Words of Wellness with Shelly

Shelly's Shares: Simple Daily Habits To Boost Energy, Immunity, And Joy

• Shelly Jefferis • Season 2 • Episode 150

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Feeling pulled in every direction by the season and still trying to take care of your health? We’re sharing a practical wellness playbook you can use today to boost energy, protect your peace, and feel more like yourself—without rigid rules or complicated plans.

We start with the mindset that anchors everything: your health, joy, and calm matter. From there, Shelly walks through simple daily shifts that pay off fast. You’ll learn why water before coffee can change your morning, how leading meals with protein steadies blood sugar and cuts cravings, and why a 10 to 20 minute walk most days is enough to move the needle on mood, metabolism, and stress. We dig into sleep rituals that actually work—dimming lights, stepping away from screens, and creating a wind-down routine you can repeat—to improve both falling asleep and sleep quality.

Stress relief takes center stage with an easy technique: box breathing. Shelly explains how a few slow rounds can dial down your nervous system and keep you from reacting in the heat of the moment. We also explore gut health during festive eating, including prebiotics, probiotics, and simple foods like yogurt, kefir, and sauerkraut that support digestion. For those navigating holiday parties, we offer mindful drinking strategies and mocktail ideas—sparkling water with berries and fresh lime—that keep you social without wrecking your next day.

Finally, we talk boundaries and gratitude. Protecting your energy might mean saying no to weeknight events, planning rest days into your calendar, or changing your mind when your body asks for it. A short morning gratitude practice—prayer, a verse, or one honest line in a journal—sets the tone for a calmer, more focused day. These habits are small, but together they create momentum for better health, stronger immunity, and steadier joy well into the new year.

If this resonated, follow the show, share it with a friend who could use a wellness reset, and leave a quick review so more people can find these tools. Tell us: which habit will you start today?

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A few of Shelly's favorite clean products:

High quality, clean nutrition and beauty products: https://shellyjefferis.isagenix

Clean-crafted wine, free from chemicals & pesticides:
https://scoutandcellar.com/?u=healthyhappyhours

Cayla Gray- Non-toxic cologne & perfume: https://caylagray.com/wellnesswithshellyj (10% discount)

JuJu Non-toxic candles & air fresheners:
https://goodjujucandles.com/?ref=mrtgnygh
Coupon code for 10% off: ShellyJefferis

Thank you for listening to the Words of Wellness podcast with Shelly Jefferis. I am honored and so grateful to have you here and it would mean the world to me if you could take a minute to follow, leave a 5-star review and share the podcast with anyone you love and anyone you feel could benefit from the message.

Thank you and God Bless! And remember to do something for yourself, for your wellness on this day!
In Health,

Shelly

SPEAKER_00:

