I know—no, really…I know!—that I can be a nag about certain things.  I’d be amazed if you did not know that I was a psycho about good fat in your diet or variety in your meal plan.  In fact, I’d think there was something wrong with you if you didn’t know that about me.  But there really are reasons for the broken record lectures that come out of my lap top every week.  This series would rank up there as one in the top 3 reasons I am the psycho I am about the way you diet.  Not just that you diet, but exactly how you do it.  Most folks focus on just your body, others focus on your body and your general health; I would say I focus on your acute symptoms first, general health second, emotional stability third and body fourth because I have seen the damage first hand when the (outside of the) body is the top priority.

Variety is my bat and your menu is my ball and I literally beat the living tar out of it every week.  Occasionally I’ll get a homerun, but for the most part I’m just swinging at it hoping for a line drive (for you to change anything).  Eating the same thing every day, day in and day out is boring, restrictive and will make you manic.  But more importantly, it sets you up for food allergies and intolerances that once they set in, you have most of them for a long time or for life for some others.  Nothing is worse than having a favorite food that you can no longer eat because you ate too much of it and now it either makes you sick or makes you sick when you eat something else with it.  Ok, well I lied.  There is something worse.  And that would be developing an autoimmune disease or condition because of the foods that you are eating such as Crohn’s disease, diverticulitis, gastritis, IBS or Ulcers.

Each one of these conditions have no real known cause as to why you have them but all of them can be triggered by food allergies/sensitivities.  Crohn’s typically runs in families but just because your parents have it does not mean you will.  What really needs to happen is that you provide it with the right environment to thrive and then it will kick in when it’s ready.   Ulcers are very much like that, as well.  They are caused by H. Pylori bacteria that flourish in our stomachs but not everyone who has H. Pylori has ulcers.  This means that we needed to get our bodies in such a rut/mess that we cultivated that condition.  I would hate to know I brought something as painful as ulcers into fruition because I insisted on eating XYZ every day.   We would like to think that because we are eating so “healthy” that we no longer have to worry about these things.  Only people who eat crap get these things.  Wrong!  Oh so wrong!

One of the requirements to work with us is to fill out a health history questionnaire.  In that questionnaire we ask if you have any medical conditions that we need to know about.  Time and time again, form after form you will see someone list a gastrointestinal condition as something they are struggling with.  Shoot down to the section on food and they will say, “Every day I have…”  and proceed to give me their food diary.  Is this their fault?  No.  No one talks about variety the way they should and most of us are happy we eat something never mind trying to mix it up.  But now that you do know, you are responsible for your health and you need to get to mixing it up!

Here are some things that you need to know when it comes to these five conditions:

Do not stack slow metabolizers

I talk about this as ‘caustic combos’.  These are foods that are not bad but should not be eaten close to each other.  Salmon, steak, sword fish, beans and pasta come to mind when I think of these.  They are foods that typically take a long time to move through the colon.  Therefore, eating them on the same day or having them day after day is not a good idea.  Slow motility (the amount of time food spends in your colon) is a major factor in diverticulitis and IBS.  The longer food sits in your colon, the more damage it can do.  And yes, we eat a lot of fiber but that means nothing.  Constipation is out of control among clean eaters (hence this series).

Binge on more than just chocolate

Chocolate is mucus forming and can really do a number on the colon.  Mucus is a primary symptom of IBS which basically says that there is major inflammation somewhere.  Say you work out and do not replenish your water adequately.  Then you come home a little later and have a salmon salad for lunch.  Now you’ve jammed up the highway during a drought season.  Then you lose your tree that night on some chocolate (I know…you’d never do that).  Now you have a chief aggravator waiting its turn for exit in your colon while sitting behind pink stucco.  Great.

Easy on the offenders

Dairy, wheat/gluten, egg whites, nuts, soy, popcorn, chemicals in food, caffeine (yoohoo diet coke lovers), chicken and fructose/sweeteners of any kind are known allergens.  Eating them in large quantities is just asking for trouble.  Back in the day, Walden farms marinades were all the rage.  Then people started cropping up with all kinds of health issues—not because there was something wrong with the marinades, but because they were going through a bottle a week.  It was crazy.  I am sure Walden Farms did not want people eating their product on that level.  But that’s what we do, we KILL foods we love.  KILL them dead!  We eat them until their pouring out of our skin.  So much of what we go through is incredibly preventive.

Listen, if you made it this far….wow.  There is more.  We need to talk symptoms of the above, supplements for everything and thyroid stuff.   This goes much deeper than you think.  Woop woop!

