Spring into Self-Care

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It’s April, and that means warmer weather, increased sun exposure, Easter, and vegetable garden prep. (It also means seasonal allergies and rain, but who’s complaining? It’s not freezing anymore!)

This month, I want to focus on how we can use the spring season to our advantage in ways that will inspire and motivate us to place greater emphasis on self-care habits.

Some of the topics I’m going to discuss include movement, mental health, and fuel:

Movement

Now that the weather is finally improving, we can get active outside again! For those who have been running through winter, you’re amazing.

But you’re also the minority.

Let’s get back outside! Some ways to take advantage of the outdoors in early spring, include:

  • Running
  • Hiking
  • Walking
  • Bike riding
  • Playing tennis
  • Joining a slow-pitch baseball team
  • Playing spring soccer

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Even increasing your dog walks from once a day to twice can help boost physical tone and performance. (For both you and your pup!) Whatever you do to increase your outdoor activity will only benefit your body and mind.

Speaking of mind…

Mental Health

The wonderful thing about getting outside, it that it increases your exposure to vitamin D. Vitamin D is essential for good health, and although our food can be fortified with it, the rate of absorption is much, much stronger through direct sunlight.

Your eyes and skin are what draw in vitamin D, so allowing yourself to wear short sleeves and refraining from wearing sunglasses right away is a promising idea—your mind will thank you for it, as by this time of year, most of us are very deficient in this essential “happy hormone.”

Fuel

Fuel—as in food. The food changes in the spring! Wintertime is all about heavy, rich, comfort food, but spring? Food gets lighter, fresher, and more locally grown products are available.

Rhubarb, asparagus, strawberries, peas, lettuce, cherries, beets, and beans are a few of the fresh produce items that will become in-season this spring. Take advantage of the local and fresh eats and save yourself some money by buying local, too.

Your body craves good nutrition, and healthy eats contribute greatly to both better movement and increased mental health.

If you’re the kind of person who likes to track your progress and keep yourself accountable, try using My Wellness Journal! It’s available for purchase in hardcover on Blurb.

For more information on how you can learn to be well no matter what stage you’re at in this moment, contact me:

Happy Spring, friends! Stay happy and healthy.

Love, Sophie.

 

Self-Care: Cultivating Healthy Habits

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This is YOUR Year for Self-Care

Happy New Year, everyone! January is the official month of wellness and self-care, and many people inadvertently seek to establish better lifestyle habits after a holiday season of indulging in festive foods and sparkling beverages.

(It’s okay—we’re all guilty!)

As a health and wellness coach, I love hearing about my clients’ strong desires to begin a path of healthy lifestyle choices—let’s begin this change together! Let’s take our health and wellness into our own hands and make conscious decisions together, one-step-at-a-time.

Documenting your goals, tracking your nutrition stats, and having a fitness routine established, is an essential way to stay on top of your new and improved lifestyle. You can do this with your own copy of My Wellness Journal, an organized strategy that I have created utilizing my professional knowledge and many years of training and expertise in wellness, fitness, nutrition, and goal setting.

You can pick up a copy here to get started!

I have separated the key areas to confront to achieve your health and wellness goals, below. Trust me, some very simple changes can create an enormous difference:

Diet

The number one thing most people think of in terms of self-care, is diet. When it comes to eating healthfully, I have come to live by this mantra: “Eat food. Not Too much. Mostly Plants.” These seven genius words of simplicity come from the book In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan, and later aired as a PBS documentary based around the concept of “healthy-ish” eating habits.

I’m all about treating your mind and body with respect, which means that once in awhile you must give a little, and then you can get a little. For example, if you are planning on having a big steak for dinner with baked potato, melted butter, cheese and garlic bread, then maybe plan on a healthy smoothie for breakfast and salad for lunch.

There is no use in stressing out about what you eat from time to time, as it only increases your cortisol levels, which can make you gain weight (mostly in the belly, too). By implementing the “healthy-ish” philosophy, everything is best enjoyed in moderation—including moderation.

Sleep Hygiene

Sleep hygiene

Sleep deprivation is seriously the root of all evils. We all know the common side effects of little sleep: feeling groggy or sluggish in the afternoons, increased irritability, sore muscles, decreased work productivity, falling asleep while watching TV, requiring an alarm clock to wake, and continuous yawning throughout the day. The list goes on and one!

But did you realize that constant lack of adequate sleep can contribute to some serious health issues, such as heart disease, decrease in memory retention, increase risk of diabetes and obesity (adequate sleep is required for proper glucose processing and insulin regulation), and increases the risk of depression and other mental illness?

So: how can you practice good sleep hygiene (and therefore, better self-care)? There are all kinds of typical bad habits that need to be broken at bedtime. Screens need to be put away, no food or caffeine beyond a certain time, limited or no alcohol, and more. There’s a great article about practicing good sleep hygiene; and can be found here.

You can also try to implement new bedtime rituals like yoga to help balance your thoughts and promote calmness and relaxation. We found this amazing bedtime yoga routine: give it try to start improving your sleep tonight! If yoga isn’t your thing, here are eight natural ways to treat chronic poor sleep.

Another way to improve your sleep pattern, is to analyze your needs and know how many hours of sleep you require to function properly the next day. Each person has a unique and optimum number of hours that they need to rest, and one will require more sleep than another. To discover your optimal sleep pattern, creep your bedtime routine 15 minutes earlier every few days until you start waking up before your alarm, including on weekends. Once this occurs for a minimum of one week, you have found the sufficient number of hours of sleep you need.

