Y'all, I had to have major surgery during the pandemic!  And when I first heard that from my doctor I was shocked, and then I became terrified.  I am sharing my story because the tools I used to navigate having a hysterectomy during this challenging time are helpful in a variety of situations.   

I wanted to have a positive experience with this surgery.  My anxiety wanted me to worry about everything.  But that emotional toll can cause physical problems, and I knew from experience that having my body in good physical shape would help me recover more quickly and wholly.   

I created a healthy toolkit for myself just for this surgery.  This is the work I do with health coaching clients in which I help them create a healthy toolkit so they have a system in place that helps them achieve their health goals.

​Here is what I put in my surgery healthy toolkit:
Hired a psychotherapist.  Have you met my anxiety?  She can be useful for some stuff.  In general, though, she tends to worry all the time about all the things.  For example, on trips she'll try to convince me that the pilot is drunk and the plane has mechanical problems.  I knew going into surgery that having a good mindset would be essential to the success of my recovery.  And it worked!  Collaborating with a therapist helped so much that the morning of surgery I was so calm that I fell asleep while in the prep room before being wheeled into the operating room and before receiving anesthesia.  Wow!

Eliminated recreational sugar and alcohol.  Years ago, before I was diagnosed with celiac disease, I had chronic foot warts.  It turns out that those warts were a result of eating wheat.  I know this is a tangent, but bear with me.  There are a lot of food allergies, intolerances, and autoimmune diseases that people think they don't have because they believe the only symptoms of these maladies are digestive distress.  This, frankly, is not a true story.  I know celiacs who had no symptoms before their diagnosis and only got tested because a family member had been diagnosed with the disease.  My celiac symptoms were foot warts and respiratory distress.  So I spent a lot of time getting to know my podiatrist.  And he introduced me to the concept of inflammatory foods.  He required all his surgical patients to eliminate sugar and alcohol weeks before surgery so they would have less pain and recover faster.  And it worked!  His nurse told me that his patients always had the best results.  I have had this tool in my back pocket ever since and I definitely employed it recently.  I walked away from alcohol last May because it was making my body feel crummy most of the time.  Since then, I had have a sip of Brian's wine at dinner sometimes just to see how it pairs with the food.  And I enjoyed a class of prosecco on New Year's Eve.  Net, this one was easy as I stopped having an occasional sip of Brian's dinner wine.  To eliminate recreational sugar, I stopped baking, stopped eating my beloved daily piece(s) of dark chocolate, and stayed away from snacking on marshmallows.  I was told it would take at least two weeks after my hysterectomy before I started to feel better.  I feel like I hit that mark at 10 days post-surgery.  In fact, I keep forgetting to take my pain meds because, well, the pain has diminished greatly.  Staying away from foods that inflame pain helps!

Went for daily walks.​  And when I say I walk, I do not mean with the dogs or with other humans.  I went on walks specifically for me.  I went on walks through nature and noticed flowers.  I went on fast walks and short walks and long walks.  I went up and down hills.  The only rule was that these walks were for me and me alone.  Walking is a standard item in my healthy toolkit.  It's how I process my thoughts.  It's part of how I stave off depression and anxiety.  And I did a walk for me almost every day during the month before my surgery.  It meant that my body was in good shape and my heart was healthy going into surgery.

Prioritized sleep.  One of the biggest sources of inflammation in the body is lack of good sleep (source).  For years, sleep has been in my healthy toolkit.  I get good sleep by not keeping a TV or my phone in the bedroom, having a bedtime routine that prepares my body for sleep, and by establishing boundaries around my sleep to protect it.  In the past, when I haven't consistently gotten 7.5 to 8 hours of sleep, my autoimmune diseases will flare up, my depression will set in, brain fog will creep in, etc.  Preparing for this surgery was no different as I prioritized 8 hours of sleep each night in the month before surgery.  It helped immensely.  And now, as I recover, I am resting when my body wants to rest, and I am sleeping somewhere between 8 and 12 hours each night.  It's essential for a full recovery.

