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I’ve got a regular post coming soon, but I’m also kicking off something different this morning. Isn’t that what new beginnings are for?

For 2018, I’ll be adding something new to the daily line-up on Mark’s Daily Apple—a daily takeaway post before the main article each weekday. For those who want a quick tip, simple target, or motivation boost to start your day, this is it.

Sometimes a salient quote, sometimes a fitness strategy, nutrition bite, or personal challenge, each day you’ll find something different—all to help you “Live Awesome” today.

Today’s takeaway is a challenge….

“If you want to lift yourself up, lift someone else up.” — Booker T. Washington

New Year resolutions are often self-focused. It’s natural, of course. The only person we can or should change is the one in the mirror. But we’re an innately social species that thrives on collaboration as well as altruism—and we find a practical, immediate kickback to those instincts. There’s something remarkably impactful about supporting someone else in his/her goal. What you offer fuels your own endeavor. So, choose one way you’ll encourage or help someone else this year. Support folks in the Mark’s Daily Apple Facebook Group or the Keto Reset Group. Coach someone. Be a gym partner. Send a message to someone you know needs it this morning. Put awesome energy out there, and see it expand in your own life.

There’s more to come this morning (including a giveaway), so stay tuned. In the meantime, I’d love to hear what you’d like to see in the daily takeaway posts. Grok on, everybody.

The post What Are You Doing to Live Awesome Today? appeared first on Mark’s Daily Apple.

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Day 272 of 360

If sets require interruption at chosen weight, make as minor an adjustment as needed and complete the next uninterrupted. When scheme is listed as “7 x 3″, it always refers to “Sets” x “Reps”. Reminder: Position and range of motion always govern weight.

Then:

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For anyone consuming a standard American diet that’s heavy on processed meat, dairy and overcooked vegetables, adding the right raw foods can certainly boost your health. Raw foods have a lot going for them, especially when it comes to preserving nutrients. Yet, there’s still some foods that are unsafe if eaten raw and others that […]

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You’ve worked your entire life, paid your dues each month and skimped on the things you really wanted, because frankly, there just isn’t enough money. Paying the heating bill, water bill, car loan, or putting food on the table takes priority. Suddenly, you’re sick — with no money to spare. You just can’t afford to […]

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“A classic,” said Mark Twain, “is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.” Such is the case with arguably the greatest novel in Spanish literature, The Ingenious Nobleman Sir Quixote of La Mancha. But the other characteristic of a classic work is the mark it leaves on culture, and you don’t have to have read the thousand pages of Don Quixote to understand its themes.

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Today’s guest post is offered up by one of our own, Erin Power. She’s our awesome Student and Graduate Support Lead for the Primal Health Coach Program as well as an amazingly successful health coach in her own right. I love her message of starting out the year with a solid, actionable goal in hand—and a practical takeaway for defining that New Year objective. Enjoy, everyone!

There’s a tide shift happening—and it’s exciting and inspiring to be a part of it.

Within my health coaching practice, I’m finding the entire vernacular changing. When I ask my prospective clients what their Main Health Goals are, I’m not hearing things like “I want to look good in my swimsuit on my beach vacation.” Or, “I want to rock a body-conscious outfit at my high school reunion.” Or even “I want to lose X number of pounds by X day of the year.”

Check out these quotes from some of my client Intake Forms over the last six months:

“I have an unhealthy relationship with food; I have a sugar addiction and constant food obsession. I need to get rid of all of this.”

“I’m looking for the lifestyle change, and to gain a better understanding of how food works in relationship to my body.”

“I’m uncertain of the foods I should be eating and the workouts I am doing. I need help reorganizing my eating, drinking, sleeping and workout habits.”

“My body feels out of sorts. I want to increase my energy and my overall sense of wellbeing.”

“I have been obsessed about food for my entire life. I just want to understand it all, once and for all.”

When people are put on the spot—and about to make a financial investment in improving their health—they spend some time really thinking about how to specifically articulate their health goals.

They put a lot more time into it than most of us put into our New Year’s Resolutions, which often end up looking a lot like the same hastily-scribbled list from last year.

And that’s a big reason why New Year’s Resolutions don’t work.

