How To Start

October 23, 2014 / ktbuchs87 / 1 Comment

You’ve decided to be healthier, now what? Obviously you need to totally overhaul your life and daily routine, because what you have been doing isn’t working. But changing everything seems like a huge and daunting task and you’re feeling overwhelmed. Maybe you’ll start next week… Sound familiar? This is a really common problem. People want to be healthier but they get stuck on the getting started part. It feels like their whole life has to change and that is a lot of hard work. So how do you get started? Small. Yup. Start really, really small. That might seem counterintuitive to being healthier, but it is actually a lot more successful than you might think. When you change small things in your life over a longer period of time you have a higher chance of actually sticking with those changes. What are some small changes you can make to be healthier? I’m glad you asked! Here is a list of ideas on little changes you can make to your eating, exercising, and daily life that will help you on the road to being healthier!

Food/Drink

Eat out less. Do eat out more than three times a week? Are you always getting fast food for your lunch? Try cutting back just a little. If you eat out four times a week, cut down to three. If you are always buying your lunch, try making and bringing your own just a few days a week. By making just a small change you will be saving not only calories, but money as well. Plus you will be able to control exactly what you eat when you make it.
Eat slower. Many of us are really busy and tend to eat either really fast or on the go. This tends to make us eat more because our body isn’t really registering that we’re eating a meal. Try and slow down when you’re eating. Really taste the food, take small bites, and enjoy the meal. The slower you eat the chances are greater that you will feel fuller sooner. This little trick can help you stop eating more food than you need.
Eat less. Try eating a smaller portion of food. If you normally make and eat a big pot of spaghetti, try eating half and saving the other half for lunch the next day. You don’t have to do this for every meal, just start with one and then keep adding more meals. You’ll eat less and be able to have leftovers for lunches and dinners during the week
Make one healthy swap. If you normally eat white rice, try brown rice or quinoa. If you usually eat white bread, try whole grain. If you usually eat flavored yogurt, try plain greek yogurt with cut up fruit. Try a lettuce wrap instead of sandwich bread or adding an extra serving of vegetables. Little food swaps like this can save you calories and get you used to eating better quality food. Again, you don’t have to change everything you eat. Start slowly and over time change more and more things.
Add a glass of water. Try drinking one more glass of water than you normally do each day. Switch one of your sodas/juices/lattes with a glass of water. Water is super important and most of us could be better at drinking more.
Keep a food journal for one day. You don’t have to obsessively write down everything you eat every single day, but pick a day and write what goes in your mouth that day. At the end of the day, see what you’ve eaten. Having it all in front of you can help you see where you need to improve your eating habits. Maybe you snack way too much in the afternoon because you don’t have enough to eat for lunch.

Exercise

Walk. If you have never exercised or haven’t exercised in a very long time, walking is a great place to start. Add just 10 minutes of walking to your day and work your way up from there. Once you’re able to walk for a good distance, start adding other exercises. Maybe jog for a few minutes or do some crunches. Keep building from there and soon you will have a pretty decent workout routine.
Move more in general. Little things can really add up throughout the day. Park your car farther away from the building. Take the stairs instead of the escalator. Walk over and talk to your co-workers instead of sending them an email. Maybe you can’t fit in a 30 minute workout everyday, but you can move more and every little thing helps
Enlist a buddy. Find a friend to take walks with you or try a new class together. Having someone else to keep you accountable makes working out more of a priority and can make it more fun.

Daily Changes

Get enough sleep. Sleep is really important for good health. It is when your body is able to shut down and recover from the day. Muscles are repaired during sleep along with other tissues and brain functions. Try going to sleep a little bit earlier at night, even just fifteen minutes can make a big difference.
Stop negative talk. Talking bad about yourself will get you nowhere fast. Putting yourself down won’t make you healthier, it will just beat you down. Try saying one good thing about yourself everyday. Yes, you might feel silly at first but it can really have a positive effect on your mind and attitude.
Limit TV time. If you normally spend your entire evening in front of the boob tube, try and cut down. Instead of four hours of TV a night, try two and go read a book, exercise, mediate, take a bath, anything but sitting on the couch. I get that watching TV is a relaxing and brainless activity many people enjoy after a long day, but there are better more productive things you can do that will help you unwind even better.

