Yoga has been a constant for me in living the #healthycoastallifestyle.
This blog hasn’t been the only area in my life where I’ve been slacking off in the last few months. It’s like everything I’d been grooving on in my life that I’d been neglecting really gelled in the past few weeks. Whether it’s slaying the cleaning, developing new soap creations, or exercising, I have reclaimed these things for my life with boldness and renewed energy.
The #healthycoastallifestyle has been one area that has suffered the most in the past months, and that has had the most significant impact on my life. Spring should’ve brought gorgeous weather for getting out and walking, but temperatures climbed quickly, as did the humidity. When I went for my annual check-up, my vitamin D levels were low, which is suprising, given how much I’m usually outside. Early summer brought scorching temps, though low humidity levels. It was simply unbearable being outside for more than a few minutes. I kept up with my yoga practices; they’re essential to my physical and mental health.
We spent a lot of time being active as we focused on cleaning. While my phone didn’t acknowledge my progress (it generally stayed on a table), I felt it. This week marked a new energy in my lifestyle. Cooler morning temperatures leave me no excuse for not lacing up first thing in the morning to walk. Yesterday morning I dug out the weights for the first time in months and did some upper and lower body training. Then, yesterday evening, I embraced every masochistic tendency I ever thought of having and did a half-hour core-strengthening pilates workout. I’m pleased to say that I can actually move, laugh, breathe, and bend over.
I am a little achy but I’d forgotten how glorious it feels feeling strong again. When I was at my peak, I moved in confidence and strength, and the months of being lax on my cardio and weight training had taken some of that from me. But now I’m back and it’s back! I felt it this morning as I’ve moved around the house.
In the intervening months, I maintained my weight by watching what I ate and keeping my calorie intake lower than my calorie burn – for the most part. I messed up some days, and that’s OK. There were also many days in there when it digitally looked like my numbers were flipped, but I knew I’d burned way more calories than my fitness app thinks I did.
While it would be so easy to just give up now, to admit defeat, that isn’t a happy place for me to be, and I’m not a quitter. While I may get lax attending to things in my life that are important to me, I never give up on them completely. That mindset and attitude has breathed new life into my healthy coastal lifestyle, my home, and my business.
What do you do when you’ve gotten slack on meeting your life goals? How have your turned your momentum back around? Let us know in the comments below.
As soon as the teen declutters her folder in my Dropbox – she’s got a video in there she’s working on for a cool project she’s doing – I’ll begin talking more about our Tidying Up a la the KonMari Method, complete with pictures.
I read Marie’s book, and some of her beliefs and how they translate into her method strike me as strange. Her beliefs, not so much, but how she ties them in with tidying… That’s another story. If you catch her show on Netflix, she begins each home visit with a time of meditation in which she introduces herself to the home and thanks it for what it does for the home’s owners. It seems strange to thank an inanimate object for anything.
In Marie’s book, she advises thanking your home each time you enter. She suggests thanking everything you get rid of for what it did for you or taught you. The focus of the KonMari method is being intentional about what you keep, not what you discard, and keeping only those things that spark joy. When we express gratitude for what we have, we find our attitude towards it changes.
As I’ve said before, I’m not a “stuff” person, so finding joy in what I have is rather a reach for me. That being said, I’ll try almost anything once with the belief that, if it doesn’t work for me, I can always go back to what I did before or try something new. No big deal. Following the KonMari Method, I became intentional about making the bed every day. Then I decided that the last person up should make the bed, so I only do it half the time. It’s nice sinking into a nicely-made bed with fluffed pillows each night. My husband, though… He has to put up with some girly pillows. Poor guy.
