Module 9
Looking After Yourself Physically
Mind and body are connected, and it's hard to feel good if you're struggling physically. Looking after your body in France means knowing how much to move, how to eat and drink well (in a country focused on both), and how to make space in your week for physical health.
Eating and moving well – keys to mental health
Physical health and mental health aren't really two separate topics — they're closely linked, and looking after one tends to support the other. This module covers the two areas with the strongest evidence behind them: how much you move, and what you eat and drink. You'll get real numbers rather than vague encouragement, plus a few things — alcohol especially — worth watching more closely in France than you might elsewhere. Start wherever feels most useful; there's no order to work through it in.
So how much exercise do I actually need?
This is a common question, and the numbers might seem a bit daunting at first glance. The World Health Organization recommends adults do 150–300 minutes of moderate activity a week, or 75–150 minutes of vigorous activity, plus muscle-strengthening work on two or more days a week. In practice: around 30 minutes, five days a week, plus two short strength sessions. Here's what that looks like:
Don't let the targets put you off!
If those numbers feel like a lot to you, start smaller. Going from nothing to something — a couple of walks a week — delivers a large share of the benefit on its own, and it's a far better starting point than an all-or-nothing target. Think of these targets as something to gradually work towards, without being too perfectionistic about getting there.
Exercise & mental health
This short video outlines the surprising benefits that exercise confers on psychological wellbeing – and you don't have to turn into an athlete to experience them.
​Key Takeaways
1. Reduced anxiety & depression — exercise has been shown to be as effective as antidepressants for many people.
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2. Better sleep — exercise increases the production of melatonin, a hormone that regulates sleep-wake cycles.
3. Improved ability to cope with stress — exercise produces feel-good chemicals such as endorphins, which make you less susceptible to stress.
4 Improved self-esteem — regular exercise can give a sense of accomplishment and improve self-worth
5 How much do you need? — just 30 minutes, three times a week is enough to feel significant benefits
How starting small actually got me moving...
Mel, 63,
originally from Essex
"I'm someone who has always dislike exercise, but a recent health scare and the advice of my lovely GP made my think I had to do something – or else! I kept picturing gym memberships, lycra and Sunday runs I'd never actually go on, so I didn't start at all.
What changed things for me was deciding to ignore the fitness community completely and just commit to two short walks a week. Fifteen minutes each, nothing impressive. I did that for about a month before I noticed anything, and what I noticed first wasn't fitness, it was that I looked forward to them.
From there it crept up on its own. A third walk. A longer route. Walking to places I'd normally drive. I never sat down and decided to 'get to two hours of walking a week', I just kept adding a bit whenever the current amount stopped feeling like enough.
My advice? Just pick something laughably small and just do that consistently. The rest might follow on its own."
How starting small actually got me moving...
Mel, 63, originally from Essex
Eating for wellbeing: what the evidence says
Diet is more than just a physical health question. A growing field called nutritional psychiatry has spent the last decade testing the link between what we eat and how we feel — with many studies showing an improved diet can significantly boost mental health. The results are actually more solid than people might expect, and a few clear, practical patterns keep showing up. Here's what the evidence actually supports.
1 Start with a Mediterranean diet ​
Vegetables, fruit, whole grains, legumes, olive oil and fish, with meat and dairy in supporting roles. This is the single best-evidenced dietary pattern for mood: the SMILES trial, a randomised controlled trial in adults with major depression, found that people who improved their diet along these lines saw significantly greater improvement in depressive symptoms than those given social support alone. If you take one piece of advice from this section, it's this one.
2 Go easy on ultra-processed food
Large studies consistently find that higher intake of ultra-processed food — the packaged, reformulated, additive-heavy end of the food supply — is associated with meaningfully higher rates of depression and anxiety, likely via inflammation, gut microbiome disruption and blood sugar swings. Most of this evidence is observational rather than experimental, but the pattern holds consistently across large, varied populations.
3 Keep meals regular
Skipped meals and a diet leaning on caffeine and sugar to bridge the gaps create blood sugar swings that show up as irritability, fatigue and poor concentration — the dietary cousin of the "overflow" described in Module 7. Three structured meals beat grazing and crashing. The French culture of eating offers a pretty decent guide to follow here: set times, a proper sit-down, and not much in between — you can borrow the rhythm even if you skip the three-hour lunch.
4 Lean on French culture
Fresh produce, olive oil, fish and a food culture with much less reliance on ultra-processed convenience food than the UK give you a genuine head start. So eating healthily in France can be as simple as following the local meal times, and basing your diet on seasonal products that are easy to find at a typical Sunday market. Notice what's already around you and try leaning into it a little more – the culture has done some of the hard work already.
What about alcohol? Is it really all that bad?
Short answer: yes and no. In 2023 the WHO stated that no level of alcohol consumption is risk-free — even light drinking carries some cancer risk. France hasn't gone quite that far: Santé publique recommends staying under 10 drinks a week, no more than 2 on any single day, with several alcohol-free days.
The reasonable middle ground is that there's no need for panic over an occasional glass, but thinking of alcohol as an occasional pleasure rather than a daily habit is a sensible way of approaching it.
How my market habit changed how I eat...
Dave, 50,
originally from
Plymouth
"I started going to the Sunday market when we moved to France mostly because it was so much cheaper than the supermarket. I also liked the walk, and that it forced me out of the house we were renovating at the time. I wasn't particularly trying to eat better or more healthily. I just started cooking around whatever looked good that week, because that's what was in the bag.
Without really planning it, our meals got more regular too. When you've bought a proper piece of fish or a bag of vegetables that won't keep, you cook it and sit down and eat it, you don't graze on it standing at the counter the way I used to with whatever was in the cupboard. Snacking dropped off a bit too, because whole food doesn't really lend itself to it the way a packet of biscuits does.
A few months in, I noticed my afternoons had changed. I wasn't hitting that three o'clock wall and reaching for coffee and something sugary to get through it. My energy just held up better across the day. I also lost a bit of weight, without really having to think about what I was eating or go on a diet."
How my market habit changed how I eat...
Dave, 50, originally from Plymouth
And that's the guide...
Nine modules, from sorting your paperwork in week one to looking after your body years in. If there's one thread running through all of it, it's this: struggling with something here doesn't mean you've made the wrong choice. It means you're building a life across two countries and two languages, which asks more of you than people realise.
Come back to any module whenever it's useful — this isn't a course to finish, it's a reference to keep. And if you have any feedback or questions, don't hesitate to contact the creators of these modules at contact@parispsychologycentre.com. Thanks for sticking with us!
