Walking with Lalane

I would be surprised if someone reading this hadn’t heard of Jack Lalane. He’s the guy who was always trying to sell us juicers late at night, right after Cindy Crawford tries to improve my skin and George Foreman insists I start grilling more. I am sure you know him. He’s famous for much more than juicers though. He is the original fitness guru convert. He was a junk food addict and at age 15 heard Paul Bragg (who makes the best salad dressing in the universe by the way) speak and it changed his life. It was all health after that. Jack invented some of the first weight machines and opened a gym in our very own Oaktown. He was a chiropractor, body builder and health extraordinaire. He recently died at the age of 96 (just last week) and in memory of his amazing contributions to the world of health I am dedicating this weeks wellness update to him.

When thinking of what aspect of Jack to write about, a girlfriend mentioned the health of Jack’s wife, Elaine. “Did you know she was a smoker, overweight and eating donuts for breakfast every day when jack met her?”

Jack was so into Elaine that he fell for her, tobacco and all and they started dating. Elaine began to change her habits because of spending so much time with Jack. They would exercise together regularly. She started eating better and eventually quit smoking. I am not saying that in order to be healthy you need to marry a health nut but it makes sense that spending time with a healthy person could eventually rub off on you.

Think about it in the opposite direction. If you are going out to dinner with a group of friends and the majority of your friends want to eat pizza, it’s going to pretty hard to say, “No! I want something healthier.” It’s much easier to say, “Oh, I will just order a salad and have one slice.” You compromise to fit the majority. If you are with a group of health nuts all vying for a nutritious meal, it’s going to be equally as difficult to insist on pizza.

I am obviously not telling everyone to dump his or her Doritos loving amigos. Heck, even I love Doritos every now and then. But if you are trying to exercise more, eat healthier or decrease stress, maybe spending more time with your like-minded buddies is a good start.

This week would be a great time to call that friend who loves power walking and make a date for some chat/walk time. Or have the Smiths over for dinner this weekend (Did you know Laura Smith doesn’t eat sugar?) Maybe you should spend your lunch hour with Donn from down the hall. (Doesn’t he meditate at lunch?)

Ok, here’s the caveat: Sometimes I have negative feelings towards overly healthy people. Yes, it’s true. The person who only eats fruit and nuts that have fallen from the tree and can’t go out to dinner unless the produce is from an organic farm next door and the fitness freak who can’t spend a day just relaxing in front of the TV. Sometimes these people make me crazy. It’s just as detrimental to be fanatical about health as it is to be unfanatical. We all need to be balanced. So if you are the person who can’t go out to lunch with friends because it means missing spinning class, or you are unable to enjoy a bite of your daughters birthday cake because of the calorie content, I recommend hanging out with some oppositely minded people this week. Let go for a day. Have some cake, dance a little, and sleep in. Health is about balance. I think Jack Lalane was great but he may have been lacking some balance, which is why I think Elaine was just as good for him as he was for her.

Be Good to your Body, it’s where you Live

Feel the Pain

Lately I have been in an unbearable amount of pain. A few months ago I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. RA is one of those pesky autoimmune diseases where the immune system attacks itself. Unfortunately it’s attacking my right wrist in a pretty bad ass way. What’s amazing is just how unpredictable it seems to be and also how much it hurts. Being in pain is like being in a constant bad mood. I am just a little bit cranky all of the time. It’s also affecting other parts of my body. I protect my wrist from possible pain by tensing my shoulders and tightening my jaw. In doing that I am most likely causing the pain in my wrist to worsen because I can’t relax.

Most of you know that I am a mindfulness maniac and I believe we should all be paying more attention to our bodies, our minds and our meals, but our pain? I mean come on, why would I want to purposely draw attention to this part of my body that hurts so bad I want to cry sometimes. I don’t want to pay more attention to it. I want to escape it. I want drugs. Give me something to take the pain away!

