Surviving the Holidays

One of my favorite indulgences during the fall is pumpkin flavored food and drink. I can't seem to get enough of it.  And what's funny is that the stuff is available year round. We can buy canned pumpkin every day at the supermarket, but during the fall the product is marketed as fresh, in season and ripe for the picking so we take the bait; hook, line and sinker. Enjoying a holiday treat once or twice during the month is acceptable, but using the entire fall and winter seasons to overeat sweets and comfort carbs will leave you looking at an extra 10 pounds on the scale, trying to figure out how you gained the weight. Maybe that's why so many New Years' resolutions involve diets. Consumer advertisement is often created to emotionally trigger a response and therefore our purchases and consumption attempt to satisfy those desires. How do we defend ourselves from these enticing, entertaining exhibits that bombard our brains on television, radio, at the grocery store and gas station?  Isolation isn't an option for most of us and honestly if you alienate yourself there's another problem set that will surface. Let me offer a 3 step solution and expound briefly on each recommendation.

1) Education: Understanding the consequences and rewards reaped from eating different foods is a great motivator that can empower people to make healthier choices. Americans are experiencing insurmountable health problems and a severe obesity epidemic due to the current condition of our food industry. The present fast paced information age has fewer and fewer people taking the time to buy fresh foods and cook healthy meals. Instead we fall victim to convenience, carryout and packaged products that are full of toxic preservatives.  Let's get back to the basics of growing gardens, eating fresh produce and teaching our children how to cook with real food. You've got to take some time to watch the new movie Fed Up. This movie illustrates how misinformed this country has become about proper nutrition and how the youngest generations are suffering from the consequences.  There's an old proverb that says, 'give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; show him how to fish and feed him for a lifetime.'  Are we teaching our children how to eat for a lifetime or how to eat for a couple decades from a fast food drive-thru?


2) Encouragement: Create an environment of support for yourself and your loved ones.  Be vulnerable and let people know that you are making a change and need their help. By having the accountability of friends, family and fitness minded fans you will create a community of support that will offer encouragement as you make health and nutrition a priority. Changing the unhealthy habits and distancing yourself from the negative people is no easy feat, but I assure you that the effort is absolutely worth the result. If you take the first step towards change, become a leader in your home, workplace and community I assure you that people will follow. Criticism and critiques will come, so get ready to stand your ground and inform others about your commitment to better health.

3) Exit Strategy: It's the weekend before Christmas and you're hurrying around the mall in an attempt to find that perfect gift for the last relative on your shopping list.  The one person you struggle to buy for every year. While roaming the stores you can't help but enjoy samples of peppermint candy, hot chocolate, pumpkin scones and gingerbread cookies. Before leaving with the back massager for Uncle Bill you've consumed an extra 800 calories and only burned 200 of those while walking around the store.  If this cycle repeats itself you'll be carrying around an extra 5-10 pounds before Santa Claus comes to visit. Now a decision must be made: do we create a calorie counterattack with hours of vigorous exercise or do we war game a plan to avoid the free holiday treats?  Chances are you don't have hours of extra time to invest in working out. It's hard enough getting to the gym for an hour just three times a week before/after your day job. Now you factor in the office party, visit to Grandmas and the church choir performance so the likelihood of any exercise is reduced to a Turkey Trot or Jingle Bell 5K. Let's just decide not to eat the treats. Walk away from the dessert table, avoid the sample booth and evacuate the area.  Flee from the temptation.  If you develop a course of action now, then when you get ambushed with holiday cheer in the form of calories it will be easier to resist the urge to indulge and instead execute the exit strategy.

I want to invite you to join me in the Fed Up 10 day sugar detox. My goal is to start with 10, keep it up for 30 more and then embrace a new lifestyle. We will start on the 28th, right after Thanksgiving and end on Christmas.  Then after enjoying some rewards for our hard work on Christmas, just pick back up and take the new, healthy habit into 2015. A New Years resolution is quite cliche, but this is so much more than that.  We are committing to change the way we eat so that our children don't fall victim to childhood obesity and we ourselves can lead healthy, long lives and enjoy as many years as God will give us here on planet earth.

