When the summer really takes hold and the weather starts to get properly warm - well, hopefully anyway - it's good to incorporate some healthy habits into summer living. So here are a few of my summer health ideas:
Summer hydration - we're more likely to lose body fluid through perspiration during the hotter days, so why not stay cool as well as hydrated by taking a flask of iced water or fruit juice to work? That way you can cool down and hydrate at the same time!
Summer exercise - if it's really hot, then going for your usual run or brisk walk may not quite have the same appeal, especially if the sun is beating down and the air is humid, as it often is during the UK summer. So what to do? One option is to go swimming - it's great for exercising different muscle groups, and it's also an aerobic activity that counts towards your recommended physical exercise as suggested by the health agencies such as the NHS.
Summer food. One of the great things about summer is the food. And there's something about the hotter weather that just makes stodge unappealing. This may be some kind of evolutionary or atavistic thing - being drawn more to high energy comfort food in cold weather may have made sense in terms of enerhgy preservation in the days of prehistory. But luckily summer is a time of fruits, vegetables, salads and lovely lower fat meat such as chicken. get creative and enjoy the summer health foods - for recipe ideas there's loads on the BBC's food section as well as on sites likethe Guardian, who also seem to specialise in a lot of the more vegetable-based type of recipes, which isn't just healthy as it helps avoid consuming too much red meat, it also means (generally) lower calories too.