With summer in the midst of transitioning into fall, winter is just around the corner. Now is the time of year when your immune system will be put to the test and the common cold will run amok. Staying healthy during the colder parts of the year can be a real challenge, but there are a few ways you can stack the deck in your favor. Here’s what you need to know in order to stay healthy as the seasons change.

Prioritize the Immune System

The entire point of eating food is acquiring the vitamins and nutrients that your body needs in order to operate and to maintain itself. However, protein and carbs often dominate the conversation, and it’s sugar and fat that play the roles of the villains. During the latter half of the year, when your immune system is the most necessary, your diet needs to provide the components necessary for a strong immune response. Protein is one of the many nutrients that can help you in this regard, but arguably more important is vitamin C.

Vitamin C is the vitamin most strongly associated with the strength of the immune system, along with other necessary benefits to your body such as maintaining healthy skin, blood vessels, bones and cartilage. Vitamin C is important to your immune system since it helps with the production of white blood cells, known to fight against infection and viruses. Citrus fruit is well known for having high vitamin C content, but potatoes and tomatoes are also high in this vital vitamin.

Vitamin D, on the other hand, is best gotten through exposure to sunlight, and sunlight tends to be much sparser and less bright as winter approaches. You can also consume Vitamin D through foods such as fish, soy milk, and egg yolks. Vitamin D also plays a major role for your immune health. It has both anti-inflammatory and immunoregulatory properties and is crucial for the activation of immune system defenses. Vitamin D is known to enhance the function of immune cells, including T-cells and macrophages, that protect your body against pathogens.

If you aren’t getting your daily dose of important vitamins, dietary supplements can help you fill in the gaps. Greens powder, for example, can help boost your immune system with a variety of ingredients that you might otherwise not even consider eating in a convenient form that can fit neatly into any diet

Stay Active

You would be forgiven for thinking that humans hibernated during the winter. Although this isn’t the case, colder, less hospitable weather tends to keep people indoors and sedentary. This, in tandem with multiple holiday feasts, causes many people to pack on pounds and lose muscle mass. Likewise, a lack of activity can weaken your immune system, so it’s important for you to find ways to get regular exercise even in the dead of winter.

For starters, consider the efficacy of a home gym. By bringing the gym experience to you, you can eliminate the commute to a proper gym without sacrificing the quality of the machine assisted workouts that it provides. A more cost effective solution is simply buying more low tech, but more affordable, workout gear such as simple weights. If you don’t have any equipment, don’t stress. Using your own weight while exercising will still benefit you. Examples of exercises that use your own weight are planks, pushups, or squats. You can easily follow at home workouts that are low impact through youtube or blog posts. While these workouts perhaps aren’t the most effective, it’s better than nothing and it’s easily attainable.

No matter what exercises you decide to focus on, you should get at least 30 minutes of movement per day at least four times a week, especially cardio. This doesn’t have to be extreme and push you to your limit. Simply walking around your neighborhood while the weather is still manageable is a great way to get fresh air while staying active. Once it’s too cold to leave the house, try doing laps around your kitchen and living room or climbing the stairs.

Stay On a Sleep Schedule

As winter approaches, days get shorter and nights get longer. This can disorient the body, because the body depends on an internal clock known as the circadian rhythm in order to know when it’s time for bed. Darker evenings can trick the brain, however, and that can result in an uptick in fatigue that can derail your sleep schedule if you let it. Sleep deprivation can occur not only as the result of too little sleep, but also because of restless sleep. When you don’t stick to a 24 hour sleep schedule, it can cause a more turbulent sleep experience that can leave you feeling groggy and, more importantly, impact your physical and mental health. In addition to this, the lack of vitamin D from sunlight can cause a decline in mental health, a phenomenon known as seasonal affective disorder characterized by depression. Poor mental health can also cause the immune system to weaken on top of not getting proper rest, so keeping track of when and how much you sleep is even more pivotal.

Winter has historically been a challenging time for humans, and that remains the case in the modern era. While the risk of starving or freezing to death isn’t ever present in the colder months, your health can still suffer. These tips will help you be at your best all year round.

Mia is a devout fitness instructor, mother and writer. She loves sharing her knowledge through blogging, teaching and writing.

The best time to build a healthy nutrition plan and the habits to go with it is as young as possible, but even those who have had a lifetime of healthy eating will have to adapt and change these plans as they age. Children, young adults, middle aged people and the elderly all have different nutritional needs and knowing how to adapt your food plans to meet those needs can help you stay healthier for longer. If you are someone whose appetite reduces as you get older, then knowing how to pack the most nutrition into the smallest portion sizes is even more important.

