Living Healthy in the Real World

How Can I Live Healthier?

23 January 2012, 12:16 am

This is a pretty big question that I think we can all continue to ask ourselves every day, no matter how far along our healthy journey we are. We might be close to our healthy peak in one area of our lives, but in another area we might have lots of work to do. It’s good to think about this question everyone once and a while and to reflect on what could be improved in your life, health-wise.

My new job (I say “new” because I’ve only been there about a month – and I just found out last week that it’s been turned from a part-time job into a full-time job, which I’m super excited about it!) has really got me thinking about this question. For one thing, I’m surrounded by people in the Food Matters office who are all very nutrition-conscious and food-focused, particularly with regards to food policy and the question of where does our food come from? And for another thing, the project that I’m working on, called Dig In Manitoba, is a resource for people to start with when they are trying to live healthier and more sustainably.

There are some things that I’ve been neglecting to “healthify” for various reasons. Take, for example, apples. Up until the past few weeks, I wasn’t eating organic apples. This is because my favourite type of apple is Macintosh, which I haven’t been able to find an organic brand of, and also because most of the healthier food stores are far away from our condo. But now that Mr. Science and I have a car (hurray!), we can go on a once-weekly grocery trip to our favourite health stores (we adore VitaHealth). And they have organic apples.

I’ve known for years that I should be eating organic apples. Apples are among the top foods that we should absolutely buy organic because if they’re grown conventionally, the pesticides can really get into the fruit in a way that they can’t when the fruit has a harder shell or peel. Also, I tend to eat one or two apples a day, so that’s a lot of pesticides that could be getting into my body over the years. Even Mr. Science has been telling me to get organic apples! So a few weeks ago I decided it was time to say goodbye to Macs and to welcome some organic ambrosia apples into my life. And they taste so good. The change wasn’t painful at all – I don’t miss my Macs one bit.

Another thing I’ve been slowly doing is to try to choose eco-friendly, organic and fair trade household products, like dental floss and laundry detergent. The key here is to make the change one step at a time. When I run out of a product, that’s when I buy the “healthier” (for me, for the environment) product. Some of the things I’m using still aren’t super great, but once I’ve finished with it, I’m looking forward to moving on to healthier products. Or I’ll just buy a gigantic box of baking soda, since you can use it to clean just about anything

While there are things I haven’t made the switch for yet – like organic walnuts (since I use large quantities of them, I’m not keen to pay the extra dollar at this time) – there are other things that I can make healthy changes for instead. And I know I’ll get there with the organic walnuts eventually!

Today is Monday: the beginning of a new week. And so it’s time to ask ourselves that question: How can I live healthier this week? My answer for this week is fitness-based rather than nutrition-based, and it is to make it to the gym at least twice. I’ve been putting off the gym since I’ve had meetings in the evenings and such, but this week I don’t have any evening meetings planned and the weather will be warm enough that it won’t be a freezing cold walk to get to the gym. It’s a little change to live healthier, but every bit adds up!

How will you live healthier this week? What changes do you plan to make? Share in the comments section below!

Filed under Environmental health, Fitness, Nutrition. Tagged dig in manitoba, exercise at the gym, live healthier, organic apples, small changes

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Plan 2 Bee follow-up review

20 January 2012, 12:58 am

I receive products in the mail every week to review. Obviously I don’t get around to reviewing all of them – or even the majority of them! So these days I’m really focused on making sure that the products I do review are ones that are really worthwhile. (Also there are some products that I should review that I received ages ago and haven’t gotten around to yet. Some day!).

All of this means that if I’m reviewing a product twice, that’s a pretty big deal. I think that this is the first product I’ll have ever reviewed twice, in fact. The product is the Plan 2 Bee personal planner/organizer.

Image from beebubbly.com

You can read my last article about it by clicking on the link below:

Plan 2 Bee

Last time I reviewed it was in December, before I’d been able to actually use the planner, since it starts on December 26, 2011 and ends on January 6, 2013. But now I’ve had a chance to use it – and I love it! I carry it around with me everywhere I go and I’m writing in it every couple hours and referring to it constantly. I’d be kind of lost without it, to be honest.

