Taking Your Wellness Regime to the Next Level in 2020
2019 was all about #Wellness, be it physical, nutritional, or mental. This buzzword dominated Instagram and other social media last year, and it will certainly continue to be a key part of healthy living in the new decade. This is because wellness means looking after our bodies by exercising and eating well as well as taking care of our mental health through meditation and a variety of other types of therapy. Our new era is all about looking good AND feeling good!
Whether you reached your wellness goals in 2019 or feel that you may have fallen a bit short, the start of 2020 is a great time to either reboot and get back on track or to take your wellness regime to the next level. Here are a few ideas to get you there.
Challenge Yourself
Let’s face it. All of us are susceptible to getting bogged down by our daily routines, families, and all of life’s other little intrigues. Keeping to a wellness regimen even while armed with many positive reinforcements can prove difficult to include in our busy schedules.
Because we are social animals, participating in community challenges with your friends, family, social media circle, local community, or even total strangers can really help you reach your goals. Try the 21-day sugar detox, clean-eating challenge, or a 30-day plank or pushup challenge. Some apps offer notifications, reminders, and a points system or even feature best-improved or most-helpful users. Most apps will also let you log your results, making your progress easy to follow. Find the right wellness challenge for you and get going—results will follow!
Try Something New (i.e. Keep it Fresh)
If you’ve reached a plateau with your current fitness routine or still need a little extra push to achieve your goals, there are several ways for you to make sure you are doing all you can to maximize your efforts and results:
• Muscle sculpting and body contouring: In one of the latest trends in wellness, muscle stimulation machines like truSculpt by Cutera can help you achieve that elusive six-pack or get rid of the final inch or two of your love-handles. The machine is designed to strengthen, firm, and tone muscles and could be the edge needed for those who are looking for something to take their training and health regime to the next level. Up to eight areas can be treated simultaneously in a painless treatment that takes 15 minutes and that can be tailored to individual needs when it comes to body shape, fitness levels, and goals. It has apparently had remarkable results in very few treatments and no downtime.
• Intermittent fasting: Whether you use this to shed the last couple of pounds or as a lifestyle change to improve health and simplify your eating habits, studies have shown that intermittent fasting can have powerful effects on the body and brain. By eating fewer meals, you immediately reduce the number of calories you consume. It also changes hormone levels, lowers insulin, and increases norepinephrine, a fat-burning hormone. Besides helping you shed unwanted weight, the health benefits of intermittent fasting also include anti-aging, a reduction in inflammation, and improved heart health.
• Meditation: In recent years, meditation has become widely accepted as a simple way to achieve a range of wellness benefits. Besides reducing anxiety and stress, regularly practicing meditation can boost your workout game in several ways. It helps to prevent injury by teaching you how to focus on what you are doing while you exercise. It also keeps you focused on your breathing while you are busy working out. Meditation can even help prevent overeating. And, these days, you don’t have to visit a temple or sign up for a yoga class to learn how to do it. It can be as simple as downloading an app, like Headspace or The Mindfulness App.
Sharing is Caring: The Case for Social Media
Once you’ve tried some of these ideas for keeping your level of wellness up to par, why not share your findings with others? Social media can help keep you from getting lonely and isolated within your own routine and give you a bit of positively channeled peer pressure to make sure you stay in line with your goals. Instagram recently removed the likes feature from many of its accounts in a move that should reduce the pressure of popularity that people used to experience on the platform, but there are many other ways to share your transformation on the app.
Hashtags can be a fun way to get people to interact and engage with your posts. Stories are another good way to mix intimacy with community and let your friends know what you’re up to, whether you’re working out or having a hearty, healthy meal. Instagram is all about images, so if achieving virality is what you’re after, try amping up your photography game with free tutorials or a smartphone photography course. Check out Udemy for one such course. The right lighting, proportions, and color scheme could take your account to another level and help you start a new year and a new decade with a bang.
Using these tools and making sure to start the year off right with an effective and realistic plan for wellness is a surefire way to set yourself up for success in 2020.
Author: Nataliya Stefanus
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