Living through a pandemic for the past year, many people’s mental and physical health has taken a hit. It’s difficult to keep your mental health in a good place when you can barely leave your house or see friends and family. Same as how it’s difficult to get up the energy to work out or eat healthy when you’re laying around your house all day and might even be in a state of depression. Between trying to take care of your mental and physical health it can become a never-ending loop of not taking care of the aforementioned. Thankfully, now is a good time as ever to try and make some changes to ensure your mental and physical health stops taking such a hit.
Your mental health is extremely important to your well-being, but during a pandemic, it can be hard to manage, especially in the winter between pandemic depression and seasonal depression. The following are some simple tips to help ease your anxieties and take care of your mental health:
1. Clean your space
Cleaning the space you live in is one easy way to help ease some anxiety. Between school, work, the pandemic, and any other aspects of life, we are consistently overwhelmed in some way or another. By cleaning your living space you can find some sense of calm in knowing where you live is organized, even if your life isn’t quite organized yet! With the often uncontrollable clutter in your life, one aspect of clutter that you can control is the clutter of your living space.
2. Write down your thoughts
A great way to get some of your anxieties off your chest is by writing down your thoughts every day. Pick up a notebook and a pen before you go to bed each night and just write down what you’re thinking and/or feeling. You never even need to read what you wrote down again, but writing it down will help alleviate some of your anxiety, so you don’t take that stress with you into the next day.
In addition to the importance of your mental health, your physical health is also extremely important, but, again, it can be extremely difficult to take care of your physical health in the middle of a pandemic and especially if your mental health is not doing too hot. Follow these easy, simple changes every day or week to help get on track to taking care of your physical health:
3. Eat one healthy meal a day
It’s simply illogical to all of a sudden start to eat healthy for every meal, so pick a meal and every day eat something healthy for it. For example, make lunch your healthy meal. Now, every day for lunch eats something healthy, maybe a salad or a healthy wrap. Don’t worry about eating healthy for the other two meals — at least not right away — just focus on one meal a day to make a slight, healthy change.
4. Set aside a couple of hours to exercise each week
Exercising every day isn’t for everyone, but setting aside a little bit of time each week to exercise is super beneficial for your physical health. Exercise doesn’t even have to be going to the gym and lifting weights, it could be as simple as taking a 20-minute walk. Anything you can do to get your body moving for two hours each week is a step in the right direction. And who knows, maybe you’ll enjoy it and start exercising more consistently!
5. Drink plenty of water
Drinking more water on a daily basis can help increase your metabolism and, therefore, the number of calories you burn each day. The Mayo Clinic suggests that you should drink about 15.5 cups (3.7 liters) of fluids a day for men and about 11.5 cups (2.7 liters) of fluids a day for women. Drinking water every day (or water substitutes such as vitamin water) is an easy adaptation to your daily schedule and will help your health in significant ways — staying hydrated is important for the human body!
There are also several activities that will assist in both taking care of your mental and your physical health:
6. Aim to get a sufficient amount of sleep each night
The National Sleep Foundation recommends that every adult should get seven to nine hours of sleep a night, so try to set up a routine where you go to sleep around the same time and wake up around the same time every day. I know it’s difficult at first with crazy daily schedules, but once you get in that habit it’ll be easy to stick to it and you’ll see results for both your mental and physical health!
7. Stretch or do yoga each morning or night
Stretching or doing yoga is a good habit for both your mental and physical health. Stretching or yoga is a light exercise that will help you relax to either start your day or help you unwind to end your day. Even if you set aside 10 minutes, try to stretch or do yoga every day and you’ll slowly see results for both your mental and physical health.
Keeping up with your mental and physical health is extremely important, especially whilst living through a pandemic. Follow the tips above to see small, but meaningful changes in your mental and physical health!