In the planner I write down all of my meetings and the things I need to do each day, as well as the time I wake up at (and the times I wake up at during the middle of the night), the time I go to bed at, the food I eat and the time I eat it, how energized I feel on a scale of 0 to 4, the exercise I fit in and my goals for the week. I’m using a really big paperclip to mark my page (thanks for the tip, Mary Anne!) and I’ve also folded over the corner of the pages that include a whole-month calendar.

If you like having everything written out and to stay organized, or if you feel like you need to be better organized, or if you’re always on the go with lots of things to keep track of, this planner is a really great option. I strongly encourage you purchase it! This is one of the very rare times that I’ll tell you to go out and buy something, but I think that this planner is awesome. Also, I feel like there are often products, services and organizations that I really strongly admire, but I often have the bad habit of not helping to support them further. I think it’s really important that we do support the things that we love so that they will feel awesome and so that they’ll continue making great products!

Click on the link below to find out more about the planner and to purchase it for $20:

Bee Bubbly!

Pay it forward! What product, service or organization do you absolutely love but don’t often give a shout-out to? Share in the comments section below!

Filed under Book and Product Reviews. Tagged bee bubbly, calendars are great, organizer, paying it forward, personal planner, Plan 2 Bee, product review

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Ten Simple Household Tips to Make Your Life That Much Easier

18 January 2012, 12:28 am

After working from home for so long, it’s a really nice change to go into the office! But that also means that by the time I arrive home from work, I’m beat. And while cleaning is important to me, I also tend to pile my stuff up on the nearest empty surface. Luckily Mr. Science and I are really good at working together to make the home a nice, friendly, healthy, happy environment to live in – below are some of the things that work really well when you want a clean home but don’t want to have to really work at it!

1) Set aside one day each week (Sundays are a good one) to do a deep clean. This might mean that one day you dust the house, the next week you scrub the bathtub, and the third week you mop the floors, etc. You don’t necessarily need to do all those things in one day, but if you tackle one room each week, the rotation of cleaning won’t make it seem like such an enormous task.

2) If you only have 10 minutes to clean, do the following three things: make your bed, wash the dishes, and tidy up the “hub” of the house. For most people, that means the living room or the kitchen; all you need to do is straighten the cushions on the couch, sweep the receipts and unopened bills off your dining room table, and add a nice centrepiece to the coffee table.

3) Light a scented candle. It will make the house smell beautiful and it will relax you, too.

Photo from sxc.hu

4) Wipe down the kitchen counters and table every evening when you’re doing the after-supper clean-up. Seeing crumbs and jam caked onto the counter first thing in the morning isn’t a great start to the day.

5) Focus on one thing at a time. If your house looks like a disaster, it’s enough to make you throw up your hands and decide that it’s too much of a bother to even begin! Instead, focus on one thing, like doing the laundry or cleaning out the fridge, and once you’ve completed that little task you’ll feel much better and more confident in your ability to move onto the next task.

6) Keep a grocery list in full view of everyone in the house. Stuck to the fridge is a great place to have it, but if you have a stainless steel fridge (like me) and magnets don’t work, you can stick your grocery list on the nail that your family calendar hangs on. We use that calendar to list our meals for the week, so it’s an extra good thing to have the grocery list there.

7) Have three or four spots in your house where you keep your writing utensils. If you’re constantly putting pens in drawers or stuffing them into bags, it’s going to drive you crazy trying to find something to write with! It’s better to have several places in the house where you know you’ll find some good writing utensils.

8 ) If you enjoy buttery popcorn, eat it out of a metal bowl. It’s a million times easier to clean!

9) Do an evaluation of your house on the weekend. Are you low on food? Is your laundry piling up? Is the recycling bin overflowing? It’s easier to deal with these things when you aren’t in the office, rather than starting Monday morning off by realizing there’s nothing for breakfast and your best shirt is still in the laundry basket.