Check out the website below for details about the Fed Up 10 day Challenge.  And let me know if you're in so we can hold each other accountable, track our progress, celebrate the victory over temptation and freedom from sugar ;)

http://fedupmovie.com/#/page/fedupchallenge

It's been 5 months already?

Whew... time really flies when you're having fun!  Hard to believe it's been so long since I've had the pleasure of blogging, but I am blessed beyond measure and I wanted to share a few tidbits of testimony with you.  Most of you know that this year has been quite a crazy one with many changes ongoing in my life; job, marital status, military assignment, mothering a toddler... just to name a few major milestones. And as we come around the last corner of 2014 my feet fasten with an excitement to finish the year in stride, sharing my passion for living a full life with my friends and family, despite hurdles and hiccups that life may lend along the way.  

What's the secret? How can we overcome adversities, deflect defeat and curb complacency?  I'm only 27 and have many lessons to learn, but allow me to mark this mile of my life with a few words of wisdom I've acquired thus far:

-don't ever lose hope. when tragedy strikes or hardship hits, stand firm in the faith and look for the positive in every situation. change your perspective to a positive one or the world will kick you while you're down. 

-speak life, not death. negativity is toxic and even if you see the fault in someone, encourage them to be better. 

-don't be a slave to perfectionism. when you fail, not if-- believe me it will happen, be resilient and bounce back. get up, dust yourself off and use the experience to overcome the obstacle with more zeal and determination. 

-don't waste your life. time is our most valuable resource and we've got to make the most of every minute, hour and day. 

-create healthy boundaries and put them into practice. don't be afraid to say no. we have to protect our time with proper planning, allocating our most valuable resource to the efforts that really matter. 

-monitor your motives. why are doing that thing that you do? is it going to produce a positive purpose in your life?  

-have a goal, write it down and make it a reality. if you don't have a plan to guide your performance today, stop wandering aimlessly and put a pen to paper. 

-all of life is a choice. what you wear, eat, say, do. where you go, work, play, sleep. how you think, act, feel, live. choose to be happy and healthy. you're in control of your life. so grab the wheel and control the throttle. we can't slow the spin of the globe but we can decelerate our speed and make the most of each mile.  


Hebrews 12: 1-3

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,2 looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

3 Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted. 4 In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. 5 And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons?

And I'm back

Note to self: do not begin contemplating journal entries and a return from your brief, blog sabbatical at 1am upon waking for a potty break.

Let me first apologize for my leave of absence and confess that this new life as a single, working mom is no easy feat.  I once thought my days couldn’t get busier when working full time on active duty with the Army, married and a new mother to John, but boy have I learned a great deal and come a long way in the last year. So here I sit, at 1am in my cozy little camper, finally returning to my beloved blog and so excited to share some stories of encouragement and catch you up to speed after about 3 months away.

Let me first address a topic I had discussed blogging about with a friend back in January; a review of the movie Lone Survivor.  There seems to be a great divide amongst Americans that seek out entertainment on the subject of our military’s’ involvement in combat.  Either you generally appreciate and enjoy watching the narrative that depicts our soldiers engaged in intense situations throughout the last decade we’ve been deployed to the middle east or you strongly object to this countries involvement in the conflict and watch war films in an effort to support your staunch stance on the subject and shoot holes in the premise that we have in fact been successful during the war on global terrorism. 

Nonetheless, I immensely enjoyed watching Lone Survivor because the movie afforded viewers insight into one of the many moral dilemmas that soldiers deal with during combat operations.  Most of us are too quick to judge and jump to conclusions when we hear or read news of yet another soldier returning from war facing charges of misconduct and mistreatment of other soldiers, prisoners or war, military combatants or civilians caught in the middle of conflict.  We have most  certainly been desensitized after longer than a decade of such ‘death and destruction’ being so negatively portrayed in the media and it’s no wonder why Americans don’t support the idea of cleaning up unfinished business.  Whether you support or reject the presence of American soldiers in Afghanistan I think we can all agree on one thing: the Taliban is a terrible, tumultuous organization that should cease to exist and if you take nothing else away from watching the Lone Survivor at least enjoy the fact that a very brave patriot lived to tell his heroic story and we should be grateful for his sacrifice and steadfast dedication to integrity.  Defending the freedoms afforded to citizens of this country comes at a very high price and the movie depicts that cost all too well when a four man fire team turns into one, lone survivor.

Wow, sorry to open with such a sensitive subject, but I had to address that topic first and tie up a loose end.  Let’s move on to a more positive topic, shall we? 

I want to expound a bit on the power of positive thinking.  I have enjoyed discussing this topic with a coworker and friend of mine this last few week as she also shares the belief that we are directly responsible for the good or bad things that happen in our life.  Think of yourself as a magnet that attracts those objects to yourself that you think of most often.  If you are familiar with the Law of Attraction that rule would also apply to my theory that we can truly effect the events of everyday life by focusing and visualizing on exactly what we want to happen.  Of course if you allow yourself to perpetually worry and entertain thoughts of ‘the worst case scenario’ than you will begin to manifest those negative actions, however; if we can train our minds to remain in a state of positive, forward thinking than our lives begin to reflect that peace and perceptive power. 

It’s no coincidence that last Saturday I ran into one the assistants from my chiropractors office at the Cherry Street Farmers Market in downtown Tulsa.  Emily was volunteering for a table set up by the Metaphysics School of Learning.  Unfamiliar with the subject of Metaphysics I decided to do a little of my own research after briefly discussing the idea with her and considering attending once of the schools’ seminars.  So yesterday I found a very rare, spare 10 minutes to hop the Google express and gain some traction on this new concept. And YAMMO… wouldn’t you know I get another healthy dose of my mental medicine for the month: the power of positive thinking. 

A few weeks ago I met an older man while taking care of some internet errands on the wifi at Starbucks.  He was seated near me enjoying his coffee and after noticing my Gold’s Gym tshirt began to make small talk about health and fitness.  We had quite a bit in common on the subject of holistic health and natural nutrition but our conversation soon turned to religion and we started discussing the benefits of prayer and visualization.  After about 15 minutes he said he had to run but wanted to leave me with an inspiring story he had printed about the Olympic athlete Mikaela Shiffrin using visualization to prepare for the winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.  The American athlete became the youngest Olympic women’s slalom champion in history and credits her success to having mentally envisioned taking the gold before her victorious feat actually occurred. You can read about a few brain training secrets that many Olympians claim to use and benefit from in this article from The Huffington Post  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/11/mind-hacks-from-olympic-a_n_4747755.html

And now my friends it’s time I leave you with this nugget of advice and a word of encouragement; go write down your goals.  Just in time for spring cleaning and some organization; let’s start to visualize today what we want for tomorrow and beyond.  Take some time to reflect on the lessons we’ve learned this last year, meditate on the direction we want to steer the ship and write down a plan of action for 2014.  Visualize yourself succeeding, take a deep breath and make strides to improve yourself one day at a time.  Consistency is key and change usually doesn’t happen overnight, but if we can train our brains to harness certain thoughts and make them captive to a positive perspective we can begin to attract those things we so desire.  Get out of debt, take that vacation with your kids, plant a garden, lose those extra 20 pounds, run that marathon, read that book, learn to play the piano, live your life on purpose and love with your whole heart. 

Live More With Less

What would New Years Day be without a resolution and a blog?  As cliche as it may seem to set a goal for the next calender year, I believe any time is a great time to make positive change in your life.  And if you need a holiday to get you motivated, than so be it.  During this season of my life things have been getting a little cluttered and out of sorts, therefore I am resolving to unpack the last of my boxes sitting in the garage since moving in July, take a close look at the stuff in my house to decide what I actually need and get rid of all the extra items just taking up space. My diet is also undergoing a few modifications and I am excited to embark on a new food foray. Both resolutions have an underlying theme that I want to share with you today; finding fulfillment in the intangible vice the tangible and learning to live more with less.

