It Is About How You Feel After….

My last night of inspiration from the lecture from Kary Odiatu and Dr. Uche is all about getting up and making change. It is about how you feel after you start to make these changes. At first it all feels uncomfortable, like too much work, too much money and you can keep going w/ the excuses. These are all excuses by the way. I have a rebuttal for all of these. Uncomfortable–it is good, it means change and change is always welcome–the same is boring. Too much work–anything that is worth something is work. No friendship, relationship, job, whatever is easy–you have to work for the good things in life. Too much money–initially, but imagine the money you save when you aren’t having to be treated by the doctor for sicknesses. So, please save all the excuses b/c that is what it is and get up and make change. Do something. Anything. Just do it!

Again, you only have to change one thing at a time. Trim back the calories, start to walk and turn that in to something bigger. Next step, only have chocolate every 10 days, turn the walk in to a light jog and so forth. A great motivational tool is to have a friend or partner to do the workouts w/ you. Find a walking group, running group, hikers, dog walkers, etc. There’s many people who want to get out and enjoy life, take in all the glorious nature and things around. You will find someone. MG and I are each other’s motivation. On days that I don’t want to do anything, he pushes me and vise versa. Here we are doing 400 stairs on the escarpment. Also, we try to help one another curve the bad food cravings. We don’t stop completely eating all the fun things, but we just trim back. This is what it is all about. Doing something good for you and hopefully encourage a loved one, friend, even stranger to take the reins and live a longer, healthier life.

I love to work out. Even though I truly enjoy it, I don’t wake up every day wanting to go for a jog or do the stairs or whatever workout it is that day. I do it b/c I know it is helping me stay healthy, stay in shape and most of all:  I like the way I feel after. After you do some exercise you get endorphins. Endorphins give you energy, excitement and an overall “take on the world attitude”. It doesn’t matter how vigorous your workouts are, just do something. Get out for a 30 mins walk, do some situps, something! You have to get the blood circulating. Inactivity is the number one cause for many things–cancer, diabetes, just to name a few. When our blood sits stagnate, it is not moving and passing infections through and out. I don’t want to get too technical and you don’t have to take my word, research it for yourself, but inactivity is the worst thing you can do for your health.

Paying attention to what you eat and drink. You do have to count what you drink b/c unless it is water, it probably has calories or fat or something. Try to start making healthier choices and you can cook one meal that can last you 3 days. That is great b/c you have dinner ready for half of the week, just off of one preparation. For instance, we made the Creamy Avocado Pasta (under my recipe tab) and it only took 15mins. So easy and oh so delicious. Try it! Quick, easy and healthy. Can’t ask for much more. Also, just b/c you do a workout doesn’t mean to eat more. Don’t slip in to the mindset that b/c you were active you can eat whatever. If you are trimming back, eating healthy and doing exercises you will notice positive changes in your body (physical on the outside) and overall healthier on the inside. Try it and I hope to hear some great, inspiring comments after you do.

Take a look at this picture. There’s all ages in this photo and every one of them feels good. Every one of them goes for walks or hikes or something daily. One of the older gentlemen in this family photo has gone through some rough health issues (he is in his 80’s), but walks at least 30mins a day no matter what. He claims it is why he is still here today!

 

 

“Make It A Great Day–Go Inspire!”

Eat This…Don’t Eat That…Confused!

Continuing on with some interesting facts from the nutritional course from Kary Odiatu and Dr. Uche. I find that there is so much information on foods, exercise, what to do, what not to do; that it gets all jumbled up and confusing. Then, in the midst of trying to figuring out all of this, you are supposed to eat a percentage of this food group and this much of another. I’m going to try to simplify all of this and make it a bit easier.

To start, we should have around 2300 calories a day. This can differ a bit depending on how much exercise you get in a day, but overall, this is a good number to try to live by. Problem is that most adults are eating between 2900-3500 calories a day. Also, back in the 1940’s, 1950’s each person, each year ate about 4 pounds of sugar. Now, with all the fast food, processed foods, and so on–each person, each year is eating around 125 pounds of sugar. Insane! No wonder there are so many people who are overweight or obese. Check your BMI here   to see where you are. A BMI of 25 and under is ideal, 25-30 is overweight, 30+ is obese and 40+ is morbidly obese.

Now, we want to either maintain or lose weight. To make it easier to follow, you want to eat many vegetables throughout the day and incorporate some fruits. Through a plant-based diet you can get all the protein, fat, carbs, iron, calcium that you need. Really focus on trying to eat a rainbow of colors during your meals. The brighter the color, generally the more potent of healthiness you get. The reason I say some fruit is that there is a good amount of sugar, although natural, it is still sugar and too much can make you store fat. If you are meat eater, you should only try to eat organic, grain fed, free roam meat and eggs. This will reduce the amount of steroids, antibiotics in the meat. Also, this type of meat is generally smaller. You should only have about 6 oz of meat a day. Weird to hear, but too much protein can actually make you fat. The link provided is a great read on what the overuse of protein can do and can be harmful.

