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What are the benefits of being mentally healthy?

As important as the body is, the mind is just as important to stay fit and healthy!
Leanne Spencer

Leanne Spencer

3 Min Read

What are the benefits of staying mentally healthy? Intuitively we know that we need to look after our mental health, but what is the real significance of neglecting that?

It falls into three simple things:

Cognitive Performance
We need to look after our mind and stay mentally active and mentally fit to ensure that we have good longevity of health span when it comes to our cognitive performance. We want to be fit, well and thinking sharply and on our feet as we age. Ways that you can do that would be focusing on exercising the brain in the same way that we exercise the body. You could try learning a new skill, getting into your discomfort zone every now and again, doing crosswords, doing games that actually blend – this has been proven with scientific studies, that you should blend physical movement with mental agility. A great example of that would be a sport like badminton, where you’re having to think about where you’re placing the shuttlecock, as well as actively covering the court.

Longevity of health span
When we are mentally sharp it’s going to significantly extend our health span from a fitness perspective. Most people who keep their mind’s fit are also keeping their bodies very active – you’re also more likely to have a longer health span. We don’t want to have a long life, but for the last 20 years you’ve been assisted in walking, in feeding yourself, in taking yourself off to the toilet. You want to have longevity of health span for as long as you possibly can. My ambition is to still be fit both mentally and physically by the age 100. I still want to be walking, I still want to be doing everything for myself – that’s my goal.

Resilience
The last benefit of staying mentally active is resilience – it helps us to respond better to stress, so your personal sustainability. How you endure stress and respond and bounce back from it is absolutely critical. When we’re mentally active and our resilience is better, we’re going to better deal with stressful situations. We’re also going to have more bandwidth to look after our physical health. That’s looking after our sleep, our energy levels, our body composition, our digestive health, our overall holistic fitness for the rigours of daily life.

As important as the body is, the mind is just as important to stay fit and healthy!

What’s your Health IQ?

If you’re reading this, you’re are probably in a reasonably senior position, running your own business or have a busy life running the home and juggling other responsibilities. Either way, you’re busy. The convergent pressures of work and family life have probably meant that the time you did have to spend on health and fitness has disappeared. Why not talk to us and see how we can help.

Click here to take our test.

Leanne Spencer is an entrepreneur, coach, TEDx Speaker, author of Remove the Guesswork, and founder of Bodyshot Performance Limited. Bodyshot is a health and fitness consultancy that helps busy professionals get more energy by removing the guesswork around their health, fitness and nutrition. Visit www.bodyshotperformance.com or email [email protected] to register your interest in our services and connect with us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

Author(s)

  • Leanne Spencer

    Leanne is an award-winning entrepreneur and the founder of Bodyshot Performance Limited. She delivered a TEDx talk on 'Why fitness is more important than weight', is the author of bestselling books 'Remove the Guesswork' and 'Rise and Shine', and hosts a podcast called ’Remove the Guesswork‘. Leanne is the founder of Bodyshot Performance, an award-winning health and wellbeing company. Bodyshot Performance work with businesses of up to 500 people who want to create a culture of energy, vitality and performance through the business and position wellbeing as a competitive advantage. Bodyshot intersect the latest science and technology to provide unique solutions to the challenge of wellbeing in the workplace that have a direct impact on the bottom line. Our clients have won awards for wellbeing and recognise it directly improves employee engagement and retention and attracts talent into the business.  We also work with chronically stressed or burned out professionals to get you back in control of your health and able to do the things you want to do in life. My expertise is around health, fitness and wellbeing, specifically focusing on sleep, mental health, energy, body composition, digestion and fitness. I host a popular podcast on iTunes called ’Remove the Guesswork ‘, and in November 2016 I delivered a TEDx talk on 'Why fitness is more important than weight'. I’m the author of the bestselling books 'Remove the Guesswork' and 'Rise and Shine' and I regularly speak to corporates on health and wellbeing. My personal values are to live truthfully, considerately and to "suck all the marrow out of life" as Thoreau said. I support the charity Diversity Role Models which works to combat homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying. I recently completed the world’s toughest ski race to raise £10,125 for Alzheimer's Research as my father-in-law was profoundly ill with Alzheimers, and I am on a constant mission to find ways to live in a way that is sustainable and environmentally friendly. I love sport, fitness, reading, gardening, business, podcasting, and being with my cat and our scampish little rescue dog, Kami from Romania.