Fortunately for me I learned organization and cleanliness at a very early age.  I can still remember my Dad strictly enforcing the bed made, room cleaned and chores complete rule both before and after school.  Growing up in a military family also helped to reinforce a general state of order and structure.  So needless to say, my living standards have always been quite neat and tidy.  Since John was born I have learned to loosen my grip on the idea of having a continual clean house and now enjoy a bit of organized chaos.  Having a child has also allowed me to accumulate a great deal of baby paraphernalia. And that coupled with a big move back from Hawaii into a house half the size of my previous one, means it's time to downsize.  We have given away many larger furniture items already, but the smaller, more meaningful trinkets and keepsakes have yet to be evaluated for worth and retain-ability. I also amassed a huge amount of shoes and clothes over the last 6 years having fluctuated in weight by nearly 30 pounds, having a baby, nursing that baby for 20 months and also moving from a very temperate climate to a normal one with cold winters. Spring cleaning is coming early this year!

Why do we let ourselves gather so much stuff anyways?  Did you really develop an emotional attachment to that hat you picked up on your vacation last year?  Or the decorative set of coffee cups that just collect dust above the stove?  Here are my theories on why most people have an inner-clutter bug lying dormant in their brain:

-Social status
-Desire to live in abundance
-Just in case-itis
-Sense of obligation
-Don't want to waste
-Can't let it go
-Organizational ignorance

When your living/working space is de-cluttered your environment becomes functional, peaceful and enjoyable.  Not to mention how liberating it is to be mobile and versatile. Ask yourself: do I really need it, do I really use it, when was the last time I used it, when do I plan to use it, can I borrow/rent it instead of owning, what's the worst that can happen if I get rid of it?

Now, how do we live more with less when it comes to food?  Plant a garden! Imagine if you forced yourself to eat only what you could grow.  Likely to starve, we are prisoners of the grocery store because of an inability to live self-sufficiently. But what if we could find a happy medium?  What if you planted that garden and harvested 75% of the food you and your family consumed?  We would not only be healthier for having labored in the yard, but the quality and freshness of our food would be substantially better than that of what we currently pay for at the market.  Learning when to plant, how to grow and which produce to harvest during each season is also a very educational endeavor to enjoy.  If you have children planting and caring for a garden can teach them some of the most important lessons of life; work ethic, patience, responsibility, commitment, protecting the environment, quality time with family and a love for the great outdoors.

I also want to share some of my thoughts on using food to fill a void in your life.  We are all guilty of having turned to food for pleasure and fulfillment.  Whether our weakness is sweets, caffeinated beverages or alcohol there is an epidemic running rampant in our society to numb the pain of our wounds from a life lived in emptiness.  Purpose and worth can be hard to find nowadays and even harder to realize.  Money is thought to buy happiness and drives many of us to continue filling our house and refrigerator with more than just the essentials.  I believe there is a remarkable correlation between the increase of disease/illness/cancer and the amount of Americans swimming in financial debt.  This is just my theory, but I really think that our culture has an unquenchable thirst for monetary gain and tangible pleasure which has led to a perpetual search for fulfillment through food, drink and material things. It's no wonder our country has seen such an increase in the occurrence of obesity, heart disease, cancer and indebtedness. Are we buying and eating food that is essential and healthy for our bodies to function or are we consuming foods that we think make us feel good?  Do you eat for energy and when you're hungry or do you eat because of boredom and an addition to unhealthy food.  In case you hadn't heard, your body can become addicted to sugar.  Try to count the grams of sugar you consume in one day, just try it tomorrow.  I'm willing to bet it's more than 30 which is a relatively safe amount to eat each day.

Enclosing, I wanted to share a quote from Ann Voskamp's One Thousand Gifts.  

We are hungry. We eat. We are filled... and emptied.  And still we look at the fruit and see only the material means to fill our emptiness.  We don't see the material world for what it is meant to be: as the means to communicate with God.  

Christian, Muslim, Jew, friend: there is a God.  He created you along with everything else in the world and knows exactly what makes you happy.  If something is broken, take it to the maker and ask Him how to fix it.  

Oh and in case you're interested in my new diet, take a look at this website for details: www.knowthecause.com

Happy New Year!