Winter wellness is important to focus on during the cooler months. Winter is a time when our bodies start to crave comfort, whether it is with heavier, warming foods or just rolling up covered in a warm blanket. Any motivation we had for summer can seem like a lifetime ago and our health can often take a back seat.
Cold weather and shorter days don’t mean your health has to take a back seat!
So we’ve put together some simple warm-up tips for winter wellness to help you feel more energised, more invigorated and enjoy your healthiest winter yet!
1. Improve Your Sleep Quality for Winter Wellness
Sleep is always important for our health. It is a time for our body to regenerate, reinvigorate and prepare us for the day ahead. When we’re tired it can be extremely difficult to make good decisions for our health, in winter this may mean reaching for the hot chips instead of the steamed greens. Sleep also provides us with the energy we need to exercise, stay active and keep our wellbeing a top priority.
2. Move More – Stay Active
This brings us to the next tip; stay active. The cold weather in winter can be an easy turn-off for exercise but it doesn’t have to be. Embrace the cold weather and try an exercise you wouldn’t usually do in summer. Maybe that means bushwalking or bicycle riding, maybe it means embracing indoor activities such as yoga or squash. Staying active is not only important for keeping the kgs off but helps move your lymphatic system which is important for fighting infections and keeping you cold and flu-free.
3. Practice Positivity
It can be easy to become negative in winter with the shorter daylight hours, the colder weather and at times the incessant rain. Think about your favourite things you enjoy during winter, is it the warm soups? Reading by the fire? Snuggling up in bed? Focus on what you love about winter and embrace more of that. It can be easy to stay holed-up inside during winter and feel like it’s just a waiting game until Summer comes again. So get outside into the sun for your vitamin D dose – it will lift your mood and spirit. A positive mind means a happy and healthy body.
4. Enjoy Winter Fruits and Vegetables
Winter has plenty of delicious food to embrace and love. Citrus fruits such as lemons, mandarins and oranges are at their best in winter (perfect as they are packed with Vitamin C – great for fighting off colds and infections). Winter is also an amazing time to embrace roasts and warm salads. With cauliflower, potatoes, turnips, radishes, spinach, cabbage and leek all in-season it’s an opportunity to get creative with veggies that are warming and packed full of nutrients necessary for good health. Try our cauliflower rice recipe here or our warming winter vegetable curry here. Winter is also an awesome time to start enjoying a daily cup of broth, the minerals and nutrients will give your immune system the boost it needs to stay healthy.
5. Maintain Your Oral Hygiene for All-Winter Wellness
It’s what we do at SHDC, so we couldn’t let a winter wellness guide be complete without a reminder about oral hygiene. Maintaining good oral hygiene in winter is just as important as any other season. Ensure you have your 6-monthly check-up with the hygienist as well as brushing and flossing daily will help prevent gum disease. Often a sore throat or bad breath can be an indicator of gum disease, but in winter can be easy to pass off as the beginnings of a cold so we mask it with medication. By maintaining good oral hygiene you minimise your risk of gum disease and many more related infections. Learn more about gum disease here.
