Tag Archives: balanced energy

The Power of Zzzzzzz

I used to think sleep was overrated – my philosophy mandated that I squeeze as much activity as possible into every 24 hour period, lest I miss something! Rest was for the weak. The less I slept, the more productive I believed I was! I lived this way throughout my youth and my 20s and maybe even the first year or two of my 30s…but I’ve changed my tune.

So what do I believe now? I believe sleep is grossly under-valued. We take it for granted, those of us who generally get a good stretch of it every night. I suppose that the chronically or severely sleep deprived have a better handle on the true value of sleep than the rest of us, since the absence of it makes its value painfully clear. I have great empathy and respect for night shift employees, those who suffer from insomnia or sleep-related disorders, etc. And at the moment I can relate just a teensy bit as the mother of a newborn. My 2-week-old daughter is actually a good sleeper so far, going 3-4 hours between feedings and not waking up much otherwise during the night; relative to some newborn behavior, I clearly have nothing to complain about! Nonetheless, the interrupted and shortened nights I’ve been living with lately have reminded me of how valuable good sleep is to my overall health and well being! With just 2-3 hours a night shaved off my norm, I can see and feel negative effects on my skin, my eyes, my patience, my energy level, and my temperament. In my go-go-go days gone by, I’m not sure I even noticed the ill effects my lack of sleep and rest were having on my body, but now I’m acutely aware of the impact of lost sleep and inadequate rest.

At Nourish, I eventually talk with all of my clients about Rest. Rest with a capital “R” encompasses sleep, but also includes other forms of recovery and rejuvenation (like quietly reading a favorite book or magazine or sipping a lemonade in a lawn chair). But sleep? It’s at the very core of Rest.

Why? Because sleep has physical and psychological benefits that can’t be overlooked. To highlight just a few:

Cellular Repair
As we sleep, the cells in our bodies produce proteins that repair damage inflicted by stress, exercise, pollutants, and all sorts of other things we battle during our waking hours. The more sleep we get, the more restoration our bodies can perform.

Easier Weight Maintenance
Adequate sleep is believed to keep two appetite-regulating hormones (leptin which signals fullness and ghrelin which stimulates the feeling of hunger) in check. When they are in the right range, you are less likely to overeat. Beyond that, people who are overtired have less willpower to make healthy food choices – they are more tempted by sugar, caffeine and snacks with their promise of quick hits of energy.

Enhanced Focus and Alertness
Simply put, sleep refreshes us. We are more alert and can think better, drive better, and perform better after a good night of sleep.

Improved Memory
Sleep has a positive effect on short term memory, allowing the brain to consolidate information taken in throughout the day so that it can be more easily recalled. This is why the ubiquitous college “all nighter” is counterproductive – wrapping up a study or work session and getting some sleep actually improves performance the next day.

Increased Energy
I used to believe that NOT sleeping a lot increased my productivity – I had more waking hours to get things done, right? Wrong. What I know now is that getting enough sleep actually boosts my energy level and focus so dramatically that I’m able to get more done in less time.

Better Skin and Clearer Eyes
Pick up virtually any women’s magazine and you’ll find an article touting the benefits of sleep on skin and eyes. When you haven’t slept enough, it shows. Simple as that.

More Even Temperament
Tired people are prone to mood swings, anxiety, anger and depression. Simply getting more sleep can help to regulate all of these emotional conditions, thereby improving relationships and overall quality of life.

Most adults need between 7 and 8 hours of sleep a day to perform at their peak. Yet many people today pride themselves on how LITTLE sleep they need. Haven’t you heard people bragging that they can get by on 4 or 5 hours? To that I say, if you feel great on 4-5 hours of sleep, just IMAGINE how you’d feel on 7!

Having learned and experienced the benefits of sleep, it’s now easier for me to justify an afternoon nap after a rough night with the baby. It’s easier to choose to go to bed early vs. staying up to finish one more thing on my never-ending To Do list. It’s easier to make those choices because I know they will pay dividends in all the benefits outlined above.

My hope is that you’ll give yourself the gift of experiencing these benefits firsthand by ensuring that you, too, are getting enough Zzzzzzzs.

This entry was posted in All blog posts, Lifestyle and tagged balanced energy, energy, rest, sleep on July 26, 2010 by Cherylanne Skolnicki.

Do You Have the Energy for Life’s Possibilities?

Note: I’ve been encouraged to do more blogging about the wellness and life topics I often delve into with my clients at Nourish instead of focusing more narrowly on food. I’m up for it! It’s all part of the Decadently Healthful life I try to live and that we at Nourish work with clients to achieve. So in this blog, while I’ll continue to write frequently about food and healthful eating, I’ll also dip into the broader subjects of health and wellness and living a vibrant, abundant LIFE! I’d love to hear from you through comments as I continue to evolve this blog so that it most thoroughly stimulates your thinking and inspires your personal journey to your own decadently healthful life. So here goes….

I’ve been biting off a lot lately – maybe more than I can chew – maybe not. With the arrival of warm weather, a growing business, an incremental consulting opportunity, two preschoolers at home all day, and a new baby arriving in six weeks, there is simply a lot going on that excites me these days! I’m one of those people who is prone to overdoing it. I always believe I have it all under control and that I can manage my life through rigorous scheduling and self-discipline and careful planning…but the truth, in the wise words of Deepak Chopra, is that “Even when you think you have your life all mapped out, things happen that shape your destiny in ways you might never have imagined.” Or as my father-in-law often quips, “If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.”

Sometimes the “things that happen” are small. Last night my 2 year old woke up at midnight with a stomach bug and he and I spent most of the night huddled on the bathroom floor with him whimpering or vomiting or napping and me stroking his head and whispering soothing motherly words while wondering how on earth I’d have the energy to get through the jam-packed upcoming day. And yet here I am. Getting through it with some reserve of energy that presented itself just when I needed it.

