Winter Health Tips

Seasonal Menu Ideas

Shake Off The Winter Blahs with Easy Health & Wellness Tips

This winter, let’s do more to maintain our health levels and improve our overall sense of well-being using these simple ideas to make the cold, dark days feel a little warmer and brighter. We’ve compiled some easy ways to help rejuvenate your joy of cooking, get more active each day, elevate your nutrition levels, and obtain some much-deserved inner peace this season. With the right mindset and a good plan, it will be a snap!

This is the time of year where we wake up feeling like someone flipped a switch on the world outside. The warm days of summer are long gone, it gets darker a lot earlier in the day, temperatures just keep going down, and everyone starts to layer up with cozy sweaters and warm hats. When this happens, it’s natural to feel the desire to just hunker down and hibernate the chilly winter days away. Unfortunately, we can’t just hit the pause button on our health and wellness levels and expect them to stay steady for a couple of months while we wait for the seasons to change again.

People often find it tougher to stay fit and healthy in the winter, as many of the activities we typically enjoy in the summer are not as easy to take part in. We need to find alternatives, and simple things we can do when the weather is cold and inhospitable to take care of our health, boost energy levels, de-stress, and elevate our overall sense of wellness. Here at The Low Carb Grocery, we’re big advocates of living a healthy lifestyle in all aspects, from nutrition and physical fitness to mental health and self-care. Here are some simple suggestions that you can use to help carry you through even the coldest winter season with a smile on your face and a spring in your step.

Let’s get our list of winter wellness ideas started with the subject that is nearest and dearest to our hearts; healthy eating with amazing low carb meal ideas!

 

Freshen Up Your Weekly Meal Plans With Delicious New Low Carb Cooking Ideas

One of the quickest ways to beat back the winter blahs is with a vibrant, healthy, and exciting meal on the table. It’s easy for our regular meal plans to get repetitive if we don’t regularly take steps to update them with tasty new recipes and extraordinary flavours. This can be done in many different ways, from something as simple as using alternate ingredients to turn basic beef ‘Taco Tuesdays’ to fresh and flavourful shrimp ‘Fajita Fridays’, or introducing a world of tastes to your table with dishes from all over the globe. You may just be surprised at how easy some of the most popular dishes from cultures around the world are to prepare, and how incredibly healthy and delicious they are!

If you’re looking for inspiration on the kinds of international cuisine you can mix into your weekly low carb meal plans, we’ve got you covered. In fact, we have compiled many articles right here on our blog on this very topic. Check these out:

There’s plenty more meal ideas in our blog, too. Including amazing recipes for spectacular low carb sandwiches and wraps, breakfast foods, burgers, hot & spicy meals, sweet treats & desserts, and so much more. If your weekly meal plan needs a refresher, or even if it needs to get blown up and recreated from scratch, you’ll find plenty of awesome ideas to choose from right here in the Low Carb Lifestyle Blog. Of course, eating right is only one step in the right direction to staying healthy and happy all winter. The next step is, coincidentally, getting more steps each day!

 

Find Quick and Easy Ways To Exercise More Often And Stay Moving

Let’s face it. When the snow is deep and the air hurts your face, it’s hard to get motivated to go outside for a walk, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t other ways to get moving more often. There are so many different things you can do to increase your total amount of physical activity in a day, you’ll be impressed at how simple it actually can be. For example, rather than take an escalator or elevator up just one or two floors in your office or at shopping centers, take the stairs instead. Parking a little further away in parking lots will give you more daily steps, too.

Another great idea to consider is giving the entire family a gift of the joy of movement for the holidays. Surprise everyone with an interactive game like Ring Fit Adventure for the Nintendo Switch, or Beat Saber for the Sony Playstation. These games are great fun and encourage everyone to get up and move to play, burning calories and releasing the natural endorphins that elevate our moods and increase our overall feeling of well-being. Make your own challenges, cheer each other on, and spend some quality time together as a family as you feel the exhilaration of these immersive fitness games.

 

Make Simple Substitutions In Your Daily Food Routine To Boost Nutrition

Don’t underestimate the big impact that small changes can have on your health. Living a low carb lifestyle is already proof that you’re taking your nutrition seriously, but there’s always room to make other small adjustments to improve even further. Take your morning coffee, for example. Changing out normal sugar for an alternative sweetener may seem like the only thing you really need to do to make a cup of coffee healthier, but you can also substitute milk or cream for something better. With Allo Zero-Sugar High-Protein Coffee Creamer, each cup of morning coffee can be infused with 10g of water-soluble whey protein in delicious flavours such as vanilla, hazelnut, and caramel. Brilliant!

Other easy substitutions and additions you can make include choices such as adding a scoop of ground flaxseed to your morning smoothie for healthy omega-3’s, or sprinkling some chopped or sliced nutrient-rich nuts like almonds or pecans to give some crunch to your salads. Once you start thinking of small things you can add into the mix of various foods and recipes to increase their nutritional value, your imagination will really start going with other things like these you can try.

Also, let’s not forget the importance of nutritional supplements to get the vitamins and minerals that might be less prevalent in the winter months as seasonal produce types change on grocery store shelves and our preferred veggies might not be as accessible. Daily multivitamins, iron supplements, and other nutritional supplements are an easy and effective way to boost our overall intake of the essentials that our bodies need to maintain peak performance and keep us feeling good.

 

Disconnect From Technology & Enjoy Some Offline Peace

It’s well documented that spending excessive amounts of time in front of a digital screen is not great for our health. More screen time usually translates into a more sedentary lifestyle, but beyond that it can also have a significant impact on our sleep patterns, and we all know how incredibly important good quality sleep is to our health. The blue light emitted by digital screens tricks our brains into thinking that it’s daytime, preventing the natural slowdown that should be happening as we approach bedtime. This effect is most noticeable when we actually use our devices in bed right before we shut out the light. Often, people find it more difficult to fall asleep and the sleep they do get is less restful, meaning they wake up still tired and with lower energy levels. In short, put the devices down and away about 2 hours before bed and do something offline.

It’s not just at bedtime that we should be limiting our screentime, however. Make an effort to set time aside during the weekends where you commit to doing something that gets you away from technology. Take a wintery walk through the neighbourhood, go skating or skiing, visit with friends, play games with the family, read a good book by the fire, or immerse yourself in the kitchen with a new recipe to experiment with. You’ll find that by giving your mind a break from technology, your stress levels will reduce, sleep will come more naturally, and you’ll just feel better in general. Make this the winter where you put better boundaries in place with your tech. You’ll really notice a difference!

 

Stay Healthy And Stay Happy This Winter

Excited for winter now? We sure hope so! There’s no reason why the long days of the season need to darken your spirits, that’s for sure. Even one or two of these tips can make a big difference in how you feel each day. Sometimes just the satisfaction of knowing you’re making positive changes in your lifestyle can be enough to lift your mood and give you the encouragement you need to stay the course. And, when springtime does arrive and the frost fades away to warm sunshine, you’ll be that much healthier because of the effort you put in over the winter. Stay warm, and stay well!