Embracing Summer Health and Wellness

Do I look forward to the summer months? I definitely do. It's the best time of the year for me. I do a lot of outdoor things and when I'm outdoors I don't always look after my diet as well as I want to look after it. All my extreme discipline of lunches, dinners that I normally do indoors in other seasons. In the summer I'm out and about a lot so that's difficult. On the positive side it's a lot easier to walk around, it's a lot easier to do exercises outdoors. I love playing tennis, I love going to the park, I love playing outdoor things. I'll organise picnics and things like that. All that makes it fun to exercise in the summer months, but on my diet side I think I need to be a little bit more disciplined and I need to improve that a bit. Perfect. And how do you manage the long days and shorter sleeping patterns? Have you found coping strategies and do you feel that it affects your general health? How about the long days and what about my feeding cycles and so on? To be honest, even in summer I try to keep up my intermittent fasting regime. I started that just over two years ago when I joined the Diabetes Community Club and I keep that up. And what that means is my eating window is only between midday, 12 o'clock, up to eight o'clock in the evening and I will maintain that jealously and if I don't have breakfast for example and I have to go outdoors for a picnic in the morning but for some reason I still have the energy that I need and obviously what's going on I suspect is that all the stored glucose in my body is then being released as I need it for for the morning energy requirements that I have. have. I also understand that after 12 hours of fasting, which would happen from 8 o'clock in the evening up to 8 o'clock in the morning, after the 12 hours, the body will get its glucose by burning down fats. So, during the summer months, I try to do extra exercises in the morning part, go for brisk walks and things like that. Instead of taking the car to the station, I might just walk to the station, for example, things like that. So try to do a lot of exercise in the morning part in the hope that all my glucose reserves are being broken down and used up during the morning walk, brisk walk to the station. Okay, perfect. You've actually answered question three as well, so move on to question four. If you pick up the paper up next to you, listed on that paper are eight behaviours and twelve characteristics. Which ones do you feel are much more relevant to you and your diet and your health in the summer? And do you have a plan on managing them or already have found strategies to support your goals? Could you share with us some of your tips to help others with similar health care conditions? If you've got the list then you can put the paper down and then, you don't have to mention all of them, it's just one or two of the points. Okay, so in the summer month a healthy diet is very important and I try to maintain that as much as I can. Physical activity also is a lot easier during the summer months to maintain so try and do that as much as I can. Stress management I try to always manage my stress as much as possible but I don't always get as much sleep as I would want to to be honest with you so I think I need to improve on that. I do own my own health, by the way. I don't rely on the health care system, my GP or anybody else. I do believe in in looking after myself and I believe I'm able to prevent problems from happening because I'm very good at monitoring myself and if I feel that I've over indulged one day I'll try and be sensible the next day. If I feel that I haven't eaten enough I I will try and adjust on that as much as I can. I believe that I can solve problems when they happen.