Easy ways to work on your own mental health

Following Mental Health Awareness Day Thursday I wanted to offer some ideas of simple things you can do relating to fitness and nutrition to help improve your mental health (whoever you are) and perhaps even help manage depression and anxiety:

1) Drink water

Most of us don’t drink enough water at the best of time and if you feel low the chances are you will drink even less. Fill a water bottle and sip throughout the day. Dehyration causes fatigue and has been linked to feelings of depression so drinking water is a cheap, low effort way of helping you feel a bit better.

2) Vitamin D

This can help make you feel better natutally. You can buy supplements, a light box, possibly use a sunbed or even better get outside and get some fresh air at the same time. Little effort required for a potential improvement in your mood.

3) Fish Oil

Omega 3 has been linked to improving symptons of mild depression. Make the effort to take a supplement each day – you can buy it in liquid form if you can’t swallow tablets (and are brave!). This was one simple habit that has worked well for me.

4) Eat regular meals

When you feel low eating proper meals at regular times can go out the window. Set an alarm for regular intervals and eat a small simple meal when it goes off. This will help stabilise your mood and create a feeling of routine and normality which can help when life feels like it’s crumblig around you.

5) Eat colourful food

Go to the shop and buy lots of different colourerd food. If you don’t feel like cooking buy prepared veg and fruit. Eating a variety of colours will mean your getting a variety of nutrients and will help improve your mood as well as your health.

6) Eat simple healthy meals

Eating healthy foods can have a dramatic affect on how well your mind feels. If I’ve had a bad week a simple healthy meal can help me feel more positive and in control of my own mind and body. It may sound stupid but when I eat well I feel like my body feels better and I’m looking after myself which in turn makes me feel brighter within myself. On days like this I won’t have the energy to cook a fancy meal so I go for a simple piece of salmon I can microwave or grill and a pack of microwave veg. 10 minutes to prepare a good quality meal.

7) Try some alternative meal prep

The holy grail of fitness freaks! Cooking is the last thing you want to do when you feel depressed. So if you find yourself having a good day make the most of it and prepare so batches of food that you can freeze. Then on days you just can’t face cooking you can defrost one of these meals and still eat something homemade.

8) Buy a slow cooker

Slow cookers allow you to make healthy tasty meals with little effort -and a casserole is brilliant comfort food. They are great for preparing a comforting meal without much effort and will make you feel better than turning to chocolate and other quick food sources that we often crave when we feel low.

9) Drink less coffee

Adrenal Fatigue and depression / anxiety are linked. Too much coffee puts you at risk of developing adrenal fatigue – drinking less will help reduce stress levels. You could try a herbal tea instead which many people find helps then relax.

10) Walk

Getting outside helps you move more -that will help your mental health. Fresh air will help lift your mood. Being outside will help increase vitamin D intake. Walking can help clear your head. Walking is free. In short one of the best and most simple things you can do to help yourself fell more positive.

11) Exercise

As I said moving has been shown to help manage many mental health issues. You may not feel much like it but it can be in any form and doesn’t need to be for long periods of time to help. Start small and build up as you start to feel like you can.

12) Dance

Stick music on and just move to the music. Music can improve mood as can moving which makes thos fun activity a win win mood boosting activity.

13) Try group exercise

Nerve wracking and requires motivation. Sounds awful if you aren’t having the best day. But if you can push yourself to walk into the room you can find exercise, motivation, good music and social interaction in one place. It’s hard to leave a class not feeling at least a little bit more positive than when you walked in.

14) Join a team or club

Another nervewracking idea. Another idea which will allow you to exercise which will help your mental health and get to meet new people, another great mood booster. It can also help boose confidence which will help your mental health dramatically.

15) Try yoga

A chance to challenge your body and stretch along with a focus on breathing and mental wellbeing. You could try a class or find a free video on You tube. You could do an hour or even 5 minutes. Whatever you feel like at the start there is an option you could try out and you may feel more relaxed by the end of it.

Do you have any other tips for improving your mental health?

Sleep

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Sleep is so important to our heath for a variety of reasons, but I’ve often found that people who train a lot tend to struggle getting to sleep. staying asleep and feeling like they have had a good quality sleep on a regular basis.

