Wellbeing

Our health is one of the most important thing we each have. While life is ofcourse still worth living if we do not have our best health, physical and mental health ensures we are able to calmly enjoy everything that we have in our life.

Most of us don't realise it but it is only in the last 100-200 years where people have really begun to sit down and lead such inactive lifestyles like we have, and in the last 50/60 the levels of obesity and inactiveness have skyrocketed. Take a look at photos of people from even 50 years ago compared to now; everybody has alot more fat on their bodies! Our food industries have evolved so rapidly. Food now is not seen purely as fuel as it always has been. It tastes so unbelievably good. Food is a science now and everything is filled with chemicals, sugar and salt so that people will buy and consume as much as possible. And why? For profit, baby!

We are an addicted population: Addicted to food, to chemicals, to information, to technology, to outrage, to judgement and vanity; to indulging and stimulating our brains and bodies. So much of what passes as normal today - our entertainment industries, our food industries, our fashion industries, our chemical industries, even our cultural industries - exist in large part now to appeal to our base instincts and they have been weaponised against us. I don't think it too extreme to say we are essentially cattle being used for profit.

So many advancements to make things easier! Yet an easier life is often not a healthier life.

It's too easy to get overwhelmed with information, as there is so much out there. Just like with flexibility, improving your physical and mental wellbeing is all about building slowly on some fundamental principles that are easy to incorporate and show great benefit with minimal input. Here are some general principles to help us all lead a healthier, more mindful life in our extremely over-stimulated existence.

General principles for physical wellbeing

We are animals. We evolved to move. Therefore we must move, if not out of necessity for finding resources or defending ourselves, but out of necessity for maintaining health. It's hard to find motivation for things when you don't have an overt reason for doing it - like needing to find food because you're hungry, or running away from a rival pack of hunter gatherers. How many times have we all left our university work until last minute? Until we feel the pressure of a looming deadline... We must learn that our health is an overt reason for performing physical activity.

If you have never been unfit, then that's great! Keep doing what you are doing. Most of us, however, have had times in our lives where we have lost the ability to easily walk up a hill without getting painfully out of breath.

Does cycling 10 miles sound like an abnormally long distance to you?

Does the thought of getting out of breath fill you with dread at the physical sensation of your lungs burning, your skin becoming sweaty & itchy, and/or the feeling of almost vomiting? We all have lived far too long in these lifestyles where physcal exertion simply is not needed. You may not realise it, but being out of breath is simply that - being out of breath. When you have a base level of 'useable' fitness, those feelings described above are simply not present. You get out of breath - and you recover. It is not an all-encompassing feeling like it may feel now.

The great thing? It doesn't take much to get passed those feelings! Physical activity is enjoyable once you don't feel like that.

Cardiovascular exercise

Cardiovascular activity, also known as aerobic exercise, utilises aerobic metabolism - exercise that uses oxygen as a primary component to create energy in your muscle cells, as opposed to anaerobic exercise which utilises primarily ATP (Adenosine Triphosphate) in your muscle cells. Aerobic exercise, such as running or cycling, is lower intensity and anaerobic is higher intensity exercise that you cannot do for very long and will fatigue your muscles to failure.

Cardiovascular exercise is what we need to get "fit". It increases the power of each beat of your heart, making it stronger and making it able to pump more blood with every beat. Combined with that, the gaseous exchange your lungs are able to provide (how much oxygen your lungs can move into your blood) will greatly increase. This is essentially what "fitness" is - how well your body can provide oxygen to its parts, and how well the muscles can utilise that oxygen. There is alot more to it ofcourse, but this is the basic idea of it.

I would recommend you find something you enjoy. Going to the gym to go on a treadmill or stationary bike is great and people can and will see great results, but I have always found it a little mundane to be spinning in the same place. It takes alot of motivation and discipline to do that. If you find something you enjoy - I love cycling for example - you can go out and get fit while having fun! Also you can change things up by going different places, doing different types of cycling (road/path or mountain biking). So while yes it feels like "exercise", it's enjoyable exercise and not just exercise for the sake of doing exercise. Walking is great, and it is a great way to get started, but you will soon progress so walking doesn't really make you out of breath. You must get out of breath. I'm not saying you should be unable to breathe, but you need to get a little out of breath to progress properly.

Strength Training

Some sort of strength training is necessary. But let's define it first. Yes, going to the gym and lifting weights is strength training, and is often enjoyable, but any activity that requires you to use all of the muscles in your body is technically strength training. Take tennis for example; you are holding a racket while hitting a ball, and running about a court, changing direction constantly and developing your hand-eye coordination. That takes every muscle in your body. They make it look easy on TV but it isn't!

