The Value of Keeping Health Simple

When navigating the health world, there are all sorts of suggestions, plans, programs and pitfalls. A simple journey to living a healthier lifestyle can become a mind-numbing mess of gadgets, apps, calorie counting, restrictions, 5AM trips to the gym and endless label-scrutinizing that would send any person back to bed to avoid all the work. It's no fun being healthy when you're constantly monitoring every thing you do! Here are a few absolutes that every expert can agree on to help you simplify things.

Enjoy life and the body you were given to live it in.
It's fine to set goals for yourself and have things to aspire to, but focusing too much on the end product will often result in endlessly beating yourself up if you don't get there and frustration. One Ayurvedic lesson is to treat your body like your friend. If your friend was sick or struggling, or if something was clearly wrong, you wouldn't belittle her or get angry at her for not being perfect. Listen to your body and identify what you struggle with and try to work with that. And celebrate and work on improving your inherent strengths.

There isn't one single life plan for everyone.
There are certainly things that will universally help your health and make you look better in the process, but remember too that each body is a unique biological organism. Real lasting change takes a lot of time. Depending on your habits, medical history, genetics and what you've been eating all your life, your metabolism could function completely differently from the next person. What works for one person may not necessarily work for you. What one person enjoys eating or doing may not be what makes you passionate about being healthy. You may look great at 140 pounds while someone else does better carrying 110. That is completely normal and okay.

Eat your vegetables.
Even if you eat vegetables at every meal, you could probably still eat more of them. Everyone agrees and the science overwhelmingly backs it: there is nothing more super and more nutritious for your health than veggies! Eating fruit or a multivitamin or a "superfood" is NOT a substitute! Avoid peas, corn and potatoes and go for nutritional powerhouses, especially leafy greens like spinach and collards, and cruciferous vegetables like kale, broccoli and cauliflower. Eat huge salads for lunch, wilt spinach in your breakfast scramble, throw a few handfuls of raw spinach into your smoothie. They will make you feel full, boost your energy and keep you young. No pill, powder or any amount of exercise can replace that.

Don't go crazy with supplements.
There isn't any herb or pill that you can take that will alter your health more than being active and eating well. Some things certainly help. If you're a vegetarian, it's probably a good idea to take a B-complex. To boost your metabolism, you may want to consider drinking more green and herbal teas. Coconut and flax oil is certainly good for you, but there's no reason to go out of your way to eat a tablespoon of it every day if you're already preparing your meals with it. Anything a superfood or supplement has can probably already be found in the foods you're eating daily. What you should do is probably what you already know: Avoid packaged and sugary foods and eat a natural diet of vegetables, lean protein, fruit, nuts and seeds to get your nutrition. Focus on the food and staying active and save your money for better things.

Strength is not complicated.
There's no such thing as "muscle confusion" or shrinking your muscle mass to look long and lean. Your muscle size is determined mostly by genetics and how much weight you lift. That's pretty much it. Doing 100 crunches a day or complex reverse interval training will not give you abs. Do exercises you like to stay active, like yoga, swimming, riding your bike, playing with your kids, taking walks with your significant other, or playing sports. Make sure you  move around regularly instead of sitting at your desk or on your couch all day. If you really want to build muscle, look into doing deep muscle training twice a week (slow, heavy reverse weight lifting until your body can't lift anymore). But beyond that, you don't have to do anything weird to stay fit. Your body doesn't know the difference, and your brain will appreciate the break.

Keeping things simple gives you more time to focus on what matters to you. Instead of making your health the center of your life when life is already short, use that time to enjoy who you are, build your relationships and your talents, and have fun! Until next time, keep it clean!

