30 Day Health Challenge

Water is essential to our health, in fact, it’s essential to our survival. Dehydration is a serious issue, and many people are slightly, but chronically dehydrated 💦

Let’s explore what water does in our bodies:
💦 It takes nutrients throughout the body
💦 It gets rid of waste products
💦 It’s a solvent for vitamins and minerals
💦 It lubricates joints, cushions the eyes, spinal cord and brain
💦 It also cushions the fetus in the womb
💦 It helps regulate body temperature
💦 It maintains blood volume

Drinking enough water helps to support these and other vital functions 💦💦💦

I’ve been talking about how our bodies need water on the inside to survive. Of course, water is also important for caring of the outside of our bodies 🚿

For now, let’s explore how much water we should drink. There are different formulas around ranging from using kilojoules expenditure to body weight, and of course the famous 8 glasses of water, which is really only one size fits all solution and doesn’t take size or expenditure into consideration 💦

Personally, I find the body weight formula the easiest and most accurate one 🤔

Here it goes: Drink one litre of water for every 22 kilograms of body weight ⚖️

So, a 66kg person needs to drink 3 litres of water, a 88kg person needs 4 litres of water, and so on, you get my drift 😉

(BTW the 2, 3, 4 or whatever litres of water can also include food with a high water content, and the amount of water necessary increases when we sweat)

Here’s the question: How much water do you drink daily?

Especially in winter, I have to monitor how much I drink, otherwise I don’t drink enough water during the day 💦

For this CHALLENGE I will monitor very closely to make sure I drink enough 🥛🥛🥛🥛

Let me know if you are up for the water challenge 💙

Ok, now that we’ve committed to drinking enough water, the question is, which water to drink 🤔
Personally, I am very pragmatic about it 😉
I will drink and use the best water available. I’ve got a hierarchy. However, I am very aware that I live in a country where I have the luxury of choice.
💦 If I can’t find anything else, I will drink tap water (still better than dehydration)
💦 I avoid buying bottled water
💦 Next in the hierarchy is filtered water (there are different quality filter systems available, and usually you get what you pay for)
💦 Best, and my personal favourite, is my Kangen water system, I just feel amazing when I drink it and wash my body with it (it becomes very obvious, when I’m traveling, such a difference)
💦 Happy to tell you more about this, just let me know 🥰

This topic is so important, and there’s so much conflicting information available. It seems that everyone is an expert. On top of that, a lot of people get very attached to their perspective 🧐

Sometimes, it’s very difficult to decide whether the information provided has any merit 🤔

Personally, as I have stated before, I’m pragmatic and prefer to keep things simple 😘

I like to
🥦 Eat REAL food
🥦 Eat lots of GREENS
🥦 Eat FRESH food, the stuff that’s in season
🥦 Cook food from scratch, avoid pre-cooked or ready to eat meals from the supermarket
🥦 Have takeaway only occasionally
🥦 Wherever possible, buy organic and local
🥦 Enjoy food

We live in a hectic world, and it can be very challenging to take TIME for eating. Yet, it’s an integral part of nutrition and self-love 🥰

Setting the table, sitting down for eating without mobile phones or TV helps to appreciate and enjoy your food 😋

I tend to make better choices if I take the time to plan and prepare my meals AND sit down at the table 🍴

Our bodies are fabulous, digestion turns off when we’re stressed, and it turns on when we’re relaxed and take the time to enjoy our food 🙏

Food for thought 🤔

Since this is a challenge, here’s what I suggest for the nutrition part:

Psychologically, it is easier to add something healthy than to avoid a particular junk food.
So, if avoiding pizza, ice cream or chocolate only led to cravings, try adding something healthy 🥗

Pick something healthy, and ADD it to your daily meals. For example, you could commit to have a salad with lunch or dinner 😋

Let me know how you go with that 💕

This is a topic that I definitely need to pay more attention to. Things seem to be piling up and daily life can be hectic 😮

I presented at a Mindfulness Workshop, and was reminded to actually REST. During my section, we did a short relaxation exercise, and people loved it. So, I’m thinking, I’m not the only one who loves more REST 💕

I relax and recharge best in nature, and I especially love the ocean.

What do you do to recharge?

🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊

Reconsidering Bedtime Routine

I have recently given my bedtime routine a complete overhaul 😴

💤 My bedroom has a Zen feel now
💤 I removed ALL clutter
💤 I no longer charge my phone in my bedroom
💤 Yep, that’s right, I survive the night without it
💤 I do a 5 minute stretching routine
💤 I make a point of stopping the use of ALL electronic devices ONE hour before bedtime

My new bedtime routine DOES help me to get a better sleep and REST 💕

Ahhh, relax 🙃

Today is a catch-up day 💕
🙂 you can revise the previous topics
🙂 decide what you would like to implement

People who are sleep deprived do not function at their best 😯

😴 Parents certainly know this

😴 Shift workers can also relate to this

😴 In recent times, chronic lack of quality sleep affects a much larger percentage of the population, and goes beyond the typical groups that don’t get enough quality sleep

😴 One issue appears to be the increase of blue light. That’s the light that comes from electronic devices, TVs, mobile phones, computers etc

😴 The difference becomes really clear, when we are in nature at night away from lights of the city and look at the stars instead of screens 🌟

So, what to do when you can’t get to sleep or wake up during the night on a regular basis (without having kids or being a shift worker etc.)?

