Healthier Lifestyle Tips

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People don’t get stressed the in summer. No, that can’t be true. But in fact, they do.

It’s hard to believe when the sun is shining, but stress is just as powerful in June through August than in the winter. Why? It’s because the slightest changes, even seemingly good ones, make a huge difference. The kids are at home more and you don’t have the same downtime as before. Worse, they can’t look after themselves and you have to take them to work. Or, hayfever may kill your summer buzz.

Whatever the causes, it’s time to fight and take back your summer. Here are four ways to defeat SSS.

Realize It’s A Thing

As tempting as it is, don’t prescribe to the notion that SSS doesn’t exist. A quick Google search will bring up millions of peer-reviewed studies and results. Summer stress syndrome is real and the first step to recovery is acceptance. Of course, it’s not easy to admit that there is a problem if you don’t understand the signs. With that in mind, symptoms of mood disorders are available by following the link. As you’ll find out, something as small as a change in weather can impact your mental health. So please, don’t act strong when you need help.

Find A Solution

The intro outlined a couple of reasons why you might feel stress more acutely in the summer. Do they relate to you and your life? If they do, then it’s time to find a quick and easy fix. Take hayfever as an example.

Okay, so your body has let you down and June, July August are very uncomfortable months. However, it doesn’t have to stay this way with the right treatments. Powerful over-the-counter medicines are available, but the doctors have access to the good stuff. As basic as it sounds, hay fever sufferers often dismiss it as something not worth bothering about even when it has a negative impact.

Drop The Kids Off At A Club

For parents, the idea that their children can be a burden is sacrilege. They are the most important thing in the world. It’s true, but it’s also a fact that they are demanding. Kids aren’t known for their diplomacy and that can make them difficult to manage.

To do it throughout the summer vacation is a recipe for disaster, which is why you should enroll them in a kid’s club. Whether you work or not, it gives you a break while filling their days with fun, engaging activities.

Release Tension

Last but not least, focus on the best way to relieve the stress. Understanding the causes and giving yourself time is essential, but they are steps to a single goal. The final thing you have to do is get rid of the pent-up aggression in the body.

Lots of people do this differently, yet exercise tends to be popular across the board. From hitting a punch bag to yoga and pilates, physical activity is a venue for release.

Are you a sufferer? Now that you know, how do you plan on enjoying the summer?

Learning to love your body is a serious journey that you must embark upon if you want to master self-love and feel great every day. However, there are plenty of challenging things you need to do, such as months or even years of unlearning things that you learned when you were younger. If you’re prepared to go on this journey, here are some pointer to help you:

Having The Perfect Body Isn’t Enough To Make You Happy

You need to know that having a ‘perfect’ body isn’t enough to make you happy. If you think you’re going to be walking on sunshine when you look like your favorite fitness model, think again. You’ll be happy for a short while, then things will crop up, and you’ll realize that you’re no happier with thinner legs, more toned arms, or anything else that you wanted.

You might be healthier with a fitter body, which is, of course, a great reason to start working out and eating nutritious foods. Just don’t do it because you think it’s going to make you happy.

Mental And Spiritual Health Is Important Too – It Isn’t Just About How You Look

Loving your body is not just about how you look. You can make yourself look better all kinds of ways, but you need to focus on your mental and spiritual health too. You need to make sure you’re focusing on doing things that make you feel good, meditating, and doing this that will help improve these other aspects of your health.

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You Will Believe What You Tell Yourself

It’s important to remember that you will believe what you tell yourself. If you keep telling yourself the same story, that you’re not good enough, that you’re too fat or too ugly, you’ll believe it. It can be hard to get rid of these beliefs and replace them with new ones, but it’s doable.

You need to change the story you tell yourself. Find one small thing to appreciate. Make a list and put it in your mirror. If you catch yourself entertaining a thought like this, switch it up. You should practice talking to yourself in your head like you would one of your friends.

Don’t Weigh Yourself – Go By How You Feel

Weighing yourself is a bad idea. Why would you get too focused on a number, when you might feel fantastic? Then that number brings you down. Weight can fluctuate every day for any number of reasons, and it’s rarely due to the fact that we’ve lost weight.

It could be your time of the month, or you could be holding more water than you’re used to. In an ideal world, you’d base your health on how you feel. If you feel great, then you don’t need to know what you weigh!  

Don’t Feel Great? Come Up With A Solution

If you don’t feel great, come up with a solution. If you’re eating a lot of processed, fast foods then you’ll want to make a swap for more nutritious options. You can make a lot of your favorite foods with healthy alternatives.

You could try a healthy pizza, healthy chips, and more. Then, you’re going to want to get some exercise. Exercise is crucial if you want to feel amazing, as it releases happy hormones. It sounds cliche, but you need to focus on how exercise makes you feel, and not do it because you don’t like your body or because you’re punishing it in some way.