Exercising Backwards

If you don't have a lot of time to work out, or just aren't very motivated to do it, there's a way to squeeze in a full body workout in 10 minutes once or twice per week. It's actually just as effective as running 30 minutes a day and more effective than regular daily workouts to help you lose weight and get toned. It's called Eccentric Exercising. Most exercise, like lifting weights, is concentric exercise. This means that the work out focuses on contracting or shortening the muscles. Eccentric exercises focus on lengthening the muscle. So for example, rather than working on lifting the weight, you're working on lowering it down after you lift it. The idea is that lengthening the muscle requires more force which requires more effort for your body. More effort means that you're working every layer of muscle tissue, not just the superficial layers. In turn you build and repair more muscle more quickly and boost your metabolism by having denser muscle mass. Here are a few simple exercises to get started, based on the compiled research of Jonathan Bailor.

Negative Pull-Ups
Start by raising yourself on a chin-up bar so that your chin is level with the bar. You can use a chair to get up there if needed. Slowly lower yourself from the bar for a full 10 seconds. Repeat until you've done this 6 times.

Negative Push-Ups
Start in a fully extended push-up position or "plank" pose. Bend your elbows slowly for ten full counts until your nose touches the ground. You may start on your knees if you can't hold yourself up that long. Perform exercise 6 times.

Negative Squats
Stand next to a bar, railing, or anything firmly anchored that is about waist-height.  Place a chair behind you. Hold on to the rail and lean back until your arms are fully extended. Put your weight on one leg and slowly lower yourself 10 seconds until your butt touches the chair. Perform 6 times for each leg. Be sure that your knees don't extend past your toes. Use your other leg to support you if you cannot lower for a full 10 counts.

These exercises are short but very difficult, and you will feel sore for several days after completing them. If you feel sore, you're doing it right! Enjoy the time you save, and until next time, keep it clean!

Streamlining Your Workout

We all have high demands on our time during the day, making it difficult to fit in everything we need to do -- much less the things we would like to do for ourselves. Unfortunately, exercise is one of the number one things we put off or put on the back burner because we don't have a free moment to do it. Here's a few tips to make fitting in a workout a little faster.

Workout where you are.
Driving to the gym, packing a gym bag, trying to arrange your keys and water bottle and headphones in your shorts, waiting for a treadmill... Sometimes going to the gym can really sap your day away! You can easily spend an hour preparing for and cleaning up after a 20 minute work out. Try finding places nearby you (a nearby park or just your own neighborhood) that offer the same perks. If you like the stair-stepper, use the nearby high school stadium and run up and down the bleachers, or find a steep hill in your neighborhood. Carry weights to make it more challenging. Running around the block is usually more physically demanding and a better workout than running on a machine. Bonus points: Research shows that spending just 5 minutes a day outside among greenery boosts your willpower and focus throughout the day. So get out there!

Resist the urge to shower every time you sweat.
I know it sounds a little icky, but you can still be clean and fresh (and save an extra 30 minutes in your mornings) without always washing. If you have access to a shower, give your body a quick rinse. If you're not so lucky, go with a French shower and wipe off extra sweat and dirt with a clean wet washcloth. Deodorizing wipes and body sprays can also help freshen you up.

You can still have gorgeous hair without washing it.
Keep mousse, light hairspray or shine enhancing balm (whatever hair finishing product you prefer) on hand. Spritz on a little, work it through your hair and then blow dry it in sections with a round brush to dry out the sweat. Flip your head over and dry underneath, and finish by blowing cool air at the nape of your neck to help you cool off faster. If your hair gets oily, you can sprinkle cornstarch on your scalp, let it sit for a few minutes and then brush it out with a bristly brush over the sink. Voila! No more oil. It's a super cheap dry shampoo that quickly gives your hair life again. This routine takes all of 5 minutes, smells great and no one will be the wiser.

Find training that works multiple areas.

To cut down on time, try multitasking with your body! You can do a cardio circuit without the machines by just varying the speed and intensity of your runs, or by picking hilly terrain. If it's strength training you're interested in, there are literally hundreds of options for working multiple muscle groups. Fitness Magazine, Nike Training Club, and Beachbody are all excellent (and mostly free) resources for short and effective workouts.