I recently did a podcast in relation to this topic where i delve into a bit more depth into some practical solutions for dealing with this.

Heather’s Podcast

The Point Here Is Right At The End

The number of views and amount of feedback I’ve had from recent blogs has made me smile. What started as a personal blog, which I pretty much assumed nobody would ever read 18 months ago has turned into a blog that has over 250 regular followers and has been viewed almost 6,000 times. Those figures might not be impressive in comparison to many blogs, but from my initial goal of just writing stuff for me to that is a big personal leap. My more recent personal venture is a spin of podcast. On episode 2 I’ve so far had a total of 36 listens from 18 people (for those who listens in installments it’s true I’m best in small doses!). Those numbers again, aren’t going to break any records, but I’m really happy with them.

I was talking with a friend about a specific comment form I’d received on my blog last night which had been rather positive, and they said this.

“That comment wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t written the 50 odd blog posts before that one.”

I read a similar comment from the online PT James Smith recently about his daily emails – which for a long time didn’t generate him one single sale, but he persisted with the regardless (and I bet he’s glad he did now).

And that’s what today’s post is about.

My first couple of blog posts were read by nobody, unless you count the handful of people I’d made follow me and read.

The next handful of blogs were read by nobody again.

Eventually after a few more posts someone outside the group of people I forced to read them read one.

The numbers stayed at the audience of one for a while. Then it became two, then three.

For months and months and months I wrote blog after blog for an audience that didn’t make double digits.

But I carried on writing. They make me no money. It’s purely a labour of love. I actually enjoyed writing them and I was happy if one person read and found it useful or read and enjoyed. The focus of the blogs changed from online diary to aiming to provide some use to the handful of readers I had. I probably got better at writing and better at picking topics, the first few times you do anything are normally a bit rubbish.

One day I looked and I had close to a hundred followers. From there growth sped up. From there people started to interact. What the blog is now is more than I aspired for it to be.

But if I had stopped writing after the first few posts because nobody ever read them it wouldn’t now be the project it is. I had to keep writing to an imaginary audience in order to get a real audience. That’s why I will persist with the podcast, as that audience of 18 may not put me on the apple top ten list, but if I stop because of that I’ve no chance of growing my audience, if I continue, it will take time but if I work hard it could well grow.

Of course it helps that I’m passionate about my topic. Sticking with something you care about is a hell of a lot easier that grafting at something you don’t feel a fire for.

Your fitness goals are like this. Well in fact all your goals are like this, but this I a fitness based blog so let’s focus on this. When you start going to the gym will you be able to lift well, will you be able to lift heavy? On day one – nope, day two- nope, day three- sorry still nope.

Now if you give up because you’re clearly just crap at this you will remain as you are forever.

But, if you keep going eventually you will see improvement. That may take days, it may take weeks, it may take months. The improvement will probably hit you in the face out of the blue- you won’t have seen it coming, but at that point you can look back at all the gym sessions where you felt no progress was being made and know that those sessions were the foundation your success is built on.

But it’s like I said about my blog. The time it took to grow didn’t matter because I liked writing anyway- people actually reading them is a really nice bonus.

So you want to find something that you enjoy. If lifting fills you with dread try a class, if you hate running but love swimming why would you buy those running trainers? Because if you can embrace the times when you start out and aren’t amazing you will improve without even noticing it because you’re just enjoying what your doing.

I think James Smith called it “Falling in Love with the Process”. If you can do that it makes personal growth a fair bit easier.

And if you can’t do that, well then simply don’t give up when things don’t happen for you straight away, because you aren’t a toddler and throwing a tantrum won’t get you results, consistency and sticking to something may well do.

5 Reasons Group Ex Instructors should consider signing up to Jump 4.2

Hello!

So today’s blog is actually a video. If you follow my blog you know I’ve been blogging about my progress on the fitness nutrition and mindset programme Jump 4.2. This is a bit of a follow up to that where I explain 5 reasons why any group ex instructors or regular participants who train a lot but aren’t getting the results they want should consider doing Jump.

