2009 September Archive at themojocoach.com

Archive for September, 2009

A Six Step Plan for Success

Published on September 29, 2009 in General. 4 Comments

Are you ready to make some changes in your life? Do you have challenges in any of these areas?

* Nutrition

* Fitness

* Stress control

* Emotional health

* Relationship wellness

* Spirituality

You don’t have to wait until New Year’s Eve to make significant changes in your life. Any day can be the first day of your new lifestyle. But to make it really happen, you need a plan for success!

STEP 1: Evaluate

Take a step back and honestly look at the few months and ask yourself, ” “How did it go?” Take note of how you handled challenges that came up. Are you happy with how things have gone? I’m guessing if you are still reading this post, you are interested in changing some things. So based on your thoughts about your recent past, next determine what you want within each of those six areas moms struggle with.

Nutrition:

Do you want to lose weight? Do you want to eat healthier? Do you want to cook better meals? Do you want to food shop more effectively? Do you want to take more time to pre-plan your meals and snacks?

Fitness:

If you have not taken the time for fitness, think about what you want to do differently. Do you want to create a more exciting workout? Do you need more motivation? Would a workout buddy or new exercise program help?

Stress:

Do you need a more effective outlet for better stress control? Do you want to learn to journal, meditate or to do yoga instead of eating or doing another destructive self soothing behavior when you’re stressed? Do you want to focus on becoming very familiar with the signs and signals that let you know that your body’s under stress?

Emotions:

Do you want to become more optimistic, positive, less serious or just more fun? Do you want to react differently to challenging situations?

Relationships:

Do you need to reset boundaries, would you like to have a closer connection with your partner or do you want to have stronger, more fulfilling friendships?

Spirituality:

Is it time to pursue that goal, feel the joy, fulfillment and satisfaction that occurs when you’re truly in the zone because you’re doing what you absolutely love to do?

STEP 2: Set Goals

Once you come up with all those answers, set specific goals for where you want to be in the next year (or six months, or whatever time frame makes sense for you.) Be as specific as you can so that what you want becomes clear and it feels real down to the very last detail.

STEP 3: Consider Obstacles

This next step is crucial but often overlooked. You want to consider every obstacle you may encounter. When you consider all of your obstacles, you’re not as thrown when they arise. They’re already somewhat familiar to you and they will not derail you so easily.

STEP 4: Plan to Overcome Obstacles

Once all obstacles are considered, come up with a strategy to overcome every one of them. We often don’t think of what may derail us or what may sabotage us. That’s why when we’re faced with it for the first time, we fall off track. Without planning, we fall off and we haven’t considered how to get back on. If your goal to exercise daily will cause conflicts with your child’s sports schedule, can you ask someone to carpool? Can you exercise during the sports event (walk around the soccer field)? Will you have a supportive community to turn to for support? What else can you do overcome obstacles?

STEP 5: Set Milestones

After you’ve discovered what it is that you want, set small, manageable goals based on what you want to achieve and the strategies you just created. The reason why you break it down into small, manageable goals is to prevent overwhelm and encourage success. When you set a goal and you reach it, it builds your confidence and motivates you to continue. If your goal is to lose a significant amount of weight, set smaller goals along the way and then…

STEP 6: Measure and Reward Success

How will you measure and track your progress? Will you be tracking your clothing size? Your weight? Your mileage? Will you monitor your progress daily or weekly?

How will you reward yourself? Will you reward yourself when you reach a specific goal or when you handled something in a way that made you proud? Will you treat yourself to a manicure when you manage a week without desserts? What’s important is that you determine, set up and implement a tracking and reward system for many reasons. Besides keeping us motivated to continue, monitoring our progress and rewarding our efforts validate our progress, help us see what’s working and what’s not, helps us stay encouraged to continue, focused and on track.

If you are ready to start making some changes in your life, these steps can give you a roadmap to success. With clear goals and some advanced planning, you can make progress in building a better, happier, healthier and more fulfilled life.

While many things are out of your control, your thoughts, behaviors and actions are things you have complete control over. Destructive behaviors can lead you to continue down a negative path while taking the steps towards creating new, positive behaviors can bring you closer to becoming the woman that’s patiently waiting to be unleashed.

As always, the choice is yours.

Becoming Supermarket Savvy

Published on September 18, 2009 in General. 13 Comments

You know by now that one of the easiest ways to avoid temptation is to avoid bringing high-fat, high-sugar foods into your home in the first place. This effort begins in the supermarket, so learning to shop more effectively can be one of the most useful skills when trying to create new, healthy lifestyle habits. Studies have shown that moms make more than 90% of the food purchasing decisions, so now’s the time to learn how to make those decisions smart ones!

