When I do an Instagram search of #selfcare, it shows up (as of this very moment) as 22,953,025 posts. Most of those are beauty posts (so many products) and cheesy memes that flash across your screen but change little. Self care is so much more than this.
Don’t get me wrong, I do recommend chill days or treating yourself to a spa treatment when you can, but this isn’t the deep self-care stuff that will change your life and improve your health. That’s pampering, and it’s only a portion of self care.
What I’m more interested in is the action ideas. What can you DO for self care?
The difficult and the easy
Let’s get real. Self care can be work. Self care is about routine, habits, planning, rerouting, and yes, sacrificing. It’s about exercising when you don’t feel like it, about making a healthy meal instead of picking up a fast food dinner, and about having that difficult conversation to end an unhealthy relationship. A fancy haircut, pricey face cream, and day of flipping between Netflix and Amazon Prime are not going to reduce your chances of struggling with a chronic disease, though they may temporarily make you feel good or lower your immediate stress levels.
For me, the foundation to good health falls mostly within one of 4 areas that we can’t cheat our way out of.
- Nutritious food and enough fluids
- Regular movement
- Restful, restorative sleep
- Joy
Good food
If you know me, you know I love food. One of the nicest compliments I’ve ever received was from a trainer/nutritionist who once told me that I have one of the healthiest relationships with food that she has seen. That doesn’t mean I always eat healthy. I’m sure she knows many who are clean eating gurus. I’m not that. It also doesn’t mean that I can eat anything I want. I can’t.
But I do know that what I put into my body makes a difference to how I feel today and how I’ll feel in decades to come. And, with that in mind, I continue to work on making healthy food choices. These are the things I’m working on ongoing:
- Eat lots of vegetables.
- Limit my sugar intake.
- Eat mostly home cooked food.
- Try to focus on eating when eating, chewing my food well.
- Make sure to hydrate well.
Others may have other things they need to work on, but this is my list.
In addition, I have the foods and food habits that continue to make me happy:
- I have 1 square (sometimes 2) of dark chocolate after dinner.
- I eat when I’m hungry; I’m a grazer.
- I enjoy–really enjoy–the treats when I have them or I don’t have them at all. There are some foods (Oreo cookies, donuts, ice cream, a whole plate of carbs) that I used to love, but don’t anymore. I don’t see a point in having them now if they are both not healthy for me and I don’t love them.
What are your self-care choices when it comes to food?
If you need help with choosing healthy foods, ask me. I love food questions! Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) food recommendations are based on your constitution, your health goals and health condition, and the season. Suggestions are personalized and modifiable.
Being active
There is no shortage of options for implementing movement and exercise into your day. Walk, run, skip, dance, swim, ski, skate, snowshoe, hike, box, train, stretch, lift. If you want to be able to do a movement like take the stairs, keep your balance, or be able to get up from the ground if you fall when you are 70, 80, 90, or older, then you may want to make sure you can do those movements now. If you can’t because of pain, disability, fatigue, injury, or illness, figure out what you can do now (or speak to someone who can help you) and work slowly to get up to a level that gives you your best quality of life. Note the emphasis on “your best.”
A year ago on January 1st (yup, I was one of those people) I joined a gym. I used to have a gym membership for years, and in university I even worked at a gym, enrolling new members, motivating current members, doing basic biometric measurements, and teaching the fundamentals of using the workout machines. For about 7 years I quit the gym because I enrolled in a yoga membership. I also started doing more of my own activities like cycling, Grouse Grind, and snowshoeing. But I felt I needed a change and I started to find it tough to schedule in the yoga classes I liked, so I switched back to the gym.
Here’s the thing. I don’t like going to the gym. But I do it because I know I like how I feel after (and sometimes even during). I do it because I know I’ll go back to yoga again (soon), but for now I need an easy way to get in regular exercise and movement.
My self-care efforts for movement include:
- Workout in some form or another (e.g. riding bike to work, going to the gym, hiking) most days of the week.
- Don’t be silly about pushing myself to the point of injuring myself. I’ve overdone it time again, only to pay the price.
- Get outdoors for movement activities as much as I can. This is not a “workout” for me. For me, doing an activity outdoors is play, fun, and excitement.
- Implement a variety of movements that include stretching, strengthening, and balancing.
What do you do for self care in the category of movement and exercise and how do you overcome your barriers (keeping in mind that your barrier could be overdoing it)?
