We’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: Eating fast isn’t good for you.
Speed-eating gets you a higher probability of digestive problems. When your teeth and saliva don’t have a chance to break down your food adequately, your stomach has to do more work. Better to take the time and chew.
And speed-eating also gets you extra calories. It takes about 20 minutes for your stomach to signal your brain that it’s full. During that time, you’re still packing in more food – food you don’t need.
If you have trouble pacing yourself, then use a few tricks. Put your fork down between bites. Count your chews (aim for 25-30 per bite). Eat your meals in courses, so you finish your soup or salad before starting in on the main course. Use smaller (9-10 inch diameter) plates. Put the food on the plates in the kitchen.
So many people think they can just give up healthy living when it comes to the weekend. Like the weekend is some kind of free pass that cancels out all the fat and sugar and alcohol they consume.
Well, it’s not.
The choices you make on the weekend set you up for success the following week.
Stick with the guidelines you’ve set for yourself. Keep working your plan. Eat well. Exercise (it’s a good time to do something different – maybe something family-friendly – like a bike ride, or a hike, or a dance-a-thon if it’s too wet to be outside). Drink water. Get enough sleep. Plan ahead for next week (it’s already off to a great start with the foundation you’re giving it now).
Keep taking care of yourself. You deserve your best effort, every day.
First, tension and anxiety activate your body’s flight or fight response, raising levels of cortisol, the hormone that encourages your body to store dangerous belly fat.
Second, you (that is, all of us) seek out high-fat and high-calorie foods for their soothing effects on the brain and the psyche. They call it “comfort food” for a reason, but that’s really only the short-term effect.
Add up both stress responses and mostly you (yeah, that’s “we”) add pounds.
Develop a strategy for the times you’re feeling stressed. Take a walk, do some jumping jacks, practice deep yoga breathing, listen to your favorite playlist (make one called “stressbuster”), call a friend, or watch a funny movie or YouTube video (laughter is a great stress reliever).
It’s the weekend! I don’t know the words to this song and I don’t care. I love this song. And I really love it when I watch the video of Owen Pallett singing during a rainstorm at a concert in Guelph, Ontario [below]. It shows what determination can do despite everything else that’s going on around you. And that’s how you should be this weekend: determined and staying the course despite the temptations and madness of other people.
~ Marilu Henner, WWMD class
What’s your plan for this weekend?
How will you succeed?
How will you stay focused?
What’s your new beginning? Each day is a fresh start. Each day brings a new opportunity.
Don’t wait for Monday, or the first of the month, or the new year. Your new beginning starts today. Celebrate it with a song (thanks to Coach Heather and Tracy Chapman) and a smile.
Then… and this is big… go change the world.
When you know your place, when you’re fulfilling your dreams and living your truth, when the message inside you is consistent with the way you live in the world, then you have something to share, to contribute. You have a mission. We’ve seen it happen to many of our members – regular people living regular lives, who come to Marilu.com to get their bodies in shape. And that requires changing the way they think. And that changes the way they live. And that changes the world.
It’s time for your new beginning. We’re cheering for you.
Join Marilu.com and meet our members. See how they’re changing their own lives, and the difference they’re making in the world. Our 30-day online class starts each Monday, with powerful, personal coaching and full menus and recipes to start changing your body and how you feel in it. Get started now!
Gotta move, gotta get out
Gotta leave this place, gotta find some place
Some other place, some brand new place
Some place where each face that I see
Won’t be staring back at me
Telling me what to be and how to be it
Some place where I can just be me
So this song, Gotta Move by Barbra Streisand, isn’t about pushing your chair back, moving your eyes away from the monitor, and exercising to increase your heart rate. Instead it reminds us that any change takes movement, action, and maybe even the idea of a direction.
Push your chair back, move your eyes away from the monitor, and start exercising anyway. Use the energy of this song to create a new way of looking at your world – the way an athlete looks at the world.
Yesterday we talked about making a plan for the future. Sometimes that future is scary, or at least has scary elements. Instead of being held back by your fear of the unknown (or by someone else’s fear on your behalf), how about stepping out, taking the risk, and gaining the knowledge? It won’t be an unknown anymore. You’ve learned something specific, but you’ve also learned that you have what it takes to risk. And that’s a very good thing.
~*~ ~*~ ~*~
Create the life you were meant to live! Get started on your Total Health Makeover® at Marilu.com. Each month, classes are offered in various aspects of healthy living. Coming up in September * What Would Marilu Do?Join now and get started on the life you were meant to live.
Can you be sure
Will this be some good thing
Lucky stars to reckon appear again and again
Can you believe all that has brought you here
You say come on baby let’s go ahead and live
~ from Some Good Thing by The Wailin’ Jennys, one of Coach Heather’s favorite bands.
Yesterday, we looked at where we’ve been, and how we got to where we are today. Today, we’re going to ponder where we’re going – starting with where we are right now.
If you love where you are, and where you’re headed, great! More power to you! Keep your eyes open for new opportunities that continue to help you grow and become the person you aim to be.
If you think you’d like to explore another direction, then, hey! Turn your head. Take that other path. There’s really nothing stopping you from making a change except YOU. Sure, you may not be able to make that turn on a dime – it may take a little time to make it work. But don’t keep going down the same road when the new path is available. Make a plan; then make a change.
But there are things that you know
Things that you know
From where you’ve had to go
Where you’ve had to go
Today, instead of looking forward, take a look back. What have you accomplished in your life so far? Where have you been? What have you done? What can you be proud of? What have you learned? What would you do over if you could?
If we’re honest with ourselves, most of us wouldn’t change our past, after looking at everything we’ve learned along the way. Sometimes we think we’re stuck in a rut, or doing something worthless, and it turns out we’ve honed the very skills we needed a few years later at a completely different job, or in a completely different situation. Sometimes we think we’ve really messed up, and we’d love to have a do-over because we’ve hurt someone terribly – or we’ve allowed ourselves to be hurt terribly. But a few years down the road, we find that we really learned from that experience, and we’re able to offer or seek forgiveness (not always in person; sometimes just to the universe) and move on.
Take a moment to be proud of who you’ve become up to this point. Love yourself. You know more than you think you do.
When we were in high school, we had fun climbing on the river bluffs with our friends. Well, our friends had fun. We were scared, and we whined and complained. And made everyone else miserable. Until finally, one friend took the initiative and confronted us – either loosen up and have fun, or just stay home.
We decided (with some humility) to try to loosen up. After all, it was just playing around on the rocks, and everyone else seemed to enjoy it. So… loosen up we did. It took some effort at first – that may sound contradictory, but if you live an uptight life, ‘loose’ is hard to achieve. Turns out we had fun – all of us. The risk was worth it for the fun and the friendships.
Since then, we’ve taken a lot more risks, and many of them serious (and some of them stupid, but, hey – live and learn). Maybe you’ve traveled in other countries, accepted a job that pushed you to or maybe beyond your limits, entered into or left a committed relationship, or had children.
Life is a bunch of risks. Don’t whine and complain and make everyone else miserable. Take the risk, grow and learn (and keep your friends).
Oh, make some big jumps, big jumps
You’re afraid to break some bones
Come on, make some big jumps, big jumps
Life is yours alone
You hold your head up, your head up high
Like you think I do
