Contributors
Posted by admin on March 6th, 2012
Reason #3 – I want it and I want it now
When I was just a we lad in elementary school, our teacher set-up a pen pal program with another school in a different state. Our class would write letters and send them off. We would then wait a couple weeks to get a response from our counterpoint in that other state.
I think about that now and realize that that was almost as archaic as riding a horse or waiting to get home to make a phone call. With the benefits of technology comes one irrefutable down side. We, as a society have no patience. That statement is exemplified in the New Year’s Resolution to lose weight.
Let’s recap using our test subject Bob. Bob is 38 years old, 6 feet tall and weighs 195 pounds. He wants to lose 10 pounds as a New Year’s Resolution. He calculates his Basal Metabolic Rate and his Harris Benedict Numbers and knows that based on his activity level, he must consume roughly 2600 calories a day to maintain his 195 pound weight. He knows that there are about 3500 calories in a pound of fat so to lose 10 pounds he needs to burn 35,000 or through diet and exercise, get to that 35,000. Bob joins a gym and jogs for 30 minutes which is roughly equal to 310 calories. After his first day of jogging, as a result of poor exercise habits and bad nutrition, Bob can barely move. His initial plan of working out 5 days a week has been cut down to 2 or 3. In addition, Bob rewards himself with some diet no no’s and subsequently increases his calorie intake.
At this rate, Bob’s 10 pound weight loss will most likely coincide with the first manned mission to Mars, probably in the next century.
Throw in the frustration of not seeing immediate results and you can see why so many resolutions fail.
The Solution:
Change “New Year’s Resolution” to “Lifestyle Goal”
Small changes to your lifestyle will have a much greater impact than trying to change everything all at once for the sake of some crazy tradition. And here are my top 5 ways to do that:
1 - An active lifestyle change is always easier when there is someone else to do it with. Find a buddy, a neighbor, your husband or wife, even your kids and commit to doing something active with that person at least 3 days a week.
2 – Resistance Training is a must. Go to your local gym, get a session with a personal trainer and get on a plan that incorporates resistance training into your regiment. If you can’t afford a gym or personal trainer, buy some resistance bands at your local Target or Wal-Mart and follow the instructions inside.
3 – Calories. Work out all you want but if you don’t manage your diet, you’ll never see results. Us the equation’s to figure out how many calories you need to maintain weight and then try to shave 500 calories day off that.
4 – Eat Smart. Now that you have a calorie count in mind, do your best to spread that out over 5-6 smaller meals in a day. When just beginning, try a ration of 65-35% Protein to Carbohydrates and eat most of those carbohydrates during your earlier meals.
5 – Have Fun. An active lifestyle change is about enjoying more of what life has to offer. An active lifestyle change has the potential to create so much joy in your life. Utilize that change to meet new friends, enjoy new activities, travel, and try all the things that you have always wanted to do. Sign up to run a race, or compete in a marathon or join a cycling club. Whether you are taking your fist dance lesson, or your first step on a treadmill, enjoy the journey that comes from a healthy active lifestyle.
Posted by admin on March 6th, 2012
You open your pantry door and the contents resemble aisles 18 and 19 of your local Vons Market. You know those aisles. The aisles of temptation. The ones that house chips of all varieties: Doritos, both ranch and original, Sour Cream Pringles, Wavy Lays, and of course your old go-to, Cheetos. The aisles that have helped you ride the waves of bad breakups with boyfriends, your father’s third marriage and multiple class reunions. The aisles that always offer consistency even when everything else seems like an endless tornado of chaos. You know exactly that the Double-Stuf Oreo’s are always fully stocked and sit reliably next to the Chips Ahoy. Why couldn’t your date on Thursday night be this trustworthy right? Seriously, Nilla Wafers are never an hour late and you don’t have to pick up the tab for them because their debit card was declined. So as we bid adieu to 2011 and welcome in the bliss of baby new year, I want to offer you some straight-up nutrition advice and talk about creating some realistic expectations for 2012. This is going to be the first in a series of blogs over the next month where I discuss setting realistic goals for the new year. I’m not going to insist you go on a radical juice cleanse for 35 days and will lose a pound per day. I’m just going to help you look past the chaos and get a little clarity on what is part of healthy, balanced lifestyle. Who knows, in the process you might just learn to skip past aisles 18 and 19, decline the call from Mr. Unreliable and welcome in a new thought process that affords your best interest. Because after all, you do deserve better.
