3.8 Can't Sit Still Eighth post in a Simple Wellness series After a few short runs and logging about 6 miles total this year, I got out for a real run (two actually) today.** It was great to be out on the road and launch my running for 2016. I have about 4 weeks to prepare for the first organized run of the season (a 5-miler) and two weeks after that is my first half-marathon of the season. Why do I bring this up? Because getting our bodies moving is vital to our wellness journey. Experts would say we need about 30 minutes of physical activity 5 days a week. The American Heart Association supports the guide of 10,000 steps a day as a target for consistent physical activity. For me, I've found that some simple goals throughout the year keep me active enough to maintain my wellness. The point is, regular physical activity can't be a phase or a fad or just something nice to hope for. Our lives are at stake. Our bodies are meant to move, to be physically pushed on some regular basis, and to be taxed with some movement on a daily basis. I've noted about lymphatic circulation in Power Pantry before. and how vigorous physical activity is basically the only way lymph fluid circulates through our bodies, filtering and eliminating toxins from our bloodstream. Without vigorous physical movement like walking, running, and other 'cardio' activities, the toxins stay in our tissues. Stored toxins in our fat and organs wait to do damage over time as they build up. If you find life has gotten sedentary, start by setting some simple goals. Get a pedometer and consistently log 2,000 or 3,000 steps a day. Once you do that for several weeks, bump the level a couple of thousand steps. As your body moves toxins out of your system, there's a good chance you'll find energy you haven't had in a long time, and a growing desire for additional physical movement. That's a great virtuous cycle, and a strong underpinning of simple wellness. Get moving today. Don't put it off... I know how hard it is to find the motivation, and we can find ourselves asking, "why am I doing this?" daily. But soon you'll turn some corners physically and mentally. Your body will thank you, and it will reward you by feeling better. From that motivation, you can build toward 10,000 steps a day or more, and you'll be on your way to wellness.
**By the Way
Even though I just started my running for this season, I've been logging a lot of activity for months. Some time ago, I set my step goal at 15,000 steps a day, and I've been doggedly pursuing that every day since (through jumping jacks, burpees, mountain-climbers, jumping rope, running-in-place, etc.). Some days I don't get there; many days I do. Combine that with a lot of core work (planks, crunches) and upper-body workouts, and I'm in fairly good shape. Problem is, I may not be in the right shape for running, but the season is young...
3.7 Go Far - Together Seventh post in a Simple Wellness series A wellness lifestyle is just a lot of small commitments, linked together by time and experience. And one of the most effective commitments we can make in our wellness journey is to travel our wellness paths with others. Jumping on a diet bandwagon is one thing, but resolving to make specific improvements in how we are living, and walking those commitment out with other people, is a lot better. If you're like me, you've grabbed onto a new initiative at some point in life and chased it with focused abandon, only to have your progress interrupted by life and derailed by circumstances. "The weather's too ______ (hot, cold, wet, dreary...)," "I'm just not ______ (excited, progressing, focused...) like I thought I would..." No worries. This happens to all of us, and it in no way makes us a failure to have these episodes of real-life distraction. The key is to have support already there, and keep us, and them, on track by journeying together. What's the magic in having a travelling buddy? It's the accountability that comes from life-on-life commitments to decisions and goals. And when we find someone who shares our wellness perspectives and will stick with us through thick and thin, the real benefit comes as that accountability keeps us from falling prey to our circumstances. Having a wellness companion keeps us from thinking like a victim and helps us overcome and press on, instead of shrinking back and giving up. Where do you find a great wellness partner? Wherever they appear. It can be our spouse, a brother or sister, a friend from work, or that cousin who has a gym membership across town. These days we can even have an accountability partner vicariously, like a Tony Horton, through P90X videos and YouTube posts. The question isn't who it is, or where they come from, the question is will you commit to journeying with someone else? So if you haven't made the decision to find one or more wellness partners to share your journey, make the commitment and ask someone to join you. There's a chance they will be as glad to join you as you are to have them along on your journey.