The first step is to avoid the random impulse purchasing of binge-inducing trigger foods. The easiest way to do this is by shopping with a prepared list. Sitting down to write a list out may seem like a big task, but you can make it easier.

An easy trick is to keep a running list easily accessible in your kitchen – maybe hanging on the refrigerator. When you are running low on something, jot it down. When you think of a healthy meal you’d like to try, write down the ingredients. When you see a picture, advertisement or recipe for a delicious healthy meal, grab your list and write it down.

Another great shortcut in list making (and healthy meal planning) is to subscribe to a service like The Six O’Clock Scramble, which not only gives you a week of healthy recipes, but comes with a handy grocery list including everything you need to make all of the recipes!

Once you have your list, make sure you only take the list to the supermarket. Leave your hunger and your kids at home.

If you food shop when you’re hungry, you’re much more tempted to buy things you would normally be able to bypass. By having a light snack or mini meal before you enter the supermarket, you’re judgment will stay intact and you will be able to make more sound choices.

Have you noticed how much more junk food you buy when you bring your kids to the supermarket with you?

“Mom, can you pleeeeeease buy this (sugary, calorie-laden) cereal I saw on TV?”

“Mom, everyone brings in these (high fat, high cholesterol, nutrient void) snacks to school!”

The battles can be endless in the supermarket, with foods containing the least nutrition and the most far, sugar and calories strategically placed right at your children’s eye level. If you must bring your children, also bring a strong resolve to stick to your list. If you have a choice, leave the kids at home and take a few moments for yourself. You can use the opportunity to make better choices that the whole family will benefit from.

So, you’re armed with your list, you’ve had a snack and now you are alone in the supermarket.

Where do you begin?

First, let’s talk about labels.

1.) The first think to notice when looking at a nutrition label is to note the number of servings in the package. The calories, fat, cholesterol, fiber and sodium are all listed for only one serving. So, for example, if you buy a bag of popcorn and the bag contains ten servings and you finish the bag, the calories, fat, cholesterol and other nutritional information must all be multiplied by ten to understand what you have just consumed.

2.) Ingredients are listed in order from the highest concentration to the lowest. This means that if sugar or fat are listed within the first few ingredients, there’s a high concentration of sugar or fat on the item. The reverse is also true. If the healthy-sounding ingredients – the fruit, the whole grains – are at the end of the ingredient list, there is likely to be only a tiny bit of them in the product.

3.) Sugar is often disguised under different names. High fructose corn syrup, any ingredient ending in “-ose”, honey, molasses, fruit juice concentrate, and brown sugar are all forms of sugar that act just like regular, white, refined sugar within your body.

4.) If the front label claims that the food is “healthy”, “low-fat”, “wholesome”, “made with whole grain”, “made with fruit”, check the back label to see what the real story is. Food producers do not generally have your good health in mind when they put foods on the shelf. They want the foods to sell, and they know that these kinds of claims catch the attention of people who are trying to eat healthier foods. But the ingredients often tell a different story. Foods may be low in sugar, but high in fat and artificial coloring. They may contain a small amount of whole grain, along with a hefty dose of white flour and high fructose corn syrup. Make sure you look at the whole label and don’t rely on the health claims to guide your choices.

5.) How many of the ingredients on the list look familiar? How many can you pronounce? How many would you feel comfortable including in something you were cooking or baking at home? When you were a child and your grandmother baked her delicious, mouth-watering apple pie, the only flavor enhancer she added was the love that went into baking it for you. Although there are thousands of items available in the typical supermarket today, an alarming amount are pre-packaged, processed and provide little nutrient value.

When a food is processed, it is altered from its natural state. Valuable nutrients, vitamins and minerals are taken out while chemicals and additives are injected back in. Food dyes, flavor enhancers, stabilizers and preservatives may make food look more colorful or extend shelf life but think about it. If a product can last indefinitely in a store or a vending machine, what happens to it when it’s in your body?

An easy rule to make healthy purchasing decisions would be this: if you can’t pronounce it, if you wouldn’t add it to anything you were cooking or baking at home, if you wouldn’t find the ingredient listed anywhere in your favorite cookbook, it’s probably best not to eat it.

So what are the healthiest choices to make when food shopping?

Most of the healthiest foods are located in the outermost aisles of the supermarket. These include the fruit, vegetable, dairy and meat departments.

Let’s start in the produce department. Here’s where you really want to fill up your cart. Pile in beautiful, interesting and colorful fruits and vegetables. Different colors of fruits and vegetables offer different nutrients, so just by making colorful selections, you’re automatically increasing your chances of getting a wide variety of healthy nutrients. There are also many varieties of prewashed, precut lettuces and other vegetables available, making it easy to prepare interesting salads and side dishes. Here’s where you splurge, because if a variety of pretty, precut vegetables are available at home, your may reconsider eating pre-packaged, processed junk food.

