June Newsletter: In Fitness as in Life

In Fitness As In Life: Lessons from Lifting

It has now been over 5 years that I have been working here at the Fitness Center.

In that time, I have of course learned a lot about fitness and coaching exercise. I have also learned a lot about how to help people change their behavior for the better.

The more I learn about fitness, the more the lessons keep on reconnecting and reinforcing each other. And lessons learned in the gym are also frequently applicable through other areas of life.

Recently, I had a moment when I realized just how much I had changed and learned. I was looking back at an old photo of me from just over 5 years ago that I had posted on my Facebook page, and I stopped to look at the comments.

This was at a time when I was frequently performing with a dance group, which translated into lots of high intensity interval training. This was also before I had discovered weight lifting, so I was pretty skinny (when I use the word skinny, I use it with the connotation of being frail, weak, or perhaps even malnourished). My dance group costume included a crop top and one of my friends asked me what was my “diet secret.”

What really caught my attention was my response. I could barely recognize the person that I once was. My response was full of dogma and attitude, and quite frankly unhelpful I imagine, as far as giving my friend information and helping to motivate her to improve her own health and fitness.

I felt embarrassed to look back and read those words I wrote, but thankful that I have had the opportunity to learn and improve. Working here at the Fitness Center, I am able to see the daily evidence of lives that I have touched, and people who I have helped to discover their health and fitness.

It’s good to periodically take a step back and look at what you have learned, so here are some lessons that I want to share with you. I hope you like them, learn from them, and let me know what other lessons you have learned in the gym. That way we can all keep learning and improving together.

Do you have an exercise philosophy?

As someone starts to learn more and more about health and fitness, they will frequently develop a “training philosophy.” This means their opinion of what is the right way to do things.

Your training philosophy will depend on who mentored you, what worked for you to get you to your goals, and what you were naturally good at already.

If you someone who is naturally slender and loves to run, you might develop a training philosophy around running. If you have different natural dispositions and goals, you might develop a training philosophy around kettlebells, TRX, barbell complexes, bodyweight training, bodybuilding style, high intensity interval training, or any of a number of other possibilities.

I can see that my tendency to use bodyweight training stems a lot from preference as a recreational gymnast/aerialist. I can argue that bodyweight exercises are extremely convenient (which they are – no equipment needed!), but I know I also have my bias behind it.

As my own personal “philosophy” develops, I can describe it in shorter and shorter sentences and phrases. I also try to avoid relying too heavily on any one tool or method with clients, as these will change depending on who I am working with and what their goals are.

So here is my take on what people should do in the gym:

1) Have Fun

Exercise should be fun, really fun. Because if it isn’t fun, then what’s the point? Sure, exercise reduces your risk of lots of chronic diseases, but you’ll never get yourself to do it regularly if you don’t enjoy it. Exercise is a health habit, just like brushing your teeth. In order to get the full benefit, you need to KEEP DOING IT! You’ll only get yourself to keep doing it day after day if you honestly enjoy it. As your fitness improves, looks for physically active hobbies as well.

2) Do it for You

It is common to start an exercise program for external reasons. People start working out to look more attractive to their spouse, or to appease family members who have concerns about their health. Ultimately, you are the one who will be putting in the time, so make sure that YOU want it. Most people exercise for a combination of reasons with one primary reason, such as “I want to feel good and be healthy, but mostly look great in shorts.”

It’s fine and good to have several sources of motivation. Make sure that one of those top reasons is for you – no one else. Exercise because you like it, and it makes you feel great.

Remember that people who set goals are the ones who go places! Use your motivation to set goals that inspire you, and maybe even intimidate you a little. As you achieve a goal, set a new one. You are a work in progress, not done yet.

3) Move Well and Move Often

There are so many paths to fitness. Methods are different, but not necessarily superior to one another. It is the over-arching principles of kinesiology that remain the same.

The concept of moving well means minimizing unnecessary forces on your joints. You’ll know if you are moving well because you can move easily with no pain, and you rarely get injured (from training or movement errors – it can’t save you from accidents or blunt force trauma).

Our bodies are built to move daily. Not everything needs to be an intense “workout” but it helps to build more activity into your routine through regular walks, stair climbing, frequent stretching to alleviate the stress of sitting for extended periods, and anything else you can work in to your schedule.

4) Try to Fail Sometimes

Failure is an uncomfortable thing. It can be even more daunting going in to a task when you think you will most likely fail. Even harder than that is keeping your head up and giving your best effort despite chance of failure.

Most people don’t know their true limits because they don’t push to edge of their abilities. You don’t need to push to the edge frequently, but it’s good to do it sometimes.

Keep in mind that as your fitness improves, the limits of your strength, flexibility, and endurance will push out. Every once in a while, test the waters to see where those new limits are. Just be smart and make sure you have a coach or a spotter so you don’t end up falling on your face.

5) Everything is Awesome!

It’s more than just a Lego Movie reference! Strength is awesome. Flexibility is awesome. Endurance is awesome. Power is awesome. Agility is awesome. Balance is awesome. You get the point… everything is awesome.

This is a lesson to not get stuck too much in the dogma of any one method. A well-rounded person will try their hand at all kinds of physical skills. You will find favorite things and spend more time on those favorites, and that is OK. Just don’t forget about the rest of the Fitness Universe out there. Your body needs some of everything to stay healthy and functional.

