I wanted to imagine my Perfect Day. I wanted to write it out and edit it until it was absolutely the embodiment of my most perfectest day ever.

I quickly realized that it was hard to do that without tossing a bunch of material things in there; I mean, if I'm being totally frank, my PERFECT perfect day would definitely start with me waking up in my king-sized bed (with my all-white Egyptian cotton linens) next to my handsome and sensitive husband, with our Rhodesian Ridgeback dog on the floor next to the bed, in our industrial loft live/work space in the woods overlooking a lake. Where I'm supposed to find a lakefront abandoned warehouse building in the forest is beyond me... Not to mention acquiring such a property would require funds to which I surely don't have access. I don't know. Maybe my PERFECT Perfect Day involves me waking up wealthy?

Why am I even doing this?
Maybe it's something to do with the existential brouhaha of inching my way up toward my mid-30s and still having much of my life so up in the air. Unlike others in my peer group, I've not yet "settled down" with house/marriage/family - and I honestly don't know if or when that will ever be my reality. I go through occasional periods of angst where I'm not sure if my life is on the right path, or if I even know what that path is.

Maybe you can relate to this: I'm not even so sure that I'm a "path" person; I'm more of an "aerial view" type of girl. I know what I'd like my life to look like from a very big-picture point of view, kind of omnisciently hovering above it and taking everything in at a glance, nodding my approval.

-- My key requirements are comfort, fun and joy.
-- My nice-to-NOT-haves are stress, drama and emotional struggle.
-- Not essential to me one way or the other are money, possessions or success.

My aerial view is a very pretty picture, if a little unrealistic.

There's an App for that
One of my favourite iPhone apps is Google Earth. I think it's so cool when you first launch the application, and the little picture of Planet Earth kind of swoops and spins beneath you until you're hovering over your exact location. I feel like I'm up in space looking down on my small piece of the planet. Quietly, unassuming. Just watching.

I also really like to pinch-zoom in to see how close I can get to seeing the detail of my little part of the globe. One time I actually made out the rusted-out white car that parks across the street from my condo building and it made me squeal with delight. So despite being a bird's-eye-view kind of gal, I appreciate that it can be kind of a fun experience to hone in on the detail.

The Perfect Day exercise will hopefully give me that same giddy excitement, as I pinch-zoom in on the aerial view of my life and pinpoint what my absolute perfect day would look like - in terms of experiences, not possessions.

My Perfect Day
My Perfect Day doesn't have any timelines, except for one: I know I'd wake up around 8am. 8am is my perfect wake-up time. It's not too early. It's not too dark. It's also not too late, so I'm not sleeping my Perfect Day away.

Portions
Eggs, toast, tea and newspaper. Wait, are eggs a possession? I just love eggs, and my perfect day would involve an eggy breakfast while I sit and read the paper.

Productivity
Then, I'd need to be productive. My Perfect Day wouldn't be totally lazy, or I'd go nuts. I'd get busy doing... something.

...I just closed my eyes for a few moments to see if I could picture what that might be. I can't, specifically. It's something creative and visual. It's something that I'd really be able to pour all of my energy into. I'd need to close off all distractions and focus on it completely. It's something that I need to do alone, left to be in my own little headspace until it's perfect. I can't say whether this burst of productivity is earning me a living, but it is something that I feel proud to produce.

How long do I perform this productive task? Until one minute before it starts to impede on the other beautiful things I have lined up for my Perfect Day. My productivity will not ruin my fun.

People
I'd set aside some time in the afternoon to check in with the important people in my world. Make plans to see friends, family, loved ones. Sending out birthday cards and thoughtful gifts - on time. I'd be the person everyone in my life could go to for a shoulder, an ear and other such metaphorically supportive body parts. Keeping my peeps close would be the biggest, most important part of my day.

Perspiration
Depending on what day it is, this particular Perfect Day may involve some movement of some kind - either running, playing a sport, lifting weights or doing yoga. My Perfect Day does not involve teaching any fitness classes, mainly because I don't want to be buckled in to a schedule.

Pigouts
There would be so much good food in my Perfect Day. It would probably be a diet very skewed in favour of seafood. Wait... is seafood a possession? I'd be eating all day long, whenever I wanted, and probably sipping on wine too. I'd take the time to cook delicious meals, and would want to share them with somebody.

Progression
I'd want to take tons of courses to learn about all manner of things - from cooking to building to designing to just understanding the world better. I'd occupy much of my day learning about everything I could.  

Page-turning
My Perfect Day would involve reading so many books. Having the time and the energy to spend hours every day poring over books and books and books. Maybe I'd finally make it through the first chapter of Shantaram!

Parties
There would be a social moment every day - either a big, raucous fun one, or a quiet, intimate one. I'd be spending great quality time with the people I love, celebrating the fun parts of life. My Perfect Day, in fact, has an equal blend of social moments and alone-time.

Passion
My Perfect Day requires a partner who's on the same happy, easygoing life path that I am. I definitely think it sounds way more fun than doing it alone.

Reality Check
Even a Perfect Day will have to involve some chores and duties. But I can't help but feel like these To Do lists would seem like less of a nuisance because every other moment of my day would be spent in bliss.

I think the thing that holds us back from experiencing Perfect Days in real life is that we let our real life take over. We are programmed to err on the side of being a responsible adult, and feel that it's our job to do the things that need to be done first, at any cost. Even if it means pushing away the truly important moments of life.

Oh, what do I know?

Sum up, Soldier
All I really know is that I have always had a bird's eye view of what my happy life might look like, and now I have a more honed-in close-up of it. When I look at the close-up, everything actually seems pretty attainable.

For instance, even if I can't quit my job to go and live with my (obviously wealthy) partner, swanning about our lakefront warehouse loft, creating visual masterpieces while sipping wine and eating sea scallops, I CAN make a better effort to keep my peeps close. Why not? I just listed it as the most important part of my Perfect Day, yet right now I spend maybe 10-20 minutes a day doing so. Quite pathetic - and there's no excuse for it. Am I too busy, too important? And if I am, how sad is that? I possess the power to shift that balance of time, and I should.

