HEALTH- Don’t lament summer passing, kick autumn into gear
It’s time to get serious about keeping in shape, because we all know the weather isn’t going to help anyone.
Right then, let’s get a few things straight here. We all know that the warmer months are great, and for more reasons that the fact many of us manage to escape the UK and head off into some beautiful but all-too-brief sunset.
During the summer we feel motivated, energised, and generally full of the sun’s good stuff. Even early mornings can feel hotter than an October afternoon. We spend our days doing things, often outside, and the idea of playing sports on a pitch exposed to the elements no longer sounds like some athletic vision of hell.
The point being we’re usually healthier in the summertime. Yes, OK, this might not be taking into account all the pub garden days, but on the whole we are eating less stodgy foods, boosting our salad intake, and staying active for more hours in the average day. Sadly, though, this is often a height we’re only ever destined to fall pretty badly, and rather sharply from. That’s if we’re not careful.
Autumn can either be a mean-spirited month, or the beginning of a whole new you. Let’s face it, nobody wants to be trapped in a gym on the hottest morning of the year, so maybe this is now the time when you can finally start making the most of that £30 a month membership you’ve been paying for the last 12 months (and used about 12 times). There’s a whole new range of food coming into season, which is ready to be explored and experimented on in the kitchen. And this is the perfect time to take up a new hobby that will keep you active through winter- like yoga, for example.
It will certainly help those aches and pains, making it easier to keep up with exercise when perhaps the most appealing option is likely to be staying indoors. When it comes to things like lower back pain, amazingly despite the potential severity with which it can affect people, many still opt for the put up and shut up approach, when this really doesn’t have to be the case.
The point being, just because that great ball of joy in the sky is beginning to be shrouded in a kind of nimbus pea soup doesn’t mean we have to let everything go to pot and start gorging on all the things we deem to be comfort-based. We can still quite easily motivate ourselves to continue taking the steps needed to be a better self. And if it really does all head down the hole hop on the next flight to the Caribbean; it’s bound to be lovely.
Image credit: (C) Mateus Lunardi Dutra