More Protein, Less Saturated Fat

Lean protein is one of the best things you can do for your nutrition plan because it provides your body with the
building blocks needed for maintaining muscle mass without adding unhealthy fats to impact your heart health. Many seniors who try to reduce their weight and the strain on their joints, will end up losing muscle mass and bone density alongside the fat, so a high protein and low fat shake every day can be the healthiest addition to your plan as you age. If the shake includes vitamin D, then it can have the bonus of helping you better use and retain calcium for bone health.

Essential Vitamins and Minerals

A colorful plate, one that has a rainbow of fruits and vegetables, is packed with a variety of essential vitamins and minerals. When you add orange, red, green and purple fresh fruits and vegetables to your plate, you are adding vitamins C, A, B and D as well as minerals like calcium, potassium and magnesium. These things can help boost your immune system and strengthen your bones, eyesight and brain function. If you are not sure that you are getting enough of any one nutrient, you can talk to your doctor or nutritionist to find the right supplements or food items for your needs.

Portion Sizes

The United States Department of Agriculture has a series of tools called MyPlate which can show you how the five food groups should look at each meal as well as a daily serving size for each type of food. These tools are broken down by age group and gender to help you plan the best diet for yourself and your loved ones as you age. If you buy packaged foods or eat out, check the nutrition facts for meals to determine what a suggested portion is and how each item meets the nutritional guidelines for a meal or snack. This can help you better control portion sizes and reduce your intake of things like salt, sugar and saturated fats which can negatively affect your health.

Hydration

Drinking plenty of water and reducing dehydrating beverages such as alcohol and soda can boost your health at every age, but water is essential to maintaining the health of body systems such as skin, digestion and circulation as you age. It is recommended that you have six to eight cups of water a day, and that you have a water bottle handy while working out or running errands. Sports drinks, sodas and flavored waters can have added salt which can put you at risk for chronic health issues and make you retain water.

Specific Health Needs

Specific health needs, such as anemia or diabetes, will often call for personalized nutritional meal plans that are designed with help from your doctor or nutritionist. These professionals can help you identify specific meal ingredients and preparation techniques to increase your nutritional intake while keeping risk factors or trigger foods to a minimum. For example, someone who is intolerant of dairy, but needs to maintain bone health can leafy green vegetables and salmon, which are high in calcium and Vitamin D, as well as take a daily supplement to remain healthy while avoiding dairy products.

Your body changes as you age, and so do your nutritional needs. This means that your meal plans need to change to keep up. You can develop many healthy habits throughout your life to better adapt to these changes such as drinking plenty of water, reducing your intake of salt and saturated fats, and switching to lean protein sources. Your doctor or nutritionist can help you develop a plan for your specific health needs as well as point you towards useful tools, supplements and guides.

Mia is a devout fitness instructor, mother, and writer. She loves sharing her knowledge through blogging, teaching, and writing. 

Ingredients

3 medium heirloom beets
Olive oil
1 cup red quinoa
1 cucumber
2 stalks celery with leaves
¼ cup shelled pistachios
Sriracha mayonnaise (see recipe below)
Salt and pepper

Dressing

3 TB lemon juice
2 TB balsamic vinegar
1 tsp dijon mustard
2/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 375.  Wash and dry beets.  Rub each beet with a small amount of olive oil.  Wrap in foil, and roast for 1 hour.  Cool, then peel the beets.  Cut each beet into 8 wedges and place in a medium size mixing bowl.

Add approximately 2 qt of water to a 3 qt sauce pan, and bring to a boil.  Add quinoa and cook for 15 minutes.  Drain quinoa in a fine mesh sieve and rinse with cold water.  Drain very well, and place in a separate medium size mixing bowl.

Peel and seed the cucumber.  Dice cucumber and celery with leaves.  Add to the bowl with quinoa.

Toss beets with 4-5 tablespoons of dressing and season with salt and pepper.

Toss quinoa mixture with remaining dressing and season with salt and pepper.

Arrange beets in a row down the middle of a large serving bowl or plate.  Spoon quinoa mixture along each side.  Sprinkle with pistachios and drizzle with sriracha mayonnaise.

Sriracha Mayonnaise:  
Mix 1 cup mayo with 4-5 tablespoons sriracha, 1 tablespoon lemon juice, and a pinch of salt.

Why this recipe is good for you…

Quinoa is full of fiber.  Fiber helps prevent heart disease by reducing blood pressure and diabetes.  Quinoa contains iron, lysine, magnesium, riboflavin and manganese.   All are essential to healthy blood and tissue cells.

Beets help to lower blood pressure, fight inflammation and are packed with essential nutrients and fiber.

Pistachios have fewer calories and more potassium and vitamin K per serving than any other nut.  They also contain 1-arginine, which helps make the lining of your arteries more flexible and less likely to develop clots.

And, of course, the sriracha mayonnaise may not be the healthiest ingredient… but it sure tastes good.