As the cooler months loom, it can be tempting to use alcohol to regulate your mood, get a buzz or relax, but even moderate intake can negatively impact your mood, nervous system, liver function and body weight. Here are expert tips for healthier replacements.
As the extended daylight of summer and after-work outdoor activities give way to the shorter days of autumn, it can be easy to fall into a routine of sitting down with a wine in the evening. After all, you miss the buzz and relaxing effect of endorphins. Plus, there’s boredom. However, while it might feel good at the time, regular alcohol intake can disrupt the brain’s mood and emotion regulation mechanisms (it’s actually a depressant), interfere with nervous system function, degrade sleep quality and lead to chronic lethargy or fatigue, impair liver function and induce weight gain. But what to do instead?
Try these psychologist-approved alternatives to flood your brain with natural feelgood chemicals.
If you’re keen to change a habit or make a lifestyle change to improve your health and wellbeing but need support or guidance, consider consulting a psychologist, who can provide evidence-based tactics for effective, lasting change.
If you've returned to work all smug about how bolt-upright straight you're sitting, you're partly right. However, many of us can take this posture logic too far.
While our chiros encourage us all to avoid slouching and keep our ears aligned with our shoulders, sitting up TOO straight can CAUSE back pain and lead to chronic pain problems by placing unnecessary strain on spinal discs and associated muscles and tendons. It may be as bad as slouching forward. So what’s optimal?
Research using specialised MRIs found that the best body-thigh angle for sitting was not 90 degrees but a more relaxed 135 degrees, with feet flat on the floor. However, simply reclining the back of your chair may remove support that places strain on the back and neck.
Takeaway? Ask someone to take a side-on and frontal photo of you seated at your desk chair and have your chiropractor appraise your sitting position and recommend tweaks for healthy sitting posture.
If you’re back at work or about to return, you’re probably too busy thinking about healthy lunches and ironing to consider how your desk height, chair and sitting position could affect your working life throughout the year. Yet good sitting posture can prevent discomfort and pain and even help with functions such as digestion. If you’re working from home, consider upgrading or adjusting your work station in line with these tips from SH chiro Dr John. Or, if you’re working in an office, consider making any requests to bring your work station into line.
Correct desk sitting posture:
If you are suffering back or neck pain or discomfort or would like to establish lifestyle habits that promote wellness and prevent spine and posture issues, consider consulting a chiropractor, who can recommend personalised changes for optimal overall health and wellbeing.
Heavy school backpacks can be harmful to developing spines, joints and muscles, yet a few simple tweaks to packing and strap position can increase comfort and reduce injury risk.
If you’re a parent watching your little (or big) one waddle off for the new school year with a bulging backpack, you’re right to be concerned. Even older kids can suffer from lugging a bag full of books, sports gear, a drink bottle and laptop, especially since their musculoskeletal systems are still developing. In fact, children should be carrying a maximum of 10 per cent of their body weight on their backs, according to research published in the Applied Ergonomics journal. For a child weighing 40kg, that’s 4kg, which can be easily exceeded between common items such as a lunchbox and drink bottle, sports shoes and books or a tablet or laptop.
But gross weight is not the only factor in whether a child’s regular schoolbag carrying will result in damage or pain. Distribution of carried weight also impacts the effects on the back particularly. How you pack the bag (e.g. placing heavier items at the bottom) and how the straps are adjusted can markedly change the load on respective body parts. Our child and adolescent physios and chiros have put together some simple tips to reduce the strain on the developing spine, joints and muscles that may be caused by schoolbags.
If your child or teen is suffering from joint or muscle pain or movement changes or limitations, consider an assessment by a physiotherapist experienced in working with children and adolescents such as the practitioners in our paediatric division.
Creating mental boundaries between work and life can help us to cope with work-related pressures and prevent chronic stress. As the new work year begins, protect your wellbeing with these simple tips.