Got by with a little help from my friends.  I have a treasure trove of friends and so many of them gave me some great advice prior to surgery from aligning expectations about the experience to what it's like to cough while nursing an abdominal incision (the worst pain ever!).  They sent cards and flowers and soup and coloring books and books and checked in with text messages and emails and phone calls.  All that love and support has been essential to my recovery.  We live in an area with few friends and no family (we moved here right before the pandemic began), and my husband has really stepped up to take care of me during my convalescence.  Knowing I have a partner who is there for me has been so helpful to my recovery.  

To recap, here's what I put in my healthy toolkit for my surgery:

• Psychotherapy
• Eliminated sugar and alcohol
• Daily walks just for me
• Sleep
• Friends

Hey, if reading this made you want to create your own healthy toolkit, contact me for a complimentary call to see if health coaching is a good fit for you! 
​

I rarely publish a gift guide, but this year I felt compelled to do so because so many small businesses could really use our money, whereas Amazon is going to be just fine.  In addition to small businesses, I also thought about businesses that are focused on improving the world.  And I thought about products I've been using every day that might benefit you!  So here is my in-no-particular-order gift guide for your consideration.  Also, some of these stores are having great Cyber Monday sales, including Beautycounter and The Sill!

Houseplants.  Last year one of my best friends in the whole word suffered a terrible carbon monoxide scare at a rental home over Thanksgiving.  For Christmas, I sent her a Snake Plant which helps purify the air and also thrives on neglect.   I only give houseplants that don't need a lot of care.  The two I love and the only two I have in my house are Snake Plants and Zz Plants.   If you lived in Greensboro, which most of you don't, I would tell you to get a Snake Plant at The Tiny Greenhouse, which is where I get all my houseplants.  However, a good online source of houseplants is The Sill.  Another option would be to purchase houseplants from a locally owned nursery in your area.  Small businesses could use our support anytime, but especially this year.

Lip gloss.  My favorite lip gloss, and one that would make a great gift is Beautycounter's Beyond Gloss.  It's moisturizing, not sticky, comes in a lot of flattering colors, does not leak, and has a pleasant vanilla scent.  And the color lasts.  I can put some on before leading a two hour seminar on Zoom or teaching a yoga class, and it's still looking good hours later.  I could write a lot about lip gloss because I wear it all the time and I am super picky about it.  Since I have celiac, it absolutely has to be gluten free.  Since I teach about health, I only choose clean beauty products that don't have unsafe chemicals, questionable colorants, etc.  Honestly, we swallow a lot of lipstick and lip gloss in our lifetime (source) so it's important to make sure our lip products are safe.  Beautycounter has a lot of awesome products and today only (11/30/20) they are offering 15% off plus free shipping over $50!

Books.  I recently read that our depressed economy has heavily hit independent bookstores, with more than one permanently closing every month since the pandemic started.  Amazon does not need more money, but boy, local bookstores sure could use the help.  I did a lot of my holiday shopping at Scuppernong here in Greensboro.  In Colorado, it was always a special treat growing up to visit The Tattered Cover in Denver (confession: I always wanted to be a gift wrapper there but alas I lacked the skills).  On vacation in California's Central Coast, Brian and I would always go to Coalesce Bookstore in Morro Bay, which carries Brian's favorite genre of adventures at sea.   Click here to find an independent bookstore in your area.  And feel free in the Comments to give a shout out to your favorite independent bookstore.  Thanks!

​Flowers.  I have a confession.  I have been buying a $3.99 bouquet of flowers at Trader Joe's every two weeks since we moved to North Carolina.  They absolutely brighten my day and my foyer.  If you use the plant food provided and trim them after one week, they really do last two weeks.  That's cheaper than a cup of Starbucks coffee for two weeks of visual joy!  You can find economically priced small vases at Goodwill and Michael's.  A great gift for neighbors, especially if you are unsure if they have food allergies, is to pop one of those Trader Joe's bouquets in a vase.  This is also good for teachers and such.  We've had a lot of people move into our neighborhood in the past year and so I've been welcoming folks with one of these bouquets.  Funny enough, one neighbor brought the vase back with new flowers in it and so now we exchange flowers once a month.

