Improve your winter wellness - The Derbyshire Benevolent Trust

Hello! I’m Steph, a Registered Associate Nutritionist (ANutr) and resident Nutrition Advisor for the DBT. I’ve popped on here to give you some advice for keeping active and healthy through the winter months!

With the days getting colder and the sun setting earlier, it can be easy to just want to stay inside in the warm, pushing any idea of exercise aside. In reality, it’s during this time that exercise is important: for bone health, physical health and mental health.

There has been copious amounts of research linked into mental health, exercise and winter months. Findings show that, on average, more mental health issues arise throughout the months of October to March, but adding in around 30 minutes of exercise a day improves overall mental health, motivation and positivity. Most importantly, exercise is part of the main process to strengthen and maintain bone density. The more sedentary and less physically active you become, you increase the risk of lower bone density and osteoporosis, which can lead to easier bone fractures and breakages.

There are many forms of exercise that can be undertaken (I know that physical activity isn’t everyone’s cup of tea), and it can take some trial and error to find what you enjoy!

What can I do?

If you are a fan of going to the gym and are able to, then this offers a wide range of activities that you could take part in. From cardio sessions, weight-lifting, body weight workouts, classes or working with a Personal Trainer. All of these have positive impacts on physical and mental health. The gym environment is not something that everyone enjoys, so below is a non-exhaustive list of options that you could try out.

Home workouts:

Youtube workout videos – HIIT workouts, yoga, Pilates, body weight workouts
- You can follow 30-day challenges, pick and change what you want and is great to find what works for you
Apps- FIIT, Shreddy, Nike Active etc.
- There is a wide range of apps, some free and some have a small charge but are great to keep you accountable, add variety and give you set workouts to challenge yourself, whilst also being able to track your progress

Outdoor activities:

Walking- brisk walking or hiking for at least 30 minutes, 5 times a week
- Perfect to do before work, in breaks or even doing longer walks at the weekend
Running/jogging- 75 minutes a week of running or jogging
- Track on apps such as Strava and see your improvements, set new challenges etc.
- New to running? Try Couch25K, perfect to get you started!
Cycling- try cycling to work, if you are able
- Weather dependant, but cycling around the local area, parks or even cycling trails is great physical activity that’s not high impact

Throughout the winter months, we seem to be bombarded with messages and adverts from the health sector about what we should be doing to keep healthy through the winter. They say that all these ‘super foods’, ‘multi-vitamins for immune health’ and ‘winter defence’ products should be purchased to keep us going. To put it straight, you probably don’t need any of these. Your daily diet is more than able to provide you with all the vitamins, minerals and good stuff that you need. These multi-vitamins are going to set you back a fair few £’s and what your body doesn’t use is just going to end up in the toilet (literally speaking, flushed through your kidneys and urinated out…)

Now, there is only one supplement that is recommended for everyone in the UK from October to March, and that’s Vitamin D. The main source of Vitamin D is sunlight, and here in the UK our skin can only utilise and absorb it from April to September. Through the winter months, it is recommended that everyone takes 10µg of Vitamin D a day. We can also find Vitamin D in certain foods, such as fortified foods (flour, breakfast cereals and margarines), egg yolks, oily fish, red meat and liver.

Alongside this, we also need a good amount of Calcium. Vitamin D and Calcium work together, increase and support absorption to promote bone and teeth strength/health and support the immune system. Calcium is also important for nerve functioning, blood clotting and enzyme action. As you can see, both of these are very important nutrients we need to make sure are actively present in our daily diet.

We can get calcium from a range of food sources; cow’s milk, lacto-free milk, goat’s milk, hemp milk (and other fortified alternative milks); cheese and alternative cheese; yoghurts and alternative yoghurts; porridge; tofu; nuts and seeds; beans, legumes and pulses; wholegrain bread; and leafy green vegetables.

Getting in your 5-a-day is the important factor. You may have heard the term ‘Eat the rainbow’ (skittles don’t count- haha!), this refers to the fact that the different colours in your fruit and vegetables will provide you with a mixture of vitamins and minerals that do different jobs within your body. This includes; fresh, frozen, tinned (in own juices) and dried fruit (with no added sugars). A portion of fruit or veg is 80g (30g for dried fruit), which is roughly 2 handfuls. Getting 1-2 portions in at every meal or using a portion as a snack is an easy way to hit the 5-a-day target!

Overall, there aren’t any major changes that you should be doing, no matter what these adverts are telling you. Only if your GP has recommended that you need supplements for anything else, then it’s safe to stick to a Vitamin D supplement and happily rely on your diet to support the rest and provide you with all the nutrients you need!

With all that in mind, you’re now ready to go fuel yourself through the winter and keep active with a whole range of activities to try! Go on, go try something new and you never know, you might actually enjoy it!

I’ve not received a password reset email?

Be sure to check spam folders, Some email providers may consider the email to be a spam email and automatically file it into your spam folder.

