Everyone Needs a Treat

Need a treat?

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  Going too long without a treat is impossible. And I doubt I am alone in thinking that way. For me, never indulging in a cookie or two, ice cream, or crackers or chips is not an option.

  I've found an all or nothing mentality doesn't work too well. I need balance and routine. Even in my eating habits.

  As careful, and as conscientious as I am about how I eat, I always find room for an occasional treat or two! I'd go crazy otherwise.

  Giving yourself a break, indulging -- whatever you want to call it -- is a necessity in order to stay with your day-to-day routine. Long term dieting, if that's what you wish to call it, isn't possible.

No Chemicals, Please
  How you indulge, and how often you indulge is key. When it comes time for your treat, be picky!

  Calories and fat are okay. Chemicals are not! I know, in today's world, this is tough. The readily-available stuff -- the candy bars, the potato chips, the microwave popcorn -- is the easiest to get our hands on! But it's also the most damaging health wise.

  Not surprisingly, there are non-chemical options. You just have to look a little harder to find them.

Unreal comparison.

  For those with a sweet tooth (like me), check out Unreal Candy. They 'reinvente' your favorite candy, and make it with 100% REAL ingredients. No artificial junk, no corn syrup, no hydrogenated oil, no preservatives, no GMOs, and 50% less sugar.

  Cleaned up junk food. Worth a try if you ask me.

  If you find yourself reaching for a candy bar, make it an Unreal candy bar. Or there's Newman's Own Organics cookies. Or Eden Organic popcorn.

  The point is: there are options. And they go beyond M&Ms, Ritz Crackers, Doritos, and Orville Redenbacher's Popcorn. They are non-GMO, no chemical foods.

  Our body knows how to process calories, fats, and sugars. It doesn't, on the other hand, know what to do with chemicals. When we take the chemicals out of our snacks, it then becomes about the quantity -- how much we're eating of it (check out the podcast linked below for Jillian Michaels' talk of her 80/20% rule).

  Long story, short: pick a version of  your treat of choice that is not loaded with chemicals and/or trans-fat.

 Many times, this conversation leads to diet talk: the fad diet everyone is trying at the moment, what's working for your friend, and so on. Everyone wants to know, 'what should I be doing; what's the best diet?' 

Fill up with whole foods.

The Best Diet
  There is no 'best diet' per se.

  What I find valuable about each diet-of-the-moment is that they allow me to learn a little bit more about nutrition. If you do some research on your own, and try to learn about the various (and they are wide-ranging) ways of eating, you'll find yourself becoming educated on each and every one of them.

  You learn about food, and how it fuels you. You learn what works for you, and how your body reacts to various foods. We're all vastly different, and therefore we all react to eating habits and diets in different ways. You learn to value the quality of food.

  And most importantly, at least for me, it truly allows you to realize a balanced diet, filled with as many 'whole foods' as you can fit in, is the way to go.

  Check out this blog post from Precision Nutrition for great information about diet specifics.

  It's realizing it's a lifestyle choice, not a diet. Being healthy isn't a destination, it's a way to live.

Fads Come and Go
  Diets, gimmicks, and the popular workout-of-the-year don't last forever.

  Excluding entire food groups (such as fruit), one macronutrient or another (carbohydrates, for example), or strict demands with how to prepare food (raw food diet) are impossible diets to stick with for a prolonged period of time, let alone your entire life.

A little joke I dug up.

  To restrict yourself in such an extreme way is not a sustainable way of life.

  While you might go low-carb or paleo for four or five months, and see great results. Inevitably, we start going back to a more 'normal' way to eat. Those restricted foods are added back in, and that's when we run into trouble.

  The basics -- the well-rounded, whole food, in-moderation advices -- will last through time. If 'healthy' is a goal, habits and lifestyles have to be adjusted to match that goal. Again, it's a lifestyle, not a diet.

  We've all heard it, and it's true: Cleaning up your diet, limited processed foods, really will make you feel better, and be healthier -- even when you find yourself wandering towards the junk food aisle!

  Be conscientious and thoughtful about how you are eating, but don't forget to give yourself a break every once in a while too! It will make you more successful in the long run.

LINKS:

Jillian Michaels Podcast 4/29/2013
Enjoy Foods You Love Without 'Cheating'
Food Babe's Non-GMO Snack Brands
UNREAL Candy
Newman's Own Organics
Precision Nutrition: the Best Diet

The Happiness Advantage

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  Last week, I came across a blog post that really struck a cord with me. It was based on a TED talk that dealt with positive psychology, how our world or 'reality' is shaped by the lens in which we see it, and how our goal-based, never-satisfied society has it all backwards.

  We all are striving to lead successful/happy lives, aren't we? This video has an interesting take on how we all can affect, and improve, our reality. Take a look at the 12 minute talk from Shawn Achor. I think it will intrigue, and encourage you; it did me.

A Few of My Take-Aways:

• Our reality doesn't shape us, how we view our world (the lens) shapes our reality.
         We assume: our external world (the things we have, where we live, how much money we make, our job, the school we go to, the people around us, etc..) predicts our happiness levels.

                   When in reality: only 10% of our long term happiness is predicated on our external world. Our happiness is based on the way our brain processes the world.

• What we are exposed to (our lens: news, tv, internet, friends), and how we react to it, shapes our levels of happiness.
• Through our lens, our brain trains itself. Having negativity around you all the time, will only breed negativity.  After seeing constant negativity, our brains expect and look for the negative, over the positive. The alternative, surrounding ourselves in positivity and training our brains to look for the positive, is true as well.

My Greatest Take-Away:

  Our society thinks: 'if I am successful, then I will be happy.' But we all know, in reality, when we achieve a little bit of success, we just want more. So the bar is pushed a little bit higher, leaving us still-striving to reach success (and in turn, our brain never reaches happiness).

  What if we changed our mindset to: 'being happy will make me more successful'? When a person's level of positivity is raised, they reach the happiness advantage where you see improved productivity (success) across the board (intelligence rises, creativity levels rise, energy levels rise, etc...).

OUR BRAINS ARE MORE PRODUCTIVE AT POSITIVE THAN THEY ARE AT NEGATIVE, NEUTRAL, OR STRESSED STATES.

How do we become more POSITIVE IN THE PRESENT, and in turn, raise our levels of productivity/success?

  Believe it or not, we can train our brain to be MORE positive. We can train our brains to look for the positive, instead of the negative. Achor goes on to describe how to create lasting positive change, in a manner similar to breaking a bad habit.

For 21 consecutive days, do the following:

• 3 Gratitudes - on a daily basis, write down three new things you're grateful for. This causes the brain to look for the positives first.
• Journaling - write about one positive experience you've had in the past 24 hours. This allows your brain to re-live the positive!
• Exercise - teaches your brain that your behavior matters.
• Meditate - allows our brains to focus at the task at hand. It trains us to get away from our multitasking society.
• Random Acts of Kindness - write one positive email/message to someone in your support network praising or thanking them.

  Is it possible that the key to success and happiness is based on the simple, old adage of the glass being half-full versus half-empty? And then, training ourselves to see the brighter side of life?

  It's obvious that each of us have a natural propensity to be more optimistic or pessimistic. And what makes us happy is specific to each individual as well. So isn't it nice to know we can make a difference, and we should look beyond what makes average person happy, and how the average person measures success? What do you think?

Focusing on the Positives

What makes you smile?

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  There's a lot of negativity in our world. Turn on the TV, or go on the Internet, and it's all around us. On the news, in television shows, down the line to our countless social media outlets.

  And when you're constantly surrounded by negative, it's easy to get caught up in the wave, and yourself, turn into 'Negative Nancy,' isn't it?

  For whatever reason, our minds focus on, and highlight negative thoughts more often than they absorb positive reinforcements.

The Psychology
  Historically speaking, bad things threatened our survival (drought, an attacking animal, threatening situations). Over time, our minds evolved to hang onto those negative things more-securely to help ensure our survival with quick and swift action. The negative alerted us to danger. This is the trait negativity bias.

  The second reason we hold onto more bad than good is that our brains focus more on things that are out of the ordinary. On a day-to-day basis, our lives are pretty good. Things are at least OK for most of us. Think about it: good things happen on a regular basis throughout our day, and we rarely bat an eye. But the moment something bad hits, we fall apart. Because it's unusual, we focus on it. We fret about it, we tell our friends about it, we might carry one negative thing with us for the rest of the day! What about those 10-15 great things that have also happened? This is called the positivity offset.

  I'm not in the US right now, but I can bet that the lead story on SportsCenter over the weekend was Ron Artest's (sorry, I refuse to call him Metta World Peace) elbow to James Harden's head. So out of ALL the positive, amazing, graceful plays that happened in the world of sports, THAT was the one play that everyone focused on, and that everyone will remember. Negative sells.

  Even as a basketball player, I've always focused more on the shots I missed, instead of relishing the ones I made. That is no different than a child remembering the the one negative thing they are told rather than remembering the five positives.

  Over time, negative, anxious and defeated feelings accumulate, and before too long, you're stuck in a rut. So if we're surrounded by negativity, and our brains psychologically focus more on the negative, how do we keep ourselves from falling into the abyss?

