Time and Time Again

Time waits for no one.  We end up waiting for time.  And too often, time fails to show up.

In terms of our mental health, we need to schedule time for ourselves.  We also need to schedule time for our workouts.  If the relentless pursuit of more time is not filtered through the discipline of time management, some of the most important parts of our lives can slip through the cracks.

Take home point:  Be deliberate about how you spend your time.

I challenge you to make three appointments for your physical fitness and three appointments for your mental health this week.

Put them in the calendar.  Honour these appointments as you would any other.  Make time work for you!

Happy Long Weekend,

Rochelle

The benefits of a slow start

My husband is a pilot, so I’ve had a chance to hear some flying analogies in the year we have been married.  I thought this one applied well to the world of fitness…

On takeoff, the engines of an airplane work tremendously hard even though the plane really isn’t moving that fast.  If you were to take a snap shot of the airplane just beginning to take off, you might think it may never get airborne.

But once the plane picks up enough speed to leave the ground and climbs to altitude, the engines throttle back and the airplane can cruise comfortably up where it belongs.

We belong in a state of health in our bodies, in our mind and in our spirit.  If we have allowed ourselves to stagnate, it can take a tremendous amount of energy to get going again.  With time and consistent effort, we can make that climb, and the effort to sustain our healthy state won’t be nearly as much when we started and seemed to be making very slow progress.

It’s a process, but ask someone who’s been through it.  Ask them if it was worth it - I’ll bet they’ll say it was.

Seth Godin on Taking a Short Cut

In this post, I am quoting a blog by Seth Godin.  We all like to save time - but in health and fitness, as it is with many things, the quick way is not always the best way...


All of us are willing to spend a little time and a little money looking for a shortcut now and then. A quicker, more effective way to lose weight, make friends, earn money and get clean, fresh breath. Sometimes, one of those shortcuts pays off and it reinforces our belief that there might just be a better way.

It seems, though, that those that spend the most effort in search of shortcuts are often the most disappointed and the least successful.

This entry was reposted from the blog of Seth Godin

Running My Own Race

Life can feel like a competition.  Sometimes we find ourselves wanting to climb over another person to get ahead.  And even though we only have our two feet to put in front of us, we often look over our shoulders to see who's chasing us, rather than keeping our eyes fixed on where we are going.

I love to run and I love to race.  But the more I think about it, the more I realize that when I train for a marathon, I'm not giving any thought about trying to beat someone else.  When I'm running with a friend or a race with 40,000 other people, the only person I have any say over is me.  And whether that person finishes in front, behind or beside me, I am still running my own race.

Life for some reason, can cause me to think differently at times.  Suddenly I care about what other people think, how they look, how they are doing and how I stack up next to them.

I have to remember that I am not better than someone else if I finish ahead of them - and I am not inferior to someone who finishes in front of me.  I am here to do I was put here to do and at the end of the race, I just have to know that I did my best.

Get back up!

One of the hardest things to do when reeling from a loss, is to get back up.  We are tired and we feel sorry for ourselves – and it’s just comforting to lie on the ground rather than to stand up on our own two feet and risk getting hit again.

Falling down happens in many different ways.  It could be missing a workout or two or seven, binging on unhealthy snacks, turning a sugary snack into a meal in itself – or just giving up on ourselves for a period of time.

So as someone who has to pick themselves up over and over again, I’m writing this to encourage you to stay in the fight.  The only way to lose is to give up – so stand up one more time.  It’s in the times when we least feel like we can go on that the greatest victories come.

Set the Bar - Then Fly Over It!

One of the best ways to get started on the footpath to better health is to set a goal, then fly past it on our way to something greater!

When we have an objective like Tough Mudder, a Spartan Race or the Edmonton Marathon, having a goal is the most effective way to start putting one foot in front of the other.  It helps to get us out the door on days we don’t feel like leaving the house.

Just wanting to lose weight and be fit isn’t always enough for us to get up and get after it.  Many of us need a goal - a starting line - something to work toward so that our fitness and weight loss targets are about more than looking and feeling good.  Feeling more alive and energetic is a great side effect, but we have to be careful about training based on our feelings, because our feelings don’t always serve our best interests.

So I would encourage you to make a goal for the month of April.  Set the bar and take a step to reach it.  Then another… then another… then one more!

Looking for a Diet? Try Real Food.

A recent study looked at several modern diets, some with devoted followings in popular culture, trying to understand out which one was the best.  These days it really is difficult to figure our which method of dieting is the best when much of the information is circulating in contradiction.  Everyone knows that what we eat is important, but just what is best for us to eat?

I found this article when a story about it in The Atlantic was re-tweeted by Michael Pollan, author of In Defense of Food.

While there are several books by celebrity authors advocating low carb, high protein, vegan angles etc, the study concluded that in reality, the truth of what we should be eating is very simple : "(a) diet of minimally processed foods close to nature, predominantly plants..."  This turns out to be our best shot at disease prevention and the promotion of good health.

If we eat food the way it was meant to be eaten and prepared (as naturally as possible), the whole concept of dieting really goes out the window.  We don't need to worry about what's been added to our food if we don't process it with stuff that shouldn't even be there in the first place.  

Michael Pollan had it right: "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants."