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“#Yes I can. #Yes I will.”
This mantra has made its way into my life lately, in all sorts of places and for all sorts of reasons. I find myself jotting it down on Post-it notes and sticking them on my computer monitor before I begin a big project. I close each nightly journaling session with it, the entries reading like little confidence pep talks from me to me. I use it as a battle cry before engaging in a workout that doesn’t exactly fall in my usual purview. I muttered it to myself repeatedly during my month of Whole30 eating, as thoughts of chocolate ice cream danced in my head. You see, I’m working towards making some seemingly impossible things possible, and if there’s anything I’ve come to believe over the years, it’s that language matters. #Yes, I can. #Yes, I will.
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 I used to spend (read: waste) a lot of time wondering if I was #worthy of the things I wanted, instead of considering if they were #worthy of ME.
For a myriad of reasons, one of my early beliefs was that asking for things to be the way *I* wanted them to be was an outrageously selfish idea. I’d be seen as ungrateful for doing it, and hoo boy! There was NOTHING worse than being ungrateful. I moved through the early part of my life always watching for ways and jumping at chances to alter myself and zip my lip in order to promote harmony, keep balance, and support peace. While harmony, balance and peace are certainly #worthy causes, they come at too steep a price if they cost you the ability to stand up for yourself.  For a human being trying to live a healthy life, stress management is a worthwhile and important goal.
And if you are paying an ounce of attention to anything going on in the world today, it's plain to see why learning to manage your (inevitable) stress makes solid, practical sense. I've found the most direct path to allowing a calm state of mind into your everyday life is breath training - using your inhales and exhales intentionally to send messages to your brain to either calm down or amp up. My favorite Calming Down breath is a 5-3-7 count - inhale for 5, hold for 3, exhale for 7. More on that in a bit. The other quick-fire ways you manage your stress is through movement and nutrition. There are about a billion studies on how and why exercise reduces stress, and as for nutrition, it's not only the foods you choose to eat, but also WHO YOU ARE BEING when you eat them. You can eat the healthiest meal on the planet, but if you eat it in a stressed out, anxious state, your digestion is dramatically diminished. Have you ever had the experience of eating a full meal and still being hungry, like you just can't get satisfied? That's a good sign that your stress response is turned on, and your body isn't assimilating nutrients. I have a trick to help with that. I'm excited lately.
I find myself in flow more often the past few months than I've felt in literally years. It's exciting because there is a combined sense of returning to myself while becoming acquainted with this brand new version of me that I have never been before. It's a version born of intense struggle and pain, and those versions tend to be the most fascinating, dynamic, and rich in possibility. All hell broke loose in my world on September 1, 2016. Up until that day, 2016 had been on its way to being a banner year. Then the doorbell rang.  Our bodies require nutrients in order to survive, function, and thrive.
We need large amounts of some - we call these macronutrients - and smaller amounts of others - we call these micronutrients. Micronutrients are vitamins and minerals, and macronutrients include:
The food we eat contains a combination of any/all of the above. Each of these three macros provide energy, or calories, to your body, and each affects your body in different ways. This post looks a little closer at the basics of Healthy Fats - what they are, why you need them, and where to find them. |
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