A Weight Lifted

Fitness Friday Video: Relieving Tension in Your Neck and Shoulders

Lisa — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 14:40:30 +0000

Friday is finally here, but chances are good that the cumulative stress from the work week has settled into your neck and shoulders. If you feel tight from sitting in the car and hunching over your keyboard, we have a few stretches you can do to relieve that tension quickly. Yes, getting a massage or making plans for happy hour can be helpful, too, but these movements are the best things you can do to loosen up that area right now and experience immediate relief.

Green Mountain senior fitness specialist LynnAnn Covell demonstrates a quick two-minute routine that will have you feeling better in no time and ready to tackle the weekend feeling more relaxed! TGIF! (Email viewers, head over to the blog to see.)

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The Big Fat Money Bomb — Donate Today

Marsha — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 18:51:39 +0000

If you’re against weight bullying and a believer that health, not weight, is the true important measure, you’ll be interested in this effort spearheaded by Ragen Chastain of Dances with Fat.

To quote Ragen, “For the last 9 months, every single day, children in Atlanta have seen billboards, commercials, and signs at bus stops like [the ones pictured here]. If you are thinking “it’s not that big a deal” I want to tell you that, as a former bullied fat kid, I think it is a very big deal. The messages couldn’t be clearer. If you’re fat – you should be ashamed. If you’re not fat – you should be terrified of becoming fat because fat people are diseased gluttons by choice and it’s ok to publicly shame them.”

She’s put together a campaign to raise money to sponsor billboards and print media campaigns that present the Health at Every Size® perspective, to “show kids of all sizes that they are valued and respected.”

The goal is to raise $10,000 TODAY and they’re already well on their way. There’s a matching grant of $5000 available if they have 1,000 people sign on to the effort. So if you can donate only $1, you’ll be helping in a big way to achieve that.

Go to http://www.gofundme.com/dp16w TODAY! And thanks for helping support health and happiness for all kids.

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Food Preferences – Why So Different?

Robyn — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 11:29:06 +0000

Generally people believe puppies and bunnies are cute and snakes and spiders are creepy. Sunsets are beautiful but drop-crotch skinny jeans are an abomination. How is it that visually, some preferences can be so similar for so many people, yet the sense of taste is so varied? How can one person can list broccoli as their favorite vegetable and another won’t touch it with a ten-foot pole?

At our healthy weight loss spa, I find it’s interesting to look at our participants’ individual dietary preferences. I wonder how many aversions to foods stem from a genuine dislike of the flavor or if it’s other factors. Texture of food usually plays a big role in creating food aversions. However, memories tied to foods could also contribute to food aversions.

Some individuals, due to genetic differences, can detect certain flavors easier than others and that may shape dietary preferences. Supertasters tend to have aversions to bitter foods and very high fat foods. Also, we are also born with dietary preferences based on what our mothers ate during their pregnancy.

Before assuming all aversions to foods are something you are born with, try experimenting with changing the texture of foods to see if that helps you incorporate more foods into your eating patterns. For example, if the texture of legumes turns you off, puree them into a soup or spin them up in your food processor into a bean dip or spread. If the last time you had green peas they were canned, and you hated them, try fresh peas out of the garden in a pasta salad.

What food have you found you actually like after years of assuming you hated it? Did your taste preference change as you got older?

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Intuitive Cooking-Who Knew?

darla — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 11:38:22 +0000

Well, I had never heard of Intuitive Cooking until last week. I was walking with a friend who told me about Blood, Bones and Butter by Gabriella Hamilton.

I was so happy to discover this concept because I have always called myself a “throw together” cook. Who knew that all along I had actually been intuitive? My chaotic-random style of cooking is to open the refrig door, see what is in there, cook it up and voila–dinner.

One of the things that encourages me to cook this way is my CSA ( community supported agriculture). I get my food from our wonderful local farmers every week and then I use that delicious, grown-with-love food for my intuitive cooking.

With such yummy ingredients, it’s almost always edible and sometimes smashingly good. I realize that the chefs at Green Mountain are intuitively seasoning the great dishes they prepare all the time.

In an Intuitive Cooking article by Lisa Turner’s in the Huffington Post and she says:

I believe that intuitive cooking is as important as intuitive eating in terms of our relationship with food. Cooking by availability and intuition — shopping the market, choosing produce that looks fresh and appealing, and then combining it with ingredients on hand, according to taste and personal preference — is perhaps the oldest and most authentic way of food prep.

In my classes I frequently talk about finding activities for our creative selves and now I can add Intuitive Cooking to the list of creative possibilities.

How have you experimented with Intuitive Cooking?

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Fitness Friday Video: How Do I Stretch This Muscle?

Lisa — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 15:41:46 +0000

Why is it that I can barely remember how to stretch my muscles when I’m doing strength training on my own? I would bet that I’m not alone here; stretching seems to be something we want to hurry through or just skip all together if no one is watching. And it’s not just that we don’t want to take the time, it’s hard to remember if we’re even doing the right stretches.

In today’s Fitness Friday video, LynnAnn demonstrates a very easy way to remember how to stretch each muscle group. When we’re doing an exercise using flexion, which pulls a joint toward the body, then we want our stretch to be an extension, which pulls the joint away from the body. Vice versa, if we’re doing an exercise using extension, then we want our stretch to be flexion. We always want to use the opposite movement to stretch a muscle.

(Email viewers, head over to the blog to watch.)

