Tag: new year

Leaving Those Holidays in the Dust!

Oh my GOSH, the holidays are OVER and a fresh new year is laid out before us with unlimited possibilities! I hope your holiday season was FABULOUS, full of peace and fun, and that you are ready for new beginnings! How did it go with your healthy holiday habits?? I, personally, had a little battle with some incredible cream cheese sugar cookies that I tried baking for the first time…I got a little overzealous with the baking process and ended up making about 300 cookies-for THREE people! They were both beautiful and tasty, and I enjoyed making and sharing them, but a few days after Christmas, they beckoned me at all hours of the night until I finally woke up at 6am and threw them into the outside trashbin. All good, all things in moderation, and enjoy all the holiday yummy-but it was time to move beyond the holiday treats.

If you’re feeling like you overdid it, whether it be eating too much, eating foods you don’t generally eat, indulging in alcohol, or leaving your self-care or exercise in the dust, you CAN get yourself back to feeling more like yourself quickly by just following a few great tips. With the new year starting, many of us have plans for healthier routines to give us a healthier and happier life, and if this is YOUR plan, you may be wanting MORE than just a few tips to get you where you want to be. If so, consider getting a professional to guide you through your journey! Did you know-people that hire health and wellness coaches have THREE TIMES more success in reaching their goals!!! Now is a fabulous time to reach out to a health and wellness professional to set up your plans and goals for a successful New Year!!

I’m a degreed nutritionist, personal trainer, and certified health and wellness coach that’s READY to set up a personalized program that fits your life and your needs!! Don’t go it alone! Let’s talk about how 2023 can be a year of health, wellness, and SUCCESS for YOU!! I’d love to guide you there with the tools and motivation you deserve!! Feel free to reach out for a no pressure chat to see how we might best work together. In the meantime, give yourself a few days to try these basic tips out, and I’m sure you’ll be on your way to feeling great!

Get Rid of Holiday Treats

This is the first step in the process! And, by “get rid”, I don’t mean eat them!! Give them away, throw them out, freeze them for the next holiday, but remove them from your house! Grandma’s leftover pie, Aunt Jane’s mashed potatoes, leftover summer sausage and crackers-whatever it is, get rid of it! It will no longer be a temptation, and you will be so much happier with it GONE!

Stock Your Kitchen with Healthy Foods

That’s right-more grocery shopping! Stock up on the healthy food that you enjoy: fresh veggies, fruit, lean meats, and whole grain foods. Do a little meal planning and prep so that you have easy, ready-made, healthy choices available at all times. Be sure to pick up some healthy snacks as well like nuts, hummus, hardboiled eggs and yogurt. Keeping healthy food available will make mealtime so much easier during this busy time of year.

Eat Small Balanced Meals

Don’t try to “fix” your holiday overindulgence by cutting out meals; this will only set you up for cravings and possible binging. Instead, focus on small, balanced meals scheduled throughout the day. Focus on lean proteins like chicken, healthy fats like nut butters, high fiber foods like whole grains, and plenty of fresh veggies and fruit. If you need a little help figuring out the best choices, check out this article on basic nutrition.

Flush it All Out

Water is your best friend when it comes to getting over any period of overindulgence! It literally flushes the body clean, helps with digestion, removes bloating, and rehydrates the body. Alcohol and foods heavy in salt can dehydrate the body and make us feel sluggish, heavy, tired and even brain fogged. This dehydration can also show up in our skin, causing dryness, wrinkles, and an uneven complexion. Aim for 6-8 glass of water each day. To make this easier, try drinking a glass upon waking, before each meal, after any exercise, and a short time before retiring for the night. Getting the water in can be the quickest way to feel better!

Try Soups!

Get your balanced nutrition AND your water in at the same time with delicious broth based soups! Throw some broth into a pot, add your leftover turkey or another lean protein, and throw in some veggies and seasonings and let it simmer for an hour or so for a tasty, light, healthy, quick meal choice. For a great soup recipe with a big vitamin pack, try this Kale recipe that can easily be made with turkey instead of chicken, or no meat at all.

Cut the Alcohol

Whether or not you indulged in too much alcohol this holiday season, try to cut it from your diet for a few days. Alcohol wreaks havoc on our body systems and makes every part of our body work harder. It dehydrates us, causes fatigue, slows the metabolism, and causes all kinds of unpleasant reactions.  

Show Yourself Some Love

Going a little easy on yourself is always crucial to your health and well-being, but especially after overdoing it. Get a little extra rest, spend a little time being quiet and still, and see how it affects your stress levels. You may want to spend a little time in simple meditation, or just sitting in silence to regain your peace of mind and re-energize. The holidays can be an incredibly stressful time, so be sure to schedule time to just rest. If journaling is your thing-or you’d like to try it, consider thinking into the New Year and coming up with a “word” to define your future. 

 Consider a Sugar Detox

If you truly want to feel and see a huge change in your health rather quickly, consider doing a sugar detox. Sugar is in SO many foods, and we eat so much of it without even realizing. Sugar intake has a massive effect on the body, our hormones, our skin, our brain, our weight, and our emotions. Many people are addicted to sugar! To learn more about sugar addiction and see if sugar might be an issue in your diet, check out my latest freebie! It’s an eye opener on all things sugar related, and even includes a sugar addiction checklist. Giving up added sugar was the BEST thing I ever did for my health!

Find Support

If you are struggling to get back on track after the holiday, and worried about the holidays ahead, consider finding someone to support you. A friend, a relative, an online group, whomever it might be. Sharing support and encouragement while holding each other accountable and offering motivation can make all the difference. If you need a strong support system and personal guidance, inspiration and tools, consider speaking to a health coach. This can be a life changing decision! Setting up goals and plans that are JUST FOR YOU can make all the difference! If you’d like to chat about how this might work for you, please feel free to contact me for a free consultation-no hard sales, no pushing, no pestering-just conversation about YOU and what you need to feel and be your best!

Happy, Healthy, New Year!!

Beewell.com

Forget Those Resolutions! (It’s About Routines)

Hello dear readers, and blessings of the New Year ahead of us! Despite my best intentions, I found the end of 2021 quite exhausting, and though I spent a wonderful holiday with my family, I felt great need to take a step back from my business duties and practice a bit of self-care. I hope the holidays treated you with joy, and you were surrounded by much love and peace.

As we head into this new year, I am feeling very aware of the emotional impact the last few years has brought us during pandemic, and I take that into consideration as I write my New Years post. In the past, my excitement for a fresh new beginning was very evident in my writings, and I wrote of setting goals and making changes with nothing but inspiration and motivation in hopes that most would be feeling the same way. I realize, after speaking with friends, family, and clients, that for many, excitement for the new year has diminished to simple hopes, a sense of uncertainty, and a bit of exhaustion.

Usually, at this time of year, I encourage people to find a word to be their defining start to the new year. In recent years I have focused on yearly words like “boundaries”, “balance”, and “mindfulness”. I would choose a word to set my intention for the year, and work towards that one word as needed in all aspects of my life. (My word, when heading into 2020 was “balance”, it may have saved me, or perhaps, just simply been an impossible word!)

Although I absolutely believe in my “word of the year” philosophy, and I encourage you to give it a try, I decided to encourage another line of thought as we head into this new year. That thought is-take charge of the things you CAN control, and secondly, simply focus on finding some joy!

In this time of constant change and uncertainty, we absolutely hold the capacity to control some of the most important aspects of our being. We have the power to control how we nourish our bodies, how we tend to our physical well-being, how we manage the stress.that is placed upon us daily, and the control of our spirit-creatively, passionately, and mindfully. In the general busyness of life, it is easy to lose sight of the ability to control these things, and in turn, we ultimately pay the price with feeling and being unwell, feeling fatigued, and losing interest in the things that can bring us joy and contentment.

I encourage you to put routines ahead of resolutions this year. Creating routines in life builds habits and allows us to ease into making time for the things that bring us joy. Take a moment and consider these questions:

~What routines could you create in your daily or weekly life that would help you achieve the life you desire?

~What routines can you create that will lead you to find the health and wellness you desire? ~When approaching this new year, who do you want to surround yourself with to ensure feelings of happiness and love?

~And, lastly, what things do you want to add to your life to bring yourself joy, and how can you create a routine that brings those things into your life enough to FEEL that joy?

Taking some time to consider these questions, instead of making some huge, blanket, lofty resolution of change, can help provide some clarity, and clarity is what helps us see where/who we are, and where/who we wish to be. Once we have clarity, it’s only a matter of planning and taking the SMALL steps that can ultimately lead us to making BIG changes in our lives over time.

When exploring the prospect of finding the life you desire, consider journaling your ideas, plans and thoughts as we start this new year. In 2018, I began journaling regularly in hopes of discovering who I was going to “be” after 22 years of devoting myself to homeschooling four children. Journaling led to sketching, which led to painting, and I began to tap into the artistic and creative side of myself that had been completely focused towards educating my family for so many years. It brought me a sense of renewed joy that I had long forgotten.

If health and wellness is a focus of your upcoming year, be sure to set SMART goals for yourself. Smart goals are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely goals. These are small goals with reasonable objectives that can be reached without frustration or pressure, which makes them easier to achieve with many small successes along the way. Instead of making a resolution to say, lose 20 pounds or eat a cleaner diet, a SMART goal would focus on cutting out sodas or sweets, or perhaps planning your meals out for better nutrition. Adding to these small goals as you move with success will lead you to your bigger goals. It’s the small steps, one by one, that provide us with the motivation and inspiration to continue our journey towards the big changes! As you plan your small steps, create a routine to ensure that they become a part of your daily life-a HABIT! Building upon these small routines (habits) as you go will create a pathway to success.

When planning out your goals, be sure to know your ultimate WHY. Knowing your WHY will always bring you back to the inspiration you need when things seem tough. The WHY is the thing that keeps us focused as we complete the small steps along the way and is the main purpose of achieving our ultimate goals. Deciding to run a 5K is a great goal-but WHY do you want to accomplish it? How will it make you feel? How will it lead to positive changes in your life? Losing 25 pounds can better your health, get you into clothes that you love, and make you happier with the scale-but the WHY may be more important; perhaps you want more energy, perhaps it’s needed for better health, or maybe it’s because you want to feel more confident about doing activities you enjoy. Every goal has a true WHY. Be sure to find yours, write it down, keep it visible, make it a part of each day. Use that WHY to plan the SMART steps and routines you need to hit those small goals, and each small success will bring you closer to your ultimate goals.

If nutrition plays a part in your goals, be sure to start small. Cutting out ALL the foods you love only sets you up for failure. Some examples of small steps that can lead you to success would be cleaning processed snack foods out of your pantry, buying and preparing more fresh vegetables, replacing sugar drinks with water, learning more about basic nutrition, setting up a pattern of meal prep and planning or removing sugar from your diet. Pick one goal to work on each week, creating a routine, and adding another goal and routine as you find your success each week. A routine could be adding a new fruit or vegetable to your diet each time your grocery shop or making sure you start each day with a glass of water. Add to these as you go.

If adding more movement to your life is a goal, follow the same idea. First, find something you enjoy! If you hate to run, don’t pick running. If you have no access to a pool, don’t pick swimming. (seems crazy-but I’ve literally had clients do this!) If you enjoy dancing, try a dancing workout. If you haven’t worked out in forever, and have no idea where to start, try a little yoga to get you moving, stretched, and limber. Plan your choice of exercise, make sure you have the equipment needed, and physically schedule your workout times on your daily calendar. Start small-2 days a week for 20 minutes and build on days and times as you hit each goal. And, if you can’t seem to find an exercise you are comfortable with, just WALK. Add distance each day, explore new areas and routes, and just get out and move. Make it part of your daily or weekly routine, and it will be a habit that is easy to build upon.

If general wellness is your goal for the year, consider the 8 pillars of wellness and decide which one will bring you the most satisfaction first. The pillars are nutrition, movement, emotional well-being, hobbies/creativity, intellectual growth, sleep, spiritual health, and relationships. When these pillars are balanced, we find overall wellness. Which pillar feels most unbalanced in your current life? How can you grow within it? How does the unbalance affect the other pillars of wellness in your life? Discover this, and that is where you need to start. If you are lacking in sleep, you are likely too tired to get proper exercise, or maybe being tired affects how you plan (or don’t plan) your meals. Focus on your sleep routine, create a healthy sleep routine, and see how that affects your overall life. Building healthy habits in one of these areas is likely to have a positive effect on other aspects.

Find time for a little joy in your life this year. Times have been challenging and we all need a bit more joy in our lives! If you are not sure where to find joy, take some time to think about a time in your life when you had more joy. Perhaps a hobby or favorite pastime that has been forgotten over the years is waiting to be rediscovered! Spend a little time and thought and explore what it was that brought you happiness at a more joyful time of life, and bring it back-add it to your routine, and build on it!

I’m wishing you happiness and great health and wellness in this new year! If you are considering acquiring assistance with your goals, I hope that you will reach out to me to chat about how health and wellness coaching can greatly change your life. I do not sell products, and I am not salesy/pushy in my approach. My only goal is to reach, motivate, educate, and inspire others to find and live their best, healthiest, most joy filled life possible. My education, experience, training and knowledge, mixed with personal motivation and inspiration focused on YOU and YOUR life provide a path to success and great health! Please feel free to contact me to see how I can help you reach your goals.

Be sure to check out my newest freebie, The Not So Sweet Ultimate Guide to Sugar Addiction

Beewell.com

That Simple Word for 2020

2020 has brought us a new year, a new decade, and an entirely new slate to write our lives upon! In embracing this wealth of new beginnings, there comes the typical conversation about resolutions: the new diet, the new exercise program, the kicking of a bad habit…But, often these resolutions fall quickly by the wayside, as our mouths fill with treats, our treadmill becomes a storage shelf, and those old habits continue to mindlessly find their way into our busy lives.

Instead of resolutions, I’ve taken to having a word for the year. After carefully examining all the “resolutions” I want to set, I look for the deeper picture. Last year, as 2019 came into view, I knew I needed to remove toxic people from my life, as well as find more “me” time to focus on the things that made me healthy and happy. Putting these thoughts into actual resolutions was difficult, because it was simply too vast to break down. I decided to pick an encompassing word: BOUNDARIES.

Boundaries became my mantra. Whenever I was put into a situation that felt toxic, or felt like it was against my need for “me”, I looked for the boundary that was not clear, quickly locked it into place without emotion, and found myself moving directly past the guilt or exhaustion that often came with those situations. This worked with my adult children, my employees, and with “friends” that were probably not truly friends. It also put the final nail in some past relationships that I had been desperately trying to remove myself from for years.

As I walked toward 2020, I pondered many words to express my new beginning and the days to come. My newly found “me” time had led me to a new part time home at the beach, a renewed love for painting, writing, inspiring, and a chance to once again find the person that had gotten silenced during 22 years of raising and home educating children. I was yearning to delve deeper into my journey, into my passions, and I wanted a word to reflect that. I considered several: creativity, passion, art, vision…But, being the always complex, multi-tasking type of person I am, I realized those words, right now, would only lead me to brain fog and exhaustion as they were simply, for now, too focused.

I realized that my new lifestyle-traveling from one home to another-had me living as an “on vacation, me time, undistracted” person for a period of time, only to quickly return to being a caregiver, homemaker, business person who had little time or energy for the things I loved. Week to week, month to month, my life was a little scattered and exhausting. Projects lost their vision, passion quickly got forgotten, and it was tiring.

So, I needed a word, a mantra, to grasp ALL of these feelings, to pull them together, and to make sense of all those thoughts and ideas bouncing in my mind…And I found it. BALANCE!

BALANCE will be the word that I repeat in my head when I’m making my schedules, when I’m journaling my goals, when my heart is pulling me to a new creative project, a new travel adventure, a new marketing idea for my business. BALANCE encompasses ALL I hope to accomplish-the writing, the beach walks, the exercise programs, the mentoring and inspiring of followers….BALANCE makes it all seem possible.

As you, the reader, enters this new awakening of a year, a decade, beginning, search your heart and mind for all the things you want to see in your life, and find that encompassing word that holds them together…Then repeat it. Every day, every time you have a choice to make-for life is so many choices-repeat that word, use it to lead you, to teach you, to hold you to your goals.

Blessed New Year. Make this the year of YOU!