Veggie Bee

Finding Locally Grown Foods

Find your nearest farmer’s market to visit this weekend at Local Harvest. Support your health by eating locally grown, seasonal fruits and vegetables. You can also find more information about Community Supported Agriculture, another great way to support your local farmers and enjoy locally grown food.

We’re stopping by the farmer’s market in Little Italy this weekend after a run at the bay. What are your healthy weekend plans??

Something is better than nothing

Whether you’re just starting an exercise program to lose weight or you’ve been on an exercise hiatus from your regular routine, many times it’s best to start small and build your exercise momentum by making it a minimum daily commitment. Using a minimum daily effort of 10 minutes may seem like an insignificant impact on your overall health or weight loss, but often this small amount of time serves as the impetus to your entire future exercise program.

When to use the “10 minute” strategy

• You’re just starting an exercise program and seem overwhelmed by the effort you think you should be devoting to it.
• You use the excuse that you “don’t have time” to exercise.
• You had previously been on a regular exercise program, but something changed in your routine and you’ve been out of the habit (sometimes for as little as a week!)
• You work out sporadically because you only want to do “real” workouts that require more time or energy than you have.
• You only workout when you can devote a large block of time to it.

It’s easier to talk yourself out of an hour long run than a 10 minute walk, but even a little bit is better than nothing. Oftentimes, that 10 minute walk will turn into a longer session of exercise since getting started is sometimes the hardest part. But even if it doesn’t, it gives you a chance at keeping your momentum going for the next day so that you have a chance at building consistency into your weekly routine.

5 simple ideas for adding 10 minutes of exercise

• Put your walking shoes & clothes on as soon as you get out of bed. Walk 5 minutes away from your front door and 5 minutes back. Commit to 7 days in a row and if you miss a day, recommit to 7 straight days.
• Put your walking shoes in your car and walk instead of waiting at appointments.
• Park an extra 10 minutes away from your appointments. You’re guaranteed 2 bouts of 10 minutes of exercise.
• Find a DVD (or “on demand” cable channel) with 10 minute segments on it and commit to doing 1 segment each day for 7 days.
• Set a timer for 10 minutes and do jumping jacks, lunges, pushups and crunches while you watch television.

Has incorporating small bouts of exercise into your day ever helped to keep you on track with your program? Which suggestion above would you be willing to try to get your momentum going?

So you say you’re ready to get healthy, makes some changes in your life, right?  Maybe it’s time to renew your commitment to your New Year’s resolutions, or you simply want to feel more energetic and alive and you know that eating healthier and exercising can only help things.  Change can be very simple and when it’s related to your health, we often hear that “it’s not that complicated”…  “just move more and eat less”… “everything in moderation”.  All of these statements are true, but just because something is simple, doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s easy.

Implementing healthy behaviors is a learning process, one that requires information gathering, problem solving, practice and feedback. Although the broad principles of healthy living are universal, such as “eat more fruits and vegetables” or “get more exercise”, the strategies involved in actually doing them in your own life are highly individual and personalized. It’s going to take some effort on your part. It’s going to take a willingness to practice new behaviors in familiar situations. It may be uncomfortable, it may make you feel self-conscious when you bring your own food with you, or defensive when someone implies that you just lack willpower. You have to be willing to go through the discomfort of change before you can relax in the comfort of habit and routine.

While a lot goes into determining success in health management, it is always a process of change for anyone developing new healthy habits. Learning to deal with the process of behavior change takes practice in itself and it helps to know where you are on the road to change.

Let’s look at the different stages of change and think about where you might find yourself today:

• Neutral – You are engaged in unhealthy behaviors and others encourage you to change, but you see no reason to change or doubt your own ability to change.
• Contemplation – You see and acknowledge a need for change, contemplating whether change would make a difference, or questioning whether you can be successful or not in making the change.
• Preparation – You decide that change is necessary and decide which changes can be made and what methods to use to change. You begin mentally preparing for success and looking for help. This process can take weeks or months as you get ready to take action.
• Action – You start taking the necessary steps to reach your goal, evaluating the effectiveness of the changes and taking additional or different steps as needed. You are implementing new behaviors that do not yet feel like habit.
• Maintenance – You meet your goal and continue with behaviors that led to change and to your goal. Healthy behaviors become habitual and seem effortless where decisions are not questioned.
• Relapse – a return to any previous stage. Can be met with feelings of failure which may then lead to earlier stages and the sense that you are “starting over”.

No matter where you are on the journey of healthy living, it helps to have support and to develop the confidence that you can make changes to get to the point of maintenance. You can do it!!  If you are feeling overwhelmed at the prospect of getting there, remember that it can begin with tiny changes that will propel you forward into even more profound changes in your health. Relax and decide to make one tiny change today…  add vegetables to your next meal!

What stage are you in as it relates to your health? What is your confidence level in getting or staying healthy?

Welcome to Veggie Bee, a blog that will focus on practicing healthy living and developing the skills you need to be successful wherever you may be on the journey to a healthier life.

Veggie Bee is a guilt-free, positive-thinking zone, which means accepting where you are on your journey to living healthier. It means that getting and staying healthy is an ongoing learning process where we’ll focus on what’s going right as well as the challenges and obstacles you face as you practice healthy living.

So what does practicing healthy living really mean? 

• Making changes that work for you. You may simply be contemplating the idea of losing weight and changing your lifestyle. You may be ready to go, but have no idea where to start. Or you may be currently maintaining a healthy life. Together we’ll come up with strategies to help you start or maintain a healthy lifestyle and the nutritional and fitness behaviors that go along with it.
• Food versus products. With all the focus on components of our diets, from carbs to proteins, from trans-fats to omega-3’s, it’s easy to forget that there are whole foods out there that are naturally created for optimal health. Food that doesn’t have to be enriched, that doesn’t have ingredients that sound like a foreign language – just whole, natural food. Don’t worry, we’ll also talk about products that are created to help us live a healthy life conveniently!
• Moving. As in, being active and moving your body more. Walking, finding activities that you actually enjoy doing, or ones that you at least don’t hate.  It’s inevitable, healthy living includes exercise for those of us blessed to be able to do it.
• Eating, not dieting. Finding foods you enjoy and strategies that you can practice that will keep you healthy over the long term, not just as a temporary fix for weight loss.
• Reality checks. Using the tools of health management to measure your progress and allow you set goals for yourself based on the reality of where you are. For some of us, it takes practice to look at our health without bias, denial or guilt. Learning to detach your worth and worthiness from the number on a scale may take time, but it is necessary at times to maintain momentum in healthy behaviors.  Weighing yourself regularly, keeping records related to healthy behaviors, knowing your health-related numbers like body mass index (BMI), blood pressure and cholesterol are all healthy reality checks to ensure you’re on the right track.
• Accountability. This may mean finding a walking buddy, joining a community of support, finding a nutritionist or personal trainer or it may simply mean setting up goals that make you accountable to yourself. It also means finding a way that works for you to keep records related to what you eat and when you move.

You can be healthy and vibrant!! I hope my passion for whole foods and fitness can help you as you make positive changes in your life. It’s time to be fabulous ~ and positively healthy!