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Taking care of your physical body is good for your mental health. The mind and body interact and influence one another in complex ways. Physical illness can make managing your mental well-being more difficult. Stress, lack of energy, poor sleep, and other problems can also affect how you feel mentally.

Why Taking Care of Your Body Is Good for Mental Health

There are a number of reasons why taking care of your body is good for your mental health:

• Health problems affect functioning: Health problems can interfere with or even overshadow other aspects of life. Even relatively minor health issues such as aches, pains, lethargy, and indigestion can affect your happiness and stress levels.
• Poor health habits can add stress to your life: They also play a role in how well you can cope with stress. The stress that comes from poor health is significant.
• Poor health interferes with daily living: Health challenges also affect other areas of your life. Health problems can make daily tasks more challenging, create financial stress, and even jeopardize your ability to earn a living.
• Stress can worsen health: Stress itself can exacerbate health issues from the common cold to more serious conditions and diseases, so maintaining healthy habits can pay off in the long run.

One way to improve your ability to cope with stress and feel better is to make a commitment to healthier habits.

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Eat a Balanced Diet for the Right Reasons

Rather than eating right solely for the promise of looking better in your jeans, you should also commit to eating foods that will boost your energy levels and keep your system running smoothly. What you eat can not only impact your short-term and long-term health, but it can also affect your stress levels.

It’s much harder to cope with stress if you are hungry or malnourished. Hunger can make you more emotionally reactive to stressors, leaving you irritable or even angry at minor daily annoyances. Watching what you eat can be a stress management tool as well as a health preserver.

While the effects of an unhealthy diet are cumulative and become more apparent in the long term, you are also less likely to feel well in the short term if you are eating a diet heavy on sugar-laden, fatty, or nutritionally empty foods.

Some of the more immediate effects of a poor diet include feeling:

Eating well has important long-term consequences, but it may also help you feel more energetic and optimistic in the short term.

Make Sleep a Priority

Sleep can have a serious impact on your overall health and well-being. Poor sleep can take a toll on mental health and contribute to problems including anxiety, depression, mood changes, and behavior changes.

Make a commitment to get enough sleep at night. If you haven’t gotten adequate sleep, you may be less productive, less mentally sharp, and otherwise more prone to the effects of stress.

Some good habits that can help:

• Try to get a full eight hours of sleep each night.
• Avoid caffeine after 2 p.m.
• Avoid eating foods in the evening that might disrupt your sleep.
• Go to bed at the same time each night; wake up at the same time each morning.
• Create a restful sleep environment; make sure your bed is comfortable and keep the room at an optimal temperature for sleeping (between 60 and 67 degrees Fahrenheit).
• Adopt a calming technique such as meditation to help yourself relax each night before bed.

Find a Fitness Habit That Works for You

We’ve all heard the advice to eat right and exercise. Research has shown that exercise and physical activity can improve depressive symptoms and overall mood, boost mental health, and relieve stress.

However, it can be challenging to fit in workouts around a busy schedule, particularly when you’re feeling exhausted from stress. 

• Make it a habit: One effective strategy for making fitness a regular part of your life is to build an exercise habit around your other habits—either attach a workout to your morning routine or your lunchtime habits, or make it a regular part of your evening. 
• Create a daily routine: If you make a morning jog part of your getting-ready-for-work routine, for example, it is much more likely to happen than if you wait until you feel like jogging and happen to have a free half-hour, especially if you lead a busy life like most of us and are tired at the end of the day. 
• Do something you enjoy: Another important way to make exercise easier is to choose an activity that you enjoy. Some examples include walking while listening to an audiobook or attending a class at your gym where good music drives up your energy level. Finding an activity that you enjoy means that you are more likely to stick with it.

Watch What You Put Into Your Body

Avoid putting unhealthy substances into your body; nicotine, excess alcohol, and even excessive caffeine can take a toll on your health in the long run, but also make you feel lousy overall in your day-to-day life.

In addition, it also helps if you can avoid allowing toxic thinking patterns to exacerbate your stress levels as well. Find healthier ways to manage stress, and you’ll enjoy double health and stress management benefits.

Find Ways to Manage Your Stress

Stress is inevitable, but it can take a serious toll on your mind and body if it gets out of hand. Excessive stress is linked to many serious health ailments, including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity, and ulcers.

