Quality of Life
It is said that you can’t ever love anyone else if you don’t first love yourself. Here are a few ways that you can love yourself this Valentine’s day:
❣ Take care of yourself. You have one body and one life, don’t throw away your health and well being for any reason. Commit to healthy habits that will last your entire your life.
❣ Be authentic. Being the real you is a million times better than ever trying to fill someone else’s expectations.
❣ Spend time with yourself. The best way to love yourself is to KNOW yourself and the best way to know yourself is to spend a little time alone with your thoughts.
❣ Learn to say no. There will always be demands for your time and energy. Know your priorities and your limits and (graciously) decline anything that doesn’t fit.
❣ Say ‘No’ to the ‘Shoulds’. Things are what they are and all of the wishing in the world won’t change one single thing. Once you stop thinking about how things ‘should’ be (or worse, how they should have been) you will be free to enjoy life as it actually is. If there’s actually something that you are committed to changing, ‘should’ doesn’t even come into the equation,you’ll make it happen no matter what.
❣ Be kind to yourself. Stop expecting perfection (nobody is perfect – not even you) and stop saying mean things to yourself!
❣ Express your creativity. Even as an adult I find that there are few things as rewarding as making something pretty. Maybe you like to paint, or build cabinets, or write poetry – whatever it is, give yourself the opportunity to express your creativity as often as possible.
❣Be grateful. There are so many things to be grateful for. Start a list and come back to it often.
❣ Do nice things for others. Almost nothing feels better than doing a good deed so try not to pass up opportunities to bring sunshine into the lives of someone else.
How will you give to yourself this week so you’ll be ready to give to others once Valentine’s day rolls around this weekend?
Quality of Life
Today is National Wear Red (for women) Day.
Heart disease (which includes heart disease, stroke and other cardiovascular diseases) is the number one killer of women, causing one in three deaths (more than all forms of cancer combined) and affecting an estimated 43 million women in the U.S.. But only about one in five women realize that heart disease presents such a threat to their health and since the symptoms that we experience with heart attack differ from those men experience (and that most of us are familiar with), women can have a heart attack without even realizing it. In fact, sometimes even medical professionals can miss the signs of heart attack especially if the patient doesn’t seem to ‘fit the profile’, as Jen Thorson shares in the Huffington Post with her compelling article We All Fit the Profile.
Knowing and reducing the risks for heart disease are great steps in the right direction. Eat right, exercise, minimize stress, and don’t smoke. Get regular check-ups and follow your doctor’s advice. And if you even think you’re having a heart attack call 911 or have someone drive you to the emergency room.
For more information check out goredforwomen.org
Mental Health, Quality of Life
I’m willing to bet that just about everyone knows at least one person who constantly posts photos of their meals, weight loss progress, and let’s don’t forget those check-in’s at the gym. You might just ignore those people after awhile but according to this article in The Herald (Scotland), sharing photos of our food and weight loss can become extreme – and extremely dangerous.
Apparently there are people with disordered eating who have created websites dedicated to ‘thinspiration’ – typically supporting the lifestyle of disordered eating, often in order to track their own ‘progress’ as did Miss Holly Temple in Working, Surrey who felt ‘It was just very important to me to document my weight loss – and ensure I wasn’t putting on any weight’. Miss Temple started a blog, which she used as a diary and as motivation to lose weight, which she certainly did – she weighed as little as six stone (84 pounds) before she started recovering from her disease. Unfortunately other people find these websites and are encouraged in their disordered eating as well.
Now, as the mother of two teenagers, this concerns me and I am committed to being aware of the warning signs of disordered eating in my children and their friends (both male and female). But I think that I also have to consider the dangers of such attitudes seeping into my own life. I’ve said before and I’m sure I’ll say again (and again) that Minute Movement encourages healthy, sustainable choices NOT drastic dieting but I won’t pretend that the message that my worth is directly reflected in the number on my bathroom scales doesn’t seep into my own thinking from time to time.
The article in The Herald states that eating disorder treatment is rising in the UK and not just with the teenagers. One treatment center for eating disorders reported ‘a 15 per cent rise in adult patients admitted with eating disorders over the last year,’ and while ‘most patients were aged 18 to 25 the largest increase was among adults aged between 36 and 45, with admissions in this age group almost doubling’ possibly more alarming is that they ‘admitted 139 children and young people between the ages of 11 and 17 last year for treatment, up from 87 in 2013’.
Take a minute to think about those numbers the next time you see those selfies your ‘perfect’ friend posts (or before you do so yourself). Maybe you don’t have an eating disorder (I sure hope you don’t) but you may want to consider the message that you could be spreading to others who might be on shaky ground.
