Building Healthy Autumn Habits

If you were encouraging someone to prioritise their health in the autumn, what advice would you give based on your own insights or your own lived experiences? So I think for autumn, because I used to be a social prescriber as well, so these are sorts of conversations that I would have had with my clients and I think in autumn it's really important to kind of get into the habit of as I said is going out and doing and seeing something in the evening while we've still got that kind of light-ish evening build that habit now so that when we get into kind of like the depths of winter you're still kind of okay with going out at that sort of time so I think it's kind of building that habit that it's okay to go out in the evening and and still have a life after work and go out and do something, but also going out and kind of appreciating kind of like the beauty of nature that we have at the moment, the changing of the season and kind of seeing how beautiful the trees are and kind of being aware of how things are changing and appreciating it. So like, I think I keep saying, but it's kind of like romanticizing the changing of the seasons. It's not all doom and gloom. It's actually really beautiful. And kind of using that as the tool to encourage people to go out and get your steps in and leave the house, even though you start thinking, oh, well, it's dark and cold now. What's the point? Thank you very much. It's really, really, again, very pertinent, very, very resonant. And how do you stay motivated or connected to your healthy habits during this time of the year, is there a particular behaviour, mindset or tool that you find is helpful for you and that you like to share with others? Yeah, so I think even at first accepting and acknowledging with other people that it's really hard to stay motivated at this time of the year is actually quite comforting, you know, everyone finds it really tricky. But I think for me, I started doing, well through social prescribing, I naturally worked with a lot of quite elderly clients, a lot of our clients were over the age of 80, a lot of them actually over the age of 90, which is incredible, but I think I'd never really thought about aging or worried about aging until that job, and then I realized, and I've spoken about it with colleagues, that it was on my mind a lot, and I think it sort of crept up on me, but all of a sudden I started really worrying about aging and and independence and quality of life. And, you know, what actually means, how, what sort of changes can I make now in my twenties that are gonna have a really positive impact on me when I'm kind of 80, 90, and I want to still be able to go and do my food shop and carry the shopping bags and be able to climb up the stairs. And I think it's difficult when you're in your kind of teenage years, early twenties, you have, this is an overgeneralization, but I think you can have quite a toxic relationship with exercising and food. I think that's quite a common experience. And I think exercise just became a way of self kind of, you know, self-torture almost. It would be like, oh, we've eaten this thing and now you have to exercise to undo the bad that you've done, which is obviously not true at all. But I think as I started focusing more on aging and quality of life and actually thinking that, okay, well, if I do this exercise now, I'm actually gonna be able to go up the stairs without holding on when I'm 80. that became the motivation that I needed. So it wasn't about changing the way that I look now or how I feel about my body now. It was actually if I put in the work now, then I'm gonna have such an easier life later. And I think that really carries me through autumn and winter when I feel less motivated. I'm not going out as much during the day. You know, in summer, I think all of our activities are outside and it's parks and it's picnics and it's walks and it's easy to be active, whereas autumn and winter, you have to be motivated. You have to kind of force yourself to do it even if you don't want to. And I think having that deeper level of motivation has really helped me. It's really changed the way that I see exercise and even just walking and not sitting for huge portions of the day. And I think having that motivation really helps carry me through autumn and winter and it keeps me moving and it keeps me wanting to be active and exercising and eating.