Responding to emails on your phone after dinner. Hearing that dreaded ‘ping’ during the weekend. A call from a colleague while you’re at the supermarket. Since the advent of smartphones, the work day no longer ends when we leave the office. And while it may feel productive to work around the clock, the lack of down time and boundaries between work and life can have the opposite effect.
The expectation to be ‘always on’ can compound work-related pressures, causing a sense of suffocation that may result in chronic stress and diminished wellbeing. According to research at the University of Illinois, workers with greater boundary control over their work and personal lives are better at creating a stress buffer to prevent them from mood disturbance and negative rumination (or getting trapped in a negative, self-perpetuating thought loop).
In addition, exposure to the light from screens in the evening may interfere with sleep hormone melatonin, resulting in poor sleep or insomnia, which further exacerbates daytime stress. It’s that much harder to cope when you’re sleep-deprived.
The good news is that there are simple measures you can take to protect yourself.
Tips for boundary control
If you frequently feel overwhelmed by work or experience symptoms of chronic stress or anxiety such as fatigue, headaches or low or erratic mood, consider consulting a psychologist who can help you to gain skills and techniques to manage stress while maintaining personal wellbeing.
Letting kids take more control of their own food intake may lead to healthier food preferences and appetite regulation.
Back to school. Back to the battle of getting kids to eat healthfully without you hovering over them. Many parents feel pressure to ensure that their kids have a perfectly healthy diet - especially with constant media talk about childhood obesity. But what does that mean and HOW do you make it happen?
The good news is that getting children to prefer healthful foods - without constant policing - may be simpler than it sounds. While it’s logical to ‘ban’ junk foods and set strict rules around food and eating, a more relaxed approach may actually be more beneficial, according to a recent statement from the American Heart Association.
While it is important to build a positive food environment by buying and preparing healthy food options, giving children the freedom to decide what they eat, when and how much can help to cultivate a healthy relationship with food and enable children to heed their bodies’ hunger and fullness signals (which means less chance of overeating now and in the long term). Less rigid food rules (i.e. not forbidding any foods but designating ‘sometimes foods’) have also been linked to less interest in high-sugar, high-fat ‘treat’ foods. It’s like reverse psychology.
Not sure where to start? Try these simple tips.
If you’re concerned about whether your child is obtaining the nutrition they need for optimal brain and body development, consider consulting an accredited practising dietitian (APD), who can evaluate your child’s diet and eating behaviours and provide strategies and targets to get them eating well
Tweaking the way you speak to a baby or child could accelerate their speech, language and vocabulary.
If you’re a parent or carer of a baby or young child, you probably schedule time for reading. But are there other ways you can promote language and speech development in everyday life? Enhancing key skills and vocabulary may be as simple as using a style of communication called ‘parentese’ according to new research at the University of Washington. While research showed that babies acquired greater vocabulary when exposed to parentese, it may also be helpful for older children with speech, language and communication difficulties. How to use it?
What is parentese? A style of communication that uses exaggerated speech elements such as vowel elongation (‘baaaaa-naaaaaa-naaaaaa’), varied pitch (high and low), a slow speech rate and simplified wording. Try to sound excited or enthusiastic, but without speeding up.
How does it work? Exaggerated articulation and varied pitch helps little ones to distinguish between words. The variation may also cause greater interest and engagement and encourage participation or mimicry. You may also use your child’s favourite songs. Often, children’s songs already exaggerate enunciation, but consider singing along with extra emphasis.
Mistakes to avoid? Don’t confuse ‘parentese’ with ‘baby talk’ (the former uses real words while the latter uses cute noises and made-up words).
If your toddler or child is struggling with aspects of speech, language or communication, consider consulting a children’s speech pathologist, who can provide exercises to develop important, lifelong skills.
A balanced lunch can enhance work performance and mental clarity and prevent sweet cravings by stimulating key brain chemicals and stabilising blood sugar.