Right this very second I could make one phone call and start weaning myself off teaching fitness classes, so that I could have a more intuitive approach to my exercise - doing just what I want to do when I want to do it (or not do it). So why aren't I making that phone call right now?

Wait, I thought this was a Wellness Blog...
How does this tie to wellness? Emotionally, maybe. The "Spirit" factor of the mind/body/spirit equation.

Here's how I see it: Either you're one of those Status Quo people who never ponders change in your life, or your one of those Flighty people who can't go five minutes without wanting to take a garden spade to the whole thing and uproot it. Either way, there's got to be some mental wellness benefits to taking a moment to clearly focus on your life and what you want. And how you'll get there. Maybe that means making a list. Maybe it means drawing a picture. Maybe it means using a weak Google Earth analogy.

Spend the time to pinch-zoom in on your Perfect Day and see if, right away, you don't spy a few changes that you could make today - right now - to get you on that path.

If nothing changes, nothing changes, and who wants a life like that?  

Years ago, I ran myself ragged, trying to DO so many things, I forgot to just let myself BE.

Around my 30th birthday or so, I took a look around me. What had all this hyperactive DOing gotten me? Let's face it: the beautiful parts of my life were looking a little bleak. All I had were a job that ran me into the ground, lots of possessions to show for my strong work ethic (I'd always had at least three jobs at any given time), some good friends that I was in danger of letting slip away, and myriad bizarre medical ailments caused from stress, poor diet and lack of sleep.

I was chronically single. I couldn't hold a relationship because I was unwilling to make the time for anyone but me. I thought men should just flock to me because of how busy and successful I was; they would just have to hang back in the wings and wait loyally by my side until I was able to make time for them.

In fact, friends and loved ones suffered the same fate: "I'll get to you when I can." 

Boy, when you look at it written out like that, it's hard to understand why we put so much value on the phrase "OMG I'm *so* busy right now." What's good about being so busy that you can't make time for the great parts of life? It's equal parts selfish and empty.

I think we associate busy-ness with importance. I lost the desire to be important a few years ago. I figure, as long as I'm enjoying my tiny part of the world, it doesn't matter how important I appear to be to anyone else.

Some people might say I lack ambition. I say: been there, done that.

Some people may think this viewpoint sounds lazy. I think it sounds balanced.

I can make the time for the things and people and experiences I really love.

And I do.

Managing Expectations
Because I live in this society that values busy-ness, this adjustment has been hard. Not many other people in my demographic are willing to throw in the busy-ness towel in order to take on a life of BEing rather than DOing. It leaves me a little lonely out here. This has required a lot of Expectation Management.

The irony is not lost on me that the buzz-phrase "Managing Expectations" was driven into my skull by the last corporate machine that leeched my soul for 20 hours a day (and then strapped me to a BlackBerry so as to make sure those remaining 4 hours per day were also commandeered). Despite the phrase "Managing Expectations" being very corporate, I still love the idea of it, and use it often.

It goes in line, I think, with the notion of personal responsibility. While I'm very content to DO only what needs to be done and spend the rest of my day BEing, I also have to recognize that not everyone is living life in this way. I need to know that I have to occupy myself. And I have. It's a great opportunity to tap into some hobbies that I have always secretly loved but never made the time for. I love anything relating to the visual arts, for example, so maybe I'll take a clay handbuilding course. I've always wanted to learn typography and silkscreen printing. Or I'll persue some active hobbies: I just signed up for a series of 5K races in the mountains this summer (more on that later - I AM NOT A RUNNER so this scary reality will surely be mentioned somewhere in this blog at some point). I'll do these things by myself and, you never know - maybe I'll meet some like-minded friends while I'm doing them.

I can't realistically expect the people in my life to come with me on my journey to BE more than DO. So I have to manage my expectations and realize that I'll be on my own sometimes. I've had to pull slightly away from people whose levels of self-imposed busy-and-importantness make my skin itch. I take responsibility for the fact that I'm alienating some good people but... this is for the sake of my mental wellness.

Just as I don't want that stress in my own life, I don't want to be juxtaposed near it either.

Work Life Balance
I think it's sad, when I look back on it now. How much time I spent working. For what?

Did I love my job(s)? Yes. I think I've been pretty fortunate in the career department, in that I've gotten to always do things that I'm passionate about.

Did I experience success? Yes. I flew up the corporate ladders and pay scales pretty rapidly for a kid who dropped out of University.

Did I acquire lots of shiny things? Yes. But who cares?

Did I get to circumnavigate South America on a motorcycle?

Have I gotten to spend 2 weeks on a water bungalow in the Maldives?

Have I witnessed the Big 5 in Africa?

No, no, no. The THINGS I'd been acquiring were at the detriment to the EXPERIENCES I've had on my bucket list since I was a teenager.

Work-Life Balance means something different for everyone. I thought I had found it at my last job: "Sure, I can have a weekend getaway because I'll have my BlackBerry on me and anyone can reach me if they need me." Or, "I've got my Work and my Life balanced, because my friends and loved ones (Life) know that they can't count on me at all to be there for them, because I'm just too busy (Work)." 

It's funny how we convince ourselves we love what we're DOing, when we'd much rather BE anything else but a slave to our PDAs, our subordinates, our bosses, our clients and our deadlines.

We're very good at self-conviction. Heck, this blog post is full of it.

Switching off sometimes
Another important ingredient in my attempt to find balance is down-time. I'm proud to report that I've gotten really good at this.

I do yoga anywhere from 3 to 6 times per week. I prefer restorative yoga; none of this Madonna Hulkamania business. When people talk about yoga they often say, "I'd like to try it, but I'm sooooooo high strung, I'm sure I'd just get restless." You're high strung? Welcome to life in a developed nation. In some ways, I think people are looking for brownie points when they bring up how hyper and busy they are. If one is too busy for a few moments of dedicated relaxation each week, we assume they must be very, very important. And, in contrast, those of us who DO make the time for ourselves are apparently not as important. And we should be ashamed of ourselves!

