Coping with mental health during coronavirus

Photo by Craig Adderley on Pexels.com

Dear reader,

I’d be lying to you if I said this coronavirus situation hasn’t had a deep impact on my life. I remember first hearing about coronavirus around January time and not thinking much of it until cases started to appear in the UK. It was at that point that I started to dread my morning commute on the London tube because let’s be honest, personal space is non-existent there so if I was going to get corona it was likely to be on the tube rather than in the leafy suburb where I live.

I remember things getting so bad to the point that I started getting chest pains the night before I was told that I could work from home. I was so grateful as I didn’t know how I was going to cope coming into the office every day.

To say that coronavirus has had an impact on my mental health would be an understatement. It has torn my world upside down. For a while, I felt like a prisoner in my own home and was so overwhelmed with what was going on. Slowly but surely, I’ve found ways to cope and I thought I’d share these with you for anyone else going through the same thing as me. If you take one thing away from this post, may it be the fact that you do not need to function ‘normally’ as the current state of the world is far from normal.

So here are my tips for coping with mental health during coronavirus:

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Why I will never diet ever again

Hi readers,

Summer has been great so far but I have to admit to you something crazy that I did before going on my holiday to Turkey.

As I was counting down the days to my holiday I decided I would have to get fit super quick to get that ‘summer body ‘ and the only way would be to diet and do intense exercise everyday.   I went about this firstly by cutting down my food intake insanely by simply eating soup and bread for lunch and dinner. Then exercising intensely one part of my body then twenty minutes of cardio.

The soup diet only lasted two days as I quickly realised that, although the food wasn’t bloating me,  eating soup wasn’t giving me enough energy for my day.  Especially since I was working out intensely. Therefore I decided to change my soup diet to a balanced diet. This meant eating carbs again with meat but in small quantities. With this change I felt much better and didn’t feel hungry all the time and could workout effectively. I actually found some nice recipes and will incorporate these in my day to day diet regardless of whether I want to prepare for a summer body or not. Here are some pictures of my meals :

In regards to exercise,  it’s intensity wasn’t healthy for me even if it seemed in theory it was. This was because after 3 days of intense exercise,  even if I was focusing on different body parts,  just wasn’t effective when I was getting extremely tired from it.  The one rest day a week wasn’t enough and actually I needed two to be able to keep up to the level that I wanted to work out at. I then decided to workout 3/4 times a week and felt much better as well as feeling my workouts were more effective.

In conclusion,  I figured out that sometimes the best theoretical plans are not the best. Yes eating less and exercising more are key components to getting fitter or loosing weight for that summer body but it must be done in moderation.  Look after your body in the best way you can.  Being healthy doesn’t have to be yucky, you can actually have fun during workouts and eat tasty dishes.

Lots of love,
Charlotte xoxo