Month: January 2013

Categories
Weight Loss Exercise

Where did my emotions go?



This is only a little bit about fitness and health, maybe not much. I have had a crazy last few months and I am not sure where it all leads but one thing that I have really noticed over the last few months is that I seem to have been repressing lots of feelings and have pushed down my emotions.

I know that this is likely unhealthy

I think this really started a couple or three years ago when I started struggling with panic attacks and with the help of a bit of Luvox I was able to crawl out of the fear and panic. Whew, snuck by that one…

Then we buy a house in the suburbs, and I am set. A wife, two kids, a minivan, a dog and cat and the Canadian dream apparently.

My sick kid comes next

I have written a bit about my daughter with her kidney disease. When we first found out about the kidney disease we didn’t know anything about the journey ahead of us but the whole family fell apart in fear, uncertainty, and doubt. When this happened I knew I had to stay strong and so I took emotions out of the picture and I worked toward making sure I would be able to do whatever needed to give my daughter a kidney.

Over the last year we seem to also be hitting all sorts of terrible money issues, regular family issues, and even a boy down the street getting cancer. I know that this does not all seem to be abnormal, we all have stresses in our lives and problems but yesterday I realized this might now be a problem.

Uh oh, Maybe I have a problem…

Where did my emotions go?So a couple weeks ago I met with the transplant doctor and he approved me for transplanting a kidney to my daughter as soon as her kidney level drops to 15% (probably in a few months) and he also found a spot on my lung in an xray that he suspects is not cancerous and is sending me for another chest xray in 4 months. Trouble is that I was not as excited as I should be about the kidney, and not at all worried about the spot on my lung.

That can’t be a good reaction.

And then yesterday the little boy down the street died of his cancer and although I feel terrible for his family and there was a lot of tears shed in my house, none were mine.

I am watching Biggest Loser tonight with my wife and daughter and they noticed that the guy on the Blue team, David, was really repressing his feelings and feeling like he was responsible for everyone around him instead of letting others help. My wife and daughter looked at me and said, hey just like you!

So here I am as a writer of a super popular fitness and health blog and I still don’t have it all together. This may or may not be a cry for help but I am betting that I am not the only one around that has these feelings.

So guys, help a guy out. I may seem to have it all together but how do I get my feelings back? How do I let go of control?

Related Blogs

  • Related Blogs on 4 Months
  • Related Blogs on All Sorts
Categories
Weight Loss Exercise

Quit Smoking With Exercise



One Great way to help you with kicking the legal weed is to quit smoking with exercise. When you decide to stop smoking, you’ll bring on other changes in your life as well. Smoking is a very addictive habit, meaning that it is very hard to quit. There are a lot of changes that take place, although exercise can be a big help to you when you decide to quit.

Try to set a new routine, such as working out or going to the gym. If that isn’t possible, you should try waking up earlier and going for a short walk. If you can turn that walk into a run or a jog, it is going to be very stimulating and the best way that you can start your day.

Quit Smoking With Exercise

Quit Smoking With Exercise

Quit Smoking With Exercise

Keep in mind that to quit smoking with exercise doesn’t really mean pumping metal. If you don’t have the time to stop by the gym every day, then it isn’t really that big of a problem, as you can always choose to workout at home.

Whether you choose to workout at home or at a gym, you should always remember that regularity is the key. It isn’t getting started that’s the difficult part, it’s sticking to a regular exercise program that is difficult and proves to be stumbling block for most people.

Some people have a great start. They will buy track suits, gym wear, running shoes, and a lot of other gear, so their first day at the gym is almost like a celebration. As the days go by, they find it very difficult to meet the demands and their routine will slow down a lot and finally come to a complete exercise burnout.

One mistake that several people make is choosing the evenings to exercise. If evenings fit your lifestyle, then it’s fine. For most people however, the evening hours are when they are completely pooped. By the evening most of us are drained, and simply too tired for exercise. Therefore, it is always best to set some time aside for exercise in the morning.

In the morning, wake up a half an hour or so earlier, put on your shoes, and hit the road. Most roads are less crowded in the morning and less polluted as well, making it a wonderful and relaxing way to start the day.

