Spring is coming, are you ready ?
With springtime almost here, nature’s simple subliminal messages are all around us. With the days getting longer, the trees budding and the weather becoming warmer and more inviting, our bodies and minds need a few tweaks to adjust to all the joys that this beautiful season has to offer us. Looking to the natural world to embrace each season as it comes gives us the mind-set to transition through our own stages and struggles in life.
Here we talk you through four ways you can gently move into spring and embrace the bright and energising opportunity and blue sky thinking that the season is known and loved for.
1. Actively choose to eat lighter meals
With the changing seasons comes a changing appetite particularly for us midlife women who have up and down, on off hormone levels to contend with. After the indulgences of winter, choosing to eat lighter, healthier foods can help you feel rejuvenated and re-energised. With more local fruits and vegetables available, lightening your eating habits with healthier recipes is easy.
Soups and stews may have warmed you during winter but lighter, cooler and more refreshing meals should be the call of the day come spring. Spring isn’t about restricting yourself but expanding your repertoire of fresh ingredients. Eat more leafy green vegetables, smoothies, juices and raw soups to give your body what it needs as the weather begins to warm. Your body will naturally crave less starchy foods and more water-based ingredients so indulge it to feel fully hydrated and refreshed. Get out those summer salad recipes early to experiment with different vegetables, flavours and textures.
2. Get outside in the morning sunlight
Make use of those longer, warmer days by getting out and about more. As the daylight builds we naturally feel the urge to be outside after the winter months indoors. The greening grass and budding plants are nature’s way of encouraging you away from your home to be more active outside. You can use this opportunity to go for longer daily walks or even doing your daily exercise routine outside is a great way to hit the reset button. If it still feels to chilly for that, start by doing your workout with the front door open !
If fitness isn’t your main goal, just being outside for a bit of gardening or enjoying a cuppa outdoors in the morning unlocks so many advantages for your health and wellbeing. Being outside in the daylight has been proven to reduce stress, strengthen immunity, boost focus and creativity, improve memory, aid weight management, and foster a generally healthier lifestyle.
If you are feeling really brave why not try something new and take up outdoor swimming this spring? Discover the best outdoor swimming spots in the UK to get started.
3. Tidy away the winter
An annual spring clean is a rite of passage as we move into springtime, but it’s so much more than tidying your home after the celebration and chaos of winter. Spring cleaning is good for you. It increases productivity, removes allergens from the home environment to help you breathe easier, reduces stress and anxiety, heightens concentration levels, and puts you in a great mood too.
Don’t we all feel better for getting rid of all those things that have been cluttering up our lives over the winter. Just the act of tidying up can be so satisfying and throwing open the windows during the day and letting the sunlight in, can put a spring in our steps. Once you have all your old clothes bagged up don’t forget to drop them off to the charity shops or clothes bank so your preloved goodies can be enjoyed by someone else.
4. Eat a rainbow of seasonal produce
At this time of year, we naturally feel tempted to eat more brightly coloured foods as they come back in season. Spring in particular offers plenty of food for thought when it comes to season produce. Apples, asparagus, cabbage, carrots, cucumber, lettuce, flat leaf parsley, purple sprouting broccoli, radishes and rhubarb are just some of the tasty produce in season from March to May.
Eating what’s in season means better tasting meals, is more environmentally friendly and costs less. Seasonal produce is also better for your health as MindBodyGreen explains:
“Foods that are grown and consumed during their appropriate seasons are more nutritionally dense. In a study monitoring the vitamin C content of broccoli, it was found that broccoli grown during its peak season (hint: fall) had a higher vitamin C content than broccoli grown during the spring. When foods are grown out of season, they aren’t able to follow their natural growing and ripening rhythms.”
The freshness and high nutritional value of seasonal produce actively supports your body’s natural dietary needs. During spring, meals laced with seasonal veggies are the perfect way to energise and invigorate.
Nothing ever stands still, particularly for us going through the peri/menopause when our body doesn’t seem to be behaving like it used to. The change of the seasons, particularly Springtime is such a mood boost and a gentle reminder that we are all changing every day as is the world around us, and we are able to adapt and flourish more than we give ourselves credit for. So get outdoors and enjoy the spring for it is only here once a year and as ever I love to know how you get on so do share and tag me in over on Instagram or Facebook.
Photo: with thanks from unsplash @cathalmacan