All these things might seem like insignificant ideas that won’t amount to much. But doing a lot of little things like this will add up over time. As you start to get used to each new habit, add in another and then another. Soon you will realize that you have changed all of your unhealthy habits for healthier ones and that it seemed like you did so without much effort. You can’t just magically get healthier overnight, it takes time and dedication. Start small, go slow, and you will get there before you know it!

Your Words

October 14, 2014 / ktbuchs87 / 1 Comment

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me. We’ve all heard it, we all try to believe it, but if we’re really honest with ourselves, we know it isn’t true. Words can hurt. Once you say something, it’s out there forever and you can’t take it back no matter how hard you try. You can try to let words bounce off of you and pretend that they have no effect, but after awhile they can start to wear away at you. Your strong exterior starts to crack and hurtful words seems to slip right through those chinks in your armor. For some, it might feel like the sticks and stones would be better than the words. We can’t control what other people will say about or to us, but we do have the power to control our own words.

Today’s post isn’t a lecture about watching your words and being careful what you say. I want you to think about the words and things you say about yourself. When we talk about words, it’s often in regards to what you’re saying about those around you. We don’t spend much time thinking about the words we use to describe ourselves. We don’t think about the things that we say to ourselves day in and day out and we really don’t think about the consequences of those words. Take a moment, what are the words you use about yourself?

Lazy. Self-conscious. Nonathletic. Over-eater. No willpower. Failure. Those were words that I often used in the lowest moments to describe myself. I was always negative and had a hard time seeing any positive when it felt like I had failed for the millionth time. High school was a rough time for me self image wise and in my quest to try and be like everyone else I constantly put myself down. I was my own worst enemy because by using all those negative words I was only hurting myself. How could I succeed when I couldn’t even talk well about myself? While my self-esteem got better as I got older, I would still find myself talking negatively to myself. If I felt tired during a workout, it was because I was being lazy and unmotivated. If I ate something I deemed bad, it was because I had no willpower. I failed to see all the good things that I was doing. Sure, I could fake being proud of myself sometimes but there was always something I could be doing better at and I zeroed in on the negative. I had trained my brain to only talk trash about my body.

Sound familiar? Like I said, words can hurt, especially the words we say to ourselves. With each jab and insult we say to ourselves, we’re only hindering our progress. Maybe you believe that you need to be tough on yourself or else you won’t see any results. I fully believe that there are times that we need to push ourselves but it should never be at the sake of talking smack. You wouldn’t call your best friends a loser for missing a workout, why in the world would you use that same word for yourself? Words are powerful and we need to start using them to our advantage. If you call yourself strong, you have a much better chance of feeling stronger and getting stronger. If you call yourself motivated, you can bet you are going to feel more motivated.

The words that come out of your mouth can either pick you up or bring you down. Stop beating yourself up with your words, it’s unacceptable. We all have flaws and more often than not we are very aware of what those flaws are. There is no need to constantly voice your problems to yourself over and over again because it will get you no where. You will just feel worse than before and are more likely to give up. If you can’t even talk nice to yourself, what’s the point. You deserve to be talked highly of and you are worthy of good words. Will you always be perfect and feel worthy of those words? No, but it’s in those times of struggle that you need those uplifting words the most. Today, start letting positive words enter your vocabulary. Use your powerful words to make yourself better and to keep moving you forward. Be your biggest cheerleader and watch how your outlook and life can change.

Healthy Or Happy

October 6, 2014 / ktbuchs87

I have noticed that there is a popular sentiment that arises when people talk about being healthier: “I would be healthier, but I would rather be happy.” They might not necessarily say that exact phrase, but it’s close. I would eat better, but I don’t want to be miserable. I would work out more, but I don’t want to hate life. I would take care of myself, but I have other things going on. For some reason, there seems to be a disconnect between being healthy and being happy.

