5 Ways To Wellness: Helping Veterans Stay Healthy
Last Updated: 05 Sep 2020

Finding ways to stay healthy and fit can be a challenge for anyone. Endeavors’ Veteran Wellness Center is making sure Veterans have the resources to maintain their wellness after military life.

Maintaining a healthy lifestyle goes a long way towards enhancing overall happiness and well being. Routinely engaging in wellness activities can help anyone live a happier, healthier life. 

For Veterans, making wellness a priority helps create a positive, stable post-military life. Because maintaining and/ or creating healthy habits after leaving the military can be hard, here are five tips to help Veterans enhance overall wellness.

1. Make Mental Health a Priority 

Mental health and wellness go hand in hand. For example, someone battling depression or experiencing PTSD can struggle to navigate everyday activities. Making mental health a priority can look different for everyone! We recommend talking with a professional, attending group therapy, or seeking out Telehealth or virtual therapy services. 

2. Eat Right, Feel Right

A well-balanced diet is crucial to staying healthy. Understanding nutrition helps maintain a healthy body weight and increase your energy level. Making a meal plan each week is a great way to avoid eating empty calories and helps take the stress out of meal prepping. Avoiding sugary drinks and making water your drink of choice is another easy way to cut weight and feel better! 

3. Ecstatic About Exercise 

Engaging in daily exercise helps boost energy and can make you feel invigorated. Increasing your daily movement by walking, biking, or joining friends for a group activity, physical fitness is a great way to boost endorphins and maintain a healthy lifestyle. 

4. Engage The Mind And Body 

Exercise doesn’t have to be all about running and lifting weights! Yoga and Tai Chi can also improve your physical and mental health! 

Yoga is an excellent way to strengthen your body and mind. Remaining calm and relaxed helps people respond better to stress. Whether at work or in your personal life, this relaxed attitude can help to improve relationships. 

Some benefits Veterans gain from practicing yoga are physical postures and breathing techniques that help to reduce anxiety and depression. 

Tai Chi is another form of exercise that involves slow purposeful movements and uses deep breathing techniques. Tai Chi is a low impact exercise that puts minimal stress on muscles and joints.

Some benefits of practicing Tai Chi include decreased stress and anxiety, improved mood, and increased energy and stamina, as well as improved balance, flexibility, and agility. 

5. Financial Factors: Understanding How Finances Impact Health

Financial stress can lead to many problems including anxiety, depression, and substance abuse. Understanding your financial situation and coming up with a plan to handle it will help you meet your goals and improve your outcome.

For Veterans, finding help, and utilizing services available to them is a game-changer. Many organizations (including the Endeavors Veteran Wellness Center) offer Veteran services to help Veterans better understand their finances and how best to move forward. This can be a great resource to help Veterans become more financially literate and create a better future for their families. 

Endeavors’ Veteran Wellness Center Offers A Surplus Of Services

Endeavors is aware of the challenges Veterans face and is building a first-of-its-kind wellness center to help them. Under construction now, Veterans in San Antonio, Texas will soon have access to the brand new Veteran Wellness Center (VWC) that will provide a variety of wellness services. 

This one-of-a-kind center was built with the needs of the Veteran community in mind. Every service mentioned in this article and more will be offered to Veterans, their dependents, spouses, and caretakers at the VWC. 

The VWC will also provide drop-in child care for Veterans with young children to ease the burden of finding outside help while receiving services!

While the building will be under construction until the Fall of 2021, help can be found now through the VWC virtual therapy services. 

To find out more about the services offered and to see if you or your loved ones qualify to receive services, visit  endeavors.org/programs/veteran-wellness-center/ , email:  [email protected], or call 210-431-6466. 

About Endeavors

Endeavors is a longstanding national non-profit that provides an array of programs and services in support of children, families, Veterans, and those struggling with mental illness and other disabilities. Endeavors serves vulnerable people in crisis through innovative personalized services. For more information, please visit www.endeavors.org.