💤 Reduce blue light from screens including TVs in the evening, and stop screentime at least one hour before bedtime
💤 If you wake up during the night, don’t stay your bed tossing and turning as you will start to associate your bed with being awake
💤 Instead, get up and go into a different room (but don’t look at any blue light emitting devices), maybe read a book
💤 If you are feeling anxious during the night and wake up, write everything down that bothers you, this will help to relax your brain
💤 It might just be on overdrive from unfinished tasks, and you write them into a journal, your mind can calm down
💤 Get up at the same time every day to keep your circadian rhythm in the same routine

Good night 💤😴

Another couple of tips for falling asleep and a improved bedtime routine 😴

Rather than falling asleep in front of the TV, let’s do something different 🌛

BTW falling asleep in front of the TV allows the blue light from the screen to influence your brain waves through your closed eyelids 😮

🌟 Go for an evening walk – this is not meant as an exercise but a relaxing stroll
🌟 Do some yoga or stretching routine
🌟 Have a soothing herbal tea
🌟 Have a bath or warm shower
🌟 Listen to sleep music
🌟 Put a couple of drops of Lavender essential oil on your pillow

Sleep well 😴

In my practice, I get asked a lot what the best exercise is, and my answer is

🤷 It depends

Yes, that’s right, there’s no one size fits all answer 😯

For those who haven’t exercised since high school (and that’s a number of years ago), I would say, start slowly and do something without a big impact 👍

🚶🏽‍♀️ Walking
🏊 Swimming
🧘 Yoga or Tai Chi

Those who have been exercising or playing sports for years up to recently, decide if you want to continue or try something new

Also, a good idea is to reflect on any injuries you may have had over the years

Some activities may not be for you anymore 🙄

The best way to determine what would suit YOU is to book a consultation where the practitioner looks at your history, current state, including any muscular imbalances that could lead to future injuries 🤔

What else is important?

It’s not deliberate exercise, although that’s great, it’s incidental movement 😯

We’re sitting too much, so much so that a new catchphrase has made the rounds: Sitting is the new smoking

And there’s certainly something in it

The incidental movement is not so new

I’ve heard good advice for years:
👍 Park your car further away so that you have to walk longer
👍 Take the stairs instead of the escalator
👍 Get off the bus a stop earlier
And so on 🙌

Do you remember when you were a kid and couldn’t sit still?

That’s where we need to get back to, naturally move more, walk more, and automatically do more of the good advice above 😘

The importance of exercise and daily movement is clear 😉
The question remains, what will you do?
🚶🏽‍♀️MORE exercise?
🚶🏽‍♀️NEW type of exercise?
🚶🏽‍♀️REACTIVATE familiar exercise?
🚶🏽‍♀️INCREASE incidental movement?
🚶🏽‍♀️CONSULT a professional health practitioner?
It all starts with a decision, then taking action 🙌

Not surprisingly, I’m a strong advocate for stretching. I often recommend specific stretches to my clients to help with their muscular imbalances.

Benefits of stretching 😀
✅ It strengthens connective tissue
✅ It increases range of motion
✅ It helps with remodeling muscles
✅ It promotes better joint alignment
✅ It boosts blood flow to the tissues
✅ It makes you feel better 😘

Happy to have a chat about the right stretching routine for you 💕

There’s two types of stretching:

😯 passive and active

When we talk about stretching, we mostly refer to the active type

What’s an example of the passive type❓

❗Massage ❗

Yes, massage loosens the muscles and helps lengthen them, thus facilitating a passive stretch to the muscles

Passive refers to the client, the massage therapist is still active 😂

I might be a little biased, but massage is really good for remodeling of muscles, and I can highly recommend it 😘

Do yourself a favour and get a massage. If you live close (in Sydney), you are welcome to book a remedial massage with me ❤️

Why am I not specific about stretching? 🤔

Quite frankly, I don’t believe in One Size Fits All when it comes to stretching. It’s probably due to my level of expertise in this area 🧐

I’m a bit of a nerd 😂

My recommendation for someone who wants to take up stretching is getting an expert to put a tailored routine together for their specific needs

Of course, I’m available for consultations both in person or ONLINE

Yes, thanks to modern technology, it’s possible online 🤩

Another welcome day to reflect and catch-up on any of the previous topics 🥰

What have you implemented so far?