This idea pervades the health world all the time. Diets are associated with denying yourself what you really want to eat, what would make you happy, and eating foods that are boring and tasteless albeit good for you. Exercise is tied in with punishing yourself for eating poorly or torturing yourself to make your body look good. In order to be the best you health-wise, you have to deprive yourself of happiness.

Leaders of the health realm play into this idea, to some extent. How many times have you heard a new fad diet claim that you can still eat the foods you love and lose weight, somehow implying that food that is good for you is food that you don’t love? How many new fitness trends focus on the no pain no gain motto? Or advertise that their workouts are really intense, but if you only devote yourself to twenty minutes of torture you can look like a fitness model? I know that not every diet or fitness trend out there does this, but I feel that on some level they still make the association that being healthy takes a little bit of being miserable.

This is so far from the truth, and it is one of the obstacles that stand in the way when people think about being healthier. No person wants to give up being happy or submit themselves to deprivation and torture to be in a better state of health. For awhile, I thought that if I wasn’t denying myself some type of happiness when it came to my health, I wasn’t really getting healthier. If I didn’t feel totally worn out after a workout or say no to an extra helping, I wasn’t doing it right. Inevitably I would give up on my diet and working out because I didn’t like feeling miserable. Sound familiar?

I want to help perpetuate the idea that healthy and happy go hand in hand. Eating well doesn’t have to be a battle of temptation. You can find food that is delicious AND good for you. You might have to experiment a little to find out what you like and you might have to let your tastes adjust to less processed food, but you can eat good for you food and still feel the joy of eating good food. Exercising doesn’t have to be a tool of torture. There are so many ways to work your body that I am sure you can find something that you enjoy doing. Again, you will have to try different things and see what you like the best and what your body can handle, but you can find pleasure in working out regularly. Instead of viewing being healthier as something that is going to take happiness away from your life, view it as a way to add your happiness. You’re taking steps to add years and energy to your life, you’re taking control of your health, and you’re taking pride in yourself. These are all healthy things that can make you happy.

The Numbers Game

September 30, 2014 / ktbuchs87

The number of pounds you weigh. The number of calories you’ve eaten. The number of miles you’ve run. The number of hours you’ve spent working out. The number of inches around your waist. It appears that numbers and your health go hand in hand. Many times it can seem like being healthier is a big numbers game. Add more numbers here while subtracting some there and multiplying it all together and you get a better you, right?

Not necessarily. While it is important to know some numbers about your health, like your cholesterol, sometimes we put too much focus on them. So often we get caught up in hitting a certain number on the scale or eating a certain number of calories per meal that we lose sight of what it means to be truly healthy. For most of my teenage and young adult years, I was a slave to numbers. For me the big numbers were what I weighed and how many calories I consumed everyday.

In my mind, if I could control these numbers everything would click and I would finally get the body that I wanted and finally be happy. Make the numbers go down and everything would be alright. I would hop on the scale each morning and see if my calculations had worked for me or against me. If the number on the scale was what I thought it should be, I was happy. But even one number off of what I desired and immediately my mood would change. That’s when I realized I had a problem. If a simple number on the scale could dictate what my attitude was going to be that day, I was in trouble. Over time, I learned that the amount you weigh isn’t everything when it comes to being healthier. I started to weigh myself less and less and tried to not fixate on my weight. It was tough to let go, because it was a comfort to see the number move the way I wanted and feel like what I was doing worked. But I wasn’t totally free of the numbers. Now I turned my attention to the number of miles I ran/walked each week or how many minutes I worked out each day. I even started to take measurements once a week just to make sure I was doing everything right.

That was my biggest motivation for sticking with numbers, it made me feel like I was doing this whole healthy thing right. It gave me validation for all my hard work and proved that I was successful. It was nice to see that I could run more miles this month than compared to two months ago. It felt good that my waist size stayed the same week after week. While my addiction to these “new” set of numbers didn’t play with my emotions as much as the old ones, it was still an unhealthy relationship. And my whole goal was to be healthier, not just physically but mentally as well. My reliance on numbers was holding me back from being wholly healthy.