Jewelry, Art, Crafts.  For this category of gifts, seek out local gift shops that carry the work of local artists.  Artists have been especially hard hit this year because all the trade shows and holiday fairs where they sell their products have been cancelled.  In Greensboro, I did a lot of holiday shopping at Just Be.  Also, on Etsy, you can not only search by the product you want but also by geographic location, which is how my husband found someone who was making face masks locally.  

There you have it.  Some great gift ideas for the holidays and beyond.  I'd love to hear in the Comments your gift ideas and small businesses you recommend.

One of the main reasons to meal plan during this pandemic is that it will eliminate excess trips to the grocery store.  When every trip means possible exposure to COVID-19, going to the store as little as possible makes good sense. ​I've been posting my meal plans on my Facebook page these past couple of months hoping people find them helpful, that people are inspired to do their own meal planning, and that they see it can be done fairly easily.  Meal planning is one of the main tools I use to thrive while living with three autoimmune diseases (yes, three!).  It helps me focus on those foods that are most nutritious for my body and stay away from foods likely to cause autoimmune flare-ups.  Flare-ups for me look like exhaustion, joint pain, and brain fog.  

To create a new habit, you need to prioritize it.  And this leads to tip #1: schedule time to meal plan.  Sit down with your calendar and a weather forecast (for grilling) and determine what you will have each night of the week.  Tip #2: write your meal plan down in a place where you are likely to see it.  We use a notebook that we keep on the kitchen counter.  Some people I know meal plan on their phone and set up reminders to do it.  Once you have that done, then write your grocery list based on your meal plan.

If meal planning is a new habit you are creating, you want to set yourself up to succeed.  Tip #3: keep it simple so that the habit is more likely to stick.  What do I mean?  Start with planning dinners using recipes you already know how to make.  Tuesday night after a long day of Zoom calls is no time to try some fancy Martha Stewart recipe that uses every pot in the kitchen.  Instead, start with what you know.  Make the more challenging recipes or ones you've never tried before on the weekends or evenings when you have more time to prepare.

​When I was a student at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, Dr. David Katz, at the time a professor at the Yale School of Medicine and an expert in nutrition and obesity, was one of our lecturers.  I'll never forget when he said that a lot of dietary theories agree on one thing: Americans do not eat enough green vegetables.  Tip #4: focus on vegetables, especially green ones.  We include a big salad every night with dinner as our main source of greens, and I tend to eat spinach at breakfast.  There are lots of benefits to eating more green vegetables, including improved brain function and they are good for your bones.   And if you find yourself resisting and coming up with excuses, it's worth eating them to protect your health!

To recap, here are four tips to help you meal plan:

1. ​Schedule time to meal plan.
2. Write it down where you will see it often and remember it is there.
3. Keep it simple so you are more likely to do it and form an awesome meal planning habit. 
4. Focus on vegetables, especially green ones.

And there you have it.  I hope you find these tips helpful.  If you already plan your meals, what are some of your best tips?

We've entered that part of summer when using the oven is off-limits and when our bodies are craving lighter foods.  This meal of grilled fish and coconut rice is one of our summer standards.   It's fairly easy and fairly quick.  You can do it on a Tuesday night when things are busy.  It can easily be scaled to feed more people should you wish to have folks over for dinner, as we did this past Sunday.  All the flavors play nicely together from the coconut in the rice to the mango in the salsa.  You want to pick a mild fish for this dinner so that the taste of it doesn't compete with the rice and salsa.  Choose a salsa with tropical fruit in it, such as mango and/or pineapple, so it will play nicely with the coconut rice.  And the coconut rice is delicious with grilled chicken or grilled shrimp, too.  Enjoy!