Previous Series Post

Yesterday I introduced the three most popular conditions that I hear about when it comes to tummy issues and I did it in a very “basic information” sort of way.   You can find a ton of info out there about them but most of the information is very general in that all the sites sort of say the same thing.  Any time someone wants to tell me to “eat better” as a way to fix the issue, I tend to tune them out because we, on a whole, have already solved that problem.  This then sends me on a hunt as to what may also be the issue or what may be the alternate remedy.  The other thing is that I am not really interested in solving the problem with an Over The Counter drug simply because if we are working this hard to eat clean and exercise, an OTC seems out of place in our lives.  We tend to want a natural remedy that reflects our more natural type of lifestyle.  This brings me to today’s post.  I am not about to give you a host of remedies, I think that would not be cool; But I am going to show you how detailed you can be about what you are going through and that it really benefits you to be in tune with your symptoms.

If you ever have the pleasure (I say that with a giggle) to speak with me, you will find that you cannot say something to me in passing and I just let it go.  I have been told that I am a dog with a bone, worse than someone’s mother, a pitbull and so on when it comes to your health and what you think is nothing is typically something.  There’s also no such thing as TMI in my book.  Please…keep that in mind.  I will ask you ALL kinds of questions if I think that there is something fishy going on.  I always say this, and I do mean this, I am not a doctor.  What I am is an air traffic controller and I am here to keep you from ignoring the big pink elephant in the room.

This is why I am about to provide the following two lists for you, because if you could, you would just ignore what your body is telling you and just keep trying to lose weight.  But here is another thing I always say, ‘only healthy people can lose weight.’  If you are backed up or leaking like a cracked pipe, you can forget changing your body composition.  Your body has priorities and healing is number 1.  Not weight loss.    You may think the occasional bout of constipation, diarrhea, gas or bloating is no big deal, but maybe you’ll think differently if you know it comes with other symptoms.   The following two lists are different ways each of the 2 conditions can manifest in your body.  Each bullet point is its own manifestation.  You should only have one bullet point.  If you have more than one, get to a doc even faster.  The lists come from Prescription for Natural Cures by James Balch MD, Mark Stengler MD and Robin Balch ND, 2004.

Constipation

• Going days without going and when you finally do it’s hard and dry.  You also have sudden, noticeable memory issues.
• No desire to go at all and when you do it’s hard and dry.  This comes with great thirst, irritability and you may have a headache.
• Chronic constipation with chills and clammy hands.  You may also feel overwhelmed.
• Constipation with bloating and bad gas.  Cravings for sweets are out of control and symptoms are worse in late afternoon.  You feel better when you drink something warm.
• Constipation with a strong craving for salt and water.  You may be depressed and also light sensitive.
• Having an urgent feeling to go but can’t.  You may be irritable and/or feel overstressed.
• Constipation with PMS or menopause.  Could be chilly, irritable and having a really hard time going when you do.
• Can go but it is work!  Not coming out without a fight.  May have chills also and you are generally lean.
• Back and forth between constipation and diarrhea.  May have strong thirst for freezing cold drinks.

Diarrhea

• Comes with rumbling and gurgling in the tummy followed by an explosion.  Could be discolored and mucus filled.
• Comes with anticipation of a stressful event or eating way too much sugar.
• Diarrhea and vomiting together.  You may be anxious, restless and chilly.  There may be blood in stool.  This could be food poisoning if the first time happening.
• Comes with extreme exhaustion and weakness.
• Comes with nausea.
• Painful diarrhea that’s accompanied by extreme sweating and spasms of the intestines.
• May just be watery but not fully diarrhea.  Typically smells foul.  You may be anxious and crave cold drinks.
• May happen after eating greasy foods or certain fruits.  You feel better in open air than in a warm room.
• Burning, explosive diarrhea that smells like rotten eggs.  You have extreme thirst for cold drinks.

There you have it.  The TMI list of all TMI lists.  But I want to tell you how necessary something like this is.  Many times we discount the thing we’re going through as it’s all the same thing and it is not.  So when your doctor, or someone psychotically detail oriented like myself, asks you questions  you may not understand why.  Or when you slap a general remedy on it but it doesn’t seem to help.  Each one of these has a different cause and a different natural remedy.  It is imperative to pay attention to your digestive system because just like your period, it is an infamous Town Crier ready to tattle on you at the drop of a hat.

We’re moving on.  Yes.  There is more TMI to be exposed.  We’re a hot bed for conditions.  Woop woop!

