Wellness, But Make it Affordable: 8 Wednesday Wellness Tips on a Budget
You can still do wellness-y things to feel your best even if you don’t have the budget of Gwyneth Paltrow
The Goop and Poosh’s of the world can make you feel like the outsider trying to enter the cool party.
Even though I respect both wellness platform’s and I personally learned a lot from Goop, and still do, I feel like where they both go wrong is they make everything look expensive and shiny, like wellness is for the select few who can afford it so why bother?
Some of the products they do promote are often really expensive, and although you should make investments in your health, there is a plethora of different wellness tactics you can incorporate into your daily routine NOW that will breed changes that will last a lifetime.
So many of which are totally free or cost just as little as your cup of coffee from your neighborhood café.
Feeding your mind, body, and soul through small changes everyday grow into something that you can’t buy from a store. The wealth, that is health, is something only you can give to yourself and continue to foster day after day.
Allow your seed of health to grow with proper nurturing, and here are several ideas to help get you started.
Staying Hydrated
Our bodies are a perfected symphony of different parts. The conductor, would be water.
When we rise in the morning we have gone 8-10 hours without consuming water so we are severely dehydrated. Drinking water at all hours of the day is important, but it is especially important in the morning.
You can consume water in many ways, in your morning lemon water or apple cider vinegar, or morning tea. You can also make water fun by adding cut cucumber, chlorophyll drops, lemon juice, lime juice, or mint leaves.
Water is crucial to regulating our body temperature, keep our joints lubricated to allow movement, prevent infections and disease, detoxify the body, transport nutrients throughout the body, and regulate mood, cognition, and sleep quality.
Movement
Having a movement practice is so good for your body, but also your mind. Studies have proven that daily aerobic movement can reduce anxiety by making your brain’s “fight or flight” system less reactive.
When anxious people are exposed to physiological changes they fear, such as a rapid heartbeat, through regular aerobic exercise, they can develop a tolerance for such symptoms.
Spiritual movement practices like yoga can impact people suffering from a whole range of chronic diseases including respiratory ailments, bone diseases, and brain diseases because of it’s emphasis of body weight-bearing exercises, flexibility component, and breathing techniques.
Join your local yoga studio to feel more motivated and form a community of like-minded, health-oriented people that will help keep you on track.
Other popular forms of workout include Pilates, kick-boxing, tennis, or HIIT. You can find a whole range of workout videos from 10 minutes to 25 minutes that you can squeeze into your morning routine and do right in your home from Youtube!
Here are some of my favorite Youtuber’s to do workout’s from that have had me feeling my best:
3. Gratitude Practice
Starting your day with gratitude is a powerful practice to implement in your life. It can take as much as 5 minutes of your day to just sit in stillness and count in your mind or write down a few things you are grateful for.
I know people who do it as soon as they wake up while still lying in bed. I like to do this as well and I have trained my mind for when I wake up, to immediately think of what I am grateful for today and looking forward too.
The beautiful thing about doing a gratitude practice this way, is that too often we wake up and start to make a list of things we have to do today that we aren’t looking forward to, so by switching that thought process to something positive, you will witness so much in your life change.
If you prefer the process of writing I always suggest getting a gratitude journal and spend a few minutes at a desk, candle lit, warm lemon water, and write down the people and things you are grateful for in your life.
Changing the health of your mind, will ultimately change your life.
4. Buying Organic
It’s always a tough call to buy the regular strawberries for for 4.99 or organic for 7.99…that extra 3 dollars just never sounds worth it.
Sadly, it is very worth it. ESPECIALLY when are talking about strawberries that have been tested to contain the most pesticides and herbicides out of all the produce.
These heavy chemicals have been proven to cause a multitude of health issues and damage the planet.
Switching to an organic diet can decrease levels of glyphosate, a powerful herbicide, in the body by 70% in just 6 days.
Buying organically, but also locally, is a good way to support your health as well as supporting your local community.
Luckily for us not every fruit and vegetable needs to be bought organically because some contain far les chemicals than others. So to save you money at the grocery store there is the Clean 15 list that you can buy non-organic, and the Dirty Dozen, that you have to buy organic.