Signs of disordered eating that can seem innocent include:
- Poor body image / negative self talk
- Excessive exercise (even when sick or injured)
- Strange habits or obsessions about eating and food – like refusal to eat with other people, designating some foods as ‘safe’ or ‘unsafe’ and rituals surrounding food like cutting food into tiny pieces, counting, excessive chewing, and strange food combinations.
- Dry skin
- Feeling cold
- Swollen cheeks (which can be caused by self-induced vomiting)
If you or someone you know has an eating disorder, please get help. There are resources here.
Minute Movement Philosophies
I know you want to look great – we all do. But as Mom would say, ‘looks aren’t everything honeybunch’.
Health is far more than the numbers on your bathroom scale, or on the tag inside of your pants. In fact there are a lot of other numbers that matter far more than those; like cholesterol levels, triglycerides, and blood pressure. Even more important might be how you feel on a day to day basis.
Minute Movement isn’t about pushing yourself to your outer limit and then going back to your old routines. We want you to experience changes that will last a lifetime. And really, isn’t that what you want for yourself too?
Reviews
I attended ‘Mom Prom’ with my son over the weekend and when I woke up Monday morning I couldn’t find my Fitbit anywhere. Since I had dressed up for the event I hadn’t used the wristband, but I was sure I’d laid the tracker on my nightstand – and equally sure that it had fallen off and been eaten by our little canine vacuum cleaner, Teddy.
Who? Me?
I’ve been wearing my Fitbit Flex every day for a little over a year and was pretty distressed at the thought of having to replace it – and what I would replace it with. Which naturally led me to ponder the pros and cons of the device…
On the plus side, I’ve found that wearing the tracker really does encourage me to move more throughout the day. Just tonight in fact, I was thinking about asking one of the kids to turn on the space heater in my bedroom so it would warm up before bedtime (old house unfortunately equals cold second floor bedrooms) but then I remembered that the class I have on Thursdays has me sitting for several hours during the time that I usually take a three mile walk so I figured I should make the quick trek upstairs and do it myself (yay me).
There was a time that I would walk the floors until midnight if I had to in order to fit my steps in, I don’t do that anymore because sleep is also important, but I absolutely pay more attention to my activity level.
I also love the silent alarms, you can program up to eight of them and since the repeat function is comprehensive I use the alarms to remind me to do my Minute Movements. The sound of the alarm on my phone was always jarring and irritating to me, which didn’t actually help me develop the habit of doing the movements; but when I realized that I could set eight alarms that would simply vibrate on my wrist a few times I was thrilled (and that was when I began consistently doing my movements)!
The sleep tracking option is also useful. I’ve always had some difficulty sleeping and often wake up feeling tired so seeing my restless times is interesting. That said, there’s something about wearing the tracker 24/7 that bothers me (electronic waves and all that) so I usually take it off while I sleep just to be safe – it’s not like wearing the Fitbit was helping me sleep better, it just confirmed that I don’t!
But not everything is perfection in Fitbit land. I don’t love that the device has to be re-charged (some don’t) and even though the battery lasts about five days it still irritates me to have to plug it in – but not as much as it irritates me to realize that the battery died hours earlier and my steps haven’t been tracked!
I have always enjoyed jewelry and am a bit of a girlie-girl so the plastic band really isn’t my favorite. While it’s fine when I’m wearing workout gear and I recognize that the band protects the tracker I’d really prefer something that looks a little more classy to wear with my ‘real clothes’. At the very least a band that looked similar to metal or leather. My black band ripped after only about six months so now I’m stuck wearing a navy band and searching Etsy for cute alternatives. Since my tracker was missing, I kicked around the idea of replacing it with one of the newer models that have a watch display since I now look for the time on my Fitbit band, but they look much more bulky and I’m not sure I’d like that.
I’ve heard complaints about the accuracy of Fitbit and I will absolutely admit that mine has buzzed to tell me that I’ve hit all of my steps while I was folding laundry. I move a little bit during that chore but not so much that I would count those movements as ‘steps’ . I usually take off my Fitbit when I’m doing a lot of paperwork just in case it sees my movements as ‘steps’. BUT the point of the Fitbit is that I have a good idea of my activity, is it really necessary that I have exact number of steps that I walked that day?
Overall I recommend using a fitness tracker to help you become mindful of your daily activity – something we encourage with our program – and I think the Fitbit Flex is completely adequate at a reasonable price (about $100).
Fortunately, after a day of looking in the same exact places 37 times and racking my brain (oh, and listening for the little dog to buzz at the top of every hour) I put my hand in the pocket of my robe as I was getting ready for bed and there it was!
What a relief!
What about you? Do you wear a fitness tracker and do you like it?
