Monday, November 7, 2011

One Year Anniversary!

It’s been one year since my first blog entry and now 12 blogs and one year later, I am still enjoying this amazing journey that marries my love of fitness and writing. These past 12 months, I have been diligent trying to reach friends and family with the message of healthy living. I’ve been hoping to inspire readers to bring health and wellness into their lives through nutrition, exercise and healthy, active everyday living. I’ve had two articles published and just finished working on a third for Healthy Living Magazine, a local Toronto publication that features articles on exercise, nutrition, family, stress and active aging. This has been journey of self-discovery for me, too.  After exploring many different career paths over the years, I have arrived at an endeavour that blends my love of teaching fitness and inspiring people to adopt a healthier lifestyle, with the creative process of writing.
I love listening to musicians’ acceptance speeches at awards shows, because they all say the same thing. “I am thankful to be doing what I love most and getting paid to do it!” Similarly, I truly feel lucky to be able to do what I love, combining my passions for both fitness and writing. When I am truly at my best and actually living in the moment, it is when I am either teaching a fitness class or writing in my journal. This is when time stands still for me. This is when I feel like I’m where I am meant to be exactly at that time and in that moment. Being in the moment, and not thinking about time or our to-do list, is the true litmus test of whether we are happy in our careers.
Like my journey towards becoming a writer, your journey towards healthy living may not always be simple. Being healthy isn’t something that we just decide one day to do and then follow an uninterrupted path to perfection. It is a curving, winding road with many distractions like work and family commitments, and with many temptations such as unhealthy foods and alcohol. Getting the right amount of sleep and hydration, fresh air and keeping stress to a minimum is a daily challenge. We need constant motivation and reminders to stay on track towards living the healthiest life we possibly can. At the same time, we need to accept that there will be bumps and hairpin turns in the road even for the best of us and it’s important not to let that stress us further. We just need to gently steer ourselves back on the path towards our own personal goals for wellbeing.
Like many things in life, finding a healthy balance is the key to success. We shouldn’t beat ourselves up about enjoying a brownie if we are eating healthy at meal time. Similarly, if we miss a workout, we need to realize that it’s OK. Simply, focus on moving forward, not chastising yourself for past lapses in your goal towards better health. Becoming obsessive about our eating and exercise routines is just that, an obsession, and like any addiction it can turn something intended to be healthy into something very unhealthy. As a nation, we have become very obsessive about every calorie and fat gram that we consume, turning eating into a scrutinized fixation. Is this how we want to live or do we want to enjoy our food? In the 2004 bestseller, French Women Don’t Get Fat, author Mireille Guiliano's espouses why French women don't get fat, but they do eat bread and pastry, drink wine, and regularly enjoy three-course meals. This is because the French, unlike many Canadians and Americans, have neither feelings of guilt or deprivation when it comes to food. However, they do know balance and portion control. So, instead of jumping on the bandwagon every time a new diet comes to town, focus instead on healthy eating and balance. A friend of mine recently announced that she was on the “Palaeolithic Diet,” an eating regime that models what our hunter and gatherer ancestors ate. Granted, I am not a nutritionist, but I had to laugh! What is next, the “Wartime Diet” that only permits dieters to scale back food intake to a few basic, economical necessities!?
My mother-in-law, who is a home economist, graduate from U of T in food sciences and author of recipes for Canadian Living and T.V. Guide magazines, is one of the healthiest eaters I’ve met. Basically, she and my father-in-law, eat according to Canada’s Food Guide-variety, balance, lots of fruits and vegetables, dairy, meat, fish, nuts and sweets and alcohol in moderation. Nothing is packaged, nothing is processed and most is homemade. Like the French, they eat without feelings of guilt or deprivation but instead eat healthy overall.
So if you’re looking to get healthier this year, cast aside your South Beach, Zone, Atkins and Raw Food diet books and pick up a copy of Canada’s Food Guide. Aim to get a minimum of 30 minutes per day of vigorous exercise and if you are over 30, start to incorporate weight training into your exercise program. After the age of 30, as part of the natural aging process, we lose a half a pound of muscle mass every year. This amounts to a slower metabolism, because it is our muscle mass that is metabolically active. If you’re not doing any resistance training, maintaining a healthy body mass index will be increasingly challenging the older you get. So try to incorporate resistance training for your major muscles twice per week, and you will be able to maintain a desirable muscle mass, and in turn maintain a healthy bone and muscular structure and weight.
It’s ironic, as I write this article, I am sitting at Chapters/Starbucks beside a young woman who has just picked up an arsenal of dieting books. I look over to catch a few of the titles: The New Atkins Diet, The 100 Calorie Fix, The Hormone Diet, Food Cures and The 17 Day Diet. She is obviously desperately looking for ways to achieve her weight goals and the book publishers are quite willing to capitalize on that!  I want to tell her to save her money and suggest that she read my blog! The advice is simple and it’s free!
Thank you for reading my blogs! I am most grateful that you take the time to check in!  Please feel free to pass on any of my blog articles to friends and family. I appreciate your feedback anytime and am thankful for your constant support!
Good luck in your continued quest for healthly and balanced life! A healthy body means an inspired life!