3 Healthy Lifestyle Tweaks to Make this Fall

Fall is such a festive time of year, punctuated by cooler weather, family feasts, colorful foliage and, unfortunately for many of us, neglecting a healthy lifestyle. Yes, as the days grow shorter and the temps drop in most parts of the country, many of us simply don’t take care of our bodies like we do during the summer months. In fact, the average person tends to put on at least 5 pounds once autumn rolls around each year. There are myriad reasons why a healthy lifestyle gets stowed away, along with our shorts and swimsuits, while our inherent urge to hibernate takes over.

As a result, we tend to exercise less, eat more unhealthy fatty foods and sweets, and simply disregard healthy lifestyle choices that we had implemented during the summer months. Unfortunately, inactivity can result in illnesses, weight gain, depression, and even things like muscle aches and pain. But take heart, because as fall rolls around there’s still hope in staying on track to a healthy lifestyle, one that will carry you through all the parties, Holiday feasts, and cold weather. To illustrate, here are 3 healthy lifestyle tips, or “tweaks” if you will, that all of us can do as fall settles in.

Fall Healthy Lifestyle Tip #1: Exercise Routinely

There’s no question it’s difficult to stay motivated with an exercise program when your energy levels wane and you’re not thinking about those revealing clothes until next spring. However, and especially if you spend hours sitting at an office desk job, you need to shake off the urge to hibernate and start an indoor exercise program.  Many of us are prone to low back pain, for example, and especially if we’ve endured a traumatic spinal injury in the past. This being the case, sitting all day at our workstation while not exercising during fall months may exacerbate a condition like back pain.

There are so many fun and effective health club workouts out there to keep your healthy lifestyle on the right track even when the fall doldrums set in. Yoga, Pilates, Spinning classes and swimming are forms of inside exercise that can effectively counteract the negative health effects of cooler weather inactivity. When done on a regular basis, exercising will:

• Stretch out your body’s muscles and increase your flexibility
• Strengthen your muscles including in your body’s core area
• Relieve stress
• Help you sleep better, feel more rested and energetic
• Burn those extra calories taken in during fall feasting
• Promote numerous other positive physiological changes within your body

When you begin using a fall exercise program, that’s one healthy lifestyle habit that will carry over throughout the year and pay off big when it’s time to pull out that swimsuit once again!

Fall Healthy Lifestyle Tip #2: Eat Better

Whether it’s tailgating with your friends before a football game, or hanging out with family around the Holidays, we all simply seem to eat less healthy in the fall. Fresh fruit and produce becomes a little harder to find, and our bodies naturally crave more sugar and carbs as the weather cools down. When mixing socializing and food during fall get-togethers, WebMD has some pointers on how to eat right while limiting your calories:

• Eat a small meal, such as toast or oatmeal, prior to arriving at a social event. In other words, don’t arrive starving or you will overindulge.
• Establish ground rules for yourself ahead of time such as how much you’ll eat while using proper portion control.
• Chat more with the other guests and, as a result, you will have less time for eating.

A proper and nutritious diet all-year-long benefits your body in so many ways, including a stronger immune system and the ability to heal more effectively, all while helping you feel more energetic and mentally sharp. Vitamin-rich foods are also good for conditions like the aforementioned back pain, as they provide much-needed building blocks for bone, muscle and connective tissue repair. In the end, implementing a fall healthy lifestyle commitment to eat better will help you look and feel great no matter what season it is.

Fall Healthy Lifestyle Tip #3: Improve Your Posture

Anytime, and especially in the fall when we are less active and prone to sitting for longer periods of time, many of us simply need to add good posture to our healthy lifestyle improvement list. Bad posture includes sitting or standing while slouching and hunched over. Not only do you come across as unhealthy and less confident, but prolonged poor posture can lead to numerous negative physical outcomes for your body, especially exacerbated back pain symptoms.

Using good posture, on the other hand, promotes a wide-variety of healthy outcomes for your body, such as:

• Supplying more oxygen to your vital organs and tissues where it’s needed
• Altering hormone production and release. For example, cortisol levels, which can cause weight gain, are reduced, while amounts of self-confidence boosting testosterone go up.
• Stimulates the release of natural painkillers like serotonin and endorphins
• Relieves pressure off your spine which helps alleviate neck and back pain
• Provides you with more energy and vigor to take on the world
• Makes you look and feel better overall

Good posture looks like this: You want to sit or stand with your shoulders back, chest out, and chin up and out. It’s really that simple! And, whether you are tasking away at the office, or just hanging out at home with your family and friends, are any of these proper posture outcomes a bad thing? So, when making some healthy lifestyle changes in the fall, most definitely include improving your posture in the process!

The Lumo Lift Posture Coach is a Healthy Lifestyle Reminder

On our list of healthy lifestyle tweaks to employ this autumn, the easiest to implement is improving your posture. However, many of us simply just don’t realize when ours is bad. To make that an easier task, the innovative folks at Lumo have developed a system called the Lumo Lift. It uses a wearable sensor, about the size of a lapel pin, that constantly monitors and discretely downloads your posture data.

At the end of the day, you simply look over your posture results and make necessary changes moving forward. Oh, and the posture coach also reminds you, with a gentle vibration, when your posture is incorrect. It’s just one of the healthy lifestyle improving resources available from the team at Lumo, as we seek to make your fall a healthier one!