A benign list, with no emotion behind it—no strategy, no incentive, no WHY—will almost always fall short in the motivation category. There’s no skin in the game. I’m not talking about a financial investment. I’m talking about an emotional one. A spiritual one.

Why Applying WHYx5 Makes a Difference

The Why-by-Five exercise is a tool that I use with my health coaching clients to help them uncover their true motivating factors for change. Those same old resolutions make it onto the list each year for a reason, and I think we can agree it would be nice to move the needle on a few of them—once and for all. This exercise helps us get to the root. All you have to do is ask yourself WHY, five times.

Allow me to share an example:

My Main Health Goal for 2018 is, as always, improved mobility. Except, that’s too vague. And the way I know it’s too vague is because I literally make this New Year’s Resolution every year and have never once stuck to it.

Let’s go deeper:

I want to practice my barefoot Grok Squat daily, keeping my feet in a relatively neutral position and my chest lifted. I’d like to work up to holding this for ten straight minutes.

Better! Now we work that specific, measurable, realistic goal through the WHYx5 exercise:

Why is that important to me?
The lack of mobility through my hips and lumbar spine has prevented me from progressing in both my strength and conditioning program, and my yoga practice.

Why does that matter?
Because I want a really capable body that can do all kinds of badass things, including lifting and bending.

Why is that important?
Because I feel like I’m just going through the motions with my fitness right now, and I want to really optimize the function of my body as I move into middle age.

Why would that be great to achieve?
Because I’ve watched so many people descend into old age and infirmity, and I believe there is a better fate for us—for me! I don’t believe we are destined to be confined to walkers and wheelchairs, and much of this is in my control.

Why?
Because I want to know that well into middle age and beyond I’ll be able to trust my body to shoulder the burden of performing badass human tasks like lifting heavy in the gym, training and exercising my horses, playing sports, and just being able to be out DOING awesome things.

From there, simply splice all of those well-thought out intentions together, to achieve an articulate goal worth reaching for.

Here is inspiration I can stick on the front of the fridge:

My 2018 goal is to practice my barefoot Grok Squat daily so that I can keep my feet in a relatively neutral position and my chest lifted, and I’d like to work up to being able to hold this for ten minutes. This will lessen the physical restrictions through my hips and lumbar spine, and enable me to trust my body to shoulder the burden of performing badass human tasks well into middle-age and beyond.

Okay now you go.

Download the WHYx5 exercise here (PDF printable), fill it out yourself, and share your 2018 goal(s) on the comment board. What are you reaching for, and what’s your why behind that desire?

Thanks for reading, everyone, and Happy New Year!

— Erin Power, CHNC, PHC

The post A Practical Tool For Your 2018 Goal Setting appeared first on Mark’s Daily Apple.

Originally Posted At: https://breakingmuscle.com/feed/rss

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Originally Posted At: https://breakingmuscle.com/feed/rss

Day 271 of 360

Rest as needed between sets. If sets require interruption at the designated weight, make as minor an adjustment as needed and complete the next uninterrupted. When the scheme is listed as “3 x 5″, it always refers to “Sets” x “Reps”.

Reminder: Position and range of motion always govern weight.

Then,

5 rounds of:

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Note from GGS: It’s important to distinguish the difference between detrimental behaviors and clinically diagnosed eating disorders. This article is not addressing diagnosed disorders, but specifically focuses on behaviors instead. If you have any doubts, please refer to the resources shared at the end of this article.

At one point or another, I believe nearly everyone has eaten food for a reason other than being physiologically hungry. There are many reasons why we eat:

• Boredom
• Fear of missing out
• To connect with others over a meal
• To distract ourselves
• Pleasure
• Stress relief

Binge eating, also known as compulsive eating, can be described as overeating on steroids. When one overeats, there may be a level of awareness and even mindfulness in the moment.  Binge eating, on the other hand, can be described as intense, immediate, driven, devouring, and out of control.

Binge eating can be at any frequency — once a week, or once a day. One can have a single episode that can happen at any time during the day. It can also be any amount of food. It could be three brownies, or it could be a whole pan of brownies; there is no specific definition of frequency or quantity.

For as long as I can remember, I struggled with my weight. I saw food as the enemy, with hunger and appetite being something to fight and attempt to control. From being told I was “big-boned” and “it runs in the family” and trying every diet I could get my hands on, to being comforted with food by well-intentioned family members, my relationship with food and appetite has been a turbulent one.

Hindsight is 20/20, and looking back, I can connect the dots of my journey. It’s important to remember that there is no single right or wrong way to heal our relationship with food — our own journey is unique.

My Binge Eating Story

In my early childhood, some of my fondest memories are with my grandfather. He loved to eat Oreos, Nutter Butters, and McDonald’s breakfast. Since he lived out of state, I only saw him a couple of times a year, and having these treats with him was a special occasion.

Through adolescence, binging on these foods became my coping mechanism to deal with stress from various aspects of my life. This pattern continued into adulthood, and as life got continually more complicated, the emotions I had stuffed down with food during my teen years began to resurface, making the binging episodes more frequent.

Fear, shame, and self-loathing surrounded each of the episodes, creating a vicious cycle that lasted many years. At the time, I was living in a fog, unaware of what was happening and doing my best to merely survive.

Today, I can look back and identify some very key points to which I was oblivious in the moment:

• I was not actually hungry for the cookies. Rather, I was craving the comfort that these foods represented: quality time with my grandfather, where I felt safe and loved.
• The hunger I was experiencing is what some may refer to as “heart hunger.” And no amount of actual food can fill an empty heart.
• The more I attempted to fight the hunger, the more food dominated and controlled my thoughts and my life. My days were filled with thoughts of food, and then feeling bad about myself for having those thoughts. At breakfast I was already thinking about what I would have for lunch.  When something stressful happened, I turned to a snack or sweet treat to make things better.
• When I binged I didn’t even really taste the food. Instead, I ate it as quickly as possible in order to not be seen, caught, or interrupted. Afterwards, shame and guilt washed over me along with massive digestive distress.

There are so many resources, programs, diets, books, articles, and gurus out there that a person can spend all of their time, money, and energy collecting data and end up more confused than ever.

The most important lesson I’ve learned on this journey is that everything I need to heal is within me.

And I am in no way saying that I have healed completely: it’s a continuum and my personal motto is that I am “perpetually under construction.” While I’ve come a long way, I still have a lot more to learn.There are also many external positive influences that have impacted and helped me along the way. Essentially, however, once I took personal responsibility for my journey is when the real change began.

How I Began to Heal

As I kept looking for solutions outside of myself, I became increasingly frustrated. Until I was ready to face myself in the mirror and begin living authentically, I was unable to make any lasting change toward healing my relationship with food and appetite.

Our relationship with food and appetite mirrors our relationship with ourself.

While I was at war with my appetite, I was in fact thwarting all my efforts at improving my digestion, metabolism, and health: I was putting myself in a chronic physiologic stress response by engaging in the negative self-talk, criticism, and judgment that comes with binge eating.

When someone very wise asked me how what I was doing was working for me, I had to come to terms with the answer: it wasn’t — not at all!

So, I chose to follow their suggestion of doing the opposite: rather than force my will onto my body, and trying to control it with my mind, I started to listen to my internal body wisdom. This was by no means easy at first: it felt as though my body and I were speaking two very different languages! I didn’t trust my body, and I didn’t trust myself.

With this realization, I continued searching for outside resources — except this time it was different and I went in with a new mindset: I am not broken and I do not need to be fixed!

Rather than looking for something or someone to blame, rather than positioning myself as a victim, rather than being disappointed when what I thought would be the answer failed, I decided to save myself for myself.

No more giving away my power. No more being a martyr. No more doing it for someone else. Instead, I made the very personal decision to enter into a relationship with myself, something I had been avoiding all of my life up until that moment.

My Biggest A-Ha! Moment

It took me a lot of trial and error to get to know my body, and to get to know myself. Finding out what worked well for me and what does not took experimenting: it doesn’t matter what the media or the experts call a “health food” — if this particular food doesn’t work in your body, then it’s not a healthy food for you.

Some other big realizations came in learning about the major impact of stress on my digestive health, and about the influence of sleep — or lack thereof — on my mental state, my ability to recover and my emotional stability.

My biggest A-Ha! moment, however, was this:

My binge eating behavior is a messenger, trying to draw my attention to some underlying incongruity within myself.

This unwanted behavior with food isn’t there to harm me, but exists as a doorway to greater clarity and deeper understanding.

Once I accepted this, I was able to begin healing my relationship with food and my appetite. Binging is an out of control behavior which is actually a compensation for a place in life where we are in tight control. The human regulatory system is brilliant: homeostasis is always trying to reach balance.

This area of tight control, for me, was emotions: I had used food to push down so many emotions over the years: feelings of fear, pain, powerlessness, rejection, loneliness, and sadness, to name just a few.

Of course, other factors can create this imbalance, all being attempts at control. Food rules and deprivation can lead to binge eating. Suppressing your joy, working too much, volunteering too much, the inability to say no, and lack of boundaries all can contribute to an imbalance that can result in a binge. Pushing down any emotion, either positive or negative can result in binge eating. Suppressed sexual energy or tension can show up as a binge.

Trying to control the universe, micromanaging everything and everyone, or living in “should” land where you are more focused on what should be happening rather than what is actually happening (and feeling overwhelmingly disappointed) can bring about a binge.

Willpower will not work to stop the symptom until we listen to its message. Binge eating is asking us to take a deep breath and sense into what’s going on internally within ourselves.

My Healing Strategies

Binge eating has very little to do with eating or food. It has to do with unseen, unnoticed energies and forces that are churning in our depths. The binge is a behavior that’s pointing at something else, something deeper.

Healing from binge eating behavior requires a whole body approach, inclusive of body, mind, and spirit. We can alter binge eating with modified behaviors, but the transformation of binge eating is not simply a nutritional strategy — it has to be an emotional strategy as well.

Rather than fight binge eating, I began to invite the behavior when it showed up, and recognize it as an attempt at self-care.

My food of choice during a binge was either Nutter Butters or Oreo cookies. And I could eat the whole bag. Both bags, actually. Mindlessly, quickly, standing at the counter, in a fury of desperation to push down whatever discomfort I was experiencing. This behavior was me doing the best I could with what I knew at the time.

I learned to ritualize the binge in order to step into the present moment. Some steps I learned to take and that served me well when I was experiencing a binge eating episode were as follows:

• Slow down
• Only eat at the table
• Use nice dishes and placemats
• Light a candle
• Play soothing music
• Give myself permission to enjoy this food, no matter what food item I chose — in other words, let go of any judgment around the food.
• Give myself permission to eat all the cookies if I wanted to, but only four at a time. I could serve myself four cookies as many times as I wanted until they were gone.

By doing the above, the amount of cookies I ate went down drastically, and I rarely ate more than a dozen at a time. It kept going down until it was about eight, and then four cookies. Nowadays, I rarely eat these types of cookies at all, opting for homemade instead, with the highest quality ingredients available. I eat them slowly and mindfully, savoring each bite, and allow myself to be nourished both by the food and by the love with which the cookies were made.

I still experience binge eating behavior on occasion. The difference now is that I know and accept that it’s a message alerting me to a misalignment within myself. Binge eating is not a lack of self-control and unless and until the root cause is addressed, the unwanted behavior will persist.

Binge eating is not the problem. This behavior is actually a gift. It’s an invitation to grow through the experience by shining the light of consciousness upon it.

Resources

This article did not address diagnosed disorders, but specifically focused on common detrimental eating behaviors instead. If you find yourself unsure and would like to learn more or find help, please consult the resources below:

• National Centre for Eating Disorders (United Kingdom)
• National Eating Disorder Information Center (Canada)
• National Eating Disorders Association (United States)
• National Eating Disorders Collaboration (Australia)

The post How I Made Peace With My Appetite appeared first on Girls Gone Strong.

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Forty million American adults live with anxiety disorders, and it’s not uncommon for depression to accompany anxiety. Nearly half of the people diagnosed with depression also have a diagnosis of an anxiety disorder. Even if you don’t have an anxiety disorder or depression, it’s normal to get stressed out from time to time. Anxiety is […]