And sometimes the things are big. An unexpected turn of events that radically reshapes the plans we had for the rest of our tomorrows. The reserves we require to navigate these changes are far more significant and require more careful cultivation to have available when they are needed. It doesn’t matter if the unexpected event is catastrophic or overwhelmingly joyous – it calls upon us to deliver energy we never knew we had. I’ve had a few of these show up lately too – fortunately all of the joyful variety – but they require energy in order to say “YES” to them!

I often talk to my clients about the idea of creating energy for life’s possibilities. When we dream together about what their very best life would look like and they immediately articulate a clear vision and their path to get there (trust me – sometimes it happens!), I try to get them to leave room in that vision for the unexpected. For the husband’s new job in another city. For the birth of another child. For the blossoming of a hobby into a passion. For an accelerated promotion. For illness or injury or winning the lottery!

When we hold tightly to control over our original plans (and yes, I’m absolutely prone to do this, too) we can miss the even bigger things the world has planned for us. Staying open to the wonder of possibilities – living the questions so to speak – allows for a much richer life.

Yet, to take advantage of those opportunities, we need to have energy in reserve. If life shows up with a big, beautiful, wrapped present and we’re too tired to open it, we simply miss out. There’s rarely a second chance to say YES when life offers us an opportunity.

It’s why I feel so strongly about living a vibrant, energized life and about NOT walking around in a chronic state of depletion. Moments of depletion? Normal. (Just ask the woman who was up all night on the bathroom floor!) But a life of depletion? Daunting! Finding ways to replenish ourselves in small everyday ways (a walk outside at lunchtime, a killer iPod mix for the morning run, a jar of sun tea on the patio) and through bigger, more intentional actions (a spa day, sending the kids to Grandma’s for a weekend, a family summer vacation, a sabbatical or leave of absence) funnels energy into our reserve so it’s there when we most need it. These activities also clear our minds enough to SEE the possibilities set before us. In our daily head-down, fast-paced, don’t-get-in-my-way lives we rarely pick our heads up long enough to see the big gift that may be sitting in front of us. It shows up as a distraction or an obstacle rather than as a possibility.

If you’re living in a state of depletion, you can feel it. Ask yourself why you’re allowing this to happen. What would have to be true to find moments of replenishment? What would it take to carve out a real chunk of time for more intense renewal? What’s stopping you? Your best life is waiting for you to be ready to take it on….

This entry was posted in All blog posts, Lifestyle and tagged balanced energy, best life, possibilities, wellness on May 25, 2010 by Cherylanne Skolnicki.

Caffeine – pleasure or poison?

One topic that almost always comes up in my early talks with a new client is caffeine. It isn’t usually the first thing on their mind as it relates to their health but eventually they wonder aloud if they are consuming too much…and if so, what effects it might be having on their body and their life.

I’ll leave the full discourse on caffeine’s bodily effects to medical doctors, but I do have a point of view on how it can jeopardize our ability to achieve a healthy lifestyle with balanced energy throughout the day.

The biggest challenge caffeine presents is that it creates what I call “Fake Energy”. It essentially tricks the body into THINKING it has energy when in fact, just the opposite is true!

Consider a fictitious person who stays up late at night working or watching TV or suffering from insomnia and consequently wakes up in the morning feeling a little sleepy. She’ll say that while she is not hungry in the morning, she simply can’t leave the house without that first cup of coffee or tea (or two). She can then “go for hours without eating” simply refilling her cup of caffeine periodically throughout the morning. She may grab lunch and then find she hit a mid-afternoon lull which she gets through with….an afternoon Starbucks run! Then she wonders aloud why she is always the so wide awake in the evening, even to the point of having difficulty falling asleep at night.

If I deconstruct this pattern, it becomes clear that while the person above is tricking her body into thinking it has energy, in reality the things that TRULY provide energy are being withheld — namely, nourishing food and adequate rest.

A healthier pattern might look like:
1- Getting 7-8 hours of sleep
2- Starting the day with a balanced breakfast
(protein, high fiber carbohydrate, fruit or vegetable)
3- Getting some exercise
4- Eating every 3-4 hours throughout the day
(to maintain stable blood sugar and energy levels)
5- Sufficiently hydrating throughout the day with caffeine-free beverages

But caffeine so thoroughly masks the natural desire for this pattern that a person can completely disconnect from it and instead survive (but importantly not thrive!) on mug after mug of good ol’ “Fake Energy”.

So let’s say you recognize yourself in the scenario above…what exactly should you do? Start by reducing the post-lunch caffeine you consume until you can get to sleep at an hour that gives you 7 or 8 solid hours of sleep. Then, eat something within an hour of waking up…whether or not you feel hungry. You may need to retrain your body to accept food in the morning but over time you will reclaim a healthy, natural rhythm for hunger that is not masked by caffeine. Then pick up the recommended pattern above to derive energy from REAL sources. If I can support you in this journey, please reach out to me! Together we can kick the Fake Energy habit and get you on a path to a life full of the energy you deserve.

I have to end by saying that for many of us (myself included!) morning coffee provides a delightful ritual of warmth and comfort. There’s nothing quite like holding a favorite mug steaming with aromatic goodness to start your day…and there is no reason to give this up! You can gradually convert to decaffeinated coffee, preserving all the joy and pleasure of the ritual, or even keep that one cup a day of caffeinated coffee with little ill effect. The key is simply to ensure that you are not using caffeine as a substitute for real nourishment that provides energy to fuel your life!

This entry was posted in All blog posts, Food, Lifestyle and tagged balanced energy, caffeine, coffee, eating for energy on March 24, 2010 by Cherylanne Skolnicki.