Staying Active and Connected in Winter

My main concern when it comes to winter is that I reduce the amount of physical activity that we do quite a lot and that's because I can no longer go to a park, I can no longer meet with my friends as often and go on those nice walks so I believe it's very important that we remind ourselves that physical activity should take place throughout the year and in the winter month maybe we need to motivate ourselves to find a gym buddy or find a friend that we can do an activity together. It doesn't have to be you know a very intense physical activity, it doesn't have to be every day of the week but we should all commit ourselves to exercising at least two to three times a week to keep healthy and keep fit. So I think that would be one of the things that I would take away I would like to improve on over the winter months. I feel like I don't necessarily have any challenges in the winter with regards to my health. I cope well and I try to find coping mechanisms for my family as well. My advice to people that are really struggling in the winter would be to find what makes them happy and if it's that they're struggling with their diet, speak to someone that can support them with that. Is it because it's having an impact on their health? Speak to a health specialist. Is it having an impact on their mental health? Find a professional that can support with that. Very often we obviously eat with our eyes and food is very important for us but it's also about creating those social connections. Do we want to share the meal with a friend? Will that help our mental health? So get together with someone that you love spending time with, have a healthy diet, do something new all the time, just do things that make you happy generally. From my experience I've found that people are struggling with lots of things during the winter. They're struggling with accessing food that is healthy, they're struggling with knowing how to cook healthy nourishing food at home, but they're also struggling with other things like paying their bills and they need to find spaces like the Nourish Hub here where they can get together, they can have a healthy nourishing meal and they can also meet their friends, ensure that they can spend some time together in a safe space and they can reduce the amount of money they spend on their bills. My advice to health professionals will be to be a lot more involved in community, get to know the community members and what their needs are, how they can reach out to them. It's very strange sometimes for residents that are struggling with their mental health or with their confidence or maybe English is not their first language to be able to express what they need very well and so it's important for health professionals to know how to be in the community a lot more and how they can reach out, organise focus groups or different workshops, different sessions that members of the community can feel that they can attend freely and they can discuss their concerns freely.