Also, you should pay attention to low or high glycemic foods. Foods with a high GI are digested quickly and cause a significant spike in our blood sugar levels. This in turn causes a corresponding spike in insulin to bring those sugar levels back down. Low glycemic index foods have less of an impact because they are digested and absorbed more slowly, so your body needs less insulin to control your blood sugar levels.Your diet should focus on a low glycemic diet. For instance, 100% whole wheat pastas, rice, NO white flour, pastas, rice. I have really grown to enjoy spelt and kamut pasta, kamut bread, sour dough bread (low glycemic), orzo and quinoa. This link is a great resource for what is high, medium and low glycemic foods. Our bodies work best when blood sugar levels are kept constant rather than big spikes up and down. Eating a diet high in the glycemic index is strongly linked to an increase in the risk of type 2 diabetes and heart disease. The World Health Organization has recommended that people in developed countries consume as many low-GI meals as possible in order to prevent heart disease, diabetes, and obesity. Voila! Pay attention to what you eat, keep it low glycemic, your insulin doesn’t spike, takes longer to process, better digestion and full longer.

Some outside influences to weight can be helpful or hurtful as well. A good way to start is to start a food diary and for 3 days mark down everything you eat and drink (yes, what you drink–pop, add sugar and/or cream to tea/coffee, etc). Then, start to look at where you could trim some of the calories down, eat lower glycemic and increase your calorie burn (exercise). Stress and sleep play a major role in weight. The more stress you have, the more fat is added. Stress can be overcome by deep breathing, yoga, endorphins from exercise, going for a walk, making a list every so often of things you are thankful for. Focus on what you are thankful for rather than things that bother or upset you. Sleep is another way to gain weight. If you are not getting your needed amount of sleep, your body can begin to store fat in case it needs it later. Make sure you are getting 6-8 hours of constant sleep per night. Also, eat many small meals a day to keep your metabolism burning and to keep your body from storing fat b/c it is storing for a famine.

Well, a lot of info, but I hope I have simplified it a bit for you. Some small changes, may be uncomfortable at first, but will become natural the more you do them, could be the answer to a healthy or unhealthy weight. Make the choice to make the changes and live a longer, more fulfilled, happy life.

“Make It A Great Day–Go Inspire!”

Dehydration!

For the next few days, I would like to elaborate on some of the important ideas that I took away from the health course I went to yesterday. As a refresher, we went to a course lecture by Kary Odiatu and Dr. Uche. They are amazing and have a load of great information.

The topic I would like to focus on today is dehydration. We can only live for 7 days without water. Water makes up more than 1/2 of  our body weight. Our bodies desperately need water. The problem is that if we don’t get enough water running through our system, it will start to borrow the water from other parts of our bodies. Some of this topic may be gross, but I feel that it is important for you to read and find out how things work.

Dr. Uche stated that as a dentist, he sometimes needs to wear 2 masks at a time b/c the patient’s breath smells so bad. One cause of this is dehydration. When we are not getting enough water, our body rings out our fecal matter, grabs all the moisture from our fecal matter and re-distributes it throughout us to give all our organs the needed moisture. Therefore, it can come out in our breath. Disgusting! I know, but true. I think this is enough of a reason to start chugging those 8 glasses of water a day. I have tried looking up what Dr. Uche has just said and I did come across a lot of articles that discuss how the longer the waste takes to pass through, the more moisture is grabbed up from it and then circulated throughout.

No matter what, we know it is true that the longer waste sits in your body, the more toxic material is released. When you are hydrated you will pass stools easily, not have constipation and overall you will feel better.  Water is so important. Our blood is made of a lot of water. Water makes our urine, potty and perspiration. This is a great link that quickly sums up why water is so vital to how our system works.

It is best to sip on water throughout the day. If you wait until you are thirsty, you are already starting to get dehydrated. Some other more severe signs of dehydration are dizziness, vomiting & feeling very sluggish. While it is very important to get enough water, it is also important to not overdue drinking water. Too much water can be dangerous and put unneeded stress on your body. By forcing too much water in to our bodies in a short period of time can raise the volume of water in our blood causing our circulatory system to work too hard and can put undue stress on a our kidneys b/c they have to work too hard filtering out all the excess water.

In saying all of this–drink enough water to stay hydrated, but don’t drink too much–how much is enough? Well, it is hard to say. I think we should always try to get in  64 oz. of water throughout the whole day. The problem is that the amount of water you need all depends on your diet, exercise, additives, etc.

