Fall means football, flu season, and only a few more weeks of comfortable weather. Days begin to shorten, temperatures drop, and as the holidays approach, it’s easy to slip out of your regular routines.
The following provides helpful tips to promote personal wellness throughout the approaching holiday season:
Stay Active
As times get busier, your usual workout time may get interrupted more frequently. Rather than giving up all together, break up your exercise sections into multiple smaller periods throughout the day.
Take advantage of the receding sunlight as much as possible. Exercise outside is often better and research has shown that it is easier to focus and concentrate on activities while you are outdoors. You’ll also get your much needed vitamin D.
Sitting inside after work, which many Americans sit at, can be a terrible situation for your back. If your activities involve sitting for long periods, stand up and stretch and walk around if possible every chance you get for a break. Binge watching Netflix has never been good for anyone’s health.
Recruit a workout buddy to keep you accountable to each other. A partner can motivate you and keep you on track. Even better, try to get the whole family involved by allocating time for family fitness, such as walking the dog or playing a sport.
Make sure that you stretch before any exercise, especially as it gets colder and wetter.
Maintain Your Health
Many people see getting sick in the winter as inevitable. It is hard but there’s plenty of measures to prevent this from happening such as regularly washing your hands, drinking plenty of water, taking nutritional supplements, and eating right.
Another often ignored health tips is to get plenty of restful sleep. Tossing and turning in a few fitful hours can do terrible things to your back, not to mention the rest of your body. Avoid staying up too late.
It can be tempting to lax your nutritional efforts during the holiday season. It’s ok to celebrate on the actual holidays but don’t call 3 months of the year “Holidays” to get away with bad habits. If you do, a fourth of your life will include poor nutrition- that’s very bad!
Get Involved
Sometimes the best way to remain healthy is to do so with strangers. We’re not talking about walking in the park at midnight, but public activities. Register for a class to try out a new workout or a walking club. Register to run in an event such as a local 5K or fall cycling ride.
Doing something in public also helps keep you on track simply because we do really care what other people think. If you don’t prepare for a race, it’s going to be embarrassing when you can’t go for 1K, let alone 5K. As long as you don’t stress yourself out about it, this is a very efficient method for self-improvement.
If it is within budget constraints, hire a personal trainer. They aren’t your friend so they will be honest with you when you need to improve and push you harder than most family might because they do it as a profession and can see you potential.
