Nutrition For The Win

Diced beets with red onion, spinach, and some cooked salmon, fresh or canned. Delicious and possibly one of the healthiest salads you'll ever eat.

It's Movement Monday once again! It doesn't matter how you do it. Run, walk, bike, scooter, play a sport, climb the stairs just to climb, do some pushups, park as far away from the grocery store as you can, it doesn't matter! Just get out there and get some extra movement in. A lot of people say they're on their feet all day at work and get their steps in there. It's great to not have a sedentary job. However, your body does adjust. Walking all day at work becomes routine an...d eventually, sooner than you think, all those steps become less of a workout on your heart, lungs, and legs. Get some movement in that is for no other reason than to get the movement in. Get creative. Just get moving. I promise, you won't be sorry.

Sleep. We all need it. Yet few of us get enough quality sleep to awake fully rested and refreshed in the morning. There are many factors into how much quality sleep we're getting. Stress levels, exercise, diet. But there are ways to improve the quality of sleep we get.... -daily activity -electronics off in the evening -avoid alcohol and caffeine before bed. -create a pre-sleep routine, like reading a physical book A final tip, one that has had a huge impact on my quality of sleep, is the importance of the timing of sleep. Eight hours of sleep is always seen as the goal. However, sleeping from midnight to 8 am may not have the impact you expect. However, if you shut things down an 10 pm, sleeping by 10:30, and wake up at 6:30, you'll get the same amount of sleep but you may find you are getting a better quality of sleep. If you stay up and ignore your body's sleep signals, when you eventually go to bed, you may be at a point where your body struggles to unwind. As a result, you may toss and turn a bit more than normal before falling asleep. You may also wake more frequently through the night, disrupting REM sleep. I've heard since I was a child that hours slept before midnight are better quality than the hours slept after midnight. As someone who has struggled for years to get proper sleep, I can tell you from experience that going to bed at an earlier time in the evening has greatly improved the quality and quantity of my sleep.

There seems to be a rise in the number of ads promoting quick fixes for people looking to get comfortably back into their summer clothes. Everything from overly restrictive diets to some magic elixir that "melts the fat away while you sleep". My feeling, and experience, is that many of these companies make promises that are unrealistic and any "positive" results are temporary and potentially unhealthy. Healthy and sustainable weight loss is 1 to 2 pounds per week, on average.... Some weeks, people may lose 3, 4, 5 pounds. The next week, maybe none. I once lost 11 pounds in one week using supplements from a strip mall diet centre. By the end, I lost 53 pounds in 10 weeks. Then regained all of it, plus 10 more, within the same year. It was not sustainable and very unhealthy. Once I figured everything out, I lost 70 pounds and have kept it off. It took most of a year to lose it. But I've kept it off for years since then. It's not easy but it is simple. I can show you. You can do it. Up to 10 pounds by July 1.