You are the only person who can truly take care of yourself, your health, your peace, your joy. You want to put all of that as a priority because guess what? The more that you take care of yourself, your self-care, your health, your peace, and your joy, the more that you can be there and share all of that and share yourself with your family and your loved ones. Do you get confused by all of the information that bombards us every day on ways to improve our overall health and our overall wellness? Do you often feel stuck, unmotivated, or struggle to reach your wellness goals? Do you have questions as to what exercises you should be doing, what foods you should or shouldn't be eating, how to improve your overall emotional and mental well-being? Hello everyone. I am so excited to welcome you to Words of Wellness. My name is Shelley Jeffries, and I will be your host. My goal is to answer these questions and so much more. To share tips, education, and inspiration around all of the components of wellness through solo and guest episodes. With 35 plus years as a health and wellness professional, a retired college professor, a speaker, and a multi-passionate entrepreneur, I certainly have lots to share. However, my biggest goal and inspiration in doing this podcast is to share the wellness stories of others with you. To bring in guests who can share their journey so that we can all learn together while making an impact on the health, the wellness, and lives of all of you, our listeners. The ultimate hope is that you leave today with even just one nugget that can enhance the quality of your life, and that you will, we all will, now and into the future, live our best quality of lives full of energy, happiness, and joy. Now let's dive into our message for today. Hi my friends, welcome back to Words of Wellness. My name is Shelly, and I will be your host. And this is our Shelly's Shares episode, and I am jumping in today to share a few wellness tips with you. And I know this has been kind of a theme for a little while, but I really wanted to give some really kind of brief tips that you can apply today to your everyday wellness that also these tips help with our overall longevity. So I am going to dive in, keep this brief today, run through a few tips that I want to share with you that, like I said, you can apply today. And I'm going to start with hydration. Hydrating first thing in the morning and throughout the day. And even during this time of year when we're doing a lot of celebrating and it's a festive season, festive time of year. Make sure you're having a nice big glass of water before you go out to that dinner or that party just to keep your body hydrated. You also want to have a full glass of water before you have your coffee in the morning for my coffee drinkers out there, which I am definitely one of those. And just it helps, hydration is so important for our immune system, the functioning of our body, and it also helps with energy and digestion. So that's one key tip. If you can implement that on a daily basis, it's so beneficial. Another tip: protein. Always start with protein. Begin your meals with protein. Whatever that looks like for you, whether it's chicken or eggs or a protein drink, it helps really stabilize your blood sugar. It also helps with the metabolism, and it has so many other beneficial reasons that we do this for our body and our overall health. But think protein first whenever it comes to a snack or even a meal for that matter. Another tip move your body, get some movement, get some exercise. And I have shared various times that it doesn't have to be anything strenuous. If you can go for a 10-20-minute walk daily or most days of the week, it is so, so beneficial for our overall health. It helps with uh managing stress, it helps to just boost our mood, it helps to keep our heart healthy, keeps our metabolism firing and strong, and of course helps with our immune system. So these tips really I'm sharing with you today. I am sharing briefly as a way to help keep our immune system strong, not just through the holiday season and whatever phase we are at when you're listening to this, because even you know, we celebrate into the even into the new year with new years, right? So these can be applied not just during our festive season that we're in, but well into the new year. Another recommendation is to be prior prioritizing your sleep. And you know, it doesn't have to be perfect, but it's so important to keep your sleep a priority. And I was talking about this recently, and I'll I'll share again, but the sleep routine that we have, when we start to kind of wind down for the night, we want to get into a sleep routine where we start to dim the lights, we we do something that's relaxing, and really helps us to be a little bit more calm before we are putting our head on our pillow. It really helps us to kind of prepare, if you will. Try and keep the screen time away from our bedtime hour. So whether if it's an hour or two before you're actually going to go to bed, it's better for your overall, not just the following falling asleep, but the quality of your sleep to keep the screen time at a minimum before we're getting ready to wind down for the night. Also, this is a great reminder. Breathe before you react. And I share this quite often as well, is that we don't take enough time to do deep breathing exercises. Quite frankly, it's something we we really could and should be doing daily. But I want to share with you if you can get in the habit, especially in moments where you might start to feel a little bit stressed, taking a moment to breathe before you react is so important. And I share what's called box breathing because I think it's just such an easy format to remember, where you take a breath in for four counts, really breathe deeply into your belly. You hold it for four counts, and then you breathe out for four counts and really getting all a really, really deep exhalation out and repeating that is really beneficial for your nervous system. It