Date Published: 24 Sep '21

4 Ways to Improve Your Lifestyle and Habits

Modern lifestyles today are very different from when we were growing up. No longer are we as active as we perhaps should be, based on our working and family life and our reduced energy levels. We may need to step back from our daily grind, re-evaluate what’s important in our lives. Here are a few tips to think about to reset your system to reduce our daily pressures, and to live life to our fullest. Sometimes just the small changes in our routine can make the biggest of improvements.

1. Reduce Screen Time

With the ever demanding lifestyles, ‘always-on’ mindset in our world today, we know that when we shut down before bed, our brains have the capacity to slow down and prepare ourselves for that all important sleep:

avoid devices, laptops, phones about an hour before going to sleep, if you can manage 1.5 hours this provides more down-time for your brain
avoid devices for the first half hour when you wake – have a shower, meditate for a few minutes, create a routine of movement exercises and stretches, setting yourself up for the day feeling refreshed and connected
move around your morning routine without multitasking is key

2. Exercise

When we move and are active during the day, our brain leases endorphins, impacting our heart rate, improving blood circulation, creating stretch and contraction for our muscles. Keeping active during the day reduces stress levels, reduces stiffness and soreness from poor posture as we sit at our desk. Promoting our movement of mind and body stimulates healthy habits. A few ways you can focus your brain and have fun doing it:

start your day with a simple movement routine – cat-cows, ankle and hip circles, or simple yoga poses
walking to the next bus stop, instead of catching the usual bus nearby
take a stroll during your lunch break, there’s nothing like smelling grass, flowers and the outdoors if you can make it to the local park
start a new hobby like swimming or running/fast walking
start restorative and gentle exercise classes like yoga, pilates or stretching – for the more adventurous, other exercises to increase your good stress are HIIT or boxing classes

3. Avoid stimulants

Who doesn’t reach for that coffee first thing as we wake? We know that coffee, alcohol, and nicotine are all stimulants that trigger that jittery feeling. When we use stimulants regularly our bodies tend to crave these. Coffee is a know stimulant causing our heart to race, our legs and hands to shake and we see it as a ‘jump start’. Alcohol can cause both depression and jitters for those of use prone to these feelings, alcohol exacerbates those feelings. We know that for some, reducing or cutting out these are much harder to do.

try replacing your morning coffee with cacao, matcha, herbal tea, or go decaf
try avoiding alcohol during the week to give your body a break, instead try a mocktail or alcohol free drinks like flavoured sparkling water or kombucha
If you are drinking, remember to keep your water intake up, 2 glasses for every 1 unit of alcohol, to avoid feeling crusty in the morning

4. Improve your mood through quality nutrients

Do you find yourself unable to articulate how you feel, reduced ability to focus or problem-solve? A hormonal imbalance may be the problem.

Our brain and body are amazing! Not only does our brain control our movement and activity through muscles and joints, also our brain controls our autonomic nervous system, including regulation and interactions of hormones which regulate our immunity, energy and mood. Our autonomic nervous system also regulates our involuntary body processes like heart rate, breathing and digestion, among many more. To support our body to be able to process our hormonal messages or ‘fight or flight’ responses, supporting our autonomic system is so important, here are a few ways you can support these:

Magnesium – effective for calming mind and body, involved in over 200 reactions in our body, proven to help with sleep under stress situations
Zinc – eases signs of low mood, which specifically feeds dopamine and serotonin.
B6 – supports neurotransmitter production, which is necessary to so many body functions, specifically serotonin and improving mood.

We know that the relationship of these body systems and the brain form a link to help our body process and relax our body, through relaxing neurotransmitters within the brain. This helps our body to de-stress and improve our capacity for sleep by changing our brainwave associations.

If you have any questions, call us today if you would like to find out more about how to improve your habits – Contact us.