Grilled Fish with Coconut Rice and Tropical Salsa
Serves 4

1 tablespoon coconut oil
1 cup brown basmati rice (we like the Trader Joe's brand)
2 cups unsweetened unflavored coconut water
1 pound of mahi mahi fillets, or other mild white firm-fleshed fish*
Salt and pepper
Olive oil
Tropical salsa of your choice (we like the Island Salsa and the Pineapple Salsa from Trader Joe's)

*You want a firm fish so it doesn't fall apart on the grill or when being taken off the grill.  
​
In a 2-quart saucepan, melt the coconut oil over medium heat.  Add the rice and stir to coat with the coconut oil.  Just when the rice is starting to brown, add the coconut water.  It will make a loud hissing sound.  Cover and bring to a boil.  Once boiling, turn down to low and cook covered for 40 minutes.

While the rice cooks, preheat your gas grill to medium.  Pat the fish fillets dry.  Brush the fish with oil so it does not stick to the grill.  Season the fish with salt and pepper.  When the grill is preheated, turn it to low, and grill the fish according to thickness.  For thin fillets, a couple of minutes per side should do it.  For thicker fillets, at least 1/2-inch thick, three to four minutes per side.

When the rice is finished, remove the pan cover and check for doneness.  Fluff with a fork.  Serve with the grilled fish and pass the salsa at the table.  

Studies show that it is not that happy people are more grateful.  Rather, people who practice gratitude consistently are happier, and, it turns out, they may be healthier, too.  A study at the University of California San Diego found that keeping a gratitude journal is good for your heart by lowering cardiac inflammation.  Researchers at the University of California Davis Medical Center have found that being grateful and practicing gratitude can boost your immune system, lower your blood pressure, and improve your sleep.  And, sleep is the most healing thing our bodies do every single day!

Practicing gratitude to improve your health does not require you to go to a gym or eat kale or give up anything.  It simply requires you to purposefully focus on what is going well in your life.  Through focusing on what is going well in your life, you then invite in more positive feelings.  And who doesn't want more positive feelings?!  So how do we get this gratitude party started?  Well, there are a couple of simple, easy, doesn't take too much time ways to do this.  

Ways to practice gratitude:

• Keep a gratitude journal.  Keep a notebook on your nightstand.  Every morning or evening, write down three or more things you are grateful for.  They do not have to be major things.  The other day, I wrote in my gratitude journal that I was grateful for broccoli rabe because it's nutritious and delicious!
• Keep a gratitude jar.  I know some families who keep a gratitude jar.  Get a jar and put in a place all family members can access.  Have a pen/markers and scrap pieces of paper next to it.  Anytime someone feels grateful, they write down what they are grateful for and stick it in the jar.  I know some families who do this year round and pick a day of the month to empty the jar and read all the notes of gratitude.  I know other people who do this just for the month of November and read the contents of the jar on Thanksgiving. 
• Commit to handwriting thank you notes.  The act of physically writing something down with a pen helps commit it to memory and wire the brain towards it, research shows.  If you are writing thank you notes, you are wiring your brain for gratitude.  
• Go for a walk and repeat to yourself the mantra, "I am grateful."  It will help wire your brain towards what you are grateful for.  

I am excited to share how gratitude improves your health and how you can easily incorporate it into your day because yes, I want you to be happy.  And I'd love to hear what you are grateful for in the comments below!

Social isolation is the public health risk of our time.
​                      - Susan Pinker
More than diet and exercise, more than being a non-smoker or a non-drinker, the number one factor in longevity is social connections.   In my own work as a health coach, the most common health concern among my clients is loneliness coupled with a lack of meaningful relationships.  

Many women find themselves alone later in life whether due to retirement, becoming an empty nester, losing a spouse, or being laid off.  Careers and/or child rearing took priority over friendships leading to loneliness when those factors are gone.