For instance, if you eat a lot of plant-based foods, you get water through them and don’t need to drink as much water. If you workout and sweat a lot, you will need more water. Salt and caffeine can also cause you to be dehydrated. So, you should sip water all day, drink when you first start to get thirsty and make sure the color of your urine is more clear. If your urine is more yellow that usually leans on the side of dehydration. There’s a lot of info here and some can be confusing. I am not a doctor and do not advise anyone of what to do and how much to drink, but I do feel that you need to stay hydrated all day. My best advice is to sip water from when you wake to when you go to bed, try to keep your urine color clear and don’t guzzle your water. If you are sipping throughout the day, you should stay hydrated and not be as thirsty. In turn, your body will thank you and feel much better.

Here’s a cheers to water. Get to drinking. Plus, a 6-8 oz glass of water before dinner helps to make you feel full. In turn–you eat less! Win-win!

 

 

“Make It A Great Day–Go Inspire!”

You Only Need to Change One Thing

We went to a phenomenal nutritional course today. Our local health and wellness grocery store puts on free lectures from time to time about different subjects. I was very excited to go to the class they had yesterday from Kary Odiatu and Dr. Uche. They are a married couple living in Toronto w/ 3 children and we found out yesterday that a 4th is on the way. She is a life coach, competes in fitness competitions and was Miss Fitness Universe. Dr. Uche is a dentist, holistic lifestyle coach and professional  member of the American sports association. So, an amazing super couple. Well, that was one of the best 1.5hr long classes I have ever taken.

Dr. Uche began the day w/ talking about obesity, health, stress, eating well, etc. He discussed how much he can tell about our everday health through our teeth. If your gums bleed very easily or if you have bad gingivitis, then you are experiencing dehydration, inflammation and overall poor nutrition. He stated several times that “what is happening anywhere is happening everywhere”. What he means is that any inflammation you are feeling in your body, such as inflammed gums, lower back pain, neck pain, means that your body is unbalanced and needs more attention. We need to deep breathe throughout day. Air in needs to come out somehow. Deep breathing from your lower abdominal is something we all should be doing throughout the day–it helps relax you so that your muscles arent’ so tight, clears your mind and brings peace to you. Also, there is new research that alzheimer’s may actually be Type 3 diabetes. This is amazing. On the topic of diabetes, the prescription meds help 37% of the time and lifestyle change helps 70%. I was given so much info on the health side of nutrition and how our bodies react to poor nutrition, lack of exercise and dehydration.

Then, Kary began to speak. She talked about the other aspect of getting healthy and that is the motivation part. Throughout the class they would get us up to swing our arms, deep breathe and move the blood around a bit. She discussed how she used to be very unhealthy, but had a breaking point where she made the change. We all need to make the change, but most times it is b/c of something. For instance, a serious health scare will usually make people wake up and start exercising, eating healthy and make the lifestyle changes needed to live. As I stated before, lifestyle change has a higher percentage of curing, helping, recovering people than prescription meds. I hope that people will start to make the change before they get sick or have a problem. All we need to do is change one thing at a time. Try eating only half of your dinner portion. Cutting back to 1/2 a cup of pasta rather than a whole cup. make sure to drink 8 glasses of water. If you eat 5 pieces of bread throughout the day, trim it to 4 pieces. Don’t change everything at once. Only change one thing and once you are comfortable with that, change another unhealthy thing. Try going for a walk, then a fast walk, maybe a light jog or take the stairs instead of the elevator. See where I’m going? Also, you don’t have to give anything up forever. Kary suggested to have a free day every 10-14 days. This way you aren’t missing out forever on your favorite chocolate bar, you just don’t need it every day.

The strange thing is that when you start to make the changes, it is very difficult, very challenging and uncomfortable at first. Then, you get used to it and enjoy it. Once you start to take sugar out of your diet, after a while you just don’t enjoy it that much. I used to have a small double double at Tim Horton’s (meaning for 6oz of coffee I was having 2 sugars and 2 creams–yikes!). Now, I have a medium coffee w/ just a dash of cream. At first, I didn’t love the taste, but now I can’t have sugar in my coffee. It makes it way too sweet. This change has only happened over the last 3 weeks. So, it doesn’t take long. Now that I’m comfortable w/ reducing sugar in my coffee and my other foods, I am moving on to taking chips away. Not for good, not forever, but not having chips for a couple of days. Then, I’ll have a few chips, then not again for a week. I’m choosing to make change.

I want to live to be 100 yrs old, but a healthy, happy, able to do for myself 100 yrs old. The only way to achieve that is to respect my life and my body. Therefore, I’m making the choice today to eat better, continue to workout and largely reduce my stress. I’m choosing life. I’m choosing to live. I’m choosing to make one change at a time that will help my body stay healthy, active and reduce my risk of disease. So, I’m asking all of you to make a change, a healthy change. Do something uncomfortable and make your life better.

“Make It A Great Day–Go Inspire!”