Eat well, to feel well

We all know (or should) that eating well leads to a healthier you, both physically and mentally. During these times of not being able to see your family and friends, this becomes even more important. Anxiety and depression can set in on even the most mentally strong and so making sure that your diet is good plays an even more important role.

What you eat has a huge impact on your overall well-being. Healthy foods lift your mood and overly-processed foods squash it.

There's nothing wrong with having an occasional treat, it makes you feel happy short term, but having these constantly will leave you feeling lethargic, will lead to weight gain (especially as movement is stilted these days), skin breakouts, dull and lifeless hair and can bring on anxiety and depression, from both the brain-altering chemicals found in the foods and the above list of body changes.

On the other hand, we do need to balance. Being too strict with your diet leads to us feeling restricted, frustrated and bored of what we're eating. We put negative labels on certain foods, we feel guilty if we eat them, making us anxious and we go round in a vicious circle, often teetering between chronically under or over-eating and this is also extremely bad for us.

Highly nutritious foods are nutrient-dense and create a feeling of fullness and satisfaction and reduce the risk of cardio-metabolic diseases. They also decrease our risk of depression where processed foods increase these risks.

If you're moving less these days, cut back slightly on your food intake, you don't need the extra calories and please ditch the wine glass. Alcohol sales have gone through the roof! I'm not saying you can't have that glass or a piece of chocolate but with this lock-down continuing, if we don't alter the way we are doing things then it will a lot harder to do it once we do come out the other side.

Our mental health, as well as our physical one, is very important at this time and the last thing we need when we do go back to relative 'normality' is to try to have to break horrible habits that we picked up over the past 6 weeks.

You can't wear those stretchy trackie bottoms to work.