Hey, I'm not super high strung, but I DO have the attention span of a gnat. Yet I manage to quiet myself a few times a week. It's not THAT hard to do, Molly Martyr.

I don't just relax at yoga class, though. I can do it anywhere, anytime. I'm REALLY good at it. I still have busy days from time to time, just like everybody else. Mentally and physically draining. But if I can, I'll find time to sit in a restaurant with a glass of something (tea, beer - I'm not picky) and read the paper. Decompression. Balancing my life with my work. It feels very nice. Like I'm in control of my schedule and not vice versa.

Do things that make you happy
And don't do things that make you unhappy

Life is too short.

 


 

Dear Internet: I got better.

My last post probably seemed very dramatic, but the truth was, I was wrestling with some holiday weight gain. It doesn't matter how much I gained or whether it was all in my head; it was a real struggle for me.

Earlier in this blog I mentioned that, like many Canadians, I've struggled with my weight almost my whole life. Except that, in my adult life, I had never really been technically overweight. My struggles were more along the lines of being obsessed with staying as thin and lean as I could, at any cost. For the 67 or so percent of "real" Canadians out there who are not currently involved in a healthy exercise and nutrition plan, my "poor little skinny girl" issues were not relatable. Nobody knew just HOW greatly I struggled with my body image issues; it didn't matter, though, because I probably looked like a girl with not a care in the world as far as diet and exercise were concerned. Little did anyone know that diet and exercise were all I cared about.

To put it another way: I struggled with my weight, just in a different way.

25lbs of Relatibility
Thankfully(?) "relatability" finally came to me in my thirties. About two years ago I started carrying a lot more fat on my body - specifically in the abdominal regions. Despite still being very in tune with good nutrition and exercise, the fat came fast and furious, and IT WOULD NOT LEAVE. Typically I don't store fat in my abdomen. Genetically speaking, I'm probably more of a "hips and thighs" girl. This made the abdominal fat extra annoying, because I couldn't even blame my mother.

At the same time, I had been experiencing some blood sugar issues - I'd get very light-headed and faint in my fitness classes. One time actually went down in front of a class - a full-on crash-and-burn situation, with a heavy barbell on my shoulders for added effect. That moment was probably the catalyst for me to recognize that my diet was messed up in more ways than just the traditional Calories In-Calories Out kind of way.

I took on a very easy-to-follow eating plan whose goal was to regulate the levels of insulin, glucagon, cortisol and other such hormones in my body. In a matter of weeks I had fixed the issue with the blood sugar crashes, was feeling more energetic than I had in a long time and had managed to shed a good portion of the abdominal fat. While my main goal had been to fix my energy levels, the weight loss was definitley a sweet bonus.

I'm still on this eating plan, and I literally cannot keep up with my own metabolism. I wake up revenously hungry and in desperate need of my huge morning protein-and-whole-grain breakfast. It's a good feeling to know you're giving your body great nutrition, and it's rewarding you with a tons of energy and a healthy body composition. I can say I've lost all of that pesky abdominal fat that I'd put on in the last few years, and then some.

Oops. Somewhere along the way, this blog post turned into an informercial. My bad.

Where I'm going with this
I had recently been feeling pretty content with my body. Almost non-partisan. But after the holidays, I felt like I had literally undid everything I'd, well, UNDID over the preceeding months. I noticed that my waist seemed thicker, I had a little bit of muffin top hanging over my pants, and I just felt very uncomfortable, bloated and stuffed through my midsection. In other words: the abdominal fat had returned in all its glory. I felt like I had competely reverted back to the pudgier version of me. I very nearly threw in the towel. "All that work," I thought, "and FOUR DAYS of Christmas eating and drinking has relapsed me?!" I figured I was doomed to have abdominal fat forever. For a few days there, I stopped believing in the power of my amazing eating plan. I thought it was all for nothing, since the weight loss I'd experienced seemed to be so finicky. I nearly covinced myself to not even bother to try losing that holiday weight gain. What was the point? I was too far gone. It wasn't going to work.

As I defeated myself with this negative self talk, it dawned on me that I was feeling what 67% of Canadians feel every January when New Year's rolls around and they decide they are going to take ontrol of their wellness this year. Eat healthy! Join a gym! Do a cleanse! Work out 6 days a week and consume nothing but salads and distilled water!

We put it into our minds that we have to follow this very strict set of steps in order to grab hold of our wellness. No wonder the success rate of 'Resolutioners' is so dismal. But in addition to the delusions of what it takes to lose weight, there's yet another thing eating away at these people, and now I know what that is: we convince ourselves ahead of time that we're going to fail. Once you've talked yourself out of something, it is nearly impossible to get yourself inspired to stick with it.

Now, I'm kind of lucky because I truly love to exercise. As such, I don't have that enormous hurdle staring me in the face: the hurdle of the ensuing physical agony. So when I share this "life lesson" with you, please take it with a grain of salt; I realize I didn't have it quite as hard as the average Canadian, but these are ideas that we can all use, no matter what level of 'health appreciation' we're at. 

Here's what I've learned, in this order

1) I really enjoyed gaining that holiday weight. It was fun.
 I was lazy. I indulged. I got tipsy more often than I should have. I had lots of laughs. I got to see my family who I haven't seen in ages. It was so, so incredibly worth it.

2) There was nothing to be gained by dwelling on how bad I felt.
I could only set sights on the future. The power to reduce my muffin top was in my hands. Even if it took me 6 months to get there, please refer to point #1: It was still so worth it. Getting down on myself for letting it happen would not fix it. Dialing back into the exercise I love and the eating plan that changed my life? That would fix it.  

3) Your body wants to lose the muffin top as badly as you do.
I cruised back into my regular, easy-to-follow, pre-holiday movement and nutrition habits. I didn't drastically ramp up the exercise. I didn't drastically dial down the calories. I just got right back into the routine that made me feel better than I've felt in years: a moderate amount of exercise and great amounts of very clean food with an emphasis on hormonal balance.