  Unfortunately, I don't think it's possible to rid ourselves of negative in the world. But how do we focus more on the positive, more on the light that is surely in our lives?

How to Focus on the Positives
  Not focusing on the negative can be a serious exercise in discipline. It takes a lot of willpower and practice not to focus on the bad. Just like it might take practice to find and focus on the good. No matter our situation, positive emotions ARE there! You just might have to work to find them.

• As 'zen' as it may sound, focus on the present moment. Again, most of our day-to-day moments are positive. But if we're fretting too much about the past, or worrying about the future, we miss out on opportunities to experience positivity in the here-and-now.

• Pay attention to the human spirit, it can be amazing! What little things have others done for you that have helped put a positive spin on your day? And in turn, what have you done, or what can you do, that might positively affect another person's day? No matter how big, or small the gesture, they all make a difference! Remember those times. "What we focus on, we empower & enlarge. Good multiplies when focused upon. Negativity multiplies when focused upon. The choice is ours: which do we want more of?" - Julia Cameron

Celebrate your successes!

• Celebrate your accomplishments. When you deserve it, really celebrate! Too often we're already looking for the next step, or our next conquest (this also can be applied to 'living in the moment'). When it's appropriate, pat yourself on the back, & take a moment to celebrate your success. It's like celebrating a win. Don't forget to celebrate a win by moving too quickly onto the next game. Just like you shouldn't celebrate too often (after each made basket, for example)!


• For a more drastic change, we might have to change our brain process. This changes our outlook, or our perspective. For one month, write down three things a day you're thankful for, and three things you're proud of. This exercise will make you think of the abundance in your life, not what you might be lacking. It trains us to look for the positives in our daily lives. "Change your thoughts and you'll change your world." - Norman Vincent Peale

 "What kind of energy are you putting out into the world? There is nothing in between."

  What about when you feel others are dragging you down? How do you not allow others' negative attitudes affect you in a bad way?

Find that bright spot, and focus on it!

  Obviously, it's important to surround ourselves with positive influences and positive attitudes whenever we can! We can try as much as we can to avoid, but of course that's not possible all the time (and avoidance doesn't leave much room for growth). Co-workers, teammates, classmates, colleagues of any sort aren't up for debate in most situations.

  So when you're around that negativity, how do you overcome it? Just the same as we overcome our own negativity, we shift our focus!

  No person is 100% bad. But once we've been around them often enough, the bad might be all that we see. Look for situations where you have positive interactions with that person, and instead relish in those moments.

  It's also important to mention taking responsibility for yourself. Your thoughts, actions (and reactions), and energy all contribute to the goodness (and the problems) in every relationship you have. 'If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem', right?

  These are some things that have arisen in my life recently, and I'm trying my best make a change for the better. As with anything, it's a work in progress! There are times when we need to be reminded that there are some things we cannot control. As much as we might try, we just can't! In those situations, choose to let it be, and move on! Let's focus our energy on the things we CAN change, and CAN affect.

  We can tell ourselves, 'think positively, focus on the good' all we want. But we have to do more than just 'think it'. If we have a natural propensity to drift towards and remember the negative, we have to retrain our brains. It takes time to change habits, so it definitely will take a little time to change our perspective! Stick with it!

 LINKS:

Trait Negativity Bias 

Jillian Michaels Podcast 4/7/2012

Positivity Ratio

Attractive or Repulsive?

Setting Goals and Bettering Ourselves

You gotta put in the work to achieve ANYTHING!

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  Resolutions and the setting of new goals go hand in hand with the start of a new year. I, for one, have never been much of a New Year's Resolution setter.

  Matter of fact, I don't think I've ever consciously made a resolution at the beginning of a new year. Sure, I've set plenty of goals for myself over the years, but never a 'New Year's Resolution'.

  For whatever reason, this year I'm contemplating actually jotting a few down. (Or am I too late? Seeing as were already a few weeks into 2012!) It dawned on me, that I haven't consciously set out to achieve one particular thing in quite some time: haven't written it down, and really set my mind to it.

  And when you think about it, that's exactly how we make ourselves better. You consciously put your mind towards achieving a goal, and you formulate a plan on exactly how you're going to do it. We're all works in progress, and bettering myself and my quality of life, is something that has grown to be a priority for me.

  There's one thing, though, that I don't like about New Year's Resolutions: Why do we wait for a new year to try to better ourselves?

  Maybe we should make monthly goals. Those might be easier to stick to, and easier to evaluate. After all, isn't one of the more-amusing things about setting New Year's Resolutions is how quickly they are broken?

  Anyways, onto some resolutions.