Unfortunately my doctor doesn’t make 8pm drug runs on a Monday night so I was stuck with mindfulness. I sat down on my sofa and looked at my hand. I started to describe to myself what I saw without any judgment. I described the way the skin looked on my wrist. I counted the freckles and hiked the terrain of my veins with my eyes. Next I began to describe the feelings in my wrist and hand. Words like sharp and tightness and warm and cold and pulsing began to surface. I stopped labeling these sensations as the thing that is pain and rather as the sensations coming and going. Because it’s true that the pain does come and go and if I focus on the pain, this thing that I hate, my zoom lens is incapable of seeing anything but it. If I keep telling myself how painful it is, I risk getting caught up in un-mindfulness and I am making pain the enemy. If I instead describe the feelings and the present moment, it becomes something else. It's not something bad or good, it just is.

Does this make sense? Mindfulness is not about just paying attention to something. It’s about paying attention without judgment. Just notice it. Be curious about it. Describe it.

This week I would love for everyone to join me in taking a look at your pain and actually noticing what it feels like. No pejorative terms allowed. Instead use words like heavy, tight, tingling, sharp, tense, stiff and dull. You can use pain that’s emotional or physical. Mindfulness can work for both; in fact, it’s great for both. And it’s actually been proven to help reduce overall “pain” and change our brains for the better, so there.

So get focused, get present, and get rid of pain for good.

Be Good to your Body, it's where you Live

Any suggestions on how to cure the 'common' but oh-so-annoying cold? I'm tired of not being able to breathe or smell or taste anything! Thanks!

My belief with the common cold is that it is telling us something. When I have a cold I think of it as a signal from my body telling me I need to re-evaluate some of my choices. Have I been going to bed too late? Not drinking enough water? Letting stress get the best of me? A cold is a chance to do some healthy things for yourself. Stay in bed and watch a movie, drink lots of fluids and take care of yourself. A lot of the time a cold will stick around because we don't give it a chance to get better.

Ask me anything

Let them eat cake

How many of you have a "bad" foods list? Even if you don't have a full blown list I bet you have a couple of thoughts on the matter. I'm not talking about bad like, "I don't like it, it's bad", I mean "bad" as in, I have pejoratively decided to label this food as detrimental to my health and waistline. Can you relate and if so, what's on your list?

Mine is candy, baked goods, cookies, cake, cream, bread and pasta. Now to clarify, I don't think there's anything wrong with any of these foods. I think cake is awesome, coffee means nothing without cream and there isn't anything better than cappelini with tomato sauce. But sometimes when I eat some or many of these foods I will subconsciously feel as if I have done something wrong, as if I have failed. This is a common occurrence for a person who has lived for many years in the mindset of a dieter.

What happens to the average dieter when they have eaten something "bad"?

Well many things could happen but here are some common ones I've seen. The dieter may feel guilty and overcompensate by exercising excessively in order to negate the trigger food. She might feel sick and disgusted with herself which could lead her to eating more of said food because, "the diets already ruined anyway, right?" He might go into a starvation mode and decide adamantly that he will never eat said food again, thus creating anxiety about the possibility of future engagements in which this food is present. Regardless of which scenario occurs, the end result is too much time obsessing about a food that isn't actually bad in the first place.

What if instead of writing foods off as bad or good, we start to pay attention to what our body wants to eat. What if there were no more labels? What if we could eat whatever we want, without any of the negative feelings and none of the anxiety? What would happen? Well for about the first week we would probably go crazy, bingeing on sugar and pasta and baked goods. But then, once we realized that sugar isn't going anywhere, that we can have it whenever we want, that eating it does not make us bad or weak or wrong, we would begin to notice that our body craves other foods as well. And then eventually we would settle into a lifestyle of eating when we're hungry and eating what our body needs.

I know that the idea of letting go of negative food ideals is a little scary for some people. You may be thinking, "But Sarah, what if I eat cake every day and then I gain 10 lbs?" If you truly let go of your "bad" food label you wont eat cake every day because your body will crave other things. Do you really think that your body would want to eat nothing but sugar all day long? If you truly listen to what your body needs and wants, you will crave a rainbow of foods. Sometimes it will include cake, and that is definitely not a bad thing.

