Self Care

25 Mar Self Care

Welcome back to Week 4 in our, “Nutrition is a Science and Your Body is a Science Experiment” series. How did your Week 3 experiment go? We want to hear about it! 

Our Lab Report for Week 4 is below, but just like the weeks prior, we encourage you to make this experiment personal by completing the report for yourself.

Week 4 Lab Report

Title of Experiment

If I committed myself to beneficial mental health habits…

Purpose

Instead of viewing self-care as a trend, I will experiment with various self-care methods to find the best mental health habits for myself and commit to practicing them daily. 

Hypothesis

I think there will be several self-care habits I enjoy, but fewer that I can realistically schedule into my day, so prioritizing the ones that I feel benefit me the most will be key.

Materials and Method

Scour the internet for popular mental health/self-care habits and choose to trial one new practice daily. Use this article for ideas.

Data and Observations

• I enjoyed the convenience of the practices in the 1-5 minutes category and it was helpful to leave myself post-its or reminder notes in various places that I visit during my day, ie. bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, car, office, etc.
• Previewing the weather and scheduling in time outdoors daily was lovely regardless of the amount of time I was able to spend.
• On the not-so-pretty days, taking a solo drive and listening to music (or not) was a nice reprieve.
• While I love the idea of a morning meditation and really want to be a morning person, it was/is very hard for me to dedicate “me” time first thing in the morning. Around lunch or before bed seemed to work better for me and journaling my thoughts and to-dos was helpful for me to rest easy and have a game plan for the next day.
• Similar to last week, my goal would be to have stress relief time daily, but if I’m able to plan and follow through on the habits I enjoyed most at least 5 days a week, I will be a better version of myself for it.

Conclusion

Self-care isn’t just trendy, it’s necessary. The term, “self-care” was intimidating to me at first, but when I really started digging into it, I realized that these are necessary practices for my well-being and the beauty of them is they can take as little or long as I want them to.

RECIPES FOR THE WEEK

By Victoria Emmitt RD