Set Up for Success
  So if I'm going to make some resolutions, I want to set myself up to be successful -- to follow through with them. It takes some honesty and self-evaluation. What do you want to change about your life? What do you want to pursue?

  Remember, not every goal and resolution has to be a huge epiphany. They can be light-hearted and smaller-scale too. But it's the deeper ones that probably will be the most difficult to achieve, and in-turn, have the most payoff.

  The most important thing when setting goals, is to make them manageable. You have to have a clear vision of what exactly you are trying to achieve. The more-specific, the better.

  The days of saying, 'I want to be healthier' or 'I want a better job' are over. What EXACTLY does that mean? Being healthier and getting a better job have different meanings for everyone. What does it mean, and what does it look like to YOU?

A Goal Pyramid
  Probably the most-productive way to setting long term goals and resolutions is to make a goal pyramid.

Top Level
  At the top of that pyramid is your very specific, very detailed goal. Define your goal. Make it measurable. Give it a time limit. And make it realistic. (Nothing like biting off too much, and immediately making things seem impossible.)

  As we all know, achieving a goal is difficult. A lot of times, we have to do things that are unpleasant and uncomfortable in order to reach that goal. It's during those unpleasant times we can lose our motivation. If achieving our goals were easy, we'd all be perfect human-beings though, wouldn't we?

  Somehow, in order to provide ourselves with the motivation, we have to form an attachment to our goal. What will reaching my goal make me feel like? What does it feel like in my mind when I reach my goal? Why is it worth it?

  We can accomplish anything if we feel it is worth it, and we feel it is achievable. Our reasons are the source for our motivation.

  I think forming this emotional attachment is the most important aspect of reaching our goals. Isn't the inability to stay motivated the biggest excuse used when goals AREN'T achieved? Someone else's motivations or reasons won't help you reach YOUR goals. It's within you.

  So we ask ourselves: how will my life be better when this goal is attained?

  That's what will keep you going. Outside motivations might help in the interim, but it's what is within (your reasons; why you want your goal) that will keep you on track. 

Second and Third Level
  The second level of the pyramid is the road map to achieving your goal. What are the more-immediate steps, or goals, to achieving our ultimate goal at the top of the pyramid? What can you do today?

  Essentially, they are a series of smaller-scaled goals.

  You can break your pyramid down into monthly, weekly, and daily goals. Our daily goals will help us achieve our weekly goals, and our weekly goals will help us achieve our monthly goals, and so on.

  Shorter-term goals are easier to evaluate, and are easier to hold ourselves accountable to. The HUGE goal may seem overwhelming, and too difficult, but when broken down into a series of smaller goals, it's made to seem more-achievable. And that's what this is all about. We want to set ourselves up for success.
  

"One may walk over the highest mountain one step at a time." – John Wanamaker

Tell it to the World
  Once our goals are set, and our pyramid is made, tell people about your goals! More than likely, it will help us stick to our guns -- be accountable. When you tell someone what you want to achieve, you'll probably be less-likely to throw in the towel. And if they're important to you, more often than not, they will offer support to you along the way.

  Finally, it becomes about action! It's about work ethic, and doing our work on a daily basis to reach our goals. It's common-knowledge that it takes 21 days to create a new habit. It doesn't happen overnight, so we can't expect immediate change. It's a long process. 

Breaking Through Negative Thoughts

  While action is at the forefront of goal achievement, our minds have a tendency to get in the way too, can't they? We must learn to deal with, and manage negative thoughts. Changing our mindset goes hand in hand with modifying our behavior. We have to train our brain. How can we respond to negative thoughts and behaviors with things that are positive and reaffirming?

  

  When negative thoughts creep into our minds, it's then we need to go back, and re-read our reasons. Remind ourselves of our motivations! Why are these difficult/uncomfortable times worth it? What did we want to feel like, again?

  Another way to turn a negative into a positive is to provide yourself with incentives. Reward yourself! When you reach a weekly or monthly goal, give yourself a pat on the back. (not just a mental pat on the back, but an actual reward for yourself!) Create reaffirming rewards for reaching your smaller-step-goals. Positive reinforcement helps in the journey.

  Resolutions and goals are very achievable, but it's a difficult journey, no doubt. The key is motivation! We have to believe in ourselves, and continually remind ourselves why our goals are important to us along the way.

  How many of you all set New Year's Resolutions? Or do you set goals for yourself on a regular basis?

  I'm going to give my New Year's Resolutions some serious thought, and I'll let you know what they are in the coming weeks!

  LINKS:

Jillian Michaels Podcast 12/31/2006

Jillian Michaels Podcast 12/16/2011