Exercise

Without a doubt, a moderate exercise plan will be an important part of your self-care routine. There are various ways to exercise for all fitness levels that don’t necessarily have to include a gym membership, yet will still give you the results you’re looking for—just be sure to get started with a fitness instructor who will ensure you get proper guidance and training to avoid serious injury.

For people who may not be interested in a gym membership and don’t know what fitness level they are at (or where to even begin!), the professional help from a wellness coach or personal trainer is a smart way to get started.

Listen to your body and don’t push yourself too far, too fast. By doing that, you are at serious risk of getting injured. I can’t stress the importance of getting a coach and a good training plan. Fitness experts (like health coaches, fitness instructors and personal trainers) have the expertise to guide and inspire and don’t have to cost a fortune.

Mind and Spirit

Meditation

Having good mental health is essential in improving your self-care habits. Reducing stress and feeling content within yourself is crucial to beginning your journey down a path of health and wellness. Again, having a good wellness coach to mentor you, guide you, and encourage you through it all will ensure your success with your lifestyle changes.

Having good mental health also means mindfulness. Being mindful of your surroundings, being aware of what you eat and drink and what you do during the day is by far the best way to start. You must be mentally, emotionally and spiritually ready to welcome healthy habits into your lifestyle!

The practice of meditation will allow your mind to open, and goes very well with mindfulness. Once you’ve trained yourself on noticing your environment, teaching yourself to relax with meditation will become a little easier. Many yoga classes will have 10 minutes dedicated at the end of class to do just that—it’s called savasana. This is a great introductory to the art of meditation!

If you’re seeking increased wellness this January and would like the professional help of a highly trained and experienced health and wellness coach, I would love to hear from you.

Visit my website or contact me directly and let’s get started together. Love, Sophie.

Addiction: Healing through Social Connection, Fitness, and Nutrition

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Addiction is a term that is often attached to stigma and stereotypes of all sorts, whether it’s our perception of someone who is homeless, living under a bridge, or drinking from a brown paper bag. Addiction goes far beyond these ideas and perceptions created either by society or our lack of knowledge or experience on the topic.

Addiction is powerful, cunning, and baffling. It can destroy lives of the one affected and those who are connected to its victim. Addiction does not judge by age, race, sexual identity, creed, religion or lack of religion. It will falsely mislead you to believe that you’re achieving a life of happiness and joy, but in the end, it will back you up into a corner of isolation, misery and despair.

The good news? If fought carefully, addiction can be arrested and a new way of life (full of serenity!) can be found, earned, and sustained.

Various services including counselling, short and long term treatment centers, 12-step programs, hypnosis, and meditation are available to one battling addiction. The end goal many want is to obtain a life free from the use of substance, but the gifts go beyond that.

Here are three major ways to help work through addiction:

Social Connection

The most crucial foundation of recovery, is to focus on the social connection we have with one another, the world around us, and most importantly, the one with our self.

Actively participating in and seeking strong social connections allows us to be human and relate to another human being through the emotion of love, compassion, empathy, service, and gratitude.

Social connection can often help beat addiction over any expensive therapist, book, or treatment center. When we can sit together with another human being, expose ourselves, get vulnerable, and know that someone else can feel what we feel and can understand what we are going through, then we feel something larger than just ourselves.

Fitness

Another great way to combat addiction is to add fitness to your treatment plan. Physically moving your body in a deliberate, mindful way can have a huge impact on mental health, and therefore addiction. Science has proven that the endorphins that your body naturally releases when exercising creates a chain reaction leading to feelings of happiness, control, clarity, and even euphoria.

Even better? Moving with other people. This ties in the social aspect of beating addiction to the physical one. Hiking with a friend of family member, attending group fitness classes, going for a walk with a neighbour, or even joining an online Facebook group that posts daily about fitness goals and workouts can be incredibly helpful to one seeking increased mental health and addiction recovery.

Nutrition

The third piece of the pie (so to speak!) is nutrition—feeding your brain to succeed in working for you, and not against you. We all know that too much sugar can spike insulin levels and result in a crash that exhausts us. We know that too much saturated fat makes us gain weight, feel lethargic, and creates new health issues for us.

So by avoiding nutrition mistakes, you really do give yourself a better chance of obtaining a healthier brain and body.

Foods that help to build a healthier body and mind include plants, whole grains, plant-based proteins, water, herbal teas, good quality vitamins, and probiotics. These foods help your body to work efficiently and productively, and afford you more energy, better sleep, and allow you to achieve and maintain a healthy body weight.

Conclusion

It’s important to remember that although there are a variety of healthy ways to recover from an addiction or substance abuse, the best one includes being social.

Humans are social beings and sharing an experience and/or having someone else go through a drastic change is a must. Most people will feel angry, lonely and tired when going through a recovery process. Just like any goals in life, we have to give our bodies a chance to heal and change one step at a time. It’s easy to rush this process and get frustrated when we don’t see the results we want (or as fast as we want). It’s all about finding a healthy lifestyle that fits your individual needs.

On a side note, I’m currently studying sugar addiction and how it affects the human body physically and mentally. I’m working on putting together a detox plan for this, so stay tuned for that!

Want to chat more about this topic? Please reach out and contact me HERE.

Take care!