The biggest mistake that most women make when setting goals for the new year is that they set unrealistic expectations for themselves. Hence, when the goal isn’t reached and disappointment sets in, they revert back to their old habits and tend to stay there longer than before without trying to set new goals. They forget to readjust. Why we women tend to set unrealistic goals for ourselves is, in my opinion, part of our modern-world feminine syndrome. Women by nature are care takers and want to make everything right for everyone which tends to drive us to overdo. We over-book, over-schedule, over-promise and over-commit to a fault. Sure I can be the perfect wife, mother, soccer mom, employee and/or boss and oh by the way I will have a phenomenal roast done for dinner that will put Martha Stewart’s culinary talents to shame. All while volunteering to bring snacks for the Girl Scout outing on Saturday just right after I drive the entire junior varsity water polo team to their weekend tournament and I write the budget report due at work. I’m such a great mom. I’m exhausted and think I have my right contact in my left eye because I was in such a hurry this morning but who cares, I am getting it all done right? Plus, to further the syndrome, women in our modern, fast paced society now have the social capacity to run billion dollar companies and hold equal status to men in business. So, the modern woman paradigm really encompasses all facets of life from motherhood, to bread winner, to care taker, to confidant. The woman’s perceived role has jumped from 45mph to 125mph over the past two decades. So how can a modern woman who has so many responsibilities still take care of herself, her diet, her nutrition and her personal exercise goals?
The first thing to remember is to prioritize. That means prioritize yourself and your health. Once you put yourself as a priority you will be making less trips to the store for granola bars and oranges to bring to the Saturday game and more trips to the gym. Also, once your health is a priority your waltz’s down the aisles of temptation won’t seem like the escape they used to be. Instead you will take more joy in spending more time on the perimeter of the store picking up lean protein and organic produce. The less stressed you are the less likely you will be to rely on the old standby’s of sugar and carbohydrate-rich sweets. So a pretty simple goal, prioritize yourself and your health.
The second key to building a healthy you is to simplify. Let’s face it, we live in a fast-paced world that can seem pretty complicated with all the downloads to do, software updates to get done and instant messaging to keep up with. But when it comes to nutrition, keeping it simple still works best. Build the core of your diet around whole, nutrient-dense foods. This includes whole grains such as brown rice, millet and quinoa, and fresh fruits and veggies in their natural state and lean protein. The less packaging the better and the fresher the better. If you can get your produce from a local farmers market you are guaranteed that the time it took to get that food from farm to your table is a lot less than it took to fly it from South America, get it through customs, truck it down from Los Angeles and deliver it to your chain supermarket. Hence, you will be getting a greater nutritional yield from what you are eating. As you are simplifying your diet and keeping it low in fat, low in sugar and moderate in carbohydrates, don’t forget to simplify your life in general. The appointments that you “have to” make…well take a second look at them and see how important they really are. Take inventory of the things that are really creating the biggest stress in your life. Is it financial, is it a relationship, or is it lack of time for yourself? Try to come up with a realistic plan on how to resolve the situation. Sometimes we avoid confronting a stressful aspect of our life because we are able to “deal with it” via coping methods we have put in place. But staying stuck in a destructive pattern is also stressful. So by dealing with it head on and staying steady in dealing with it a little bit at a time will eventually bring you to a better and healthy place that is free from dysfunction.