Do you suffer mid-afternoon sweet cravings or struggle to concentrate after 3pm? Or get to lunchtime and cave in to buying a cafe pasta because that same-same soggy ham sandwich is so boring? These are classic signs that your lunches are letting you down. In fact, a lunch lacking certain elements can cause everything from energy slumps and fatigue to mood swings and impaired concentration and focus (just like athletic performance, your best mental performance depends on giving the brain its required and preferred fuel). An unbalanced lunch (e.g. fast-release carbohydrate such as white bread with little or no fibre or protein) can also cause blood sugar to rise and drop sharply, provoking the notorious ‘vending machine run’.
If you’re thinking, ‘yes, but that all sounds too hard’, here’s a simple formula you can adapt for endless exciting combinations that will fill you up and keep you satisfied and firing on all cylinders until dinner time.
5-step ‘full ‘til dinner’ work lunch formula
Get creative and experiment. If you’re looking to meet specific health goals through nutrition or just wish to realise your best physical and mental wellbeing, consider consulting an accredited practising dietitian (APD).
What’s your strategy for maintaining your new year’s resolution? Have you set yourself up for long-term success? Whether your goal relates to health, fitness, career, travel or any other life area, there are certain psychology tricks you can use to make desired changes without relying on willpower.
What type of new year’s resolutionist are you? Do you make the same ones every year (hoping that this year you will miraculously find the motivation to keep up healthy habits)? Maybe you’ve stopped making them after too many failures? If you feel as though new year’s resolutions are a losing battle, take heart. It’s not you. It’s them.
Simply, popular culture’s concept of new year’s resolutions is fundamentally flawed. Radical lifestyle overhauls ignore how the human mind and body work. First, there is no such thing as a ‘quick fix’ (progress is evolution, not revolution). Second, successful, lasting change requires real motivation. Superficial prompts such as feeling obligated to quit junk food won’t last when you’re craving a burger. Third, many popular practices often relied upon for resolutions are doomed to fail (for instance, research shows that dieting actually causes weight gain in the medium-to-long term).
So should you abandon your goal to get fit or lose body fat or join a netball team? No! Soaring Health provisional psychologist Rebecca has compiled these expert tips to stick your goals long term.
GOAL-SETTING
Clever goals
When it comes to setting goals at any time of year, SMART goals (goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound) are more likely to succeed than vague ones. It is also helpful to break large, overarching goals into smaller sub-goals. If you’ve made a resolution or are considering setting goals for the year ahead, check your ambition against these goal-setting guidelines. You’ll be glad you did when you’re running 5km or sliding into your old jeans or bounding out of bed in the morning.
S-Make goals specific. Think going to the gym twice a week or reducing alcohol consumption to two glasses, one day per week or taking a home-made lunch to work four days a week.
M-Make goals that are measurable (as above). Frequency and markers such as distance, duration or speed are solid, quantifiable targets.
A-Ensure that goals are achievable and realistic. As you set them, consider your schedule. Record the actions you commit to taking (e.g. attending gym straight after work on Tuesdays and Thursdays) in your diary and tick them off.
R-Check that goals are relevant to your true desires, ambitions and values. If you’re not fussed about your weight, skip weight loss goals. Maybe what you really want is to have enough energy and/or fitness to go on a skiing holiday or to get through each day without fatigue. Review your goals periodically to check that they are still relevant and adjust if things have changed.
T-Make goals time-bound. A timeframe, or mini timeframes or deadlines for progress, helps to create and maintain motivation and effort and keeps you accountable (again, write down your planned actions and tick them off). Will you exercise for 45 to 60 minutes twice a week for three months? Make sure timeframes are realistic.
