By Emily Fishburn, Junior Account Manager
This week marks Nutrition and Hydration Week, a week that takes place annually and aims to re-energise conversation and top tips around the ways to best maintain health and wellbeing, something that can easily be neglected in our busy lives. Earlier in the week, the Whiteoaks team had a session with a registered nutritionist and health coach, Claire Sendall from Health Empowered who taught us her top tips for becoming a healthier and better-hydrated version of ourselves. In this blog, I’ll share some of the advice learnt.
Staying hydrated
On average we should be drinking around 2 litres of water per day to stay well hydrated and support our bodies digestion, circulation and temperature control for our brain to work well. Many of us can find this a tricky target while it can be difficult to measure how much water we are actually drinking. An effective way of keeping track is by investing in a good water bottle, some even have a guide on the side of the bottle of where the level of water should be at certain hours of the day. By drinking from a reusable water bottle can also be healthier for us than reusing a single-use plastic bottle over and over while they can leech chemicals and bacteria can grow in them which could be harmful to us.
Why is nutrition important?
In a similar way to how being hydrated can impact our mood and performance, what we eat can have just as much of an impact. Eating a healthy diet contributes to preventing illness and improving quality and length of life. Understanding what we are putting in our bodies and our foods nutritional value is important to be aware of, some food restaurants now are helping us to educate us on this by labelling menus with their nutritional value. From April 2022 the UK government has ruled that large businesses will need to display calorie information on menus and food labels – another way that can support us to make healthier choices when eating out.
Having a better focus on health and wellbeing – an ongoing journey
Over the past year or so, while our busy lives have been put on hold somewhat this has given us time to focus on getting our health and wellbeing in order, and so has seen the rise in popularity of PT’s such as Courtney Black, James Smith and nutritionists such as Graeme Tomlinson, aka the fitnesschef on Instagram. Many, including myself, have looked to their social accounts for inspiration and guidance.
From apps such as MyFitnessPal, wellbeing, fitness and nutrition influencers on social media to wearable gadgets such as Apple Watch and FitBit, today we have so much information and support readily available to help us better look after our health and wellbeing – it’s just about putting in the effort to find the approach that works best for us.
