How To Invest In Your Health & Wellbeing As A Teacher

contributed by Anne Davis

Your overall health is important to sustaining a good quality of life.

While genetics may work against you at times, if you make the right choices, you can live a long, healthy life. Maintaining a healthy weight, eating nutritious foods, taking care of your skin and learning how to release your stress are all essential to enjoying a healthier future.

1. Reflect and express gratitude

Keep a gratitude journal to document the things in your life that make you feel good, are important to you, and otherwise give you purpose, humility, and gratitude.

2. Learn Cognitive Behavioral Therapy basics

This is usually of to mitigate mental health problems but pre-emptively learning to monitor and ‘control’ your thinking can have a significant benefit to your mental health and well-being.

3. Socialize

Human beings are social creatures. Just make sure you’re hanging out the kind of people that promote healthy relationships and activities that contribute to your own well-being.

See also How To Be Happy: Things Happy People Do

4. Eat (relatively) clean

Holidays and other social gatherings can often help you gain weight, but unhealthy eating isn’t necessarily limited to these occasions.

While adding a bit of weight during these times is normal, you’ll want to focus on eating healthy the rest of the year. Weighing just 10 pounds over your ideal weight can make you more susceptible to common weight-related ailments and diseases such as Type 2 diabetes and heart disease. Indulging in a poor diet also reduces your resistance to cold and the flu and puts added stress on your bones and joints.

Eating ‘clean’ doesn’t require a specific diet or significant effort. Thankfully, by eating the right foods like lean meats, fresh fruits and vegetables and whole grains you give your body the nutrients it needs to remain strong.

5. Take care of your skin

Your skin is the body’s first line of defense and, as such, is constantly exposed to the elements. However, your skin can also reveal your health, or lack thereof. Eating a well-balanced diet nourishes the skin and keeps it looking vibrant, alive, and glowing. Maintaining younger-looking skin free from fine lines and wrinkles can prove quite challenging as you age.

6. Meditate

Many people experience a lot of stress throughout the day. Whether it’s getting children off to school and managing a home, or working at a fast-paced job with constant deadlines, your days often start and end with stress. Occasion stress is normal and the body can handle it pretty well.

But, if it’s something you expose your system to regularly, it can put your health at risk. The good news is that you can take steps to reduce your stress levels and ease tension. Taking time to relax each day by self-meditation through yoga and partaking in spiritual retreats a few times throughout the year helps to keep you calm and focused. Another way to de-stress is to hand over some of the duties to others in the home or on the job. There’s no shame in asking for help when you need it.

Yoga can be useful in reducing stress, too.

7. Limit unhealthy habits

Doing things like smoking, doing drugs or consuming alcohol daily is bad for the body. The best way to sustain good health is to give up your bad habits sooner rather than later. If you can’t do it alone, there’s no shame in seeking the help of family or friends or going to rehab.

Your health is not something to take for granted. You have one life to live and eating right, taking care of your weight and your mind and disposing of bad habits will all help to improve your chances of staying healthier for longer.

8. Spend time in nature

Whether it’s taking a short walk for a break, hiking for an afternoon, or taking a bike ride through a park, nature is naturally uplifting, not to mention a way to get you moving and burning calories.

image attribution flickr user tulanepublicrelations