Even though everything is awesome, you will occasionally find particular exercises or pieces of equipment that you just hate. That is ok. You don’t have to do something you hate. There are always substitutes and alternatives. Also, you may find those things you hate go away as your ability improves. I used to hate pistol squats until I gained sufficient leg strength to do them decently.

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I hope these ideas inspired you and got you thinking. Please share with me what you learn as well.

May Newsletter: How to be a vegetarian (or sometimes eat like one)

How to be vegetarian (or sometimes eat like one)

Without being hungry, tired, or malnourished

I grew up in an omnivorous household, and I was the only person in that household who opted to forgo meat as a matter of choice.

Family holiday dinners can still be a little awkward. At this point, my mom understands that I do need something to substitute the meat – it doesn’t work to just have the side dishes. However, she doesn’t have the energy to make a non-meat high protein dish that I will be the only one to eat. So I have to bring my own.

I first went vegetarian in high school. Honestly, I started because one of my friends was doing it. Feel free to laugh about my initial motivation.

Since high school, I have been everywhere on the vegetarian spectrum, from vegan, to standard lacto-ovo vegetarian, to pescatarian (vegetarian + eat seafood/fish). Currently I consider myself a “selective pescatarian” meaning  that I do sometimes eat fish but I am selective about it, and most of the time it is far easier to tell someone that I vegetarian than to explain why don’t want to eat whatever fish they have. I have learned to be selective about what non-meat protein sources I choose. I realized recently that I tend to feel better if I only consumed a small amount of dairy each day; in particular I do better with cultured dairy products. I have also recently realized that fake meat products made with mostly wheat protein (gluten) tend to have undesirable effects on my digestive system. Not a major problem, but it is something I’d rather avoid if I can.

A 2008 phone survey of Americans indicated that about 3% of us are vegetarian. Only 0.5% of Americans are vegan (which is a subset of vegetarians that eat no animal products, meaning no eggs/dairy). So I realize that many of you reading this newsletter are not vegetarian, and may have no plans to be.

However, there have been many times that I spoke to members about their diets, and they tell me that sometimes they just don’t feel like eating meat at a given meal, and just want to know to put together a meat-free meal without being so hungry afterward. Other members of the Fitness Center tell me that they are vegetarian for religious or cultural reasons, or may be vegetarian for certain time periods. Many of these people come to me with their struggles of being vegetarian while keeping their hunger and body fat in check.

Currently, the US government is considering recommending a plant-based diet as part of the 2015 Dietary Guidelines for Americans. The Guidelines won’t be finalized until later this year, but it shows that the idea of eating more plants is gaining traction. I am not here to convert you, but just to show you how to intelligently consider your options.

It’s Tough Being Green

The internet loves to ridicule vegetarians and vegans. In many areas of the country, it is hard to find vegetarian restaurants, or even individual menu items that are meat-free. It’s a lonely road sometimes.

Another difficult aspect of vegetarian life is the fact that everyone in your life seems to become very concerned about your nutrition. Let me tell you, it is just as easy to be a malnourished meat-eater as non-meat-eater. However, American culture is so based on meat-eating that public knowledge of how to build a healthy meat-free diet is sorely lacking.

Vegetarians get sick of people asking them “where do you get your protein?” However, there are still plenty of newbie (and not-so-new) vegetarians that are mismanaging their diets that people still feel the need to ask. Stereotypes of weak frail vegetarians eating plain rice abound, and I don’t want you to be just another stereotype.

So here are my Top 3 Big Ideas for putting together a vegetarian meal or diet.

*Be aware of protein sources (and also how much fat and/or carbohydrate comes along with those grams of protein)*

Yes, protein matters. Protein is an essential building block for your muscle and connective tissue. Protein also contributes significantly to your satiety (feeling full) from a meal. Protein needs vary depending on your size and activity level. As a general rule, try to aim for somewhere between 0.7 – 1.0 grams of protein per pound of body weight. For someone who is 120lb, that would be somewhere between 84 and 120 grams of protein per day.

Many foods contain protein, and many of the foods on this list (below) have a lot of carbohydrate and/or fat that come along with that protein. So if you are trying to watch your weight, you may find that you need some foods that are more concentrated in protein without all the other calories from carbs or fat. Chlorella and spirulina (microscopic algae common in “greens” powders) are both almost 60% protein by weight. They are a good quality protein, but most people who consume them only have a small amount. If you want a great source of protein plus vitamins and minerals, try a big scoop of chlorella or spirulina in almond or coconut milk. I suggest cocoa powder and stevia for taste.

*Vary your protein sources and focus on whole food (don’t over-rely on just soy products, or a certain brand of fake meat)*

Depending on where you get your news from, you may have seen some negative press about soy and the phytoestrogens in it making you fat. The reason soy became so popular in the US is that we looked to Eastern cultures where soy is popular and has been eaten for centuries, and they enjoy good health and longevity. We wanted that health and longevity, so we started using more and more soy. It has gotten to a point where soy derivatives (like texturized vegetable protein) are in all kinds of food you wouldn’t expect. We took a healthy food, and then took it out of context with heavy processing. If you choose to eat soy, it is best to stick with traditional, minimally processed forms – edamame, miso, natto, and tofu. The lesson here is to stick with whole foods as much as possible and limit processed foods. Check out ingredient lists, and if you aren’t sure what something is – find out!