In the meat section opt for leaner cuts of beef, chicken and turkey. Choose cuts with less visible fat to decrease your intake of saturated fat. If you are buying ground meat, look closely at the percent of fat (most labels now show the fat content) and buy the leanest version. With fish, choose both fatty (salmon and tuna) and lean varieties. Fatty fish are great sources of omega 3′s and white colored varieties (flounder, sole, and halibut) are low in fat and calories.

In the dairy section look for words such as “low fat”, “non fat”, “fat free”, “1 percent”, “2 percent”, and “skim”. Consider switching to skim milk, or at least working your way down to 2%, then 1% and then skim. Whole milk contains about 3.5% fat (and 150 calories in a serving), so 2% milk is still more than half of the fat (and 120 calories), while skim milk has only .4 grams of fat and 86 calories per serving.

Eggs, butter, margarine and soy products are often in these aisles so read labels and choose carefully. Watch the fat in your dairy products and look out for added sugar in yogurts, creamers and soy milk.

You can still pick up healthy items in some of the center aisles if you choose carefully. In the grain aisle, try to avoid refined carbohydrates and opt for whole grain and high fiber whenever possible. Choose 100% whole-wheat or sprouted grain bread, high-fiber cereals, whole-grain pasta, and brown rice. The closer the grain is to its natural source, the more fiber and nutrients it contains. Beans can also be found in either the grain or canned food aisles. Dry beans require soaking, which may not appeal to you. Canned beans are just as nutritious, so if you’ll eat more beans this way, buy the canned version! In the frozen foods section, you might want to grab a few bags of frozen vegetables or mixed blends (without the added sauces or butter flavoring). Frozen vegetables retain the vitamins and nutrients while being convenient and easy to prepare.

When you work on becoming more supermarket savvy, you become more familiar with labels, packaging, and products available in your supermarket and you begin to realize that your shopping trips can either be the first step in preparing a healthy eating environment in your home, instead of a war zone where you battle with your best intentions, your cravings and your judgement.

Are You a Mindless Muncher?

Published on September 11, 2009 in General. 0 Comments

Imagine mealtime at your house. Does it go like this?

The kids are screaming, the dog is barking, the phone is ringing, and the kids are starving NOW! Soccer practice ran late leaving you less time to prepare dinner, piano lessons start in 30 minutes, and you have to feed everyone else and eat on the go. You get the kids sitting down and your dinner consists of shoving the leftover macaroni and cheese that they didn’t eat into your mouth as you run out the door. During a lull in the action, you are able to grab a bag of something crunchy while you catch up on e-mails. Once the hectic day is behind you, you can’t think of doing anything else but staring at the TV with a bowl of ice cream in your lap.

This is not a scenario that sets the stage for mindful eating, is it?

When we eat mindfully, many things occur. First of all, we are aware of how much we are eating. We are more in tune with our body’s signals that tell us when to eat, how much to eat, and when our body has had enough. We overeat less because we are paying closer attention to what our bodies need. When we eat mindfully, we are also able to more fully enjoy our food because we are focused on the flavor, texture, aroma, presentation and atmosphere that surround us and the food we’re eating. When we eat mindfully, our bodies are determining when to eat as opposed to the event, the clock, or the show on TV.

Picture a beautifully set table with candles, china and sparking silverware. Music is playing softly in the background, you’re wearing something flattering and your partner notices how great you look. You’re hungry for your dinner, the food looks delicious and you casually stroll to the table for your exquisitely prepared meal. It wouldn’t be difficult to eat mindfully in this scenario, would it?

To eat mindfully, the first step is to be aware of what, when and why you are eating. You need to catch yourself eating when you’re not hungry.

So often we eat mindlessly when we’re passing food to others, making snacks for the kids, preparing dinner, walking past the candy dish at work, reading or watching TV. We may even find ourselves looking for something to eat when we have a few minutes to spare before the next activity, using the food as a way to kill some extra time. Somethings we may wander into the kitchen, open up the cabinets and wonder why we are even there!

I’m not talking about emotional eating, where food is used as a coping mechanism offering quick relief from your emotional pain. That is a whole other discussion. I’m talking about mindless eating where distractions and a lack of awareness cause you to take in food when you’re not hungry-when you are not paying any attention to what you are eating!

Here are some ideas to help you become a more conscious eater and conquer that mindless munching.

1) Stop and ask yourself why you’re eating.