5. Avoid Processed Foods
Processed foods containing seed oils and added sugars are harmful to our gut lining which can cause inflammatory issues, skin problems, mood disorders, hormone imbalance, and chronic disease.
Limiting, or completely eliminating these foods from our diet does wonders for our digestive health and immune system. It also forces us to eat cleaner by choosing healthier options when we are hungry, snacking on chickpeas instead of cheetohs.
Anything that comes in a package should be considered less than 10% of your diet, whereas plants and whole foods taking up the remaining 90%. Never underestimate the power of plants.
Check-out some of my favorite vegan recipes:
6. Setting Intentions
You might hear often in yoga to set an intention while on the mat. The idea is to set the tone, by which you will continue to focus on throughout the practice, and will come back to if your mind starts to wander.
The same can be applied to your intention for your day. You can google good intentions at first at the start of your day to get an idea of what they sound like, but ideally the phrase should be something you come back to throughout your day that will bring a sense of calmness and bring you back to the present moment.
When you are able to drop into present moment awareness you will find how much more you can accomplish, and how much gratitude you can develop. When you exist in the present moment the past no longer controls you, the future no longer gives you anxiety, you are who you are…you are, “I Am.”
Partner your intention with deep breaths throughout your day and find yourself just as at peace throughout your day as if you paid for a week-end long wellness retreat in Costa Rica for $3,000.
I use an app called I Am, that sends me I am affirmations every few hours throughout my day directly to my phone. When I see them, I know to take a moment, take a breath, and repeat the affirmation in my head to fill my mind with positive thoughts throughout the day amidst the chaos and stress of everyday life.
7. Time in the Sunshine
Did you know that sunlight is a nutrient?
You can just walk outside and get your daily value of Vitamin D. This powerful vitamin supports our mood and immune system.
It also supports mitochondrial health that is the power system behind our cells, improves thyroid health, naturally lowers blood pressure, boosts dopamine, and reduces pain and inflammation.
It is best to get sunlight right in the morning because it omits a different frequency from the rest of the day. The morning UVA causes our brain to make beta-endorphin, which is what helps us feel alert and gives off a slight euphoria. For at least 10 minutes in the morning you should try to be in direct sunlight, with no glasses or even sunscreen on to fully absorb the benefits of the sunshine.
8. Get Rest
Despite popular belief, 8 hours of sleep is not the measuring stick by which everyone should follow.
Some people need 8 hours, some people need 10, some only need 6. That’s the beauty of bio-individuality, once you tap into your bodily awareness you will be able to intuitively decide exactly what your body needs to function at it’s best.
I feel at my best at a solid 7 hours of sleep, I would say however, in order for our bodies to rest and digest at the pace it needs you should get at least 6 hours of sleep every night.
But the quality of sleep matters just as much as the quantity.
Creating a restful environment that promotes relaxation will help you wind down faster in the evenings so when you hit your bed, you fall asleep quickly without the incessant thoughts, tossing and turning, and need to turn your TV on to help you fall asleep.
So many people have TV’s in their bedrooms, but it is not actually good for you. The blue-light that a TV omits actually has the opposite effect on your cornea in your eye, which than relays the light message to your pineal gland in your brain to refrain from creating the hormone melatonin that helps us fall asleep. Removing the television from your room helps decrease this blue-light exposure and limits late night distractions.
Restricting phone use is another way to limit blue-light exposure, I use the function on your iPhone called “Sleep” where you can set a time limit on your phone for use, for example my phone apps stop working at 10:30PM every night and come back on at 6:30AM so I reduce senseless, late night scrolling.
Other ways you can promote healthy sleep is by using popular scents in spray, oil, or candle form like lavender and eucalyptus, don’t workout too late at night or your adrenaline will still be swimming through your veins keeping you alert, and don’t eat a large meal right before bed or you will mess with your digestive processes.
A healthy sleep schedule improves your mood, brain cognition, and fights a range of chronic diseases like obesity, heart disease, and brain diseases.