Many of the most popular meat substitutes are made with proteins that are common allergens, such as wheat and soy. While veggie “meats” have been getting a lot better in the past 20 years, soy and wheat proteins are still the most common but you may find that you need to avoid or limit them. Other protein sources, such as brown rice, pea, and even mushroom, are becoming more common and give you a variety of options.

*Be aware of key nutrients that are frequently lacking in vegetarian/vegan diets*

Vegetarian diets are very healthy when planned correctly. The problem is that they are often not planned correctly. Vegetarian and vegan diets commonly lack sufficient protein, iron, zinc, calcium, vitamin B12, vitamin D, and vitamin A (or carotenes, precursor to vitamin A). Most of these are well taken care of when the diet includes a variety of nuts, seeds, legumes (beans), dark green and orange vegetables. However, many vegetables and legumes also contain factors that inhibit the absorption of other nutrients. Supplementation for vitamin D and B12 may be needed – always ask your doctor to get a blood test. This will help ensure you are supplementing the right nutrients for you.

April Newsletter: Of Course I’m an Athlete

Of course I’m an athlete! – I’m a Professional Desk Jockey

I have a confession to make.

I have a history of back pain, both upper and lower back. Sometimes I still suffer from back pain and have to actively manage it through stretching and exercises.

I first experienced chronic back pain in my late 20s. For a while I had frequent upper back pain, especially between my shoulder blades. Then in my early 30s, I started suffering from lower back pain. I discovered that frequently wearing high heels, plus having already very flexible hamstrings, and doing a lot of dancing and gymnastic activities that hyper-extended my back had all lead to me having a forward-tilted pelvis. That put continual pressure on my lower back, and my abdominal muscles weren’t reflexively engaging to stabilize me.

So I was in pain, and years of habitual posture and movements took a lot of effort to overcome.

As an active adult, and someone with a career in fitness, it is a little embarrassing to admit that I let my body get into such a dysfunctional state. It is also sometimes hard to convince people that I did in fact have bad posture and pain because of it. My parents and grandmother did not believe me when I told them. Back pain is correlated with increasing age and being overweight. Maybe my family hadn’t read that in a research article, but they seemed to know it instinctively anyway.

I’ve also had periods of ankle pain (from shoes that were ill-suited to me), and knee pain from banging up my knees. There was even one time recently when I was standing in an awkward position and I started to feel sharp hip pain for a moment. Good thing it went away as soon as I shifted position to a better stance, because I was just starting to think “oh my god, my body is falling apart!” Yes, I freak out like that.

All of this has taught me that I need to keep my muscles strong, flexible, and well-balanced in order to prevent pain and injury. I also know now that I need to always be aware of my posture and the ergonomic set-up of my work space, otherwise I will have chronic pain and limited range of motion.

I refuse to accept pain. Instead, I accept strength, posture, and muscle balance. I’d like to save you some pain too, so read on for tips to live, work, and move better (and hopefully pain-free).

Is Sitting the New Smoking?

There is a commonly cited statistic that roughly 80% of Americans will experience back pain in their life time. When you are young, it’s easy to look at that statistic and think optimistically “I’ll be in the fortunate 20%.” I thought that, and I still ended up in the 80% before age 30.

I have a feeling that statistic might soon be adjusted upward; since our technology is rapidly changing and everyone from young children to adults are spending increasing amounts of time in front of electronic screens (TV, computer, tablet, or phone).

I’m sure you see people texting like the figure below on a daily basis. It seems harmless, but having your chin tucked down to you chest and hunching over for extensive and frequent periods is very damaging to your spine.

For reference, your head weighs about as much as a bowling ball. Your neck can handle this weight well when the head is balanced over the neck, but as soon as the head starts craning forward (as in computer posture or texting posture), it puts strain on the neck equivalent to the weight of several heads. Pain and injury will result from it.

The time that you spend sitting seems like it should be harmless to your body. After all, sitting is resting position. When you are ready to exercise, you should be able to just hop right out of your chair and exercise vigorously without any aches, pains, or stiffness. But as I am sure you already know from experience, it doesn’t work out like that.

It turns out that a major risk factor for developing back pain is having long periods of inactivity punctuated by brief periods of strenuous activity. Are you kidding?! That describes almost every active person I know, because we spend probably 8+ hours sitting in a typical day, then jump up after work to do some intense metabolic conditioning with kettlebells.

So our bodies get angry at us for spending most of our waking hours in a chair that is unsupportive, then putting ourselves through brief periods of extra mechanical stress on our joints.

If our bodies don’t like hours of uninterrupted inactivity, then it seems like almost a waste of time to get up and stretch for a few seconds every hour. Surely, that is such a small portion of time that it will have a negligible effect on the body. It seems like it would be more efficient to just add up all those 1-minute breaks into one longer session. Then you could at least get some real exercise in.