I’m not your traditional advert for a fitness programme. I haven’t had a massive physical transformation in 8 weeks – I haven’t developed a six-pack. What I have gained from working with Ricky is a healthy relationship with food, my training and my own head. I can have weeks where I eat too much and don’t train of course, but now I can deal with them – they don’t derail my progress or make me feel like I need to start again. I know what I can achieve if I want to get super lean, equally I know where my happy place is where I’m fit, healthy and able to enjoy life.

I think that’s what most of us really want. Most of us don’t want to give up cake and cocktails or spend hours in the gym in exchange for abs- we just want to feel good whilst still enjoying our favourite indulgences. If that’s you then I’m the proof that Jump 4.2 works – I’m the most boring yet honest advertisement going!

The last intake in 2019 opens on 1st September. If you are interested and have any questions you can contact me on instagram DM @heather.sherwood or Ricky Long @rickylong42 or @jump4.2.

I have a couple of discount codes for 15% off – if you would like to sign up with a discount drop me a message.

Anyway – here’s my video!

Jump 4.2 Video

Social Strategy

When you are trying to stick to a calorie deficit social occasions can be tough and you need to decide on a strategy to not let one day or night out derail your progress.

Below are some ideas of methods you could sue to exercise a bit of damage limitation and still enjoy yourself.

Check out the menu beforehand

Have a look online at the menu before your night out and plan what you will eat, that way when you are there you are less likely to over order or order things you haven’t accounted the calories for.

Fill up on salad / veg

Aim to include some salad / vegetable items with your meals to help fill you up whilst also keeping calories down.

Avoid the bread basket

Perhaps you really like bread, in which case knock yourself out and have some. But if you’re only eating it because the bread basket it’s extra unnecessary calories.

Mix your drinks

Not in the way you think. Mix water in between your alcoholic drinks to help limit calories through drinks.

Eat beforehand

If the social occasion isn’t specifically based around food you might want to eat beforehand so you can easier control how much you eat.

Save calories during the week

If you want to stay on track but still have a big calorie night out you could consider creating a bigger calorie deficit across the week so you have extra calories to use on your night out.

Eat something you really enjoy

If you going to eat more calories than normal you may as well pick something you are really going to enjoy, that way you are more likely to feel satisfied and less likely to overeat on other elements of your meal.

Pick an activity that doesn’t involve food and drink

When planning days or nights out try and plan activities that aren’t just based on eating and drinking.

Jump 4.2 – Week 5

You know when you have those weeks where you just feel a bit blah, where no matter who much you try and do and even manage to do you have a nagging sense of failure.

That’s been me this week!

I’ve actually been pretty productive and got quite a lot done, I’ve trained, and I’ve eaten reasonably well – hitting a small calorie deficit, if not the 20% I was aiming for. I’ve also hardscaped my garden (which felt like it burnt around four million calories as well as burning my back!).

But I’ve not felt brilliant. The tough thing about these weeks is what do you do if you know you’re basically on track but you still feel a bit rubbish – it’s not the same as knowing you feel crap because you’ve not trained or have eaten nothing but takeaways.

What I have done is follow module 5 of Jump, get the training in, modifying it a bit on the days I felt crap and lethargic so I still did it just at a slightly reduced intensity. I’ve done yoga everyday, noted down things I’m grateful for every day, for more fresh air and generally tried to keep myself plodding along without dwelling to much on the nagging anxiety.

When we sign up to programmes or plans or start new health kicks we want 100% perfection and the moment we slip up or don’t do every single workout or eat every single meal we think I’ve fucked that up, I need to go back to the beginning and start again doing it 100% this time. This is why so many people don’t complete fitness programmes however they are structured.

Life is rarely uniform, things crop up all the time and the most successful lifestyles are ones which allow you to ride the ups and downs, have good weeks and bad weeks but importantly not stop and start again after the bad weeks.

To be fair just writing this reminds me that what I’ve felt of as a bad week really wasn’t bad at all, I’ve just not felt very sprightly and have been a bit run down. That’s not a reason to call a week a failure because if anything getting to the end of weeks like that and being able to brush yourself down and be ready for a new week is part of creating a healthy and sustainable lifestyle.

Under Pressure

An awful lot of the pressure in my life comes from me. I’m probably not alone in that. We face enough genuine stress in life without putting more on ourselves, but that’s exactly what many of us do, in one way or another.

I get annoyed with myself if I miss a workout, go over my calorie goals, make a mistake at work. I take these small things and build them into massive issues that can ruin my day- sound familiar?

The first step toward easing off of yourself is to identify when you might be making things harder on yourself unnecessarily. Recently I’ve been making more of an effort to identify when I’m stressing about something I really don’t need to stress about and change that.

Here are some ways I’ve found helpful for cutting down on unnecessary stress.

Understand The Difference Between High Achievement and Perfectionism

When it comes to stress, “do your best” is better than “be perfect,” and in the long run, it’s healthier as well.

If you find yourself constantly going over mistakes you’ve made, noticing more of what you’ve done wrong than what you’ve done right, and getting anxious when you do a good-but-not-perfect job you may want to review how you view your own expectations of yourself.

Draw A Line Between Leading A ‘Full’ Life And An Overwhelming Life – Learn to Say No

Leading a full life is great (YOLO and all that) but if you don’t live a balanced life too, you can feel too stressed, too often.

Be aware of how you feel at the end of the day or weekend – if you’re constantly knackered maybe you need to let some things go or say no to some invites to allow yourself some time to relax. Exhausted people lose momentum eventually no matter how many exciting things they’ve done or got planned.

Manage your commitments in all aspects of life to help manage the pressure you put upon yourself. If something needs to take longer then it needs to take longer, if it really really can’t then something else needs to give sometimes.

Think Like An Optimistic Realist Rather Than A Pessimist

Realistic positive thinking (focusing on the positive without completely ignoring and failing to address issues that require a response) can help you to be more effective in your life, and less stressed along the way, research has shown.

One of the best positive thinking strategies you can adopt is optimistic thinking, which is a specific pattern of thinking that allows you to focus your attention on your accomplishments which allows you increase your confidence to do your best in the future.

That doesn’t mean not dealing with problems – just not focusing on them over the positives all of the time.

Allow Yourself To Feel Then Take Action

An effective way to help yourself through stressful times is to become more aware of how you feel and why (perhaps by journaling, talking things out with a close friend, or even talking to a therapist if necessary, sometimes it means just having a really good moan) and then once you’ve acknowledged those emotions instead of trying to fix them there and then decide to undertake one or two small activities that will bring something positive to your day. The activities can be completely unrelated, it’s more the act of just doing something positive and feel good that matters here.

In other words – acknowledge what is getting you down then focus on what you can do that day that is positive (it could be a tiny action) rather than trying to fix your entire mood in one go. It won’t fix things but can just improve how you feel a little bit.

Accept Your Weaknesses, And Those Of Everyone Else

Give yourself a break. You can also relieve stress by giving everyone else a break as well, don’t take things as personally, don’t hold onto grudges, and try to see the best in people by understanding how things may feel from their perspective.

I wrote recently about the fact you can’t be positive all of the time. In the same way you can’t avoid all stress, these things are just part of life. You can be proactive in managing your reactions to these stresses, which goes a little way towards making you feel good about things.

Jump 4.2 – Week 4

I’ve reached the half way point of Jump.

This week was a tough week – work, people, my period; you know those weeks where you aren’t feeling it- I’ve had one of those.

But the great thing I’m finding about this programme is that doesn’t matter. Life doesn’t need to be going perfectly to be able to work through it. Even though there’s been frustrations I’ve not felt down about it – I’ve used habits already practiced on weeks 1-3 such as writing down what I’m grateful for and what I have done well to stop myself getting down about what hasn’t worked and to stay upbeat and keep working to get things done nonetheless.

Training has been ok – I’ve not completed everything but I’ve had some good sessions. My food intake has been ok – I haven’t hit a calorie deficit this week – mainly because I’ve craved chocolate. Again what I’m pleased with here is how I feel about that. Sometimes these things would stress me out and make me feel like a failure because I haven’t done things perfectly. Right now I feel like perfect isn’t a necessity and although I’ve things I’d like to improve in week 5 I don’t feel like not being perfect so far has meant my experience on this programme hasn’t been useful so far.

