by IcennaEmach | Oct 11, 2011 | Uncategorized
There is a story I’ve heard. And like many stories, the question is never whether it is real, but whether you can learn something from it. Here’s one such story that if you are aiming to improve your health and lose weight, you should read.
Picasso is touring a school with someone who wants to know why the institute of education is failing the children. Picasso asks a roomful of six-year-old children, “Who here is a painter?” All hands go up. “Who here is a dancer?” “Who is a singer?” All hands go up. “Who here is a storyteller?” All hands go up. He walks down the hall to where the seventeen-year-old children are taking classes and he asks the same questions. Few, if any hands go up. “There’s your problem,” says Picasso. “Schools train our children not to be painters, dancers, singers, and storytellers.”
The meaning of the story is something that we may relate to better in the midst of our careers, but it should have meaning to many of us, regardless of our ages, who are striving to improve the quality of our lives.
Few would disagree that we’ve become conditioned over time to believe that as we age, we must settle for less than optimal health. Like the older children in the story, we have become conditioned to expect less of ourselves and less of our physical bodies. I am not suggesting that we are ageless and this is not an article on how to live forever. This article is about living a healthy lifestyle that makes us look and feel our most optimal at any given age.
You Have What It Takes
When people tell me that they can’t lose weight and keep it off, I say that they most definitely can! What often happens is that most people buy into weight loss regimens, lose weight, and then gain it back. They buy products and weight loss tactics, that don’t appear gimmicky, but that are, and that lure them into believing they will lose weight, look good, feel better, and be happy.
It’s nothing new to understand that the role of promoters is to make us believe we can lose weight, keep it off, and live happily ever after. When this doesn’t happen, or if it does, and the weight soon reappears, dieters are left disillusioned in their weight loss abilities until… another book comes out, another product is marketed, or an improved weight loss tactic comes on the scene again, starting the whole dysfunctional process all over again.
Fortunately, many health coaches, including myself have been gaining traction in helping people understand the right way to lose weight and keep it off. Our successes are increasing, and many people, even those once previously anxious for quick weight losses are realizing the compounding effects of losing weight smartly. Theyuse less medications, have more energy, more vitality, more confidence, more lean muscle mass, better health numbers, and best of all, they’ve created lifestyle changes that keep the weight off for life!
Below is an illustration of our differences. See if it helps. Also, see if it helps you get a better understanding of why programs that don’t engage you mentally in the decision making process/personal responsibility fail. Savvy health coaches bring awareness. They help their clients strategize a system to help them not just lose weight, but keep it off for life!
PROMOTERS SAY And What HEALTH COACHES SAY
It’s easy. No thinking involved It’s manageable. Let’s put a plan together individualized for you.
You will be sexy! Health is sexy! Continuing to lose and gain is not sexy.
Just buy these products. Just use your gray matter.
It costs only $2.00 a day. Reduction/elimination of meds is possible.
Eat whatever you want. Eating for enjoyment and health is possible.
You Have What It Takes
You are a singer and a dancer and a storyteller and an artist. You are all the various things you want to be. You might never play ball like you did as a child, but you look good – you feel good- you are a living breathing being, living at your most optimal level for who you are today! You might never play for the NBA but why should that keep you sidelined in silence?
You choose how your days are spent. You know in your heart that being your healthy best comes down to making solid lifestyle choices, using your gray matter, and changing your behaviors. You know that most lifestyle plans featured today are just diversional tactics, keeping you from doing the real work of being lean and fit. You know, that any “feeling good plan”, that does not engage you, challenge you, and question you, is not going to work. And you realize that like a young singer, dancer, painter, or storyteller, you can’t be seeking the nostrums of the promoters. This is your day though. What is it going to be?
by IcennaEmach | Jul 20, 2009 | Uncategorized
Lifestyle routines are often overlooked in assessing how to get a good night’s rest. How to balance your day mentally and physically between work and play is central to sleeping well and in turn aging well.
It’s a little known fact in the world of sleep that mastering the perfectly balanced day is a necessity to sleeping well. Having just the right amount of physical exertion, mental stimulation, and feeling of accomplishment is key to a healthy night’s sleep. Unfortunately, many people struggle with balancing their day. As with learning most new behaviors, bringing awareness is the first stage of change. Here’s how to begin.
Logging Current Lifestyle Activities
It’s difficult to change your lifestyle if you don’t know what your current one looks like. Keep a log book for two weeks before making any lifestyle changes and include the following:
-Hourly activities from morning until night.
-Rating of physical exertion after each activity.
-Rating of mental stimulation after each activity.
-Rating of feelings of accomplishment after each activity.
-Rating of enjoyment after each activity.
Method to Your Madness
Have the mindset that there needs to be a method to this madness, and your job is to seek how you rated in each of the four categories. However, before tallying the ratings, ask yourself this question,”What is my general feeling of how balanced my daily life is between physical exertion, mental stimulation, feelings of accomplishment, and feelings of enjoyment?” Write a brief description. Next tally your ratings in each of the four categories over the two week period and see how closely the tallied ratings correspond to your general description. Chances are you have depicted yourself quite accurately. The reason for this exercise is to demonstrate that writing information down brings awareness to how we really live our lives. And this is our starting point for change!