Previous Series Post Next Post in Series

There comes a time when an issue is so worth discussing that we have to look past the embarrassment factor that it may cause.  When I first started eating clean, I never thought about anything but the outcome.  All I cared about was what I was going to look like when I reached goal and the methodology behind what I was doing to get there (remember, I started this to do what I do now for a living, not to just look good).  I had no idea that I could crave foods more than a pregnant woman in her 9 month or after a period of dieting hate chicken with a passion reserved for mean people and animal abusers.  But what was the real shocker was the gastric disturbance caused by all of the veggies and artificial sweeteners in my diet.  Even after I cleared out all the sweeteners, I could still level a 4 story building with one shot if I wasn’t careful.  You know it’s clinical, when you are burning so many candles that you change the temperature in the room that you are sitting in.  That’s serious business right there.

This is going to be a TMI series at some points and a great help at others.  What I have found in the clean eating community is an abnormal amount of gastric issues when they should be cleared up with our initial diet change.  IBS, heartburn, constipation, Crohn’s disease, gastritis and so on are rampant amongst the ranks and it seems as if it shouldn’t be.  So I want us to take a look at what we are doing right, what we’re doing wrong and what we don’t even know that we are doing that is furthering these conditions.  Whenever you read a book on these conditions, the first thing that they tell you is to clean up the diet and we have already.  So what gives?

I will be talking about these conditions and how they affect us both physically and emotionally because both play a role in our overall health.  Since we tend to be type A folks, we have to look at what that does to our stress levels and our colons alike.  Most of us at some point in our dieting careers are like wound up balls of yarn waiting to unwind at any moment.  That does a number on us long term and since adrenal fatigue is a concern nowadays, we need to be prudent in the way we relax as much as the way we diet.

I won’t be starting this series until Monday.  There will be no blog on Thursday and the Friday audio post will not be posted until Saturday afternoon.  I owe you sweet and savory so I’ll be getting that on the blog this weekend.  If you have anything you want to see covered in this next series, hit me up at Jodi@trans4mationstation.com.  Cool?  Woop woop!

Previous Series Post Next Post in Series

I began this series by pointing out the four phases of dieting which are success, rebound, dieting after rebound and maintenance.  Each phase has a unique characteristic of struggle associated with it that is present with almost all dieters when they are in that particular phase.  As we mature as dieters through experience (both positive and negative), we slowly but surely learn to fail forward.  These phases and their quirks no longer bring us down and we begin to make it through the obstacles faster.  Some of us do it by learning and some of us do it by adapting.  The latter is not healthy and if I remember, I will talk about this at the end of the series.  If not, it’ll come up again I’m sure and I’ll make you aware of it then.  Today, however, is dedicated to the characteristics of the rebound phase and how detrimental it can be.   Our girl did go on vaca and gain a few pounds, but it didn’t end there.  She came home and really sealed the deal.

Ok…so this is a hobby horse but you get the point.

Unpacking

It’s been 3 days since she’s landed back home and to say things have gotten worse is an understatement.  At first it was all about ‘just feeling better’:  you know…stop the bloat, eat healthy and feel ‘clean’ again.  But no matter how much she wanted that, she couldn’t stop eating junk.  Lots. And lots. Of junk.  Suddenly she hates chicken and the way it feels on her teeth when she chews.  And she loathes the smell of tuna fish from a can although she’ll eat it from a packet.  And don’t even mention cottage cheese! OY!  Amid all this repulsion of good food, is this strong desire to eat ANY kind of bad food.  Chips in any form, chocolate, bread, ice cream and peanut butter is all she had on hand when she first came home and that wasn’t enough to stop the onslaught.  She went out to dinner with friends and killed a bottle of wine by herself AFTER she ate the bread basket, all the oil that came with it and the dessert she ordered.  And this was all in the first three days!!  As she unpacked her clothes, she sat in shock of how much she’s packed in her mouth in 72 hours and the pounds keep adding up.

Myth: We have control over our eating and when we don’t it’s a lack of will power.  This is true if you’re talking about turning down dessert not when your dessert starts on one end of the kitchen cabinets and ends on the other.

Fact: If she does not intervene, this will not “just end”.  This will go on for a good amount of time.  For some it’s weeks, for others it’s months.

Failing Forward: Our girl will soon learn that when the sugar monster shows up, he must be tamed by the FAT guy.  Good fat silences the sugar demon.  It’s not perfect, but it’s better than this.

Stressing

When the initial smoke cleared from her free-for-all, our girl mistakenly thought it was ‘safe to go back in the water’ and 2 days after the first eating spree ended, the second one began.  This one was less fervent and far more insidious because instead of her eating a ton of junk endlessly, now she ate really well all day but then lost it at night.  Or she would have a crappy breakfast, great lunch, no dinner and a box of junior mints to top off the day.  She didn’t know how to eat and she didn’t know how to stop the onslaught.  She feels bigger than she ever did before she even started dieting and now she’s out of control.  What the????????

Myth: Now that I eat healthy, I’ll never go back to eating crap again.

Fact: We are driven by emotion, not by health.  If you think you eat the way that you do because of health, you have another thing coming in way of revelation.

Failing forward: Stick to eating small meals often even if they are not super clean.  When this goes down, give up the rigidity of rules or you’ll hold yourself down longer than need be.

Lamenting

Now what?  Why go through all that dieting only to end up here?  Our girl feels trapped.  Who can she tell?  Who would understand?  Better yet, who would care?  She has never felt so lonely before in her life.  This has got to stop.  This weekend is it, she decides.  I’m getting back on plan and I’m going to get this all off.

Myth: You can just get back on plan.  Good luck with that.  You’ll probably take a hostage by meal 2 and demand a ransom of a gallon of ice cream and some fudge sauce or you’re fleeing with your hostages.

Fact: Your issues at this point are out of your “will’s” control.  They are hormonal and emotional, there is no will in that.

Failing forward: If this ever happens to you, lose all structure.  Stop trying to conform to something and just accept that you are a hot mess and no amount of planning is going to fix that.  As soon as you let go, you’ll be more in control.

There’s more to this craziness.  Pull up a chair and stay tuned.  We need to talk about when she starts dieting again.

Previous Series Post Next Post in Series

Is it me or does my littlest one look like he just saw something gross right before the shot was snapped?  These CIA agents have zero loyalty to their mother.

My kids are awesome.  Yes, I am biased in saying that, but truly, they really are awesome kids.  However, they tend to throw their mother under the bus on more than one occasion.  They say they don’t mean to, but the two older ones are worse than the town crier.  The main thing they tattle on me to their father about is the high flying antics stuff that happens when I drive them to school.  Now I am one of the most aggressive and psychotic cautious drivers there are out there so I’m not sure why they find it necessary to tell their dad that we were driving on two wheels to school but they do at times and it is very inconvenient.  Clearly they got to school by the hair of their chinny chin chins because they weren’t in my car when I got back home nor under the tires and the school didn’t call to say they were psychologically damaged absent so obviously they were fine.  So there are days I just want to hush the two town criers in my back seat by forcing them to listen to their father go on and on about it bopping them upside their heads—but I can’t.  But there is a town crier that we are silencing that we should not be and it is usually warning us of impending peril.  This would be our cycle.

Cycles are very funny because we loathe having them but we hate missing one even more.  They possess an uncanny ability to show up the week you go on vacation no matter when you book it and they make every day activities uncomfortable and cumbersome.  They’re about as welcome as a tummy virus is after a Sunday dinner with the family.   But missing one, for some of us, is more traumatic than being robbed at gun point so let’s just be honest that it’s not like we’re rejoicing because we skipped a month.  And even if missing one doesn’t send you into cardiac arrest, it still makes you think in the back of your head, “What’s wrong here?”

If you hop on the web and start googling, you will find a ton of information regarding missed periods, or as the medical community refers to them:  irregular periods.  Some of it is inaccurate, not all because there is some good info out there on the more prominent websites, but almost all of it is inapplicable to the lean community.  We are a special breed that is incredibly underrepresented in medical studies and on the medical websites.  We are lumped in with the general public and when it comes to issues regarding our hormones or how our bodies react to dieting, we aren’t even close.  But contrary to popular belief of us clean eaters, we do not lose our periods because we are low body fat.  Very few of us ever get that low of body fat to say we lost our cycle for that reason.  I know I have mentioned this before, but we have a warped sense of what our true body fat is.  I have heard girls say they are 8/9% body fat at their leanest and that is a far from the truth.  They are most likely 11/12ish but highly unlikely they as low as 8 or 9%.  The thing that most of seem to miss is that the accuracy of the measurement tends to decrease as you move out to either extreme.  Super lean BF levels and super high BF levels are normally not accurate because they are out of the range of accuracy for that measuring tool.  This is another post for another time but just know that unless you have some ribs showing and your femur perfectly outlined, you are not 8% BF.

We lose our periods due to high levels of the stress hormone cortisol.  It is the grand interrupter.  Cutting your cals and beating your body into submission is a great way to raise your cortisol levels which in turn messes with your sex hormones.  (Of course, this beats the old fashioned way of fight or flight which just shows that we have become bored with more traditional ways of jacking ourselves up and moved on to more sophisticated methods.)  Once that balance is off kilter, so is your period and it can take an act of Nature to get it regular again.  But why the fuss and who really cares?  If I’m missing my period, why don’t I just take the pill and make it come back, right?  That’s up to you but your period is the best loud mouth you will ever have in your body.  It’s forever telling you how you are doing medically.  Silencing may not be the most prudent thing to do.

Hang on tight while we jump into what your period really tells you on a monthly basis and why the pill may not be the answer you expected it to be.  Can’t wait, ladies!  Woop woop!

I don’t know about you (Actually that’s a lie, I do know about you but I’m going to act like I don’t know about you so you can stop feeling like I’m staring at you—and just you.:) but I notice that for most of us struggles with cheats, treats and chocolate (yes, it gets its own category) come in cycles.  We’re not always struggling and we’re not always winning.  We have moments or seasons, if you will, of chaos and mayhem that take us down more than normal and begin to chip away at our dieting confidence until we feel like we “suck”, “we’ll never get it done”, “why bother” and so on.  The best thing we could ever do at this time is go to maintenance eating but that’s actually the last thing we do and so begins the battle.

Heather the slave driver putting them through and endless up/down cycle of cardio.

How Does This Happen In The First Place?

Sadist Masochism.  No really, we love to torture ourselves.  I think some of us are so good at this that we have it down to such a degree that we can determine the level of torture we want to inflict on ourselves based on whatever drama is going on in our lives at the time.  Lots of drama means we drag out big whips and chains and cat-o-nine tails in the form of huge weight loss and per4mance goals and not so much drama means we want to just take off a few pounds here and there.  Ever done this?…

Aunt Betty Ann* has a big work project coming to completion at her workplace.  She’s been on the project for a while and it is finally coming to a close within the next 6 weeks or so. It’s a huge project and the tension at the job is thick. Three months from now is a big race that ABA wants to run in and she’s been waiting all year for it to come around.  Four months from now ABA’s sister is getting married and she’s going to be in the wedding.  Suddenly ABA feels like she needs to lose at least 10 pounds for the wedding.  She knows the race will help with a few extra pounds—she hopes—but the stress of all that’s going on begins to weigh on her.  So what does ABA do?  She starts a 16 week diet to get ready for her sister’s wedding (because that’s exactly what we would all do) but she can’t stick to it for the life of her.  She’s nibbling, dabbling and wavering more than she’s dieting and working out.  Of course she thinks it’s because the plan’s not strict enough and she has too much choice so she changes what she’s eating from chicken, broccoli and an occasional sweet potato to wallpaper paste, shoe leather and dust (you know those earlier choices were taking her down).  Now that her diet is more realistic, she should stick to it, right?  NOPE.  Now she thinks it’s her workout schedule and she’s not working hard enough to stay focused because she keeps finding herself eating a lit bit of this and a little bit of that.  Finally, ABA realizes that she’s not going to make goal so she scraps the diet and throws caution to the wind.  Does this sound familiar?

When I first started to come across this scenario years ago, I used to believe that it was the busy schedule that made ABA unsuccessful at staying on track.  I would tell her she was nuts for trying to diet during all of that commotion and to either wait until everything calmed down or zip some things out now.  But then I began to realize that she wasn’t interested in dieting when it all calmed down.  At that point, she was happy with herself (kind of) and was really in a maintenance way of thinking and what was really going on was her trying to manage her chaos through the scale.  This is really destructive in nature but is such a pattern with type A women that it needs a name.  I’m working on it.

What we do is find something we can mother all over while everything else in our lives is “going to he** in a hand basket” because as far as we’re concerned, our weight is controllable.  Now is it really?  NO.  But we think it is at the time and we’re going to whip it around like an amusement ride at the Brockton Fair.  I’m not going to build this now although I have a lot to say about this topic because it is SUPER relevant to us but it’s too big to tackle in this post.  But I am going to say that this is a function of emotion more than it is a physical issue that you can just control.  “Not eating the treat” is not going to work so knock it off and trying to tighten up the diet to make you stop is even more pointless.   Stop beating yourself up because you can’t stop eating the cookies on the counter and start inner dialoguing with yourself about how you can focus your attention elsewhere while you are dieting.