Cycling is good but it doesn't really target all the muscles a sport like tennis would. Again, this is all about you finding something that you enjoy - so try different things, but strengthening your muscles will increase your metabolism and help you burn more energy and it will make you stronger and more able. As we get older we lose muscle mass so it is good to ensure you keep as much muscle mass as possible in order to stay safe and mobile in to older age.

The more able you are, the more confidence you are. Not to mention gaining muscle looks great no matter what gender you are!

Diet

Diet is where almost everybody will fall. Even the healthiest of people have days where they splurge or indulge. We are humans, and our brains are wired to want calorie-rich food, just in the case we aren't able to find food tomorrow. Most of us are thankfully lucky enough that we will always (hopefully) have food tomorrow. But our brains and bodies evolved in a different time, so it is only logical we adore food.

While people can and do make drastic changes to their diets overnight, it is not something I would recommend. Simply because you are not used to it, and it is such an integral part of our lives and bodies that making sudden changes to something like this is unsustainable as we are likely to love motivation quickly. It isn't just a mental game; our gut bacteria change so that we can digest the food that we mainly eat. If we change our diet overnight, our bacteria cannot keep up, therefore we are likely to find the cravings for our original diets overwhelming, leading to lapses in diet and ultimately failure.

For most of us, a dessert is commonplace. It should not be. If that sounds bad to you, then sorry - tough! Food is fuel and nothing more. That is not to say you cannot enjoy your food, because good, healthy food can taste great. It simply means we cannot indulge every meal. That, unfortunately, is just how things are. We need to learn how to cook meals that have a well-rounded macronutrient and micronutrient profile.

A good rule to follow is to not eat processed food. That may actually sound relatively simple, but you would be surprised by just how much processed food there is. Processed food is food that has been altered in some way during its preparation before getting to your house - so bread, tinned foods, snacks like crisps, microwave meals... are all processed foods with alot of preservatives, fats and sugars added to them so they taste better and don't spoil.

So without going too far into detail, just attempting to cook your own meals with natural foods, ehrbs and spices will automatically put you in a good place when it comes to diet. Obviously don't go and eat 3 big bowls of the same food, but you will inherintly be in a far better position. If it doesn't taste good to begin with, then try again! Learning to cook is a skill that is invaluable.

General principles for mental wellbeing

Our mental ellbeing is just as important as our physical wellbeing. They are intrinsicly linked and both should be taken care of. If we aren't mentally okay, then our physical health will take a downturn, and vice versa. People often forget that our brains are in our body and they are one and the same. Here are some easy ways to buidl resilience and help with staying mentally stable.

Stop posting on social media

Notice the wording of the heading? "Stop posting on social media." If you can get off social media entirely that is for the best. It may sound difficult reducing your social media usage, but it is not. You will soon realise your life is just as full without it. I recommend stop posting, as all that does is make you hang tightly on to how many likes and/or comments you get. It is not a photo album. You are posting on it get validation from other people. Don't kid yourself - you are not doing it for yourself. You are comparing yourself to the lives of others, forgetting that just like you, they are doing the same and only posting the best image they can of their life. When you compare yourself, there is nothing but hopelessness, despair and a feeling that you are not good enough. Look at it this way - when you see you're doing better than others, do you think "I'm glad I'm doing better than them." or do you feel bad for them? So when you compare yourself to others and see you're not doing as good as them, you may feel good for them, but you are also feeling sorry for yourself. There is no win in this situation. It is a vicious cycle of vanity and vacuousness.

On social media we are also bombarded with inhuman amounts of information, constantly. Incessent, endless amounts of information. We are not designed to deal with that amount of information. Our brains are so overly indulged and overly stimulated that there is no room for anything else.

When was the last time you were bored? What was the last creative thing that you did, instead of opening your phone and scrolling through social media?

Social media has its uses, but for the most part we are unable to distinguish between the good and the bad. I also find it interesting that none of us have ever had a dream we were on our phones, so do they really matter?

Use it to message your friends, that is useful. But we need to get back to reality and nature. So stop using it as much!

Breathe

Our brains are overly stimulated. In this busy world it is important to clear your mind of unecessary business.

Taking a minute or two every few hours to close your eyes, breathe deeply and intentionally and concentrate on only your breath is a good way to calm your mind. A calm mind is a calm person, and better decisions can be made and better work can be done. Your mind will wander but that is okay and natural. Simply be mindful of it and bring it back to your breath. I like to imagine my mind as a vessel or a container, and imagine it as empty.

The above are simple, fundamental methods that we can all employ to lead a calmer, happier, more joyful existence. They are simple yet effective. They do take work but what better thing to work on that oneself?

Remember: One step at a time. You do not, and probably should not, do this all at once. Give yourself a break and don't be too hard on yourself if you fail. We all fail and it's part of the process. Just keep going!