Change Beverages to help Quit Smoking

You should also steer clear from the coffee and try tea instead. If you are moving around in the house, try playing music. You can also redecorate your room by adding a few pictures around. When you redecorate, you should get rid of everything that reminds you of smoking.

Plan your day where you’ll have something fun to do at the end of the day. It doesn’t need to be something that involves money, as you don’t want to end up bankrupt. Spending time with family, playing games, or going for a walk with your family are all good activities.

Watching television doesn’t really fit into the list. The reason is because television isn’t something that demands a lot of attention. You can easily do something else while you are watching television.

Stress Reduction to Quit Smoking

You should also make a list of things that build up your stress and try to avoid them. If it isn’t possible, you should try to find out some some ways to bust stress and use them. Whatever you do, you shouldn’t use stress as an excuse to start smoking.

There are many other methods that you can use to beat stress. You can try breathing exercises, mediation, or even music. Another great way to beat stress is using the distressing ball. If you don’t have one or access to one, you can always wiggle your fingers and toes. This too is a great and natural method to beat stress.

Use these tools as a way to cut down and especially if your want to quit smoking with exercise.

Related Blogs

  • Related Blogs on Addictive Habit
  • Related Blogs on Burnout
Categories
Weight Loss Exercise

Creating some 21 day habits



Experts say that it takes 21 days to create a habit. I do not even know if this is true but the one thing that I do know is that if you do something, anything for 21 days it becomes ingrained inside you.

Let’s take that idea and run with it here shall we? Today we are as we are, if I decide that I am going to become more positive (this would make my wife and coworkers crazy) then I would think in my head as much as I could all day everyday about my successes in the past and the things that are going well. This would change me from being pretty positive to excited as I would feel that there is nothing that I can not do.

Building Great 21 Day Habits

Creating some 21 day habitsAt the same time if someone wanted to become healthy and they started to jog everyday as a runner would they would be sore the second day, sore the third day, stronger the fourth day, and very powerful by the fifth day. The habit is being formed, by the 21st day this person would be areal runner putting in mile after mile a week. Often runners have trouble taking days off even when they know they have to because that cadence of exercise reminds them of who they are, the habit has already been formed.

There are really only three steps in creating new habits that will become ingrained within 21 days, and really probably more like 10 days, and these are the following:

1. Decide on the Change – This means that you are making the very concious decision that whatever you are doing starting now will be different than before. This may be big like deciding you will exercise daily, eating better, or giving up alcohol, or this could be something smaller like deciding to start the day with a glass of water, or giving up some inane TV show.

2. Make the change often – To ingrain a change you have to conciously make that change as many times as possible. Usually if it is gaining something this is easier but if it is losing something than it will be more difficult. For instance every single time you want a cigarette but decide against it you will be giving something up, but if everytime you want to go for a walk you just get up and walk around the building you work in then you will be making an easy concious decision that you are looking forward to.

3. Understand that this is YOU now – The final step is the acceptance that you have changed. I do not consider myself a smoker anymore because it has been 15 years or so. I also don’t feel lazy becasue I have proven enough times that I know it is not true.

You should make your habit like SMART goals as well to help you to be able to get them right. If you wanted to lose weight this 21 days to a habit is even a shorter time but it works the same way. If you decide to eat only fruit instead of candy then you struggle for about three days and then it is over and three weeks later you have some chocolate and it starts burning in your stomach and the sugar rush gives you a headache, the habit was formed already.

My Experience in Building Lasting Habits

Years ago when I quit smoking I just imagined myself as a non smoker and then I just quit, I had been unsuccessful at cutting back so I decided that cold turkey was my best chance. After a couple of days for struggles I was OK and I continued my working out then one day weeks later I realized that the habit was now that I looked at myself as being in good shape and that I was flushing those bad toxins of smoking, I had turned the corner.

So now it is up to you. What do you want to do now? Do you have any bad habits to reverse? Or some Good habits you would like to incorporate into your daily life? As I said earlier, the change is the tough part and as you go along creating habits is a 21 day process so three weeks from today you can make a difference in yourself that you can be proud of.