By the Way
There is an quote I like, often attributed as an African proverb: "If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together." Find a wellness buddy today, and go far, together.
3.6 Portion Distortion & "Mindless Eating" Sixth post in a Simple Wellness series We're well into 2016... how are your power pantry choices going? I took some time off with the big blizzard last week, and caught up on some goals. If you're still working on new and improved wellness goals for the year, maybe you're processing that as well. We've been looking at fundamental issues which can make or break our wellness, especially elements related to food. This post deals with the physical aspects surrounding what we eat, and ultimately how much, how long, and how many calories we eat. I've been fascinated by research from a brilliant and winsome PhD, Dr. Brian Wansink, that you need to review. Wansink and his colleagues at Cornell have spent the last 15+ years doing ground-breaking research on eating behavior. Here are some tidbits:
The size of our plates matters a lot - the bigger the plate (bowl, spoon, fork) the more we eat. Use smaller plates and utensils and we'll eat less volume and less calories.
The size of our portions matters - dishing out a single serving of each food offered helps us get full (satiated) with less calories; if it's on the plate, we eat it and get the same 'feeling' but we've consumed additional calories
The proximity of food and snacks matters - leaving serving dishes in the kitchen makes us eat less (ie, don't put the pot of food and casserole dishes on the table); keep healthy foods within sight and arms reach in the pantry and fridge; keep fatty, sugary, salty snacks in closed containers and out of sight to reduce how much of them we eat (and the calories which go with them)
Wansink has a ground-breaking book, Mindless Eating, that thoroughly covers this territory. Check out his Mindless Eating website , and especially review the 'Toolbox' and 'What Can I Do' tabs. It is fascinating to me that eating in a mindful way, literally just being aware of plates and portions and proximity, can make all the difference in our eating habits. Read Dr. Wansink's materials on the Mindless Eating website, and maybe you'll get some inspiration for power pantry improvements you can start this week.
By the Way
For even more inspiration, check out Dr. Wansink's new book,Slim by Design. This content is fully endorsed by Power Pantry! Click the 'Dieting is Exhausting' banner at the top and take the short quizzes to score your home, office, school, etc, on how friendly these spaces are for being slim. Another significant opportunity is a live coaching opportunity to take Dr. Wansink's Slim by Design course, available right on your phone.
Fifth post in a Simple Wellness series If you have the conviction to overcome past choices and ruts, we want to share some tools to help break free of the old way of living. A few of these are credited to Prevention magazine and a great article they provided this month about beating food addiction. The fact is, we can outgrow our old ways of living when we put our minds to it. Here are some suggestions:
Write down goals in simple language, in your own handwriting. This helps solidify goals in our mind and make them real. Goals should be simple and yet stretch us beyond where we think we can go. And it is great to keep your goals visibly prominent; post them somewhere that you'll have to look at them regularly (on the bathroom mirror or your car dashboard, for instance.)
Watch your language, because it matters, a lot. Our minds automatically go to work on whatever we feed them, so if we feed our minds with negative talk ("I can't do it", and "I'll never be able to... (lose weight, eat in a healthy way, be physically active)" and any other self-defeating phrases) our minds believe what we've just said. The opposite is also true. If we feed our minds with positive self-talk ("I'm going to eat nutritious, whole foods all this week," and "I'll find a way to be physically active for 30 minutes today..." our minds will accept that as truth and do what it takes to make it so.
Create accountability around our goals. If we form and maintain accountable relationships, that is the foundation of lasting improvement in life. Prevention suggests a goal-setting app called Coach.me where you can enlist friends to view your progress and offer encouragement. You can also get crowdsourced encouragement and even register a pre-determined cash penalty you'll charge yourself if you don't meet your goal.
Understand the power of replacements and avoidance. When unhealthy choices have been our norm, it is valuable to identify replacement foods or ingredients which meet the needs of our meals or palette, but with healthful nutrients. Things like almond milk in place of dairy milk and frozen bananas in place of ice cream. Alongside replacements is outright avoidance. If you face significant temptation from an unhealthy choice (food or lifestyle activity, etc.) maybe you just need to manage around that temptation by avoiding it.