Think small
As well as setting SMART goals, it pays to keep goals small. One reason that many of us tend to ‘fall off the wagon’ or ‘give up’ on our desired habit changes is that the goals we set are too big and overwhelming. It is important to break overarching goals (superordinate goals) into smaller, manageable ones (subordinate goals). That is, once you identify a main goal (lose 5kg by April 1), chunk it into mini goals (e.g. lose 0.5kg a week for 10 weeks). This makes it possible to assign steps and actions such as creating a caloric deficit of 18,000kJ a week through a combination of diet and exercise. From there, you (and possibly an accredited practising dietitian and/or fitness trainer) can identify and follow healthy, sustainable action steps based on your lifestyle and science - not wishful thinking or guesswork.
IMPLEMENTATION (MAKING IT HAPPEN)
Swap willpower
Quite often making a resolution and taking the first step is manageable. After all, you’re fired up and fuelled by the prospect of losing weight/running 5km/relieving symptoms. But as weeks go by and life happens, maintaining that resolution becomes harder. (It is estimated that up to 80 per cent of people who make new year’s resolutions abandon them by February.) A common explanation for ‘falling off the wagon’ is lack of willpower. However, it is a mistake to rely on willpower alone to sustain habit changes. Why? Because it is exhaustible. When the going gets tough (you get busy or tired or miss your favourite chocolate biscuits), waning willpower is unlikely to win out over going straight home or sleeping through gym hour or grabbing a sneaky pack of Tim Tams. Research shows that factors such as fatigue and energy deficit can erode willpower and decision-making. There are many well-researched theories and principles to reduce reliance on willpower and reduce the ongoing effort required to practise new habits (which in turn means less chance of burnout or giving up). Try these tips to achieve your goals with less effort.
If you are looking for ways to sustain new health and fitness habits and behaviours or need extra support, consider consulting a psychologist for assistance with goals and motivation. An expert such as a physiotherapist (for fitness) or dietitian (for food and nutrition) may also provide the support you need to set and achieve realistic, personally-meaningful targets.
Looking for the next big thing to help with weight loss? Don’t have the willpower to follow a diet? The answer may lie in an ancient practice that encourages enjoyment of food (even chocolate).
It’s not what many of us want to hear at new year, but diets don’t work. Extensive research shows that, in the long term, restrictive eating practices contribute to weight gain and a disturbed relationship with food and eating whereby your mind and body are no longer working together but on parallel tracks. Your head wants to limit calories, while your body’s biology desperately tries to fight ‘starvation’ and essentially forces you to overeat or even binge eat. It has nothing to do with willpower. Meanwhile, metabolism slows with each new diet attempt, leading to the dreaded ‘yo-yo’ cycle. So, then, what is the answer for those of us who want to lose weight this new year without rebound weight gain?
Enter mindful eating.
You’ve probably heard of mindfulness. It’s one of this decade’s most talked-about psychology topics, praised as an accessible, self-help practice that has been shown to help with everything from stress to anxiety and depression. Drawn from ancient Buddhist practices, it is alarmingly simple. In short, it is paying attention to what is in any given moment. This often involves paying close attention to the body and functions such as breathing as well as sensations such as the feel of your feet connecting with the floor or the cool sensation of a breeze rushing past your ear. It makes sense, then, that mindfulness is now being explored and used as a tool to regulate food intake and help with weight management.
How does mindful eating work?
The idea is that overeating or consuming unhealthy foods is often the result of a kind of distractedness or disconnect from the body’s cues and signals. Many of us make food decisions based on convenience rather than what would nourish our bodies and make us feel good. In addition, many of us eat on auto-pilot, which causes us to consume unnecessarily large portions. (It is hard to recognise when you’re full if you’re holding a burger in one hand and driving with the other or inhaling a cafe pasta at your desk). Moreover, rapid eating with little or no chewing may prevent you from feeling satisfied. This is because it takes about 20 minutes for the brain to register satiety (fullness). What’s more, chewing fully helps the body’s hunger and fullness hormones to kick in. Which is why ‘mindless’ eating can contribute to weight gain and work against weight loss.