Yet when it comes to avoiding chronic pain, once again that is not how it works out in real life. It turns out that frequency of physical activity has a huge impact on your overall posture and mobility. Your body needs that frequent reset of proper posture and moving joints through their range of motion. So I encourage you to set an hourly alarm on your phone to remind yourself to get up and stretch for 30 seconds or more. It may not feel like much at first, but it will start to give you momentum and a greater feeling of energy.

During your work day, it is easy to feel like you can just hunch forward for a few minutes while you work out this one urgent problem or issue, but trust me – pain is not worth it. Take a minute to make sure your chair is at the correct height (feet flat on ground), monitor is at arm’s length from you, and keyboard is low and close enough so that your elbows are right below your shoulders and wrists straight. Your neck and back will feel so much better.

March Newsletter: Hunger & Appetite

Hunger and Appetite: Aren’t those synonyms?

We all know about the concept of “Freshman 15,” so let me share my experience with you.

I have had a steady body weight through my adult life, but the first year of college brought a lot of stress. Most of it was good and exciting, but of course there was the academic course load, and holding yourself to a very high academic standard is tough for anyone.

Living in the dorm with a bunch of other 18 year olds was both exciting and frustrating, and we were all required to be on the meal plan that included meals at the cafeteria. There was an urban legend going around the dorm that the cafeteria staff secretly sprayed extra starch on the salad bar lettuce so that girls didn’t become anorexic. I‘m pretty sure that was false.

I never really liked it as much as home cooking, but there were just always so many choices. Dessert was available every day. That wasn’t normal to me. In my household, dessert was an infrequent treat, so I probably went overboard, eating things mostly because the choices were there and it was exciting for me.

I was physically active. I took some early morning kickboxing classes, plus I was still trying to keep up my high school habit of running in the morning. I distinctly remember waking up regularly at about 6am and being SO. DARN. HUNGRY. Really, so hungry that it was my hunger waking me up, not my alarm. I couldn’t even think of sleeping in when my stomach growled that much in the early morning.

I also recall having frequent digestive issues at that time, which I never really figured out at the time. You know – issues of the stinky, embarrassing variety. Not good for anyone’s social life. I felt that my diet was “off” in some way, but I couldn’t figure out how to fix it.

Bottom line – I gained 10 pounds during my first year of college. How did that happen?

For years, this has puzzled me; even as I got my bachelor’s degree in nutrition, and went on to start my career in fitness.

It has taken me many years to come to terms with the fact that I, like any other human may do at some point, had mistaken my appetite for hunger.

Appetite, hunger, satiety… will this be on the test?

We all like to think that we can’t be fooled. Once we have seen how a magic trick works… we won’t be taken in. That is for other people, the ones who are ignorant. But not me – I am too smart to be fooled. Famous last words.

The thing is – once you think you know it all, you stop looking at everything else around you with open curiosity. The sad truth is that people who think they are too smart to be fooled are exactly the ones who get fooled.

For decades, the officially accepted dogma in nutrition and weight loss (and the way I was taught in my college nutrition courses) was that all you had to do was expend more calories than you take in. Simple as that – your body is a math equation. Aerobics were the superior form of exercise for weight loss because it burns the greater percent of calories from fat. Oh, and definitely a low fat diet was the way to go, since obviously eating fat will make you fat. A healthy individual should be able to self-regulate food intake based on hunger, but if you have trouble with that, then tough, you just need to count calories.

So scientists had it figured out, and government health agencies disseminated the information to the public. Low fat diets and steady-state aerobic exercise reigned supreme throughout the 20^th century, and America continued to get fatter by the year.

We started with this equation for energy balance:

Calories in = calories out

Now, the equation looks more like this:

Calories in + stress + inadequate sleep + inattentive eating habits out of proportion to real hunger cues + addictive nature of processed foods = Calories out (consists of: resting metabolic rate + all movement and exercise, which is affected by sedentary lifestyle, movement patterns, and metabolic adaptation to aerobic exercise)

It turns out that there are several factors on the “calories in” side of the equation that complicate things by affecting your hormones or your psychological state. It also turns out that appetite doesn’t always match up with hunger.

Appetite is a psychological desire for food, and as such it will be affected by your past experience with food, as well as your current mental state. Hunger is your body’s physical need for food.

Theoretically, hunger should drive appetite, but in real life it doesn’t always work out nice and clean like that. Likewise, the satisfaction of physical hunger should give a satisfaction of appetite, but once again satiety doesn’t always work out that way.

There’s a saying that reflects this mismatch between hunger and appetite. Have you ever said that someone’s eyes were bigger than their stomach? Have you ever said it about yourself? The phrase is usually in the context of dishing yourself up more food than you can eat, and being left with a lot of wasted food – a common phenomenon at buffets and potlucks. A similar phrase is biting off more than you can chew – and these are just the American English phrases. Each language and culture has their own phrases for similar situations. After all, eating and culture are deeply intertwined, and appetite is universal.

So what happens if you override your physical signals telling you to put the brakes on eating, and just keep going back and back again for more because you simply have to try everything? The immediate effects are typically painful, usually involving heartburn and other digestive upset, and the long term effects are an increase in girth. The more often you do it, the more your friends and family come to regard you as a member of the “clean plate club.” They start to anticipate your reaction and offer or leave you food.

