Have you been watching Dr Chatterjee and his BBC One series Doctor in the House? He has been working as a GP for 16 years and from his work he has learnt and experienced that for many patients it is not a pill that they need but a lifestyle change.

Sound familiar? If you attend my classes you know this is my passion and that is why I am currently putting myself through University, doing a degree in nutrition.

Let’s get back to basics; there are four key areas that we all MUST address and work on:

• Eat well
• Move more
• Sleep better
• Manage stress

Simple right? Unfortunately not, life is sooo busy for everyone and stuff just gets thrown into our paths time and time again. Here I am talking to you about the basics yet I have spent the last 6 months in complete chaos due to building work at my house. This has affected all areas of my life and so I know how difficult it can be to work on the basics.

However it is achievable and we CAN do it! Just takes a little bit of effort and planning so we are not feeling run down, bloated, and tired all the time. We can manage the triggers that are adding to our feelings of being overwhelmed, stressed and generally feeling YUK!

What we eat plays a big part on our physical and mental health, it is not just about how our clothes fit but it is about how we feel too. There is research out there that demonstrates that sugar and processed foods can cause anxiety and depression, by cutting them out of your daily diet can make a huge difference.

Food can be an inflammatory to your body, it is working out which type of foods affects you. Wheat and diary are the biggest culprits and so it may be necessary to eliminate them from you diet to see what affect that plays on how your feel. But before you all rush off thinking but that means you will be miserable and can’t go out and “have a life” STOP! That is not the case, as it is about listening to your body and about balance! When you start to see how different you feel when making adjustments to the types of food you eat, you will soon start to think if that food is really worth it?

With exercise, as we are well aware, as a society we have become very sedentary, sat at our desks, sat in our cars, sat in front of the TV etc etc. It is so important to ensure that we move more throughout our daily lives not just do one class per week!

The exercise should be varied too, especially for women who are getting a little older, our bodies need strength and flexibility type exercise as well as regular aerobic / cardio type classes. That’s why at Thrive we are passionate about the variety we offer and how our classes can be adapted for all ages and abilities.

There is so much more I can talk about but instead of fitting it all into one blog, I will focus on these 4 key areas in my next series of blogs, so keep following our social media pages for full updates.

In the meantime, to again refer back to Dr Chatterjee, the focus of his work is that we need to look at the root cause not the symptom BUT he is also clear to point out that there has to be willingness to change too. So are you ready to make a change?

Lesley X