With warm summer days behind us and chilly afternoons on the horizon, fall is a time when many of us start to slack on our wellness goals. Seasonal sniffles and winnowing daylight don’t make it any easier, but those factors make it all that more important to double down on health and wellness.
Fortunately, autumn offers unique (and fun!) wellness activity opportunities to bolster your physical, mental, nutritional, financial, and social health. Here are ten research-backed fall wellness tips to help you stay healthy and happy at home or in the workplace. You can even use these ideas to keep your wellness program fresh in the fall!
Our List
- Discover Fall Outdoor Activities
- …But Stay Hydrated
- Practice Healthy Handwashing
- Enjoy Seasonal Fall Nutrition
- Play Fall Sports
- Participate in Fall Holiday Wellness Celebrations
- Refocus on Your Mental Health
- Foster Social Wellness
- Get a Wellness Checkup
- Get Enough Sleep
10 Fall Wellness Tips
Use these fall health and wellness tips to inspire your initiatives at home and at work.
1. Discover Fall Outdoor Activities
Though temperatures are dropping, getting outdoors in the fall is a great way to maintain overall wellness. In fact, spending time outdoors has been shown to improve mental health, concentration, and focus while lowering heart rate, blood pressure, and cortisol levels (UC Davis).
Moreover, outdoor activities help you get the sunlight you need for your body to produce vitamin D. It’s easier during summer months when around 25% of your body is exposed to the sun, as you only need around ten minutes of sunlight daily. But in winter, when only around 10% of your skin is exposed, you could need up to two hours of sunlight to produce the vitamin D you need (UCLA Health).
Autumn falls somewhere in between, so it’s important to get outside and enjoy the brisk air. Outdoor autumn wellness tips include:
- Walk daily (go on nature walks to behold the beautiful fall foliage)
- Yard work, such as raking leaves
- Pick apples at an orchard or visit a pumpkin patch
- Go to a haunted cornfield, cornfield maze, or on a hayride
RELATED: Healthy Work Environment Examples to Upgrade Your Employees’ Physical Wellbeing
2. … But Stay Hydrated
We all know hot summer months can lead to hydration if you don’t keep up with your water intake, but studies have shown that cooler weather can also dehydrate you due to factors such as:
- Respiratory water loss
- Sweating under layers of clothing
- Cold-induced diuresis
- Reduced fluid intake (we don’t feel thirsty)
Experts recommend that women drink 11 cups and men drink 16 cups of fluid daily. Fluid intake should increase by one to three cups per hour during physical activity (Penn State).
RELATED: 21 Summer Wellness Ideas
3. Practice Healthy Handwashing
Colds, the flu, and now Covid are all common fall illnesses, underscoring the importance of practicing healthy handwashing habits. In fact, 80% of common infections are spread by hands (BC Centre for Disease Control) while handwashing can prevent 30% of digestive tract infections and 20% of respiratory infections (CDC).
As simple as it might sound, handwashing offers an excellent workplace wellness education opportunity. The CDC says handwashing education is proven to:
- Reduce the number of people who get diarrhea by up to 40%
- Reduce respiratory illnesses by up to 21%
- Reduce absenteeism due to gastrointestinal illnesses by up to 57%
This is one of the easiest fall wellness tips to follow – find CDC recommendations for handwashing here.
RELATED: 15 (No Cost) Employee Wellness Strategies
4. Enjoy Seasonal Fall Nutrition
Fall is ripe with delicious and healthy nutrition opportunities. An autumn staple, pumpkin alone offers significant wellness benefits as it’s a rich source of proteins, carbohydrates, and healthy fats with anti-inflammatory and antioxidative properties (National Library of Medicine).
