Practical Steps for Everyday Wellness
Hello, my loves. Welcome to this six-part series where I am going to bring an easy and attainable action or idea into your world that you can reflect on and implement, so that you can live your life in your most optimal health.
I want to start with why optimal health is crucial for enhancing the quality of our lives. Our well-being + health fundamentally shape our daily experiences, which is why the saying “If you don’t have your health, you have nothing” resonates so deeply. While it’s possible to be surrounded by loving and supportive people even when unwell, enjoying life becomes significantly more challenging without good health.
This underscores the importance of prioritising health. Whether it’s having the energy to play with your children or grandchildren, the stamina to play a game of rugby or even just to walk the length of the beach and enjoy this natural wonderland we live in, good health is essential. That being said, not everyone has the same accessibility and aiming for optimal health might look different but is equally important.
For instance, someone using a wheelchair can still focus on maintaining cardiovascular fitness and upper body strength through tailored exercise routines. These efforts can enhance mobility, independence and overall well-being. Therefore, laying the foundation for optimal living is vital and, surprisingly, easier to achieve than one might think.
With over 12 years of experience in the health and wellness industry, I have seen the same questions arising from multiple clients and have seen lives change rapidly by adding and implementing an easy foundational structure.
I’m going to start this series with a thoughtful notion to get you thinking, rather than an implementable action (which will come).
‘If you had to live an average day on repeat, where would you end up?’
The reason this is important to reflect on is that it’s really easy to get caught up in the monotonous cycle of life. Wake. Eat. Work. Netflix. Sleep. Repeat. And our bodies adjust to what we are used to. And we resort to our average days more than we realise.
The truth is that we can have days where we have the best intentions and we hit a step count and go to the gym and send off those emails and also eat super nurturing foods and we feel like we are nailing it – but the course of our lives comes down to how we spend our average days where we don’t feel like doing anything. What are our foundations when we are going through the motions?
When this ‘average day’ is still stacked with habits we’ve built over time that are pointing us in the direction we want to go, then it wouldn’t matter if we only lived average days on repeat; we would still be living + improving our lives.
Exercise is instrumental to optimal health, not just in the way it primes our physical bodies, but because of the cascade of benefits caused by movement. Did you know that:
- as well as being instrumental to preventing and reducing almost EVERY health disease and condition, including but not limited to: stroke, metabolic syndrome, high blood pressure, Type 2 diabetes, depression, anxiety, many types of cancer, arthritis.
- exercise also improves your mood, your sleep quality, your energy levels and even your libido.
My favourite little nugget of information is what a dramatic effect exercise has on your brain function.
Every time you move your body, you are releasing a huge amount of neurochemicals in your brain. Some of them make you feel good, plus helping with mood and energy, like serotonin, endorphins, noradrenaline, dopamine.
But every time you exercise, your body also releases growth factors. Growth factors go directly into your hippocampus to help brand new cells grow. Your hippocampus is only one of two total brain areas where new cells can grow.
Every drop of sweat counts. The more you exercise the greater increase and change in your brain + mood.
The more you do, the more brain change you get.
Physical activity is also scientifically proven to help with the ability to shift and focus your attention.
This is absolutely necessary for the world we live in, with our attention being pulled in all directions.
I’d love to hear your reflections on this question.
You can find me over on Instagram or check out my podcast on spotify ‘Curious & Curiouser with Kaitlyn Gooch’. Send me a message and let me know your thoughts.
Tune in to next month’s article for some implementable actions + foundation starting ground.
Words by Kaitlyn Gooch
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