Edited By: Tanmaya Ramprasad
As the second phase of COVID hits, more restrictions are arising and with the cold weather approaching mental and physical health are even harder to nurture. Here are some actionable steps to take care of yourself and make your mental and physical health a priority this school year!
1. Journaling Everyday
Starting or ending your day with some light journaling is a great form of self-care. Writing down how you’re feeling, actionable mantras, intentions, or daily gratitude’s can help your mental health more than you know! Some prompts to use are:
- 3-2-1 method journaling (ideally used in the morning): 3 things you want to get done, 2 things you’re grateful for, 1 thing that fulfills you.
- Gratitude journaling: When you’re feeling a bit down or want to refocus yourself, try writing down things or people you’re grateful, thankful, and blessed to have in your life.
- Write and release: Feeling overwhelmed, overworked, or life is getting to be a bit too much, step back, write down what’s happening, how you’re feeling, and release it from your mind. This forces the mind to structure and form opinions on the specific moment that is taking up mental space and can often feel like a weight off your shoulders when you work through how you truly feel about the issue.
2. Staying Connected
Meeting up virtually with friends to help feel more connected, this can take form in facetime, phone calls, or even a Netflix party. Netflix party is a great way to feel connected by watching the same TV or movie remotely with your friends with the ability to talk in the built-in chat in real-time.
3. Forming a Structured Workday
Ensuring your day imitates a regimented workday, by structuring working and resting hours identical to work or school hours is great for splitting up the day to limit feeling overwhelmed and overworked. For example, waking up, getting ready and starting your remote school or “work” day from 9-5 can make you more productive, lower stress and create structure while learning from home.
4. Prioritizing Moving your Body and Exercising
While the weather gets colder and going outside for activity is harder and gyms begin to close again due to the second wave of COVID, getting exercise is progressively harder! But isn’t impossible, even in the smallest of places, making exercise a priority not only helps physical but also mental health. By working out, endorphins, the hormone that makes you feel better/happier is released. This helps with not only physically feeling more well but mentally better after moving in some way.
5. Choosing Fulfilling Workouts over Challenges
Through the quarantine that started in March, I found it way more useful to do workouts that fulfilled me, and not focus on results driven workouts. While challenges and result-driven motivation can be helpful, just focusing on how you feel after a workout is much healthier for your mental health. Considering how much stress these lockdowns can cause, challenges can often add unwanted pressure so try focusing more on mental nourishment. Exercising is more than a short challenge; it’s about doing something positive for yourself.
6. Focusing on Consistent Workouts over Intense Workouts
Focus not so much on how long or hard you want to work out, do what makes you feel the best. Set a schedule for exercise and try sticking to it, exercises do not have to be intense, just moving your body in some way is the most important part of it. Anything from yoga, stretching, HIIT, body weight, or weighted workouts are all beneficial to physical health. Working out steadily helps set patterns, and when staying home more it’s especially important to set healthy habits. Even in the smallest spaces, great workouts can happen! A tip I have is to utilize a yoga mat, this defines the space being used for your workout. This helps your mind categorize the space in which you exercise and relax in two different areas.
7. Utilizing Social Media for Workout Ideas
Instagram is a great resource for diversifying your workouts and helps find altered difficulty and equipment levels. But be cautious to only follow fitness influencers who are positively impacting you; social media can negatively impact mental health so beware of that.
Here are some positive fitness influencers I like to look at for inspiration when working out:
- Whitney Simmons – Whitney posts a lot of dumbbell only workouts that are easily modifiable, but also completely no equipment, no noise workouts. She also has a wide range of easy follow along, bodyweight, at home workouts on her profile starting in March. Whitney also has a subscription app, called “Alive” which features a gym and at-home follow along with a workout subscription schedule.
- Gabby Scheyen – Gabby, an Ontario local, posts many apartment workouts that utilize small spaces, and low impact modifications. She posts a lot of timed workouts, typically around 30 minutes long, for those who want working out to be short, sweet, and to the point. Her exercise posts from April -June are generally bodyweight legs and HIIT which are all low noise, perfect if you live in an apartment.
- Libby Christensen – Libby posted a bunch of at home workouts on her Instagram from March-June, they feature everything from legs, to upper body and everything in between. Her workouts typically use a kettlebell or dumbbells but can be modified with any objects at home that have some sort of weight to them such as a book or water bottle.