If you want to improve your health and wellbeing it is easy to be overwhelmed with well-meaning but often conflicting advice. When you’re juggling a hectic, frazzled lifestyle, small habits can often be the most sustainable.
At Jaffa fruit we like to keep things simple so here are five of our favourite tips for better wellbeing to help you enjoy a healthier, happier life.
Get moving
Whether you enjoy cold swimming, sweaty exercise classes or hitting the yoga mat with a downward dog, staying active is one of the best ways of supporting your health and wellness.
Not only can regular exercise help you to maintain a healthy weight, but it can also boost your energy levels, reduce your risk of many diseases, improve your mood and wellbeing – and strengthen both muscles and bones.
However, an active lifestyle doesn’t need to mean pushing yourself in the gym until you’re purple faced and dripping in sweat. Movement can (and should) involve finding and doing the things you most love – a dip in an icy pool on a hot summer’s day, or some soothing Yoga at the end of a stressful week.
If even that feels too much for you right now, then why not try incorporating micro movements into your day? This could be as easy as taking the stairs, going for a walk after dinner, stretching in front of the TV at night, or moving every 30 minutes when you’re sat at your desk.
It’s also important to listen to your body wherever you can. Women in particular can ebb and flow in terms of their energy due to hormonal shifts throughout the month, so make sure you pick exercise that feels right for you in that moment.
Just don’t forget to replenish your energy stores with carbohydrates and protein after you’ve exercised! Jaffa citrus fruit will help to boost those glycogen stores – perfect for blending into a protein smoothie to rebuild tired muscles – and are rich in vitamin C and fibre. Plus, they’re easy to stash into gym bags!
Eat the rainbow
We all know that one of the cornerstones to wellbeing is enjoying a healthy, nutritious diet. When we embrace more natural and freshly-prepared foods, our energy levels and even our mood can improve, and we might start to lose the weight we struggled to shift.
Changes to your diet don’t have to look complex, either! One of the simplest shifts you can make is to slowly incorporate more home-cooked foods into your meal plans – and to pile your plate with more plants.
Experts are starting to recognise the importance of our gut when it comes to overall wellness (a healthy gut can mean a healthy body, and a healthy mind) and now believe that one of the best ways we can boost our gut health is to enjoy a large variety of plants. Aiming for 30 different plants, which include herbs, rice and even oats, each week is a great habit to aim for.
As you enjoy your five-a-day, it’s also worth noting that each colour of fruit and veg comes with its own benefits, so eat the rainbow if you can! For example, tomatoes are rich in lycopene, which can support skin health, while plump and juicy blackberries are high in the powerful antioxidant anthocyanin.
Our Jaffa fruits make the perfect snack for anyone looking to embrace a healthy lifestyle. The Easy Peelers and Jaffa citrus fruits are packaged with vitamin C, potassium and fibre – and they’re guaranteed to perk up any meal, from salads to burgers and even smoothies.
Self care
Many of us spend our lives in constant hustle mode, firing off emails, replying to group chats, or dashing from meeting to meeting. Yet, because of this, we are also living in chronic stress mode.
Signs you may be chronically stressed include not feeling hungry when you wake, feeling tired and wired, lacking in energy, struggling with sleep, aches and pains, digestive issues, or often getting sick.
Yet, chronic stress can also lead to many long-term health conditions, as well as hormonal imbalances, so it’s crucial that we try to take time out to refill our cups.
Self care can mean different things for each one of us – and can vary from moment to moment, depending on your needs.
However, it may look like running a bubble bath, buying yourself flowers, booking in a massage, or it could be as simple as eating a healthy breakfast, connecting with friends, listening to the birds sing over your morning cup of coffee, or setting aside five minutes to sit in stillness.
Every day, aim to do something which lights you up!
Gratitude
After the last few years, many of us have been left feeling frazzled, depleted or struggling with our mental health.
It’s important to recognise that living a healthy lifestyle isn’t just about the foods we eat, or whether or not we move and exercise – it also involves caring for our minds and for our mental health.
One of the most powerful things we can do to support our wellbeing is to practice gratitude. When we appreciate the things we have, or express our gratitude, we can reap the rewards – gratitude has been shown to improve our mood, help us to cope with adversity, ease anxiety and depression, support healthy sleep and even boost our immune system. Gratitude may even improve our relationships and reduce the risk of disease and chronic pain.
At the end of each day, why not spend five minutes reflecting on the good things that have happened to you? These don’t have to be big things – they can be as simple as enjoying a beautiful sunset, or the smile of a loved one.
Get Outside
It’s been proven that spending time outdoors can help to lower the stress response. In fact, stepping outside and enjoying nature is one of the easiest (and quickest) ways you can lower levels of the stress hormone, cortisol.
If you can, aim to get outside for 15-20 minutes each day. Better still, get outside first thing: soaking up morning light is a powerful way to ease stress levels, and can also help to regulate the Circadian Rhythm (aka our body’s internal clock), which helps you to sleep easier and deeper. Better still if the sun is shining, since it will help you to boost your vitamin D levels!
However, if you struggle to find time to get outdoors – or if the weather isn’t playing ball – you can still enjoy the benefits of Mother Nature by bringing green plants into your home, or even hugging a pet (stroking or cuddling an animal can increase levels of the love hormone, oxytocin). The sound of nature, such as bubbling streams or bird song, has also been shown to reduce our stress response, so why not pop on a healing soundtrack and relax and enjoy?