Sleep in your gym clothes.
My sweats double as my PJ's. This way I can just roll out of bed, put on my shoes and go. If you work out during your lunch or after you get off work, lay out your stuff the night before. This way if you have other things on your mind as you're getting ready for the day, you won't be distracted by trying to remember where your favorite pants are.

Keep in mind what prevents you from working out.
Everyone's schedules and lives are different. Take a hard look back on the times you've skipped workouts and be honest with yourself. When you start making excuses, be conscious of it and step outside of yourself and say "What is really preventing me from going? Am I really that tired or hungry? Do I really have to clean the kitchen right now? Can I check my emails when I'm back at work, or does work really demand my time right now?" Only you can talk yourself in or out of doing something, and only you know what's at the heart of what's stopping you. The only workout you regret is the one you don't do. So spend less time lying in bed, dragging your feet and debating about what you want to do or should do and just do it!

The less barriers you have, the more likely you are to get things done. Make it easy on yourself to achieve what you want and you'll be more likely to succeed. Until next time, keep it clean!

Healthy Routines

When you start exercising, it's easy to either be really soft on yourself or to push too hard. Here's a few basic tips for setting the right balance.

Make a Habit
It takes 60 days to turn a daily activity into a habit. If you're having trouble getting into the routine of exercising, just put a calendar on the wall and X-off 60 days in a row for every day you work out. As long as you create the habit and get your body used to being active, it doesn't matter what you do. This could mean a 15 minute jog around the block, a sun salutation of yoga poses or doing a few sets of push-ups. The idea is to make it not feel weird or like a chore to lace up those sneakers every day.

Keep It Simple
Your workout should be a basic game plan. The more you add to it, the easier it is to over think what you're doing and talk yourself out of it or over-do it. If you plan on doing more than one or two activities per day, memorize your circuit so you can flow directly from one activity into the next. If that's too difficult, try taking a class for a while. The peer pressure of having an instructor, a friend or even strangers watching you work out is a motivator, and if someone is telling you what to do next, you can't tell yourself to do more or less than what was planned. If you're by yourself, wear a heart-rate monitor  and stay in your zone so you know when you're over-working or under-working. Force yourself not to change that routine once you set it for at least 2 months. That way you'll get the most benefit out of your current routine and see realistic results from what you're doing.

Stay Alert
Get a good night's sleep each night and lay off the caffeine. The best way to stay awake is to get plenty of rest and eat foods that are easy to digest and don't weigh you down. Eating seems like a very sedentary activity, but digestion takes a lot of energy! When you eat less, your body expends less energy throughout the day. Start your morning with hot water with lemon, herbal tea, a smoothie or a probiotic drink such as kombucha. Easing yourself into eating throughout the day allows your body to rehydrate itself and reenergize itself for the long day ahead. If you still have trouble staying alert, try elevating your workstation so that you have to stand at your desk. When you stand you move and shift your weight more, your blood flows more and it's easier to think clearly.

Don't Make Excuses
If you worked too hard yesterday, don't automatically give yourself a pass for today. Likewise, if you missed yesterday's workout, it won't do you any good to run twice as far today. If you make a mistake or didn't do your routine quite right, learn from it and move on. You can always try again today with what you learned yesterday. It's more important to keep the healthy habit than to vary your routine to try and balance it out. And if something is always stopping you from working out or doing your plan like you planned, treat your time like an appointment. What you do for yourself is important too and shouldn't be blown off or pushed aside for extenuating circumstances.

Take an Off Day
All of that said, it helps to close out the week and have a fresh start by taking one off day. Usually people choose Sunday or Friday, but it can be any day you like. It also helps your muscles to recover and get ready to be pushed further for the coming week. Try not to overdo your time off either: Taking more than two weeks off from working out will set back any previous gains you have made.