Maybe you’re wearing clothes that aren’t great for you. They might be too tight, or they might even be too loose, hiding away from the rest of the world. With confidence, you’ll feel comfortable wearing clothes that show off your figure and personality.

Make sure you’re taking care of your feet especially; look for the right shoes and consider wearing socks for bunion relief. If your feet are comfortable, you’ll instantly feel better. Think back to a time when your feet were hurting. You probably felt awful!

Try Positive Affirmations

Positive affirmations might not sound like your thing, but try them before you dismiss them completely. As mentioned earlier, we believe the things we tell ourselves. Start telling yourself things you want to believe. Here are some ideas:

• I am beautiful
• I am healthy
• I love my body
• I love myself
• I am confident
• I feel great every day
• I am loved

You could go on and on. Pick some phrases or come up with your own that resonate with you and then use them regularly.

Write In A Journal

Writing in a journal is a great way to notice any patterns that could be cropping up in your thoughts and feelings and paying attention to what could be causing them. You don’t have to write super long entries every day, but you could answer a few questions, such as:

• how am I feeling today?
• What have I done to feel good today?
• What acts of self-love have I practiced today?

The more you write in a journal, the more clarity you could get over certain aspects of your life. You might even realize that one reason you don’t feel very good about yourself is that you’re entertaining toxic friendships.

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Visualize

Visualizing can be hard for some people, but the more you do it, the easier it gets. Who would you be if you loved your body? Picture what you’d wear, what you’d say and act like, who you’d be with, where you’d spend time and anything else you can think of. Add to your visualization every time you do it. Spend time doing this in the day and at night time and it’ll help you to achieve your goals!

Try The Tapping Solution

Tapping is a great way of replacing old beliefs with your new beliefs by tapping certain points on the body at certain times. This solution has helped people eradicate all kinds of problems and beliefs from their lives.

Loving yourself in this world is a bold move – are you ready to make it?

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One of the biggest challenges in life is struggling with confidence. No matter how you look, you will always seem to pick out the imperfections because we have the idea of wanting to be perfect when really being perfect is merely an opinion, not a fact.

Having said that though, it doesn’t change how we feel about ourselves. If you lack confidence you will never feel good, you will often compare yourself to someone else who you believe to be prettier, and more popular. Part of the issue comes down to social media. While it is a brilliant platform for providing opportunities for talent, it can also be a common cause for people to feel worse about themselves because they see so many other people with the best hair, best clothes, best cars, and so on.

One very important thing to remember is that it’s not real. Just because someone’s smiling doesn’t mean they’re happy. Just because someone’s skin looks flawless doesn’t mean that it is. There are tons of apps that work as an alternative to photoshop that allow you to airbrush, resize, reshape, and blur. So just because you see something in a photo on Instagram, it doesn’t actually mean it’s real.

So how can you boost your self-confidence in time for the summer? Here are just a few examples:

The beauty of makeup

Before we get into this, you need to know that makeup shouldn’t be used as a mask. You’re beautiful, and you should never feel the need to plaster yourself in makeup. What you can do though, is learn how to accentuate what you already have, creating a positive focus, instead of the negative one that you feel you have.

Take acne for example – this is a nightmare to go through because you only wish to have clear skin, but unfortunately for some people, no matter how much skincare they buy, their body is just prone to spots. Makeup gives you the power to cover these up, along with any blemishes and hyperpigmentation you may have, giving your skin a flawless finish.

Once the problem has been dealt with, you can then make your features pop. A little contouring here, and a little mascara there, and you’re good to go.

The power of hair

Hair is often a thing we use to hide behind – it’s a comfort blanket. But if you’re so used to doing this, you may have overlooked the care and love your hair requires. Or it may be just the issue.

When dealing with stress, a very common problem that can happen is hair loss, and that only increases the levels of stress because it’s a traumatizing thing. No one wants to see their locks on the bottom of the shower, or on the floor every time they brush.

Fortunately, you don’t need to go through this anymore as there are drug-free hair growth shampoos that stimulate your scalp through natural ingredients that are easy on the skin. You can then think of a new style that you can have with your healthy looking hair. Go to a professional salon and discuss ideas that will suit your personality.

The passion for fashion

You only need to take one step outside to see all the various styles that people choose to wear. You may not follow the latest fashion trends, and that’s okay, you don’t need to. The best thing about fashion is that although you have top designers that make a lot of money creating trends that the celebs promote – there really are no rules to any of it.

One of the best ways to be a unique individual is to dress however you feel like. It doesn’t need to ‘work’ – if you see something you like and want to mix and match with another item or accessory – so be it. It’s what makes you you! Another really fun thing is that you can create your own items too.

All you need is a pair of scissors, as well as a needle and thread, and essentially you can make brand new, never before seen garments that you rock around town.

One of the most important things to remember is that you should never feel like you need to fit in. You already do. Everyone does. The world is a diverse place, and that is what makes it so fantastic. How boring would our planet be if everyone was the same color, wore the same clothes, and had the same haircut?

So friends, how will you be working on building your confidence before the start of the next season? Share your stories below!

Sure, you’re doing your best to live a lifestyle that’s both healthy and thrifty. You’re trying to ensure that your body is well looked after, exercised and nourished without it costing a fortune and disrupting your carefully planned family budget but are you really putting your back into it?

Most of us consider our lifestyle healthy (and for the most part, we’re right) but many of us are neglecting one seriously important part of our health, and that’s the health of our spine. Like any other body part, most of us take it for granted and only pay it any attention when it’s not working quite so well as it should.

Of course, like any part of our body, we can only expect it to continue to function properly as we get older by taking good care of it. The trouble is that our increasingly sedentary lifestyle makes us put our spine under pressure that it hasn’t evolved to cope with. Neglecting your back can lead not only to limited flexibility but to a range of serious health conditions.

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Serious health conditions? Spine-health can’t be that important, can it?

You bet it can! Let’s start with the obvious. Your spine is responsible for most of the mobility that we take for granted. We use it every time we do something that involves bending or twisting your body. Without a healthy spine, we can’t function. It’s really that simple.

We can’t run, lift weights at the gym or even reach over to the coffee table to pick up our phone when it rings. Neglecting your spine could lead to serious mobility problems even with the simple activities like sitting and walking that we rely on every day.

The spine is also the core of your central nervous system. It’s responsible for sending electrical impulses all over your body from your brain. Living a modern lifestyle can cause us to impede these impulses which could lead to a lack of sensation or even paralysis.

Your spine also runs parallel to your esophagus. Damage to your spinal column can press against your esophagus, or even puncture it, impeding your ability to swallow food and water.   

Even if you exercise regularly and eat relatively well (the standard by which we measure a healthy lifestyle today), the truth is that years and years of little things like incorrect lifting technique at the gym or using heavy tools incorrectly at work can slowly but surely lead to deterioration of the spinal column, wearing away at the spinal discs and joints, leading over time to degenerative diseases.

Every day our lifestyle leads us to bad habits that cause us to do our spines more and more harm. Fortunately, fixing these matters needn’t cost a fortune or involve a complete lifestyle change.

The power of posture

There’s a reason when we’re growing up our parents and teachers keep telling us to stand up straight. It’s not just because it makes us look slovenly, it’s because bad posture can lead to a huge range of health problems. It can lead to headaches, neck pain, back and shoulder pain, and even impeded lung and digestive function.

Correcting your posture takes constant diligence but the health benefits don’t take long to present themselves. Check out this guide for some everyday hints that can help you to correct your posture.

At work

Whatever your job and career aspirations, you likely spend a lot of your day sitting. You sit in your car or on the bus or train to work. You spend 8-10 hours a day sitting at your desk while at work, you sit again on the way back home and when you get home, it’s time for another sit.

The trouble is that sitting is not a configuration that our bodies have evolved to spend long periods of time in. Given that we spend around 8-12 hours a day at work (predominantly sitting) before sitting for a little longer at home. At work we’re not only sitting, we’re leaning forward to peer at the screen.

This puts a lot of pressure on our spine not to mention our vital organs. It’s no hyperbole to say that too much sitting can kill you, even if you exercise regularly. If your job requires a lot of sitting, build opportunities into your day to get up and move.

Every 30 minutes go over to grab a glass of water or check something with a colleague. It will take just a few minutes but could do a world of good for your health.

At home

Aside from yet more sitting there are other ways in which we don’t do our spines any favors at home. When we shop for a sofa we tend to go for the most comfortable option, little knowing that comfy sofas can cause back pain.

As important as our sofa is our bed is even more important. Even in a thrifty household, your mattress is not an area in which you should be a penny pincher. The wrong mattress can be disastrous to your health in all sorts of ways. It can prevent you from getting enough sleep and lead to back and neck pain that leads to more serious issues.

Your mattress should be replaced every 10 years. If you’re in the market for a new mattress don’t waste money on an uncomfortable cage sprung mattress. A hybrid mattress is great for spine health and a restful night’s sleep. What are hybrid mattresses? It’s a pocket sprung base interspersed and topped with memory foam. This gives you the perfect balance between comfort and support.

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At the gym

Whether we’re aware of it or not we put our spinal health at risk when at the gym, particularly when lifting weights, many of us neglect the all-important warm up and cool down to protect our joints and the muscle tissue surrounding them.

Never sacrifice technique for weight as lifting heavier weights with incorrect technique not only compromises your goals in the long term but can lead to inadvertent back injury.

Vigilance and the fixing of a few bad habits are a small price to pay for a healthy and supple back!