Healthy Ways To Start Your Day
"When you start your morning with good habits, you're setting yourself up for success all day long!" ~ Melinda Hershey, Health Educator
Are your mornings mayhem or magical? You get to decide. Starting your day off right is important for overall health and happiness, and having a good morning routine can help you to wake up feeling like you have direction, purpose, and energy to go about your day.
The way you start the morning can have a big impact on the rest of your day. It’s important to have a morning routine — and to follow through with it. What you do and when you do it doesn’t matter as much as having your routine already planned out. Do the same things in the same order at the same time each day. Try out a morning routine for a few days to see what works best for you.
TIPS FOR A HAPPIER, HEALTHIER MORNING:
Wake up earlier ~ Wake up early enough to start your day on a calm note with enough time for self care. Your entire day will unfold with more ease and productivity if you take the time to "fill up your gas tank" first!
Drink water ~ After a night of sleeping and perspiring, your body needs to be rehydrated. Drinking water first thing in the morning not only hydrates your body (which helps with digestion, metabolism, skin and muscle health, and kidney function), it also helps wake you up, boosts your metabolism and energy levels, flushes out toxins, and gets your system up and running.
Do Yoga/Stretching ~ Yoga or stretching is an ideal morning exercise and it can play a vital part in energizing your morning routine. Taking time to do some gentle stretching or yoga first thing in the morning loosens up your joints and increases flexibility, builds strength, gets your blood and endorphins flowing, centers your mind, and prepares you to calmly embrace the day.
Journaling ~ Journaling for a few minutes a day is a great way to reduce stress and find your center, build self-awareness, and reassess your goals and priorities. It also helps you commit things to memory, and every now and then, its fun to look back at past entries and see what sort of milestones you’ve accomplished. You may find tremendous benefit from taking a few minutes to write down your morning thoughts or even just to organize yourself with a daily to-do list.
Eat breakfast ~ Consuming a good quality, nutritionally balanced breakfast wakes up your metabolism, stabilizes blood sugar levels, maintains a healthy weight, gives you more strength and endurance to power through your morning, and helps you concentrate, focus, and be productive. Be sure to include some fruit, complex carbohydrates, healthy fat, and protein - don't forget the veggies!
Take supplements ~ Striving to get all your nutrients from REAL food is ideal, but taking a properly balanced multi vitamin and mineral supplement can help fill in when you fall short.
Exercise ~ Getting at least 30 minutes of exercise wakes up your metabolism, boosts circulation, raises endorphins, and energizes your body. Exercising in the morning is one of the best things you can do to start the day and will also cause you to make healthier decisions all day long. Walking in nature is an excellent component of a morning routine. Nature has a wonderful vital energy that we can benefit from, the plants and trees give off oxygen, and we get a little bit of sunshine and vitamin D.
Shower ~ Cleanse your body and your mind. Be sure to include dry skin brushing to increase circulation and lymphatic drainage, break down unwanted toxins, remove dead skin, and rejuvenate the nervous system.
Making enough time for self care each morning by choosing to follow these simple tips demonstrates that you put your health first and that's a very good feeling! You've started your body slowly and gently, hydrated and nourished it, done some exercise, and prepared your body, mind, and spirit for the day. As a result, you'll be more centered, energetic, and enthusiastic, and you're more likely to feel and be a little healthier and happier.