There are many healthy habits that can help you manage and regulate your stress levels. In other words, ways to help your body recover and get back to a relaxed baseline after enduring stress from various sources. There is, however, something even better than fixing your stress after it happens — you can work to stop it from ever starting to begin with. Here are some tips that can help you live a stress-free life. Or at least as stress-free as possible.

1 – Watch what you eat

Your body and your mind are not separated. Your thoughts and emotional state are both influenced and guided by the biochemical machinery that keeps your body alive and allows it to move. The result of this is that what you eat will have an impact on your mood. Hard-to-digest foods, for example, can leave you moody and more easily irritable. On top of leaving you feeling low energy. All of this makes it easier for you to feel stressed and overwhelmed on a daily basis.

This means that eating healthy isn’t just good for your waistline, but also for your mental health. But you don’t have to go vegetarian or switch to the Mediterranean diet to experience the benefits. Just making sure you’re chewing food properly and getting enough fiber in your diet — or through supplements with antioxidants — can already do wonders for your mood and quality of life.

2 – Meditate

Meditation isn’t a religious practice by itself. While many religions include meditation among their practices, you can enjoy it as a purely secular experience. And there are good reasons to do so. Research on the benefits of meditation has shown many positive results, the key one being that meditation has a positive impact on helping people deal with feelings of stress and anxiety.

While it is useful at reducing stress, meditation can also help with prevention. Meditating before a day you know will be long is an easy way to cool your head, gain some perspective, and avoid feeling overwhelmed.

3 – Reduce the drama

How often do your friends and family make you stressed? While relationships are important and have their own value even as a stress management tool, sometimes they are more trouble than they are worth. If you have a friend or relative that’s constantly stirring up drama and getting you worked up, it might be wise to avoid contact with them online. Ditto for people who only seem to talk to you when they have bad news to tell or use you as a venting chamber.

It may seem like they don’t cause you too much trouble over a single day or single week. But over months and years, the constant drama can wear you out and cause quite a bit of stress.

4 – Protect your sleep

Sleep is an important tool when trying to prevent stress. That’s because your body performs many critical functions when you sleep, one of them being hormone regulation. This is important, as your hormones help regulate how often and how easily you get stressed by everyday life. As a result, not getting enough sleep can make you irritable, and more prone to various sources of stress.

You can counteract this by treating your sleep as sacred and going to sleep at around the same time every night.

5 – Leverage natural substances

Everything from full spectrum CBD gummies to chamomile essence and lavender tea can be effective at helping you stay relaxed throughout your day. Try experimenting with these and other substances to see which work best for you, then make them part of your routine.