Staying Healthy While at Home: Top Ways To Maintain Your Physical And Mental Health When You Are Stuck in Your Home!

Whether you are a stay at home parent, someone working from home or one of those forced by the COVID-19 pandemic to remain home, creating a healthy lifestyle when stuck within the four walls of your house can seem difficult. Days not dictated by work or school can throw us off. When you have family around, there's the additional challenge of ensuring your lives run smoothly while handling all the responsibilities without annoying each other!

Managing your physical and emotional health amidst all these challenges needs conscious effort!

When you are home 24/7, it can become a real chore to keep things tidy. Clothes, books, kids' toys lying about can add up, and the house may never seem clean! A cluttered house can become a reason for pulling down your mood, whether you feel it or not.

Cleaning is best tackled on an ongoing basis. Make a daily cleaning routine, and don't forget to involve your family/roommates too. Draw up a chore chart with individual responsibilities so that the workload is fairly distributed. Online resources you can use to get some useful tips include Flylady, askannamoseley.com, cleanmama.com and konmari.com.

If you have just started working from home, here is an important tip - be sure to set up a separate work area fitted with all essential accessories like a good ergonomic chair. This will put you in the right frame of mind and improve your concentration. Make it clear to your family and housemates that your work time is sacrosanct, so that you are not distracted without reason.

Staying at home may lead you to feel you are no longer a slave of the clock. No more rushed mornings of getting ready, no more morning traffic to beat! However, there may be days when you find that it's Time for that morning conference call, but you are yet to have your breakfast!

Not maintaining a schedule can seriously disrupt your productivity and sense of achievement. Create a routine that accounts for all the things you need to accomplish in your typical day. Plan out Time for work, exercise, cooking and eating, including fun! Setting aside Time for each of these even loosely can give a rhythm to your day and help you feel more purposeful. Having a daily routine is all the more important for families. It can be upsetting for your children to have no structure to their day. So create distinct Time for studying, play and parent Time so you can manage their days well.

Exercise is a proven way to keep healthy and improve your mood. But finding motivation for it, especially if you are in a COVID 19 lockdown, can be a challenge. You can neither go out to the nearby park nor head to your gym. But that does not mean you give up on being active. Just adding 30 minutes of exercise to your day can make all the difference.

There are several ways to get active while at home - take the stairs when you can, make chores fun like put on some music while cleaning, learn bodyweight based exercises, or even yoga. Turn to online resources to get started. Some good options include Popsugar Fitness Channel, Yoga With Adriene, Roberta's Gym.

If you have kids, look for ways to tempt them away from screens. Set aside family time and play with them - board games, hide and seek, or anything that fits their interests. This will not only keep them occupied and active but also give you opportunities to create fun family memories.

When you are stuck at home, it is rather tempting to munch away mindlessly on snacks, even if it's just out of boredom; that bag of chips or the cookies box seems to an easy way to keep yourself occupied, but hold on! The calories will pile on before you can realise it!

As you well know, a healthy diet featuring a proper mix of green vegetables, whole grains, meat and fruits is irreplaceable for your wellbeing. Of course, your diet need not be all boring "good" food. Comfort food and yummy snacks should also feature as they help in keeping your spirits up. However, remember, the golden rule is moderation.

Having regular meals is equally important. Try creating a schedule and stick to it - this will ensure meals aren't delayed or missed due to poor time management (or laziness!). Draw up a meal plan and have a list of easy to make meals ready for those times when you find yourself unwilling to spend long hours in the kitchen. Alternatively, you and your family could meal prep once a day, and so you have ready meals to have when you get hungry, instead of cooking from scratch at each mealtime. One great way to keep kids engaged is to ask them to cook with you. Look up some kid-friendly recipes interest and then encourage them to experiment (under your supervision, of course!).

Having a good night's sleep is essential to feel healthy and energetic. It can again be easy to slip into a habit of sleeping only when you want to, but poor quality of sleep can have severe consequences on your energy levels and your wellbeing. That's why you need to stick to a set schedule for your sleep as well. Mark out your and your family's bedtime and stick to it. Follow good sleep practices such as building a soothing nighttime routine, avoiding caffeine and screen before bed, avoiding daytime naps, etc. Aim for a minimum of seven hours' of sleep, a good foundation for most people.

If you are finding yourself stressed more than usual from the demands of your life, then consider incorporating a relaxation practice as a coping mechanism. There are several easy-to-learn simple options, such as deep breathing, yoga meditation, and mindfulness. All these practices are proven in managing anxiety, stress, and worry. They can help reduce your heart rate and your blood pressure and also in calming and centering you. If you have never tried it out before, then this is a perfect time.

Find a time slot even if it's just 10-15 minutes during your day when you can sit alone and practise one of these techniques. There are numerous resources (apps, YouTube channels etc.) to get you started. A few of the recommended apps and YouTube channels that offer guided breathing and meditation sessions are: Headspace, Calm, Michael Sealey, Tara Brach, and The Honest Guys.

Being cooped up inside for hours can take a toll! If you have recently started working from home, you may miss the interaction that occurs naturally while at the office. However, staying at home (even in a lockdown) does not mean your social life is at an end. Thanks to the technological tools available today, you can reach out and speak to people anywhere in the world! It just requires a little effort - make the first move and reach out to family and good friends, so you do not feel isolated. Call up for a simple chat, or to watch a movie together or even have a digital party - there's a lot of different things you can do to connect. Some tools to check out include Kast, Zoom and Skype.

Everyone's need for alone Time and social interaction differs. For those living alone, not having anyone around - even work colleagues - can start feeling isolated. Like we said earlier, they should make an effort to reach out and connect.

But for those spending more Time than before with their families can bring a different set of issues. You may feel stressed having to manage everyone's needs at all times, the lack of space may aggravate tensions, or you may feel the loss of privacy - rather than just reacting, it's best to get a plan in place to deal with these issues. Clear communication goes a long way in smoothing over family interactions - discuss boundaries, needs, and expectations in a calm and non-accusatory manner, so everyone understands.

It may be difficult to find the Time and the motivation, but you must focus on self-care too - take some time out for yourself on the regular to soothe your frazzled nerves. Whether that's a calming walk, a video game session, or Time spent on a hobby, put yourself first for some time. Such self-care will go a long way in avoiding burnouts.

Try setting aside some time to pick up the hobbies that got dropped when life became too busy. Perhaps you loved knitting, or you played an instrument, now is the Time for you to take it up again. Doing something you love not only makes you happy but will also boost your spirits and energise you. Even better if you can involve your family. Getting your children into something new will keep them engaged and is an excellent way to bond. If you feel you need help in getting back into the groove, the internet in general and YouTube, in particular, has tutorials on virtually every topic you may be interested in.

You could also try learning something new. There are several things like baking that you can explore while at home. Here too, you could look for something you and your kids can learn together.

Creating a lifestyle that enhances your mental and physical well being typically involves having a series of good habits! If there seems to be a long list of things that you need to start doing to change, it can feel overwhelming. Don't give up! Developing a new habit is not all that hard - here are few tips to jumpstart the process: