Surviving Bad Holiday Eating Habits

Grandma’s apple pie with an aroma you can’t resist. Mounds of mashed potatoes calling your name.  Pork & Beans with the prized fat swimming in the middle.  Mom's potato salad slathered in mayonnaise. Pudding with the fixings and delicious.  Candy galore.  How do you survive the calorie-latent holidays without gaining 10 or 20 pounds?  This is a question we have all asked for decades and seem to interestingly forget we even thought about it when the Holidays finally arrive.  Here are some concrete tips  to stay in control of your eating and not have to worry so much if your pants are still going to button a week from now.

    * Start the day off right with a hearty breakfast - Eat a big breakfast full of nutritious food the day of the special family gathering (which I might add you should be doing every day anyways!). Oatmeal with some fruit and a veggie omelet cooked in olive oil will start your day off just right!

    * Have a mid-morning snack - Find the veggie tray that your health-nut cousin Mark brought.  Instead of drowning it in ranch dressing, dip your veggies in some hummus.  You could also make the wise choice of hijacking some wheat crackers with some turkey and cheese (did you happen to bring it in case there is none?).

    * Help set the table - If your grandma needs someone to volunteer to do the dishes, go for it!  The more active and social you are, the happier you are and there will be less of a chance that you will overeat.

    
* Portion control is key during the BIG meal - When it is time to eat the "big meal," serve yourself a little of everything so that you don't feel like you have been deprived of your Holiday food.  It really isn't so much what you eat, but how much you stuff yourself.  You will find out, a little of everything makes you feel more satisfied than a lot of one thing and studies show doing this, you eat less calories.

    
* Second chance at healthy eating - If you go back for seconds, pick healthier foods this time (if you can find any).  Make sure though, you really want it. (Did you have some water with that feast?)

    
* Bring your own healthy dish - If you have to bring a dish, bring one of your favorite healthy recipes so that when you go back for seconds, you know you will find something just for you.  More than likely, you won't need seconds if you have had enough to drink and you ate your food slowly.

    
* Take a little after dinner walk - After your Holiday meal, find a place to take a walk to get your digestion in full gear!  (Of course after you have helped clean up!)  This will help you feel lighter and more energized and this also counteracts the sugar fall you will have from eating the Holiday goodies.

Even though you are used to doing it and everything looks so appetizing (I think this is caused from the lingering Holiday Spirit), DON'T take leftovers home.  If you are having the get-together at your house, pawn the leftovers onto everyone else.  You don't want unhealthy food tempting you in the middle of the night.  (We all know that happens.)

If you do happen to be unable to resist the temptation to over eat just head on over to the  You Can NOW! Coaching site; I'll be happy to help you get back on track!

Yours in Health,

Flossie Alexander

Life/Weight Loss Coach

About Flossie: Flossie is currently a member of the National Association of Professional Women and Toastmaster’s International. She is a Certified Personal Trainer, Certified Nutrition Coach and a Certified Wellness Coach with a successful track record in leading organizations and individuals into achieving healthy lifestyle goals. After overcoming obesity, losing 165 pounds in 18 months, she has developed a passion to help others through public speaking and one-on-one weight loss coaching. Visit Flossie at http://www.youcannowcoaching.com to start creating your new healthy lifestyle and lose unhealthy weight permanently.

Half the Man I Use to Be

That's me in a photo with my friends Sandria and Mu Shemsu-t during Blog-a-Thon '09.

37. 5'10. 377lbs.

I never thought those numbers would scare me but they did. I recently went to the doctor for a check up (after not having gone in for almost two years! Schedule regular doctor's visits people, for real...) and found out that I'm borderline diabetic, have degererative joint disease and worst of all I had gained almost 45lbs!

They say ignorance is bliss; I mean if you don't know you can be happy, right? WRONG! Ignorance is what it is. I fought going back to the doctor because I didn't WANT to hear what I already knew: I'm severely overweight and need to drop the "other person" I'm carrying around in the guise of extra weight.

I felt a lot of things after leaving that doctor's office - scared mostly - but what i was pleased to find is  the feeling of excitement. Why? Because I had a great lifted off of me named denial and I was now ready to kick weight's ass to regain my health.

As fate would have it, I have already been blessed with someone that will be imparting the gift of renewed health to me...my fellow blogger Flossie Alexander of You Can NOW! Coaching! As if on cue she called me right after I got home and I told her the news. "UH, UH! We can't have that!", was her reply and now I'm on the road again to increased health. By this time next year I will be "Half the Man I Used to Be" in the above photo. My goal is to reach 277 by my birthday and be down to 220 by this time next year.

I may document my progress here or on another blog. I hope that my journey wil inspire someone else to take up the challenge to be half the person they used to be. Let it begin!

Meditate on this: I embrace a healthier me today and everyday!

Have a PERFECT day!

Michael

MIIS

You Deserve A Break

When we find ourselves going through a difficult time, we tend to put our health on hold; health as in fitness and eating the things we know we should be.  Taking care of ourselves is put on the back burner because it just doesn't seem as important as the next stock market crash.  It seems everywhere you turn, we are bombarded with negative news about the economy, our health, our health care costs rising, new diseases, old diseases, and the list just goes on and on.  If you aren't able to take a weekly vacation to "get away from it all", there really is no break from it.  Or, is there?

Working with people from all different social environments, I have yet to be presented with a situation where the client and I could not come up with a plan where they couldn't take  "a break" on a daily basis from their more than hectic life; to find a short interval in their day to mentally escape from the chaos that surrounds them to refuel and rejuvenate their mind.

The question really is, do we really need a full-blown vacation to feel renewed? refreshed? ready to start again?  The answer to that is, no!  (I am really sure this is one of the reasons why Calgon was invented, which proves my point.) Although, it sure is nice to go to our favorite vacation spot, sit on the dock fishing all night to reflect on life while listening to the crickets chirp, to feel the coolness of the night air on our skin, and to count the stars that you can't see in the city.  However, reality reminds us that we only get to do that a couple of times a year and that really isn't enough to keep us as happy as we were meant to be.

Ask yourself how often do you take 10 minutes just to stretch your legs and take a break from the stressful task you have been working all morning on.  I don't mean to go outside with a coworker to talk about how your day got started with the boring as heck manual you have to pull apart and put back together again, but to actually break away from it.  To go outside of the box you inhabit to explore your surroundings and stimulate your mind with something positive and new.

What was your answer?   Well, if your answer was no or not very often, then take it from me, YOU DESERVE A BREAK TODAY and EVERY DAY!  Yes, you!  It is a proven fact that if you break away for a 10-minute "hiatus," you come back revived and ready to go!  Who the heck wants to wait for a vacation to feel alive? To be at our best, it only takes 10 minutes for a brisk walk down the street to smell the aroma of the newly bloomed flowers to breathe some freshness into our day to help us take on the rest of the day as if it just started. 

 
We forget sometimes that life is about living and we get caught up in the every day stressors that it throws at us and then we no longer are living it and it is living us.  If you have found yourself in this predicament, you need a healthy living lifestyle coach to get you living life again!  A healthy living lifestyle coach works with you to get you back on the path of feeling good and looking forward to another day, another week, another year!In he words of Jim Rohn: "Take care of your body. It's the only place you have to live."


Be Healthy Every day, You Are Worth It!



Yours in Health,

Flossie Alexander
Life/Weight Loss Coach

About Flossie: Flossie is currently a member of the National Association of Professional Women and Toastmaster’s International. She is a Certified Personal Trainer, Certified Nutrition Coach and a Certified Wellness Coach with a successful track record in leading organizations and individuals into achieving healthy lifestyle goals. After overcoming obesity, losing 165 pounds in 18 months, she has developed a passion to help others through public speaking and one-on-one weight loss coaching. Visit Flossie at http://www.youcannowcoaching.com to start creating your new healthy lifestyle and lose unhealthy weight permanently.

The Weakening Effects of Being Judgemental

Greetings Readers,

My family and I recently started going to First Baptist Church of Indiana as a means to spend more time together and to strengthen our spiritual connectedness as well. A bus comes buy Sunday morning and picks up various families in our neighborhood and takes us to church then drops us back off after service.

As you would expect there are all types of people that attend attend such a large church because they visit a lot of impoverished neighborhoods to pick people up. So this past Sunday was the first time one of our daughters attended...she was NOT pleased!

The entire trip she complained about how "ghetto" the children were (a large portion of the ridership are kids attending without their parents - sad but true - and they do have difficulty with authority figures on the bus). I tried several times to calm her down reminding her that 1. she was unruly just like the kids she was angered by at one point and 2. it's futile to allow the actions of others to cause us suffering.

Long story short, we get home and I pulled her and another of our kids to the side and tell them that they were being just as negative as the kids on the bus - both of them looked at me in disbelief that I had said such a thing. I went on to describe how they were being overly judgmental of people they do not know. I further explained that some - no - most of the people attending First Baptist are right where they need to be receiving spiritual food that will hopefully lead to their enlightenment and salvation.

I wasn't done though. I continued to drill into their minds the fact that everyone is not on the same level spiritually and you can add to that the fact that not everyone has the same parenting skills to teach their kids better manners. I told them that there is a way to constructively get your point across without belittling the so called trouble makers.

Finally, when we are judgmental we are saying that we are better than the person or persons being judged and that's not the way to be. It weakens our our own spirituality when we do so. As the saying goes, when you point the finger at someone you have to remeber there are four pointing back at you.

Meditate on this: I will exert more understanding and compassion for those I do not agree with.

Have a PERFECT day!

Michael
MIIS

Freedom from the Message

Greetings Readers!

Today's Freedom Friday post centers on being mindful of the subtle influence of the media...Enjoy!

I was sitting with my grandkids watching Clifford The Big Red Dog - an episode appropriately titled "Food for Thought" - in which Clifford and his two friends became insistent on getting this paticalar dog food after watching a TV promo and viewing a billboard about the product. As the episode ensues the trio, after sampling the dog food, come to realize that what they see on TV isn't necessarily true, they can get strong and jump higher just by doing what they normally do and, most importantly, they should put more thought into something before they decide they want it.

How many of us have seen something on TV or saw something in a store window or on the side of a bus or on a billboard and immediately thought "I MUST HAVE IT!" I use to be like that...OK, I can STILL be like that. :)

Better question: how many of us, after getting the thing we wanted so badly felt like it didn't meet our expectations? That's how the media gets you. They know they we are emotional creatures, habitual creatures and they tap into that with every commercial, radio spot and billboard you see.

Are the ad companies wrong for doing this? Nope! I'd do it too to attract more buyers. The point is that we should be more mindful of the message behind the ad and ask ourselves serious questions before we go lopping the proverbial arm and leg to buy the newest iPhone, Vizio or Mercedes Benz.

I remember reading something in Robert Kiyosaki's Rich Dad Poor Dad book that mentions we should allow our money to work for us and use the assets we create to buy the luxuries we want...makes sense right? That way, our money is working for us AND allowing us to get the things we want.

Back to my point though: We need to free ourselves from being slaves to the hidden messages in ads that cause us to run like hungry dogs after every bone tossed to us. We need to learn the lesson behind delayed gratification and the pain of instant gratification.

And to think some parents say you don't learn anything from watching cartoons! ;)

Have a PERFECT day!

Michael
MIIS

Image Courtesy: NHPTV

My Apologies

Greetings Readers,

I must apologize for not posting as scheduled yesterday. I've been experiencing some health issues along with several other members of my family but it's nothing life threatening. For those of you that know me personally and have sent well wishes I'd like to offer my thanks. 

You can look forward to a post on health and wellness tomorrow from contributing writer Flossie Alexander as well as my Freedom Friday post. Meditate on this will be back in effect next Monday. Thank you all for your patience and continued support of the MIIS blog.

Humbly,

Michael

MIIS

5 Fab Ways to Boost Productivity

Ever wish you had more time in a day to get just a few more things done? Everyone could use an extra set of hand or at least some good productivity tools to make their day a little smoother. Below are  five suggestions to give your productivity a jump start!

1. Stop Procrastinating - The biggest thing that hinders most people is the lack of any action at all. You can't get anything done if you aren't out doing it! The old saying never put off until tomorrow what you can do today applies here.

2. Evaluate Your Current Productivity Level - Once you get the ball rolling you need to know where you are before you can set goals for where you want to be. Make a list of all your primary tasks and daily obligations and see how many of them you complete in an hour, a day or whatever time frame is sensible to you. After compiling this data you can gauge where you can improve and set quantifiable goals for yourself.

3. Get a Smartphone - Back in the day a person could get a way with using just a desk calendar and/or a day planner. With so many people demanding information moment to moment a smartphone such as a Blackberry or Treo is a must for staying connected and accessing important documents and information fast.

4. Hire a VA or PA -  If all else fails and you just can't get organized then I highly suggest looking into getting either a personal assistant - someone at your beck and call to handle administrative tasks - or a virtual assistant - someone you can go to on a project by project basis when you only need a set of hands temporarily. I can work with you in both capacities; shoot me an email to sensiblesolutions6672@gmail.com with Assist Me in the subject line for more details.

5. Breathe, Relax, Let It Go - The most important thing for you to remember is to keep cool and  act, don't REACT, to your productivity challenges. Knowing you have a need to change your productivity habits brings you one step closer to solving them. With a little creativity you will be on track in no time!

Free Yourself!

Michael
MIIS