What to eat and drink, when to sleep, how to move – there are many steps to wellness and finding the right ones can be overwhelming if looking for them on your own.

Christina Dotson is offering help for free as part of Healthy Kickstart 2024.

She launched the programme a week ago with her Waterfront Wellness colleague Catherine Burns, a health nutritionist who writes a weekly column for The Royal Gazette.

There are no classes and no hidden charges; sign-up is optional. A click on a link grants access to lifestyle tips, healthy recipes and general support to get nutrition back on track.

“It started last Thursday. We had an informational night where you could come in person or [watch as we] live-streamed it via Zoom, and we talked about all aspects of improving our health and wellness,” Ms Dotson said.

More than 300 people turned up, interested in learning how to choose healthy foods, get better sleep, reduce their exposure to chemicals and how to meditate and be silent.

“We spend so much time in the day being noisy – being talked to and talking to people,” she said. “But it was everything from hydration, to balancing our blood sugar with nutrition, to exercise, to getting enough sleep, breathing deeply, reducing our exposure to environmental chemicals – we cover it all.”

At the end of the two-week programme, people who want to dive deeper can sign up with Waterfront Wellness for training in all those areas or just the ones they feel they most need help in.

In the meantime, people who sign up receive regular help at no cost.

“We've got daily e-mails that go out that touch on those subjects,” Ms Dotson said. “We've got healthy recipes, we've got exercise tips … whatever they want to work on.”

It’s the second year that Waterfront Wellness has offered the initiative.

“It was just something to engage the public. Not everybody knows that Waterfront Wellness is here.

“Not everybody knows all of the different opportunities that we offer and not everybody has access to health and wellness.

“So we want to make sure that we can at least do our part in making it affordable to everyone. We had 320 people sign up this year; last year we had about 300.”

The programme works, because of the breadth of knowledge at Waterfront Wellness, she added.

“We have Catherine Burns, who is our nutritional therapist, we have personal trainers with all sorts of expertise under their belt. We've got regular personal training, we’ve got Oronde [Camara] who really focuses on rehabilitative training, we've got group classes for all levels – anywhere from our mind-body classes to high intensity classes….”

Weight training, aerobics, dance, HITT and spinning classes are all on offer as well, Ms Dotson said.

A love of running got her interested in wellbeing. The group fitness instructor has run three ultra-marathons and is keen to help other people achieve their health goals.

“Once the Healthy Kickstart is over, we do invite everybody to take advantage of our Nutrifit programme that Catherine offers, especially if you're looking to hone in on your nutrition skills. And then once you've got your nutrition going on a good path we offer the Beat the Couch programme, which will help with your exercise and your fitness,” she said.

“The great part about these programmes is that they are just short enough so you don't lose interest but long enough to create healthy habits.”

A great benefit of Healthy Kickstart is that it helps people understand why certain habits are important.

“We teach them the benefits of getting enough sleep – for promoting cellular repair, for reducing your cravings of carbohydrates, for boosting your immune system …. getting enough rest – at least seven hours – is important.

“So we give them tips on how to get enough sleep at night. It might mean putting down your devices and switching off the TV about an hour before bed so as to not overstimulate the adrenal glands, it could be something as simple as cooling your room down with AC or fans so you can fall asleep better.”

Although the programme launched on January 12, it’s not too late to sign up at www.waterfrontwellness.bm. The recorded informational session will be shared along with the Healthy Kickstart guide.