Philosophy
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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How I Overcame Finishing LAST in Every Race
Principles for accomplishing ANY goal Do you ever feel like all your hard work is just NOT paying off? Like you’re beating your head against the proverbial wall to achieve something, yet have nothing to show for it? That is exactly how I felt when I started running. My first year on the track team in high school, I finished dead last in every single race. Grueling practices and lung-burning exertion all the way to the finish line, only to see no improvement – to fail, letting down my team and myself. Initially, I thought joining the track team would be a great way to become a runner. Until then,…
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Back to School Snack Traps: Top 4 Healthy Not Healthy
And better alternatives for backpack snacks Parents across the nation are singing the praises of the back-to-school season. Because, no matter how painful and tedious back-to-school shopping is, every parent knows that the reward for this effort is that his/her kids will be back in the classroom and out of the house soon. If you aren’t a parent with kids in school, you may be unaware that, these days, kids are allowed – nay, encouraged – to bring snacks to school … for consumption during non-lunch times of the day. I don’t know about you, but when I was in elementary school, snacks brought from home were straight up contraband…
