5 small steps on a path to wellness

We took the Nestlé Choose Wellness quiz and were a bit shocked at the results.

I thought we lived pretty well. But what we’re discovering is that living well, and wellness, are very different kettle of fish. In fact, it would be safe to say we’ve been living a little too well…

So, we decided to turn over a new leaf this Spring. We’re on a new path towards wellness.

There’s just one catch. Our path feels more like negotiating snakes and ladders, than following the yellow brick road. After a few rungs up, we find ourselves sliding back down the slippery snake.

As guides, we really owe it to our children to model wellness behaviours and mindsets. Sleeping well, eating well, lots of mental and physical exercise, taking time to be in the moment, laughing more, getting involved in your community and finding more reasons to get outside as a family.

But, we also need to keep it simple. To take baby steps. And to let one change in behaviour bed in, before we attempt another.

We came up with a very simple list of 5 changes to make over the next 5 weeks. And we challenge you to come up with your own 5 for your family.

5 small steps on the path to wellness
Walking to kindy

There’s always some reason not to walk to kindy. We’re running late, the wind’s a bit chilly, our daughter’s a bit tired, we’re a bit tired. But really these are just excuses. Sure, if it’s raining, we’ll definitely take the car. But on fine days we’re going to try our best to walk to kindy.

Always on the look out for data, I plugged our walking route into this walking calorie burn calculator and was pleasantly surprised to see 238 calories being burned. That’s equivalent to a light session at the gym! We’re definitely going to do a more of this one.

Breakfast oat cups

We’ve been meaning to make a healthy version of oatmeal breakfast cups for ages. We used Uncle Tobys Ancient Grains oats, that have Rye, Puffed Millet and Quinoa in them, which all sound like things that should be good for us! We used a little rice malt syrup for sweetness, and a little organic cocoa powder for yumness. For the filling we used sweetened greek yoghurt with maple syrup and vanilla powder, and a little more cocoa.

And, yes, they are absolutely yum! Check out the breakfast oat cups recipe here.

Cosmic Kids Yoga

Yoga is something we used to do together for regular exercise. Then we had kids, and found any old excuse not to go. We’ve been using our kids as an excuse to not do yoga. So we thought, ‘what about using our kids as the excuse to do yoga?’

Sure enough, a quick search on Youtube uncovered the truly awesome Cosmic Kids Yoga. Seriously, your kids will love this. It takes kid-friendly ideas like moon trips, pirates and popcorn, even Harry Potter and Frozen, and turns them into yoga workouts. Within a week, our daughter is down-dogging with the best of them! And the best thing about this is that we’re exercising together as a family. This one is giving us wellness in spades.

Playing in the park

We often take our daughter to the playground. But when we thought about it, it’s really our daughter having a play, and we’re, well, watching…

There’s a park only about a 5 minute walk from our house. So we grabbed a kite, and went down there. Surprisingly for Wellington, there wasn’t much wind. But we had a ton of fun running around chasing the kite! This is such a simple idea. We get fresh air and physical exercise, and we get to hang out as a family and enjoy each other. Wellness? Tick!

Sleeping more

And so we get to the end of our list. We really, really, really would like to sleep more. Let’s face it, parenting and sleep is an oxymoron.

Maybe 8 hours of blissful sleep just isn’t possible as parents with young kids. But we’re going to get better at meditating in the evenings. We’ve tried to start the Deepak Chopra/Oprah Winfrey 21 days of mediation about 5 times now, and never really got past about day 6! We’re waiting for the next one to come out, and this time we’re going to shoot for day 10, at least.

Remember, it’s all about baby steps people.

Nestlé Choose Wellness Quiz

Nestlé are running their Choose Wellness campaign all through September. More than 62,000 people have taken the Nestlé Choose Wellness quiz already. They have some great daily ideas on their #choosemywellness page, that you can put into action at your place.

We challenge you guys to take the quiz, and choose wellness for you and your family too.

And don’t forget to enter our competition to win an Uncle Tobys Oats prizepack.