10) Communicate with the people you live with. Is everyone pulling their weight? Are there some chores that you or they absolutely hate that the other can do? Will one of you need extra help tomorrow because your day is packed full of meetings? Talk to each other to make sure that everyone is clear on what their household roles are, and that way the chores will be taken care of and you’ll undergo a lot less stress.

Share your simple household tips in the comments section below!

Filed under Life Lessons. Tagged 10 minutes to clean, cleaning tips, household chores, household tips, how to clean

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2012: The Year of Balance

16 January 2012, 12:31 am

This is my 16th day on the Ultimate Nutrition Challenge and my detox month. So far it’s been going great – I’ve lost 5 pounds and 1.3 % body fat! You can read about what I’ve been eating by visiting my Health Writer Eats food diary blog. But it occurred to me the other day that what the Ultimate Nutrition Challenge is really about is finding balance.

As I’ve mentioned before, I co-host a radio show called Wooden Spoons, where we talk about sustainable and healthy living. On our show right after New Year’s, we talked a lot about the role of technology in our lives and the concept of trying to get back to our roots, slow down and really breathe. You can listen to the podcast by clicking on the link below:

Wooden Spoons July 6 – MP3

When we were talking about this on the show, I was reminded of something I learned in one of my university rhetoric classes: how we really need to have a balance between the culture of the screen and the culture of the book. I think this can be applied to everything in life: when we go too far in any one direction, too far in any extreme, we can lose ourselves, and it’s very unhealthy. We need to have a balance of everything.

My focus on balance this year is going to be mostly between physical and mental health, but also in all other aspects of life too – to balance work with play, to balance literature with movies, to balance busy nights out with quiet evenings indoors.

In some regards I think that I’m doing a fairly good job so far this year, but in other ways I think I could use a lot of work. But that’s why my focus on balance is for a full 12 months! We can’t suddenly be balanced all at once; these things take time and require baby steps.

This month I’ve been prioritizing work over just about everything else, but I think that at this time, it’s appropriate. I’ve just started a new job a month ago, plus I’ve started volunteering for two different organizations within the past month or so as well. Things are beginning to move along with The Food Label Movement, so it requires more attention than I’ve been giving it. And I have a lot of work to do with my nutrition course.

Since I’m involved with a lot of different things, I’m focusing on a balance between these various workloads this month. Making sure that things don’t get neglected and that I make time for everything I want to do. I figure if I can focus on balancing work this month, next month I can do a better job of incorporating play – for example, in the form of exercise. It actually works out well that my time for exercise has been limited this month, since I wasn’t planning on exercising a huge amount anyways while I’m on the detox and organizing myself.

Which brings me back around in full circle to this month’s detox. This past Thursday was the first time this month that I really didn’t feel in a detox-mood at all. I had gotten a terrible sleep the night before, and then I had a very long day, so I was a bit thrown off. I didn’t derail from my detox foods, but I did overeat. On Friday I was still very tired and I overate again, but this time I included some cheese – which I originally hadn’t included in my detox plan.

I felt good about incorporating the cheese though. I think it was the only dairy I’ve had since I started the Challenge. It felt right to eat it because that’s what my detox is about: it is about eating nutritious foods in moderation, balancing healthy foods so that my body will feel really good. The detox is primarily a low-calorie whole foods vegan diet, but it also includes room for non-vegan higher-calorie foods – such as cheese – on occasion. Honestly, I don’t want to be eating cheese and meat every day, or even every second day. I also think it’s doing my body a lot of good to not have bread on this diet, for example, and of course I feel really good not eating anything processed. But I think that eating animal products a couple times each week have a place in this detox, and they have a place in a healthy lifestyle. It’s all about the balance.

Yesterday I felt myself starting to get on the right track again, so I think this week should go well!

Have you been doing your own detox this month? Is it going well? How are you balancing your life right now? What’s your idea of a healthy diet? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!