Are you someone who always eats the leftovers from your kids’ dinner plates? It is a common thing, and I have heard it from members of this gym. When you finish your kids’ leftovers on a regular basis, appetite gives way to habit. If you are in this situation frequently, you may not have the appetite to finish the other’s plate, but habit and culture can be strong driving forces. I know many people who struggle with their weight because someone else in the family (child or spouse) has eyes bigger than their stomach, but the composure to stop eating when satisfied. The other person (who hates wasting food – which I completely understand and relate to) is left to most likely become the human garbage disposal for the other person’s sampled fare.

We all have times that we succumb to such feelings, even more so at parties, holidays, or other celebrations. The first step in getting things under control is to acknowledge that you are human, and therefore your desires can get the better of you sometimes. I find that the more thoroughly I accept the ebb and flow of my desires, the easier is the whole process of self-regulating food intake.

The second step is to slow down your eating. Chew more, take smaller bites. Ask yourself if you are really still hungry. Sometimes this can be hard question to answer for yourself, so I have found that an even better way to go about it is to ask yourself if you are still enjoying your food as much as when you started eating. If you are still not sure, just put your meal on pause for a few minutes. You can always resume if you later decide you are still hungry.

The third step is to never punish yourself, no matter what dietary “transgressions” you experience. As soon as you mentally chastise yourself, a different part of your brain will most likely feel upset at the restriction, and then proceed to drive you further off your plan to complete dietary abandon. When your meal is that emotionally charged, it is next to impossible to discern the signs of satiety from your body.

In the paraphrased words of best-selling author and gym owner Rachel Cosgrove, “if you had a flat tire, would you stop and fix that one tire, or would you just slash the other three?” Of course you wouldn’t slash your tires, so quit derailing your nutrition goals.

It takes time to get to know your body well enough to keep your appetite in line with your hunger. It can be particularly difficult to anticipate your changing hunger levels when you start doing more metabolically demanding workouts, such as we do in our classes. It is natural that working out will stimulate your appetite, but when you are trying to trim your waistline, it doesn’t do you good to overcompensate in terms of diet. So remember, when in doubt, slow down. It also helps to keep a food/exercise journal so you can see the trends of how different types of exercise affect your hunger the following day.

February newsletter: Building a better relationship

Building a Better Relationship with yourself and the food you eat

With the coming of Valentine’s Day, discussions of love are in the air.

Maybe you are already in a happy relationship, and you feel lovey-dovey all the time. Or maybe you are single and frustrated and decry Valentine’s Day as the Hallmark fake holiday, created solely to make money on greeting cards, flowers, and candy. Maybe you are just over the whole idea of it.

My opinion is that it is easy to love someone (or something), but it is much more work to have a healthy relationship with that person (or thing), to keep that love alive year after year till the end of your days.

When I was single and dating, I didn’t really know what it meant to have a healthy relationship… because I had never been there. Attraction and infatuation are easy to come by. It was an entirely new concept to find a partner who supported me emotionally, whose long term goals in life aligned with mine (ie, want to get married and have a family), and who really wanted to stick with me through all the difficult times in learning to communicate better so that we could have a deeper and more fulfilling relationship. Once I found such a relationship, I married him. I thank my lucky stars for my husband.

We all know people are in (or have been in) dysfunctional relationships. People may be passive aggressive in their communication and seek to undermine their partners for petty reasons. There are some people who think they can ignore or change the fact that their partner does not want the same things in terms of long term big questions like marriage or children, until it blows up in a big fight.

Perhaps you even know someone who has been in an abusive relationship. It’s not always physically abusive, but it may be verbally abusive. Whenever one partner tries to physically or mentally harm the other partner, it is clearly an abusive pattern.

There are many parallels between the relationships that people have with each other and the relationships they have with themselves. So get ready for a bunch of analogies, and hopefully you will find a few ways to improve your own relationships.

Always treat yourself with the love and respect that you would give your oldest, dearest friend

I’m gonna come right out and say it – it is shocking how many people are in an abusive, neglectful relationship with themselves. And I’m not even talking about drug abuse. I mean emotional self-abuse.

In my personal experience, most of these people are the kind who would never stand for an abusive relationship with a romantic partner. They might be the person who has their bags packed and a restraining order ready after the first infraction.

So it breaks my heart to hear such people confide in me about their struggles, and the things they tell themselves. Words like fat, lazy, weak, failure, loser, ugly, or worthless might escape their lips. These same words, if spoken by a lover, would constitute verbal abuse. Why do so few of us recognize that? Self- abuse is just as inexcusable.

The tagline goes – there is no excuse for domestic violence. I would like to add that there is no excuse for treating yourself and your body as your own personal whipping boy.

Sometimes I have difficulty convincing people that their emotional self-abuse is indeed damaging them and hindering their health & fitness goals. They seem to think it’s OK for them to look in the mirror every day, pinch their belly, and tell themselves how fat and gross they look.

Huh? What? You wouldn’t take that from anyone else, so why should you get a free pass? You should always treat your body and psyche as your oldest dearest friend or loved one, because it truly is.

In our culture, there are lots of forms of self-neglect that pass for normal. Perhaps some will sound familiar to you.

-Working through the pain. (Meaning sharp pain, not discomfort of fatigue)

-Denying your body the sleep it wants, which results in dependence on caffeine and perhaps multiple alarms to wake up.