I know from my own experience how hard it can be to make friends or find community after changing jobs or moving.  The ease of making friends in high school or college is no longer available later in life, and often the effort to create solid, trusting friendships requires a lot more energy than expected.  

Susan Pinker, a psychologist, studies longevity, and has a worthwhile TED Talk about what differentiates those people who live long lives from the rest of us.  When looking at social connections, there are two types that impact longevity.  The first type is who you interact with on a daily basis.  This includes not only people you live with, but also your neighbors, the grocery store clerk, the bank teller, and the coffee barista to name a few.  This suggests that leaving the house is important for your health.  The second type is your very close friends.  Shame and vulnerability researcher Brené Brown calls these people your "bury the body" friends.    These friends, of which you can expect to only have a handful at most, are the friends you can call when you are in a tight, challenging situation and they won't judge you or gossip about you for said situation.  They will help you.  Hold these people close and dear for they are the golden treasures of your life.  

Are you lonely?  It's not uncommon these days.  If you are, I can empathize.  I have spent many months of my life feeling isolated and alone.  To me, when I was deep in the loneliness, it felt like drowning in a sea of molasses.  It felt thick and dark and there was no way out of it.

The truth is there is a way out of loneliness.  One key question learned in coaching is to ask, "What are you willing to do about this?"  It doesn't really matter if the client has a lot of great ideas for overcoming loneliness or lack of meaningful social connections.  It only matters if they are willing to take action on them.   That isn't to say there is something wrong with the person who doesn't take action.  Taking action is a choice, and they are lovable no matter the choice they make.   So if you are lonely, what are you willing to do about it?  Some successful solutions my clients have found are scheduling a lunch with a friend they haven't seen in some time; taking a class at a community center, art studio, or yoga studio; joining a book club (check with your local library for clubs in the area); participating in an activity on meetup.com.  

If you are lonely, please know I am rooting for you to make meaningful social connections.  Your life depends on it.

Additional sources for this blog post can be found here and here.   Also, this study was used a source material.  

Every year I notice that the supposedly happy holidays are really unhappy holidays.  As the days get shorter and our natural inclination is to slow down and rest more, our culture goes in the opposite direction.  We are bombarded with a crazy amount of lights, activities, and pressure.  That pressure very often comes in the form of expectations -- both our own and that of our culture -- to give the perfect gifts and be the perfect hosts and have perfect decorations.  So much pressure!  That pressure is counter to the natural rhythm of life to rest during winter when the days are short and it's mostly cold (except where I live, but that's another story).

Are you finding it difficult to slow down during this time of year?  Do you feel the holiday pressure?  Is this year triggering old wounds, especially around family and expectations?

Here is what I have found I most need this time of year to both enjoy the season and embrace the desire to rest and slow down:  routine.  Having routines gives me a solid foundation so that the upheaval of the holidays does not derail me.  Having routines boosts my immune system.  Having routines gives me stability at a time of year that can feel incredibly unstable, no matter how much fun it is.  

I believe in the power of having a routine so much that when I work with health coaching clients, the first thing I encourage them to do is establish a morning routine.  It is much easier to seek and embrace change when you have a solid foundation to stand on.  It doesn't have to be anything over the top.  The key is to do a couple of things every day in support of your health and sanity.  My routine always includes tongue scraping, a long walk with the dog, and warm lemon water with a splash of apple cider vinegar.  That's it.  Three things in the morning.  And I keep that routine even when I am traveling.   

The return on investment for my routine means my immune system is strong, I have energy to give to my clients and students, and I am not tired or feeling meh.  It also means that life upheavals like the holidays or the refrigerator breaking on Thanksgiving Day (true story!  and we were hosting the big dinner!), or both of our cell phones failing within a week of each other recently are not so debilitating because every morning I can fill my cup back up through having a routine that supports my body, my mind, and my spirit.  

