What Are You Doing to Take Care of Your Health?

What good habits for your mental and physical well-being do you practice now? What goals do you have? What tips can you offer other teens?

By Katherine Schulten

By February, the New Year’s health resolutions we make have often fallen by the wayside. But in this student forum, we hope you’ll post a comment to help reinspire yourself and others.

What are you doing that’s good for your health right now? Consider everything from your diet and exercise to the habits you have to take care of your mental health and well-being. What tips do you have for others your age?

If you’re in search of ideas, here are just a few recent pieces from the Well section that might help.

The Joy Workout suggests six research-backed moves that can improve your mood — and includes a video demonstration. Here is how the workout is introduced:

It’s no secret that exercise, even in small doses, can improve your mood. Researchers even have a name for it: the feel-better effect.

And while any physical activity — a walk, a swim, a bit of yoga — can give you an emotional boost, we wanted to create a short workout video specifically designed to make people happy. What would a “joy workout” look like?

I’m a psychologist fascinated by the science of emotion. I’ve also taught group exercise classes for more than 20 years. To design a happiness workout, I turned to the research I leverage in those classes, to maximize the joy people get from moving their bodies.

For another kind of “joy workout,” check out “Bouncing Your Way to Better Health.” Perri Ormont Blumberg writes about the “impressively effective, efficient mode of exercise” that is bouncing on a trampoline:

In one small 2016 study Dr. Porcari conducted for the American Council on Exercise, 24 college students jumped on mini trampolines for six months. During each 19-minute workout, men burned an average of 12.4 calories per minute, while women burned 9.4 calories per minute, similar to running six miles per hour on flat ground. Yet the participants rated their effort on the trampoline as lower than one would expect for that level of exertion. In short, Dr. Porcari said, they were having too much fun to notice.

Read the full article here.