The email is not in my Spam folder?

Some email providers may have very strict spam blocking in place. If this is happening you can add our email address to your ‘white list’

To do this please follow the instructions in the below links, by choosing your mail provider and adding the email: “admin@derbyshirebenevolenttrust.com” to your whitelist.

AOL

Add the “admin@derbyshirebenevolenttrust.com” to your AOL address book:

Click the “Mail Options” menu and select “Address Book”.
Inside the “Address Book” window, click the “Add” button.
Inside the “Address Card for New Contact” window cut and paste “admin@derbyshirebenevolenttrust.com” into the “Other E-Mail” field.
Make our From address the “Primary E-Mail” address by checking the associated check box to the right of it.
Click the “Save” button.

If the mailing is in your SPAM Folder, you can open the email and click the “This Is Not Spam” button.

Gmail

Add the From address you want to receive mailings from to your Gmail Contacts List:

Click “Contacts” along the left side of any Gmail page.
Click “Create Contact”.
Copy and paste “admin@derbyshirebenevolenttrust.com” into the primary email address dialog box.
Click “Save”.

If the mailing is in your SPAM folder, check the box next to the mailing and click the “Not Spam” button along the top.

Hotmail/Outlook/Live

Add the From address you want to receive mailings from to your Hotmail Safe List:

Open your mailbox and click “Options” (upper right hand corner).
Click the “Junk E-Mail Protection” link.
Select the “Safe List” link.
Copy and paste “admin@derbyshirebenevolenttrust.com” into the dialog box titled “Type an address or domain”.
Click the “Add” button next to the dialog box.

If the mailing is in your “Junk E-Mail Folder”, open the email and click the “Not Junk” button.

You should also check that the mailing’s email address is not in your Blocked Senders list. You can find your Blocked Senders list by following the directions above and going to “Blocked Senders List” instead of “Safe List”. If you see the mailing’s from address on this list, select it and click the Remove button.

Mozilla Thunderbird

Add the From address you want to receive mailings from to your Thunderbird Address Book and configure your Junk Mail Controls to white list your address book.

Add an address into your Personal Address Book:

Click the “Address Book” button.
Make sure the Personal Address Book is highlighted.
Click the “New Card” button.
Under the “Contact” tab, copy and paste “admin@derbyshirebenevolenttrust.com” into the Email dialog box.
Click “OK”.

White list your Personal Address Book:

From the main drop down menu, select “Tools –< Junk Mail Controls..."
This will launch the Junk Mail Controls window that has two tabs: Settings and Adaptive Filter
Under the Settings tab, update the “White Lists” module by selecting Personal Address Book from the pull down menu and then check mark the box next to “Do not mark messages as junk mail”.
Click “OK”.

If the mailing is in your junk folder, right-click the mailing and choose “Mark –< As Not Junk".[/vc_column_text][/vc_tta_section][vc_tta_section title="Netscape Mail" tab_id="1498728551530-a54d18f1-2c51"][vc_column_text]Set up a filter to redirect the mailing you want to receive into your inbox:

From the Edit drop down menu, select “Message Filters”.
Click “New”, and give the new filter a name (e.g. “Whitelist”).
Change the drop down on the left to “sender” and the one in the middle to “is”.
Copy and paste username@domain.com into the box on the right.
Make the bottom two drop downs “Move to folder” and “Inbox”.
Click “OK”.
Make sure that your new filter is located at the top of the Message Filter list so it is run before any spam filter.

Outlook 2003/2007

Add the address you want to receive mailings from to your Safe Senders list:

On the Tools menu, click “Options”.
On the Preferences tab, click “Junk E-mail”.
On the Safe Senders tab, click “Add”.
In the Add address box, copy and paste in username@domain.com and click OK.

If you are using a different version of Outlook you can add the mailers From address to your Address Book. This can be done by opening the email, right clicking the From address, and selecting “Add To Contacts”. You can also access your Address Book via the tools drop down menu.

Yahoo

Set up a filter to redirect the mailing you want to receive in your inbox:

Open your mailbox and click on “Mail Options” (upper right hand corner).
Select “Filters” under the Management column.
Click the “Add” button on the Filters page.
In the “From header:” row, make the drop down “contains” and put the mailer’s from address username@domain.com in the box.
At the bottom of the page Click the “Choose Folder” pull down menu and select “Inbox”.
Click the “Add Filter” button.

If the mailing is in your Yahoo Bulk Folder open the email and click the “Not Spam” button. You should also check that the mailing’s email address is not in your “Blocked Addresses” list. You can find your “Blocked Addresses” list by clicking “Mail Options” and then clicking the “Blocked Addresses” link under the Spam column. If you see the mailing’s from address on this list, select it and click the “Remove Block” button.

Others

The most common way to whitelist an address is to add it to your address book, white list, or safe list. There is no universal way to whitelist an address, so if this is not an option, you will have to consult the help section associated with your email application. They should have instructions on how to whitelist an address there.