Blog - Healthy For Your Life

Beware blue light: go low-tech before bed

Getting enough quality sleep is about more than just trying to avoid falling asleep during an afternoon meeting. Adequate sleep is necessary for the proper balance of the hormones that affect appetite and fat storage. When you find yourself dragging because you don’t get enough shut-eye, it’s a LOT harder to muster up the motivation and energy to exercise or cook a healthy meal, and you might find yourself relying on crutches like caffeine and sugar to keep going.

Many factors can get in the way of a good night’s sleep. The glow from your TV, computer, tablet or smartphone is one big one. These devices emit blue light, which is the worst kind to be exposed to before bedtime. Why, because it is especially good at preventing your pineal gland (a pea-sized organ in your brain) from releasing melatonin. Normally, your body releases melatonin a few hours before your normal bedtime, making you less alert and better able to sleep.

Do you enjoy snuggling up with a laptop or tablet before bed? Consider going low-tech with a book or magazine instead. Alternately, keep the device further away from your face than usual and/or turn the brightness settings down.

Just breathe: Six simple steps to less stress

Relaxation

One of the simplest ways to soothe stress is to just breathe. In fact, it’s so simple that it’s easy to dismiss it as a strategy. Something that easy can’t really work, can it? Yes it can.

Even though you probably don’t notice it when you’re feeling especially stressed or anxious (because, duh, you’re preoccupied with feeling stressed or anxious), when you are in the grips of the “stress response,” your body tenses up and your breathing becomes shallow. Deep breathing is one of the best ways to counteract this response because is sends a message to your brain to relax. Your brain responds by sending a message to your body to slow your heart rate, lower your blood pressure, and unwind some of the tension your muscles have been holding.

Whenever you notice that stress has you in its grips, take a few minutes (five or 10 is ideal, but anything is better than nothing!) to practice this simple breathing exercise:

Find a quiet, comfortable space where you will not be interrupted.
Sit with your back straight and close your eyes.
Quietly inhale through your nose. As your chest rises with your breath, say to yourself, “rising.”
Exhale completely through your mouth to the count of six. As your chest falls, say to yourself, “falling.”
Continue to inhale and exhale as described, saying “rising” and “falling” to yourself.
If your mind wanders (and it will), simply label the thought and return to your breathing. (For example, if thoughts about a work project pop up, say to yourself, “work,” then return to your breath.)

If you need more robust tools for dealing with stress, I recommend the book “Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle“ by Emily and Amelia Nagoski. I’ve recommended it to many of my private practice clients, and they call it a game-changer.

Three cheers…the second edition is here!

Book

It’s official…the updated, revised and expanded (by about 80 pages) second edition of “Healthy for Your Life: A non-diet approach to optimal well-being” is available on Amazon! Once we take care of some formatting, it will also be available via Kindle (if you’ve ever read a badly-formatted Kindle book, I think you’ll appreciate that I do NOT want that to happen with my book). [Update: The Kindle version is available for purchase!]

Be sure to check out the downloadable worksheets (also updated and expanded) to accompany the book, as well as the robust (and ever growing) resource lists, one for books, one for everything else!

The power of play: reclaiming joy in exercise

Energy

When we were kids, we played for exercise. Now that we’re adults, we exercise for exercise. Where we once felt the joy, now we usually feel the burn (or try to). That’s a pity, because:

Play is something you do for the joy of doing it, rather than as a means to an end.
Play fires up the brain.
Play is the truest expression of your humanity.
Play allows you to become engaged.
Play is an anecdote to stress.

Think about what kind of active play you enjoyed as a kid. Did you hula hoop? Roller skate? Play soccer? Tap dance? Run in and out of the waves on family beach vacations? Climb trees? Hang from the monkey bars?

Then, think about fun ways of moving your body that you’ve thought about doing as an adult, but have yet to try. Salsa dance? Bellydance? Trapeze class? Zumba? Dancing around your living room to corny ‘80s music?

Decide on one type of active play you want to try and take concrete steps to make it reality. Buy a hula hoop. Find a dance class close to home or work. Crank up the music and bust a move when no one’s watching. Just play!

Set yourself up for success with a kitchen cleanout

Nourishment

One important part of nourishing your body and soul is preparing meals at home. No matter whether you are a newbie cook or a gourmet, regardless of whether you have the tiniest of apartment kitchens or a spacious set-up large enough to host a crowd, when improving your nutrition and your health is your goal, then giving your kitchen a once-over is a good place to start. To begin your kitchen cleanout, I suggest that you:

Declare, “Out with the old!” Rummage through your pantry, refrigerator and freezer and toss anything that is stale or freezer-burned. Be gone, ancient condiments and frozen veggies, 3-year-old dried beans and rancid oils (if you haven’t eaten it by now, you won’t ever…and I wouldn’t want you to!). See the “Kitchen Cleanout” download for more tips.
Clear the counter clutter. Stacks of mail, be gone! Small appliances that you use infrequently, be gone! Reserve your counters for appliances you use daily (or at least several times a week) and for actual food preparation. If your kitchen is perpetual mess, you’ll be less likely to want to cook.
Break down barriers. If you don’t cook as often as you would like to, what’s getting in your way? Is the sink perpetually filled with dishes? Are all of your knives dull? Do you need a few more cutting boards? Do you never seem to have the right size pot or pan?

In the book, I cover meal planning, cooking and setting up the perfect pantry, but these three steps have benefits in themselves!

At last, the book revisions are done!

Book

At long last, the revised and expanded second edition of my book, which had hoped to complete in 2022 before other projects got in the way, is done. As with the first edition, it had fallen victim to back-burner syndrome (in other words, I was perpetually putting all of my freelance writing deadlines, and all of my private practice clients, first).

Within about six months of completing the first edition in 2018, I knew there were parts of the book I wanted to rewrite, and new material I wanted to add. Late last year, as I was wrapping up final edits on my Audible Original course, “Mindful Eating,” I decided it was time to pull the book off the back burner and buckle down, starting with grabbing a copy of my book and a red pen. Frankly, it was exciting, and I did manage to take excellent care of my clients, meet all of my other deadlines, and keep up with the speaking gigs I had lined up.

“Healthy for Your Life: A holistic approach to optimal wellness” will become “Healthy for Your Life: A non-diet approach to optimal well-being,” and will be available this spring (finger’s crossed) via Amazon, and I really will have a Kindle version available this time! Stay tuned for more details!