So give it a try now. We're often a lot better at this than we give ourselves credit for. Write down some goals, create some positive dialog with yourself and seek accountability. In no time you'll be on your way to achieving your next step in your wellness.
By the Way
Research says it takes about 21 days to form a new habit. That's only three weeks. And after about a week to 10 days of modifying our behavior (ie, making healthier choices) we will have overcome most of the grip of cravings and old habits. Another resource suggested by Prevention for tracking these kinds of good modifications is the GoalsOnTrack app. Today is the first day of the rest of your life, and overcoming your first hurdle may be only weeks away.
Fourth post in a Simple Wellness series... If we're committed to a wellness journey, we've set a vision for our health, and started down the road to resetting our food choices, then we've got to work on our pantries. What lurks in a majority of American pantries is scary. There are not a lot of 'real' foods, even though a lot of what we stock may be edible. Real foods are unprocessed, nutrient-dense, and as fresh as possible. Have you stood and stared at your pantry or fridge lately? Seen anything edible that just isn't food? We have a few things... some salty snacks, starchy sides and sugary breakfast cereals, but we stock mostly real foods, and reap the benefits of eating them. Real, nutrient-dense foods afford us the healthiest bang for our calorie buck. We benefit from fiber, minerals, micronutrients and phytochemicals in fresh foods. Think veggies, fruits, nuts and seeds, and whole grains. Dr. Joel Fuhrman likes to describe 'GBOMBS' as his quick label to remember 'Greens, Beans, Onions, Mushrooms, Berries and Seeds.' If we've reset our food choices, these five categories are absolute winners to give our bodies the healthy nutrition they crave. A great way to integrate real foods is to purge our pantries of the most processed offenders, and begin including as many real foods as possible. Then we can set simple goals in our meal planning and food preparation to have more and more of our meals feature real foods (and only real foods). Let's say we eat about 20 meals a week (7 days times 3 meals a day...) If we had one real-food meal a day, that would yield about 30% of our meals being health, and 70% being regular choices.
As weeks and months go, it can be simple to grow that ratio to 50/50, then 60/40 (so now we're closer to 2 meals a day being real food) all the way to 80/20. An 80/20 goal for real-food to standard food is valuable. At that level our cells are being nourished and we even have the opportunity to reverse some disease patterns and symptoms. Here are some real-food meal suggestions: Breakfast can be a smoothie with greens, chia seeds and fresh fruit, or a hearty oatmeal or muesli with dried fruits and healthy nuts. Lunch could include a big salad with a small portion of fish or beans. Supper can feature a healthier meat like broiled chicken breast or salmon, with steamed veggies and a baked sweet potato. And here and there, a regular old burger-and-fries, or pancakes-and-bacon meal is okay. Not to binge on comfort food, and blow your wellness accomplishments, but just to scratch that itch of wanting something from your 'old' pantry. So find a great, healthful cookbook (Dr. Fuhrman publishes the 'Eat to Live Cookbook', and it's a good one) or a great book of smoothie recipes, and launch into your new, real, healthful choices.
By the Way
A critical step on a journey to a healthful 80/20 diet is the selection of snacks. Here again, ditch the packaged snacks, like crackers and candy bars, and go for the simplest real foods you can find. A piece of fresh fruit is great, or dried fruits and nuts work well too. Take your time nibbling, though, and be careful with portions, because fruit has a lot of natural sugar, and nuts pack a lot of fats that can have you bulked up on calories in no time.
