Sleep Facts

Do we really need 8 hours of sleep?
Most of us need 7 to 8 hours - not only to be sharp, but to also fend off mood disorders and even metabolic problems. Most folks who don't snooze long enough just get used to feeling sleepy and preforming suboptimally. Is that where you want to be?

When is it too late to go back to sleep?
If you need to be up in less than 90 minutes, it's better to just get up. We usually wake up during the lightest stage of sleep which occurs about every 90 minutes. So if you can't get an additional 90 minutes, you'll likely wake up from a deeper sleep stage feeling groggy.

Carbs Are Killing You!

http://blog.massivehealth.com/infographics/Carbs_are_killing_you/ 

What to Drink During Your Workout

By Benjamin Plackett

As much as 60% of your body is made up of water and when you work out, you can lose quite a bit.

The American College of Sports Medicine notes that drinking water helps functioning of the joints and body tissues, the regulation of body temperature, and the transportation of nutrients. But some of us don’t drink enough, says Nancy Clark, R.D., a sports nutritionist and author of Nancy Clark’s Sports Nutrition Guide Book. Here's how to get it right.

Choose the right beverage

Sometimes the simplest solution is the best, and that’s true when it comes to choosing a workout beverage. “If you’re an average person, then water after a workout is just fine,” says Clark. But if your workout is more intense and you spend more than three hours at a time doing it, then Clark recommends chocolate milk. "It’s got sodium and calcium, which we lose when we sweat. It’s also got carbs to refuel and give energy, and the protein also helps to repair any damage.” If milk or water isn’t your thing, sports drinks, coconut water, or other beverages are fine. Don't worry too much about electrolytes; Clark says food can provide those lost in sweat.

Consume the right amount

Clark says there isn’t a set amount of water that you should consume during exercise, rather, she recommends you “drink to thirst.” But there are ways to calculate your sweat rate, which involve weighing yourself before and after you run, and doing a few calculations. Clark says that if you lose a quart of sweat in an hour then you should be drinking about eight ounces of water every 15 minutes. If you want to skip the math and you tend to sweat a lot, 4 to 6 ounces every 15 to 20 minutes during your workout is a good rule of thumb.

Don’t drink too much

It’s actually possible to drink too much fluid, although this is uncommon. More of a risk during marathons and triathlons, athletes who consume a lot of fluid (even sports drinks), but not enough sodium can develop a potentially life-threatening condition called Hyponatremia. (A woman died of it during the 2002 Boston Marathon.) Symptoms include bloating, nausea, confusion, disorientation, and seizures. But really, over hydration is “rare,” says Clark. “Most people don’t drink enough.

Pack in some protein and carbs

While exercising is good for you, it’s common to incur some minor cell or tissue damage after a workout. Proteins can help repair any damage, so Clark recommends rehydrating with a protein-rich drink after an especially intense workout. But it’s not just about protein, she says. Because you expend substantial amounts of energy when exercising, “you want about three times more carbohydrates than protein,” which is why she recommends flavored milk as fluid replacement.

Know the risks of dehydration

Any number of problems can result from not drinking enough water; perhaps one of the most common is fatigue. If you don’t drink enough water then “your blood gets thicker from lower water content and your heart has to work harder, which means you get tired,” says Clark. “A dehydrated person will get fatigued.”

Drink before and during exercise

Clark recommends drinking fluids before you even begin to exercise, especially if you’re doing something that requires a lot of stamina. "You need to start drinking about one and a one half to two hours before running a marathon," she says. Also, drinking fluids during a workout isn’t a bad idea either. "We don’t drink enough during exercise and that puts you in a hole when you finish and then you have to rehydrate," says Clark. "It’s better if you don’t put yourself in that hole in the first place." While it might be cumbersome to carry water with you on a run, it’s worth it, she says.