And here we are, January 15th. Just two weeks later after my e-meltdown on this very blog. The life-ruining weight gain that I whined about in my previous post is gone. I've lost the holiday muffin top, and then some.

It was way, way, way easier than I had convinced myself it would be.


You can do it if you don't stress about it
The point of this post, I guess, is to realize that our mental self-sabotage can be our undoing. It can be the brick wall standing in the way of our slow and steady wellness process.

When I picture the path to wellness, it looks very much like the graphic I have plastered at the top of this page: it's kind of a meandering meadow path with lots of beautiful scenery - and virtually no elevation gain or loss. It's pretty steady, as far as topography goes. I picture the wellness path as an easy backcountry hike - not a mountain trek. It's steady, slow-paced and enjoyable. It is not grueling, demanding, exhausting, defeating.

I love a good mountain hike. And I love a grueling workout. But the path to wellness should be viewed as slow and steady. Oh, and long. It's a long, long, pleasant hike. It'll probably take you the rest of your life. There will be gentle rises and falls of the terrain, but nothing that should make you want to give up and go home.

The lesson I learned is that even just showing up at the trailhead ready to embark on the wellness path with a positive mindset will help you be successful.

Go easy on yourself - it's not a race.  

Dear Internet: I got fat.

I did. I got fat over the holidays. I'm not trying to sound alarmist when I say this. I really mean it.

December was a fun month for me. In early December, I took a week-long trip to Cabo San Lucas. Then I was back home for only about a week and a half before I headed home for the holidays.

If it feels good, do it.
This is for sure one of my main mottos in life, but especially where food and drink indulgence is concerned (and money, hence why I live in a tiny apartment).

I think about the years I wasted obsessing about my diet, my exercise and my body image, and it saddens me. What a waste of some of the potentially most fun years of my life! These days I try to eat pretty cleanly most of the time, which allows me lots of leeway to indulge when the mood strikes me.

Well, the mood struck me hard during my trip to Mexico, and then again during my visit home for Xmas. Of course it did. Neither of those experiences would have been as fun, in my opinion, without the food and the drink and the lounging around like a lazy blob. Sure enough, the combination of a lack of exercise and an indulgent approach to eating softened me up more than a little. 

It's okay. I had to know it would happen. I mentally prepared myself for it. Even the participants in my fitness classes had to hear my take on holiday weight gain for pretty much the entire month of December: "It's probably going to happen, so let's not stress about it too much! Eat, drink, enjoy -- and then we'll all come right back to the gym afterwards and work it off together." I think they were skeptical at my lackadaisical approach to impending Xmas fatness. They were probably on to something.

Muffin-top acquisition: Accept it and move on.
I don't know about you, but I definitely felt a lot softer and rounder when I got back into the swing of things after Xmas. But it wasn't until I went back to work that I realized the true nature of my holiday indulgence. Specifically that first morning I had to put on non-stretchy pants. Oy. I've been sucking in for three days over here.

I don't ever weigh myself, but I'd have to assume that I am on the high end of the holiday weight gain spectrum. My clothes don't fit right. I feel uncomfortable and uncoordinated.

I'm not exaggerating that I feel very chunky and out of sorts, but I will admit that my reaction to a small bit of holiday weight gain is quite severe. This is how a recovering anorexic behaves, I think. Always and forever.

Time to undo everything I've undone.
I can usually undo a short period of bad eating simply by buckling down for a couple of days. Clean eating and my regular, relatively intense workouts can usually lean things back out to where they were before. But it's been three days now, and I still have a very long way to go.

Should one expect to be able to change their body in a few days? No. But I know how my body reacts to periods of slothiness followed by periods of mindful eating and exercise - I typically bounce back quickly. Maybe it's a sign of my impending old age that it's taking longer than normal to burn off the holiday squishiness.

Whatever the reason, I know I have to be patient.

The lesson learned.
Every step - forward or backward - along the path to wellness is part of the learning experience. We're learning to accept and appreciate our bodies and all of their idiosyncratic behaviours.

I think we all measure our sense of wellness differently; I learned pretty recently that my personal sense of wellness is based on How I Feel About My Body. My goal is to always feel utterly non-partisan about it; to ignore it altogether because I'm more or less content with it.

Right now, my body and its squishy composition are front and centre of mind. For me, this isn't healthy. In a way I'm happy that I can step back from the situation and observe that I'm having unhealthy thought patterns toward my body. Despite the fact that I'm upset about how my body feels, I am happy that I have learned a bit more about myself and how I react to changes with my physique. I know. This sounds corny.

But bear with me. This experience has enabled me to take a breath, look at the bigger picture and realize that it's okay. It's FINE. What's done is done. There is nothing to be gained by obsessing about a 7-10 pound holiday weight gain. 

Meanwhile, I need to balance the frustration I'm feeling at "letting myself go" with the fun I had on vacation and over the holidays with my family. Sure, my jeans are a little tight today, but it was absolutely, 100% worth it.   


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Have you got a holiday weight gain story you need to get off your chest? Share it with me at erin@thewellnessshift.com. I promise to be a sympathetic ear.

People, it's November. We need to have a serious talk about the eating season creeping up on us. But first... an analogy.

Weight management is a lot like money management. Your weight can get away from you just as easily as your finances can. One minute you're cruising along, enjoying life - eating, drinking, shopping and being merry - and then next thing you know you've racked up piles of credit card debt. Gaining the debt was easy; getting rid of it is the hard part. You make tiny payments, barely chipping away at the debt. The number never seems to go down. It takes months to make a dent! And all because of a few weeks of good livin'.

I'm not a big fan of credit. I don't think I ever have been. When I was 20 years old, my parents suggested I buy a house. I was making my first full-time salary, and I got pre-approved for a small mortgage. I bought a small house with my small mortgage, nowhere near my dream house. But, dream house or not, it was "important for me to build equity," I was told.