Stress management strategies that can help include:

• Practicing mindfulness: Mindfulness is an approach that involves focusing more on the here and now instead of fretting over the past or future. It can help increase your self-awareness and improve your ability to handle the daily challenges life throws your way.
• Utilize stress management techniques: Incorporate a variety of stress management tactics into your life, such as deep breathing, guided imagery, and positive self-talk. Making these a habit can help you combat stress in the short term and later down the road.
• Eat a balanced diet: A poor diet can exacerbate the adverse effects of stress. Instead of reaching for high-sugar snacks or fast food meals, focus on following a balanced diet incorporating fruits and vegetables, lean proteins, and complex carbohydrates. 

If you are feeling anxious right now and need immediate relief, there are simple, evidence-based techniques that you can use to feel calmer and more grounded. Everyone goes through periods of feeling anxious and worried. After all, it’s a normal human experience. Having tools to help you calm your mind and body can reduce the intensity and duration of these feelings. 

1. Acknowledge Your Anxiety

Acknowledging when you feel anxious allows you to take steps to ease the symptoms. The first step is to accept that you cannot control everything. To do this, the Anxiety and Depression Association of America (ADAA) recommends putting feelings of stress or anxiety in perspective.

2. Learn How Anxiety and Depression Are Connected

While not a specific strategy, understanding the connection between anxiety and depression can help you determine if what you’re dealing with is temporary or a sign of something more serious. 

According to Leela R. Magavi, MD, a psychiatrist and regional medical director for Community Psychiatry, anxiety and depression are intertwined and frequently exacerbate each other. Part of the reason, she said, is that the same neurochemicals are implicated in both conditions. 

3. Schedule a Worry Break

It may sound counterintuitive when looking at strategies to help you find relief from anxiety, but allowing yourself a short worry break each day can free up your energy to focus on the task at hand. How you set this up depends on your routine.

Earlier in the day, you can write down any worries or anxieties that creep into your mind. Then, give yourself permission to deal with them later. This allows you to go about your day while still acknowledging that something is bothering you.

Later, when you go over the worry list, make sure to set a timer. Review what you wrote, identify any thoughts that are still causing anxiety, and cross off those that don’t seem important anymore. Allow yourself a few minutes to sit with each concern.

4. Interrupt Your Thoughts

When negative thoughts or excessive worries run through your head, it can feel like there is no way to turn them off. One strategy to try is interrupting your anxious thoughts by doing something else.

While it might not work every time, you may find that taking a break from overthinking can lead to fewer intrusive thoughts throughout the day.

Here are some techniques to try:

5. Practice Mindfulness Meditation and Relaxation 

Mindfulness meditation, relaxation, and breathing exercises can help calm your mind and body, which may allow you to feel less worried.

Plus, it only takes a few minutes each day to feel a difference. Use this time to be aware of what’s going on in your mind and body. Start with five minutes a day and work your way up to mindful moments several times a day.

6. Engage in Diaphragmatic Breathing

Engaging in diaphragmatic breathing and registering bodily cues could help you better understand your emotional response to stress. Many people who experience anxiety find it helpful to partake in guided body scan meditations while breathing slowly and deeply to identify how each emotion triggers disparate sensations in their body, Magavi said.

You can use this information to think about how to respond verbally or behaviorally. She recommends using diaphragmatic breathing and pranayama, which is alternative breathing or the practice of breath control.

7. Do Something That Makes You Happy

When you’re feeling anxious and want to take your mind off the stressor, Lagoy says to carve out time to do the things you love, such as:

• Riding a bike
• Reading a book
• Painting
• Catching up with friends
• Taking a bubble bath
• Treating yourself to your favorite food

8. Consider What Your Anxiety Is Telling You

Feeling anxious isn’t always a bad thing. In fact, anxious thoughts could be your body’s way of giving you valuable information. The next time you feel worried, fearful, stressed, or have overwhelming thoughts of dread, stop and take a deep breath.

Instead of defaulting to “this is my anxiety talking,” reframe how you view the situation and ask yourself if your body is trying to tell you something.

Do you need to slow down? Maybe you’re getting sick, and your body is responding to stress. Or maybe there is a real threat, and you need to take action. 

9. Talk to a Loved One

Sometimes the best thing you can do is to call or text a friend, partner, or family member. Maybe you just want to vent, or maybe you want to be distracted for a bit. No matter the case, talking to a loved one can help you feel like you’re not alone and shift your attention to something other than the source of your anxiety.

Keep in mind that, even though loved ones mean well, they could make your anxiety worse, especially if they start freaking out too. So, if you go this route, make sure to choose someone who’s known to be calm and won’t add to your anxiety.