How What You Eat Impacts the Oceans

• 0 • Live Well

As part of my plant-based nutrition course, I watched a lecture by Bruce Monger of Cornell University on how what we eat is affecting the health of our oceans.  I was so moved by his lecture, that I created a 2 minute video with the highlights to share.  (I did get credit for it, but the written assignment would have been easier!)

I hope that you’ll watch it, and if your intrigued, you’ll read the article Dr. Monger wrote about how our food choices impact the environment: http://nutritionstudies.org/impact-of-food-choices-on-the-environment/

I’m not going to become a marine biologist anytime soon, but I do eat three meals, every day.  And I can make a difference by choosing what I eat for those three meals, every day.  You can too.

For additional information on how to make better decisions about the seafood you eat (if you decide to eat it) check out http://www.seafoodwatch.org/

If you like Bruce Monger’s work and are interested in learning more about oceanography and the latest ocean news, you can like his facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/CornellOceanography

What’s your environmental passion, and how have you found ways to make an impact by doing things a little differently in your every day life? I would love to hear your ideas in the comments below or via e-mail!

Planks While the Tea Steeps: Pairing to Form Habits

• 0 • Live Well

In Gretchen Rubin’s most recent book, Better Than Before, she shares lots of strategies for habit formation.  One of them is the strategy of pairing (see her describe it in this video on her blog).

To use pairing, take an existing habit or part of your routine, and pair it with an unrelated habit you’re trying to form.

One example Gretchen Rubin gave in her book was working on her balance by standing on one leg during her elevator ride.  She knew she wanted to work on her balance, she takes the elevator every day, viola, a successful pairing was born.

I’ve had trouble remembering to do core workouts, so I recently decided to pair them with my tea steeping.  While I’m waiting for the water to boil and the tea to steep, I do planks, squats, etc.  Suddenly I have three to five minutes of dedicated time at least three times a week.  (This works best when the kitchen is clean, because otherwise I end up using the time to empty the dishwasher.)

Pairings don’t need to be things you can do simultaneously, they could be associating two things that will happen in succession, too.  Perhaps you decide that you put a load of laundry in the wash before your favorite Thursday night t.v. show, and switch it to the dryer afterwards.  Maybe you only check your favorite phone app after you brush your teeth, limiting it to a few times a day.

The possibilities of this strategy are pretty exciting.

Some questions to ask as you think about creating habit pairings:

Is the frequency of each activity compatible?

Will it make it easier for you to remember to complete your new habit, or just make you avoid your old routine?

Does this save time, or create a helpful reminder for you?

Will you have enough time to successfully complete the pairing on a regular basis, or is it unrealistic?

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I’ve already done more planks in the past two weeks than I had in the entire two months prior – and it’s a nice reason to sit down with a cup of tea in the evenings when I might otherwise skip the steps of making it.

Paddleboarding – Yes, it’s a real work out.

• 0 • Cross training, Live Well

You know how I know it’s a real workout?  Because I hurt. ALL. OVER.  (That’s not true, my calves and forearms are fine.  Actually my toes and ankles and knees are good too.)

Seriously, though, I had heard that paddleboarding was a good workout for your core, but was a bit skeptical.  Yes, you’re balancing, and you’re switching the paddle from side to side, but for the casual user, was it really doing much?

The best way to find out was to switch from casual paddleboarder into go mode.  I had a morning free on the lake (we’re renting up in Maine for a while to be near family) so I took my Dad’s paddleboard out for a 90 minute paddle down the entire length of the lake and back.

I knew it was further than I should really have gone on my second paddleboard outing of the summer, but that’s the beauty of the out-and-back, right?  You decide to go to the beautiful island, and then to the rock, and then sit and watch the loons for a few minutes, and then you’re close enough that you can’t resist making it to the opposite side of the lake, and then…

YOU HAVE TO GO ALL THE WAY BACK.

The wind, inevitably, is now blowing into your face.

One benefit of running is that when you stop, you net zero.  Stop paddling on a board or kayak and you could lose all your ground.

I was at no point experiencing any pain or concern, but suffice it to say that if I could have paddled out 45 minutes and back for 15, I would have felt better the next morning.

I couldn’t run today, because my quads hurt so much, and if I turn sideways fast I can feel every abdominal muscle I have.

This is great news.  I have confirmation that something I truly love doing, and would do for hours given the chance, is working major muscle groups and giving me a decent workout.

The best kind of exercise is the kind you’ll do.  (The best kind of vegetables are… you got it.)

The only sad part of the whole thing was spotting a dead fish in the lake.  I wish I knew why it had died.  Did someone get it on their hook, and throw it back too injured to survive?  Was it the phosphates in the dishwashing detergent someone used to clean their coffee cups at their vacation home?  Maybe the sunscreen we wear into the lake that leaves an oil film as we dip beneath the water’s surface.  Could have been old age.

We are too far removed from the consequences of our actions, and it makes it both harder to change and hard to know what to change.  If I knew something I did today had killed that little fish, I would try to find a solution that would keep it swimming through the rocks, and still leave me with clean dishes and no sunburn.

If the factories were polluting the air and rivers here instead of China, would we be more likely to pick up items at my grandmother’s famous church rummage sale instead of ordering them on amazon prime?  If we knew people working as day laborers pollinating flowers because the bees are dying out, would we buy different almonds, or use different chemicals on our lawns?

It’s so hard to remember, so convenient and easy to forget.  I buy many new things when reusing would do.  I am awesome at bringing my reusable water bottles everywhere, and we only eat plants, but let’s be honest, I buy a lot of maca powder goji berry chia whatever shipped to me from across the world in plastic.  I could probably get all those nutrients and antioxidants much closer to home.

Every choice we make is an opportunity to make a little difference, a change somewhere.  We won’t ever know or see the direct results, but we should feel good whenever we choose more carefully, because one less bottle in our ocean does make a difference.  We’re all pretty small, but we count, don’t we?

Visit Today As Your Future Self

• 1 • Live Well

I’ve been reading a little lately on mindfulness, a concept that meant almost nothing to me a year ago.  I even attended an amazing mindfulness workshop given by Cory Halaby, a local yoga instructor and life coach.

What is mindfulness?  To me, it means being present in the moment, and really experiencing what is happening around you.  Not thinking about the past or the future, just being truly aware in the moment.  We spend so much of our time thinking and planning.  What’s for dinner?  Did I respond to that e-mail too soon? I should have seen what everyone else said first.  Is it going to rain this weekend?  We should go to the farmer’s market.

While I’m thinking about the weekend weather, my e-mail and dinner, I’m missing the sunshine glinting off my son’s hair, and the way the house smells after I’ve just made coffee.  Will, throwing his head back in laughter because he and Andrew are pretending to be oatmeal monsters and making faces at each other.

If I’m not careful, the thoughts in my head that keep me from being present will be how “it all goes by too fast”.

Sometimes, at least once a day, I try to pause and think about how much my future self will wish she could visit this moment.  If my 40 year old, 50 year old, 60, 70, 80 year old self could be with me now, what would she say?  Who would she hug?  Would she be thinking about something else, or trying to capture every precious detail of the moment?

I think she’d say PAY ATTENTION!  Do you know how lucky you are, to be holding your three and four year old boys on your lap as you read to them before bed?!  Feel the weight of their heads as they lean against your arms.  Notice how cute their little feet are sticking out of their pajama bottoms, side by side.  Watch their eyes, look right into them, when you tell them you have time for one more story.

I watched some videos of the kids recently from when they were younger.  Every time they ended I felt a sense of loss.  I wanted to stay in that world, see more of them at that age, pick up my 6 month old and bounce him in my arms… except he’s 3 now. I wish I could tell that mother to let the camera roll just a bit longer.

I don’t know what my future brings.  I try not to think sad or morbid thoughts, but I do know that even the happiest of futures will age us all.  My children, as exhausting as they are, will only be young once.  That once is now, and I am here now.  This is my chance to live it.