Forming healthy, balanced habits is not always easy, which is why not everyone has them. However with great patience, the willingness to keep trying again and again, a forgiving mindset for your mistakes and healthy pats on the back when you reach your milestones, before you realize it you'll already be in great shape. Until next time!

Simplifying Your Commute

Want a good way to wake up in the morning without the coffee? Enjoy a cool morning breeze and the wind in your face? Want to save a little dough, be kind to the environment and stay in shape too? Try biking to work! It may seem far-fetched, but you'd be surprised how fast and easy it is to bike to most places. Here are a few tips on learning to get around.

Get your ride
This may seem obvious, but picking your bike is important. Will you be riding greenbelt trails, or urban streets? Are you a speed demon or a cruiser? There are lots of good places to find bicycles, including craigslist and freecycle. Buying a brand new bike can be very expensive, but can pay for itself in the gas you save in a few months in most cases. If buying a brand new bike isn't an option, remember that bike specialty shops can also do upgrades and repairs for relatively cheap. Updating gears, changing tires, outfitting the saddle or adjusting the handlebars to your liking are just a few of many things they can do. But mainly, be sure that everything functions tightly and smoothly, the body of the bike fits your height and posture, it's easy to shift (if you don't have a fixed gear) and that your butt is comfy in the saddle! I do recommend getting a bike with gears for your first ride, especially if there are hills in your area. You'll go a lot faster and expend less energy to get there.

Outfit yourself
Be sure to fit your bike with all the gear you'll need. The basics are reflectors (required by law in most places), headlamp (for riding when it's dark), bike lock and basket (or backpack). Be sure your bike lock is secure and that you always use it. It's handy to have a backpack or basket that is waterproof for anything you may carry, such as groceries or a briefcase. Extras you'll want to consider are reusable water bottle, change of clothes if you sweat a lot, and windbreaker that doubles as a raincoat. However keep in mind that every item you carry has the potential to weigh you down, so don't pack too much.


Find your route
Many cities provide bike trail routes and bikeable hiking trails on their local government homepage. Google now has bike routes in beta. Pick your start and end point and adjust the lines to what works for you. The best routes are ones that follow bike paths, steer clear of overcrowded streets and can cut straight through neighborhoods with few turns.

Get riding
Remember that bicyclists have to follow the same road rules as cars! Stay with the flow of traffic, stop at lights, and learn your hand signals (Stick your arm straight out to the right for a right turn, hold up your arm in an L shape for a left turn. Pointing works too.) Be extra watchful of your surroundings for cars making turns and people stepping into your path. And most importantly, OWN your space in the road! Some drivers may get cranky, but it is essential to your safety and visibility to ride in the lane and not squished against the curb where you could be sideswiped. If at all possible, make sure you can see the driver in their rearview or side mirrors. That way you know they can see you. When you're first starting out, try doing trial runs to the market or just to work and back in the evenings to get a feel for what you'll be dealing with, how sweaty you get, how fast you go and how long your ride will be. Remember that bikes shift up and down depending on speed, just like a car. If you're sailing along, shift up a gear to go even faster!

Depending on rush hour traffic, sometimes riding a bike is just as fast as riding in your car, and it is far more rewarding. With a little practice and preparation, pedaling to where you're going is fun and exhilarating. Enjoy the ride!
 

Getting Fit on the Cheap

Fitness has become a growing market in the United States. With all the advertisements for weight loss plans, equipment, gym memberships, TV shows about getting thin fast and celebrities selling shakes and "superfoods", on top of advertisements for regular supermarket foods touting their supposed health benefits, it's no wonder that most people are confused. Some of the information we're getting is downright contradictory. Here's a few quick and easy tips to bypass all of that, and save a few bucks too!