I don’t verbalize “thank you” to my house when I enter. Generally, I’m simultaneously kicking my shoes off, hanging up my purse, and keeping a cat from slipping out. At night is when the gratitude is most available to me. I slip my day clothes off and let them rest on my bed before changing into what the evening holds – loungewear or workout wear. When I get ready for bed, I put my day clothes away and thank them for what they did for me. Same with my lounge wear and workout wear. As I do this, I’ve noticed a couple of new things. One, no matter how tired I am, I will still take the time to put the clothes away. Two, I am becoming more grateful for these clothing items.
Gratitude is also part of the practice of yoga. One of our instructors says every practice, “Think of someone you’re grateful for, maybe someone who made it possible for you to be here tonight.” My thoughts immediately go to whoever is home and cooking dinner while I practice. It’s one thing to think, It’s so nice of my teen to make dinner while I’m at yoga! It’s still another thing to feel grateful in my heart for her doing this. When I go home, though, and tell her “thank you,” that gratitude is out in the open. It becomes a tangible thing that fills her heart and mind so she can then share my joy. She blooms in front of me in those moments.
With these expressions of gratitude comes an understanding of joy in my things. I have always appreciated my things and taken great care of them. Now, I will know the joy they spark when it comes time to tidy again and to cull out.
Part of the healthy coastal lifestyle is having good mental health and a healthy space. These are interconnected, and feeling and expressing gratitude helps promote good mental health and good, healthy relationships. How do you express gratitude for the things you have and for the people who help make your life possible? Drop a comment below.
So far, we’ve done clothes and books. My trunk is filled with bags of clothes and my living room still holds bags of clothes and boxes of books, all ready to donate.
As a way to promote my business and practice my writing, particularly with constraints, I have been responding to HARO (Help a Reporter Out) queries. Three times every weekday, I receive lists of topics from reporters who are looking for source feedback for their articles. Categories include business/finance, health & medicine, lifestyle, entertainment, travel, and so forth. Interested persons reply to the queries and, if accepted, their responses are included in the article, either digital or print, with mentions of their business. I got my first mention in a blog post that came out yesterday. You can read that article here.
This morning I responded to a query from a reporter looking for success tips from people who have lost 20+ pounds and kept it off. I thought I’d share with you what I shared with that reporter. I’m not including the “common sense” stuff about cutting sugary drinks for water and exercising every day.
My tips for healthy lifestyle success:
(1) Just do it, anyway. When I don’t want to go out for that walk, I grab the sneakers and walk anyway. When I don’t really feel like going to aerobics, I grit my teeth and do it, anyway. I find a “commitment” activity. Though it was humid out this summer, once I grabbed a pair of socks, I mentally committed to walking. (I keep a pile of clean, paired socks beside my bed, so I can just reach down and grab a pair. Boom! Commitment before I get out of bed.)
(2) Ignore weight. The scale just tells us about our relationship with gravity. When you’re improving your health through changing food choices and adding exercises, it’s common not just to lose fat but also to build muscle. A pound of muscle weighs as much as a pound of fat (so no weight change between losing that fat and building that muscle), but a pound of muscle is denser and has significantly less volume than a pound of fat. Your weight may stay the same while your body shape is noticeably changing.
(3) Record everything you eat. With the holidays coming up, this is tedious – heavy family dinners, parties, socials, etc. This helps you see patterns in your eating and helps you make adjustments to make sure you’re getting enough carbohydrates, fats, and proteins without consistently overdoing any one of these. I use an app in my phone to keep up with this.
(4) Move. Grab extra steps whenever and however you can. Some days require long periods of sitting, but break them up by walking and stretching.
(5) Be gracious with yourself. You’re not going to exercise when you’re sick. That’s OK. There’s no walking outside when it’s 30 degrees. Ate 2400 calories on that day of the office Christmas party followed by your spouse surprising you with dinner out? It’s one day. You haven’t failed as long as you get right back to it as soon as you reasonably can.
