6 Ways to Keep Your Family Healthy During Tough Times

With the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic, both parents and kids have found themselves cooped at home and navigating their new routines while struggling to balance school or work and family life. When life and work overlap, it can be detrimental to one's physical, mental, and emotional health.

Achieving holistic health is not just about exercising and incorporating greens into your meals. It's about becoming healthier in every aspect of your being, and there are ways you can improve your health together with your family during a crisis like the pandemic. Here are some helpful ways you can get started.

1. Get adequate sleep

Lack of sleep can make a person feel tired and physically fatigued, prone to mood swings, and vulnerable to negative impacts concerning their mental abilities and emotional state. When this happens, the body finds working on tasks unappealing and requires too much work. Set the bedtime at the same time as your children to ensure everyone gets sufficient and quality sleep to maintain a healthy body and mind.

2. Eat balanced meals

The drastic changes brought upon by the coronavirus pandemic have triggered emotional eating as a coping mechanism for many people. Straighten out this poor eating behavior by focusing on diet and nutrition. Make sure to incorporate leafy greens, fruits, proteins, and other foods loaded with vitamins, fiber, and minerals into your family's meals. As much as possible, minimize your consumption of processed snacks and food as you transition to a healthier lifestyle.

3. Learn how to cope with stress

Some people stay active as a form of stress and anxiety relief, as it can help improve your mood and makes you feel better instantly, Mental health is important, so regardless of how you choose to alleviate stress, find positive and healthy ways to cope with it. It could be through meditating, reading, and developing certain skills or hobbies, and more. You can encourage your children to do what relaxes them, like reading, every time they feel overwhelmed.

4. Stay connected

Keeping in touch with your loved ones during difficult times or isolation can help ease feelings of loneliness, anxiety, and feeling down overall. If you can't meet people outside safely, use communication apps to talk to them. You can call each other and listen to music, watch movies together, or schedule trivia nights—these can be great entertainment activities to do with your relatives.

5. Do activities with the whole family

Staying active can lower the risk of diabetes, depression, and other serious medical conditions. If possible, get out and ride the bike with your family on weekends or play badminton or table tennis. You can do physical activities or those that test and improve the creativity of the entire family. Regardless of what it is, keep moving with the whole family.

6. Have a self-care checklist

During this challenging time, it's vital to set self-care routines or a mental health checklist that enables everyone to focus on themselves and nothing else. For example, when you're feeling overwhelmed, self-care could entail taking a break from electronics. For the parents, this could be a relaxing home spa bath routine once a week or meditation every night for several minutes. For the kids, this can be reading a book after school or painting every weekend.

Wrapping Up

Set a good example for your children. Establish and stick to healthy habits to take care of and improve everyone's physical, mental, and emotional health at home. Find new practices and enjoyable activities to keep your family healthy and happy. Knowledge and understanding of one's health are crucial to enjoying life, especially if you have an ailing disease, and we must protect it by making healthy lifestyle choices. In challenging times like the pandemic, keep everyone active and eating well while you spend valuable time together.