How I would focus, experience, and cherish this moment if I were a visitor from my own future?

Over the course of my life I will lose many of the people in my life who I love.  Someday I will be too old to run.  My children will grow older.  I will cease to be the center of their universe.  The cat curled up next to me won’t be here forever.

I am at a beautiful point in my life.  I have two wonderful children who are active and healthy, and I’m lucky enough to be home with them.  I have the most amazing husband in the world, and he’s healthy, too.  All four of my grandparents are still alive.  All four of my children’s grandparents are still alive.

I will be wishing to be here, now, at points in my future.  I will wish for two things.  One, that I’d made more time for the precious, beautiful moments in life, and two, that I’d stopped thinking about everything else and paid attention when those moments were happening.

Yes, I have to make dinner.  Yes, I have to fold the laundry.  But I don’t need to think about those things while I’m playing with my children.

My intro to mindfulness has given me a great gift, by reminding me how lucky I am to be at this point in my life, and to live it.

You’re here, now.  Live it.

Do your long-term goals pass the “then what?” test? Here’s why they should:

• 0 • Live Well

I’m currently reading The Joy Diet by Martha Beck. It’s unexpectedly hilarious.  Here’s a favorite quote describing her experience in yoga class: “Soothing sitar music plays as she demonstrates, one leg wrapped around her neck, the other folded into her armpit, her head (as far as I can tell) resting gently on the floor beside her buttocks. She looks like the very serene victim of a terrible crime. I could no more assume that position than I could fly to Neptune.”

Martha Beck says something about long-term goals that really resonated with me. She says it’s important to look at what you think you want, and see if it passes the “then what?” test. So frequently, we set goals and then once we achieve them, aren’t as happy as we expected we would be.

whatthenquotation

A classic example: Thinking that having a degree from a prestigious university will be rewarding in its own right. The true reward is the “then what?” that comes afterwards, which is that you will hopefully then be better prepared for success in a career you’re interested in, and it might be easier to find a job. What probably won’t happen: “Then I will feel fulfilled because I have a degree from Harvard!”.

How many purchases would you rethink if you ask yourself the “then what?” question?  Will zealously working on an aspect of your appearance actually change your daily experience?

If I’d taken time to deeply reflect on the “then what?” in choosing life goals for myself, I probably would have chosen a different undergraduate major, and a different graduate school and career path. I entered college hoping to become a writer, and let one horrendous poetry class and a few fun history classes shift my trajectory. My heart still wishes I were a writer.  I started this blog thinking the “then what” was going to be that I’d be motivated to record and therefore complete my half marathon training. The “then what” that happened was that I enjoyed interacting with other runners and writing so much that I haven’t stopped.

How this applies to fitness goals: Asking “then what?” can help us identify better fitness goals for ourselves. For example, in Gretchen Rubin’s new book about habits, I read about someone whose fitness goal was to achieve a six pack before his 30th birthday. He achieved that goal, but there was no “then what?” waiting for him. Sure, he could cross it off his bucket list, but he didn’t enjoy the required exercise enough to maintain the six pack. He worked hard to achieve those results, and earned fleeting satisfaction at best. (I hope he took some photos. But then he might look at them and feel the loss of his six pack more acutely.)

A better fitness goal might have been to find a fitness routine he loved and could stick with by the time he was 30, so that he’d reach the ages of 40 and 50 in better health, and obtain all the positive benefits of exercise along the way.

I thought when I ran my first half marathon that my “then what?” was simply that I would always know I had the spirit and determination to train for and run 13.1 miles. I also looked forward to being physically fit enough to run 6 or 7 miles at a time in the months that followed. That was enough for me at the time.

What I discovered was that the reward for my running was more running. I was better able to enjoy long, leisurely runs. I could handle a few extra hills when I was out with the jogging stroller. Running more meant I could run more, which made me interested in running more. Half marathons pass my “then what?” test with flying colors.

What passes yours?