Lockdown is certainly beginning to take its toll on the best of us! However, we are here to help keep you on track to maintain your healthy lifestyle until we can re-open our facilities. It is incredibly important to note that staying healthy in lockdown is not purely about your physical fitness. Instead, it is a mixture of attributes: your diet, your mental health, social interaction, and many more.
Here at VR Leisure, we understand the importance of your mental health and wellbeing and know that lockdown can be a difficult time for many individuals. We believe that these five key factors may help to achieve a healthier outlook:

• Connecting with other people,
• Being physically active,
• Learning new skills,
• Sharing with others,
• Eating healthy.

Connecting with Other People

During these times of prolonged isolation and uncertainty, it is more important than ever to stay connected to those around you. Whether this is digitally or in person, staying connected to family and friends will boost your morale and stop those feelings of loneliness that can often creep in.

One way that could keep you connected to others are online fitness classes. Not only will you get your fitness fix and maintain your healthy lifestyle, but you will also spend time and interact with other people. At VR Leisure, we recently launched our online coaching portal where members, and non-members, can gain access to 1-2-1 virtual advice and sessions. These sessions are proving vital to many in the VR family. They are a great escape from the stresses and strains of lockdown life and provide the much-needed motivation to reach your fitness goals. For more information on our online portal, please contact us.

Being Physically Active

Physical activity can help to maintain a healthy immune system, which is incredibly important within the conditions we are currently living under, it increases white blood cell circulation and therefore raises your body temperature. Research also shows that regular physical activity can also boost self-esteem, mood, sleep quality, and energy. As well as this, it can also reduce your risk of stress, depression, dementia, and even Alzheimer’s disease. Unsure where to start? You can check out our at-home workout videos on our social media platforms to help get you started and give you ideas for the best workouts that’ll suit you.

Learning New Skills

Learning new skills is a great way to pre-occupy your mind and keep yourself busy. It is important for being able to work on both your personal and professional developments whilst allowing yourself to have fun. There are many different skills in which you can undertake: learning a new language, learning how to cook, perhaps even learning new workout routines – there are many different individual and unique skills you can undertake to keep your busy. Research also shows that learning a new skill can help you learn things faster over a long period of time. By stimulating neurons within your brain, more neural pathways are therefore formed and electrical impulses then travel faster when you attempt to process new information, meaning learning new skills is increasing your intelligence whilst having fun with your new lockdown hobby.

Sharing with Others

Arguably, perhaps one of the toughest aspects of lockdown for a lot of us is not being able to physically see our family and friends. This can easily begin to take its toll upon our mental health, however, it can easily be avoided by ensuring we stay connected and sharing our thoughts with others: video calls, social media, doing online activities together, texting. It is important to realise that you’re never alone within these unknown times and that reaching out to another person will not only help yourself but will inevitably help them too. Everyone must try to lift each other up more than ever to ensure that we all get through this together, which we all will. The team at VR Leisure are always more than happy to help and are simply a message away.

Healthy Eating

‘A healthy outside starts with your inside’, an important quote to remember. It is important that your diet is correct to ensure you are allowing yourself to gain the most potential when it comes to your healthy lifestyle and fitness goals. Ensuring that you eat healthily will not only allow you to reduce body fat but will also encourage you to feel more confident whilst reducing the risk of illness. Frequent studies indicate that eating healthy food and maintaining a healthy diet is one of the most important aspects to sustain a healthy balanced life. Much like taking part in physical activity, healthy eating has many health benefits: reducing the risk of heart disease, obesity, strokes etc., but it can also boost a person’s mental health, their overall mood and provide them with more energy. If you struggle with cooking healthy meals, VR Leisure can help, we provide freshly cooked, restaurant-quality meal-prep meals, you can find out more information and how to order our meals here.

We are here to give you guidance and advice which will allow you to focus on you and your goals within a supportive and friendly environment, both virtually and in-person when our gym re-opens. By trying the above 5 key factors you may notice you’ll have more energy, reduced stress & anxiety, improved sleep, happiness, and self-confidence, which are all key factors to a healthy lifestyle.

Of course, we understand that all this information can sometimes be overwhelming, and it is important to note that this is not an overnight process, but the VR Leisure team is here to help you every step of the way. We are looking forward to seeing you all back in the gym when we re-open, stay safe!