Tag: Healthy Coastal Lifestyle

Keeping The Healthy Coastal Lifestyle a Life Style

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.

Healthy Coastal Lifestyle – Year 2

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!

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.

The Bone Broth

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.

Strong is the New Skinny

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.

Mindfulness Flow

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.

Springtime Salad

Spring means fresh fruits and the beginning whispers of fresh vegetables (asparagus, anyone?).  As the temperatures warm up, we’re outside more which means different dinner menus.  Our fare has gone from hearty and filling to lighter and filling.

Last weekend, our family went to a dinner party at a friend’s house.  Our contribution was a large, fabulous salad that was a huge hit.  It was fancy by our standards, and I guess it was a fantasy salad by everyone else’s standards, too.  Maybe they also grab a bag of greens and toss salad dressing on them?

This salad was so refreshing and delicious that I just knew I had to share it with you.  Best yet, it is super-easy to make.

Spring Salad from Sara Nesbitt on Vimeo.

So, getting to the skinny on how to make this…

5 ounces of spring mix greens (or any green of your choosing)

1/2 cup of cheese (bleu cheese crumbles or shredded cheese)

1/3 cup candied pecans*

1/2 – 3/4 cup sliced strawberries

1/2 cup sliced mushrooms

Salad dressing to taste (I used 2 ounces of Balsamic with Honey Dressing)

Combine all ingredients in a bowl and mix well.

*To make the candied pecans… Melt a tablespoon of butter in a small pan.  Add a tablespoon of light brown sugar and 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon.  Mix together.  Toss in 1/3 cup chopped pecans and stir to coat.  Let cook for 5 minutes, stirring frequently.  Remove from pan and set on wax paper until cool.

We served this salad as a side, but it is also wonderful with chicken for a main course.

Throw this together for a mid-week dinner and let me know in the comments what you think.

Just Eat the Damn Dessert Already!

It’s been one of those days.  Shoot, it’s been one of those WEEKS!  My daughters are taking turns being the conductor and the engineer of the crazy train, I’m working, school is taking forever to complete because of their misbehavior, and some crazy evil spirit has possessed my usually angelic younger child, a spirit that can’t be exercised exorcised because her soccer practices have been cancelled all week due to rain.

After a particularly trying day today, I was ready for a 2″ tall chocolate cupcake “lightly” frosted with 4″ of buttercream icing.  Upon hearing that, my teen – God bless her! – started tossing dark chocolate Doves at me.  That got us through inverse logarithms.  But dang, I still was having lustful urges towards cupcakes or these new espresso brownies our local coffee shop posted to their Instagram feed yesterday.  You know, when things are going to crap, you just want some comfort food, and my comfort comes in the form of chocolate.

Español: chocolate en piezas
Español: chocolate en piezas (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Yet, comfort food isn’t exactly good for the waist, nor is it good when one is trying to live the healthy coastal lifestyle.  So what’s a person to do?  Easy!  Just eat the damn dessert already!  When the spirit is drained, the head is pounding, and you just want to crawl up and have a good cry, just eat the blasted sweets!  Take comfort where you can.  Tomorrow you can get back to pounding the pavement.

And total psychological recovery requires both.  Don’t deprive yourself of the treat, but also don’t beat yourself up for indulging in it.  When you go to bed, the day is over, and when you awaken the next morning, it’s the perfect opportunity to start all over fresh.  It’s also the perfect time to lace up the sneakers and get outside.  Take a walk or a jog.  The important part here is to get fresh air, clear your mind, and get some exercise.  Follow that with some mindful stretching, yoga, perhaps.  Fuel up for the day, and swing right back into the healthy coastal lifestyle.

How do you recover after a particularly stressful day?  Comment below.

The Healthy Coastal Lifestyle Continues

A couple of weeks ago, I shared how my journey toward the healthy coastal lifestyle began with exercise.  As I began this journey, I determined to keep a food journal in my phone.  This helped me see what I was eating, how much I was eating, and how healthily I was eating.  After sweating through my first months of exercise, I decided to start getting serious about eating healthily.  If I was doing all this work, I definitely wanted to make sure I wasn’t sabotaging my efforts.

Now, for my caveat…  I don’t have any dietary restrictions or health conditions that prevent me from eating whatever I want.  I do have a genetic predisposition towards high cholesterol, which often sucks, given how much I like eggs, shrimp, and liver pudding, so I do limit myself on these foods.  If you have questions or concerns about how to adjust your diet, talk to your doctor first.  These tricks are what have worked for me.

Things to be aware of…  Sugar is the basic source of energy for us people.  Our bodies burn off simple sugars first – sucrose, fructose, glucose.  Then they go to carbohydrates, converting carbs into sugars.  Once our bodies don’t have any carbohydrates to consume as energy, they start attacking fat, converting fat into sugars for its use.  Keep that in mind, as it is very important for how you eat.

The food journal/diary is very important.  It’s an old trick, it’s fairly simple with today’s technology, but it’s still important.  You can go old school and write down what you eat with pen and paper.  There are computer programs and device apps that keep track of your meals, your calorie and nutrient intake, and whatever else you could want.  Mine also keeps up with my nutrient score and rewards me with a badge when I hit 80 or above (the closer to 100, the better).

Focus on carbs earlier in the day.  This gives your body time to burn it off throughout the day.  Shoot for absolutely no carbs after 5 p.m. (way easier said than done!).  Each gram of carbs is worth 4 calories, so remember that when you’re ready to dive into that Cinnabon.  I hit another plateau in my weight loss, so I started cutting back on carbohydrates, forcing my body into fat-burning mode with the twice-weekly aerobics classes and thrice-weekly walk/jogs.

Working, exercising, straining muscles need protein.  Proteins help repair muscles after workouts, though a protein hit an hour before your workout will boost you gloriously through it.  I grab milk, peanuts, a protein bar, or a cheese stick.  Proteins will also help you feel fuller for longer, so you won’t be as tempted to snack.

We can’t forget the fats, though.  It’s gratifying seeing that I truly am cutting carbs, but it’s also disheartening to see the fat grams stacking up.  Our bodies need fat, though.  It’s essential to the metabolism of vitamins A, D, E, and K.  Keep it lean as much as humanly possible, though, avoiding saturated fats and embracing unsaturated.

I honestly deny myself nothing.  If I want dessert, I eat dessert – but only if I’ve kept the eating limited throughout the day.  When I know I’m going to be eating heavily, such as at special dinners, I just go with some lean protein for lunch.  I learned several years ago that when I crave something, I should enjoy it in moderation and get rid of the craving.  Otherwise, that craving becomes an obsession.  At the same time, I listen to my body’s cravings, because usually it craves foods with nutrients it needs.

Working out paired with dietary changes has made a huge difference in how I’ve felt and in my healthy lifestyle journey.  I had to make a wardrobe transition, donating too-big clothes and buying new clothes that are already feeling loose.  But it’s all good, because I see the changes in my body, both in the mirror and when I feel the new muscle tone in my back, arms, abs, and thighs.  And just Sunday, a friend/aerobics instructor said she could see in my face that I’ve lost weight.  When I washed my face last night, I could see my cheekbones have reemerged – those lovely cheekbones that bely my Cherokee heritage.  It’s so good seeing them again!

What steps will you make towards embracing the healthy coastal lifestyle?  Here we are, early in the year with New Year’s resolutions and Super Bowl junk foodin’ behind us.  It’s a great time to get serious!  We’ve got this!

 

The Healthy Coastal Lifestyle Begins With Exercise

For me, it began with exercise.

This week has included celebration as a bunch of a friend’s friends and I celebrated her 10-pound weight loss in the last month.  That’s tremendous, because she owns the fact that all she’s done is hit the treadmill.  Yet, she’s not seeing results as she’s expecting.

Thinking about Kim’s success made me think back over my health journey and what I would tell someone who’s just starting out – what’s worked, what hasn’t, what my obstacles and frustrations have been.  For me, it started with a decision.

There’s what I stated publicly – very specific, measurable goals.

Screen shot of Facebook post
My publicly stated goals

But then I also had some powerful internal motivations, as well.  My husband has a seizure disorder, and nothing makes me feel more powerless than seeing him on the floor and not having the upper body strength to even come close to helping him up.  I’m an only child of parents that are getting older.  When they get older and not able to take care of themselves, I’ll need to take care of them.  I also have an aunt who doesn’t have children and therefore, no one but me to take care of her when she reaches her advanced years.  I’ll own that I haven’t always been in good physical shape, so I want to make sure that I’m healthy enough to ease the burden on my own family should I need them to care for me at some point.  Basically, a large part of my motivation is to be in shape to care for others.

Caveat:  What I’m describing is what has worked for me.  Every single body is different with different needs for different daily activities.  I’ll cover my dietary restrictions – or lack thereof – in a future post.

