Key Messages
Recharge Your Body: Sleep for optimal daily functioning, it's the most effective thing you can do for your health each day
Restore Your Mind: Sleep for memory and creativity, mental wellness, and mood and emotion regulation
Rest: Sleep is a necessity, not a luxury. Strive for 7-9 hours of consistent, quality sleep each night
Eat Intuitively: Give yourself permission to eat any food when you're hungry
Weight is not Worth: Who you are isn't dictated by your body size or shape
Eat Whole and Fun Foods: Get a variety of foods, ranging from veggies to dessert, each day
Get Enough Fuel: This means 3 meals and 2-3 snacks for college students
Listen
What messages do you receive related to your body and physical health? Listen to these new perspectives, reframing the way we think about our health with the hope of cultivating more balance in our lives.
Nutrition
Not all food is created equal, and climate change is having an effect on nutrient content of food.
Ted Talk: NUTRITION: How climate change could make our food less nutritious | Kristie Ebi
Podcast: Leah Penniman on Farming While Black
Exercise
Listen to neuroscientist Wendy Suzuki talk about the benefits of exercise for the brain. Consider your relationship with exercise and if you look at exercise the same way.
Ted Talk: EXERCISE: The brain-changing benefits of exercise | Wendy Suzuki
Podcast: What Makes Athletes Tick? | Meb Keflezighi
Sleep
In this short talk, Arianna Huffington shares a small idea that can awaken much bigger ones: the power of a good night's sleep.
Ted Talk: SLEEP: How to succeed? Get more sleep | Arianna Huffington
Alcohol
What really causes addiction — to everything from cocaine to smart-phones? And how can we overcome it? Johann Hari has seen our current methods fail firsthand, as he has watched loved ones struggle to manage their addictions.
Ted Talk: ALCOHOL & DRUGS: Everything you think you know about addiction is wrong
Podcast: Inside the Current State of College Drinking Culture
Do
Are you willing to do an experiment to help you feel better about your body and physical health? We want to challenge you to try something new in the hopes of building new skills for your toolbox.
1. Appreciate Your Body: Have you ever wondered how appreciative you are of your body and how you can work on it? Do the Body Appreciation Activity.
If you're a female-identified student, sign up for a Body Project session.
2. Say No to Diet talk: Often, we are pushed to do things we don't want to do because we feel we 'should' for various reasons, especially around food, body and exercise. Setting boundaries is a form of self care. If you have a family member or friend who talks regularly of dieting, food, body weight or shape, exercise, etc tell them you do not want to talk about it anymore. Or, if you are asked to go out when you don't want to, wear something you don't feel comfortable in, or eat something you don't want to eat or aren't hungry for, practice saying NO!
*Register for Nutrition Group Health Coaching
Thursday, February 6th 6-7 pm Gasson 013
*Calling all Male-Identified Students: Males struggle with body image too, and we want to help. Take this survey and tell us anonymously about your challenges around nutrition and body image and how we can best address them.
1. Assess Your Exercise Patterns: Ask yourself the following: Do you like movement? Are there challenges to doing exercise at BC? Do you have over exercising tendencies like exercising even though you're tired, feeling guilty for taking a rest day, pushing yourself only to change your body, or using exercise just to burn calories, etc? What is your relationship with exercise like? Exercise should be fun, not a stress in your life. Make a goal around either engaging in, changing, or stepping away from an activity. For instance, if you feel guilty for taking rest days, practice doing just that. If BC Rec is an intimidating place, ask a friend to go with you to a group class.
2. Change Up your insta feed: Did you know there are 500,000 influencers on instagram who post pictures of their bodies and promote products, especially weight loss and exercise products? Research shows following fitness and food accounts leads to more body dissatisfaction. Unfollow people you're following that regularly post about exercise and physical activity. This will help your subconscious not be influenced as much by these images, and free up brain space to make your own decisions around exercise for reasons that challenge your body and are fun, not to change your body.
1. ASSess Your Sleep: Take the Sleep Survey and assess the quality, quantity, and consistency of your sleep. Then create a weekly sleep goal for yourself, i.e. # of hours you want to get each night, on average, or in total for that week or include strategies to enhance your sleep environment to help you get quality sleep. Set a reward that you will give yourself once you meet your goal. Meet with a trained Sleep Health Coach to discuss your score and set more sleep goals! Schedule an appointment here.
2. Set a Consistent Schedule:Having a consistent sleep schedule is important and getting 7-9 hours of sleep is important, but it doesn’t matter when you sleep and wake as long as it's consistent throughout the week and weekends. Try going to bed and waking up at the same time every day for a week, then try a different time the next week. Notice how your rhythm is different, any changes physically or mentally. Once you find the sleep and wake times that fit best with your body, try and stick to that schedule as best you can week to week. Check out the Circadian Rhythm handout to see where you're at.
*Register for Sleep Group Health Coaching
Monday, February 24th 3-4 pm
Reflect
What have you learned as a result of listening and engaging in new activities related to your body and physical health?
Let's Talk More...
We want to help you find joy in your journey, wherever you’re at. We have many resources within Center for Student Wellness and throughout campus to continue this conversation—we’re here to listen, reflect, and help you set and achieve health goals that feel intuitive, sustainable, and balanced.
Meet with a Peer Wellness Coach
Engage in a conversation about your health and wellness goals related to caring for your body - in the areas of sleep and general health, body image and exercise, and alcohol and other drugs!
Visit bc.edu/wellnesscoach to schedule your Wellness Coaching session and learn about each type of appointment, or use the links below to sign up directly through google calendar.
Health Coaching
Body Project
Nutritionist
ADE
BC Rec
UCS
UHS
1. Farmer’s Market at Corcoran, CSA, and Pop-Up Dining Events
2. 1:1 Body image conversations with a health coach
3. iNourish group nutrition coaching
4. Body Project
5. Volunteer opportunities in food system:
The Food Project (Dorchester)
The Daily Table (Dorchester)
Allandale Farm in Brookline - one of Boston's oldest working farms
6. See Kate, campus nutritionist
Body image conversation with Health Coach
iNourish group coaching on exercise
BC Recreation
Individual iSleep appointment
iSleep group coaching
Sleep Screening
UCS and UHS
ADE: Voluntary Appointments
Connect Program
Alcohol Screenings
UCS and UHS