On the flip side, consciously choosing and preparing nutritious foods, making dedicated time to sit down and eat without distractions, paying close attention to the experience of eating, including texture and taste, and tuning in to your body’s signals between mouthfuls (e.g. by putting down your fork while you fully chew and properly swallow), may mean you recognise that you are satisfied with less food. Many people who try mindful eating report that it’s ‘like magic’. If you’ve tried ‘dieting’, you may be surprised that regulating food intake and weight can be so simple and effortless.
Is mindful eating a diet?
Mindful eating is not a diet. In fact, the two concepts are contradictory. A key difference is that while diets prescribe ‘good’ and ‘bad’ foods (often with a ‘forbidden’ list), mindful eating encourages consumption of a varied, balanced diet including favourite ‘indulgences’. In fact, your favourite chocolate can form a valuable part of mindful eating - even if your goal is weight loss. How can this be? The logic behind the lack of restriction in mindful eating is two-fold. One, the psychological and physical deprivation triggered by restrictive eating actually set in motion processes that promote binge eating or erratic patterns of ‘light’ eating and ‘splurging’. If everything is allowed, this is less likely to occur. Two, favourite ‘indulgence’ foods are great vehicles for mindful eating practice. For instance, that decadent Danish chocolate you buy by the piece and special occasions. The key is to opt for small portions of high-quality chocolate or cheese and make an occasion of eating them. Think of it as a kind of ‘food meditation’.
What about the chocolate?
Let's apply a typical, simple mindful eating session to a piece of chocolate. First, sit down, preferably at a table, with a single piece of chocolate served on a nice plate. Take time to observe its appearance. Next, take in its aroma. What do you smell? Then slowly move a small amount of food to your mouth and take a small bite, noticing the feeling as your teeth penetrate the food. Is it cold? Hard or soft? Then push it back on to your tongue and observe characteristics such as the flavour, temperature and roughness or smoothness. Continue to observe changes in these attributes as you chew thoroughly. The more complexity a food or meal has, the more rich and satisfying you're likely to find the eating experience - which is why experts recommend choosing more expensive, high-quality foods over low-quality, uninteresting ones you're more likely to need more of to feel satisifed.
How to practise mindful eating
Unlike diets, mindful eating is a long-term practice. You don't need to entirely change the way you choose, prepare and consume food overnight. Experts suggest starting mindful eating by choosing one meal a day for practice. Try these hints and tips to kick start your mindful eating habits.
Is mindful eating the same as intuitive eating?
Intuitive eating is another ‘anti-diet’ practice hailed as an effective tool for curbing behaviours such as binge eating and emotional eating. Like mindful eating, it discourages a restrictive diet mentality and promotes permission to consume all foods. Intuitive eating also encourages awareness of the body’s needs and signals such as hunger and fullness. However, proponents of intuitive eating warn against using the practice for weight loss. While weight loss may be a side-effect, making it a priority can work against truly becoming aware of and freely honouring the body’s needs.
If your new year goals include losing weight, eating better or resolving certain health issues or symptoms, consider consulting an accredited practising dietitian (APD) for science-based, personalised advice.
If you’re considering a new year detox diet to ditch the extra 2kg, dial down bloating or fix your skin, bad news. Not only are detox diets ineffective, they may be dangerous and lead to weight gain. Instead, try these science-based alternatives that actually work.
Which detox diet is best for undoing the indulgences of Christmas (and maybe lockdown)? It’s a trick question. However tempting promises of fast weight loss and cleansing may sound, there is no scientific basis for swapping regular food for a liquid diet such as juice and clear soup.
According to a review of popular detox diets at Macquarie University, there is no plausible argument for using detox diets to manage weight or promote toxin elimination. The human body has evolved highly sophisticated mechanisms for eliminating toxins. When functioning normally, the liver, kidneys, gastrointestinal system, skin and lungs all play a role in the excretion of unwanted substances. But detox diets are worse than ineffective. They may be dangerous. According to the review, popular detox diet protocols encouraging fasting, supplements, food modification and laxative use posed real health risks to otherwise-healthy consumers. Among the risks were protein and vitamin deficiencies, electrolyte imbalance and lactic acidosis, they warned.