Where to Begin Making Changes
This is the fun part. Let’s say for illustration purposes, you are lacking in the physical exertion area but your days are exceedingly mental. However, feelings of accomplishment is generally high, but areas of daily enjoyment is assessed low. There are many places to start. Choose an area to work on and pick a behavior to change or add to your daily routine. Keep in mind this is a process and it is not necessary or recommended that you make too many changes at once. Consistency in making a change is more important than the quantity of change. Master one behavior at a time and proceed with a thoughtful strategy in place assessing your quality of sleep as the weeks progress.
Behavior Change Examples
-Decrease mental stress by practicing short walks throughout the day inbetween mental challenges.
-Increase daily enjoyment by planning a fun activity to anticipate throughout the day
-Increase physical exertion by joining an activity that you did as a child. Examples might be tennis, jogging, basketball.
-Increase life enjoyment by planning a weekly fun ritual.
-Increase mental stimulation by planning a daily time to read, write, or find a new interest
-Increase sense of accomplishment by starting with an easy goal increasing the difficulty as the weeks progress. Examples may be planning a day trip to planning a week long trip, or walking 20 minutes daily to jogging 2 miles daily.
Have a mindset that practicing lifestyle changes aimed at increasing the quality of sleep is as worthy as practicing our golf or tennis swing. By balancing our day mentally and physically between work, play, life enjoyment and accomplishment, we not only sleep better, but age better, and in turn live more vitally and vigorously!
by IcennaEmach | Jun 6, 2009 | Perspectives in Aging Well, Uncategorized
In his book, The Brain that Changes Itself, Norman Doidge, M.D. writes, “competitive plasticity explains why our bad habits are so difficult to break or “unlearn.” Most of us think of the brain as a container and learning as putting something in it. When we try to break a bad habit, we think the solution is to put something new into the container. But when we learn a bad habit, it takes over a brain map, and each time we repeat it, it claims more control of that map and prevents the use of that space for “good habits.” That is why “unlearning” is often harder than learning, and why early childhood education is so important-it’s best to get it right early, before the “bad habit” gets a competitive advantage.”
Not Surprisingly We Are Conditioned to Fail
Often we are conditioned by advertisers to believe feeling better, looking better, and achieving a vital vigorous lifestyle are easily achieved tasks. Unfortunately, this type of thinking leads many people astray and more apt to act quickly,rashly, and consequently with a high failure rate when looking to overcome various adverse health habits that have been learned over a lifetime.
Slow, Progressive, Consistent Behavior Achieves Results For a Lifetime
The reason many people eventually fail in their weight loss and other health goals is they have not achieved a healthy, slow, patient, and consistent behavior change process that allows the brain to adjust to it’s new neural pathway patterns and brain map. Mr. Doidge proposes we must make space for our new habits, but not only must we make space for these habits, we must emphasize the manner in which we do so. Care and consideration for how we implement changing our “bad” health habits is paramount to making lasting lifestyle changes, and fortunately many of today’s savvy consumers are not buying into self denial, superhuman willpower, and hard to sustain dietary and exercise routines. These smart consumers are leaving many of these “dark age dieting techniques” to their unaware counterparts.
Think about this analogy the next time considering losing weight or making behavior lifestyle changes: An amateur or professional golfer and tennis player learns not in one day, but over a lifetime of practice, can you consider that the future of our wellness is no different. We learn and unlearn best like the golfer and tennis player who practices and “unpractices” his skills for a lifetime.
by IcennaEmach | May 31, 2009 | Perspectives in Aging Well, Uncategorized
I read an article the other day by an author who intrigued me with a statement that seemed at first to be contradictory. He said that in order for big changes to occur, we basically have to say, ” I give up.” The article was a little more philosophical than I like, but the idea of giving up or giving in to change is something I can relate to in my field of health and wellness.
Before it appears that I am encouraging mediocrity in the area of our health, I should tell you that it is quite the opposite. If we want to make lasting improvements in our health and fitness goals than we need to consider there is much to be gained in starting off with a clean psychological palate. Can we forget about our past victories and triumphs and instead focus on where we are at this given time? Can we focus on what our healthy minds and bodies can achieve regardless of what we have done or did not do in the past? And most importantly in my mind, can we imagine how we will feel as we go about our daily lives improving and progressing in the area of our health? No doubt there will be challenges along the way but the good news is that people are resilient. Our muscles can grow at any age. Our bones can grow at any age. Our cardiovascular output can increase at any age. Our flexibility can increase at any age. And perhaps most importantly, our minds can grow and change at any age.
For me personally, “giving up” has been a useful tool for me as my health, wellness, and sporting goals have changed substantially throughout the years. What hasn’t changed is the feeling that I get from the way I live my life on a daily basis. Although I may not be able to run a 5:30 mile today, I still derive the same feeling that I did when I was a kid even though running is not my main outlet today.
My question to you today is, “can you surrender your past victories and or past shortcomings and work diligently daily towards retaining the feeling of being an easy going healthy kid again?
by IcennaEmach | May 24, 2009 | Perspectives in Aging Well, Uncategorized
“Most people would agree that our body would rebel if we asked it to go from an eight-minute mile run one day to a six-minute mile run the next. Yet in our fervor to diet down to the perfect weight, we ask our brains to do the same by drastically changing our lifestyle habits in one day. Consider that our brains, like our body, will break down under similar demands.” Kim Miller
I only ask that you think about this. It takes more than willpower to change our habits. It takes thoughtful consideration for who we are, patience, and strategic planning for us to make lasting lifestyle changes. Consideration for small incremental lifestyle changes is an absolute must for long lasting behavior changes. Let the old way of dieting be out and the smart way to a healthier life be in! You can do it. There’s no hurry.
