The Teacher's Health Journey: Episode 4

Keep Going, You Can Do This!  The Health Journey continues…

Don’t get discouraged if you’ve been trying to improve your health, but don’t see results right away or have hit a plateau. This is a normal part of the larger journey, and you can (and will!) get through it. And when you get to where you want to be after so much hard work, you will feel amazing! Here are some guideposts to help you on your health journey if you’re in a slump:

Nutrition Tip:
Have you ever made eye-contact with a certain unhealthy, yet delicious food and felt as though you had to have it? Humans are visually stimulated creatures and often when we see yummy food we want it, even if we don’t need it. To help fix this issue, try putting healthy foods into“sight zones.” In other words, rearrange your fridge and food cabinets so all the healthy options are in the front where you will see them. Move the unhealthier foods and snacks to the back. Out of sight, out of mind!  (Well, okay, you might even want to try not having the unhealthy things in the house to begin with.)

Fitness Tip:
Make and keep goals. Goal setting is absolutely vital to any kind of success. But while it’s important to have big, over-arching goals, we also need to set small goals along the way. Small goals help us feel encouraged and accomplished on the health  journey towards the larger goal instead of feeling discouraged we’re not already where we ultimately want to be. For example, if your goal is to someday run a marathon, you can set smaller goals to work up to it – first you could run a 5k, then a 10k, and then a half-marathon until you reach your ultimate goal. Small goals help you prove to yourself that you can do hard things, keep the promises you make to yourself, and accomplish anything you set out to do.

In case you haven't seen it, check out our first Teacher Health Journey episode here.

Carolina Fransen is the EdTech Apps and Tools Editor at SimpleK12.com. She writes regularly about the use of educational technology in K-12 classrooms. If you have an app, tool, website, or service that you think we should know about, please send your information or tip to editor@simplek12.com.