But what about weight loss?
Anyone who’s gone without food for four days knows that miraculous 2kg drop on the scales, right? Unfortunately, unless you’re running marathons (which is unlikely with the lethargy and fatigue induced by energy shortfalls), it’s almost certainly not body fat. Rather, the apparent reduction in body weight owes to lower water weight, in part due to depletion of glycogen stores from consuming fewer carbohydrate foods. If a detox diet is prolonged, some ‘lost weight’ may be attributed to reduced muscle mass, which occurs when your body runs out of energy sources and breaks down its own lean tissue (yes, it basically feeds on itself). It gets worse. Reduced muscle mass effectively reduces metabolic rate and in turn encourages weight gain while eating previous maintenance amounts. And if you think, ‘I’ll just eat less than I used to’, beware of this double-whammy: prolonged energy restriction may cause long-term changes that promote binge eating. Cue the notorious ‘yo-yo’ dieting cycle.
Not convinced? Key points:
“But I want to feel lighter and lose the bloating!” We hear you. Here are some steps you can take while maintaining good nutrition and health.
If you are considering making dietary changes or wish to tailor your nutrition to specific health goals, consult an accredited practising dietitian (APD), who can create a personalised, flexible, sustainable plan for long-term results, health and vitality.
Fitness resolutions are fraught with mistakes that cause many of us to ‘fall off the wagon’ or declare failure by February. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Hit your new year fitness goals with these science-based hacks.
If you’ve ever set a new year fitness goal and fallen off the wagon by February, you’re in good company. Failure rates for new year’s health resolutions are estimated to be as high as 80 per cent. In fact, it’s a wonder any of us continue to make them. Yet somehow many of us manage to conveniently forget what happened last time and set ourselves up to repeat the cycle. Foolish? It depends whether you reflect on factors involved in past failures and incorporate your learning into your new attempt (you know the quote, ‘Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result’?). If you’re ready to change your relationship with new year’s fitness resolutions, keep reading.
Why fitness resolutions fail
There are myriad physical, psychological and practical reasons why fitness resolutions fail - from flagging motivation to lack of time and pain, discomfort or injury. However, broadly, failure factors tend to fall into two categories: planning and execution. The former relates to setting goals and strategically planning to achieve them. The latter pertains to the implementation. Each of these stages can be a minefield of common mistakes that catch many of us off guard or leave us baffled as to what went wrong.
So what DID go wrong (or might go wrong)?
PLANNING
Your goals were out of synch with your true desires (for instance, you felt obligated to lose weight but weren’t intrinsically motivated). Your goals were disconnected from your physical abilities or strengths (if you’re a sprinter with fast-twitch muscle fibres, endurance running or marathons mightn’t be much fun). Your goals were unrealistic, setting you up for disappointment at your lack of progress or accomplishment (cue throwing in the towel). Your goals disagreed with your lifestyle, making it difficult to maintain your regimen. You overlooked the mechanisms of motivation, which inevitably involves periods of returning to earlier stages (two steps forward, one step back), causing you to confuse a setback with terminal failure and quit. These and other missteps can largely be prevented by setting SMART goals, as discussed in our psychology post on making resolutions that stick.
IMPLEMENTATION
You went too hard, too fast and incurred pain or injury. You did the same workout every day, leading to boredom, lack of progress or both. You made mistakes with technique or form and failed to progress as expected. You started out well but hit a plateau, causing you to push yourself too hard and burn out physically or mentally, or prompting you to simply give up (what’s the point?). You bypassed preparation such as investing in suitable apparel and equipment. You failed to make sessions a priority by scheduling them (so you ‘forgot’ to wash your workout clothes or take your gear to work and couldn’t work out, leading to an inconsistent exercise schedule). You decided to ‘wing it’ and design your own workouts without consulting a sports physiotherapist, exercise physiologist or personal trainer, who could tailor your activity to your goals. Familiar?