This is THE most common of the three scenarios presented and unlike the other two, there’s very little resistance here.  This is the one that can make you gain weight because you are not denying anything.  You are not focused–you are just wrecking shop.  Every day you “try” to get it done and every day you say you’ll do better tomorrow.  Twenty pounds later, you realize you’ve gone through 45 “tomorrows”.  There are other reasons for this, too, besides the one above:

• You denied yourself for so long (scenario #2) that you have begun to unravel and can no longer justify locking it down anymore.

• Your head has not caught up with your heart.  This happens when you keep shooting for a goal that you really do not want anymore but have not taken the time, yet, to reconcile that with your head so you keep gunning for it.

• You want something for all the wrong reasons and your heart is smarter than your brain.

• You’ve lost passion for the goal.  You want what you originally fell in love with but somehow that has been stained by reality in some way and you can’t admit that.

These are permutations of the same thing, pick which one is yours.  I suffered from 3 of the 5 and it took me a long time to get my head back in the game.  Some of you have sent me some of the best emails with battle scars as to what this looked like for you and how you came out on top afterward.  I want you to know that I have heard all that you have said and am using some of it tomorrow as I talk about how to move beyond all 3 eat-cheat cycles.

Email me or leave a comment below if you have a story you want to share or have any questions on what I’ve talked about so far.  I would love to hear from you: Jodi@trans4mationstation.com or add it below.

Suggestions come tomorrow! Woop woop!!:o)

*Depending on how long you’ve known me and I’ve been telling you stories, Aunt Betty Ann is a regular on the scene.  She’s completely fictional alongside her husband Uncle Peanut, cousin TayTay and Frank.  Try and keep up with them.

Seanna is wrapping up her R & R this week so I thought re-posting her thoughts on balance from MP4 might be especially relevant this week.  Enjoy!–Jodi

I know someone who has struggled his whole life with psoriasis. This someone went to the dermatologist (again) for help treating a mean outbreak of the itchy, red spots. I was sharing with Jodi and she mentioned that this person is more than likely, due to the inflammatory nature of psoriasis and his typical, albeit fancy, western diet, chronically heavy in omega 6 and deficient in omega 3, ie. his omega 3-6 ratio is way out of balance, and that daily doses of omega-3 will in time help keep the psoriasis under control. (I’m giving my dog omega-3 every other day for a similar reason.)

This got me thinking about equilibrium in all areas of life. When things are out of whack, man do we know it. I’m convinced that our minds and bodies want to exist in a peaceful stability. For me, the keys to staying in balance are enough physical activity, clean eating, lots of sleep and a peaceful day-to-day outlook.

Physical

Take training for example. The MP4 call last week was about recovery. Heather does this and Amy likes that, and then there’s me. I was the “control” group because I always feel pretty good. Recovery for me isn’t so much of a thought out thing, but obviously I do recover because for the most part I always feel pretty great. I feel like this is due to me not pushing myself as hard as they do in the training ring because I know myself. I exert myself as much as I need to for my purposes (health and physique maintenance), and that’s all. Mostly because I don’t want to do more, I don’t need to do more, but also, who has time? In other words, I know my personal limits and myself. I’m meeting my needs and so feel good physically most of the time. When I up the ante and take on more (for a specific purpose and stated time frame), I feel it, and so have to plan around this so that the rest of my life isn’t sacrificed to the increased physical demands from a new goal.

Nutrition

A very big piece to being able to stay well, recovered, and in balance is a great diet. We’ve all talked about this to death but it bears repeating, you won’t feel or look your best, let alone be able to really get it done for your sport if you eat like crap, not enough, too much, etc. You’ve also got to know what you need. What sits well in your tummy, what doesn’t? What weighs you down or makes you feel alive? Knowing yourself and what you thrive on is important with eating too. I’ve walked this clean eating walk for a long time (at MP4 we all have) and could probably plan meals in my sleep. I know what I need and what I can get away with adding in or leaving out. But clean eating, with a few treats sprinkled in as life offers, is key to my steady state of being recovered and feeling great.

This is a classic!