Filed under Life Lessons, Nutrition Challenges. Tagged detox diet, eating cheese, healthy living, low-calorie whole foods vegan, nutrition in community, radio co-host, Wooden Spoons

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Can I Exercise on a Detox?

11 January 2012, 12:09 am

The answer to the above question is YES. Yes, you can exercise on a detox. It just depends on the type of detox that you’re doing as to what type of exercise is the best choice for you.

Some people say that when you do a detox, you should stop exercising. But I don’t believe that. Unless you’re doing a super intense detox of just lemon water (and if you’re going to do that, please don’t do it for any longer than a day!), you can (and should!) easily incorporate exercise into your day.

The detox that I’m doing throughout the month of January is really focused on eating fairly low-calorie (I aim for 1,200 but usually get closer to 1,500 a day), whole foods, and vegan. That means that some days I’ll eat a high amount of healthy fats from nuts and nut butter, and other days (like yesterday) all I’ll have is green smoothies. It really depends on how you’re feeling and what you want to do.

My version of the detox ensures that the body is given a high quantity of nutrients for the calorie content its receiving (hello veggies!), rather than extreme weight loss. Because of that, I feel completely comfortably doing low-impact exercise daily. I’m aiming for at least 1 hour of walking every day, plus Pilates every 2 – 3 days and strength training every 2 – 3 days. It’s nothing strenuous, just 10 – 15 minutes of Pilates and strength training, but it’s enough to maintain/build muscle and maintain/gain flexibility. After all, what’s the point of doing a detox if you lose a bunch of weight and it turns out to be mostly muscle and then you end up all weak? That’s no fun at all!

Ideal Detox Exercise

My idea of the ideal detox exercise is a variation and combination of yoga, Pilates, stretching and walking. The reason for this is that these are low-intensity exercises that are easy on the joints. They are also very much about relaxation and improving mental health as well as physical health – very important for a detox. Doing light stretching or going for a walk can re-energize us as well, and help a lot with the mind-body connection so that the detox really works for all parts of ourselves.

The main reason why I’ve been doing Pilates during the past week, rather than yoga, is because I have a book on Pilates and I don’t have a book on yoga. But I also really love Pilates because it focuses so much on combining strength training through body weight with stretching. It’s been a really nice way to wake up on some of my mornings.

What about high-intensity exercise?

This is where you have to be careful when you’re doing a detox. If you do too much exercise and you aren’t getting enough calories, it can be very dangerous. This is one that you need to really listen to your body for, and you also need to consider the type of detox you’re doing. Even with my type of detox, I’ve made a conscious decision to not go to the gym or go running. You should at least build your way up: if you’re doing a month-long detox, focus on walking, light strength training and yoga for the first couple weeks, and once your body has adapted to the detox then you can focus on going for a run or similar. But I think that when you’re doing a detox, it’s better to focus on lighter types of exercise which aren’t likely to hurt you and which will emphasize the mind-body connection.

Lastly, it depends on how much exercise you’re already doing as to if you want to do high-intensity exercise for your detox! If you run 5 miles every day, then you’ll probably be just fine continuing that run on the type of detox that I’ve been doing (but maybe reduce the number of miles you run, at least in the beginning). If the most exercise you do in a day is to walk to and from your car in the garage, then definitely start out with just 30 minutes walking each day and some stretching – you can build in strength training and longer bouts of exercise when you feel more comfortable with it.

Do you exercise when you’re detoxing? What type of exercise are you doing these days? Share in the comments section below!

Filed under Fitness, Nutrition Challenges, Weight loss. Tagged benefits of Pilates, detox, detox exercise, doing yoga, how to exercise, mind body connection, walk mindfully

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Dealing with challenges

9 January 2012, 12:14 am

I recently started on the final course of my nutrition diploma program, Sport & Fitness Nutrition. I have three months left to complete the course, and then I have to write an exam for it, and then I have to complete my final exam for the entire course in order to get my diploma. At that point, I’ll be a Certified Holistic Nutritionist, and I’ll be able to counsel people on nutrition. As you can imagine, I’m very excited about it!

