Well with Alice

I am sure you are all over the healthy habits that are always promoted: eat healthy, move, sleep. In light of athletics day this week, let's talk about movement today!

Exercise is vital for physical and mental wellbeing. Benefits include the following:

• boosts mood
• boosts concentration
• boosts alertness
• improves sleep
• increases energy 
• lowers stress hormones and muscle tension
• increases happiness hormones
• improves sense of control
• improves coping ability and can be an outlet for frustrations
• improves self esteem (it feels good to reach your fitness goals!)
• can distract you from negative thoughts / thought spirals and increase mindfulness
• if you exercise with someone else, it offers an opportunity to socialise

To achieve these benefits, you do not need to exercise for an hour every day, and it does not need to be strenuous either. Any kind of movement is beneficial! If you can squeeze in 10 minutes each day, or an hour or two on the weekends, you will reap benefits.

How to get started?

Firstly, find something you enjoy.

If you get a gym subscription knowing that you hate exercising inside and feel uncomfortable exercising around other people, you are likely going to fail. There are so many other options! For example:

• going for a walk/run around the neighborhood (canine friend optional)
• playing a team sport
• downloading an app with short workouts - many are free!
• online fitness membership (I personally have an online Pilates membership and it's the best!)
• dancing around the house with your children
• Wii fitness/dance/exercise games

If you don't know what you'd like, see if you can do a free introductory class or a trial somewhere! Maybe you even have a friend that you can try that with.

Secondly, set small and achievable goals

Of course, you can set yourself a goal to run a marathon, but you cannot go from sitting on the couch to running a marathon within a week. You will have to follow a training schedule that starts small but consistently builds up the pace and distance.

You can get a gym membership and aim to go every day, but how about going one day per week first and making that a consistent habit? It will be way easier to stick with this one day than with an every day commitment.

Thirdly, make it an easy habit that you incorporate in your routine

As touched on above, it is best to make exercise a habit. If you determine to start your day with 10 minutes of Pilates, you will need to set your alarm a bit earlier to sneak that in! You may roll out your mat the night before and even have exercise clothes (optional) out on your dresser so that you do not have to take all these steps in the morning.

I hope some of the above ideas help you to remember how fun and rewarding movement can be and that they help you get started or continue the habit of moving. This will help you so much in so many ways.

Kind regards,

Ms. Alice Romijn

School Chaplain