I came to learn that all equity got me was piles of credit. And when you have piles of credit, you can get into trouble.

To be truthful, I've never struggled with being very overweight like millions of Canadians do - although I have struggled with weight management in my own way. But I have struggled to repay financial debt. The financial struggles I had in my youth have made me the cash-junky I am today. If I don't have the cash, I don't buy the item. I know it's not the most luxurious way to live, but you have to admit it makes a lot of sense.

Why not apply the same logic to weight management?

Mmmmmmm.. I love Turtles
So here we are. Early November. In Canada, we've already had Thanksgiving. The sound of that electric knife carving the turkey was like the starter's pistol for the Big Eating Season.

Life becomes more festive as we cruise through the last couple months of the year: companies and acquaintances hold "holiday parties," workplaces become rife with home baking and boxes of chocolates, friends invite friends over for egg nog and appetizers. It's dietary mayhem... but it's also incredibly fun. It would be a shame to miss it.

Turn on the radio anytime in December and you'll hear some cheesy radio personality spewing the same tired statistic: "Hey-heyyyyyy! Did you know that the average person gains between 7 and 10 pounds over the Christmas holidays? Uh oh!" (Look, it's really hard to convey the "cheesy radio personality" voice in a blog. Cut me some slack...). But it's true. The big eating and the resulting weight gain are anticipated, almost joked about. But it's no joke when the bill comes in the mail in January.

We spend the early part of every year trying to work off all the pounds we gained over Christmas, with varying degrees of success. We spend that same amount of time paying off our Christmas credit card bills. For months after one of the happiest and most festive times of the year, we slave and struggle to repay all that fun we've had. Talk about a buzz-kill.

I'm a pretty big fan of the You Only Live Once/If It Feels Good Do It line of thinking, so I'd rather enjoy my holidays with reckless abandon. That's why this month, I'm overpaying my credit card so I start with a debit on my account before I start Christmas shopping. Even though I'll still spend a grotesque amount, it will seem less horrible.

And I like to do the same with my holiday eating. Because if I enter a room with egg nog in it, you can bet I'm drinking some of it. 18 grams of fat per cup be damned (I do not advocate "Light" egg nog; if I wanted egg-flavoured water I'd have stayed living on the farm and drinking out of the well!).

Egg nog has a very high, er... interest rate, but I have no problem adding that to my debt-load. Life's too short not to.

Your Q4 Fiscal Action Plan
November is your last chance to prepay your dietary credit card before the crazy eating season really starts. Start making smarter diet choices now, and see if you can cruise into the holiday season with a "debit on your account." If you were to lose even 2 pounds before December rolls around (no pun intended), you'll still be slightly ahead of the game in terms of the 7-10 pounds the average Canadian gains each Christmas.

But here's the other half of the puzzle: exercise. They say diet contributes about 75% of the work to a weight management program, and exercise makes up the other 25%. And I agree with that. But where earning calories is concerned, I suggest putting your emphasis on exercise starting right now in November. Here are a few reasons why:

November: With diet alone, you'll be able to make a nice small prepayment on your dietary credit card for the holidays. Exercise will help to increase the size of that payment. Imagine if you exercised enough in November that you waltzed into December with a 5 or 6 pound pre-holiday weight loss? Even after you gained the typical 7-10 pounds that Canadians pack on over Christmas, you'd come close to breaking even! Not only is that good for your physical wellness, but it's a great mental and emotional boost, too, to know that you've remained in control of your exercise and nutrition during the most challenging time of the year.  

December: The work you put into your exercise in November will not only afford you a dietary credit card overpayment, but something else will happen behind-the-scenes too: you'll have been establishing a habit. Not only will this habit help you earn even more treats during the big eating season but more importantly, that habit will hopefully continue on through the month of December - a.k.a., the month when all dietary hell breaks loose. Studies have shown that it takes 21 days to make a habit; that's what November was for. Once the calendar turns to the month of December, that habit will already be engrained and you'll be more inclined to exercise to earn or burn all those delicious Christmas calories. Go ahead. Envision yourself saying 'Yes' to a second glass of full-fat egg nog WITH rum, knowing that you spent 30 minutes earlier that day having a brisk incline walk on a treadmill. The few hundred calories you'll be racking up by drinking a few glasses of rummy egg nog will have already been paid in advance by your exercise habit. 

January: Cut your fitness-related New Year's resolutions off at the pass. Gyms bust at the seams with Resolutioners in January, February... March? Not so much. But chances are very good that you'll make a similar resolution. Will you stick to it? It's a heck of a lot of pressure to be one of the hundreds or thousands of new members at a gym trying to get inspired to build a fitness habit. But you could already have your habit built by then. Listen, you've got two months before you have to make that resolution, and you KNOW you're going to make it, right? So start your exercise plan now. Get the habit started early and beat the resolution crowd to the punch. By the time all those nervous, wide-eyed Resolutioners hit the floor in January, you'll already be on auto-pilot.

Ka-Ching!
If you start right now, and vow to exercise all the way through the holiday season, three times a week for 30-60 minutes at a time, burning an average of 500 calories each time, that's 1500 extra calories you can consume each week and still break even - because the holiday season is no time to try to lose weight, just as it's no time to try to save money. You can drink full-fat egg nog, you can have an extra heap of stuffing and gravy with your turkey dinner and you can have Turtles for breakfast, as long as you've made a little room on your dietary credit card.

When the New Year rings in and the holiday season finally starts to fizzle out on January 1, 2010, aim to be the same weight you were in October before all this eating madness started. And even if you do gain a few pounds, at least you've taken great strides toward creating your fitness habit. You've been making your minimum payments. And it's easier to avoid going into debt than it is to pay it back once you've gone into the red.

Building or continuing an exercise habit through the month of November will set you up to continue the habit through December, and into 2010 and beyond. Even with all the parties and the Turtles and the nog, as long as you've got a regular exercise habit under your belt (no pun intended) you'll come closer to ending the Christmas season in the black.