(6) Eat the dessert. In other words, don’t do a deprivation diet. Eating a little bit of that “bad food” will stave off cravings for it and the potential for bingeing on it. Denying yourself carbs or fats or whatever to lose weight just makes you want those foods that much more after you meet your weight-loss goal. I have seen, time after time, people regaining unhealthy amounts of weight after following low-carb diets or diets where the foods/meals are provided for them. Just be sure to record the food in your food journal and possibly add some extra exercise to the week.
I had already cut out sugary drinks (tea and sodas) in favor of water, so that isn’t something new to me. I also don’t drink many alcoholic drinks (max 2-3 a year) or fancy coffee drinks, all of which pack on a lot of empty calories. I am still losing weight, but this lifestyle change has become a part of me. Simply put, the side benefits make me feel good, so I’m more inclined to keep with it.
Once you make a healthy lifestyle yours, it goes beyond such mundane things as dieting for weight loss and trying to bulk up. With a slow and steady progress, the healthy lifestyle becomes just that – a life style. Or, a better way to look at it is, a style of living for the rest of your life. It’s a style of living that includes healthy, balanced eating; regular exercise; and overall choices that lead to a longer, happier, healthier, more active life.
It’s the end of my second year of living the healthy coastal lifestyle, and I’ve met all but one of my goals. I had a weight goal that I’m still striving towards, but considering it wasn’t my primary goal, that’s OK.
In the last year, I’ve added high/low impact aerobics and yoga to my previous routine. I’ve hit plateaus (OMGosh, how annoying are those!?) and reduced my daily calorie intake a bit more each time. I learned that I have anxiety and have added routines (not just yoga) to my life to help reduce that. In May I had a complete physical, including full blood panel, which gave me some additional insights in how well I was doing in taking care of my body. In short, it’s been a very health-ful year.
In year one of my HCLS, I went on a mission trip and the knee I’d rehabbed the previous year did great. This past spring, I went back to Washington, DC and put even more steps on my pedometer, and it was as if my knees had never hurt at all. A couple of weeks after that trip, I wore the black velvet choker to our anniversary dinner I’d striven to wear again.
Hubby + me. I’m wearing the choker in this pic.
I’ve noticed some incredible changes in my body over the past two years!
I’ve lost over half my targeted weight. This isn’t a gross loss; while I’ve burned fat I’ve also built muscle. It’s frankly disgusting to think about the mass of fat cells I’ve lost – we’re talking the weight equivalent of 3 gallons of milk! And those fat cells took up a lot of space (fat has a great deal of volume). I’ve replaced some of those pounds with muscle, which has less volume. Think of the difference between a pound of feathers and a one-pound brick; they weigh the same, but the feathers take up considerably more space than the brick.
I have greatly reduced my reliance on NSAID pain-relievers. With the advent of yoga in my life came increased calm, increased mindfulness, increased flexibility, and decreased pain. Before starting yoga, I would have to take two tablets before aerobics to prevent pain (hopefully) and three more at bedtime to help control pain and swelling overnight. I haven’t had to take NSAIDs at all, either prior to or following my high/low impact aerobics classes.
I enjoy greater strength. While I still do and enjoy weight training and toning, yoga builds strength in different ways. To the casual observer, it seems wimpy – holding poses, balancing, etc. However, to the yogi, yoga requires a great deal of strength. Core strength (the power in the back, sides, and abdominals) is essential to the balancing poses of yoga. Arm and upper body strength are necessary for poses such as downward facing dog, tabletop, and plank.
My clothes (very annoyingly) don’t fit well anymore. They’re loose and I’ve had to start wearing belts to prevent public embarrassment. While I’ve replaced some of my too-big clothes, it seems pointless to go out and buy a whole new wardrobe when I’ll have to buy still more clothes after I hit my goal.
Can we talk stamina? I have more energy than I used to. Part of it is from losing the weight, but another part is from building up my cardiovascular health. I’ve walked at stiff paces for 3.1 miles and barely felt it. Yet, my heart was beating at a robust, fat-burning 150+ bpm. That stamina and energy have also translated into other parts of my life. I’m more active during the days, no matter what’s going on.