Lastly, re-committing to the realistic goals and priorities you have made for yourself will ensure that you reach your desired outcome. Frustration only happens when a goal is thwarted, so by setting goals that are within your reach, simplifying your approach to achieving them and then re-committing to your desire, you will avoid the stress, frustration and disappointment that comes when you push for too much too fast. Forget about rivaling Martha Stewart and hang up your angel wings for the winter. You will lose that twenty pounds for good if you do it steadily and still allow for the occasional cha cha through the Twinkie zone. Just as long as it is occasional and you don’t over-extend your stay, you will be on the way to your ideal self in no time. And believe me, next time you open up your pantry door and see that Chester Cheetah and Fred Flintstone have been replaced by brown rice bags and boxes of Kashi you are going to be much happier because you can fit into that sexy plum purple dress that you are planning to wear out on Friday with the fun, sexy and reliable guy you met while perusing through the Fuji apples at Whole Foods. Happy New Year to you, best wishes in creating those realistic expectations, and look for my next blog about increasing endurance during your training and decreasing fatigue in 2012.
Posted by Milena Glusac on March 5th, 2012
Have you ever wanted something so bad but you couldn’t have it. You finally move on and realize that you don’t need it to be your best you. Then one day, that thing you really really wanted comes back into your life. You are presented with the option to take it. You look at it. Examine it from side to side. Left to right. Up and down. You circle around it a few times and imagine how it would look on you in a mirror. Then with the wave of your hand you signal a “oh no this won’t do.”
How ironic, at one point in your life you would have felt like the queen of the century to have it. What happened? Why now do you feel differently? How could you have moved on so surely? No looking back. Even when you know that by turning it away, what you once desired with your entire being, will never return mainly because your staunch stance on it won’t allow the re-entry to occur. Did you ever really forgive or just realize that it was just flat out not good for you. You see, when someone cheats, they really realize that they cheated themselves out of something great in life and the maladaptive attempt to reconcile is really just and attempt to not have to carry a life-long feeling of guilt on their shoulders.
You know I used to be pretty forgiving. But not anymore. Nope. Now I just move on. No looking back. It really feels good to be the girl I should’ve been all along. Pretty empowering if I must say so myself. Sometimes I feel I’m slightly heartless. But then I realize if I was heartless I wouldn’t continue to volunteer my time to charities or help out my true friends when they were in need. No I can be heartless to the one that wanted to leave their heart out of a relationship. It is ok. In fact it is healthy. Boundaries keep countries cultures in tact and they keep our soul’s focused on embracing that which reflects true love and life. Sometimes love is tough. Sometimes it goes to 24 Hour Fitness at 10:00 at night and does a killer leg workout to the lyrics of Bon Jovi, Poison, Def Leppard and a little Bruce Springsteen just for an extra kick during those last two sets of heavy squats. Yep love can kick some major ass if you condition it to. And believe me, my love has learned to become the La Femme Nikita of the cardio world. I feel sorry for the poor jerk that tries to steal my heart without first depositing a golden token of good intent in the happiness jar. He might just get his butt handed to him by a 110 pound girl that is well hydrated by some Vitalyte, fueled by some Tri-Phase and ripped by spending two hours every morning and evening at the 24 Hour Fitness around the corner from her house.
See, being single allows one to set new standards of tolerance. Really in fact, I realized these standards should’ve been in place all along but they weren’t because I felt someone might leave if I actually made them accountable to their own actions simply by stating what was good and not good for me. I might lose something I never had or something that was never good for me in the first place. And what is the loss in that you might ask? Well, when you have never been able, allowed, or encouraged to have love, you will soak it up any which way you can. I mean there were big races to consider, and training to be done and major problems at home to attend to. You just don’t have time for that Milena and you certainly can’t afford the distraction. So the distraction came big time later in my life, hit ten times as hard. And sometimes it hit so hard I just felt numb because I didn’t even feel I was living my own life. But I’ve rebounded a hundred times better. That’s what I love about being 36 and fit as ever. My entire life is based around me now. Not a race. Not a sport. Not a boy. Not a parent. It is all about me. And you know…I really really like me. I love it that I give back to the community. I love it that I have amazing friends that confide in me. I love it that I work for an amazing company that offers people healthy alternatives. Sport has helped shape the landscape of my life. But it only has because of who I am and what I have allowed it to be to me. At the end of the day, anything could change the landscape of our life but we ultimately have the power to ascend to the top of the mountains that were created in the collision.