Believe it or not, you may not even realize that you had something in your hand or your mouth. Ask yourself if you could possibly be thirsty instead. (Our thirst mechanism doesn’t always work effectively. We often confuse thirst with hunger).

2) Ask yourself what you really need.

If you are bored, you need something to do – not something to eat! If you don’t know what you are feeling, you need to figure that out, too!

If you are eating just because the food is there, here are a few tricks that might work for you.

Chew Gum - If you just want to keep your mouth busy, gum might satisfy that oral need.

Teeth Whitening Strips - You can’t eat for 30 minutes with one on. Less eating and whiter teeth!

Take Your Hands out of Commission – Polish your nails, apply creamy scented lotion, knit, or even wear rubber kitchen gloves. It would be hard to eat mindlessly with any of those obstacles in the way.

Brush Your Teeth – You could also pop in a breath strip. For many people, enjoying that minty, fresh taste will prevent eating.

Find Something Else to Do – Brush the dog, clean a drawer, anything that keeps you busy and out of the kitchen.

Visualize – Picture a regular sized plate. Now picture that plate with all of the snacks, bites and treats that you grabbed mindlessly during the day. Put everything on the plate that you grabbed when you walked by the candy dish, ate standing up, tasted while you were cooking, nibbled while you were on the phone, sampled while you were feeding the kids, or snacked on while you watched TV. How does the plate look? Is it overflowing?

When learning to eat mindfully, it’s important to focus on your food as you eat it. The best way is when you eat slowly, sit down and concentrate on the taste of what you’re eating. Many mom’s feel that sitting down to a meal is a rare treat. But by sitting down to a meal, many things happen. You are more aware of the amount you eat and the reasons why you are eating. Mindful eating also leads to better digestion. You get more benefit from the nutrients you are eating. Finally, by eating mindfully, you’re sending an important message to yourself that you are worthy and deserving of some much needed self-care. You’re treating yourself with some kindness and respect which overflows to those around you.

And that’s SO much better than leftover macaroni and cheese!

Are you Conserving too much Energy?

Published on September 4, 2009 in General. 3 Comments

Conserving energy and natural resources is a great thing when we’re talking about turning off the lights when you leave the room or recycling. However, it is possible in the modern world of drive-thrus and remotes to conserve too much of your physical energy and limit how much you move your body in the course of a normal day.

Electric garage door openers, television remotes, electric can-openers, dishwashers, drive-through windows, and baby monitors enable us to stay put while we accomplish many of the tasks that at one time would have required physical effort. If you used to hand-deliver papers to your colleagues in another part of your building at work, now you can just e-mail them. If you gamble, you don’t even have to pull the lever on the slot machine anymore!

So many products and services make things simpler and easier, yet all of this energy conservation is making us bigger than ever. In a nutshell, the more “efficient” our world becomes, the less “efficient” our bodies become at burning calories.

Take a minute to think of someone who’s naturally thin. Not someone who lives from one diet to the next or rarely eats a meal, but someone who maintains their weight with seemingly relative ease. One thing you may notice about this person is that she rarely conserves energy. When she needs something, she goes and gets it instead of asking you to pass it to her. When she wants to get somewhere, she moves at a quick pace instead of strolling along. When she has free time, she often will choose an activity that requires movement, such as gardening, instead of watching TV.

Naturally thin people are often not as physically efficient as overweight people. They won’t wait for things to pile up before taking them upstairs, wait for the elevator when the stairs are right there, or wait for the closest parking spot to prevent a longer walk. They don’t think about the extra movement, they just do it.

Naturally thin people are also likely to fidget. Studies have found that fidgeters burn many more calories than their more sedentary contemporaries. Their bodies are constantly moving whether doodling, toe tapping, rocking while waiting in line, or pacing while on the phone. Movement expends energy (calories) and although it may not look like much, this extra energy expenditure adds up over the course of the day.

If you don’t know a naturally thin adult, take a look at your kids. If they need to get somewhere, they don’t slowly walk to where they want to go – they run, jump, skip, hop, bounce or glide! If you’re exhausted following a young child around all day, it’s because they’re constantly moving. The reason you want to hold their hand half of the time when you’re in a busy area is because they move so fast that if you don’t hold onto them, they’ll quickly run ahead! There’s no conservation of energy with them, just bursts of movement and action.

Take a look at how you’ve been conserving your energy in order to make life more efficient. While it may make things easier to move less, the extra energy and health you gain by adding additional movement to your daily routine can make you feel healthier and stronger. Challenge yourself to find two ways that you can move more. Pace while you talk on the phone, park farther away from your destination, take the stairs instead of the elevator, stop making phone calls to co-workers and walk to their desks instead. Commit to adding more activity to your day and to being LESS energy efficient!