 

So, I started writing this rather self-righteous post about how I think it's foolish when people go to what I consider 'illogical extremes' with their diet. I tried to use a survival analogy to illustrate my point - referring to the fact that our ancestors, the mighty cavemen, didn't restrict their diets. They *couldn't* restrict their diets, in the name of survival.

As I was writing it, I started looking around for information to back up what I thought was a really great point. Instead I found some research that indicates that cavemen DID in fact eat a restricted diet - not out of choice, but because it was all they had access to. And their restricted diet may have rendered them a lot heathier than modern man.

Once I realized the research slightly contradicted my entire analogy, I thought about deleting this whole entry. Instead, I decided to shovel up a big ol' slice of humble pie and publish it anyway. Even if my original point is now somewhat moot, it's still interesting to learn about the caveman diet. 

More interestingly, this very contradictory post can actually help to illustrate a very real issue in the Wellness World: contradictions are everywhere. One person may tell you to that cardio is better for fat loss, another may tell you that weight training is. One may tell you that a vegetarian diet is the best way to keep your heart healthy, another may tout lean protein as the source of a healthy heart. It's very difficult for the average end-user to know what's true and what's hype, and it makes the whole journey down the wellness path even more winding and convoluted than it needs to be. We have to band together to wade through the muck. So that's what this convoluted, time-stamped post now represents: wellness muck-wading.

What started as a quasi-Darwinian look at nutrition soon evolved into something else entirely. 

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"If it doesn't make sense, it probably isn't true."
(Thursday, October 29, 10:12am)

Truer words were never spoken (and we have Judge Judy to thank for that gem).

Sometimes when I'm pondering an issue that affects us as a species, I think in terms of evolution.

In order for us to evolve into man, the one and only thing we needed to master was survival. To this end, man learned how to do a lot of things that probably didn't come immediately naturally to him. He learned to drink water. How did he learn to do this? Let's assume it was trial and error. Probably sometime very early in our existence, when our first single-celled ancestors emerged from the primordial soup, we lost a few generations of organisms because we were just so gosh-darned thirsty but didn't know how to satisfy our thirst. Or, for that matter, what "feeling thirsty" even meant. Eventually we learned that if we drank water, we could stave off that thirsty feeling and - as a bonus - we didn't die as much.

As we grew from plankton to monkey to man, we learned a lot of things in this way. We learned that we needed to eat. We probably expended a few generations' worth of ancestors just figuring out what plants and organisms were edible and which were poisonous - or which ones would fight back and kill us if we tried to eat them. We learned to make weapons to take down these bigger, more murderous meals. We learned that their skin and fur kept us warm when the temperature got cold. We learned to make fire to keep us even more warm and we figured out that if we cooked our meat over that fire, we lost even fewer of our kin to illness.

We figured all this stuff out. Of course. it took a really long time to get to where we are now. Now we live in a world with flying machines, smartphones and crunchy tacos INSIDE soft tacos (how do they DO that?). But it can't hurt to think back to where we came from and how we managed to get here.

Which - to sum up this neverending preamble - is why I shake my head when I hear someone say that he or she is trying some kind of new eating plan that eliminates {food item/macronutrient}.

The fundamentals of nutrition are relatively simple: the food we take in is converted and used in a very specific way in our bodies to keep us survivin'. Moreover, we've been honing the skill of survival for millions of years. In our history as a species, nutrition has played one of the biggest roles in our ability to thrive, reproduce and evolve. 

Scaling nutrition back to very simplistic terms, we have our macronutrients: protein, carbohydrates and fat. Water is sometimes tossed in there as a macronutrient too. We have the vitamins and minerals. All of these things work in the body to regulate stuff and help build the tissues and cells and things that we need to, you know, exist. I'm REALLY simplifying this...

What if I told you that I decided I was going to go on a low-calcium diet? You'd probably recoil in horror at the inevitable loss of density in my teeth and bones. You'd remember back to everything you learned in your life about how drinking milk is necessary for us to "grow up big and strong."

Or maybe I'll try a low-Vitamin C diet. Think of all the calories I'll save if I never eat another orange again! I'll look super hot in my swimsuit this year, if you can overlook the scurvy-induced bleeding gums and skin lesions.

Or, okay. Let's put this in terms that modern-day 21st-century man can understand: What if I said I was going to go on a low-protein, high-carb diet?

*stunned silence*

Somewhere in very recent history, carbohydrates have been labeled "really bad" and protein deemed "super good." Fat suffered this same fate a few years ago too, before everyone jumped on the low-carb wagon. In fact, they're all totally unique, equally-necessary macronutrients that perform important roles and tasks for the proper care and function of our bodies. Every macronutrient, vitamin and mineral is equally important, and shunning one of them makes absolutely no sense.

Our genetic code, dietarily speaking, is built upon simple, intuitive eating habits. Rather than obsessing about what to eliminate from your diet, spend less time thinking about it altogether, and let your body have a logical sampling of all the macronutrients. The building blocks of basic nutrition are not open to interpretation. We didn't get to where we are today by eliminating one or more of  our necessary dietary elements.

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Eating Crow (a Good Source of Lean Protein!)
(Thursday, October 29 2009, 11:26am)

Well now I'm a little bummed, because I just read this article about the caveman diet, which says that in fact cavemen *did* have a restricted diet, and that modern man is not equipped to consume and digest all the refined carbohydrates we've been eating since the advent of agriculture.

The article went on to indicate that some of the common diet-related diseases we see occurring more and more often as time goes on - such as obesity and Type 2 diabetes - are because, at the genetic level, our bodies have not kept up with the technological advances of agriculture and food preparation. We are not programmed to thrive on our modern diet.

Cavemen didn't have a means by which to process and refine the grains that modern man eats in such abundance today. Sugar and salt as we know them didn't exist. Even dairy was scarce or non-existent. As a result, cavepeeps probably had healthier hearts and narrower midsections than the average modern man.  