Keep it simple
If the interplay of physical and mental factors sounds complex, it is. Paradoxically, it’s simpler than it might seem. Basically, many ‘mistakes’ in both planning and implementation create a negative Domino effect. For instance, setting overly ambitious goals pretty well guarantees that you will soon confront your own failure, which may cause you to train harder or more frequently in an attempt to ‘fix it’. This may lead to physical and/or psychological burnout. Bye bye, resolution. Which is good news, because the flip side is that you can create a positive Domino effect that promotes factors towards success (without applying overt effort to each factor). If you’re ready to set in motion a cascade of success, consider these ‘hacks’.
1. Vary your routine
Once you’re in a routine, it can be tempting to cling to the same workout. After all, you’ve mastered this machine and that technique. Plus, it makes sense that the more you do the same thing, the better you’ll get at it, right? Not quite. Doing the same workout day in, day out is likely to result in slowed or stalled progress or a ‘plateau’ (that is, you’ll stop seeing results, which may undermine motivation or cause you to push beyond your limits, resulting in over-training and inadequate recovery that further impede progress). Why does this happen? Adaptation. That is, your body adapts to certain activities or movements, becoming more efficient, which means the processes that enabled gains in strength or speed or endurance are dialled down. Depending on your fitness goals, a rule of thumb is to change up your workout routine every two to five weeks. As a positive knock-on effect, this also prevents boredom and apathy and promotes sustained motivation. Between ‘change-ups’, incorporate variety by adding different techniques to your workout program – think supersets, circuit training and HIIT (high-intensity interval training).
2. Go easy
Fitness is often associated with a gung-ho ‘go hard or go home’ mentality. However, this is actually self-defeating. Doing too much in a bid to attain faster results is often false economy. In fact, over-training is one of the main enemies of successful fitness resolutions. Why? The effects of over-training make it difficult or impossible to maintain optimal training. Form is compromised, which means exercises fail to achieve what they should when performed correctly. Other effects such as joint and muscle pain, fatigue and depleted energy may force time-outs or reduced training that effectively delay results. Along with regulating training frequency and demands, it is important to factor in recovery periods (or rest days). Without this, your body can’t rebuild and repair muscle tissue, which is a key factor in achieving optimal results. Relatedly, to work optimally, your fitness resolution needs to be supported by adequate, good-quality sleep. Sleep enables the body to dedicate resources to repair and recovery and growth. (Yes, some of your ‘progress’ may occur while you’re snoozing.)
3. Track yourself
What’s the point of setting goals if you’re not keeping tabs on whether your workout program is advancing you towards achieving them? Regular evaluation can reveal what is working as well as what isn’t, providing opportunities to tweak your routine early (rather than blindly continuing with something that isn’t working or isn’t working as expected). Of course, evaluation requires data. To capture the interplay of success factors we’ve discussed, make a habit of keeping a fitness diary, not only to record how many sets and reps you did on Wednesday, but to document associated factors such as nutrition and sleep and the effects of specific conditions (for instance, a workout in which you became fatigued earlier than expected may be explained by missing lunch or a poor night’s sleep). As far as monitoring exercise, for cardio, record intensity, distance and duration. For strength work, record the exercise performed, the weight load and your sets, repetitions and periods. In addition, make a note of how you felt after each workout. Review your fitness log weekly and try to identify both positive and negative patterns or links and make adjustments accordingly.
This is just a snapshot of considerations we recommend taking into account when embarking on a fitness regimen. Remember to jump over to our how-to for 'oops-proof' goal-setting. If you are embarking on a new year fitness blitz, consider consulting a physiotherapist, who can provide personally tailored advice for fitness goal-setting and implementation.
