Yesterday was my birthday. In Friday’s blog I sketched out a plan to navigate the food and drink from the celebratory weekend so that come Monday morning, I would feel good body, mind, and spirit, and be back on the healthy track. I am happy to report that I feel fabulous! As I sit to write this blog, my workout is complete and my healthy meal plan resumed. I also had an amazing time with my folks who came to town to help celebrate, and I thoroughly enjoyed all that we ate and drank. While I definitely ate more than unusual, I did practice reasonable moderation and didn’t go crazy. I don’t feel the least bit deprived. In fact, I feel thoroughly feted. While I didn’t follow my plan exactly, I did find it extremely helpful to have thought out what I wanted to do, and to reach out to you fabulous readers for accountability. Remembering that I was going to have to report back to you was a great curb to going back for seconds on desserts, or ordering a second cocktail. But here’s the real key—I definitely had some splurges and I wasn’t perfect. It would be easy to beat myself up over those. But instead, I’m choosing to look at all the times I did push back from the table, stopped at one glass of wine, and got my planned workouts in. Building on small successes generates positive momentum that moves you towards your goal. Focusing on the negative—as I used to always do—drains your momentum and zaps your energy, which means you are more likely to go ahead and keep eating because all is lost anyway. Not only did focusing on […]
The Gift of Wellness for My Birthday
Sunday is my birthday! My fabulous folks are driving into town as I type to help celebrate. I anticipate that we will have a wonderful time, and I already know that delicious food and drink will be plentiful. In the past, celebratory weekends like this were the triggers that would send my diet and exercise program spiraling out of control, sometimes taking weeks, months, and even years to get back into alignment. Fortunately, I’ve come far enough that I’m no longer worried about that happening, but I do want to get back to work Monday afternoon feeling physically, mentally, and spiritually good! No food hangovers for me, thank you very much. But I also don’t want to be so rigid that I’m not having any fun. It’s my birthday after all. My family will be here and I want to celebrate! The key for me is setting some intentions and doing some planning before family arrives and chaos ensues. Once that happens, it’s too easy just to open my mouth and start shoveling in the goodies. I also find accountability extremely helpful, so if you don’t mind, I’d like to ask you fabulous readers to help with that. So here’s my plan. Moving my body: Fortunately there are only two workouts that I have to plan for—tomorrow (Saturday) and Monday, as Sunday is a planned rest day. Typically I do my workouts in the area outside our guest room. My being in that space while guests are trying to sleep is inconvenient and uncomfortable for all of us. So I have brought down my exercise mat, resistance bands, weights, and a workout DVD that I can set up and do in the living room. I […]
Three Stress Relieving Tips to Help You Have More Fun
One of my clients was recently giving herself a hard time because a week after moving to a new state and a few days after starting a new job, she wasn’t relaxed. In fact, she was downright stressed. I call this the Super Woman syndrome. This is the expectation that you can—and have to!—do everything while always being happy and relaxed. How reasonable is that? Particularly if you are going through some pretty significant life changes? Now this doesn’t mean that you can’t go through a move and job change feeling relaxed and happy, but regardless of how many people can do that, your reaction is your reaction. So here are 3 tips to help relieve stress and have more fun. 1—Ease up on yourself, particularly in the moment. Notice your reaction, but let go of the self-judgment as much as possible. Beating yourself up for your reaction—to any situation—is just adding negative fuel to the catabolic fire. It just makes you feel worse and will prolong the stress. 2—Give yourself a little perspective. How much of your day do you feel stressed? Is it 100 percent of the time or were there just some significant moments of overwhelm that colored your perception of your day? Start paying attention to how many good moments you are having. Begin to track just how much of the time things are going well, you are making progress, you are coping, you are feeling relief, satisfaction, gratitude, and even joy. You might be surprised that there are more of those positive anabolic moments than you thought. 3—Give yourself a break. Being is just as important as doing. Take a moment to slow down. Think about how important a task […]
Are You Enjoying the Ride?
For the past week, it’s felt as if the current of the river I’ve been paddling down has sped up and there have been some rocks and rapids to navigate. It’s been an exhilarating ride, and doesn’t look like it’s going to slow down any time soon. In the past, I totally would’ve gotten stressed out by such a fast-moving current—and I’ll admit to having a few moments of overwhelm—but the opportunity has been to Be Present, and for the most part, I’ve done that pretty well. (Yeah me!) Most of us think that staying balanced means maintaining our life in equal parts—this amount of time and energy devoted to work, this amount devoted to family, this amount devoted to fun and me time, etc. True balance, however, comes from within. There is no way to control the external factors of life, so we must find a way to be balanced moment-to-moment. When life speeds up or you hit some rapids—or even run into some rocks—focusing on being in balance internally will help you enjoy the ride rather than have you holding on for dear life. One of the best ways to do that is to focus on right now. Don’t look at the past or future, but Be Present. Life feels calmer in the moment. There is only what you can do right now—not the overwhelming specter of everything you have to do, or how things have turned out in the past. Right now, you have the power to choose your response, and if you are not responding as you wish, you have the power to make another choice. Right now you can breathe. Another way to find balance is to ensure that your […]
An APPLE for Mental Wellness
Deadlines. I have some long-practiced negative catabolic energy around them that always seems to catch me by surprise. Yesterday I spent a lot of time and energy either berating myself to focus, which is a lot like slamming your foot down on the gas pedal of a car and then careening out of control, or taking my foot off the gas completely, which feels a lot better but doesn’t get you anywhere. The end result was that I made a little progress on an article I am writing, but I wasted a lot of time and mental energy that could have been better used. So today, my plan is to more gently and steadily push down on my mental gas pedal and actually get somewhere. The result will be improved mental and emotional wellness, which are key facets of optimal physical wellness. Just like the old saying, “An apple a day keeps the doctor away,” I’m going to apply my APPLE principle, which can be used anywhere you want change. Awareness—What is really going on? I think at the root of my deadline struggle is fear. Fear that I don’t know what in the heck I’m writing about (particularly if it is a technical subject, which describes just about all of the articles I write.) Fear that all the articles I’ve ever written were just flukes and now the game is up and I won’t be able to do it. Fear that I’m letting people down and negatively impacting others (sources, copy editor, and graphic designer), which comes true when I don’t meet my deadlines. And even fear that I’ll miss out on other things I really want to do, which of course comes true […]
Can You Love Life And Be Fit and Healthy?
Are you living as the person you intend to be? Do your actions line up with your desires for the life you want to create? Often the answer is “No.” For instance, you may want with all your heart to be fit and lean, but you consistently overeat or blow off exercise. I’m just as guilty of this as anyone else. For the past couple of months, I’ve overeaten or made less than stellar choices on the weekends. While I am happy to say that the over-indulgences weren’t nearly what they would have been in the past, I still made the conscious choices to eat and drink more than is absolutely best for me. The good news is I’m continuing to make progress on my 18-week Transformation Challenge—I’m more flexible and am getting stronger, I’m seeing muscles develop, and my waist is a little slimmer—but the improvements have definitely slowed. So the questions I’ve been asking myself for the past couple of days are, “Who do I intend to be and what do I need to do to Be that person?” One limiting belief I recognized is the feeling that I have to be either or. For instance, either I am fit and lean, Or I enjoy myself with family and friends on the weekends. Is it possible to be fit and lean And enjoy myself with friends and family? Switching that Or to And feels much more powerful to me. It’s giving myself permission to more fully be the person I want to be—and still meet my goals. The key now is to find that balance that lets me speed up my progress And still enjoy my friends and family when I get to […]
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