What are the best tips for staying healthy while stuck at home? You can make these small changes to improve your diet, fitness, mental health and more – all without leaving your house.

Many of us are concerned about maintaining our health while staying inside more.

Tips For Staying Healthy

1. Wash your hands

You might be tired of hearing it, but washing your hands is an excellent way to stave off infection and food poisoning. Check out our ‘how to’ guide to handwashing to help you get back to basics.

2. Lift weights

You don’t have to go to the gym to boost your strength. Look online for bodyweight exercise tutorials that require no equipment at all. You can also use household objects as makeshift weights – from a tin of beans to a bucket of water.

3. Get 8 hours

A good night’s sleep is crucial to feeling your best. Most people need a minimum of eight hours of good quality sleep every night, so make sure to have a set bedtime and stick to it.

4. Drink more water

Always aim to drink 6-8 glasses of water a day. Staying hydrated keeps skin healthy, helps kidney function and boosts performance during exercise.

5. Become a flexitarian

Numerous studies have shown that a plant-based diet is healthiest, but you can still get many of the benefits even if you don’t go full-on vegetarian. Following a semi-vegetarian diet that includes fewer animal products but doesn’t completely cut them out may help you keep your weight in check as well as lower your chances of high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, and inflammatory bowel disease.

6. Expand your palate’s palette

Dietary guidelines recommend that half of what’s on your plate at any meal be vegetables or fruits. But it’s also important to mix things up. While all fruits and veggies are healthy, they don’t all have the same nutrients. Give yourself the widest range of benefits by eating different-colored produce throughout the day.

7. Move more, sit less

That’s the physical activity guidelines in a nutshell. While at least 150 minutes a week of moderate exercise is ideal, experts say that any movement is better than nothing. So make it a point to stand up more often and stretch, park a bit farther from your destination for extra steps, and explore new pastimes that will help put you in motion.

8. Cut back on sugar & alcohol

Number four on our list of ways to stay healthy isn’t something you necessarily have to do all the time, but you should definitely do when you’re feeling sick/fighting something off. Sugar and alcohol both have a negative impact on our gut as well as our immune system. They can also affect our sleep which has a direct impact on our health as well. I’d say just try to limit your intake and cut back when you can!

9. Take vitamin C

We didn’t really talk about specific vitamins in this post, but I want to at least bring up one: vitamin C. Vitamin C has been shown thousands of times to support your immune system and overall health. When you’re feeling compromised I would suggest taking a vitamin C supplement, but if you’re just living your everyday life, I think getting vitamin C from whole foods is perfect. Things like oranges, grapefruits, lemon, and even pineapple are packed with vitamin C!

10. Take care of your gut

Our gut contains about 70% of our immune system. So when our gut isn’t happy, our immune system is compromised. It’s important that we support our gut by eating foods that nourish it. Add probiotic-rich foods into your meals like kimchi, sauerkraut, and yogurt. You could consider taking a probiotic as well. Cutting back on sugar and alcohol is another way that we can support our gut health. Those two feed bacteria and can potentially cause too much of the bad bacteria to thrive.