While quarantine has without a doubt contained the spread of the coronavirus, maintaining your individual health has never been more difficult. Most of us are cooped up at home with minimal outside contact, striving to make sense of these uncertain times. In this situation, most of us are finding it a hard nut to crack to eat well, catch up on rest, exercise, and practice other such healthy habits, especially those that strengthen our immune systems to combat the disease. For the cherry on top, it is especially harder to maintain good mental health in the absence of routines, support systems, outdoor activities, and all such things that typically perk us up.

However, instead of drudging through the pandemic slouched up at home, reveling in misery, doctors, therapists, and other experts offer their best tips on how to stay healthy during quarantine.

Maintain Structure In Your Day

During quarantine, it may seem like your entire life has been turned topsy turvy but remember that whatever semblance of normalcy you manage to maintain in the face of such turbulent times, will benefit your mental and physical health. You can start with the most basic stuff, such as waking up, going to bed, starting, and ending work, eating meals, and exercising around the same time as you used to, every day.

Go For Regular Walks Or Runs

If you are finding it harder and harder by the day to stay cooped up within the confines of your walls, why not go out for brisk walk somewhere empty and safe where you can maintain social distancing, to keep yourself fit, healthy and active. In the foresight, it will help you feel like you are a part of the community again, albeit from a distance. Even while staying six feet away from others, you can wave or say hi to your neighbors, or even exchange a quick word. These are some amazing ways to connect with others, which will especially help to ward off feelings of loneliness and help you in the present moment.

Get Creative With Your Home Workouts

With your local gyms closed off due to the pandemic, you can still maintain your exercise regime from home. Even though you may not have all the equipment, you can use your own body weight for resistance by doing planks, lunges, and squats. You can take your workout a step further by levering common household items for weights, for instance you can lift things that have convenient handles for gripping, such as bottles of laundry detergent or jugs.

Use Compound Workout Moves

Not of all can stick to home workout routines, so it would do us best to keep the challenge alive with compound moves. For instance, you can combine four different exercises to make up one big one. Its great for when you have limited equipment, plus it works a lot of muscles at the same time. By the time you have completed a few circuits of four challenging movements, your heart rate will be pounding and you will have increased your strength.

Step Outside Your Comfort Zone

Life is giving you an opportunity to test the waters of new workout moves at home that you never had the guts to try at the gym, in the company of others. Step out of your comfort zone and practice those moves at home, so that when you do go back to the gym, you will be better able to do it with just a bit more confidence.

Help Out Others

Being isolated can leave you feeling obsolete, lonely, and powerless. That’s why you should focus your energy on doing something constructive for others. Remember that this is a global impact that has touched the lives of everyone around us. In the face of such uncertainty and dread, kindness and compassion are the best healers. Find ways to help someone in need, and this will make you feel happier and more in control.

Practice Deep Breathing

When you take a deep breath, it sends a cue to your brain to unwind. In turn, when your mind is relaxed, it helps your body relax by decreasing your blood pressure and slowing your heart rate. For starters, sit in a comfortable place and put your hand on your stomach. Inhale deeply through your nose, feeling the air entering your lungs, experience your belly expanding, and exhale through your mouth, feeling the air exiting your body, and your belly springing back inward. Repeat this up to 10 times, as necessary.

Try Progressive Muscle Relaxation

This simple exercise offers more benefits than you can imagine. Simply tense one muscle group at a time for somewhere between three and five seconds, followed by releasing all tension in your body at once. It works because when you relax your entire body, that muscle group you just tensed tends to be more relaxed than it was before the exercise. Repeat for all muscle groups, lower legs, feet, arms, lower arms, hands, fists, whole legs, then full body.

Eat Whole Foods

You already know how your diet plays a huge role in your overall health—especially during this period of quarantine. If your diet is lousy, you have a higher chance of getting sick than someone who eats a healthier diet. Bacterial infections, viruses, and other contagious diseases will hit you harder and keep you out for longer. This is why you need to stock up on whole foods, such as healthy fats, whole grains, vegetables, fruits, lean protein, which allow our bodies to respond to illnesses quickly and efficiently.

Limit Your News Intake

The news these days is all dreary and bleak. Even your social media feed is filled with the havoc wreaked by the COVID-19. If the news is taking its toll on you, try balancing out all that negativity and pessimism with activities that you find comforting and restorative. While you should stay abreast of what’s conspiring within your locality and grab the information needed to stay safe, its also important to set some boundary when it comes to how much should you expose yourself to, and adhere to strict limits.

Instead of sticking glued to the TV or your phone all day, do something to unwind such as taking a bubble bath, working out or calling up a friend when you notice you’ve reached your limit and need to unwind.