8 Times You Shouldn’t Pick the Fat-Free Option

By Woman's Day

By Lexi PetronisWhen to Buy Full-Fat

When you're at the grocery store and two options are staring you down-one that says "reduced fat" and one that's unapologetically full-fat-choosing the less fattening option is a no-brainer, right? Not so fast! "Just because a product is labeled 'fat-free' or 'lowfat' doesn't mean it's healthier or even lower in calories," says Jared Koch, a nutritionist in New York and the founder of Clean Plates. "In fact, most lowfat or fat-free foods will have sugar and chemicals to make up for the loss in taste, which renders them poor nutritional choices."

Plus, our bodies need healthy fat in our food to keep our cell walls strong, absorb important vitamins and regulate our hormones. Taking away that fat and adding in chemicals can have another unexpected result: Franken-foods that don't cook the way they should, or crumble up when they shouldn't. Here are eight full-fat foods that are actually better for you than their reduced-fat or nonfat relatives. 

Salad Dressing

You might think that a salad filled with low-calorie, lowfat veggies would find its match in a low-calorie, lowfat dressing. The opposite is true, though. Researchers from Purdue University found that while fat-free dressings are lower in calories than fat-based dressings, they block absorption of fruits' and veggies' nutrients, like carotenoids which protect your body's cells. According to the study, dressings with monounsaturated fats (from canola and olive oil, for instance) boosted the absorption of the veggies' carotenoids. Dressings made with polyunsaturated fat (from soybean oil) and saturated fat (from plain old butter) helped absorption, too, but it takes more dressing to reap the rewards. Don't use this info as an excuse to smother your salad in high-fat dressing-just 1/5 tablespoon of extra-virgin olive oil drizzled onto a salad is enough to get the best out of veggies.

Peanut Butter

Sure, peanut butter is high in fat and calories-a two-tablespoon serving can pack about 190 calories and 16 grams of fat. But is it nuts to buy the reduced-fat version? "The fat in peanut butter is healthy monounsaturated fat, which has been shown to decrease inflammation, raise healthy cholesterol levels, promote weight loss and possibly fight belly fat," says Erin Palinski, RD, CDE, LDN, CPT, author of the forthcoming Belly Fat Diet for Dummies. "Reduced-fat peanut butter takes away some of this healthy fat and replaces it with sugar." To make the most of your PB, buy a natural version with no added sugar. 

Milk

If milk does a body good, then nonfat milk probably does a body better, no? "Milk is fortified with vitamins A and D, which are fat-soluble vitamins-essential vitamins that are stored in your liver and necessary for the absorption of other important nutrients," says Palinski. "When you take all the fat out of milk, you don't properly absorb these essential vitamins." (This is why you'll often see skim milks with added vitamins A and D.) Instead of nonfat or skim milk, try one percent-it's still low in saturated fat, but it has just enough fat to up vitamin absorption. And there's a bonus: "One-percent milk contains higher levels than fat-free milk of conjugated lineolic acid, which may help reduce body fat," says Palinski. But if you're looking for an extra calcium kick from your milk, a glass of skim could be your best bet. 

Cookies

"Salt, sugar and fat are the three primary vehicles to deliver taste," says Koch. "Whenever you remove one, one of the others replaces it to ensure a food is still yummy. So lowfat or fat-free cookies have a lot of extra sugar or high-fructose corn syrup to make up for the missing ingredient." And too much sugar can lead to higher triglyceride levels, which increases your risk of developing coronary artery disease and gaining weight. Another problem with fat-free or lowfat cookies: the crumble factor. Because they're made with chemicals, they tend to turn into dust at the bottom of the box more quickly than cookies made with natural ingredients.

Potato and Tortilla Chips

OK, there aren't a lot of health benefits to be found in full-fat chips, but certain lowfat and nonfat chips could be even worse. That's because some brands contain fat-mimicking chemicals that can cause intestinal cramps, gas and diarrhea. On the label, look for the words "Olean" and "Olestra"-they're synthetic fats added to foods that have been found to cause these symptoms-and they may also result in weight gain. Stick to small serving sizes of regular chips-or better yet, try baked versions, which don't contain fake fats at all.

