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Let’s Go Walking

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Secret Exposed!

Walking just may be the best-kept health secret today! It releases stress, reduces anxiety, helps clear your mind, increases blood flow, improves your energy, helps with weight loss, enhances your mood, and – along with healthy nutrition — can reduce or eliminate a host of symptoms, such as high blood pressure, elevated cholesterol, diabetes, stomach distress, and more! And springtime is the ideal time to put on your sneakers and go take a walk!

The President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports recommends 30 minutes of walking a day, at least five days a week (the equivalent of 10,000 steps daily) for the best health benefits. Here are more top tips to get the most health value from your daily walk:

  • Make it your morning routine. Studies show that it feels easier to keep our commitment to exercise when we schedule it in the morning or early part of the day – before we are exhausted by the day or get bogged down with other commitments.
  • Eat a balanced dinner of lean, healthy protein and “good” fats to ensure your body has fuel for the morning. Make sure you’re eating two to three hours before bedtime, and skip the alcohol (which can interrupt your sleep cycle or make you feel sluggish in the morning).
  • Prep the night before. It helps to have your walking shoes, bottled water, and Vega-protein drink (or a banana) ready to go by your front door! (Yes, you can make a protein smoothie the night before!)
  • Mix it up. Include short, power walkouts as well as longer, more moderate-paced walks each week. Health experts have long recommended challenging yourself to keep a brisk pace, but that you should still be able to “talk and walk.” However, the latest research cited in Prevention Magazine, from studies at the University of Virginia, found that women who walked shorter, fast-paced walks three times a week PLUS two longer, moderate-paced walks “lost five times more belly fat than those who strolled at a moderate pace five days a week — even though both groups burned the same number of calories (400) per walk.”
  • Take a moment! If you’re walking outside, take time to take in the beauty of the outdoors, the flowers blooming, the blue skies, the birds chirping. Walking is not just good for your body, it’s good for your mind! If you have a favorite playlist – great! That can also be meditative and relaxing. Just remember to pay attention to your surroundings and look ahead for any uneven payment, cracks in the sidewalk, or holes in the ground to avoid injury.
  • Warm up and cool down. Within the first few minutes of your walk, stop and complete a few easy stretches to protect your hamstrings and ankles. During the last 5 to 10 minutes of your walk, slow your pace and complete additional stretches, ensuring your muscles and heart have a chance to recover.
  • Replenish with water.  Believe it or not, most of us are dehydrated before we even head out the door in the morning. Holistic health experts such as Dr. Andrew Weil recommend that you drink half your weight in ounces of water every day. On those days when you increase your exercise, you’ll want to add more. One easy tip: Start by drinking eight ounces of water when you wake up. An hour or two before your walk, drink another eight ounces. During your walk, replenish with water every 15 minutes. This will not only keep you hydrated, but will also help you maintain your energy during and after your workout. Check out my Old School Gatorade recipe for a healthier option to replenishing electrolytes.

One of my favorite tips is to walk with a friend! It helps me keep my commitment to walking, while giving us time to catch up and motivate each other. Who can you partner with to step up your walking workout?

Finding Your Exercise Groove

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Sustainable Exercise is the Goal

I truly believe exercise consistency comes down to mindset and how what you associate exercise inside your beautiful brain. If you need to push yourself to exercise, it is very difficult to make it sustainable. Let’s face it; any chance you get will be a good one to avoid it.

Tony Robbins talks about the push and pull factor. You need to move away from the push and into the pulling force. To find out what you really associate something with, especially if it’s something you say you want to be doing but don’t seem to be doing, he has 4 questions you can ask yourself ( he calls this the pain/pleasure questions):

1. What pain do you associate with doing it?
2. What pleasure do you associate by not doing it?
3. What will it cost you if you don’t do it?
4. What will you get if you do do it?

I used these 4 questions to get my meditation practice to a consistent level and it worked! Take some quiet time to really look into these questions.

Making time for exercise

While I agree with this suggestion, there’s another huge factor to consider; your already busy schedule. The trick is not to ADD exercise to your already full and exhausting day, but see what you can CROWD OUT in order to get consistent exercise into your schedule. Is there anything you can delegate, give up or hire out in order to have time for exercise? Don’t get up earlier and lose sleep or give up your lunch hour because that will exhaust you more in the long run. Once you finagle your schedule to include consistent exercise, put it on your calendar, and treat it like any other important appointment.

Find something you enjoy and make time for it. Explore. If it is yoga then find a series you enjoy on video/TV or go to a studio. If it’s kayaking then find a way to incorporate it into your week. Just like food there is no one way. Don’t force yourself to do exercise you hate. It won’t last and you will not make the time for it. I speak from experience!

How much time is necessary?