Be Good to your Body, it's where you Live

Hope for a miracle

There is a sea in Margarita; an island off the coast of Venezuela where it is said that “taking a bath” there can heal even the most horrific of disease. There is a man in Brazil named John of God, who has cured brain aneurisms with only the touch of his hands on your heart. As a therapist I meet people regularly who have experienced the most horrible traumas and tragedies and yet still have unbelieving faith that where they are now would be impossible without the help of something bigger. There are stories in every culture, in every language, of miracles that happen, at times when it just doesn’t seem possible that they could. Believing in those miracles keeps us healthy and it paves the way for even more miracles to occur.

Many people believe that this thing, this helper greater than us has to do with religion or a God. I think it’s absolutely wonderful if you have found a God to believe in and that helps you have hope, but if you haven’t found a God or if you just don’t believe in a God, that’s fine too. I am not trying to get you to believe in God. In fact I am not even fully sure what sort of God I believe in, but I do believe, in the healing power of hope.

“Hope is the desire for something, combined with a belief or positive expectation that it is possible to have what you want.” There is an element of trust or faith in our notion of hope. In fact, many linguists believe that the word hope shares its roots with the word hop, as in leaping in expectation of a good outcome.

In Greek legends, when Pandora opened her box to let out all the Gods, hope remained in the box. That kind of says to me that hope is the one that will always be there to guide us even when the Gods have left the building.

You may be scoffing me right now, “Sarah, I have desire and I have belief that greatness can happen, but it still doesn’t happen.” And to that I have a religious joke:

There once was a man named Joe. Every day Joe would pray to his God to give him a million dollars. Joe believed so deeply that God could grant him this wish. Religiously, every night Joe would kneel in front of his bed and pray, “Please God, please, give me a million dollars. Every day Joe would visualize how he would use the money to help his family and save his home and every night he would pray. Eventually Joe passed away and he never made a million dollars. As he stood at the gates of heaven he pleaded with God, “why did you never give me a million dollars?” And God said to him, “Why did you never buy a lottery ticket?”

“Hope is a desire for something and a belief or positive expectation that it can happen.”

And it is also about having the will to make it happen.

This year, in 2011, my hope for all of you is to believe in yourself. To have the desire, the hope, the positive expectation and the drive to make your life the way you want it to be. Be your own miracle.

Happy New Year!

Resolve yourself to small goals

Resolutions

New Years Resolutions are interesting. They are usually a combination of
all the stuff we wish we had done differently mixed with all the things we want for
ourselves, squeezed nicely into one massive more than likely difficult goal.
Interestingly they are usually health related. Some examples are:

To quit smoking
Lose weight
Run a marathon
Stop eating white flour
Meditate every night
Even money resolutions are health related.

Money is a huge cause of stress in peoples
lives. If you resolve to save money, you are resolving to lower your stress in preparation for your future or to make sure that you can afford to take care of your health in the future.

All of those resolutions are valid and great. I mean who doesn’t want a loved one to quit smoking, lose excess weight or become more empowered? It’s not the end goal I have a problem with, it’s the lack of pre-goal goals.

In order for a person to achieve a grand resolution such as Drink 8 glasses of water every day they would need to first try drinking just one. Even if you feel as though you already drink a glass of water every day, you are probably not making it conscious. Consciously commit to drinking one glass of water every day. The ultimate achievement and success of that goal is going to propel you to the next step, drinking two. I think you get the idea. When you finally get to your 8 glasses of water a day you will have gotten there by persistence and hard work. You will truly be an 8 glass of water a day person instead of a person who forces themselves to drink water all day long in order to keep up a goal they no longer remember why they made. Does that make sense?

Think about it in terms of your job or career. Did you wake up on the 31st of Decemberand shout, “I want to be a (insert name of current profession here)!” Then woke up again on the 1st to discover you had in fact been given said job.

Unless you have a truly amazing story, which I would love to hear all about, you are
going to say, “No Sarah, I have been working, studying, interviewing and constantly
striving to get to where I am. If you are anything like me you are still doing quite a bit of the striving and studying part. Now, when it comes to my job, this doesn’t depress me. This is fairly normal. It’s a part of the way society functions that we work hard for what we want and hopefully we will keep moving forward with our goals. Our little goals are what combine to help us achieve our bigger ones.
It makes sense with ones’ career so why are so many people distressed (including myself by the way) when their health goals don’t miraculously appear within the week, month or year. I can’t even count the number of times I have declared some decadent resolution on the 31st like, “I will never eat sugar again!” or “I will run for 5 miles every day!” Heck, even something as innocuous as, “I will work out three times a week” can be doomed.

