Many of you are telling me you’d like to wait another week or two before tackling your healthy living resolutions for 2013, and I can understand why!
There is so much to be done to get things back in order after the happy holiday chaos; starting anything that requires significant focus and attention (which is, ahem, exactly what resolutions require) feels like a tall order.
And guess what? Waiting a bit to begin your resolution may actually work to your advantage! That’s because the best day to start a resolution is THE DAY WHEN YOU FEEL READY to start it.
In fact, a recent study showed that people who began implementing their New Year’s Resolutions on January 31st were actually more successful than those who started on January 1st. Why? Because the later starters were truly committed to making changes and not just swept up in the energy of “everybody else is doing it so I may as well join them.”
You have likely heard stories about gyms being super-crowded for the first two weeks of January, but then thinning out quickly as those new members fell off the wagon and stopped going. They weren’t ready. They rushed headlong into the gym on auto-pilot, but they hadn’t thought through what it would take to keep up the practice week after week, so when the going got tough, they gave up!
Let’s not be the people who give up this year, okay? Let’s be ready.
If you’re feeling stressed because January 1st has come and gone and you haven’t begun to make changes yet, I want to reassure you that there is no magic in January 1st. It’s simply a very popular date to start fresh, so if you’re already ready, then I’m ready to support you! But if you need a little more time to get your ducks in a row, then by all means take it! Set yourself up for success.
Now, since more than a few of you have told me that you ARE ready to get started now (using your new workout clothes, cookbooks, home gym equipment, and Vitamix blenders), I thought today I’d offer you one simple and proven tip that will help to ensure you begin your healthy lifestyle changes on the right foot. Are you ready? Here it is.
GET MORE SLEEP.
That’s right. Start building a sleep pattern that gets you 7-8 hours a night with consistency. I cannot tell you how much this will help you implement any healthy change you want to make. You will have better judgment, more willpower, and your mood will improve. You will be more productive and creative. You will even boost your metabolism – that’s right. You can eat more if you sleep more.
To kick off 2013, figure out what it will take for you to get more sleep and make it happen.
There are 364 days remaining in 2013….don’t panic. Just get ready. And get some sleep. You are going amaze yourself this year.
Category Archives: Fitness
Are You Stuck in the Girl Box?
Do you remember what it was like to be in 4th grade? Most of us have extremely clear memories about something that shifted for us at that point. I can remember being deemed “invisible” by a group of cool girls I thought were my friends. When I spoke, they would literally say to one another, “Did you hear something? I didn’t hear anything.” Some of you may recall being left out of a clique, or being teased about your lunch, or your clothes, or your hair, or your weight, or worse. Many of us started to close up and live differently as a result of these experiences. We retreated into the Girl Box and played it safe, living smaller than we could have for years…or forever.
Enter Girls on the Run.
This dynamic organization is about SHATTERING the Girl Box and encouraging girls to dream and live as big as they can! And they do all of this while preparing the girls to complete a 5K at the end of a 12-week season.
Girls on the Run inspires girls to be joyful, healthy and confident by using a fun, experience-based curriculum that creatively integrates running. The girls meet twice per week with encouraging volunteer coaches who teach the girls important skills like healthy eating, standing up for oneself, being positive, and managing stress – all while training for the Girls on the Run 5k at the end of the season. In addition to physical activity, the girls learn to believe in themselves in an encouraging team atmosphere. Girls on the Run provides girls with tools, confidence and positive peer support group so that they can thrive in middle school and high school.
How ’bout that? Seriously, don’t you wish you’d had Girls on the Run? I first learned about the organization when I was living in Atlanta, and then I served as a founding Board Member for the Greater Cincinnati chapter back in 2005. My dear friend Erin Hamilton left her thriving corporate career to serve as the Executive Director and personally coached a small team of 12 girls in Loveland that year.
This year, GOTR of Greater Cincinnati will serve nearly 2,000 girls. It gives me goosebumps. Many of those girls are on scholarships, so fundraising is key to GOTR’s viability. I’m making it super-easy for you to support this amazing organization because if you subscribe to Nourish Menu Plans by November 17th I will donate 10% of your subscription to GOTR. Get all the details here!
November 17th is the GOTR Fall 5K in Cincinnati
You can also donate directly to GOTR of Greater Cincinnati via their website. If you want to find your local chapter or donate to GOTR International instead, go here.
If you can’t donate money, will you consider donating your time? They need race volunteers, coaches, and administrative helpers. Or run or walk the 5K. It’s an experience you will NEVER forget as you cross the finish line with throngs of extremely excited 8-13 year old girls with painted faces and rainbow colored running gear and foam crowns and sometimes even tutus. Wanna see? Really, check out those pictures and tell me you’re not moved. Go be moved.
Get involved – give your time or make a donation – and when you do, the Girl Box will feel like a distant memory… left in the dust… right where it belongs.
Your Scale is Not an Instant Read Thermometer
That brownie you ate last night is not what caused the extra two pounds on the scale this morning. I promise you that the brownie did not actually WEIGH two pounds, nor did it transform its calorie load into two pounds of fat in some sort of marathon fat-creating session overnight. Nope. Those two pounds could have come from a whole host of things, but the brownie was not one of them.
If I had a dollar for every client who said to me, “Well, I was up a pound this morning but if I hadn’t had that candy bar last night I’m sure I would be fine,” I’d be a wealthy, wealthy woman. For some reason, our girl brains want to create a direct cause and effect between what we ate an hour ago and what the scale says right now. But it just doesn’t work that way.
Gaining a pound of fat requires you to consume 3500 calories more than you’ve burned. That’s about ten brownies, for perspective. I generally tell people to weigh themselves no more than once a week…and to look for trends in their body weight. A very normal week to week fluctuation might be +1, -2, +2, -1. Note this pattern actually maintains your weight over the course of the month. Conversely, if you start to see plus signs on your chart for too many weeks in a row, it’s time to examine what you are eating and make some changes. What the scale says the morning after an indulgence is far less important that the pattern you observe over time.
So please, don’t jump on the scale each morning looking for your reward or punishment for yesterday’s food choices – you won’t really see the effects show up for about 3 days when those calories have either been burned or converted into stored fat. It’s a scale, not an instant-read thermometer. And remember that what scales like most of all is balance…so look for yours!