Third post in a Simple Wellness series... When we eat real food it makes our bodies happy. When we eat processed foods, it makes our taste buds and our minds happy for a while, but processed foods of our Western diet make our bodies really frustrated. And once we're in the cycle of eating processed foods, our minds need more and more of it to get the same level of satisfaction. For all the abundance we have, the standard American diet is killing us slowly and painfully, and the decline to poor health is totally preventable. If we've struck a clear vision of our future, like we talked about in the last post, our next step is to start moving our food choices toward ones our bodies will love. The great news is that as we make healthier food choices, we can get our minds and bodies to reset and overcome the cycle of cravings and toxic hunger which come with processed foods. The food-industrial complex surrounds us with a lot of food-like products and drinks, but these aren't real food. Real foods are ones which are simply the way God made them. Not processed, not refined, not stripped of vital elements to make them look better or have a better texture. No growth hormones and no genetic engineering and as un-enhanced as possible. Michael Pollan, an author, professor and journalist, has a great quote: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." And by food, he's referring to real food. Simple, whole, nutrient-dense food. When we do, it is very possible to reset our taste buds and overcome the distraction of cravings. It will take a week or two to shed the desire for industrialized food, but as the salt and fats and artificial flavors come out of our system, replaced by fresh, whole foods, the cravings will die down... we'll talk more about that in the next post. To get going, just start. A pantry (and fridge) purge of processed foods is the best way to launch. Ditch the foods with white flour and preservatives and sugar, and MSG and artificial colors and flavors. If it wasn't in our great-grandmother's kitchen, don't eat it. Last week I suggested watching "Fat Sick and Nearly Dead", and there is a follow-on documentary by Joe Cross as well, "Fat Sick and Nearly Dead 2" (available on DVD, iTunes & Netflix). Both of these films depict a juicing 'reboot', where you can detox and reset by consuming freshly juiced fruits and vegetables as a regularly part of your daily diet. A juice fast isn't necessary to reset our cravings and launch our wellness journey, just a purge of the junk, and introduction of real food. The key is to just do it.
By the Way
If you're not convinced there is anything wrong with our industrialized food, check out the TEDx Talk by Douglas Lisle, author of The Pleasure Trap. It's a great investment of 18 minutes in your wellness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jX2btaDOBK8
Be sure to note Dr. Lisle's three tips at the end of his talk... our foundation of success is a decision away.
We're all headed somewhere. The big question is where. Even making 'no' decision about our direction is a significant decision about where we'll end up. And the destination may not be good. I've shared before that my wellness vision aligns with Jack LaLanne and Tony Horton. Even though these men are generations apart, they share(d) a basic approach to wellness that includes simple, nutritional food choices and a physically active workout routine. They both revolutionized wellness by their influence. Granted, I'm no Tony Horton, but if I can learn something from his great guidance, and it tugs me in his general direction month by month and year by year, I might just end up someplace awesome. Jack LaLanne lived to be 96 years old, and worked out right up to his last days. How awesome would that be to live into my 90's, truly living? If that happens, I'm only half way there! You have some sort of wellness vision. Trap it and linger on it. Maybe it's to lose some weight, or achieve a walking or running goal. Maybe you want to climb a few flights of stairs without losing your breath. Or maybe it's to overcome an ailment like Type 2 diabetes or high cholesterol by improving what you eat. If you can see it in your mind, you can certainly achieve it. On the journey, we may need to overcome some fears, and maybe they're significant. Fear we might fail, or lose our identity, or be hungry all the time, or that we'll lose our friends, or we'll get injured, or that we'll simply outgrow those close to us. The truth is some of these may happen, but what I've realized is that if I've lost a friend or two, I've gained 10 who resonate with my wellness lifestyle. And even if I get some sore muscles, I've eliminated a bad left knee, chronic lower back and shoulder pain, and migraines... eliminated in my late 40's... how cool is that? (And I've never gone hungry... I eat an awesome diet, and I eat a lot... very cool.) So start where you are. Strike a big vision, and expect a lot of good to come of it. Capture a compelling picture in your mind and hold it there. Cut out some magazine pictures, or old pictures of yourself when you were healthier and happier. Put them on your mirror or fridge. Let the vision grow in plain sight, and see where it starts to take you.
By the Way
This quote from Marianne Williamson always helps give me permission to go big:
"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people will not feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone and as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give others permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."
