5 Tips to Prioritize Your Wellness During a Pandemic (and All the Time)

It's challenging to think that it takes a global pandemic to force us to prioritize our health and wellness, but instead of dwelling on the past, I am encouraging my clients to use this time to create a healthy and sustainable wellness routine — for the pandemic and beyond.

Healthy habits work just like compound interest in the bank and building your wellness routine in this way means you are more likely to stay consistent in the weeks and months to come.

However, in these stressful and uncertain times adding on even more to our busy schedule can feel overwhelming and even somewhat paralyzing. In this article I'll guide you through the tools and strategies I use with my clients to create a routine that works for you, enabling you to prioritize your wellness during the current pandemic.

Even the most level-headed of us can take the wrong approach to prioritizing wellness and think that to improve our health we have to overhaul our entire lives. In fact, it is the small changes, completed on a regular basis that achieve the most effective, long-lasting results

Rather than an all or nothing approach, try adding in one new healthy habit a week. In the first week, you could take a great quality multivitamin, such as this daily multivitamin for women, to boost energy and immunity. The next week, add a 30-minute walk to your daily routine to improve insulin sensitivity and manage your stress. Week three could be adding one more serving of vegetables to every meal, increasing your antioxidant consumption.

Healthy habits work just like compound interest in the bank and building your wellness routine in this way means you are more likely to stay consistent in the weeks and months to come.

Why not see if you can "hack" your existing habits to make your regular routine more beneficial to health? For example, if you typically have a coffee and a muffin mid-morning, switch this to an organic, low acid coffee such as Puroast, or even a matcha latte made with unsweetened almond milk (I love Elmhurst 1925).

Stop "shoulding" on yourself just because JLo works out twice a day in her fifties or your favorite Instagram influencer forces down a celery juice every morning.

Pair this with one serving of a collagen glow for a healthy mid-morning treat that won't spike your blood sugar and provides some skin-boosting amino acids that will have you looking great on those zoom calls.

A term typically used by performance and productivity experts, "habit stacking" is the act of adding an additional habit to a pre-existing one. For example, if you typically listen to a particular podcast every morning, can you jump on the treadmill or the bike as you listen? Can you walk outside or even around your house when taking work calls? If you already take a multivitamin can you boost your supplement routine with a multi herbal. (I love this particular multiherbal for its benefits for brain, mood, heart, and whole-body health.) Cooking a meal? Can you make extra servings of chicken breast or roasted vegetables for lunch the next day? These additions can make a huge difference, without taking up any extra energy or time or adding any more stress to your day.

Stop "shoulding" on yourself just because JLo works out twice a day in her fifties or your favorite Instagram influencer forces down a celery juice every morning. Your wellness routine should be based on your health needs and goals, should fit into your lifestyle, and the most important "should" is that it should be fun and enjoyable for you.

For example, Intermittent Fasting is such a huge trend right now, but it just doesn't work for me as I get super hungry in the mornings, and I love breakfast! So, I choose to balance my blood sugar and stay full and energized until lunch by having a Breakfast Smoothie made with organic plant protein, a handful of veggies, some avocado, berries, and almond milk.

Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against crystals, candles and a rose petal bath from time to time, but when they replace the key health practices needed for disease prevention and optimum wellness, I have to draw the line.

I have the word "holistic" in my job title, but that doesn't mean I eschew conventional medicine completely.

Know your family health history. Schedule your annual physical once a year. See your OBGYN. Get a mammogram or a prostate check. See your eye doctor (especially important now as we are spending more and more of our time in front of screens).

Move your body. Sweat daily. Eat more vegetables and include a daily vitamin and supplement regime. Manage your stress during the day and prioritize sleep at night.

I have the word "holistic" in my job title, but that doesn't mean I eschew conventional medicine completely. Use your insurance dollars to get your tests, your check ups and your prescription reviews. In the UK we refer to a holistic approach as "complementary," which to me is a far more accurate term for the way we should see our health and wellbeing.

There is room for conventional medicine (testing), a functional approach (eating well, taking targeted supplements and moving your body) and self care in all of our wellness routines, but I definitely recommend probiotics over pranayama every time.