This week’s message from my experience would definitely be that it’s worth changing your mindset towards yourself and your training / nutrition when want to improve how you feel and train.

Over Eating

We all have days when we over indulge – whether that be food, alcohol or both. It’s not a case of trying to never do that because that would make life pretty miserable. We can however choose to respond more positively to these over indulgences so we don’t sabotage our results in the long term.

So what do you do if you’ve had over indulged?

Do drink more water

Depending on how you over indulged you may be dehydrated, but regardless extra water will make you feel fresher.

Don’t do extra exercise

Avoid using exercise as a punishment for over eating as this will create a negative association with training, plus if you have a hangover exercise isn’t really what you want to be doing.

Do use the extra calories to fuel your next workout

Whilst you don’t want to add extra training in you could use those extra calories to push yourself harder in your next scheduled workout and come out feeling really good.

Don’t starve yourself

Punishing yourself by drastically reducing your calories in the days after will create a negative cycle of eating. You could look to slightly reduce your calorie intake for a few days subsequently (couple of hundred calories max) but reducing what you eat dramatically to make amends will only make you feel worse.

Do eat nutrient rich / dense foods the next day

Eat foods that will both fill you up and make you feel good the next day, making you feel better without starving and allowing you to mentally get back on track.

Don’t skip meals

By the same token don’t purposefully skip meals to try and compensate.

Do Move on

One bad meal or day doesn’t define your diet overall, so rather than punish yourself for it look at it as a day / meal you enjoyed and focus on the next day / meal instead.

Don’t scrap the rest of the week

Try moving on straight away instead of saying well I may as well start again Monday now. This essentially ensures damage limitation.

–

Jump 4.2 – Week 2

Today I’m entering week 3 of Jump 4.2.

Yesterday I finished two weeks of eating a Paleo based diet and having spent last week reviewing my TDEE I am about to embark on a week where I track my calorie intake to help me see where I am food intake wise and hat I need to change to stay on track.

I do feel quite comfortable on a Paleo based diet and have in the past done 4 days on / 3 days off for long periods of time, so for me fourteen days wasn’t too tough, although weekends are still tough when you are used to being able to relax your diet a bit and social occasions require thought and planning if you want to stay on track.

The reward for sticking to it however was worth it. Yes I’ve lost little weight (around 4kg but my weight fluctuates a lot anyway so this number doesn’t mean lots) and my body fat went down whilst muscle mass increased (according to my scales I would add so again take that as you will depending on how you feel about scales).

More importantly for me I feel better- less bloated, more energetic and like I’m fully back in the habit of eating homemade, fresh food over processed foods. I think you can see a difference around my waist and I feel like my skin looks brighter.

Today I’ve had toast with my breakfast (which also contained plenty of protein and veg) and a really nice slice of homemade coffee and walnut cake courtesy of a colleague, my lunch has still essentially been chicken and veg. Mentally I’ve noticed how much I’ve enjoyed adding foods back into my diet without feeling guilt, instead focusing on how much I’ve enjoyed what I’ve eaten today.

Training wise I’ve largely stuck to my normal training routine, although where I’ve had time I have tried out some of the sessions (I’ve done three so far), and these have been challenging but fun. I like the fact they have all taken less than an hour to complete and that each one has a clear focus and is easily adaptable to your own current fitness levels and equipment availability.

There is also a strong mindset focus each week and this week the focus has been on morning routines. I have long felt I need to work more on my morning routine as I often feel rushed in the morning. This week has made me realise that in order to get my shit together in the mornings I need to get a better night time routine to help me get to bed earlier ad get a good night sleep so I’m less desperate to snooze come morning.

A week with a trip to Edinburgh and being away from home over the weekend wasn’t the best week to get into regular night and morning routines but this week I am making it my one goal to really develop a more positive morning routine.

The thing I like most about this programme so far is being able to read through the downloads and listen to the audios and videos when it suits me rather than having to be in a particular place at a set time.

All in all I’ve enjoyed the first fortnight and am looking forward to week 3, and to keep me accountable I will update you again next week!