calms your nervous system and it can really help, like I said, during during stressful moments. And it's also very cleansing for the body and the brain. When you do a breath like that, it really, it really is refreshing for for your brain and cognitively too. And also support your gut health. A lot of times, you know, during the the holiday season, we can be maybe eating a little bit out of our ordinary routine. Maybe we're having foods that we don't normally eat, or we're eating a little bit heavier than normal, and you still want to really support your gut health to be able to just help with your digestive system. So prebiotics, probiotics, taking a supplement, and then also maybe including foods like yogurt and kefir and maybe sauerkraut. If you're someone that that likes and enjoys sauerkraut, these are really beneficial for our overall gut health. And then again, limiting alcohol during this time of year. Again, lots of parties, maybe lots of eating out. And I don't want to say don't enjoy your alcohol, but you want to really be mindful of how much you are consuming. And sometimes you can just do an a mock tail. You know, a lot of people nowadays are creating mocktails, and you know, I love having now, don't get me wrong, I enjoy my prosecco, I enjoy my wine, but I also am loving some carbonated sparkling water with some maybe berries thrown in and squeezing lime, a fresh lime. It is very, very good and really refreshing. And a lot of times you can alternate some of the alcoholic drinks with some of these mocktails, and very, very good. Refreshing and good for you too. Uh, I also want to share another tip: protect your energy. What does that look like? I think it's important to just remind everyone that it is okay to say no. I know for me personally, especially during the week nights, I'm very selective events that I will attend, and I don't attend that many, but sometimes, depending on what's going on in your life and your schedule, it's necessary to perhaps decline an event on occasion. And first and foremost, you want to take care of yourself, your health, not just physically, but mentally. And setting up some boundaries is an important way to take care of yourself, it's a form of self-care. And I think one helpful tip is to maybe at the beginning of a month, maybe you can prioritize what events you will plan to attend and what events you might not attend. And really, you you really want to tune in to how your body's feeling. And sometimes, maybe even if you've committed to an event, and when it comes down to it, maybe your body's telling you no, it's time to rest and stay home. Listen to your body. That's the message here with this one. Really protect your energy, and most importantly, just really be in tune with how your body is feeling and what it's what it's telling you to do. Putting yourself as a priority is not selfish. And I love this tip: starting your day with gratitude, whether it's a prayer or a Bible verse or just something that you can start your day of thinking about that you're thankful for, writing it out in a journal, whatever it might be, all of those are such an important way to start your day and start your start your day on a positive note. And it is so great for your entire mindset and your overall mood. And then, lastly, just one last tip I want to share, especially during the season, take care of you. You are the only person who can truly take care of yourself, your health, your peace, your joy. You want to put all of that as a priority because guess what? The more that you take care of yourself, your self-care, your health, your peace, and your joy, the more that you can be there and share all of that and share yourself with your family and your loved ones. So I hope that these tips really come in handy for you and that you can apply some of them or all of them. And again, my goal was to share these briefly today because many of these can start to be incorporated right away. And maybe some of them or all of them you're already incorporating in your day-to-day lives, and I think that's wonderful. And again, these help with your overall health, your immune system, especially during the holiday season and and the festive season that we're in, and beyond. You know, these are tips that I want you to think about applying on a daily basis, even once we get into the new year and beyond, to take care of yourself, your overall health, physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. So, with that being said, take some time for yourself and your wellness, my friends, and have a wonderful, blessed rest of your week. And I will see you next time on Words of Wellness. And real quick message for my moms out there. I want to remind you that our moms who flourish mentorship is coming. January 20th is when we start. Please reach out to me. My Instagram handle is in the show notes. You can reach out to me at Wellness with Shelly J or Wellness or at Moms Who Flourish, and I can share with you all the details so that you can join this very unique special wellness program that is created just for all of my moms. So reach out for details. And with that being said, have a beautiful, blessed rest of your week, and we'll see you next time. Thank you so much for tuning in to today's episode. I hope you gained value and enjoyed our time together as much as I did. And if you know someone who could benefit from today's episode, I would love and appreciate it if you could share with a friend or rate and review Words of Wellness so that more can hear this message. I love and appreciate you all. Thank you for listening. And if you have any questions or topics you would like me to share in future episodes, please don't hesitate to reach out to me through my contact information that is shared in the show notes below. Again, thank you for tuning in to Words of Wellness. My name is Shelley Jeffries, and I encourage you to do something for you, for your wellness on this day. Until next time, I hope you all have a healthy, happy, and blessed week.