Four ZZZZ

Sleep can be a scarce commodity in our world.  Here are four ways to promote better sleep.

 

1.     Ditch the caffeine.  Yeah, I know.  Many of us just can’t cope without our morning coffee, but doing the work to wean ourselves off of it can be worth it.

2.     Get some exercise.  Working harder, paradoxically, can help us feel more rested because it promotes easier and deeper sleep.

3.     Turn off the light.  Yes, even the little ones on the computer monitor.  We sleep best in the dark.

4.     Make it a habit.  We tend to do best when we go to bed and get up at the same time every day.

Stressing the Strategies

All of us face stressful times every once in a while.  (If stress gets chronic, that’s a whole different story for another day.)  It’s really easy to decide that we’re going to cope with the stress with a pint of ice cream on the couch, but if we can manage it, there are better options.

 

One of those options is making sure we get in some cardio.  Cardio improves mood, helps us sleep better, and makes our brains work more effectively.  We get bonus stress-busting points if we can take our cardio outside in the fresh air, so stressful times are a great time to go for a walk or a run or a swim.

 

Another important self-care option when we are under stress (or any time, really) is making sure we drink our water.  Dehydrated people are crabby people.  Or, to put it another way, we don’t need our bodies to be stressed while our minds are already trying to cope with stress.  Feeding ourselves healthy food on a regular basis helps, too.

 

Finally, stress is tiring.  We are allowed to rest.  In stressful times, it is all right to nap and to do what we can to ensure that we get our full nights of sleep.

 

Fitness pretty much comes down to this:  move, eat, drink, and rest.

Don't Die

The goal of fitness, in the largest sense, is promoting optimal health.  I like to focus on the positives, but today, I want to discuss some of the negative things that fitness helps us avoid.  Our vocabulary word is comorbidities.

 

Comorbidities are conditions that make it difficult for us to be healthy.  There are lots of them, but here are a few of the most common and how fitness helps us reduce them.

 

Heart disease is a very common comorbidity.  When we do our cardio exercise, we are reducing our susceptibility to clogged arteries and heart attack.  We also improve our lung function, which helps us avoid things like COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease).

 

Type 2 Diabetes is another increasingly common comorbidity.  Both cardio and weight training help keep this one away.  Cardio increases glucose tolerance in the body and weight training increases lean body mass.

 

While I believe that healthy bodies come in every size, excess body weight can, in some circumstances, put us at higher risk, so overweight is considered a comorbidity.  Our work at the gym helps us avoid overweight or reduce it when we also work on eating foods that are good for us.

 

We want to have long, happy, and fun lives.  Working on our fitness now will help us live better.

Monday Workout: All Kettlebell Classic

Sometimes life gets busy or complicated.  For those times, I keep a stockpile of old workouts just in case.  This workout is all kettlebell, but can also be done with a dumbbell if you don’t have a kettlebell.  Three rounds.

 

kb swings	30
kb twists	20
kb 8s	10
kb one arm clean/press	30
kb goblet squat	20
kb overyets	10
kb overhead high knees	30
kb overhead triceps	20
kb pushups	10

7 Delicious Things

  

Eating in season helps us with our healthy diets.  Here are seven things to eat in August.

 

1.     Summer squash.  Also, if we don’t eat them, they will take over the world.

2.     Tomatoes.  Caprese anyone?  How about some fresh tomato sauce?

3.     Corn.  On the cob, in relish, in soup!

4.     Cucumbers.  Maybe with some hummus?

5.     Melons.  All of them.  So yummy.

6.     Stone fruit.  Peaches!  Plums!  Apricots!  Hooray!

7.     Blackberries.  Cobbler anyone?

In the habit

I am, in many ways, an extremely lazy person.  Left to myself, I might not ever get off the couch.  So how is it that I manage to exercise every day?  I make it easier to exercise than not to exercise.

 

Spoiler alert:  there is some work involved, but it’s mostly at the beginning.

 

What I do, and what I encourage my clients to do, is to make a habit of exercising.  Habits take some work to establish, but once they are there, we can rely on them to keep us on track.  I don’t have to think about exercising; I wake up and do it as part of my morning routine, just the same way I brush my teeth and eat breakfast.

 

The work of building a habit is mostly research on what works for us.  I am one of those annoying morning people.  If I want to make sure something gets done, I schedule it for the morning.  I’m also a person who loves to check things off of lists, so I have a workout sheet that allows me to do that.  I keep the list in a specific place, so I don’t have to run around looking for it when it’s time to work out.  I am particularly lucky in that I wear workout clothes all the time, but for those of us who don’t have that luxury, prepping our gym bags ahead of time as part of our routine is helpful.

 

Another tool to use when we are in the process of building a habit is accountability.  This can be as simple as the aforementioned list.  However, some of us benefit from having an accountability buddy, whether that person is just someone to tell we’ve done our workout or someone who shows up and does it with us.  Sometimes our commitment to showing up for other people is easier to honor than showing up for our own good.

 

We can tell a habit is a real one if we skip doing it and feel weird.  How weird does it feel to forget to brush our teeth?  When skipping a workout feels like that, we know we’ve been successful.

 

We can do it.

Yes, and

I am all about enthusiasm.  If I like something, it’s not going to be a secret and I might blur the lines between enthusiasm and obsession.  I hope I am not alone in this, because if there’s no excitement in life, what is the point?

 

However, we (going out on a limb here) can’t let our enthusiasm overwhelm our good sense.  When we discover a new kind of workout that is super fun, we can overdo that one thing and neglect our other important fitness tasks.  What do I mean?  For example, we may discover that rollerblading (or swimming, or skiing, or basketball…) is the Best Thing Ever.  We wake up ready to go practice.  We tell all our friends about how great it is.  We do it every day, maybe even twice a day.  Then suddenly we discover that we are stiff and sore and tired.  Or we realize that the Best Thing Ever would work better if we were a bit stronger or more flexible.

 

I am not here to rain on anyone’s parade.  I’m just reminding us all (yeah, me, too!) that just because the Best Thing Ever is fabulous, we still need to put in our time with our stretching (yoga, Pilates) and our friends the weights.  This will help us avoid repetitive stress injuries, stay strong, and keep mobile.

 

Go play, in lots of ways!