Spring Cleaning

What a great time of year!  The birds are singing, the temperature is getting warm, and the sun is still shinning at 6:45pm!  Love it!  This is the time of year we should be making New Year's resolutions, not when it's dark, cold, and all you feel like doing is crawling under a warm blanket.  This blog is entitled Spring Cleaning and is intended to help you get a fresh start on becoming well.  It's time to dust off the dumbbells under your bed, throw unhealthy habits out the door, and put a fresh coat of muscle on your body.  Making changes for better health does not require a monumental life upheaval.  In fact studies and research have shown, if you overwhelm yourself with to many lifestyle changes all at once you will end up failing to accomplish your goals.  Start off one brick at a time until you have a solid foundation in which to take on bigger challenges.  I've put together some "bricks" in which to build on. Try to develop at least one of the following wellness habits this spring-

From left to right
Chooch, Louie, Paris

-Use a pedometer to start logging your daily steps and or miles walked each day.  It is recommended that we take at least 10,000 steps per day.  2,000 steps are approximately 1 mile for a grand total of 5 miles per day.  Chooch and his friends love steps :)  You can purchase pedometers at any sporting store and of course online.  They can range from $1.00 to $50.00.  There was a report done by a group of researchers interested in finding the accuracy and reliability of pedometers.  Their results were published in the Medicine & Science of Sports & Exercise Journal (2003,35[8], 1455-60) and here is a list including some of the top performers:

• Yamaz Digiwalker SW-701 (around $25.00)
• Walk4life LS 2525 (around $25.00)
• Sportline 330 (around $12.00)

-Keep track of your food intake.  More often than not we eat more than we presume.  All the little extra calories that get snuck in throughout the day will end up adding to be big pounds.  In fact if you eat just 500 extra calories a day, at the end of the week you will have accumulated 3,500 calories which will put 1 pound of unwanted weight on you!  Of course the opposite is true: -500 calories per day x7 days and you will lose a pound of body weight.  First step, figure how many calories you should consume  in a day and then create a calorie deficit.  The site http://www.livestrong.com/thedailyplate/ does this all for you and I highly recommend it.  It will ask you for some basic information in order to compute your daily caloric needs.  You will then log on throughout the day and input what you eat.  It will keep track of the calories you consume and at the end of the day, show if you are at deficit or not.  Great resource!  Take some time and try it out!

-You are what you eat!  This saying is so true.  I have a seek and destroy mission for you.  Take the next 10-20 minutes to seek and destroy any and all unhealthy foods!  Possible hiding places- cabinets, refrigerator, cupboard, pantry, in the car, office draw....  We all have a pretty good understanding of what an unhealthy and healthy food is.  Replace packaged/processed foods with whole foods (I like to call them real foods) i.e. apples, pears, bananas, carrots, peppers, celery, nuts, beans.....  Foods that have to be picked off a tree or dug from the earth. Yum real food!  These foods will help with your energy level, skin appearance, weight loss, cholesterol levels, mood, and will help you with overall health.  Your mission starts now!

Well Gang, Happy Spring :)  Use this naturally motivating time of year to make some healthy changes.  Take one step at a time and along the way, enjoy the hike.