Embracing Summer: Family, Food, and Well-being

Thank you for having me, and yes, definitely looking forward to the summer. Summer is the season where we all come together as a family. There's challenges that we face every season. I feel summer is probably one of those where we face the most challenges because of the travelling aspects but also trying to include a healthy, to have a healthy diet and include very traditional recipes in our cuisine as well as we're meeting with family members. So remembering those recipes, getting people together, getting the fresh ingredients to create those recipes could be challenging because of the cost involved but at the same time it's always nice when we all get to sit together and have a nice meal around the table and those lovely conversations. One of the challenges that I face during the summer is being able to maintain lifestyle changes even during difficult periods of stress and I'm saying that because not only summer is a very fun period of the year when we all get together families when we have holidays, it's also a very busy time. We need to try and plan kids holiday, we need to try and plan lots of activities at work for those families attending the Norwich Hub. And so it can become quite a difficult time of the year for us, it can be very busy and it's very important to know how to manage our time, how to prioritise, how to organise the event and how to think about ourselves because if we're not well in ourselves then we can't reflect that and we can't deliver anything at the level that we would like those activities to be delivered. So focusing on us and our well-being, finding time for us, eating healthy, exercising and just having those moments for us and for our friends or the loved ones so we recreate that, we get that energy that we need back. I think what supports me with the longer days in the summer and what my coping mechanisms are are things like planning. So as a mother and a full-time worker, it definitely helps having meals planned for the whole week or a menu planned for the whole week, shopping once a week as much as possible and just getting bits and bobs in between like fresh milk or fresh bread, but also making things at home over the weekend. So it's definitely very important to be organised, plan your meals, cook batches if you can, freeze if you can, and also just make things that you might not necessarily have the time to make as a family. So get everyone involved and everyone can participate in bringing a few ingredients that you've got in your cupboard or in your fridge to life, creating a nice meal for the family. I think in the summer we do all get a bit more active. The days are longer so it encourages us to be out more, to play lots more sports, to get a bit more involved in activities with the children, whereas in the winter on the other hand we tend to be indoors a bit more. So it's very beneficial to make the most of those summer days, to enjoy the sun. We don't get a lot of sun as we all know in London so they're important to make the most of those sunny days and get involved in activities, get some lunch packed up, have a nice picnic in the park. Those things are things that I implement at home with my family. I feel it's very important to create a community whether it's a community that we can all be part of or whether it's a community that we have online, to share those experiences that we all live or have lived, to bring new ideas to the table, to share recipes if anything, so it's all helping us to support each other and learn from each other. I believe there's lots of things that the health experts can do to support the members of the community, starting with things like you're already doing it teams, creating those communities online, sharing more tips, more recipes, more ideas, sharing the knowledge that you have and sharing activities that we can take part in during the summer for younger children, for teenagers but adults as well.