I know you have just returned from holiday time and have renewed energy and vitality, great new intentions, and thoughts about how to make this a good year. So today is a good day to speak to you...
Research is showing quite clearly that eating much less meat is good for us. Additionally, research, as you well know, indicates that regular exercise is essential for our wellbeing. Exercise—a combination of cardiovascular exercise, strength training, and flexibility training—is a vital ingredient for brain and body health, serving as our best defence against Alzheimer’s disease, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and many other non-communicable diseases. So here some ways to start integrating these essential components into your lifestyle without becoming overwhelmed!
Meat-free Mondays offer you a chance to nourish your microbiome with a variety of yummy, fresh vegetables and tantalize your taste buds with delicious food that will not clog your arteries or cause inflammation in your body. Make these days colourful – get all the colours of the rainbow onto your plate and into your belly. The more colours, the more different bacteria you will be nourishing, and the more vitamins your body will receive. Maybe be super-bold and make your meat-free Mondays alcohol-free as well? Tune into how you feel on Tuesday. Perhaps you'll sleep better and wake up feeling focused and energized? (Maybe not, but check in and investigate).
Take-to-the-tar-Tuesdays and Fridays, can offer you the chance to get your step count up, while enjoying some fresh air and effortless (☺️ maybe it will be hard, but it will be worth it) enjoyment, raise your heart rate and speed your metabolic rate by building some muscle. If you are already exercising, up it on a Tuesday and get some extra movement going in your body. Make sure it's fun, even if it's hard!
Wellness-Wednesday lends itself to a coffee AND alcohol-free day... why not just replace your coffee with herbal tea, chiccory, or some water with mint and lemon? Focus on drinking 8 glasses of water during your Wednesday, and tune in to see how your body enjoys that? Top your Wellness Wednesday off with going to bed a whole heap earlier and try reading in bed to ensure you fall asleep and have the deepest, most restorative sleep possible.
Triumphant-Thursdays lend themselves to some mind health. Sit for 5-10 minutes and just focus on your breathing. You don’t have to get too technical, just watch your breath with interest and sense how it feels to breathe. If you really want triumph, why not get out a pen and paper and write without lifting your pen for 10 minutes about how you feel and what’s working in your life and what’s not? Write about what you want to achieve this year and what you are proud of having accomplished last year. This isn’t a science thesis, just a check in with yourself, so make it easy and fun.
Saturday can be ‘leave-yourself-alone-day’, unless you are super-inspired. We don’t want to try and turn the ship 180 degrees in the month of January. Reason being that consistency is crucial and you want to make sustainable changes to your life and health, and not crash and burn. Small tweaks make a monumental difference. It's better to start small, sense the results, than to try to shift monumentally and end up quitting or hurting yourself, ultimately landing back at the starting line in March (or worse still, in February!). That said, exercise does need to be done at least three times a week to get the desired results, so don’t be shy to go for a good brisk walk or do some yoga, padel or whatever makes your heart sing on two other days. But don’t bully yourself. Entice your wild child to try something new, rather than add some “shoulds” to the list in your head.
Sweet-Spot-Sundays are for seeking balance in all things. Take a few moments to reflect on how you can get more middle-ground-living into your life. This takes a bit of checking in with your life. Finding the Sweet Spot between; being too disciplined and too unstructured, too generous and too stingy, too selfish and too giving, too hard working and too lazy, is where the least stress and strain lies and the happiest, most fulfilled and success-generating life exists. Tune into where you lack balance and see if some clarity comes your way on what to tweak to make wellbeing your state of being this year. This is best done with a pen and paper or with a friend or partner, who will help you reflect honestly and effectively.
As always, I am here to help, should you need it. Remember, the rules of the game are:
Consistency is king.
Self-kindness works and self-bullying takes you in the wrong direction.
Small tweaks done repeatedly make a monumental difference – much more than big tweaks done for a while and then stopped.
Change is hard, but small adjustments are easy.
You can only control your actions and your choices, but these you have total control over, so use this power!
Deprivation NEVER works.
I wish you a health-generating January!
Much love,
Sue