-Slamming energy drinks and working harder when feeling run-down. (When you feel run-down, that is your body asking you to rest, and perhaps eat more).

-Eating far too much or too little, and ignoring the obvious painful signs from the body.

-Eating specific foods that consistently cause problems like bloating, gastric distress and more. This could be a sign of food intolerance, and these intolerances vary individually.

Many people have a complicated relationship with food, and eat food for all kinds of reasons other than the enjoyable sustenance it should be. Food can be a source of guilt and shame, or it can give a high like a drug. Food is given to others to show love, or to sabotage someone else’s effort to trim their waistline. Food is labeled as good or bad. Sometimes, a food will cross over from one category to another. A few decades ago, we all talked about how bad butter is, and sugar is good. Now, more people are embracing butter and other saturated fats while telling the evils of sugar.

To me, the most useful way to view food is as your friend. You can and should have a wide circle of (food) friends, and it will probably be rare that you completely black-list a (food) friend when they betray you.

The healthy foods you like best are like your best friends. You can enjoy their company very frequently, even daily, and always feel good because of it, not drained.

Next comes your circle of close friends, which is like the healthy food you like, but might get tired of if you eat too much, or less healthy food that you like but choose to moderate. You like spending time together, but you don’t need daily contact. You might be fine going weeks or months without hanging out together.

The junk food that you have trouble controlling yourself around is like that old friend you’ve known forever, but they always seem to bring you down. Maybe your friend went down the wrong path in life, got in trouble with the law, or just doesn’t believe in the concept of self-improvement. Although you love this friend like a brother, you simply cannot spend more than a few minutes together. You still love your friend, but your goals in life just don’t align.

You may even have a few (or several) foods that cross the line – they just plain hurt your body and you will not allow it. Those foods are like a former friend who betrayed your trust, and now you have to go your separate ways.

Just as you would never punish yourself for occasionally getting together with an old friend that you haven’t seen in a long time, you shouldn’t punish yourself for eating a less-healthy food that you enjoy. So if you indulge, relax! Eat slowly, enjoy, and stop when you feel satisfied. Ask yourself if the bite you are currently eating still tastes as good to you as the first bite. When the answer is no, put down the fork.

I’ll end this article with a personal story from this past Christmas vacation. One day on vacation, I was feeling lazy. I ate a pastry for breakfast. For lunch I had a donut and some vegetarian “sausage” (gourmet food combination, right?). In the afternoon I went out with my husband to the mall and felt thirsty. I got an iced tea at one of those fancy tea places. I forgot to ask for half-sugar as I normally do. Maybe it was because the mall was so busy that I was feeling out of sorts, but when I tasted the tea I realized my mistake, yet I didn’t want to bother to get a new one. I went about drinking my tea and walking. Halfway into the cup, I sat down and was in a complete mental fog. I felt wretched. I told my husband what was going on and that I probably had too much sugar. I can recall feeling unhappy about my foggy state, wishing I could rewind the day and make different choices, but not upset at myself or the food I ate. When I got home, I made myself a normal dinner (with veggies, healthy protein, and fat), drank some water, and felt normal very quickly.

January newsletter: resolution solution

Cheers to a New You: Adopting New Habits and Making Them Stick

It’s that time again.

Well, it may be more like that 5^th time again. I know it is so good for me, but it is just so hard to do. Maybe not so hard to do a few times, but as the weeks and months go by, there just always seems to be something else more interesting or pressing to do with my time.

Most people who make New Year’s resolutions quit by mid to late January, and I know this, so I don’t want to be another statistic. I’m going to start early, in December, so I can be ahead of the curve. Maybe that way, when my motivation starts to fail, I will make use of everyone else’s January energy to feed off. Oh no, that means I am committing myself to do this over the holidays and while traveling! Should I back out? No one will know but me.

For me, the habit in question is meditation. (You knew that I exercise regularly, right? As the manager of the Fitness Center, that would just be ridiculously embarrassing if I didn’t.)

I tend to have an anxious personality, and I could really use the calming effect of some daily meditation. Dozens of research studies attest to the health benefits of meditation. It’s good for your body, your brain, and even your longevity. It’s free and easy to do. Many techniques are out there, but all you really need to take some time to yourself and just do it. I’ve even done it a few times, and the effects were nice.

I could have replaced the word “meditation” with “exercise” or “lose weight” in that last paragraph and it would have sounded like the resolution rationale of millions of people every January.

The process of habit change is the same whether you are trying to adopt a new exercise program or engage in daily meditation.

Just know that I am right there with you on the path.

Success is built day by day in the adoption of good habits and planning

When you are motivated to make a positive change in your life, it can be really easy to get carried away with your motivation and bite off more than you can chew.

When people try to make a major healthy change in the New Year, it frequently involves changing 5 to 10 (or more!) individual habits, and that is very difficult to do all at once, and nearly impossible to maintain long term.

So in the interest of long term success and maintenance of healthy habits, the best way to go is one habit at a time. Habits take a lot of mental energy to change, but if you take the time to do it right, the new healthy habits can feel relatively easy to maintain.