I think the best way to achieve a goal is to break it down. Break it down to the smallest possible version of that goal and then slowly work your way up.
Let’s say you want to lose weight. (I only use weight loss in this example because it is a common goal for many people I meet.) Well how are you going to lose weight? Eating less and moving more? Ok, so I say start small. Let’s just take the eating thing to begin with. If you eat desert every night then maybe your first resolution could be to skip desert on one night of the week. Just the one, that’s certainly do-able. It’s small my friends. Or maybe you never eat breakfast. Well how about one day a week you eat a banana first thing. That seems reasonable, it could even be on Saturday.
Now onto the exercise portion of your goal: If you never exercise at all then you could
start with a 5-10 minute walk twice a week. I know that sounds simple and it should. The point is to achieve the goals. Try those little goals for a week or two. If it feels good and you are achieving your goal, then up the ante, but do it small. Pack your lunch 1 or 2 days a week with healthy food. Up your 5 min walks to every day. If you were already exercising maybe this means you want to add 1 day of week of weights. Or perhaps you want to make your walks longer. Each little goal will be different for each person.

My tiny goal this week is to make coffee at home one morning a week instead of buying it. The whole idea is to pick goals that are small enough to achieve and goals that are pushing you in a direction of a bigger goal. Eventually I would like to make coffee every day and put 15 dollars a week in my savings account.

Recently I met a woman who was talking about her considerable weight loss. I asked her how she did it. “Small goals”, she said. She walked for 5 minutes every day. After a week she upped it by 1 minute. She then walked for 6 minutes every day. She did the same with push-ups and crunches. She could do 4 push-ups on her knees when she began. She did 4 push-ups every other day and 8 crunches. When that became easier she did 5 push-ups and 10 crunches. She just kept moving forward in small baby steps. She is one of those women who I truly believe will keep her weight off because she lost it slowly. It’s the same with all your health goals. I propose that everyone take a good look at your health resolutions for 2011 and see how you can make them smaller in order to make the bigger ones stick.


Be Good To Your Body, It’s Where You Live.

Rituals for Health

As we near closer to Christmas (only 5 days away) I can’t stop thinking about all the rituals in my life. I am a fan of Christmas but whether you celebrate Hannukah, Kwanza or Vesak, you are participating in a ritual and according to scientists, it’s good for us.

Rituals are described as “Who we are” and routines are “What needs to be done”.

I for one have a heaping of routines. I routinely go to bed by 10pm. I drink coffee every morning and tea in the afternoon. I walk my dog. I clean my ears, I take my vitamins… The list could go on and on.

As far as rituals are concerned, I have a bunch of those too. Sunday morning big breakfasts and rainy day movie marathons. Saving the wishbone. Thanksgiving turkey. Decorating the Christmas tree. Addressing my Christmas cards while watching Miracle on 34th Street. Blowing the pollen off a dandelion while making a wish. Holding my breath in the Golden Gate tunnel. These are all rituals. Oh and one more I forgot, exercise. That’s right my friends, exercise is a ritual for me; a ritual I routinely do. It is something I do for my health and it pays me back with a double serving of good for ya. Ideally I would like everyone to start thinking about making exercise into a ritual. Something that isn’t just necessary but something that makes you who you are. You are healthy, not you are being healthy right now. But my advice on how to make exercise into a ritual or at least a routine is for another article.

Today I want to express my hope and wish for everyone during the holidays (whatever you may be celebrating) that you embrace the ritual closest to your heart and know that in doing nothing more than that, you are living a healthier life.

I know that I am going to sit around the Christmas tree and pass out presents and eat too much sugar and listen to cheesy Bing Crosby music and watch It's a wonderful life too many times and take lots of pictures and tell everyone I know how much I love them. I am going to giggle with anticipation at having my presents opened and loved. That is part of my Christmas ritual. May yours be just as perfect, for you.

Be Good to your body, it's where you live!