Cavemen ate only what they could kill or procure from the plants around them, so it meant a lot of lean proteins, fruits, nuts and berries. It sounds a little Atkins-ish, except that the caveman diet wasn't restricted out of some desire to look hot in a loincloth - it was simply because only certain foods were available. 

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So What have we Learned?
(Thursday, October 29 2009, 4:04pm)

I still feel confident that the best way to eat is to eat in a way that makes logical sense. But maybe it has to make sense 400,000 years ago.

400, 000 years ago, there was no white rice, no white pasta, no white bread, no sugary candy, no salt shakers on the table. Cavepersons intuitively ate the things that were available to them, things that existed naturally in their world, and they were probably healthier, nutritionally speaking, than man is today.

So we could say that we've learned that we should avoid eating refined grains... but I feel like we probably knew that already. Eliminating refined grains is NOT the same as eliminating all carbohydrates, and even the cavemen knew that. They ate lots of berries and as many whole grains as they could dredge up. If a caveman had decided to NOT eat berries, he would have been eliminating one of his vital sources of nutrients - a deeply illogical move, especially since a caveman needed to have as much energy as possible, since he spent much of his day battling sabre-toothed tigers and inventing the wheel. The caveman needed to eat all of the naturally-occurring foods available to him, and so do you. 

If someone suggests that you need to eliminate an entire macronutrient in order to be fit and healthy, tell them, "No thanks. I'm trying to keep our species alive here." 

Poor fat. Fat has such a terrible reputation. "Don't eat fat and, whatever you do, definitely don't be fat." I know so many people who have no tolerance for fat. I remember one extremely lean fitness colleague of mine saying that she was happy she had almost no breasts to speak of, because she couldn't stand to look down and see all that fat sitting there on her chest. She even made an "ew" face as she said it (never mind that she was talking to me, a girl with a healthy layer of body fat all over).

I don't know about you, but now that I'm in my 30s I am much more welcoming to fat. I think it keeps me looking luscious and healthy.

I know what you're thinking: "Did she really just describe herself as 'luscious?'" I did. And I meant it. And I like it.

So here's a shoutout to Fat - probably the most-despised macronutrient... and that's saying a lot, because there are a lot of carb-haters out there.

The Fat Manifesto

-- Fat is necessary for your body to absorb some important vitamins. If you don't eat some fat, you can scratch vitamins A, D, E and K off of your list, because your body aint gettin' any.

-- Did you know that fat is necessary in order to help waterproof the skin? Imagine how soaked you'd be if your skin wasn't 'laminated' with water resistant fat. You'd be literally soaked to the bone.

-- Fat is a crucial component of many hormones that work hard in our bodies to keep our engines purring.
 
-- As you get older, you have to sacrifice your butt to save your face. If we strive to eliminate every ounce of fat from our bodies, it shows up on our faces. Our cheeks become sallow and wrinkly. Our lips vanish. Our boobs go away. Do you really want to look like the Crypt Keeper in middle-age? Having some fat on your face keeps you looking youthful - but it does mean that you'll have to hang on to a little fat elsewhere on your body, including your butt.

-- This one's for the ladies: we're SUPPOSED to be soft. Listen, I covet a Dara Torres body as much as the next girl, but it's not realistic to be that fat-free, unless you happen to be an Olympian. Men typically like a lady with some lady lumps. 

-- Fat takes a long time to digest, so if you're eating meals that have an ideal balance of good fats, you'll feel satisfied longer.

-- Oh, another one for the women (men, shield your eyes). As much as we hate our "monthly visitor," if your fat intake and your body fat become too low, you may stop menstruating. It may seem like a blessing in disguise, but it is actually the tell-tale sign of a serious hormone imbalance and/or low energy availability (i.e. you're not eating enough of ANYTHING to keep your body functioning normally). Whenever your body ceases to function normally, a red flag should go up, but especially in this case because the seemingly awesome cessation of your period can contribute to severe bone loss.  
 
-- Fat insulates your cells and neural pathways, and are an essential energy source for the brain. If your fat intake is too low, it can affect the function of your mind, and may lead to spaciness, lack of focus and depression. Who wants to be a bummed-out hardbody?

-- You need to take in a certain amount of good cholesterol to even out the bad cholesterol in your blood. These good fats help prevent heart disease by leveling the playing field between good and bad cholesterol.

-- Some of the most delicious and indulgent food experience come at the hands of fat. Fat has a very pleasing sensation to our mouths. This is one of the reasons why fatty foods are so "addictive" - our brain registers this pleasure sensation and makes us want more, more, more. Of course, we need to keep our fat intake to a healthy range, but these deliciously pleasing fatty foods can and should be enjoyed in moderation. I don't want to live in a world where I'm not supposed to eat cheese.

Yoga is many things – restorative, peaceful, ancient… and intimidating. There are so many benefits to a yoga practice, but it can be overwhelming for a beginner. What do I wear? Where should I set up my mat? What if I can’t bend the way they want me to bend? What happens if my cell phone rings? 

Believe it or not, all those people you see strolling around with their yoga mats casually tossed over their shoulders on their way to or from a yoga class went through this exact same learning curve. Nobody told them how yoga studios work – they just mustered up their courage to try it, and figured it out as they went along.

But many of us aren’t that courageous when it comes to trying a brand new, totally foreign activity. Here are some quick tips that will have you waltzing into your first yoga class looking like a pro.

Class levels and types
The types and levels of yoga vary from studio to studio and instructor to instructor, so your best bet is to venture in to your local yoga studio and pick up a schedule, or see if they’ve got one posted online. Almost all yoga studios’ schedules will describe what each of their classes is like.

Restorative yoga – sometimes called Hatha yoga - is a great place to start if you’re brand new to yoga and feeling nervous about any physical limitations you may feel you have. These classes typically move you into poses more slowly, and you’ll spend more time enjoying each pose, working on improving your flexibility and reducing your stress.

Power yoga classes – often found under the category of Ashtanga yoga - can be an incredibly demanding muscular workout. If your studio has an Intro to Ashtanga class, give that a whirl. If not, an Ashtanga Level 1 class is pretty doable for most people – you just have to embrace the fact that much of the terminology will be new and foreign to you.