Other in-season produce includes apples, pumpkins, pears, squash, cranberries, sweet potatoes, eggplant, and beets. Consider these fall nutrition ideas:
- Make healthy soups from in-season produce
- Get fresh produce from local farmer’s markets
- Host fall-themed cooking classes or potlucks at work
RELATED: Ways to Boost Nutrition in the Workplace
5. Play Fall Sports
Indoor and outdoor sports can help you maintain your cardio, strength, and overall health during the fall. Organize a charity tournament, participate in a fall fitness challenge, or join a fall sports league. Fall fitness tips include:
- 5Ks and walking challenges
- Volleyball, basketball, flag football, and pickleball leagues and tournaments
- Yoga
- Weight training
- Biking
- Hiking
- Indoor swimming
- Disc golf (a fun way to get your steps in!)
RELATED: 50 Office Fitness Challenges
6. Participate in Fall Holiday Wellness Celebrations
Holiday wellness celebrations are outstanding ways to combine healthy nutrition and social wellness in the workplace. They also provide opportunities for celebrating cultural diversity around holidays such as Halloween, Oktoberfest, Thanksgiving, Day of the Dead, and Rosh Hashana. Holiday-themed fall wellness ideas include:
- Share holiday recipes with coworkers
- Better yet, make holiday-themed dishes and share them over a potluck
- Host holiday-themed lunch and learns featuring cultural fare
RELATED: 18 DEI Activities for the Workplace
7. Refocus on Your Mental Health
Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) often sets in during the fall (National Library of Medicine) and affects ten million Americans (Boston University), or about 5% of the U.S. population (Mental Health America) – and it can affect as nearly as 10% of people in some states (National Library of Medicine).
Even if you don’t suffer from seasonal depression, autumn is a good time to refocus on your mental health as it’s easy to get down when the days begin to turn cold and sunlight wanes.
- Practice mindfulness or start journaling, focusing on the positives in your life
- Do a digital detox. Instead of turning on the screen, get active
- Go outdoors (see our recommendations above)
- Get social (see ideas below)
RELATED: How to Improve Mental Health in the Workplace
8. Foster Social Wellness
Cooler weather often means more time indoors, but that can put you at risk of social isolation during the fall. Per the CDC, social isolation:
- Increases premature death risk from all causes to levels similar to smoking, obesity, and inactivity
- Increases dementia risk by 50%
- Increases risk of heart disease and stroke by 29% and 32%, respectively
In addition, there is an association between loneliness and depression, anxiety, and suicide.
Make a plan to foster social wellness this fall. Ideas include:
- Attending holiday celebrations
- Volunteering with causes you care about
- Attending backyard bonfires (or host a workplace bonfire)
- Hold workplace contests, such as jack o’ lantern carving or painting
- Sponsor a fall festival booth
- Join a group or club (books, films, cooking, sports, etc.)
RELATED: 16 Staff Wellness Ideas for Creating a Healthier Workplace
9. Get a Wellness Checkup
With colds, the flu, RSV, Covid, and seasonal allergies, fall is a great time for a wellness checkup. Studies have shown that wellness visits offer tremendous value in identifying previously undiagnosed conditions, which can lead to early treatment. Consider these fall health tips:
- See if your workplace offers biometric screenings as part of its wellness program
- Consider getting recommended vaccines and flu shots
- Make a plan to deal with seasonal allergies
- Host a fall health fair in your workplace
RELATED: How to Do Biometric Screening: The Complete Guide
10. Get Enough Sleep
Changing seasons, daylight savings time, and back-to-school schedules can disrupt the routine you’ve become accustomed to over summer, so be sure to get enough sleep.
- Many experts recommend that adults get seven hours of sleep each night
- Sleep restores cells and removes toxins (University of Wisconsin)
- It also promotes heart health, a healthy weight, learning, and memory (UC Davis)
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Excellent tips. These are simple actions that will help us fight colds during the autumn period. It is worth fighting for your better health, there is nothing difficult about it. Physical activity, healthy eating and good sleep will help us to be healthy.
Thank you for your response! We agree, wellness does not have to be hard and so often-simpler is better!
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