Up until my Sports & Fitness Nutrition course, I’ve been able to move through the courses fairly easily. I’ve spent a lot of time researching health and nutrition over the past five years or so, meaning that much of the course work was revision or expansion upon what I’d already learned.

Sports & Fitness Nutrition, however, is a whole different story. This course focuses much more on the chemical structure of things, and the science behind nutrition.

Last week I began the chapter on Human Energy. It was far more challenging than I’d expected, and I found myself getting cranky as I tried to read and reread each section. Although I was telling myself that I was trying to understand the science of energy, in reality my brain was shutting down, and I was refusing to process the information. It was too hard.

Finally I threw up my hands in exasperation and went for a long walk. Later in the day I went back to it, this time when Mr. Science was at home, and he heard my fuming over the course. Him being all science-y, he immediately offered to help and was eager to learn about the science of energy.

“You have to learn this stuff, you can’t just coast through it,” he said. “If you’re going to be counseling people on nutrition then you have to really know it.”

It wasn’t what I wanted to hear, but it was what I really needed to hear. Science is one of those things that doesn’t come easily to me, the way that language does. It was such a pleasure to graduate from university and know that I’d never have to take another math or science course again if I didn’t want to; instead, I could focus on what I was good at and what I enjoyed. But sometimes when we want to do what we enjoy, we need to go through something that’s challenging first.

After Mr. Science helped me with the chapter on Energy, I felt a little better about the whole thing. The next day I began reading the chapter of Carbohydrate on my own – earlier in the day, so that my mind was ready to concentrate fully – and I took a lot of time with it. I went through it paragraph by paragraph, pausing to let it all sink in, writing down notes and jotting down questions to ask Mr. Science when he came home from work. I stopped reading when I felt my concentration breaking, and went back to it early the next day, refreshed and ready to learn more.

Even just a few days later, I’m not dreading opening that textbook the way that I was before I started to really pay attention to it. I’d actually go so far as to say that I’m enjoying it!

Too often when things are difficult for us, we shut ourselves down and refuse to listen or learn, because it would take too much effort. But how can we accomplish anything if we ignore the difficult stuff and only focus on what’s easy for us? If we don’t constantly challenge our minds, we won’t be able to keep as sharp. We won’t be able to look at things from other perspectives. We won’t be able to understand those things that are difficult for us.

Trying out something that’s challenging for us – not necessarily something that’s new to us, but something that we think we dislike because we didn’t “get it” the first time we tried it – can result in a whole new way of thinking. I should have known better when it came to learning science: back when I was taking my Rhetoric degree, I had to take a mandatory class on Oral Communication. Before the class, I hated public speaking. I came out of that class at the end loving public speaking. Just because something’s challenging for us doesn’t mean we should dislike it or avoid it. In fact, if it’s challenging for us, that’s all the more reason that we should confront it and learn it better!

What have you tried recently that was challenging for you? What challenge will you take on this week that you have previously avoided? Share in the comments section below!

Filed under Life Lessons. Tagged Alive Academy, certified holistic nutritionist wpg, chemical structure, difficult challenge, learning about carbs, overcoming difficulties, science of nutrition, sports & fitness nutrition course

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Nine Days in NYC

6 January 2012, 12:57 am

Several weeks after Mr. Science and I returned from NYC, I’m finally getting around to posting about our trip!

We arrived in NYC on Friday December 9 and left on Sunday December 18. It was the perfect length of time to be away. We did everything we wanted to do and saw everything we wanted to see by the end of the day on the Thursday, so that left us two more days to revisit some places and take it easy.

I absolutely adore the Met. So much beautiful art! My favourite was the Roman and Greek section.

Our hostel was just a block away from Central Park, and we were right at the north tip of it, on 106th street. It was quite nice to be out of the super touristy area, but it also meant that we had a whole lot of walking to do! We talked about catching a bus or a taxi a couple times but never ended up getting around to it. Instead we walked everywhere. One day we even walked to Brooklyn and back – it took us about 10 hours in total!