So first, consider your fitness goal. What exactly is it? Be specific. If you need help with this step, now is a great time to set an appointment with one of the staff members for a Goal-setting Session. We can help you by measuring your current fitness level, and talk you through your motivation in reaching a specific goal. Then you will be able say your goal specifically, such as “my goal is to reduce my body fat level from 25% to 20% by the end of March so that I will feel confident in my wedding photos.”

Once you set a specific, measurable, realistically attainable goal, the next step is make an action plan. Take time to consider all your typical habits for physical activity, eating, food preparation, sleep, and stress management. Consider how ready you are to make a change in each of these areas, and how feasible it will be considering your schedule and lifestyle. Rank each habit you have listed in terms of your readiness to change or improve on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being not going to change and 10 being ready to change right now.

An evaluation of someone’s current habits (let’s call him Bob) might look something like this:

Physical activity includes a 20 minute walk, usually 5 days a week. (Ready to change: 5)

Rest of day is almost entirely spent sitting (Ready to change: 6)

Typically skip breakfast. (Ready to change: 2)

Typically purchase food for lunch at a local restaurant. (Ready to change: 4)

Dinner is spent with family – I have whatever they are having. Plus I eat what the kids leave on their plates. (Ready to change: 4)

Purchase snacks from vending machines daily (Ready to change: 10)

Drink about 4 glasses of water per day (Ready to change: 7)

Enjoy a glass of wine once or twice a week (Ready to change: 1)

Have little food preparation skills – stick to basics so I don’t set the kitchen on fire (Ready to change: 3)

Eat food quickly and almost always while checking email or doing something else (Ready to change: 9)

Usually sleep 6 to 6.5 hours per night, maybe 7 on weekends (Ready to change: 8)

Can’t remember the last time I got a massage (Ready to change: 6)

Step one for Bob would be to bring his own snacks to work so he doesn’t fall into the vending machine trap. Snacks can and should be simple. It can include things like deli-sliced turkey, an apple or other piece of fruit, and small handful of nuts. He would work on this habit for several weeks until 100% confident to add in the next habit (eat slowly and reduce multi-tasking while eating). Next Bob would get to bed earlier each night by reducing TV viewing in the evening. Even 20 to 30 minutes will make a difference long term.

Even as Bob works through his list of habits, there may be things that he is not willing to change – ever (such as a weekly glass of wine). That’s ok. Life is all about finding the balance that works for you.

Another important piece to long-term success is expecting bumps in the road. Life will challenge your schedule and habits. Expect it and get back on the path as best you can and as soon as you can. Big changes in work and family life can throw everything off schedule and make you feel like you are back at square one. Having a support network (like other people at the gym) always helps to get you back on track to your goals.

Relapses happen. I know – I have been there.

Several months ago, I had been doing well with my intention to make daily meditation a habit. I was typically spending about 15 minutes quietly sitting each morning before going off to work and face the rest of my day. Weekends were inconsistent, but I felt good that I was doing pretty well with my habit. I felt happy and productive at work.

Gradually, little things started adding up and before I knew it, meditation was gone from my schedule. As holiday stress started building around Thanksgiving, my anxiety about all kinds of things started bubbling up again. Weekends became not-that-happy, anxiety-filled times. I needed to change what I was doing.

I decided to take my own advice and start small, smaller than what I thought I needed.

So early in December, I began my morning meditation habit again. But this time, I only aimed for 5 minutes. I wouldn’t even worry about doing 15 or 20 minutes. Plus, I would do it before turning on the computer, eating, or having any other distractions. With only a 5 minute commitment to myself, everything else could wait.

I’m sure there may be more bumps in the road ahead, but right now I am off to a good start.

How I improved my straddle split with foam rollers

When it comes to stretching, most people are very haphazard. They do the stretches they like (read: good at) and avoid the ones that hurt. They stretch whenever they think about it, which ends up meaning they do it once a month.

Now, I am fairly flexible person and have been for as long as I can remember… yet I am still like most people. I regularly do the stretches I like (am good at), but tended to avoid the ones that hurt. Yet, as a fitness professional, I knew that I could just avoid things and expect to reach my goals.

For as long as I could remember, I wanted to be able to do a straddle (aka middle) split. I was always pretty good with the front-and-back split, so I had little motivation to work on that one. But whenever I tried to stretch my straddle split, it just hurt and I didn’t know how to make it not hurt. I didn’t want to suffer through intense stretching sessions. I read about various stretching techniques, but it was all unpleasant and I couldn’t get myself to do it regularly.

Until one day I happened to lay across my foam roller. I had been using the foam roller in the typical method of self myofascial release for a few years, but I thought I could put it to an additional use.

My problem was that when I tried to stretch, my thighs tightened up reflexively. I thought that if I could support my chest and prop myself up to the height where I was ready to stretch, I could finally relax into the stretch. When I did it, I felt the completely new sensation of my thighs relaxing and my hips stretching.

