By Ava Nicols
Sports Editor
Oh, how I’ve missed you all. These weeks of school post-winter break have been something else. Just as we were starting to get used to a routine with no agenda or stress, it was time to warm up for another semester again.
I love the feeling of a fresh year. The continued opportunity for improvement is so motivating and, hopefully, gets you thinking about what you want for yourself in the months to come. Though, just because it’s a new year, we are not restarting from scratch. Instead, we get to keep building off all the previous success already accomplished up to this point, snaps for us.
For this issue, I wanted to dabble in one of the most classic new year’s resolutions circulating our culture lately: Health and wellness. Health is such an umbrella term. Under it you’ll find anything from nutrition to exercise, mental health, sickness, habits, and the list goes on.
Unfortunately, “health” always seems to get confused with the classic 30-day challenges and juice detoxes, dieting, or the pressure to be the fittest person ever. All of this ultimately ends up failing and rightfully so. Health can get picked apart to the point where it’s not so healthy anymore.
Health by definition, is a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being. Would you look at that, it is not just about your appearance. Looks come from taking taking care of our health, not from unrealistic habits. Looking and feeling our best all the time is my goal for us this next year.
We should never be killing ourselves to fit a societal mold. Instead, I think time would be better spent looking at our personal needs and seeing what could help us be the most successful across the board. It is entirely subjective and fun too because we all are so different from each other and have so many outlets to promote our health. For example, when I run, I feel invincible, but to you, that might sound repulsive.
Nourish your body with good food. Eating better food is the perfect start to taking better care of our bodies. Imagine how fantastic we would all feel if we ate, real, whole foods, not fast food or processed garbage? Sounds so simple but its a big deal. Food easily gets stigmatized in relation to health to be this obstacle you need to limit, burn off, or obsess over. To tell you the truth, diet culture health is not real; it’s just myths that will freak you out and waste your time.
Sleep more – we deserve it. I think it shouldn’t get any more complicated than being smart and intentional with what you’re putting in your body, we know what works for us. Another thing to implement is sleeping more. Do you know how much more content I would be if I slept more? I would be happy as a clam. I think feeling like we’re living in auto-pilot and in monotony, which gets normalized because we have boxes to check and things to cross off the calendar. The need for sleep gets suppressed and then put on the back burner because meeting deadlines takes priority, especially with school.
Ditch the stress. Stress is hugeley impactful on our health. How are we supposed to be functioning and productive to the best we can if we’re so stressed out? Stress dulls life down and how awful! We’re all victims of it and its way too easy. To combat this, living with more meaning and thoughtfulness can help us see the beautiful parts of life that we’ve created. Gratitude and appreciation for ourselves and our surroundings should do the trick, we can try it together.
Maybe you don’t believe in new year’s resolutions, but they are kind of exciting to think about when you realize they can be so helpful to bettering your life! What did you pick this year?
Until February,
Xoxo, Ava
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