Me on the Brooklyn Bridge.

I really love how pedestrian-friendly New York is. The sidewalks are always really wide and accommodating; it’s easy to walk absolutely everywhere. Here in Winnipeg, there aren’t always sidewalks, or they aren’t very well-kept, or the buildings just aren’t pleasant to walk past. But in New York there is always something beautiful to look at, so it’s a pleasure to walk for several hours. You can easily go for a wander and not realize how much time has passed until it’s four hours later. In Winnipeg it’s much harder to manage that. I expect this is also largely due to city planning: there are often apartments and shops of all kinds located fairly close to each other in NYC, whereas in Winnipeg the living spaces are often kept separate from the shopping districts. Hopefully that will change. Anyways, back to New York! We enjoyed all of the walking we got to do

The High Line - an old railroad track converted into a walking path.

While we were in NYC, we did all kinds of awesome things – walked across Brooklyn Bridge, wandered through Times Square, went to the top of Rockefeller Centre for a view of the city (both in the night and during the day), explored Central Park, admired the expensive apartments overlooking the park, visited the Natural History Museum and the Met, walked the High Line, explored Chelsea and the West Village, stared in awe at the buildings in the Financial District, saw the off-Broadway show Happy Hour (by Ethan Coen), and enjoyed some absolutely amazing food. Mmmm.

Me and Mr. Science at the top of the Rock! You can see the Empire State Building (or part of it) on the right hand side.

We also did a little bit of shopping. Last time I was in NYC I bought myself an Hermes scarf – this time around, I bought myself a pair of Prada shoes, a pair of Jimmy Choos, and some Tiffany earrings! I saved up for a long time so I’d be able to purchase those items Luckily the shoes were both on sale, half price, and the earrings were sterling silver rather than covered in diamonds and pearls, like most Tiffany items. Hehe. It was lots of fun to just be completely amazed at all the ridiculously expensive designer stores there. We were offered champagne in the Prada store! I think more shoe stores should offer champagne to their clients

New York has so many tall buildings!

The other thing that I loved in NYC was how there was so much good fresh food everywhere. And Whole Foods! Oh Whole Foods, you’re wonderful. I think there are only one or two Whole Foods in Canada, and they aren’t anywhere close to Winnipeg.

Isn't Central Park lovely?

To sum up, NYC was a fantastic trip. Mr. Science and I had such a lovely time – it was our first real trip together (I don’t think backcountry camping/hiking trips count, ha) and it was definitely a success

What did you do for the holidays? Do you have a favourite big city?

All photos courtesy of Mr. Science.

Filed under Mental Health. Tagged Brooklyn Bridge, Central Park, holiday in New York, Jimmy Choos, Natural History Museum, New York City's High Line, NYC, Roman statue, shopping trip, Tiffany earrings, Top of the Rock

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How to Menu-Plan

4 January 2012, 12:38 am

I weighed in yesterday morning at 3 lbs less than Saturday morning – go me! Nutrition is one of the most important things we can improve upon when we want to get healthier and/or lose weight. And good nutrition means planning menus.

I love planning menus but got rather bad at it over the holidays – and of course we didn’t really have the option of menu planning when we were in New York. But now that I’ve started my nutrition challenge, it’s really important that Mr. Science and I plan our menus together. First of all, we need to make sure that I’m following the challenge, and second of all we need to make sure that we both enjoy the meals we make. After all, what’s the sense in a nutrition challenge if you don’t enjoy it?

Here’s how to plan your menus:

1) Gather together your resources. For us, this means our cookbooks. You might also find that online recipes work better for you, but personally I quite prefer holding a cookbook in hand Since January’s nutrition challenge is Detox, we chose five or six cookbooks to look through: the Looneyspoons Collection, three Tosca Reno books, The Flat Belly Diet Cookbook, and a Light & Easy Cookbook. Then Mr. Science and I set aside some time to sit on the couch and go through each of the books, practically cover to cover (leaving out the meat sections and the baked good/dessert sections). Whenever we found a recipe that fit my criteria and looked tasty, we’d show it to the other and then we’d write the title of the recipe and the page number (and cookbook!) in a notebook. By the end, we had easily a couple dozen recipes that we liked the looks of.