What is mental health?

There are a lot of definitions. For example: it’s often defined as psychological well-being 💓 Sometimes, people talk about it as the absence of mental disorders, which is a negative definition in the sense, that it’s the absence of something 🤔

Personally, and for the purpose of this health challenge, I would like to define it as psychological well-being with an emphasis on thoughts 🥰

We think lots of thoughts all the time, but we are rarely aware of what we’re thinking. Many of our thoughts are habitual and happen in the background 🧐

If we want to become aware of these habitual thoughts, we have to put a bit of effort in. This can be worthwhile, because we may discover thoughts that don’t serve us anymore 😯

❗ Because we’re adults now and not little kids anymore
❗ Because we’ve moved on from a job, relationship, circumstances, whatever …
❗ Because we have personally grown
❗ Because we don’t want to run on autopilot
❗ Because we could make thoughts habitual that make us happier

🥰 Think about it 😘

In recent years, psychology research started to look at mental health rather than mental disorders. A new field emerged from this, called positive psychology 👍

Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, a positive psychologist, came up with the concept of flow state 🆒

In this state of mind, we experience things like
🥰 Forgetting what time it is
🥰 Not being aware of hunger, thirst or tiredness
🥰 Loss of feeling self-conscious
🥰 Complete focus on the activity
🥰 Enjoyment of the activity
🥰 One new and great idea after the other
🥰 Everything goes smoothly

It’s good for us and our mental health to get into this FLOW as much as we can 💕

Another great way of looking after our mental health is to practice mindfulness 💙

With practice,we can improve
💙 Attention
💙 Self-awareness
💙 Emotional regulation

Imagine EMOTIONAL HEALTH like a flow of a river, where there’s no dam to restrict the flow of water 💧

Emotions are a form of communication with ourselves that we then express in words or otherwise to the outside world 😀

When we suppress emotions and don’t acknowledge them ourselves, we build a dam into the river of our emotions 🤷

When we do this on a regular basis, the emotions just like too much water in a dam, will find a way to come out, and that is often uncontrolled 😯

When we allow our emotions to gently flow through us without holding on to them or giving them special meaning or pushing them back, we will be a lot more balanced 💜

How can we handle our emotions?

▶️ First of all, we need to become aware of them
▶️ This requires practice 🤷
▶️ Then, it’s important to be the observer 🤔
▶️ As the observer, we don’t interpret the emotions, we notice them and let them pass
▶️▶️ This requires even more practice 🤦

Most likely we’re not yet an enlightened master, so we could use some exercises to become better at awareness and observations of our emotions 💜

Some people like journalling, others prefer breathing techniques, meditation or yoga. The important message is to practice any of these, find the one that works best and stick with it 💜

When we aren’t aware of our emotions, and they take over, banishing any logical reasoning, we may miss the point of return 🤦

And hurt our loved ones 🙄

And they may then get back at us

And hurt us

That’s not good 🤔

That’s why it’s so important to practice self-awareness 🥰

There’s another great strategy, we can use before things get out of control 😇

It’s called PATTERN INTERRUPT

For example, go outside or a different room, get a glass of water, go for a quick walk or run, do some deep breathing, or any other way to shift out of the emotional deadlock 💜

This topic refers to our environment
🌱 Immediate such as our house or apartment
🌱 Neighbouring such as our suburb, town or village
🌱 Distant such as our country as well as including all of our planet

It’s a good idea to keep all this in a healthy condition, because it does influence our health 🌱

The easiest and a very important one is our immediate environment. A clutter free home that has a good energy about it, is fresh, sunny and airy, can influence our health in a positive way 🏡

Spend some time to declutter your home 🌱

Another tip to improve your immediate environment is to get some indoor plants for your home 🌱

Some of them are better than others to improve air quality, but having plants around has also feel-good benefits, which in turn help with overall health 😉

It’s even more important, if people live in an urban environment where there’s not much greenery near by 🌱

We are very depending on our planet 🌍

Without it, we cannot survive 🌍

It’s our responsibility for ourselves and our children to take care of our planet 🌍

There are so many small things we can do to look after our planet:
🌱 Pick up plastic on the beach
🌱 Avoid single use plastics
🌱 Walk short distances instead of driving everywhere by car
🌱 Plant a tree
🌱 And so much more

What other ideas can you share? 💕

We have come to the final day of this 30 day HEALTH CHALLENGE 😯

And it’s a catch-up day, where we can go back and reflect on some of the topics we have covered 🥰

Let’s face it, a comprehensive health challenge obviously takes a lot longer than 30 days 🤔

Hopefully, it has given you some food for thought and inspired you to keep exploring on improving certain aspects of your health or health related areas 💕

And, please reach out, if you want to dive in deeper 😘