Philosophy
4 Simple Eating Habits Everyone Can Learn From Kids
Have you ever seen a kid get upset, eat a pint of ice cream, and then feel guilty about it? Or, refuse to eat until after noon because they “pigged out” the previous day? Of course not! Children are natural intuitive eaters – they don’t stress about what, when, or how much they did or will eat. Instead, they just eat when they’re hungry and stop eating when they’re full. Amazing! How do they do it? We adults are quick point out that kids usually don’t have the emotional baggage and stress that we do. They naturally get plenty of exercise, and they don’t care about their waistline. All true.…
10 Simple & Effective Workday Exercises
Have you ever stood up from a chair and felt your muscles tighten like vice grips around your shoulders, back and legs? Maybe your legs even “fell asleep”, or your wrists ached from over-mousing. It’s easy to lose track of how long I’ve been sitting in the same position and find myself with tight and angry muscles. Over the years, my husband and I have done some inventive things to keep our bodies from seizing up during marathon meetings, road trips, or even movie marathons. I’ve tried double pigeon pose, in office chair, with lumbar pillow (FAIL. I do NOT recommend.). He’ll bust out a few sets of pushups and…
4 Reasons to Break Up With Your Fitness Tracker
Or “take a break” … or “just be friends” Here’s recent imaginary conversation between me and my fitness watch: Me: “It’s not me, it’s you. You only love me when I walk 10,000 steps per day, you take a lot of my work and exercise for granted, and I’m afraid you’ll share my personal information without my permission. In short, I invest a lot of time and effort in you, yet end up feeling inadequate and betrayed. I think we should just be friends.” Fitness watch: [silent] Fitness trackers are great for a lot of things – like setting a morning alarm that won’t wake your spouse. That is the…
Health At Every Size – What It Is, Why It’s Important, and Where It Goes Too Far
In my recovery from Hypothalamic Amenorrhea (HA), I’ve been listening to some podcasts that discuss the topic. Because the majority of HAers are restricting food and exercising excessively, a lot of these podcasts delve into eating disorders, diet culture, and a principle called Health At Every Size®, or HAES. What is HAES? In short, the HAES approach to both policy and individual decision-making that rejects the following: The use of weight, size, or BMI as proxies for health, and The myth that weight is a choice. The Health At Every Size® Principles are: Weight Inclusivity: Accept and respect the inherent diversity of body shapes and sizes and reject the idealizing…
Three Reasons Noom is Not for Me
I was excited to try out Noom, a healthy-habit/weight loss app that’s been getting a ton of press recently. I dutifully entered all of my health info and stats as prompted and waited for my personalized recommendations. Imagine my surprise when Noom gleefully announced that I could lose 15 lbs by March! Surprised because, if I did lose 15 lbs, I’d weigh 100 lbs (I’m 5’6”), which would be unhealthy and darn near starvation. Noom. It’s an expensive app ($45/month at time of posting) designed by behavioral psychologists to help you lose weight. It’s targeted to millenials, because as stated by the app itself, millennials struggle to perform difficult tasks…
Sports Injuries: 3 Steps to Complete Recovery
So you’re injured. You were humming along, being your active self – running, playing tennis, crossfitting, etc. – and you feel a knee pop or wake up the next day with searing pain in your shoulder. Whether you suffer an acute injury, like breaking a bone, or an overuse ailment, such as plantar fasciitis; it’s common to feel angry, sad, or even depressed about it. For me, coping with the psychological impact of an injury is harder than the physical recovery! No matter how you feel, one thing is for certain – we all want to recover well, and recover as fast as possible. In this post, I share a…
10 Must-Have Foods for Healthy Eating
Ever think about overhauling your diet or just eating healthier, but then get overwhelmed with all the choices? It’s no wonder – the options are endless! The average supermarket now carries over 40,000 products, which is a 5x increase from the 1970s – so many choices [1, 2]!! When I talk about food and nutrition with friends and family, one of the most common questions I get is, “What do you eat?” I think to myself, “Yay – I’m so glad you want to chat about food!” because I could talk for days about it! Even though I think a lot about food and nutrition, the reality is that I…
The Best Advice for Long Distance Running
How to Develop a Perseverance Mindset The thought of long distance running as a hobby or recreational activity seems to put off a lot of people. I think it’s because running is thought of as (and can be) a painful activity that one must suffer through rather than enjoy. When I tell people that I look forward to my longer weekend runs, I often get bewildered looks. Is this negative perception due to memories of the “gym class mile” in middle school, running-as-punishment in high school sports, or some other running=bad experience? Certainly, running can be painful. Running when injured or trying to run a 5-minute mile with no training…
Are Free Days Good For You?
They Can Be – Here’s How Really, the only downside to healthy eating is not eating part – not eating mass quantities of just anything we want. Most of us would love to stuff our faces with ice cream and pizza every day … but then we’d be sick. What to do? Typical diets, especially fad-ish ones, require the elimination of your favorite treats (chocolate ice cream, I’m looking at you) or even entire food groups (I can’t live without dairy!!). Unless you’re allergic or have an intolerance to a food, there is no scientific reason to ban it from your life forever. Today I’d like to share with you…
7 Ways to Stop Eating So Much Sugar
Most of us realize that too much sugar is bad for our health – not only does sugar have no nutritional value (outside of calories), eating too much can lead to weight gain, type II diabetes, and other chronic health problems. The problem: sugar is wonderfully delicious! Case in point: the average American consumes more than ⅓ cup of added sugar daily – that’s 57 pounds per year! If you have a few minutes, this TEDx video does a great job of explaining why we looovve eating sugar: https://youtu.be/lEXBxijQREo Even though we humans are hard-wired to consume sweet foods, The American Heart Association recommends no more than 6 – 9…
