It’s time to break up with your summer plans. This breakup might be the only way to live healthy. Here are 15 unconventional ways to have your healthiest summer ever.
It’s the season of indulging. Whether you prefer kicking up your feet at the pool with a suspenseful read and shutting off work a little earlier to light up the BBQ, this summer doesn’t have to escape you in the blink of an eye. This summer, we hope you choose to live it and use the longer days and increase in energy to invest back into your health.
In all honestly, this is where your health is made. In moments when you show up to live, you get outside and move, and you sip your iced sun tea. Health is in the living. This summer, I want to help you do that! To experience health by supplying your body with the energy it needs to thrive. Here are a few tips to get this season started right and begin living your healthiest summer ever.
15 Ways To Have Your Healthiest Summer ever
1: Move Your Body Outside
There’s nothing more energizing than the summer sun. Make it a point to get outside every day, even for ten minutes. Choosing to do something in the great outdoors, knowing nature is healing. Move your morning strength session from your workout room to your driveway. Ask your friend to go on a morning hike or take the kids for a swim at your local pool.
02: Eat Fresh Produce
The bounty of summer produce could be the best thing about this season. Take priority of your local farmers and markets, buying food grown locally and in season. Not only is it more nutritious, but it tastes delicious. Set a goal to stop by your local farmers market to buy as much produce as you can for the week, and hit the grocery store to fill in what’s left. Your body craves the light and fresh produce available this time of year.
03: Read, Just For Fun
Hit your local library or pick up some of the season’s hottest books or recent favorites like American Dirt or Where the Crawdads Sing. There’s something freeing about putting your nose in a good book. It seems to give you permission to scroll less. Go ahead and mix it up, setting aside your self-help book for something focused on filling rather than fixing.
04: Light Up The Grill and Get Relational
Make more time for friends, eating meals gathered around the backyard BBQ. It doesn’t have to be perfect. In fact, there is beauty that unites in the imperfection of doing life together. Plus, living relationally is one of the most critical aspects of health that we easily overlook. Invest the time you once spent fixating on your diet and put it into building friendships and community.
05: Focus on soul-care > self-care
Don’t get me wrong, self-care is essential, but it’s significantly more powerful when we do that out of a healthy soul. Your soul is the heart of your body, and it’s running your show. I know it’s easy to neglect, even compartmentalize, in your life, but your body is always responding to the health of your soul. Take time this summer to practice soul care. Maybe that’s reading, journaling, learning, or simply cranking the worship music and singing at the top of your lungs. Make soul-care a daily rhythm.
06: Stay Flexible
Make a plan but keep it flexible. Sometimes having too strict of plans can set up many expectations that steal your focus rather than the moments of living within those plans. Don’t be so focused on the plan that you can’t go with the flow, switch gears, slow down, or change plans when better plans come up. It’s not always easy, but sometimes it’s better to go with the flow.
07: Don’t forget sun protection
You need sun, just not too much or too little. Snag some morning sun sans sunscreen, but as the day progresses and the sun gets higher, slather a safe option on your skin, backing that up with a nighttime moisturizer. These are my favorite affordable and safe sunscreen options. Don’t forget these three places most people forget to sunscreen!
08: Get Adventurous
Do something different. It might feel scary, but spontaneity feeds your soul and creates a new sense of safety, helping you explore life without fear. If adventure is new to you, start small. Try a fresh meal, pick up a book you’re unfamiliar with, or explore a local park. If you want to get more adventurous, book a summer trip, try a new wardrobe, cut your hair or re-organize your life. Do something different, and feel differently.
09: Cut Back on Screen Time
I’m not just talking about social media but every screen. Cut back on the hours you spend in front of your computer, opting for pen and paper, and nix the nighttime Netflix binge you’ve gotten stuck in. Don’t miss the best days of the year with your eyes married to a screen, but set boundaries around screen time. Take a weekly, weekend sabbatical from social media, opt for no TV on the weekends and choose instead to sit around a fire, hit the local pool, load up the kayaks or ask friends over for smores. If you need help, try this 1000 unplugged hours challenge.
10: Break Up With Your Bucket List
Is the bucket list causing you more stress than excitement? If it is, it’s time to break up with the list and opt for the alternative. Taking plans one day and weekend at a time. Sometimes, we set so many expectations we end up living under more stress making us miss the joy of the experience. Don’t miss summer living so wrapped up in checking a list, but get outside and enjoy it. Whatever that may bring, be there.
11: Hydrate better
Hydrate better doesn’t mean drinking more. Of course, we need to drink plenty of water, but drinking too much water without the proper electrolyte balance can cause more harm than good. Leaving you with bloat and indigestion, making you feel puffy and heavy. The goal is not to drink more but drink smarter. Make sure you balance your fluid intake with plenty of electrolytes to keep yourself hydrated. Try adding a pinch of sea salt to your water or adding a squeeze of fresh citrus juice. Nothing feels more hydrating to me than starting my day with this drink.
12: Stop Grazing
Summer tends to bring the rhythm of grazing. It’s partially because good food is always around. But it’s also because the heat makes it difficult to overeat. Instead of eating meals, we tend to graze all day. I’m not against snacking, but grazing can lead to eating in abundance, making it a habit more than a necessity. Avoid grazing and choose healthy, light, and refreshing meals. If you need a snack, make it last by eating another small meal.
13: Make Peace With Your Body
A lot of insecurities arise when we are forced to stop hiding behind baggy sweaters and oversized sweatshirts. When the heat forces us to choose between being cool or being comfortable. But I wonder what would change if you could see how other people see you. Suppose you stopped throwing insults at yourself and chose to see yourself differently. Not for what your body lacks but for what it’s done and carried you through. At some point, we all have to choose to keep fighting our body or realize it’s always been fighting for you! Stop fighting it, embrace it, love it, respect it, and in the process of that, treat it kindly. This is where real change can happen, in the places of love.
14: Buy a swimsuit you love
If you’re refusing to buy clothes you feel confident in, particularly a swimsuit, until you lose the last few pounds, STOP! This might be preventing you from losing those pounds because that’s what a lack of confidence does. It keeps us stuck in the places we hate. This summer, buy “the” swimsuit. Not the cheap one or the trendy one, but the one you feel good wearing. Confidence changes you, but you must choose it, not wait for it!
15: Decide to Have Your Healthiest Summer Ever
Health is a perspective that leads to action more than anything else. In the process, this creates a lifestyle. But you have to choose it. This might mean you have to choose to break up with your current way of health, potentially quitting it altogether. But in the process, trusting it’s the choice, the new perspective that produces a new action creating a better outcome. I believe in you! Make the most of it. Choose to have the healthiest summer ever. It’s in your hands!