Posted by Milena Glusac on February 14th, 2012
If the benchmark for a successful Valentine’s Day includes a shop-worn half-dozen saran-wrap laden bouquet of red roses, a few out of date Ferrero Rocher chocolates and an off-brand greeting card with the word “love” mistyped, then I have hit the mother-load jackpot. Yes it seems that the only time the “ex-boyfriend” can even remember Valentine’s Day is when I am gone for good. And by gone I mean I have thoughts of Cancun at Spring Break and Vegas escapades that can only be recalled with the assistance of iPhone photos and Visa debit card receipts. Yep too little, too late. The gas station roses just won’t quite make up for two and half years of sub-par treatment and caviar dreams. I mean seriously, did you really think that ringing my doorbell at 10:24 pm Valentine’s night was going to impress me. No. What really impressed me was the $6 amazing cocktail I had at Flavor in Del Mar and the two extremely well-mannered and polished twenty-something young men that had enough class and maturity to hold an intelligent conversation with us for half the evening. So how does love lost but identity gained have anything to do with a woman’s blog? And by God Milena, how does it relate to running? Well here is my parallel so listen closely ladies. You may want to put away the Droid, turn off the Mac Book Pro and instead pour a great glass of lambrusco and take note. It really all has to do with attitude.
You have all heard the saying “No one wants to play with the toy until someone else does.” It seems that saying not only holds true in the dating world, but in all aspects of life. Your kids don’t want to pay attention to you until suddenly their best friend notices how awesome “Mrs. Kellerman” is. Your husband really doesn’t seem to take notice of the ten pounds you lost until his best friend points it out. Even the dog tends to take for granted your dedicated outings to the dog park until you are too busy a few days to take him and he misses out on the chance to see that oh-so-fine Bichon Frise with the perfect puppy pedicure. Yep, you are officially transparent, or so it seems. And then one day you have had enough. Instead of packing lunch you give the kids money and let them “fend for themselves” at the school cafeteria. Instead of making sure your husband has his favorite stock of Trader Joe’s Chocolate Covered Potato Chips on hand, you conveniently print out a MapQuest with explicit directions from your house to the closest location. And instead of taking Mr. Biggles to the pooch park, you hire K-9 Commando, owned and operated by a former CIA agent who now will teach the chocolate lab all the commands he missed out during his formative years. And what do you do with all this new free time. Simple, you put on your running shoes, head out the door with your new Jaybird headphones (my pick for the ultimate all-time favorite running headphone) and take yourself on a much needed, much deserved, long-overdue run. The time alone is worth all the trips to Nordstrom in the world, and the message you are sending to those around you (that mom has boundaries) is actually going to help everyone around you be much happier and healthier. Now they start to look inside to problem-solve and actually can reflect about the efforts other’s go through when then love and care for someone. I always say actions speak louder than words. I used to tell my ex that consistently but he didn’t seem to understand, want to hear or choose to listen. He had two and half years to figure out the importance, meaning and love that comes with that phrase. Unfortunately, he figured it a few months after I left and Valentine’s Day came and he had no one to spend it with. He left flowers on my doorstop along with a voicemail that was garbled between tears, an attempt to clear himself of the guilt he doesn’t want to deal with and a few long-winded apologies. I contemplated leaving the six red half-dead roses out on the porch. However, the lover of beauty in me brought them in, placed them in a vase and waited to see if they would come back to life. I deleted the voicemail and didn’t return the call. The roses were completely wilted the next day. Take back your power by under-doing, leaving the heavy lifting alone and do it with love in your heart and a smile and kind words. Those around you will sit up and take notice. You deserve the respect. I hope you had a wonderful Valentine’s Day. And if it wasn’t what you wanted it to be, then here are my suggestions. Go buy yourself a dozen roses, a new pair of running shoes and some Jaybird headphones. You will thank yourself down the road!