Hot yoga is a much newer branch of power yoga done in a studio where the temperature is turned up high. The resulting hot workout gets your heart pumping and your sweat flowing like almost nothing else. This sweat-fest is said to help eliminate toxins from the body, and the heat of the room may help enhance flexibility – warm muscles tend to be more bendy than cold ones. 

Studio Etiquette
In yoga studios, there is one big rule: please be quiet. Other classes may be in session when you arrive, and loud noises can disrupt the experience. Turn off your cell phone before you walk in the front doors of the studio, and try to remember to speak in a soft voice while you’re there.

Try to be on time for the start of class, and stay right until the end. Coming into and out of the studio is often disruptive to the meditative experience of a yoga class. 

Necessary Gear
Yoga is a pretty gear-light activity. A yoga mat is really all you need for the average class. These mats are just cushiony enough to keep you comfortable on the floor and just sticky enough so that your hands and feet stay firmly planted during poses.

Some classes may have you use additional equipment like blocks, bolsters and straps to help ease you into more complex poses. Many yoga studios have these items available to borrow.

As far as wardrobe is concerned, wear a comfy top and long shorts or pants, and bare feet! Don’t worry too much about the state of your pedicure – honestly, nobody is looking.
 
Yoga Vocabulary
Your instructor may intersperse some Sanskrit language into his or her class. Don’t let this trip you up – you are not expected to memorize these words. Other instructors may use English words to describe the poses. Either way, try not to let the terminology intimidate you; eventually you’ll start to learn what some of the words mean.

In addition to the poses, there are a lot of breathing (“pranayama”) and posturing (“bhanda”) terms that your instructor may toss out during practice. He or she should explain what they mean during class, but if not, just hang in there and do your thing. Eventually you will begin to catch on.

The good news is, yoga hasn’t changed much in the last few thousand years, so once you start getting the hang of it, you’re golden.

Honour the Body
There is a strong focus in yoga on “honouring the body.” This means checking in with how your body feels during your practice, and taking positions and challenges that work for you and you only. Let go of judgments and ego and just accept that your body will tell you when it wants to push hard and when it wants to rest. If your instructor ever takes the class into a pose that you really feel you’re not ready or able to try, you can absolutely choose to skip that pose.

Allow for a Big Learning Curve
There is a lot of poses in yoga, and you are never expected to know them all. Allow yourself the opportunity to learn, and give yourself a break if your instructor asks you to take a pose that you’ve never heard of before. Every single person in the room has gone through the very same learning curve you are experiencing. After four or five classes, some things should start to make a little more sense to you. Hang in there!

After the Class
The very end of a typical yoga class involves a few minutes of relaxation and meditation. Meditation is yet another daunting aspect of yoga practice, as many of us feel that we are too busy and important to shut off our minds and just sit quietly for a moment.  In fact, truly letting go of your physical, mental and emotional struggles will leave you feeling refreshed, renewed and at peace.

Some yoga studios do not allow participants to leave during the meditation, so if you are pressed for time or aren’t feeling in the mood for relaxation, be sure to pack up your mat and quickly and quietly leave at the very beginning of the mediation. You’ll know when it’s meditation time, because everyone will be lying on their backs, resting. Your yoga instructor may refer to it as “savasana” (shav-AH-sah-na), which is a Sanskrit word meaning “corpse pose.”

The instructor might guide you through the meditation, or leave you to rest quietly on your own. Some people fall fast asleep during meditation and, yes, some people even snore! It’s all good – anything goes in savasana.

After a few moments, the instructor will start to “bring you back,” waking you up from your relaxed state of mind and body.

Namaste
At the end of class, typically the instructor rand all the participants share a Namaste – or ‘thank you’ in Sanskrit. It, like everything else in yoga, is not mandatory; it’s simply a sharing of all that good energy you’ve created within yourself.

Yoga will challenge and invigorate you like almost no other workout can. The intimidation element of the yoga studio should never deter you from doing something so restorative and so positive for your body and mind.

Lay comfortably on the floor. Any position that is comfortable to you.

Ideally, allow your arms to float away from the body centre. If possible, allow the legs to also float away. 

When we are tense, our bodies seize up, and everything seems to squeeze in to our centres. Tension is held in the centre – the centre of our hips, the centre of our shoulders, the centre of our eyebrows.

Ideally, the centre is where we reach when we need strength, courage, flexibility, breath, and yet it can also be the centre of all our tension, cares and worries. 

As your breath starts to slow and your body and mind start to relax, start to think about the width of your body. Front body, back body. Internal, external. Face. Mind. Allow the tension to leave your centre, and experience the distance between left body and right.

Move through the body, experiencing and allowing this width. 

Become aware of your feet rolling outwards, heels supported by the floor. 

Similarly, experience the external rotation of your ankles and leg bones.

Allow your pelvis to soften and nearly liquefy, giving the legs even more room to widen. Observe the width of your soft pelvis, the distance between right hip and left hip. Envision and even wider pelvis, and go there with your breath. 

Moving up, acknowledge the softness of your belly, and experience the width of your soft breath as it travels in, filling up the chest and abdomen. 

In your mind’s eye, see the width of your rib cage, and watch it expand even more with every soft inhale.

Continuing up the body, imagine a very wide collar bone. Miles wide, and very, very heavy. 

Also acknowledge the width of your upper back, across the back of your shoulders. Feel your wide shoulder blades supported by the ground. 

Traveling up the back of the head, over the crown of the head, come to the forehead, and imagine miles of width across the forehead. Untie the knot between the eyebrows.

Increase the width of your eye sockets, and of each individual eyelid. Un-squint the eyes, and let the top of your head completely surrender. 

Envision the width of your cheeks, your jawline. Allow the jaw, tongue and throat to fall back toward the floor. 

Stay here, experiencing your full width, the sensation of having no held tension, no struggles anywhere in the body.