What healthy steps have you taken to meet your fitness and health goals? Drop a comment below and share what goals you’ve met so we can celebrate with you.
Two weeks ago, a major hurricane bore down on our coast before deciding that the area is quite lovely and she wanted to spend a couple of days just hanging out. A full day of devastating winds followed by two days of catastrophic flooding were her gifts to us before she moved on to torment towns, cities, and communities inland.
My teen and I returned from the beach and started preparing for the storm with an eye toward the possibility of having to evacuate. I had decided to pull some turkey carcasses out of the freezer to make bone broth to can, thinking, if nothing else, we’d have some broth with which to make soups (on the grill) or to add flavor to beans and rice (cooked on the grill).
For those of you who don’t know, bone broth is a fantastic base for soups and gravies, and, better still, the collagen that steeps out of the bones is great for gut health. (My husband will be having outpatient surgery in the coming months, so any leftovers would be good for him.) I make my broth with the bones of the previous year’s turkey and use it to make the next year’s gravy. It makes a LOT of gravy, so I had a bit leftover in the freezer. With the power outages, though, there’s a chance it would no longer be good, so I’ll toss it when we get home.
Early in the week, I made and canned seven pints of bone broth and had two quarts leftover to freeze. As midweek approached, we’d decided to ride out the storm, so I’d started another batch, pushing to get it made and canned while we still had power. Unfortunately, an evacuation notice curtailed that brilliant plan, so I poured everything from the slow cooker into a huge container, wrapped it in four grocery bags, and carried it with me to my parents-in-law’s house where we have been since we left.
I finished the broth our fourth night evacuated. As I was ladling the fresh, hot, fragrant broth into my container, I had a few thoughts go through my head. One, I simply had to admire my broth. It’s beautiful, all golden healthfulness. Two, I need to skim the fat off of it, freeze both the fat (for the gravy) and the broth, and can it when I get home. Three, it’s a good time for starting fresh and new.
Turkey bone broth
Through the disaster and the not knowing, we are finding the happy things. We are grateful for all we have as we get through this time. We are taking advantage of opportunities that this location affords us. We are thankful that we homeschool and can take our studies with us, as well as find awesome-cool field trips and things to explore that we don’t have at home.
We have no idea what our home looks like now or what it will look like when we return. One this is for certain, though: We will have to clean out our refrigerator and freezers (maybe the freezers, depending on how long power was out). This means starting with a fresh, clean space. We will have to air out a home that will have sat in heat and humidity with no central air for over a week. We will want to launder bedding and change sheets – all sorts of things to freshen up our home.
The seven pints of bone broth I canned and the ten or so more I will be canning will be new and fresh for us, too. They will see us through cold and flu season, dinners, and pre-procedure clear liquid diets. A quart will give itself to our amazing gravy for Thanksgiving dinner. They will be the start of something wonderful as we take this opportunity for fresh newness.
*Note: For the sake of this article, “beach camp site” refers to a person’s or group’s spot on the beach. This might be towels and a beach bag, or it may be a 10×10 canopy, wet bar, lounge chairs, DJ, and separate play area for the kiddies.
Part of my brand is all about enjoying our gorgeous North Carolina beaches, and they are here for all people to enjoy, both tourists and locals. As the girls and I were spending a day at the beach today, I thought of how our beaches’ visitors, both local and touring, could make beach-going better for everyone.
A 30- second beach break
(1) Do not play music loudly on the beach. The beach has the best sounds: Crashing waves, cawing seagulls, and happily squealing children. Many of us go to the beach specifically to enjoy these sounds. Your loud music drowns those sounds out. You don’t actually have the right to play your music loudly enough to be disruptive to others. Sure, listen to your music; that’s what earbuds are for. Otherwise, if you wish to look at water while you blast music and get drunk, please do us a favor and do this in your bathtub or backyard pool. There was a group with a serious “let’s party” speaker on the beach today. I ended up moving our beach camp far down the beach until I couldn’t hear their music anymore. Never have I wanted to scatter bread crumbs around someone as much as I wanted to today. This brings me to my next point.
(2) Do not feed the seagulls (aka, beach rats). You may be thinking, Awww, how cute to see little Billy offering his fries to the seagulls! It’s so cool watching them flying around! It may be like you’re in a fun summer movie, but it’s not so fun for those of us around you. Do you know that stuff goes into seagulls, and stuff also comes out of them? Those in the 20-foot radius around you really don’t wish to get pooped on while you’re feeding the birds.
(3) Only smoke in designated smoking areas. Have you smelled the beach lately? It smells of wet salty air, ozone, and a glorious blend that can only be half a dozen different sunscreens. You may enjoy the pungent aroma of your nasty smelling imported cigarettes or cigars, but the rest of us? Not so much. And while we’re at it, please keep your butts off our beaches – your cigarette butts, that is.
(4) Do not litter. Do you love ocean life? Maybe you are big on ocean life because you’re a die-hard conservationist. That’s great! My younger daughter is, too. Maybe, you want to protect ocean life because – let’s face it – shrimp and fish make for good eatin’. Litter on the beaches eventually makes its way to the ocean where it harms and kills ocean life. No butts, no bottles, no cans, no plastic bags. Every beach access has trash cans available, and some also have recycling cans, too.
This simply comes down to, love our beaches and be considerate of others at the same time. There are a lot of little beach etiquette rules; I grew up with them, and they’re pretty common-sense things. Things like, don’t shake your towel out where the sand will blow on other people. Don’t run by people, kicking sand up on them. Watch out when you’re boogie boarding so as not to run into people in the shallows (sometimes unavoidable).
We want everyone to enjoy our fabulous beaches. It would really suck if someone came to one of our beaches, had a horrible time because of inconsiderate beach-goers, and forever after vacationed in Virginia, South Carolina, or Florida. It’s real, folks. People judge beaches by the type of people that plant themselves on them. My parents will never again vacation at this one particular beach because of people that were there one time. I myself avoid a certain beach for a similar reason (that, and the beach is narrow and crowded).
What makes or breaks a beach experience for you? Drop your comments below.
If you’ve been following me on social media and through my blog and newsletter, you know I’ve recently started doing yoga. I go to a class once a week and do some exercises on my own throughout the week. At the beginning of each class, Beth, our instructor, tells us to “set your intention for this time.” My intention is rarely the same week to week. This week, I may want to stretch out. The next week I might be focusing on building strength. Two weeks ago, mindfulness may have been my goal. Those are really three very different foci, and it’s pretty impossible to set an intention for more than one at a time. Sure, I can do the flow with mindfulness as my goal and still build strength and stretch out, but I can only concentrate on one intention at a time.
Doing yoga has helped me learn how to set intentions for each day.
The same happens in business. My intention for my business is to serve my customers the best I can. Another day, my intention might be more growth-oriented. These don’t happen in isolation from each other or any other focus I might have for my business on any given day.
I am using the lesson from yoga to impact my business. Each day, I’m going to start out by stating an intention for that business day. Today’s intention was transitional. Transitional days see me moving from the last major task to the next one. I finished clearing out the remnants of the lip balm order I sent last week and prepared to restock some soap. This transitional day was also a day of preparation: When my new printer crosses the threshold tomorrow, I will be ready with stacks of labels to print off.
By stating an intention for my days, I am doing more than setting a goal. I am declaring what I will achieve that day. Doing this today has energized my day. I have felt super-charged to make things happen, but only if they work towards my intention. Wrapping soaps that need to be wrapped is not part of today’s intention, so they will only get done after everything else is complete. They are, however, a huge part of tomorrow’s intention.
Do you set intentions or goals for each day? I encourage you to set an intention for each day, and let me know how that changes how you’re able to do life or work in the comments below.
I shot this quick video last night when I got home from Dance2Fit. This is real, y’all – sweaty, no makeup, hair pushed back in one of my daughter’s soccer headwraps to keep the sweat from dripping into my face.
I’d gotten home after a 75-minute workout, during which time I’d downed about 20 ounces of water. I wasn’t perfect; I missed steps and kicked right when everyone else was kicking left. Two things happened last night, though, that really fired off some pride and humility in me. First, the instructor praised how low my squat was – right after praising this other lady who was also killing the held squat. The cool part is, I admire and respect that other lady’s fitness level and how she does the class. She’s been doing Dance2Fit for years and really has the routines down. The humbling part came after a grueling 3-4 minute arm workout. I was walking around my spot and stretching out my arms when I happened to notice a new lady to the class was copying my stretches. Just like I watch the lady I admire, this lady was watching me. You can bet I was a lot more attentive to how I moved after that!
Genetics and a life of not making the best choices both ensure that I’ll never be skinny – not without some really dangerous behaviors or extensive and expensive surgery. And that’s OK. I’m getting stronger with every workout, be it high-impact aerobics, weight-lifting, cardio, or yoga.
For ages, society has equated skinny with healthy, and in some cases, that is certainly true. However, skinny isn’t the only shape healthy takes. While far from skinny, I’m in the best health of my life, not just judging by strength, but also by the numbers – blood pressure, cholesterol, resting heart rate, and glucose. I celebrate my healthiness and my strength, even while I continue to slim down my silhouette.
How are you building strength, whatever stage in life you’re finding yourself? Drop your response in the comments below so we can celebrate and encourage you.
Dieting is anathema to healthy living. I’ve seen it too many times to count. Back in the 80s when NutriSystem was new and hot, someone I know jumped on it; she was a “chunky” size 10. (Funny what was “chunky” by today’s standards.) She followed the diet faithfully, lost a bunch of weight, and looked GOOD. As soon as she met her goal, she got off the diet and started eating as she wanted (a large bag of Doritos in a day, for example), and all those pounds came back and brought friends. They settled in and never left, and now this person has a number of weight-related health problems. Both our dads have done low-carb – Atkins and South Beach – and we’ve watched the pounds drop while they followed the diets and the pounds come back as they started eating carbs again. Even I’ve done that in my life – reduced calories to lose weight, only to gain them back and more once I met my goal. That life isn’t for me.
This yo-yo dieting isn’t healthy at all. It puts tremendous strain on every part of the body. It slows down the body’s metabolism, actually making it harder to lose weight, especially around the gut and internal organs. Yo-yo dieting also leads to increased cortisol levels, which makes us gain weight. It can further lead to Type 2 diabetes and high cholesterol, both of which can lead to life-threatening cardiovascular events. In short, yo-yo dieting can kill you.
I don’t diet. I hate diets. I think they’re intrinsically flawed and doomed to failure for reasons we’ve all experienced. You deprive yourself of something (in behavioral psych terms, that’s called punishment), and when the “punishment” is over (e.g., you’ve met the weight loss goal), we enjoy the forbidden foods again and all those pounds come back with reinforcements. I saw similar behavior with my younger daughter last week. She abused the boundaries we’d placed on her tablet use during the school year – a day after getting it back from a previous punishment. She’d lost her Fire through the end of the school year, and we gave it back to her when she returned from a mission retreat. For two straight days last week, all I saw was the top of her head while she played games or watched videos on it. Her punishment was over, and she glutted on the thing we’d taken away. As a result, I began placing limits on her use, turning it into a reward.
