Happy New Year! It’s that time again to take stock of your life and find ways to live happier and healthier. The new year offers a chance for a fresh start, a new beginning, an opportunity to better yourself. Most commonly, people expect to do this with popular resolutions—lose weight, eat healthier, save money, travel, spend time with family.
Having a hobby is more than just finding an activity to fill your free time. Hobbies keep you mentally, physically, and socially active, can be great stress relievers, and allow you to explore new interests and passions.
Even though as many as 20% of older adults experience anxiety or another type of mental health concern, it is largely stigmatized and avoided. Because of this stigmatization, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) states that “depressive disorders are an under-recognized condition and often are untreated or under-treated among older adults.”
Cooking can be a fun and enjoyable activity, but if you live alone, it can be hard to muster up the willpower to spend two hours cooking and cleaning—and then inevitably eating your leftovers for the next week straight. It may seem a lot easier to simply pop in a frozen pizza, pick up take-out, or just snack through the evening until it’s time for bed.
The term “active relaxation” may sound like a paradox—if you’re relaxing, then you’re not active, and if you’re active, then you’re not relaxing, right? The answer: not quite.
Self-care has been a hot topic lately. And while the idea of taking care of yourself is not revolutionary, the term “self-care” is somewhat new on the scene. According to Google Trends, the search term has more than doubled since 2015.
Namaste. Downward Dog. Warrior Two. You may have heard these phrases in passing and wondered, “What kind of exercise has poses that make you look like a dog”? You may know that these phrases have something to do with yoga, but that is as far as your knowledge goes.
When people think of wellness, they often think of simply the absence of illness or disease. True wellness, however, is much more complex and comprehensive than that. According to The Global Wellness Institute, wellness is defined as “the active pursuit of activities, choices, and lifestyles that lead to a state of holistic health.”
In today’s society, meals are often eaten in a second-nature manner—in front of the couch while watching a TV show, from a bag while driving from one place to another, or at your desk while trying to do three things at once. This approach to eating, while common, creates a passive and mindless relationship with food and mealtime.
If you’ve ever seen an advertisement in a health magazine or on TV, you’re familiar with some of the popular “fad” diets. Like the Atkins diet or the HCG diet, these diets promise noticeable results in a short period of time. And while these trendy diets may cause some people to shed pounds quickly, they do not help sustain long-term nutrition, don’t encourage healthy aging, and can sometimes be downright dangerous.
