October Health & Wellbeing Blog – New Healthy Habits to try for Autumn

Date added: 13th October 2021 Written by: ISL

I am a huge advocate for exercise and just moving more in general. Although exercising alone will have huge health benefits; if you improve your diet, this will supercharge your fitness & well-being goals and help you feel good with more energy.

The approach doesn’t have to be drastic at all, if you currently don’t exercise or eat healthily whatsoever, small steps will make all the difference and you should start to get the feel-good factor quite soon.

Do you often get that tired lull in the afternoon? Or when you get home from work just want to lay on the sofa as you have no energy? If you had a poor lunch full of fat, sugar or fast food with very little nutritional value, then it is likely and no surprise that energy and mood will be impacted.

We often say “I don’t have time to shop for items”, “I need to grab something quickly” or “I didn’t have time to prepare anything”. These are valid excuses sometimes depending on your schedule, but if you just tried a healthy lunch for 2 days, you will feel the difference in the afternoon and evening.

The key is just to make a few small changes to begin with and once you have those nailed down, maybe add a couple more, slowly build your new lifestyle step by step.

A quick win would be to make a small batch of soup maybe to last 2/3 days, the recipes with very little prep time would amount to less time spent shopping for easy food at lunch and this is a great season for hearty soups.

Here are some ideas on this LINK to get you started. There are few better ways to get veggies in than a nice home-made soup, giving you a vitamin packed meal in only a few minutes of reheating….try it for just 2 lunchtimes and see the difference.

Walk a Full Marathon in a Month?!

Sounds daunting right? Actually, it isn’t as bad as it sounds. Drawing motivation from the London Marathon earlier this month, this is a nice little challenge to get the legs and cardiovascular system going with very little impact on the joints or in terms of time – A simple walk each day for one mile achieves more distance than a full marathon in a month.

An example would be a walk from Victory House in Macclesfield to the Macclesfield Cenotaph and back, for 26 days to complete a full marathon distance within that month. That’s roughly 2600 calories during the combined activity, plus your body will continue to burn more calories afterwards and ultimately adapt to this exercise in the form of weight loss and a cardiovascular & respiratory health increase.

Planning a goal or a challenge and writing this goal down makes you more likely to achieve it! Taking inspiration from Chris’s recent Yewbarrow challenge as an example, this particular mountain was no easy task, affirmed by the Hikers we spoke to nearby the foot of the climb and the climbers who had even suffered bad injuries whilst ascending the trickier scrambling parts of the climb. But Chris, Andy and myself discussed the challenge, planned the routes and ultimately laid out the goals of exactly what Chris wanted to achieve.

The creation and planning of this goal set in motion the motivation and desire to achieve it. After the demanding steep and early ascent, Chris declared that he would reach the summit no matter how much his legs were burning or how difficult it already was. The picture attached gives you the answer to how his goal ended………..