Ice Cream

It sure sounds like a good idea-take the fat out of ice cream and create a magical food you can eat all day, every day. Beware: "Fat helps you feel full. Without that fat, you keep eating," says Palinski. And even though fat-free ice cream might not pack in the fat grams, it still packs in the calories. A ½ cup of full-fat vanilla is about 230 calories and a ½ cup of reduced-fat vanilla is about 170, which can add up fast. 

Frozen Meals

We've all nuked a lowfat frozen meal and called it lunch-and why not? It's easy, low-effort and relatively low-cal. The only problem? "They have much more sodium than their full-fat counterparts," says Julie McGinnis, MS, RD, a dietitian in Boulder, CO, who also owns The Gluten Free Bistro. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) recommends that adults eat no more than 2,300 mg of sodium per day. Processed foods are salt-filled wonderlands-lowfat frozen meals can have half your daily allowance in one lunch. To lick the salt once and for all, make your own frozen meals; all you need are fresh foods and a freezer.

 

Yogurt

Sweet, cool and creamy, yogurt is a popular go-to snack. Full-fat versions contain about 8 grams of fat per serving; lowfat versions clock in somewhere around 4 grams of fat per serving. "But some lowfat yogurt brands make up for a lack of fat with artificial sweeteners," says McGinnis. And studies have shown that sugar substitutes may overstimulate your taste buds, leading you to crave more sweet foods and upping your risk of weight gain. Also, some experts are concerned that sugar substitutes are addictive. If you want a lowfat yogurt, make it Greek-many brands have no added sweeteners, artificial or otherwise.

5 Stages of Change Model: Which Stage Are You In?

The 5 Stages of Change Model is a very useful framework that describes the series of stages we go through to change our lifestyle habits. The critical assumption that underpins this model is that behavioral changes do not happen in one step, but through a series of distinct, predicable stages. Just realizing the stage of change you’re in may be helpful for you to succeed.
While this model was originally developed in the 1970′s to better understand how smokers are able to give up their addiction to cigarettes, it has since been used to understand changing just about any type of behavior. For the purposes of this article, eating unhealthy foods, or not exercising are the habits we are trying to change.
1) Precontemplation
People in this stage don’t want to make any change to their habits and don’t recognize that they have a problem. They may be pessimistic about their ability to make change, or even deny the negative effects of their existing lifestyle habits. They selectively filter information that helps confirm their decision not to exercise, or eat better. This stage is many times referred to as the “denial” stage.
Unfortunately, it’s difficult to reach, or help people in the precontemplation stage. It may take an emotional trigger, or event of some kind that can snap people out of their denial. It’s highly likely if you are taking the time to read this article, you are not in this stage.
2) Contemplation
During this stage, you are weighing the costs (i.e. effort, time, finances) and benefits of lifestyle modification. You are contemplating whether it’s something that will be worth it. People can remain in this stage for years without preparing to take action.
I think setting very powerful, motivating goals and visualizing your results can be very helpful for someone in the contemplative stage (See: 7 Ways to Increase Your Motivation to Exercise). If you can identify new ways that making a change will benefit you, the benefits will begin to outweigh the costs. We tend to seek pleasure and avoid pain, so the more pleasure you can ascribe to making a change, the more likely you will take action and succeed.
3) Preparation
People in the preparation stage have decided to change their negative habits within one month. Congratulations if you’re in this category! You may have just set up an appointment with a personal trainer, nutritionist, or other fitness professional, purchased a fitness program, or started a gym membership.
4) Action
The action stage is the process of changing your lifestyle, whether you are exercising more consistently, or eating healthier. Individuals in this stage are at the greatest risk of relapse, so it’s key to leverage any techniques you can to stay motivated (See: 7 Ways to Increase Your Motivation to Exercise).
5) Maintenance
This is the stage of successful, sustained lifestyle modification. If you have been exercising for years consistently and have blended positive habits into your lifestyle, then you are in the maintenance stage.
In my experiences, people tend to bounce between the contemplation, preparation, and action stages, in other words, most people are “yoyo” dieters and exercisers. I think one way to prevent this yoyo effect from happening is to make small changes in your habits that over time create something meaningful.
In addition, yoyo dieters and exercisers should understand that maintaining physical fitness and changing fitness are two totally different paths that require different approaches. It’s not that difficult to maintain a given level of physical fitness just by remaining consistent (unless you are at a very high level). It’s very difficult, however, to prepare and take action to change your body. Our bodies are resistant to change, so trying to change them takes a MASSIVE effort that requires a substantial commitment, both mental and physical. Once you’ve changed your body, you can coast without losing that fitness level. It’s a lot better to cut back on exercise and maintain what you’ve gained then to stop completely. Stopping exercise should not be an option.