Keeping this flexion-extension trick in mind is a good idea: Stretching continues to pump blood to and give full range of motion to a tight muscle and prevents soreness. Let us know if you have any of your own tricks to help you remember your stretches!

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Food Insecurity and Diets

Robyn — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 11:02:15 +0000

After the little town our healthy weight loss spa resides in was hit hard by the flood waters of Irene, we lost our one and only grocery store. As a result, our town grocery store has been operating out of a tent for the last four months. As of today it will close completely for 10 days in order to move back into a building. Now, I do have a car and I can drive to a neighboring town to shop, but I still had a twinge of food insecurity pop up regarding this.

This got me thinking about the food insecurity that dieters experience. Although most of us don’t need to worry about not having enough food in the house or not knowing where our next meal will come from, we can still experience perceived future restriction and that can feel scary. Anticipating your next diet attempt, whether the plan is to start Monday or tomorrow, can create a sense of deprivation before you’ve even cut your first calorie and consequently the Last Supper Effect kicks in.

Food insecurity can occur due to our chaotic work or school schedules as well. Many of us have such busy days that eating gets put on the back burner. We may struggle through the day thinking that we won’t get to the chance to eat, and as a result we eat whenever food is put in front of us, since it can appear like our only chance to do so. I call this proactive-eating, i.e. “I’d better eat these donuts I stumbled upon on the break-room now since I doubt that I’ll get a lunch break later.”

Making sure you have access to a wide variety of foods and that your kitchen or work environment is well stocked is a great place to start when tackling this type of food insecurity. Knowing that you’ll consistently have access to food can help prevent you from “eating it all now because you might not have a chance to in the future.” Also, avoiding any changes to your eating patterns that feel like a complete overhaul or are too restrictive, such as diets, can reduce food insecurity as well.

What experiences have you had with perceived food insecurity triggering unwanted eating?

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Where the Magic Happens

Marsha — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 15:03:45 +0000

Do one thing every day that scares you. ~Eleanor Roosevelt

Thanks to Quan Yin on Facebook for this.

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Binge Eating to Numb Out

darla — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 11:36:04 +0000

Binge eating is a frequently discussed topic with Green Mountain alums. One woman was telling me about her desire to just numb out at the end of the day. She was looking to the binge to help her cope with feelings, but she didn’t have a clue about what the feelings were.

I call the process of looking for the feelings “exploring the storm of the underneath” and often times the only way to discover the underneath is by guessing. She guessed anger, which is a common underneath feeling for women who use food to cope.

I was reading a blog by Leora Fulvio in which she talked about retroflection which comes from Gestalt therapy. She writes:

Retroflection is being angry at someone else, and hurting yourself in response. Do you ever notice this happening? Have you ever felt so angry at someone and wound up in the middle of a binge?

It’s incredible how we can often hurt ourselves when we really want to hurt someone else. Of course hurting anyone is never the answer or the correct response, but punishing yourself after someone has hurt you is devastating and the last thing you need.

You’ve already been beaten up enough, you don’t need to join in. It can lead you become isolated, lonely, and unsupported.

Even if you are not aware of the anger, frustration, disappointment, you may be using bingeing in this hurting yourself way to numb out.

Doing something as simple as free writing for 10 minutes to see if you can guess at the feelings underneath can be a way to interrupt the self punishment.

What other strategies do you use to help yourself guess about what is going on underneath?

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Fitness Friday: Behold the Plank

Lisa — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 14:24:45 +0000

Before the current “planking craze,” which consists of lying face down in strange and unlikely places and having someone take your picture, another form of planking for exercise existed: the abdominal plank. Though it may seem intimidating, the abdominal plank is a great move for your back and your abs, even if you are new to exercise, because it can be modified to fit your current fitness level. Also, when you want to shake up your current strength training routine, which is recommended to avoid plateauing and growing bored, you can try a plank instead of your typical ab crunches.

Try several variations and hold the position for increasing amounts of time to gauge your progress. In today’s Fitness Friday video, Green Mountain at Fox Run fitness intern Celeste demonstrates the safe way to plank. (Email viewers, go to the blog to see it.)

Have a fun weekend, everyone!

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Thursday Thoughts: Daily Affirmations, Paula Deen & Type 2 Diabetes

Marsha — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 15:14:12 +0000

Deep Fried Mac and Cheese, courtesy of Paula Deen on the Food Network

Because we’re doing Fitness Fridays much of the time now on the blog, I thought I’d put together my round-up of interesting posts on Thursday, at least this week. No promises for the future, though. We have so much going on at Green Mountain these days — all good — but it’s taking me away from one of my loves — writing. I do have plans to get back to it. Here’s one of my first, short installments that was easy to do because it didn’t require much thinking on my part. There’s so much good stuff out there already!

I start with this video of Jessica’s daily affirmation that comes to us via Medicinal Marzipan. It is a MUST VIEW imo. Quoting Mara, It’s “dying of cute.”

You surely haven’t missed the furor over Paula Deen’s announcement that she has type 2 diabetes. There’s been so much blaming of the foods she showcases in her popular cooking show. This post by Paul Campos, author of the Diet Myth (originally titled the Obesity Myth, which Wikipedia describes as “an expose of the hysteria surrounding weight and health in the Western world today.” Aside: Yay, Wikipedia is back), talks about a major study that looked at the impact of diet on the development of diabetes and obesity. Yoni Freedhoff has some additional thoughts that can help put the furor into perspective, too.

That’s it for today, folks. Gotta get to work now. Have a good Thursday!