Sleep

Oh man, I love to sleep! I love when I can go to bed early, like by an hour, even if I’m not tired, because I’ll fall right to sleep. Can I just add that after sleeping a solid 9 hrs or so, your skin glows and your eyes sparkle. Well, mine do, but then I thrive on lots of sleep. You may not need as much and glow and sparkle with 7 hrs. Like eating, sleep is one of the areas that I’ll have to plan to tweak due to increased activity demands. I can’t increase my activity output and not also compensate with a bit more sleep. When that’s impossible, the sleep I do get must be quality. I’m not a frequent nap taker, but occasionally my body will force one out of me. That’s my rather obvious clue that I’m getting out of balance.

If you’re like me you may have thought she was blowing her nose in her hand, but she’s not.  She’s crying.  Hope that helps you out in your travels today.

Emotional

I won’t get into this too much, except to say that emotional balance is precious to me. All of us that have lived through a season of emotional upheaval know what I’m talking about. I’m convinced that emotional and physical health go hand in hand, one greatly enhancing the other. For me and mine, a peaceful existence is a priority.

So the take home message from today’s post is this … stay in balance – know yourself and give your body and mind what it needs – activity, nourishment, rest, peace.

What are some of the ways you keep your life in balance? What activities specifically address this for you? Thanks ya’ll. Have a great day!

If you haven’t noticed by my past few posts, right now is a busy time for me.  With the amount I am working, the stress levels that come with work deadlines, and the lack of sleep; it is no wonder I am worn out.  Couple that with the fact that I really don’t like to miss workouts and will get up to get my butt to the gym, even if I haven’t slept enough; and you have a recipe for disaster.

 Of all people out there, I know how important sleep is.  When all is right with the world, I get to bed around 10pm and get up at 5am.  When all is really right with the world, I’ll go to bed at 9pm.  But when stress kicks in and I don’t get home from work until 8 pm or later, I end up staying up until 11pm or; dare I say it, midnight.  I can keep this going (the stress and staying up that late 1-2 times/week) for about 2 weeks and then it catches up with me like a bad hangover.  Add on a lack of weekends because I am working, and it gets really ugly. 

 Last week was my breaking point.  I ended up taking 2 rest days instead of 1 (oh the horror) and pushed the snooze button more times than should be legal.  Despite repeated conversations with friends and family that I needed to take time to rest, I kept pressing forward.  Thankfully, I completed three large projects last week which allowed my 80-hour weeks to slow down to a 55-hour week.  My mind and body must have sensed the ability to rest and took full advantage. 

 But prior to that rest, I have to set the tone with my Friday and Saturday workouts.  On Friday I had every intention of getting up (like I normally do) and getting to the gym.  That didn’t happen.  Instead, I went to the gym after work all set to get in a lift AND cardio.  Well, half-way through my lift I could barely move.  I started trying to try and figure out ways to cut the lift short.  The very thought of cardio was a distant memory.  I managed to finish my lift and made it home to bed.  Unfortunately, I was still high-strung from the weeks of stress.  My brain couldn’t stop trying to think of something to stress over and I didn’t get to bed until 11:30. 

 Cut to Saturday morning.  Granted I slept for 7 hours, but that clearly wasn’t enough.  I woke up and dragged myself to Jodi’s Beyond Bootcamp class.  Have you ever gone to do a burpee or a squat jump and no matter how hard you try, you cannot get your body to move quickly?  It feels like you are moving through quicksand.  Well, that is how I felt.  I got through the workout, went out for breakfast and was home on the couch by 11:30am. 

 I did not move from the couch except to go to the grocery store and get food.  Other than that, I had a date with my DVR, curtains drawn, no lights on, snuggled under a blanket, in and out of consciousness, for the remainder of my day.  I was fast asleep at 9 and slept until 9 the next morning.  Now that was the recovery and sleep I needed.  However, I never should have let it get that far. 

 The way the past three weeks should have gone down is a different story.  I should have adhered to a strict bedtime.  I should have allowed myself extra rest days if necessary (although I must say the gym tends to set the tone for my day) or at least eased up on the workouts.  I should have built in extra time to decompress.  But we live and learn.  And since there are still 7 more weeks until the end of this tax season, I will have plenty of time to implement this strategy. 

 The point, however, is that there comes a time when you are so worn down that your workouts are pointless.  Your returns diminish to the point o being nonexistent.  That is where I was last week and knowing that, I can’t even worry about taking more than one rest day.  I had nothing to give and pushing myself any harder would do nothing but hurt me.  Those are the times we need to realize it is time to say uncle.

Not like the Exercise Slump post, this is different. I want to know, how do you weather the storm? How do you deal with organized chaos or do you not deal at all?