The Lazy Person's Guide to Exercise

We’ve all heard the common (and sometimes conflicting) prescriptions when it comes to getting exercise: Get into a routine, do it with a friend, mix it up, keep it the same, make it convenient, take the stairs, bike to work! But only some 30 percent percent of us are actually getting to the gym or pounding the pavement with any regularity.
That’s a problem, and here’s why: Not only are we suffering from a growing obesity epidemic in this country, exercise also helps you sleep better, stress less, and feel happier. But the truth is, we all know this—and yet we still find it hard to fit exercise into our routines. So instead of offering up the usual yawn-worthy tips, we’re going to suggest some tricks instead. Below are 6 ways for you to be more active without really noticing.

1. Stand while you work. Standing up requires two times the energy as sitting down, but calories are not the only reason to consider this unusual method of working. Standing desks are gaining in popularity for other reasons too. Being upright may help you get ideas out, help alleviate back problems associated with long hours at the computer, and burn fat.
2. Pace while you talk. High-strung people tend to this anyways—have you ever noticed how thin they are despite what they may eat? Every time your cell rings, pop up from your desk (or couch) like you have somewhere important to go and take that conversation on the road. Not only is that less annoying for co-workers, it’s a mindless way to get activity in. Pace up and down the halls of your office, or up and down your front street. Pacing burns about 90 calories an hour, which adds up if you spend half your day on conference calls.
3. Meet halfway. Tie exercise to an activity that you’d rather be doing, like going for a drink. Think of this as the buddy system for lazy people: Make a pact with a friend whom you hang out with frequently to always meet at some walkable halfway point, rather than taking turns going to each other’s neighborhoods. There’s just something about having a destination that takes the boredom out of exercise.
4. Do two-minute exercise spurts. For some of us, even 20 minutes of exercise can feel like a lifetime. But two minutes? Anybody can do that. Here’s what you do: Set your phone alarm every hour on the hour and as soon as it goes off, do jumping jacks for two whole minutes. If you stick to that plan between 8am and 6pm you will have added 20 minutes of high-intensity cardio to your day, which is pretty darn good for your health. It will also likely up your productivity and burn an additional 200 calories.
5. Play music while you clean. You may have already heard that doing housework can burn all sorts of calories, but we’re going to bet that adding music to the mix will put even more bounce in your scrub. Listening to upbeat tunes can also boost your mood and distract you from unpleasant thoughts—just like your cleaner home can—making chore time pass more easily.
6. Make it a date. Not an exercise date per se, just a regular date that involves movement. If you’ve recently started seeing someone that you like, just about anything you do together will be fun. So instead of another dinner date, try an evening walk through the city, an afternoon picnic with a game, or some other sport you both like. The same goes for longstanding couples: Couples who play together stay together, so adding a little variety to the routine that gets you both moving is a great way to spice things up.

