Ways To Better Your Health All Winter Long

            With winter fast approaching, there’s never been a better time to focus on your health. We all want to look better, eat better, sleep better, and make good choices. But sometimes that’s easier said than done and it can be hard to establish a routine of healthy habits. But if you’re looking to live a healthier lifestyle and feel better, don’t let that deter you. It takes time to establish good habits, but once you do, you’ll have made choices and established good habits that can last you a long time. If you’re looking for ways to better your health this winter, consider these helpful wellness tips:

Make Wellness Appointments

There are many ways to better your health any time of year, but if you’re focusing on getting healthier this winter, one of the first things you’ll want to do is make wellness appointments. If nothing else, it’s good to visit health professionals to get an understanding of where your body is physical. If you’re looking to lose weight, for example, you can visit your general practitioner to get a sense of what your weight is, get a physical, and healthy steps you can take to lose weight. Visiting a doctor can also help prevent the spread of adult diseases such as diabetes and heart disease and you can also update your immunizations if you’re due for those. Don’t forget about having your eyes checked either. By booking an appointment for professional eye care, you can get an eye exam and you’ll get know-how healthy your eyes are. If it’s been a while since you’ve had an eye exam, get one, because you might just discover you need glasses or contacts to improve your eye health.

Next on your list of appointments, make one with  a local dental clinic. If you had a busy summer and had sweet treats such as smores and ice cream, visit a dentist to help prevent cavities and establish or re-establish good hygiene habits. If you have spaces between your teeth or are looking to correct overbites or underbites, especially in children and young adults, visit the best orthodontist in your area. These days there are all kinds of options available if you need braces, including Invisalign braces which are easier on teeth and less intrusive. If staying active is going to be part of your winter wellness plan, one of the ways to better your health is to make a visit  to a chiropractor. If you’ve got any nagging pains, a chiropractor can help you feel better. Getting rid of nagging pains will make it easier to stay active since you don’t have to worry about being in pain or having to sideline yourself with back pain or knee pain.

Check Your Insurance

While there are many clinics, doctors offices, hospitals, and other places that offer needed health care services for adults, it never hurts to check your health insurance from time to time. Your health insurance covers a lot of things—from ER visits, to dental cleanings and even surgery—but you should know exactly what it covers. There are some things that may be only partially covered by insurance, such as cosmetic surgery, and any claims you make that aren’t covered may require negotiations between your insurance company and a health care attorney.

Stay Active

Of the many ways to better your health in the winter, staying active is among the most important. When you stay active, you keep your body moving and on a path to good health. So what can you do to stay active? The sky really is the limit for you and it really comes down to what activities you enjoy. If you’ve got workout equipment at home, such as an exercise bike or weights, make use of them. If you’ve got a gym membership, establish a routine where you’re going to the gym a few times a week. If you’re into sports, join a local rec league in your area for sports like basketball and tennis.

If you’re keen on working out at home, find workouts that work for you. These days you can find just about any type of workout online. It’s estimated that Google receives more than 75,000 searches every second, so if you’re looking for workouts to do with the equipment you have, type a search into Google and get to searching; you might just be surprised with what you find. You may think it’s easy to find ways to better your health when it comes to staying active. It definitely can be, but it can also be difficult to find the motivation to get moving, especially if you’re working out by yourself. To that end, you can find local groups doing winter fitness challenges and join them. If you’re unfamiliar, these fitness challenges bring together folks who are looking to get healthy and a group leader assigns everyone a daily task to complete—think 20 sit-ups or walking 1,500 steps. If anyone doesn’t complete the challenge, they have to pay money into a group pot and at the end of the challenges, prizes are awarded based on results. Of course, you can always keep things simple. Even though it can be bone-chillingly cold in the wintertime, you can go for walks around your neighborhood. This can be a great way to get moving, especially if you have a dog that needs to go on regular walks. If there’s a place in your area with an indoor walking track, you can go there too and do laps, not to mention staying warm. If you’re looking for something fun and different to stay active this winter, consider taking up a new sport. One sport that’s growing in popularity and can be played any time of the year is pickleball. If you wondering what pickleball is, it’s very similar to tennis and played with paddles on a court. But the court dimensions are different and the paddles are smaller. Aside from being fun—and there are currently more than three million pickleball players across the United States—there are lots of other benefits to playing pickleball:

• Playing pickleball can boost your mood and give you plenty of social interaction, especially if you join a local pickleball league.
• You won’t be doing all-out sprints, but playing pickleball can give you a good deal of aerobic exercise and help you burn a few calories. It’s a great game for seniors looking for an activity with moderate exercise.
• Pickleball can also improve your balance and agility. A pickleball is slower than a tennis ball, so you don’t have to move at a breakneck pace and you can still tone your muscles and improve your coordination.
• Pickleball is an inherently social sport, since you typically play in either singles or doubles games. This gives you plenty of opportunity to meet new people, make new friends and interact with people who can show you the pickleball ropes if you’re a newcomer.

So if pickleball sounds promising, head to your local sporting good store, which will have all the men’s pickleball apparel or ladies pickleball apparel that you’ll need.

Focus On Healthy Eating

Another one of the key ways to better your health is by eating better. If you’ve been promising yourself for a while that you’re going to eat better, there’s never been a better time than right now.

It’s important to remember that everyone’s physical makeup is different, so if you want to go on a diet, what works for one person might not be as effective for another person. Still, if you’re focused on eating better, it’s important to establish a routine and stick with it. How can you eat healthier? For starters, make sure you’re eating three meals a day. You’ve always heard about breakfast being the most important meal of the day, and it is because you can start your day off with a meal that gives you energy and important nutrients. If you’re prone to skipping breakfast because you’re on the go, take time to at least make something to take with you. You can make a breakfast smoothie with fruits and oat powder, which will fill you up, give you important nutrients and help you lose weight. As you look for ways to better your health through eating, here are some other easy steps you can take:

• Load up your lunch and dinner plates with plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables.
• If you eat out, try healthier options or try portioning your meal.
• If you’re unsure where to start, consult a dietician, who can give a lot of great ideas.
• Don’t be afraid to try new foods. You may find that something you’ve avoided eating for years is not only nutritious, but very tasty.
• Look for healthy alternatives to some of your favorite foods. For example, if you make a pizza at home, try loading it up with vegetables and olive oil, rather than red meat. Or if you’re a fan of pasta, try making it with wheat pizza instead.
• Look for healthy recipes online. If there’s a certain vegetable you’re fond of or you’re looking for a new way to make chicken, you can find thousands of delicious recipes you can try.
• Make sure you stay hydrated. Some health professionals will tell you that you need to be drinking up to a half gallon of water a day. You can start small by getting yourself a good, reusable water bottle and drinking water at work and with meals.

As you find a routine that works, try new foods and make an effort to eat healthier, you’ll likely notice that you’ve got more energy, you’re in a better mood and you just generally feel better overall.

Don’t Neglect Your Mental Health

Eating right and staying active are important ways to better your health, but in the process of getting healthier, you can’t neglect your mental health. By  visiting a mental health therapist, you can talk about whatever is on your mind, whether you’re dealing with a long-term mental health issue or just feeling stressed at work. By visiting a therapist, you can improve your communication skills, boost your confidence, and get treatment for depression and anxiety, just to name a few benefits.

Clean Your Home

It’s true there are many ways to better your health from physical and mental standpoints, but getting healthy also means working on yourself socially. If it’s been a while since your home was cleaned, winter is a great time to get it spic and span. You can clean your home yourself or look into local cleaning companies that can come in and clean your home professionally from top to bottom. Cleaning your home might seem like a curious thing to do if you’re trying to get healthy. But getting healthy is all about having order in life and establishing good habits. If you’re looking for a clean slate, having a clean home is a good way to get started on your betterment journey. Plus, if you’re going to be working out at home, having a clean home certainly helps.

Be Proud Of Your Journey

As you can see, there are many ways to better your health, and winter is the perfect time to get started on living healthier. By taking time to stay active, make and follow through on necessary wellness appointments, and eating better, you can settle into a routine that ultimately results in better sleep, feeling better, and establishing good habits. The important thing is to take your betterment journey one step at a time, one day at time. Focus on yourself and what works best for you. Your quest to get healthy and live better is not a competition or a contest; it’s about making choices and doing things that work best for you as an individual. You won’t see the results of your hard work overnight, but if you stick with it, especially during the bitter cold of winter, you may just surprise yourself with how good you feel when springtime comes.         

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