2) Get out your calendar. Next, get out a calendar that everyone in the house can see. Go through the recipes you picked out and figure out which ones you’d like to make and eat this week. Keep in mind ingredients – if there are a couple recipes that call for mushrooms, for example, it’s a good idea to make them both in the same week. That way you know you’ll use everything in your fridge without ingredients going to waste. When you’ve decided what you’d like to eat for the next week, write down the recipe name, the cookbook it’s from and its page number on the calendar square. Don’t forget about leftovers, either! Be sure to factor those in where they’ll fit.

3) Make a grocery list. Now you know what your meals will be, so it’s time to collect your ingredients! Go through the recipes, figure out which ingredients you have on hand and which you need to buy, and write up your grocery list. Go on your shopping trip to get everything for the week (or at least for the next few days) so you won’t have to worry about missing ingredients for any of your meals.

And that’s it! From there you have all your tools at hand to cook brand new recipes. Choose your menus every weekend for the rest of the week so you know what it will all look like.

Are you a menu planner?

Filed under Nutrition. Tagged Christmas cookies, detox month, eating healthy, healthy cookbooks, how to, menu planning, planning meals, weight loss

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Year-long Goals

2 January 2012, 12:24 am

Today marks the second day of my month-long detox. Fun stuff!

Over the past month or so, while I’ve been travelling around New York and finishing up at an old job and beginning a new job and indulging in holiday pleasures, I’ve been thinking about what I want to achieve over the next year. Ultimately I want to get back to being really healthy again, so my year-long goal is to become as healthy as I can be, in both body and mind.

This means that I’ll have several specific goals throughout the year:

1) Lose 35 lbs in the first six months, and maintain that loss for the following six months. Six lbs each month is equivalent to losing 1 – 2 lbs each week; a healthy amount to lose. Under this category, I also wish to lose about 10% of my body fat, and several inches off my waist. It’s quite astonishing to realize I’ve gained that much in a year and a half. My BMI has just crossed over into the official “overweight” category, whereas I used to be on the low end of the “healthy weight” category. It’s not fun to no longer fit into your old clothes, or to find that you aren’t quite as strong or as fast as you used to be, or to realize that you’re a lot more susceptible to illness and disease. So therefore I’m using my Ultimate Nutrition Challenge to improve my weight and decrease my body fat so I can be much healthier. And that’s largely why we’re starting with a month-long detox

2) Engage in mindful recreation several times each week. Ideally I’d like this to be a daily thing, but I know it will take a while to get there. By “mindful recreation,” I’m referring to acts in which I feel restful. Things like getting a massage, using my acupressure mat, doing yoga and meditating. It’s a great way to reduce anxiety and replenish energy stores.

3) Regular exercise – cardio, strength training and flexibility – several times each week. I walk for at least an hour 6 days a week, but apart from that, intense cardio is sporadic. My flexibility training has been very weak in the past few months. I’m decently strong, and I usually lift weights a couple times each week, but I’d like to be more rigorous about it and be sure that I’m exercising those muscles for a decent length of time, three times each week.

The Ultimate Nutrition Challenge is an accompaniment to the above three overarching goals. The Challenge will allow me to try new ways of eating, to experiment with different foods, and to learn more about local foods and eat raw and such. I think the best part about this program is that I finally feel I’m mentally in a great place to ensure overall health – the last time I physically became very healthy, I wasn’t in a very good place emotionally, and I think that’s what led me down the path to gain all this weight and “let myself go,” to an extent. We need to be healthy in all areas of life if we want to feel and be our very best, and if we want to maintain that healthiness for the rest of our lives.

What are your year-long goals, and how do you plan to see them through? Do you have good health in all areas of life?