Ditch the gym. Depending on what membership you get, fitness clubs can range from as little as $20 bucks a month to upwards from $100 or more. That's a lot of dough! If you have a pair of running shoes and a sidewalk or a not-too-busy road, just walk out your front door and start jogging. Cardiovascular activity is the surest way to lose weight fast (and show off muscle tone!). Check out free programs such as Walk to Run or Couch to 5k if you're new to running for tips on building stamina. Ideally, running 45 minutes to 1 hour consecutively in your heart rate zone will burn the most calories, build the best heart health, strengthen your memory, boost your creativity and improve your mood. Yep, exercise does all of that, even after just one run! If you're new to working out and having trouble figuring out how hard your working, invest in a basic heart rate monitor and learn what your heart rate zone is. Continually running in your zone will get you used to the difference between feeling the burn and hurting yourself by working too hard. It takes 21 consecutive days to build a habit, so put a calendar on your wall, sleep in your gym clothes, roll out of bed and put on your sneaks and get out the door. It's much easier than packing a bag and driving, then working out in front of a bunch of strangers.

You don't need fancy gear to sweat. I admit, it's tantalizing to try out moisture-wicking technology and compression gear that's supposed to make you more aerodynamic and your muscles recover faster. But actually, scientific studies show that a lot of that gear doesn't help by much. Unless you're a professional athlete, shaving 0.12 seconds off your race time isn't going to do you a lot of good. If it helps you get over your embarrassment to work out by wearing good looking clothes, check out a local thrift store, browse a big box store for comfortable pajama pants, and dig out those rock band t-shirts from the back of your closet. Get the most basic sports bra that will support you if you need it, even the expensive ones will warp and stretch out quickly with daily use. Pajamas are basically the same drawstring pants but $5 or $10 cheaper. Get clothes made from natural fibers such as cotton and wash them on cold to keep the smell out and keep them lasting longer. The only thing you should spend your money on is a good pair of shoes, especially if you're running in an urban area. Shoes should be replaced every 500 miles or about 6 months to a year. Bad shoes or bad running form can result in shin splints, which will set back your running routine fast.

Stick to simple foods. Though sometimes convenient, the calorie content and ingredients in sports foods are usually more harmful than helpful. Some sports bars have just as much sugar and calories as a big cookie. Companies will try to sell you on the sciencey superiority of their formulation, but in actuality this is just another thing that really only benefits hardcore athletes who are working out 3 hours or more per day. Electrolytes are amazingly found in fresh fruits and vegetables, fruit juices, coconut water, and good old pickle juice. Pickle juice is even more hydrating than the average sports beverage! Save your dough for a good salad with lemon juice and oil for dressing, or a fresh fruit smoothie. Packaged foods are usually at least 3 times more expensive than making something yourself. If you like having something to grab and go, don't underestimate the power of your refrigerator. Baking whole grain breakfast bars, or meal additions like brown rice and saving them in your freezer will save you time during the week and money that might have been misspent on frozen dinners or boxed and processed foods. Cut up fruits and veggies and store them in water or lemon juice in the fridge to keep them fresh and easy to snack on. Stick to the outer perimeter of the grocery store and get veggies, fruit and bulk grains and nuts before you venture down the aisles. If you commit to picking up the healthy food first, you'll be less likely to spend your remainder on a bunch of junk food.

Use your surroundings creatively. You don't need weights or machines to build muscle and stretch. Use the curb, a wall or a table to press against to get the maximum stretch. If you can't touch your toes, wrap a belt or a towel around your feet and pull yourself forward. Chin ups can be done on stable supported surfaces, like door jams, stairs or monkey bars. Put your feet on the bed and your hands on the ground for an assisted push-up, or flip on your back in the same position for a greater range of motion sit-up that will work your back muscles as well as your abdominals. And you certainly don't need assistance to do yoga poses. In time, everything will start to look like something you can work with.

Working out is a part of life and a part of maintaining balance and a healthy body, just like brushing your teeth and getting a good night's sleep. Hopefully these tips will help you to treat it like an easy, normal part of your daily routine. Until next time!