I am not going to say that I have totally done away with numbers, I still track how many miles I run, but I try not to let those numbers define or validate me. I don’t think that tracking numbers, in whatever form, is necessarily a bad thing. If you’re just starting out, numbers can be a helpful way to keep you on track or show progress. I just caution you to make sure that those numbers don’t become your whole world. When you spend all your time focusing on numbers you miss out on other important aspects of your health. As cheesy as it may sound, YOU are not a number. You and your health are so much more. You are a person who has so many other things that define who you are than a number on a scale or number of calories you eat. Think of it this way, when you introduce yourself do you say, “Hi. My name is Katie, I run 40 miles a week, eat 1500 calories a day, and do yoga at least 20 minutes a day.” No, because that is kind of ridiculous and I’m pretty sure most people aren’t really interested in any of those numbers. Don’t put all your worth into an arbitrary number. Work to feel good about yourself as a whole and remember that health is not just a numbers game.

When Routine Becomes Too Routine

September 22, 2014 / ktbuchs87

Ask any member of my family and they will tell you that I am a big fan of routine. I like knowing exactly what I should be doing at each moment in the day. I like having tasks to do and then being able to check them off my list as I complete them. Having a routine helps me to feel in control and it also keeps me on track. It helps me accomplish my goals and gives purpose to my day. Some people might find having a routine too boring and rigid and like to face the day with no plan in mind and let what may come, come. That is totally fine, but I am not those people. In my mind, routine is a good thing. Until it isn’t.

When you make a choice to be healthier, I would say that establishing some type of routine will be crucial to your success. It’s good to have a plan set for what you are going to eat for the week, what workout you’re going to do for the day, and what goals you have in mind for your health. In this sense, a routine will help keep you on track and moving towards what you want. But we have to be careful to not become so addicted to our routine that it starts to hinder our health.

I began to notice that I was becoming so used to doing the same thing over and over again that my progress had actually stalled. While I wasn’t losing ground, I definitely wasn’t gaining any either. I also started to notice that any sort of change to my routine would throw me for a huge loop and cause me a lot of anxiety. I wasn’t flexible to the little wrenches that might be thrown into my day and it stressed me out. Stress and anxiety are the opposite of helpful when you are trying to be healthier. I started to worry about straying from my ideal routine or plan and that was all I could focus on. What would I do if this happened? How could I avoid any possible challenge to my routine? What can I do to make sure that I never have to stray from MY plan? Those aren’t healthy or helpful questions.

In case you hadn’t noticed, life doesn’t really care too much about your plan or your routine. It is going to do whatever it wants and you can play along or fall by the wayside. No matter how much I plan out my day or week, there are going to be things that have to change and I am going to have to adapt. That is a good thing! I realized I was missing out on so many fun things because they didn’t fit into what I thought I needed to be doing that day. I can’t go to the movie at that time, that’s when I’m suppose to be doing yoga. You want to eat that meal instead? Sorry I already planned this one out three days ago. I was trapped in a box that I had made myself and ironically it was causing me to stray from my healthy goals.

I will never be a person that can just fly by the seat of my pants. I will always have to have some type of schedule or routine because that’s who I am. But I am working on going with the flow more often. I am learning to say yes to things that weren’t originally in my plan and letting go of the anxiety that creeps up when I can’t cross something off of my list when I think I should. It’s ok to have some wiggle room in your life, in fact I would say that it’s necessary. Say yes to an impromptu meal with a friend from out of town. Surprise yourself and your significant other by doing something out of the blue. Don’t worry about not getting in a full hour workout or eating the exact meal you prepped. Adapt to the situation and make the healthiest choice possible at that time. You’ll be a more well-rounded person and you’ll get to experience amazing opportunities along the way. You don’t have to throw all caution to the wind and forgo routines or plans all together. Instead of a rigid schedule you HAVE to stick to, set a general map for your day or week and make decisions as they pop up. As long as those decisions are propelling you toward your ultimate goal, don’t stress about the ride!