I like food. I like the tastes, the textures, and the experience of food. When I want the food, I eat the food. It doesn’t matter what it is. I am tending to skew to a higher protein percentage for muscle repair from working out. However, I’ll eat a cookie or a serving of ice cream or a serving of popcorn. I try to reduce my carb intake throughout the day, giving my body more time to burn them, but I don’t beat myself up if that doesn’t happen. For me, it’s about moderation and grace. Could I eat a quart of ice cream? Sure. Do I? Not in a sitting. I eat that ice cream a 1/2 cup at a time over weeks, if not months. (That’s moderation.) Some days, I eat more calories than I burn. I don’t give up; I just get back on track the next day, and maybe exercise a bit more throughout the week to keep myself on track overall. (That’s grace.) I’m not a failure because last Tuesday I blew my calorie count out of the water at our anniversary dinner.
My breakfasts tend to be carb-heavy, my lunches more protein- and fruit/vegetable-heavy, and our dinners feature lean protein, vegetables, and, when possible, carbs from veggies (jicama, carrots, peas, etc.) more than from grains, rice, etc. However, when someone else in the house plans and cooks dinner, I gratefully go with what they fix and don’t demand a special meal (there are quite a few social reasons behind that that I won’t get into here). To their credit, they run their menus by me ahead of time so I can eat accordingly throughout the day. I only snack on days when I’ll be eating a late dinner because of workouts and/or soccer practice, and it’s something high-protein, like cheese, a glass of milk, peanuts, a protein bar, or a snack serving of Kind Dark Chocolate granola clusters (low glycemic index, good protein – and that stuff is AWESOME!!! in vanilla Greek yogurt).
I drink a LOT of water. Lately I’ve been averaging 9 cups a day. I have 2-3 alcoholic drinks a year, no more than 2 sodas a year, and maybe 5 glasses of sweet tea a year. Juice is rare, milk is less a drink and more a calcium and protein source, and my one mug of coffee a day is the source of my personality. I can’t stand artificial sweeteners and avoid them at all costs. It’s pure cane sugar or I go without, and since I don’t want to take in tons of sugar, I’ll opt for “without.” Besides, water is cheap; I got into that when I was in Div school and broke but we still wanted to go out occasionally without spending $2 on a glass of tea that costs the restaurant about $.08. (Plus, water keeps our urinary tracts functioning at their best, doesn’t destroy tooth enamel, and keeps the rest of our organs functioning at their peaks.)
The result of all this? Mentally, I know I’m not depriving myself, so I don’t feel like I’m being punished for being overweight, which is basically what weight-loss diets do; they’re punishment. Eating is necessary, but how and what I eat becomes a choice with consequences. If I eat too many carbs in a day, I really don’t feel good in my body. If I want a little sweet bite after dinner and eat 3 Kisses, then I have the pleasure of the chocolate and the “yay, me!” of knowing I’ve exercised will-power. I’ve lost about half the weight I want by combining eating well with a variety of exercises. It hasn’t been fast, but it’s been steady, and I’d rather be healthy for life than just lighter for a few months.
And even better? I’ve met my final health goal. Last week, I was able to wear my favorite black velvet choker to our anniversary dinner. Check it out!
My honey and me
And I’m still so excited about those shoulders! Woot!
Have you started living the healthy coastal lifestyle, yet? You don’t have to live at the beach to make the magic happen. And remember, the slow walker is doing far better than the couch potato. What steps have you taken to improve your health? Tell us in the comments below.
In this video, I share with you tips for living life more mindfully to reduce stress, lose weight, and increase creativity. Whether you think of mindfulness as a habit or a discipline, practice truly does make perfect. You’re not going to get it completely right the first time, and that’s OK. Give yourself the grace to mess up and to embrace the fresh opportunity to start over with the next day. Start with one minute and go from there. Remember, we’re flowing like water.
If you have questions about the effects of our emotions on our bodies’ chemicals and what that has to do with health, feel free to ask them in the comments.
Did you try it? How was it? I still have to work to bring my mind back to the now or to keep it from straying to the then. How do you feel after practicing this mindfulness exercise for a few minutes? Please let me know in the comments below.