On 1 October 2016, after months of high-level stressors including the loss of a once-cherished friend, I frankly got tired of being fat and feeling unhealthy.  I was tired of not looking good in my clothes, despite the slight strengthening I’d felt in my legs from months of rehab and in my arms from some light weightlifting.  So, I girled up and stepped on the scales.  After all, I had to learn where I was before I could determine where I needed to go.

It had begun with rehab the January before.  Doing one set each of exercises in the beginning was all well and good, but as the number of sets increased, I had to have something to do in those rest periods besides twiddle my thumbs and peruse Facebook.  So, I grabbed a pair of 2-pound weights and started doing arm exercises.  It was good, but not enough.

One of the key factors I had to take into consideration was the strength and durability of my knees, my recovering right one, especially.  I began to walk.  And walk.  And walk.  I found I really loved walking outside and would do so every chance I had.  We live in a safe neighborhood, and our town boasts a lovely, well-maintained pedestrian/bike trail that circles the historic downtown area.  I’d walk throughout the neighborhood 2-3 days a week – it’s 2.6 miles twice around – then I’d walk around downtown while my teen was in her weekly dance class.

And on the other days, I did strength training – squats, lunges, bridge lifts, crunches (soooo many crunches!), bicep curls, lateral lifts, and tricep curls.  I also began to keep a food journal in my phone; the Samsung Health app includes all this.  I was feeling great!  I was disciplined, and nothing was going to keep me from achieving my goals.

I was three months in.  My clothes were getting loose, and unseasonably warm temps meant I was outside a LOT.  Time to step on the scales for the first time after the holidays.  I’d lost… 3 pounds.  THREE.  Not 13.  Not 30.  3.  At that point, I decided to start looking at measurements instead of weight.  That was much more delightful to track, because while I was burning fat, I was also building muscle.  Often, my losses and my gains canceled each other out.  But imagine a pound of feathers.  Pretty bulky and voluptuous, right?  Now imagine a pound of brick.  It still weighs the same as the feathers, but it’s compact.  That’s what was going on in my body.  The fat has more volume than the muscle, so it takes up more space.

I kept at it, adding biking when the weather warmed up and swimming when things got really hot.  I walked still and ran up and down the field with my soccer teams.  The pounds and inches kept disappearing, the clothes got baggier and baggier.  Last fall, I got tired of the plateau I’d hit and kicked things up with low-impact aerobics.  That lasted just a few weeks before winter break, so I found a Dance2Fit class offered for free just a couple of miles from home.  That’s seriously high intensity that leaves me pouring sweat by the time I’m done.  It’s great!

Throughout all these exercises, some things changed on my inside.  First, if I exercise in the second half of the day, I sleep much better at night.  Exercising that strenuously has also been a good way to increase my water intake.  As I resumed walking last month, yet another change became apparent.  The dancing and aerobics have strengthened my heart muscle (yes, the heart is technically a muscle), and what used to feel “strenuous” is now easy to me.  My rate of speed has increased by a half mile per hour in the last year and I’ve even been able to jog some.  Yet, my heartrate stays comfortably on target or even a little below.  It looks like my challenge will be to kick things up a little bit more.

That’s the cardio side of things, but what about the strength training?  I’ve gotten heavier weights that I’ve been using, and the results are becoming more and more apparent.  For the first time since I was six, I’m able to wear an off-the-shoulder blouse, because I have the sexy shoulders to pull it off.

Woohoo! Sexy shoulders!

The gain has been worth the pain, that’s for sure!  My core is stronger, giving me a stronger back and better posture.  My arms and legs have new contours and sleeker appearances, and both are stronger, able to do more, lift more, live more.

When it comes to living the healthy coastal lifestyle, exercise will come easier to some people, while eating right will be easier for others.  I liked starting with exercise, because I was adding something positive to my life.  When that friendship I mentioned above blew up, suddenly I had lots more time in my days to devote to taking care of myself.  Eating the right way inevitably means taking out something we like.  Maybe it’s that bit of sweet after dinner or the cold PopTarts breakfast as we run out the door.  Working out and beginning to feel those results – while also keeping a food journal – served as great motivation to change my eating habits, which I’ll discuss in the next post.

We’re one month into the New Year.  How are those resolutions coming?  Is your gym membership card or that new piece of exercise equipment starting to collect dust?  Time to dust it off.  Don’t let a week or two of slackness derail your goals.  You’ve got this!

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