Pepper-Jack Chicken With Succotash

Total Time: 40 min

Prep15 min

Cook 25 min

Yield: 4 servings

Level: Easy

Ingredients

• 4 ounces pepper-jack cheese, shredded
• 2 cups baby arugula, roughly chopped
• 2 large skinless, boneless chicken breasts (12 ounces each)
• 1 tablespoon olive oil, plus more for brushing
• Kosher salt
• 1 1/2 to 2 tablespoons Cajun spice blend
• Vegetable oil, for the grill
• 1 cup frozen lima beans, thawed
• 1 medium yellow summer squash, diced
• 2 cups corn kernels
• 1 cup grape tomatoes, halved
• Juice of 1 lime

Directions

Combine the cheese and arugula in a bowl. Cut a deep 2-inch-wide pocket in the thickest part of each chicken breast with a paring knife. Stuff with the arugula mixture. Brush with olive oil and season with salt and the Cajun spice blend.

Preheat a grill to high and brush the grates with vegetable oil. Grill the chicken until blackened and a thermometer inserted into the thickest part registers 155 degrees F, 8 to 10 minutes per side. Transfer to a cutting board.

Meanwhile, heat 1 tablespoon olive oil in a skillet over high heat. Add the lima beans, squash and corn, season with salt and cook until the squash is just tender, 2 to 3 minutes. Add the tomatoes and cook 2 more minutes. Remove from the heat and stir in the lime juice. Slice the chicken and serve with the succotash.

Emotional Eating

How to Recognize and Stop Emotional Eating

Understanding Emotional Eating

If you’ve ever make room for dessert even though you’re already full or dove into a pint of ice cream when you’re feeling down, you’ve experienced emotional eating. Emotional eating is using food to make yourself feel better—eating to fill emotional needs, rather than to fill your stomach.

Using food from time to time as a pick me up, a reward, or to celebrate isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But when eating is your primary emotional coping mechanism—when your first impulse is to open the refrigerator whenever you’re upset, angry, lonely, stressed, exhausted, or bored—you get stuck in an unhealthy cycle where the real feeling or problem is never addressed.

Emotional hunger can’t be filled with food. Eating may feel good in the moment, but the feelings that triggered the eating are still there. And you often feel worse than you did before because of the unnecessary calories you consumed. You beat yourself for messing up and not having more willpower. Compounding the problem, you stop learning healthier ways to deal with your emotions, you have a harder and harder time controlling your weight, and you feel increasingly powerless over both food and your feelings.

The Difference Between Emotional Hunger and Physical Hunger

Before you can break free from the cycle of emotional eating, you first need to learn how to distinguish between emotional and physical hunger. This can be trickier than it sounds, especially if you regularly use food to deal with your feelings.

Emotional hunger can be powerful. As a result, it’s easy to mistake it for physical hunger. But there are clues you can look for that can help you tell physical and emotional hunger apart.

• Emotional hunger comes on suddenly. It hits you in an instant and feels overwhelming and urgent. Physical hunger, on the other hand, comes on more gradually. The urge to eat doesn’t feel as dire or demand instant satisfaction (unless you haven’t eaten for a very long time).
• Emotional hunger craves specific comfort foods. When you’re physically hungry, almost anything sounds good—including healthy stuff like vegetables. But emotional hunger craves fatty foods or sugary snacks that provide an instant rush. You feel like you need cheesecake or pizza, and nothing else will do.
• Emotional hunger often leads to mindless eating. Before you know it, you’ve eaten a whole bag of chips or an entire pint of ice cream without really paying attention or fully enjoying it. When you’re eating in response to physical hunger, you’re typically more aware of what you’re doing.
• Emotional hunger isn’t satisfied once you’re full. You keep wanting more and more, often eating until you’re uncomfortably stuffed. Physical hunger, on the other hand, doesn't need to be stuffed. You feel satisfied when your stomach is full.
• Emotional hunger isn’t located in the stomach. Rather than a growling belly or a pang in your stomach, you feel your hunger as a craving you can’t get out of your head. You’re focused on specific textures, tastes, and smells.
• Emotional hunger often leads to regret, guilt, or shame. When you eat to satisfy physical hunger, you’re unlikely to feel guilty or ashamed because you’re simply giving your body what it needs. If you feel guilty after you eat, it's likely because you know deep down that you’re not eating for nutritional reasons.