Use the school holidays to help kids to develop and maintain important skills.
If you’re a parent or carer, you probably spent lockdown coming up with activities to keep the kids entertained while maintaining and improving their skills and development. No easy task! And now you have to do it again all holidays? We asked children’s OT Yuho for insider tips for go-anywhere holiday activities that are fun AND secretly good for them. (It’s a bit like hiding grated veggies in spaghetti bolognese.)
If you notice that your child is having difficulties with certain skills or competencies expected for their age or are concerned about whether your child’s development is normal, consider consulting a children’s occupational therapist, speech pathologist, physiotherapist or psychologist, depending on the area of concern.
Face masks. They've altered the way we communicate face-to-face, causing many of us to feel frustrated at our lost ability to read how others feel and convey our own emotions. Yet there are many simple ways to restore satisfying interactions despite face coverings. We asked our speech pathologists, who are experienced in working with people with communication challenges, to pass on tips that can be used in any day-to-day situation, from chatting with the barista to disciplining kids at the supermarket.
While they may help prevent the spread of disease (good!), these new health essentials have also fundamentally changed how we communicate and connect (challenging). Without a full range of facial expressions (an estimated 55% of communication is non-verbal), the social skills that help us to feel connected don’t work as they did. Minus the smile, that friendly joke in the supermarket queue is met with suspicious silence. Or fellow walkers look down as they hurry past. Such experiences may make us feel alienated or disconnected.
So how can you overcome communication barriers while wearing a mask? We asked our speech pathologists and psychologists to share some tactics they use to help clients with speech, language and hearing difficulties and difficulties with emotional expression and interpersonal relating.
1. Ramp up gestures. Think a thumbs up, nodding your head and demonstrative hand gestures. If you can’t smile, acknowledge a person using the social nod or tilt. Also exaggerate upper-face expressions and tilt your head back as you laugh.
2. Laugh it off. Rather than letting the mask cause division, diffuse the discomfort by making it a point of common ground. It may be as simple as asking, ‘Do your ear loops do this too?’ If someone is wearing a stylish mask, consider complimenting the person or asking where they got it, as you might with a regular item of clothing.
3. Over-articulate. It might feel awkward, but over-enunciate to reduce the risk of mishearing or misunderstanding, since ‘normal’ verbal communication relies partly on lip reading and facial expressions to compensate for missed words. Likewise, increase your vocal volume. Even if it sounds loud to you, it will sound ‘normal’ to the receiver.
If you or someone in your care struggles with communication, consider consulting a speech and language pathologist, who is expertly versed in exercises and techniques to improve and increase the satisfaction of interpersonal interactions.
As COVID-19 restrictions force us to alter our health and wellbeing practices, Splash and Soaring Health have compiled a video guide to staying fit, strong, and healthy at home. The Splash digital program and Soaring Health chiropractors and physios are your virtual support team.
Working from home (WFH) and posture with chiropractor Dr. John
Incorporating exercise into your lockdown routine with physiotherapists Sandra and Neela
At-home health and fitness recap
For more tips and support to stay healthy and fit during COVID-19, please follow the Splash and Soaring Health socials and check back for new blog posts and videos.
We all know change is inevitable, but ordinarily, many changes are experienced as evolutions, not revolutions. We have time to adjust. This year’s events, however, have forced many of us to suddenly and dramatically reimagine parts of our lives and our roles. Never has the phrase ‘the future is uncertain’ felt more real and, perhaps, terrifying.
While it is important to plan, paradoxically, it may now be equally helpful to suspend the will to control circumstances and instead redirect that energy to managing your own thoughts and emotional responses - both to what is, and to what you imagine may eventuate. Acceptance can help to ease the tension and frustration caused by resisting changes we can’t control.
As George Bernard Shaw said, "Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything."
🍃Stay safe and #keepsoaring
