One of the most difficult things that I’ve learned recently is figuring out how to make the best healthy changes. I love the idea of living a fully sustainable life, without any toxic products, but figuring out where to start has been a big struggle. I’ve got a budget to stick to, and not a lot of time available for making huge changes. I’m personally still in the process of making changes and getting my house and family healthier. Follow along while I keep learning and making changes!

Health is defined as a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not just being free from illness or injury. Physical health in general is not being sick or hurt, and while you can still get sick, the better your physical health is, the less likely you are to get or stay sick. While mental health has been making a bigger appearance out in the media and our communities, its still a big issue to tackle. Then comes social health: the bain of my existence. In between running my office, taking care of my home and my animals, grocery shopping, exercising and everything else that seems to take up time in my day.

Physical health

Learning how to be as physically healthy as possible seems to be the easiest goal to reach. All you really need to do is workout and eat fruits and vegetables right? That is until you start looking all of the other potential factors to your physical health. Your stress levels, your sleep habits, and your specific exercise habits can all affect how healthy you actually are.

Making sure that you eat a well balanced diet, drink plenty of water is a great step one for your physical health! This means drinking approximately half your body weight in ounces of water a day (i.e. if you weigh 140 lbs, drink 70 ounces of water), eating 2-3 cups worth of vegetables a day (supplement with greens if you have to – here’s my favorite , eat a high quality protein like chicken, lean beef or lentils or beans, and add in some whole grains like oats, barley, rye or quinoa instead of white flour products.

For exercise, I like to start low impact with things like walking, yoga, Pilates, and simple body weight exercises. This helps minimize the stress on your body, and helps keep your stress hormones lower since you aren’t pushing your heart rate super high, super fast. I love taking long walks/hikes, especially when my husband is home and can go with me. The varying terrain of walking through the woods helps build muscle and joint stability, while maintaining a steady heart rate, and keeping my stress hormones balanced! I also set a bedtime alarm and a wake up alarm to help measure the amount of sleep that I’m getting, since sleep is important for healing.

Mental Health

Not gonna lie, this is the area that I know the least about, and I’ve been working on learning as much as I can but its not easy. We as a society definitely need to work on educating ourselves more. I know that making time to talk about the things that are bothering you, and giving yourself space to understand your feelings really helps. I also discovered that journaling has really helped me figure out where I’m at mentally and how I approach life.

Starting the work on your physical health will make a difference in your mental health because the two are linked! Getting out and move, spend some time out in nature focusing on your breathing and enjoying the beauty of the world. Acknowledge the negative things in your life and then focus on the positive things, and building up the good things.

One other thing that I’ve been looking at and trying to learn more about is therapy. We see doctors when our bodies are sick, so why shouldn’t we see a doctor when our mind is sick? I have reached out to a few therapists so I can build a working relationship with them and have a few options to refer people to if they ask, so feel free to send me an email if you have questions!

Social Health

Working to maintain a healthy social life an seem like a full time job; however, I have recently started what I call an intention page in my journals. What this is, is a page where I write down what things I need to remember and intentionally get done. I write down a couple of friends names, and then add in a couple of fun plans, like lunches or coffee, or dancing. I then pick a friend and call or text them and invite them to go do one of those activities which me!

This takes some of the stress off of me trying to plan big get togethers, and it means that I’m not sitting around waiting for other people to come up with something or waiting for their schedule to free up. The little bit of intentionality that I put in a few days a month makes the world of difference, not just to me, but to my friends as well.

I hope some of this helps you start adding some healthy habits into your life, and I can’t wit to share more with you all!