So many people are preoccupied with calories, grams of protein, or whether to become vegan. As a nutritional psychiatrist, I remain diet agnostic, especially for patients who seek to improve their mental well-being. In my experience, a healthy eating style is less about sticking to a specific diet and more about simply doing your best to make better food choices. So whether my patients are carnivores or vegans, I remain open to helping them eat better for their mental health....

Those healthy habits, among others, became ingrained in many people’s daily routines. Adjusting to the loss of them, and finding the motivation to pick back up, can be hard. However, making and maintaining healthy habits can be attainable. Here are my tips for doing just that: I’ve seen patients’ bodies break down due to “healthy” habits, like overexercising, undereating, or eliminating nutritious foods groups from their diets. If you begin to notice obsessive behaviors or negative effects from setting a habit, it’s no longer healthy....

Yes, all of those emotions are different, albeit they are on a similar plane. According to Harvard Medical School psychologist Susan David, Ph.D., we tend to mislabel our emotions—and especially stress. More often than not, she tells me on this episode of the mindbodygreen podcast, we file all the uncomfortable emotions we face under a giant umbrella of “stress,” without actually understanding what they truly mean. And if we can’t understand our difficult emotions, how in the world can we begin to handle them?...

Here are a few precautions you can take going back to work and how to ask for accommodations to protect yourself. To make wearing a mask all day more comfortable, I add a drop of cloves essential oil. It helps me breathe better. Additionally, cloves are used in some ancient cultures as a way of protecting against viruses and a reminder of our boundaries. More practically speaking, invest in your own cleaning supplies, from wipes to sprays to antibacterial cleaning solutions....

However, instead of taking the temporary, fix-it, Band-Aid approach, it can be much more beneficial to take a kinder and more sustainable route. By taking a closer look at what it is, where it stems from, and how it looks in action, we can start to work through the techniques and tools available to us so we can start taking our power back and living life on our own terms. Let’s dig in....

As someone who has spent years researching and writing about the mental health benefits of nature through my Ecohappiness Project and book, Finding Ecohappiness: Fun Nature Activities To Help Your Kids Feel Happier and Calmer, I know how powerful nature can be to calm us down. Stepping outdoors can also help us slow down, quiet our minds, and stay in the present. Can’t you just get lost in the moment when staring at a gorgeous sunset, butterfly fluttering by, or the dancing ocean waves?...

One reason for that is the increased acceptance of living with a long-term partner without marriage: 55% of adults ages 18 to 29 think couples are just as well off if they stay together without ever getting married, compared to 45% who think long-term couples ought to get married eventually. And 69% of all adults say cohabitation is just fine with or without plans to get married. Polygamy (marriage between more than two people) is not legal in the United States, so some people who are in polyamorous relationships or other styles of nonmonogamy may choose to forgo marriage altogether because it doesn’t make sense for their relationships....