Monday, October 22, 2012

Emilia's Corner: Good Days & Bad Days...

Crazy Emilia!

We all have them, it is part of being human. How you deal with your good and bad days is what’s important.

I am going to talk about the benefits of having exercise as part of your routine to be used as your outlet for helping you get through those bad days (aka stresses) and reaching the happiness we all deserve.

The most important reason is that exercise provides an effective release of negative emotions, turning these otherwise potentially unhealthy emotions into motivation for increased health and well-being. Sometimes it can be tough for us to realize this, but all we have to do is get moving for a few minutes and you will notice a difference in your mood almost instantaneously, I guarantee it.

Here are some benefits of exercise to reduce your stress:

1.      Stress Hormones
Exercise helps to decrease the hormones in your body that are there to help you cope with stress. It is a natural mood booster that can last all day. – see this link for more information on stress hormones and the causes of constant stress.

2.      It is a great source of distraction.
Sometimes, all we need is a change in scenery temporarily to take our minds off what we are thinking about and exercise is an excellent tool to use to do so. That can be anything from walking to yoga to the gym which all of these places can be a lower stress environment to help clear your mind.

3.      The shallow part: looking good = feeling good
Yes, this is a more surface level benefit but when you exercise and start to feel the changes in your body it is extremely motivating, empowering, uplifting and therefore of course it is going to increase your mood! When you look healthy (to what you feel for your body is,) it reduces your stress level immensely.

4.      Environment
We all know when you’ re in a positive environment where the people around you are all about similar values it rubs off on the other. Using exercise as a positive tool to get together with friends and family will only bring a positive attitude and therefore help to reduce your stress levels. Make it a consistent commitment and the gains will be even greater.

5.      Immunity
While stress can cause illness, it is important to have exercise in your life. It helps to increase your immune system, which helps to ward off sickness such as the common cold or flu’s.

6.      Resilience
This by far is my favorite reason for having exercise in my life.  The more frequent you exercise and associate exercise as a positive factor in your life, the more resilient you become to your daily stresses and less affected by them!

To me that is so important, because it is so easy to get into a funk, you need that key go to positive outlet that will help you be the person you are meant to be.

If anyone has questions on exercise please feel free to drop me a line:


Yours in health,

Emilia

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Choices...


Every day we make choices and decisions. Some we think about, ponder, weigh the pros and cons and take our time choosing. Then there are those choices we don’t think about, they are easy and require little to no thought. Going for coffee with a friend you haven’t seen in a long time, smiling at the cute guy at the gym, buying a pair of jeans because they make your butt look amazing. Then there are the choices that you used to give no thought to that you now have to give every ounce of energy you have into making. For me these once easy decisions are around food and eating. I used to give it no thought and now it takes all the energy I have sometimes to make the right choice, the healthy choice, the choice that is going to move me towards my goal of a healthier more vital me.

I had this thought that once I made the decision to start working with Emilia and live a healthier life style it would be easy. There would be a big fat red “easy” button sittin’ there. Nope. I started to have to get honest with emotions and feelings that have been buried deep. Feels of the hate for those individuals that made elementary school and high school more difficult and the same feelings of hate towards myself for letting them. The more I started looking the more I began to process these emotions. Over 20 years of habits, choices and decisions laid out in front of you is never an easy pill to swallow. I am then reminded of a scene in movie Sex In The City 2 where Samantha is about to take a handful of pills and Charlotte asks her how she’s going to swallow all those. Samantha smiles and says “Have we met?” I have started to swallow this pill and wage a war on the unhealthy habits and choices that I previously gave no thought to because who I was in high school is not the same girl that I am today.

Choices are made in every moment of every day. Making one wrong choice in one moment is human, it’s how long you let that choice derail you where strength is found. I had a challenging week in a lot of areas, but in the area of eating I made better choices this week than I did last week. I wasn’t perfect and that’s ok, because I wasn’t as bad as the week before.  I am choosing to celebrate this because this journey isn’t about being perfect, and for a recovering perfectionist, well heck….

Yesterday was weigh in and measurements with Emilia….4.5lbs lost never to be found again!