If you are in pain, too tired, unwell, or simply don’t know what to do, ask me how you can implement movement that helps you reach your health goals. It used to be that we stopped all movement to allow injuries to heal, but movement in the right way and right amount is now what we recommend.
Get enough zzzzzzzzs
So, this is typically the hardest one for me. Not because I can’t sleep. I’m one of the lucky ones, as I can fall asleep quickly, most of the time. But because I don’t like sleep. It feels like a waste of time–like I could be doing something better, checking things off my to-do list.
I’ve started developing a better relationship with sleep. I know I need it. I know it’s important–truly vital. So, I’m now getting enough hours. But for a while I had to set an alarm to go to bed. I had to treat myself like a stubborn child who just wants 5 more minutes to stay up, and then another 5 more minutes, and so forth.
My self care for restful, restorative sleep includes:
- Go to bed by 11 p.m. I know some people say that you get your best sleep if you go to sleep before 10 p.m., but that’s not me. I’m a night owl and 11 p.m. with a 7-7:30 a.m. wake up works for me. That may change in the future, but for now, this works. This is why you don’t see me starting my day in clinic before 9 a.m. You don’t really want me poking needles in you at 8 a.m.
- When, on the rare occasion, I get back from a late night event and am still revved up, I take an herbal sleep remedy to help me wind down quicker and easier.
- As I said, I already don’t want to sleep, so napping is not an exciting thing for me. But that doesn’t mean I never nap. If I’m sick, jet lagged, or simply overdrawn and exhausted, then I nap. Like it or not, my body makes me take that 15-30 minutes of shuteye.
What are your self-care routines when it comes to sleep?
If you are like me, disliking sleep, or if you have a hard time getting to sleep or staying asleep, let’s chat. We can work on the underlying imbalances that lead to these challenges.
Joy!
Maybe you don’t like your job and only have holidays to look forward to. Perhaps you’re just too busy with daily chores to imagine how you can fit in the things you like to do. But you don’t need to spend a ton of time or money to make joy a daily feature of your life. Yes, daily. Joy doesn’t need to be a jump-in-the-air-and-shout-hooray type of feeling. It can be just enjoying some simple pleasures.
I recently started crocheting. I like it because it’s portable and I can do a little at a time. I also like that there something I can gift or enjoy myself when I’m done. For me, there is a little feeling of accomplishment with figuring out a new stitch or pattern or even just in completing each row or round and I get a tiny hit of dopamine (a brain chemical the body produces that gives a feel-good boost as part of our body’s reward system). Prior to that I was doing needle felting and I still do, on occasion.
I feel that creativity, social connection, purpose, and connection to nature are all important categories to consider when looking for ways to feel and express joy.
I try to find ways to bring forth the joy on a regular basis in each of these categories:
- Crafting, writing, dance, and music (ukulele!) are some of the ways I enjoy my creative side.
- I’m fortunate to get to connect with my patients on a daily basis, though I’m really an introvert. I continue to try to attend social events, though I’m no social butterfly.
- I’m obviously passionate about health, so educating others, bringing hope, and being helpful is what drives me to get up and go every morning.
- Some people are beach people and I do like the water, but I’m a mountain person. This year I’m going to use my pass to Grouse as much as possible!
- Oh, and my dogs help me on all 4 fronts. I learn from them as they seem to find joy so easily.
How do you bring joy into your daily self-care routine?
You don’t need to make it complicated and it can be as simple as looking up at the sky and taking it all in, sending a nice text message to a friend, accepting a nice compliment instead of brushing it off and forgetting about it, drawing a smiley face or message on your steamy bathroom mirror so a family member will see it when they get out of the shower, or petting a dog or cat. The point isn’t how long you spend doing it, but when you do it, savour the moment and feeling.
Did you know that having trouble focusing, feeling anxious or stressed, suffering from depression, feeling unmotivated, having a hard time making decisions, and struggling with finding what brings you joy can be affected by patterns of imbalance that TCM addresses?
TCM’s approach to self care
As a doctor of Traditional Chinese Medicine, my goal is to find out what’s throwing you off balance, discover where your risk factors lay, and make a plan for what I do to treat you and what you can do to treat you. Self care is one of the main foundation pieces of TCM’s approach to health.
Come in for seasonal health tips and tune ups, check out my various health tips on my website, or email me your questions.
Here’s to your health and real, life changing self care!
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