Wellness Wednesday: Everyday Wellness

Here at Hilton Head Health, our goal is to help you reach your weight loss and wellness goals and ensure that you achieve long lasting results through nutrition education and personalized programs. We believe that achieving your goals is not a process that happens over night. It involves squeezing small healthy habits into your everyday routine. Here are 5 healthy habits that will enable you to practice everyday wellness.

1. Start your day by eating a healthy breakfast.  This sets you up to be less hungry by lunch and dinner and stops your from potentially overeating at those times.

2. Plan on eating 2-3 healthy snacks a day. Healthy midmorning and midafternoon snacks keep your metabolism revved and this prevents you from feeling deprived.

3. Stay hydrated throughout the day.  Start off in the morning with a big glass of water when you wake up and repeat every 2 hours.  This will give you about eight glasses per day.  Dehydration can mask itself as hunger initially; instead of reaching for a snack, have a glass of water first.

4. Get extra steps in.  Park farther away from the building where you work, take the stairs instead of the elevator, plan a noontime walk after you have your lunch and when you get home at night, eat dinner and then go for a 10 to 15 minute walk or go outside and play with your children.  Instead of meeting friends for happy hour, meet for spin class or a run. Not only will you get more activity in your day but you will have a lot of fun doing it.

5. Get enough sleep. One of the most important factors in any wellness program is sleep.  Aim for seven to eight hours of uninterrupted sleep every night.  Try to keep your sleep times the same throughout the week.  Turn off the TV, cell phone and computer and keep your sleeping area cool, dark and quiet.  Your body needs to go through all the sleep cycles to regenerate itself so the fewer distractions in the bedroom the better.

With proper hydration, nutrition, sleep and motivation, any time is a good time to stay fit, lose weight, and practice everyday wellness! Remember, that “the journey of a thousand miles begins with one step”-Confucious.