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We all know that sugar isn't great for you, but do you know why? Our cells use blood sugar or glucose as fuel to keep our cells alive and functioning. We need it to survive. So why then should eating sugar have a negative impact on our health?  How does your body use sugar to fuel it?
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Awareness is the first step to battling chronic stress. Have you been living your life at the same frantic pace for so long that it feels normal for you?
Are your struggling with chronic stress?
These are all symptoms of chronic stress.
This part's exciting...at least to me. I guess I'm a bit of a nerd.Simple lifestyle changes go a long way in reducing chronic, low-level inflammation. As I wrote about a few weeks ago, here, chronic, low-level inflammation plays a part in many disorders, such as, high blood pressure, heart disease, cancer, dementia, Alzheimer's, arthritis and more. When chronic, low-level inflammation shows itself as an auto-immune disease, your body is unable to turn the immune system off. That's basically what's happening before we ever get to a disease state.  The three most common symptoms of chronic, low-level inflammation, are brain-related, joint-related, and digestive system-related. Read more here! The first two almost always lead back to the digestive system, or gut, even if you don't have any digestive system symptoms. The three main causes of chronic, low level inflammation are stress, damage to the digestive system, and toxic overload from environment factors. Read more here. As I wrote in last weeks post, stress and toxic overload, also cause damage to the gut. In fact, researchers are now linking 90% of chronic diseases to an unhealthy gut. Think about it, when you're feeling stressed, worried, or anxious, where do you feel it? If you're like me, it's right in the pit of your stomach. How can you fix it?It's easier than you think, for the most part!
Do you really want to be healthy and feel great? Follow these three steps to make it happen.1/10/2018 Make it happen!Most people do want to be healthy and feel great. Then, why isn't it a reality for more people? The reality is that there's a big difference between want and intention. Wanting is simply wishing you can have or do a particular thing. Intending means you've committed to achieving something by making an actionable plan, and sticking to it!  The key to intention is action!The first step is to get clear on where you are right now and where you want to go. What do you want to accomplish? How do you want your life to be?
Last August I wrote a blog post about accountability. I had just finished a 2.7 mile open water swim race with a friend and felt that our accountability to each other really helped us make it happen. Fast forward a year and we both decided to sign-up for the race again, even though we both had a lot of other commitments for our summer. This year, we didn't make it happen. In a large part it was because we were distracted by our other commitments. But I also think that we didn't do a very good Job, this year, of holding each other accountable.  Sometimes having a close friend as an accountability buddy works and other times you need someone who will be a little tougher on you, someone who won't take no for an answer. Maybe even a larger group to keep you going. This next Monday, September 25th, I'm leading a 21-Day Well-Being Challenge. During the first five days, we'll be working on setting the stage for success. Then we'll go on to food choices, exercise choices, and end with heart and mind health. Click below to find out more! SIX STEPS TO HOLDING YOURSELF ACCOUNTABLEIf you could feel more comfortable in your body (and your clothes) without dieting, would you do it?8/16/2017 Diet has two meanings in the dictionary and I definitely prefer one over the other. The first definition of diet is "the type of food a person habitually eats" and the other is "a special course of food that a person restricts themselves to, either to lose weight or for medical reasons." I bet you can guess which one I don't like. I also don't like the emphasis on weight loss. We are so much more than what we weigh, and the number on a scale doesn't necessarily tell us a whole lot. People have different body types, so their healthy weights can be very different and is not necessarily what society is telling us it is. On one hand, I recognize that we have an obesity epidemic in the United States, with more than one-third of adults being classified as obese. On the other hand, 10 -15% of adults have some type of eating disorder. Clearly there is some kind of disconnect and probably more have an unhealthy relationship with food. A healthy body has more to do with gaining a healthy mindset and less to do with restricting calories.Why Yoga?
Once you've made a little bit of time to practice, you'll often want to keep going if you have the time. And don't worry, you're in luck! Headstand isn't one of the five! Ha ha! Headstand is not an easy pose for me, mostly because I don't practice it enough. So I decided during our trip to have fun with it and practice it in inspiring places. For example, while waiting for the clouds to clear to get our first glimpse of Machu Picchu across the valley. 
Do you find just getting started to be the hardest part of exercising?
Me, too!
I know I feel good when I exercise, but that doesn't always get me started. I feel like I need an good incentive just to start.
Try these three tips to create your exercise routine.
Hint one of them is accountability, join my Women's Wellness Circle by clicking here.
Make exercise fun and social.
Back when I was doing triathlons in my 20's, the social factor got me out the door a lot of the time. Even for a 6am swim workout. At that time, many of my friends were doing the same thing I was and I was often to busy to have another social group. So, honestly, I was quite socially motivated.
I'm still socially motivated. I've swam with some of the same people for 25 years.
Even if I don't see them away from the pool or locker room, I still consider them friends. You'd be surprised how social swimming can be. It hasn't been as easy to step back into my life as I thought it would be. I'm finding that I don't want things to be exactly the same as when I left ten months ago. Ten months out of the country and I'm not the same person I was when I left. No one in our family is.  We're not in Cornwall anymore, Toto! Preparing meals has been one of the hardest parts. We tried not to eat out all the time, but for the most part I only prepared simple meals while I was traveling. A friend made me feel better by reminding me that even without going anywhere, you often are cooking and eating different foods than you were a year ago. So I realized I didn't need to step into making the same meals I was making before we left. But that actually meant I wasn't really making any meals for awhile. Oops! For the first week and a half back at home, my kids were complaining about the lack of food in the house and I completely lacked the motivation or creative energy to make dinner.
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