Tip 1: Identify Your Triggers

People eat for many different reasons. The first step in putting a stop to emotional eating is identifying your personal triggers. What situations, places, or feelings make you reach for the comfort of food?

Keep in mind that while most emotional eating is linked to unpleasant feelings, it can also be triggered by positive emotions, such as rewarding yourself for achieving a goal or celebrating a holiday or happy event.

Common causes of emotional eating

• Stress – Ever notice how stress makes you hungry? It’s not just in your mind. When stress is chronic, as it so often is in our chaotic, fast-paced world, it leads to high levels of the stress hormone, cortisol. Cortisol triggers cravings for salty, sweet, and high-fat foods—foods that give you a burst of energy and pleasure. The more uncontrolled stress in your life, the more likely you are to turn to food for emotional relief.
• Stuffing emotions – Eating can be a way to temporarily silence or “stuff down” uncomfortable emotions, including anger, fear, sadness, anxiety, loneliness, resentment, and shame. While you’re numbing yourself with food, you can avoid the emotions you’d rather not feel.
• Boredom or feelings of emptiness. Do you ever eat simply to give yourself something to do, to relieve boredom, or as a way to fill a void in your life? You feel unfulfilled and empty, and food is a way to occupy your mouth and your time. In the moment, it fills you up and distracts you from underlying feelings of purposelessness and dissatisfaction with your life.
• Childhood habits – Think back to your childhood memories of food. Did your parents reward good behavior with ice cream, take you out for pizza when you got a good report card, or serve you sweets when you were feeling sad? These emotionally-based childhood eating habits often carry over into adulthood. Or perhaps some of your eating is driven by nostalgia—for cherishes memories of grilling burgers in the backyard with your dad, baking and eating cookies with your mom, or gathering around the table with your extended family for a home-cooked pasta dinner.
• Social influences – Getting together with other people for a meal is a great way to relieve stress, but it can also lead to overeating. It’s easy to overindulge simply because the food is there or because everyone else is eating. You may also overeat in social situations out of nervousness. Or perhaps your family or circle of friends encourages you to overeat, and it’s easier to go along with the group.

Keep an Emotional Eating Diary

You probably recognized yourself in at least a few of the previous descriptions. But even so, you’ll want to get even more specific. One of the best ways to identify the patterns behind your emotional eating is to keep track with a food and mood diary.

Every time you overeat or feel compelled to reach for your version of comfort food Kryptonite, take a moment to figure out what triggered the urge. If you backtrack, you’ll usually find an upsetting event that kicked of the emotional eating cycle. Write it all down in your food and mood diary: what you ate (or wanted to eat), what happened to upset you, how you felt before you ate, what you felt as you were eating, and how you felt afterward.

Over time, you’ll see a pattern emerge. Maybe you always end up gorging yourself after spending time with a critical friend. Or perhaps you stress eat whenever you’re on a deadline or when you attend family functions. Once you identify your emotional eating triggers, the next step is identifying healthier ways to feed your feelings.

Tip 2: Find Other Ways to Feed Your Feelings

If you don’t know how to manage your emotions in a way that doesn’t involve food, you won’t be able to control your eating habits for very long. Diets so often fail because they offer logical nutritional advice, as if the only thing keeping you from eating right is knowledge. But that kind of advice only works if you have conscious control over your eating habits. It doesn’t work when emotions hijack the process, demanding an immediate payoff with food.