[Aside from stretching, my regular workouts include full body strength training and mobility work. I always start with foam rolling my hips, thighs, and back and move on to muscle activation exercises to warm up.]

this was where I started stretching – laying on a 6-inch foam roller

After practicing this regularly for a while, it actually became comfortable. The day I thought I could take a nap in this position was the day I decided I was ready to move to the next level. I needed something similar to this foam roller that brought me just an inch or so closer to the ground.

step 2 – laying on a squishy air roller

Encouraged by my progress, I quickly tried a 3-inch half roller.

step 3- the half roller

From there I was finally brave enough to go unsupported. In this photo, my hips are actually just an inch or 2 off the ground, but this is a huge improvement for me. I found a stretching method I didn’t dread – in fact, looked forward to and could even smile while doing it – and got results. 🙂

flat out like a pancake

Even after reaching this point, I still start each day’s stretching session with the 6-inch roller, than the squishy roller, the half roller, and then floor. I want to keep this a happy comfortable experience that I ease my body into each time. Looking back at the photos, it doesn’t look like such a huge difference from step 1 to step 4, but I assure you it felt like a huge difference.

Wash-and-Chop: The answer to getting yourself to eat more vegetables

Getting yourself to eat more vegetables like you know you should can be a battle. There are lots of common hurdles, including the time and effort to prepare vegetables for meals, or just not “liking” vegetables. The answer to “not liking” vegetables is to buy better quality (fresh, local, in season) and learn to cook! The answer to the time stumbling block is…

Wash-and-Chop

A streamlined method for washing and prepping your vegetables for the week ahead of time. This is a simple concept: right after you do your weekly grocery shopping (and plan out your meals for the week – planning is big key to success), you gather up all your veggies in a colander, wash them, cut/chop, and put back into the fridge in tupperware (or if you are like me, GlassLock reusable containers).

I know from my own experience comparing weeks when I successfully wash-and-chop versus failing to do so that I easily double my intake of vegetables by doing this.

Having the veggies ready to go makes it super easy to throw them into your omelette or salad or stir fry.

Have leftover shopped onions and broccoli (or whatever) at the end of the week? Put them in a frittata. (this is a baked egg dish that you can put any kind of meat or vegetable you like – it is the answer for leftovers!)

But what about pre-cut veggies?

Pre-cut is convenient, and convenient comes at a higher price. Also, there is a price in terms of compromised freshness. In my limited experience with pre-cut fresh veggies, I also seem to be slightly more likely to get food poisoning from them (and that is after washing and cooking!). That’s just my take on it, but I suggest washing and cutting your own vegetables.

actually, this is enough vegetables for just 2 meals for me – a week’s worth would be a lot more

Lemon tahini salad dressing

I have to say, I can’t stand salad dressings from the grocery store. All those gums and thickeners make me gag. Once I realized how easily it is to make my own, I never went back.

My initial forays into salad dressing making were naturally oil-and-vinegar variations with some spices. These work well, but sometimes you want something that will stick a little more to all your greens and not just pool at the bottom of the bowl.

I forget how I happened upon this dressing that became my basic go-to dressing. Maybe I wanted to put some tahini sauce on my falafel. I kept tahini in the fridge, but needed to thin it out somehow, and I had lots of lemons.

Basic lemon tahini (sesame seed paste) dressing

• 1-2 TB of tahini
• Juice of 1/2 lemon (or more if needed/desired)
• Salt to taste
• Desired spices (such as garlic, pepper, oregano…)
• Can be thinned out with a small amount of additional water, olive oil, and/or vinegar

Directions:

Start with just the tahini and lemon juice in a bowl and slowly mix together. As it mixes, the acid from the lemon juice will cause the tahini to lighten in color and change texture. After you have a smooth consistency, you can add in spice and any other flavorings.

lemon tahini dressing before mixing

 

lemon tahini dressing after mixing

But I don’t like drinking water

At Sanctuary Fitness, we keep our nutrition advise pretty simple for clients, and it can be summarized in just a few words: protein, veggies, fish oil, and water.

Of those 4 concepts, water intake is the simplest to explain, but occasionally someone will say “but I don’t like drinking water.”

I certainly enjoy ice cold water on a hot day, but there are times that I don’t feel like drinking plain water, so I can sympathize with this sentiment. So here are some suggestions for healthy hydration. Start with a good water filter at home, and of course use reusable bottles when on the go.

1. Lemon/lime juice added to water – juice of half a lemon or lime added to a glass of cold water makes a very refreshing drink. Here is a convenient water bottle that already has a citrus juicer built in: Zing Anything. Also, you can boil a cut lemon in 2 cups of water to make a healthy detox drink full of limonene.
2. Mint water – someone made a fortune of bottling this concept, but you can make your own easily. Add a few drops of mint essential oil to you water and stir, or add mint leaves and refrigerate overnight.
3. Carbonated water – this idea can be combined with any of the other flavoring ideas, or add a few drops of liquid stevia to make your own soda. Make your own with Soda Stream.
4. Tea – herbal, green or white teas are a great way to get hydrated. I like having tea in winter, but you can also do iced tea in the summer time. Keep it lightly sweetened.
5. Any fruit or vegetable combination that appeals to you – I never got into cucumbers in water, but I have seen lots of people do it. Try whatever you like with your own infused water.

Note: Sometimes people don’t want to drink enough water because they aren’t absorbing it (feel like it is just sloshing around in stomach). In that case, adding a pinch of sea salt to a water bottle will help you to absorb the water better. Use just a pinch – you should not be able to taste it. Try Celtic Sea Salt.