How To Stay Healthy This Fall: Health Tips For You And Your Family
It is that time of the year where we enjoy the crisp and cool air, colors, feelings, and magic of watching the falling leaves, amongst other fantastic fall season perks. However, it can also be a challenging time for our health. The change in season can disrupt routines and make us more susceptible to colds and flu. That's why it's advised to take some extra steps to stay healthy this fall season.
While we embrace the fall season with excitement, here are tips on how you and your family can stay healthy this fall.
Start Everyday with A Hearty Breakfast
A good breakfast is a perfect way to jumpstart your day. With a good breakfast, you need not worry about your day as it makes you more efficient, less irritable, and more energetic. Studies have linked a healthy breakfast with less chronic disease, increased longevity, and better health. But what exactly is a hearty breakfast? A hearty breakfast is one that provides at least one-third of the required calories for the day. This can include foods such as cereal, waffles, bananas, peaches, and berries. All types of fresh or frozen whole fruits with no sugar added suffice, especially citrus and lemon. Other additions may include whole wheat or multigrain bread and proteins such as tofu and legumes.
With a good breakfast, you can maintain your ideal weight and not worry about weight gain, because you will be provided with just the right amount of energy you need to make it to the next meal - lunch. With a good breakfast, you won't have to worry about unhealthy snack habits, which are among the main causes of weight gain. Most importantly, the right breakfast provides plenty of long-lasting complex carbohydrates to ensure long-lasting energy.
Forming healthy breakfast habits will help prevent burn-out, and overall, help you look good and feel better.
Exercise And Take Walks
Moderate exercise not only boosts your metabolism but also strengthens your muscles and helps you lose or maintain your ideal weight. With everybody on the go, activities are rushed. Even children and retirees barely have time for themselves due to full calendars. Nevertheless, it is important to make time to exercise, even if it is just 10 minutes every day. You can exercise by taking walks, as walking is good practice for staying fit. With walking, you do not have to worry about injuries. Walking is done at minimal cost; you do not need the wrist pads, goggles, knee pads, helmets, gloves, or poles that would be required for other forms of exercise. All you need is a pair of good walking shoes.
The good thing about taking walks is that it can be done at any time of the day. You can walk during your lunch hour, or at break times, if you have a tight schedule. You can take walks in the evening after work or in the morning before starting the day. And the best part? You don’t have to do it alone. You can walk with a friend, partner, or sibling, as it tends to boost and encourage communication and strengthen relationships.
The effect of exercise walks, or any high-priority activity is that it increases your energy, and promotes weight loss/maintenance by enhancing metabolism and burning calories faster. This is a high-yield investment that uplifts your spirit and helps you to lead a healthy and productive life.
Make Time To Rest
Resting is an often-overlooked factor that boosts and strengthens the body's immune system. Here are some ways to ensure you have good rest:
Have a consistent sleeping pattern. It is important that you go to bed and wake up at the same time every day.
Eat healthily and at early times of the day. An empty, resting stomach is more conducive to quality rest.
Avoid excess caffeine such as coffee, tea, or cola, as it is a central nervous stimulant, which is a major cause of insomnia.
Exercise often, usually three hours before your bedtime.
Lukewarm baths are helpful relaxation techniques.
Deal with disturbing problems during the day rather than at night. That way you can avoid being emotionally stressed before bedtime.
Rest is an important practice that is part of life’s rhythm, which helps you to be in tune with yourself and will contribute to a longer and healthier life in the long-run.
Routine Body Check
It is important you add a routine body check for you and your family to your to-do list. The fall season is a good time to ensure everyone in the family is up-to-date on their wellness visits. You should regularly schedule annual physicals to track existing conditions, monitor your health, update vaccinations, perform any necessary exams, and discuss risks for hereditary diseases that may run in your family.
Scheduling your routine body check and wellness exam in the fall alongside that of your family once a year is a decent practice. With this appointment, you can keep a record of your health and that of your family. That way you can avoid unforeseen sicknesses, and ideally save more money in the long run since, as you may know, “prevention is better than a cure.”
A routine body check can not only be used as a medium to get your flu shot but also to understand your family history. With this, you can take steps to protect your health and prevent certain health conditions, such as cancer, diabetes, strokes, osteoporosis, or heart disease.
Healthy Diet And Lifestyle
Eating healthy requires a comprehensive approach to change in lifestyle (if you don’t already have one). A healthy diet requires that you identify and change eating habits that could be dangerous to your health. It could be drinking water instead of soft drinks, or cutting back on fats and oils. It may require you to completely restructure your eating patterns and lifestyle, especially if you are on a journey to weight loss. Here are a few tips on how you can practice a healthy lifestyle:
Never skip breakfast, as it is the most important meal of the day.
Think long-term. A healthy lifestyle takes time to adapt and requires no shortcuts. Have the do-it-yourself mindset. There's no better motivation than the one you have set for yourself, especially when it comes to improving your health.
Avoid fast food and vending machines.
Take walks outside.
Find a support/accountability partner
Have a weight-control plan.
Lastly, keep your focus on improving your health, rather than weight loss.
Remember to rest. Know when to take breaks to avoid burn-outs.
Learn And Practice Forgiveness
You might want to ask why forgiveness? Forgiveness is like a pathway to peace, and when you're at peace, your body tends to flourish in all its forms. We live in a world where, sometimes, the root cause of our problems lies within ourselves. A painful memory is like a mental wound you must allow to heal. To grow both mentally and socially, you have to learn to practice forgiveness, because, when you learn to forgive, you will suffer less anxiety and depressionThis will contribute to lifting your self-esteem, allowing you to enjoy better health. Forgiveness opens the heart, making you feel a zest for life and a sense that your existence is meaningful.
Practice Mindfulness
Mindfulness is a state of being mindful of your thoughts and having positive emotions. Research has it that some scientists still question a direct link between emotions and disease because there is no conclusive proof that a person’s state of mind is able to cause or cure a specific disease. However, there has been a better understanding of the body's immune systems in recent years. While emotions, such as anger, sadness, stress, and bitterness, cannot be related to a specific disease like a heart attack, they can now be measured through the body’s immune system response to specific threats. It is called the Placebo Effect, where thoughts and emotions are known to directly influence the mind, which, in turn, powerfully affects the body.
You can stay healthy this fall by practicing mindfulness. It may sound Pollyanna-ish, but staying optimistic in difficult times may keep you well. Some studies even suggest that a stable emotional life is as important to good health as more traditional influences like improved diet, exercise, etc.
Drink Water
This may sound cliché to you, but to function, the body needs enough fluid. When you don’t drink enough water, the body must excrete wastes in a much more concentrated form, causing body odor, bad breath, and unpleasant-smelling urine. Drink enough water to keep the urine pale. The body loses about 10 cups of water every day through sweat. It is important you drink water first thing in the morning and every half hour. This will give you a regular stress break.
In conclusion, this could be the perfect time to hit the reset button on your health routines, an opportunity to prioritize some of the most important habits that can help you to keep a healthy lifestyle and give you the energy you need to accomplish your goals.
Works Cited
Author, Aileen Ludington, MD & Hans Diehl DrHSc, MPH (2000). Health Power: Health by Choice, Not by Chance. Review and Herald Publishing Association.
Ronnie Koenig (2021, September 9) 10 tips To Get (And Stay) Healthy This Fall SmallChanges To Your Routine Can Add Up To Big Health Benefits. Today.com. https://www.today.com/health/10-tips-get-stay-healthy-fall-2021-today-t230412.