So where am I going with this? With age comes wisdom is the saying but I am not always sure of that. Sometimes I wouldn’t say it’s wisdom as much as it is recognizing patterns. Say we’re on a roll of working out and eating well and we’re in a really nice groove. Life begins to get hectic and we start to fall apart. At what point does your emergency broadcasting system kick in and tell you to kick it into plan B? And if it doesn’t kick in, why not?

When I am stressed or distracted, the first thing that goes with me is food. I would rather not eat when harried than eat. Back in the day, I would allow that to happen. I would feed into it (for the lack of a better word;) and go for long periods of time before I would eat. The bad thing about that is my cortisol levels are shooting through the roof, my blood sugar is as crazy as NYC at rush hour and my thinking becomes impaired because I lack the glucose to have a coherent thought. What ensues after this is a downward spiral of what I refer to as organized chaos. I call it that because it always unfolds the same way, it has a predictable outcome but yet it wreaks havoc on my life for as long as I allow it to. Not anymore, though. Now I see the storm brewing on the horizon and I have a contingency plan in place to keep things from getting out of control.

First, I have a series of yummy meals in my freezer that are ready to go at any time. So the minute I start thinking that I don’t want to eat because “there’s nothing to eat” (my famous line when I am stressed and avoiding food), I know that that is bull. Next, I save parts of my workouts for my time with my clients. This forces me to workout with them and it keeps me in the exercise loop. Doing this primes me for my own personal workouts later in the day. Lastly, I openly recognize that this is going down. I don’t avoid it or start saying cute sounding platitudes, I literally acknowledge it, talk to it, talk about it, whatever—but I honestly take the time to point out to myself that it could get ugly.

So my question to you is, what do you do to weather the storm? Or, how do you recognize the storm is on the horizon? What makes your emergency backup system go into effect and what do you do when it does? I am hoping we can help those who do not have one in place right now or do not realize that they can have one in place thereby keeping the organized chaos to a minimum.

Hit me up and let me know what you do…:o)

Oh it’s about that time.

You know…when we stop being so serious about hormones, looks and such and discuss what’s really on our minds:  bad driving!

Oh you know it bothers you!  If it doesn’t, then you are who I am about to talk about!hehe

In this day and age, we need to be careful of stress.  Free radical damage is serious and having high levels of cortisol can cause your hormones to go out of whack (thereby causing unnecessary weight gain) and your body to be off kilter.  So how can we keep this happening?  GET RID OF THESE BAD DRIVERS!

OH HEAR ME WHEN I SPEAK, PLEASE!

If you think a stop sign secretly reads PARK–I am talking to you!  Please don’t camp out at these things!  They did not want you to stay for long so they made the sign short:  STOP.  Not…STOP AND READ THIS SIGN FOR 10 MIN WHILE CONTEMPLATING THE FONT USED ON THE SIGN AND THE SPECIAL COLOR RED IT IS PAINTED ON.  You got me?  OY!

If your car goes from 0 to 60 in 5 min.–remove it from the road!  You are a hazard to society.  If I can run beside your car the whole time while you are trying to gain speed, you need some new pistons.  Honestly!

If you drive so slow that my 3 year old has to call you out: “Mama, why you behind dis’ slow poke?  MOVE! Mama, can you go pass him? Pass him, mama!  MOVE IT!”  It’s a shame folks but he’s learning early!

If you slow down to gawk at an accident I hope you pop a tire on any free flying glass!  It’s you clowns who cause 5:00 o’clock traffic!  In fact, you also slow down for tire changers AND disabled vehicles.  You deserve to run out of a gas on a long stretch of road…in the dark…in a foreign country…while it’s snowing…up hill…both ways…lol.

lastly…

If you cannot solve a rubiks cube with one hand while building a lego castle with the other, don’t talk on the phone while driving.  Clearly this task is beyond you.  I have had the luxury of seeing some outrageous things lately like talking on the phone while eating and driving a stick.  Actually, that was me, but I got it done!  Unlike these other yoyos who try it and end up 3 lanes over straddling 2 lanes at the same time.  This also applies to putting on make up while driving too!  Honestly, lip liner is meant to line your lips–not trace your major facial features!  Try a mirror in your bathroom please…

Keeping your stress levels down is key to a beautiful face and body.  I recommend that you pull over, stop the car and help a fellow brother or sister out by turning the car off.  Walk to the nearest bus stop and get on.  Suddenly, they will notice fine lines and wrinkles disappearing and their youthful glow will be back.  It’s time for you to give back to others and get off of the road.  This has been a public service announcement from your local annoyed trainer/nutritionist.  Peace!