Remember exercise is all about health not about weight loss. Yes, exercise helps, but food is by far the best mechanism for weight loss. Think short bursts or ‘moments’ of exercise. This is your minimum target. It doesn’t matter how you get that exercise but 10 minute minimums are your minimum goal with at least one dedicated exercise session lasting 30 minutes in any one week. This will circulate your blood, get your lymph system active, and stretch your muscles a bit.

Set the number of minutes that you want to achieve each week. 90 minutes is the low end of the recommendation for good health. We’ll start there. In a week that could be:

6x10mins and 1×30 mins = 90 mins = Goal Reached.

You might want to do 3×30 minute sessions and you will reach the 90min goal in just 3 days – better yet you might really prioritize and do 30 minutes a day (maybe 15 minutes in the morning and 15 minutes at lunch or in the evening) with one day off and really see results with 180 minutes of exercise a week.

Your exercise can be at any pace from walking, rebounding on a mini trampoline to jogging or lifting weights, but if you get huffy puffy that would be great (huffy puffy is when it is a little bit difficult to talk while exercising).

Make exercise a priority

Prioritize your exercise program, because in the end it is simply a choice. You either choose to make it a priority or you choose not to make it a priority. Let’s face it, the exercise needed for good health is not hard. Now, go get that beautiful body moving!

Tips to Relax from Holiday Hoopla

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Puh-wooooosh! That’s the sound of us all deflating after the holiday hustle. Do you feel it?

You’ve spent weeks rushing around and making sure you’ve gotten everything done for your friends and family, but there’s one gift left that you need to give yourself this season: the gift of a peaceful mind. If you could take just one day, or just part of one day, to relax your mind and body, you’ll be sure to close out this year on a good note. Here are some of my favorite ways to relax and recharge my peaceful mind batteries!

Tips to RELAX

Relax

Get Moving

Exercise is a fabulous stress and tension reliever. A nice walk outside is a great way to restore some peace of mind. If it’s too cold where you are, some yoga or simple heart rate boosting jumping jacks and pushups will do the trick. The exercise will increase your endorphins, which are known stress-reducers, and increasing blood flow helps you feel better, too.

Listen to Calming Music

Science backs me on this one. Scientists have found that music stimulates more parts of the brain than any other human function. Plus, my own empirical data proves certain music is just the thing to soothe the savage beast inside. Choose soothing sounds, not jarring combinations of notes, and just let it work its magic!

Conscious Breathing

I know that deep breathing can reduce stress and promote relaxation, calm and inner peace. By paying attention to your breath, you will rapidly change your state of consciousness, begin to relax, and slowly detach from ordinary awareness. Try this breathing exercise and see for yourself!

Take a Warm Bath

Don’t underestimate the effectiveness of a nice, warm bath. Once you glide into the water and your muscles voluntarily relax, your tension floats away. Adding a few drops of lavender essential oil will melt your cares away even further. Plus, who doesn’t enjoy a few moments of quiet alone time?

Essential Oils for Stress

Essential oils can be perfect for helping take the edge off your stress. Some of the best essential oils for this purpose are:
• Lavender
• Frankincense
• Chamomile
• Patchouli
• Wild Orange
(Find these 100% pure essential oils here.)
Some essential oils can be applied to the skin, but almost all can be used in essential oil diffusers.

Your Assignment

Some of us need permission to carve out some me-time. Well, here it is, Beautiful! Your decompress, relaxation plan for the post holiday hoopla. Go for a walk or get some sort of exercise to get your blood moving. Take a nice, warm soak in the tub with a few drops of lavender essential oil, as you are listening to your favorite relaxing music. While you are enjoying the soak, do some deep breathing exercises and feel the tension melt away.

When you are all finished, curl up on the couch with someone special and cuddle to your heart’s content! Being close to your loved one helps release oxytocin, and that helps reduce stress. Be sure to diffuse some relaxing essential oils while cuddling for added benefit.

If you follow my advice, the last few days of the year will feel much richer and clear your head to start setting intentions to make your new year FABULOUS!

Enjoy!

Is Trendy Necessarily True?

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We’ve all been guilty of jumping on the latest trendy fashion, right? When it comes to our health we need to err on the side of caution. Flashy headlines with the sweet promise of the perfect figure are suspect at best. At their worst they are dangerous to our health. Sustainable health is found in common sense. We all have it, we just need to flex its muscle. The first step is to trust your inner voice. You know the voice that whispers softly, “This is bunk!”, when you read the latest and greatest diet or exercise trend. But do you listen?

We are conditioned to not listen to that powerful voice, but I propose it is the most important voice we hear. You know what feels right. Trust yourself. Tell trendy to take a hike! When you tune into your intuition, and trust it, a  powerful shift takes place. Balance becomes your new mantra and life simplifies.