For me it was doing just a few minutes of HIIT a day. It boosted my energy levels a lot and reduced my blood pressure by about 5 points.
Going for a walk. Trees have a positive effect on mood and you are out moving :)
Good advice. Unless the trees are trying to kill you (pollen). Many of my friends/colleagues are avoiding trees ;-)
That’s fair
I’m also a big tree-starer.
Drinking a glass or two of water, stretching a couple times an hour if you sit most of the day and eating a vegetable at at least one of your meals. Also getting your face in sunlight for ~15 mins if you can manage it.
It’s not zomg-cure-your-chronic-illness levels of anything but it’s a small baseline buffer.
eat healthy food. exercise. engage in activities you find stimulating and make you feel good afterwards.
Sit for some time (recommended is 5-10 minutes, i do 2-5) picturing your thoughts as clouds passing overhead, observe what they are but don’t judge yourself for thinking or feeling that thing.
Gives you more control over your own mind and how you react to things, makes you more focused in the long run. This is supposed to be a habit you can do 1 time each week or each day. It comes up in one of these brilliant videos - probably the first one listed.
Eventually you will start to welcome these moments of calm. I like to do it in the garden or the bath.
Pick up a small exercise you can do with no equipmemt at will, you can do this at home when you need to think or are worried about things. Motion is good for managing thoughts. E.G:
- Squat unweighted as many times as you can, up to 100. Harder than it sounds and better for you than it sounds. (Source: YellowGuy on Youtube)
- Use resistance bands just to make sure you’ve actually used your arm, back or leg muscles today (great if you work at home)
- Swap inauthentic things for authentic things. E.g replace X and Tiktok with Fediverse equivalents :)))
- try making new foods for yourself. Pickles and fermented things are good and pretty economical for what they would cost otherwise, and providss you with a healthy sugar free thing to snack on
- Never bring a screen to bed with you and always try for 8 hours of sleep.
- Go outdoors for sunlight and maybe a walk as soon as you’ve finished your wake up routine. [1 source (others exist): Huberman Labs “Optimal Sunlight Routine”
I really appreciate you putting so much effort into writing such quality advice!
For me, getting more outside in nature, traveling more and improving my sleep schedule has tremendously boosted my mental (and overall) health. Also mostly overcoming my quarter-life crisis helped a lot (yes, that’s a thing apparently).
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Eat oranges.
Alcohol. For the second part, at least.
I realized a while back that Alcohol just steals joy from the future and uses it up in the present moment, but the way it does so is on a rising curve of what I liken to joy debt.
A beer in the evening after a hard day of work isn’t really going to accrue any joy debt. No hangover, no real long-term negative effects.
A night out with moderate drinking, not to the point of intoxication, incurs a joy debt that you’ll likely pay for in the morning in the form of a headache. A strong coffee and a good breakfast pays off most of the debt but you’re still in the hole for a couple hours after. Frequent repetition of this incurs a sneaky kind of joy debt that slowly accrues over time and if not controlled will fuck up your health as you age, but can be reversed if you get things under control.
Getting proper drunk fucks up the entire next day. Basically an entire day of joy debt. Your rager last night was paid for by both your wallet and your well being the next day. God forbid this becomes a regular thing for you. One of the worst examples of joy debt I can think of is liver cirrhosis.
So yeah I agree, alcohol can help mood if you’re not the kind of person that gets angry when they drink but it can also indebt you in some really fucked up ways that sneak up on you pretty quick.
Totally agree with you there, it was mainly just a joke. But I say this while paying off some debt today. Unfortunately, the more debt you take on, the more debt seems like a good idea.
Masturbate.
Exercise outdoors, eat healthier, limit sugar to 20 mg a day (less is ofc better), meditate, take time off, sit in silence and let your brain just rest for a while
- Getting a good night’s sleep
- Getting a nap in, for those who can fall asleep quickly
- Drinking a nice cup of hot/warm tea or water. Seriously it works surprisingly well for relieving stress
Metabolic health appears to be directly linked to both body health and mental health
Eating local whole foods, nothing from a factory or a box or a bag - is a great way to remove a bunch of junk from your diet.
Check out your tg/hdl ratio on your last lipid panel, if its less then 2 its a good indicator your metabolic health is doing well, if its less then 1 then your metabolic health is doing great. If you have room for improvement then you could consider doing whole food low carb diet, as carbohydrates are heavily implicated in many instances of impaired metabolism.
Incorporate exercise and movement into every aspect of your day, don’t stay indoors, get sunlight as much as you can, don’t sit to long in one position at the office, etc. Exercise snacks, even as simple as taking the stairs, helps.
Go for walks regularly.
Eat healthy.
Get 8 hours of sleep every night.
So what’s that abbr.?
SWTA? You mean? And by that I mean YM?
High intensity interval training
I can second the working out. Consistent steady training routine has been rather great for energy levels and mental well-being, even despite training sessions being exhausting.