Posted by Milena Glusac on January 13th, 2012
Your alarm rudely awakens you at 5:30 am with the audacious blare of Adele’s “Rollin’ in the Deep” that your twelve year old downloaded for you while you were busy cooking dinner, helping your fourth grader diagram sentences, and taking two phone calls from your hysterical mother who can’t find her Shih Tzu for the fifth time today. You are fatigued. You are tired. You are exhausted. Any you have every right to be. You are balancing the dynamics that many modern women struggle with: Work, family, the in’s and out’s of daily life. There isn’t much left in your day for you. When there is, you are just too tired to make it to the gym or out the door for that run you keep telling yourself you will get to. Well it is time that your Nike’s don’t look like you just took them out of the box even though they are five months old. They are crying for some TLC and would do just about anything for some scuff marks or even a ripped shoelace. Something to show them you care. But no matter how many pep talks you have with yourself, how many times you say “I will get to it just as soon as I finish…,” or how many motivational reruns of Dr. Phil you watch, you just can not seem to gather the energy to get out the door. Well I am going to offer you a few ways, that during the new year, you can decrease fatigue and increase your endurance and help to bring some much needed energy as we start 2012.
Remember in my last blog we discussed setting realistic goals. Now that you have determined that your goal is to decrease fatigue so you can have some energy for your own workouts, how do you go about getting to your goal. These are three steps that I have utilized throughout my career to help me refocus on goals I have set. First, I always de-clutter my environment once I have set a goal. I determine the factors that are keeping me from achieving my goal and if there is anything in my immediate surroundings that I can remove, I do so immediately. For instance, you have determined that one of the reasons you are so tired is because you are not getting to bed early enough. Determine the factors that are keeping you up late. Then, make the adjustments necessary so you can get into bed on time. Sometimes you have to be creative. For example, I turn off my phone and do not answer calls past 9:00pm. My mind needs to wind down and it is time to go into rest mode. Whatever it is can wait until the morning when I am better suited to deal with it. I also clear space in other aspects of my life once I have my eyes focused on a goal. I make sure my closets are in order, paperwork filed and gone through and everything organized. The clear space in my physical surroundings makes it easier for me to go from A to B to C through out my work day. Being organized means I spend less time looking for things and more time training. Hey I have even put boyfriends out with the recycling because the relationship was too distracting and not adding the support and encouragement I needed during the times I was working towards a goal. Now I am not saying that your kids, husband, pet fish and dog should be waiting out on the curb at the next trash day. But instead, anything that you can determine that is actually not healthy for you needs to be re-evaluated.
Ok, you have cataloged, codified and classified. The shelves are standardized and everything is accounted for. What to do next? Once I have created more space for myself, I immediately feel my stress levels decrease. With increased breathing room I can finally carefully choose what I want to add back to my life. At this point, you should be focused on reintroducing those aspects that add value to your life. Let’s say you have set the goal to have more energy so you can finally start working out. You have tailored everything accordingly in your life and you are ready to start your workout regime. Something that would be of value to your goal would be to add a training session per week with a personal trainer. This will help you reach your target faster.
You have harmonized your life and added those things that bring increased worth. One final step left. Add the extras that make a difference. Now you are finally at the place where you have the energy and time to add the “extras” to your life. For instance, taking the time to make a healthy breakfast before work will definitely give you more energy than your old 10:30am habit of two jelly-filled donuts at the office break room. Having your water bottle that sits on your desk at work filled with Vitalyte instead of triple-caff, extra-bold, quadruple pressed coffee, is a much better hydration solution. Slipping on your Nike’s and heading out for a walk or a run instead of putting on your slippers and heading to the couch for a few hours of TV when you get home is a much healthier option. It is true that one positive change leads to another and even though there are times when you would really like to leave the kids outside next to the Hefty Cinch Saks, now that you are less stressed, less fatigued and more energized, when those moments do happen, you are better equipped to handle them. Happy harmonizing and look for my next blog about what to cook for that healthy breakfast.
