I think this flower looks like a fried egg, but I don't know what it is really called.

I work in the evening.  That’s when people want to work out.  I love my clients and my job, so that’s all good.  And it means I need to plan ahead when it comes to cooking for my family.

Planning and cooking are two of the best things we can do to promote healthy eating for ourselves and our loved ones.  For some of us, that might mean spending part of the weekend making dinners for the week.  For others, it might be enough just to make sure that there are the right ingredients on hand for tasty meals that come together quickly.  The goal is to avoid that weak moment when clearly the right answer is to call for pizza.  Where to start?

1.     Make a list.  Yeah, lists are boring, but without one, we might end up without a crucial ingredient. 

2.     Make a habit.  This works better for some families than others.  If you and your family don’t have a high need for variety, knowing that Monday means chicken can save a lot of brain space.

3.    Consider a slow-cooker or instant pot.  Some of us have more time to prep dinner while making breakfast than we do later in the day.  Let the appliances do the work!

4.     Stock the pantry.  Figure out one or two meals that everyone likes that can be made from stuff you always have on hand.

Carrot? No thanks...

When we face the task of changing our behavior toward more healthy actions, we have to figure out how to motivate ourselves.  We want to do more of some things (like exercise) and less of other things (like eating too much cake). 

Pretty much we can choose between carrots and sticks as motivation.  Imagine we are donkeys.  We will move toward yummy carrots (I admit, I would have to be a donkey to find carrots motivational!) and away from sticks that might whack us on the behind.  The research suggests that, in general, adults respond better to rewards than punishments.  This was also true of my children, at least, but they are hardly a representative sample.

Rewards come in two flavors, and neither of them is carrot.  We can give ourselves something we want or we can get ourselves out of something we want to avoid.  In practice, this might mean that we get a long massage for losing that first five pounds or that we might get out of doing burpees at a workout for remembering to log our food intake every day.

Because we are all individuals, we will need to experiment to find out which rewards actually get us to make the changes we want.  We can experience science in action!

Monday Workout: 100!

We’ve spent a few weeks doing longer circuits, so it’s time to shake it up and do a shorter one.  It has been a while since we last did the Pilates 100; if that’s more than you can manage, you can always substitute a V-sit for as long as you can hold it!  Four rounds.

1 min cardio
heavy squats	10
overhead high knees	20
ball bench press	20
deadlifts	20
mountain climbers	20
100 or V-sit

Friday Book Report: Keep Your Brain Alive

Lawrence C. Katz, Ph.D. and Manning Rubin wrote Keep Your Brain Alive to help prevent memory loss and increase brain function.  They coin the (horrible) word neurobics for their brain training exercises.  The exercises themselves are fairly interesting and could be useful.  The brain likes novelty and thrives on tasks that involve multiple senses.  Doing things like brushing one’s teeth with the nondominant hand or navigating the shower process with our eyes closed to wake up other senses have good results for our brains.

The take away is:  do something different and focus on more than just the visual and you will stay smarter longer.

Energy!

Many of us are tired.  We would love to have more energy.  Absent a magic wand, we have to create that energy for ourselves.  Here are some ways:

1.     Get enough sleep.  Duh.  Except we don’t.  We stay up too late playing video games or watching cop shows or even doing useful things like laundry and work.  Just go to bed.  Mom says.

2.     Exercise.  Even though we are tired, we need to do it.  Paradoxically, it will give us more energy.  Cardio is especially effective for this, so even if all we do is drag ourselves around the block (or get a dog to help…), we will feel more energetic afterwards.  Bonus points:  it helps us focus afterwards, so we’ll feel smarter, too.

3.     Watch out for the sugar.  Yes, it will get us through that dreadfully boring meeting without falling asleep, but the crash afterwards will be worse.  We need to try to have protein in our emergency snacks for good energy management.  Worst case:  if you do not have an allergy, at least choose a candy bar with nuts in it.

From the top...

Sometimes we need to start over.  We may get injured and have to take time off to recover.  We may have an especially busy or stressful time with work or family and lose track of our workouts.  This is all right.  It happens.

Starting over can be frustrating.  Things we used to do easily require way more time and effort than we think they should.  We want to pick up where we left off, not backtrack.

Here’s the thing:  we have to work with who we are in this moment.  Maybe last year we were stronger, or maybe we were totally awesome in high school.  Maybe not.  When we start a workout, time is new.  The past doesn’t count.  The barbell doesn’t care whether we used to lift more or fewer plates along with it.  We build the future by having an open and accepting attitude about what we can do today.

Let’s get awesome.

Yep: still writing about goals

We all have goals, whether or not we express them.  (Yes, even striving to avoid all conversations about goals is a goal.)  Some of our goals are fuzzy, like wanting to feel “good” or “fit” or “healthy.”  Some are more concrete, like wanting to fit into those jeans at the back of the closet.  If we want to achieve those goals, however, how we articulate them becomes more important.

First, we want to make our goals less fuzzy.  That means we have to spend some time defining good, fit, and healthy in terms of things that can be tracked and measured.  Measuring good might mean something as simple as assigning a grade for how good we feel on each day’s calendar box and seeing if we can get those grades up over time.  Fit might mean something about a target time for a mile run or a target weight for a heavy squat.  Healthy might be a body fat percentage or a cholesterol level.

Then we get to make some choices.  Specific goals fall, loosely, into three categories:  outcome, performance, and process.  Outcome goals work best for the super competitive among us because they are about winning and losing.  This is the kind of goal for someone who wants to take first place in the next 5K.  For those of us who are less motivated by the total win, we can skip this kind.

All of us need the other two kinds.  Performance goals focus on targets.  “I want to achieve my best time ever on my next century ride.”  Essentially, they are about competing with ourselves to reach our peak.

Process goals are about how we get to performance goals.  “I am going to do interval workouts to improve my cardio three times a week.”  “I am going to increase my leg strength by weight training twice a week.”

In practice, this means that we might have several goals that together add up to a single goal.  That is great as long as we are careful not to overwhelm ourselves with too many things to do at once.  We will get there.