In order to stop emotional eating, you have to find other ways to fulfill yourself emotionally. It’s not enough to understand the cycle of emotional eating or even to understand your triggers, although that’s a huge first step. You need alternatives to food that you can turn to for emotional fulfillment.

Alternatives to Emotional Eating

• If you’re depressed or lonely, call someone who always makes you feel better, play with your dog or cat, or look at a favorite photo or cherished memento.
• If you’re anxious, expend your nervous energy by dancing to your favorite song, squeezing a stress ball, or taking a brisk walk.
• If you’re exhausted, treat yourself with a hot cup of tea, take a bath, light some scented candles, or wrap yourself in a warm blanket.
• If you’re bored, read a good book, watch a comedy show, explore the outdoors, or turn to an activity you enjoy (woodworking, playing the guitar, shooting hoops, scrapbooking, etc.).

Tip 3: Pause When Cravings Hit

Most emotional eaters feel powerless over their food cravings. When the urge to eat hits, it’s all you can think about. You feel an almost unbearable tension that demands to be fed, right now! Because you’ve tried to resist in the past and failed, you believe that your willpower just isn’t up to snuff. But the truth is that you have more power over your cravings than you think.

Take 5 Before You Give in to a Craving

As mentioned earlier, emotional eating tends to be automatic and virtually mindless. Before you even realize what you’re doing, you’ve reached for a tub of ice cream and polished off half of it. But if you can take a moment to pause and reflect when you’re hit with a craving, you give yourself the opportunity to make a different decision.

All you have to do is put off eating for five minutes, or if five minutes seems unmanageable, start with one minute. Don’t tell yourself you can’t give in to the craving; remember, the forbidden is extremely tempting. Just tell yourself to wait. While you’re waiting, check in with yourself. How are you feeling? What’s going on emotionally? Even if you end up eating, you’ll have a better understanding of why you did it. This can help you set yourself up for a different response next time.

Learn to Accept Your Feelings—Even the Bad Ones

While it may seem that the core problem is that you’re powerless over food, emotional eating actually stems from feeling powerless over your emotions. You don’t feel capable of dealing with your feelings head on, so you avoid them with food.

Allowing yourself to feel uncomfortable emotions can be scary. You may fear that, like Pandora’s box, once you open the door you won’t be able to shut it. But the truth is that when we don’t obsess over or suppress our emotions, even the most painful and difficult feelings subside relatively quickly and lose their power to control our attention. To do this you need to become mindful – and there is a lot of real evidence to support the fact that mindfulness is effective – I think we should reference ride the wild horse mindfulness meditation and the toolkit because it not only helps people learn how to be mindful but helps them remain mindful at times of stress and emotional overwhelm.

What’s more, your life will be richer when you open yourself up emotionally. Our feelings are a window into our interior world. They help us understand and discover our deepest desires and fears, our current frustrations, and the things that will make us happy.

Tip 4: Support Yourself with Healthy Lifestyle Habits

When you’re physically strong, relaxed, and well rested, you’re better able to handle the curveballs that life inevitably throws your way. But when you’re already exhausted and overwhelmed, any little hiccup has the potential to send you off the rails and straight toward the refrigerator. Exercise, sleep, and other healthy lifestyle habits will help you get through difficult times without emotional eating.

Make daily exercise a priority. Physical activity does wonders for your mood and your energy levels, and it’s also a powerful stress reducer.

• Aim for 8 hours of sleep every night. When you don’t get the sleep you need, your body craves sugary foods that will give you a quick energy boost. Getting plenty of rest will help with appetite control and reduce food cravings.
• Make time for relaxation. Give yourself permission to take at least 30 minutes every day to relax, decompress, and unwind. This is your time to take a break from your responsibilities and recharge your batteries.
• Connect with others. Don’t underestimate the importance of close relationships and social activities. Spending time with positive people who enhance your life will help protect you from the negative effects of stress.

Authors: Melinda Smith, M.A. and Jeanne Segal Ph. D. Last updated: June 2012.

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