"My cup runneth over. What comes out of the cup is for y'all. What's in the cup is mine. But I've got to keep my cup full," renowned life coach Iyanla Vanzant said in an interview with Oprah.  It's worth the three minutes to watch it.  

Routine helps you keep your cup full, and it's essential during the holidays.  Now, the big question for you if you have this awareness that you need a routine, is how to create one.  First, write down what is important to you that brings you joy.  For me those answers included movement and nature.  Next, write down what you are willing to do every single day based on how you answered the first question.   To implement it, schedule it.  If it is not scheduled you'll never do it.  

And now I'd love to hear what you do daily to keep your cup full so please share in the comments below!

Last week, parts of my life resembled the lyrics to a depressing country song.  My parents' dog died (RIP Doc).  My car sustained damage while being serviced at the dealer.  Our fire alarm, hardwired into the electrical, would not shut off for hours no matter what I tried. This caused the dog to have anxiety ... for all of those hours. I received an empty bubble package from Amazon, slashed in the middle, lacking the vitamins I ordered.  I pinched a nerve in my shoulder and had severe pain from my neck down my right arm for most of four days.  Every one of those things in and of itself would have been trying, but compress them all into Monday through Wednesday, and my catastrophic thinker had me full-on believing that it was a bad week.  A very bad week.  

And I have a dark side so it is very easy for me to get depressed (so familiar) and decide I am a victim (so comfortable and yet so boring).  But I know that while it was a trying a week, it was not a bad week.  I know that every single one of us is going to have one of those weeks from time to time.  As my mother reminds me, no person is immune from tragedy or trauma.   Last week contained neither tragedy nor trauma. 

So how did I turn last week around and not surrender my happiness to events somewhat out of my control?  The simple answer is gratitude.

On Tuesday (before the fire alarm situation had even occurred), Brian and I were going for a pre-dinner walk with the dog.  It was lovely out, neither too hot nor too warm, lots of flowers blooming, and generally pleasant.  I turned to Brian and I said, "You got to help me get out of my head about all of these things going wrong this week.  I need to do some quick-fire gratitude right now."  

Gratitude is one of the easiest things for me to do, express, and embrace.  I talk to clients about it all the time.  Gratitude helps you focus on what is going right, not what is going wrong.  It keeps you in the present moment noticing all the blessings in your life.  Studies show that grateful people are generally happier.  As an aside, they also are in better physical health.  

Your brain patterns are not set.  Gratitude is one way to shift your thought patterns away from catastrophic thinking and towards being focused on the positive.  This does not mean spiritually bypassing your feelings and not getting upset when things go wrong.  By all means, feel your feelings.  It does mean not letting them consume you or blowing things out of proportion.  Gratitude, I've found, is great for perspective.

With Brian, while walking the dog, I listed as many things as I could think of that I was grateful for in that moment.  There were so many more things I was grateful for than the handful of weird things that went wrong last week.   As I went deeper and deeper into gratitude, I could feel my shoulders relaxing and my anxiety waning.  By the end of it, I simply felt better.

With my wonderful clients, I talk about gratitude as part of a healthy toolkit.  Mindset is key to achieving goals, ending self-sabotaging habits, and believing in your value.  Some of them have found it effective to keep a gratitude journal.   It's fairly easy, and it either sets you up to have a good day or a good night's sleep.  Here's how you do it:

• Place a notebook and pen beside your bed.
• Either before bed or when you awake in the morning, write down two to three things you are grateful for.

​So simple!  And now it's your turn.  How do you tune into your gratitude?

My great-grandmother died of complications from Alzheimer's disease thirty years ago.  My mother would take us to visit her at the nursing home in the small Colorado town where I spent my early childhood.  Most visits she had some to no idea who I was.  One particular visit, she wouldn't let me sit down.  I asked to sit on her bed, her chair, and finally, after exhausting every other surface in her room, I asked to sit in her bathtub.  The answer was always no.  Who could blame her?  The dementia had so crippled her mind that I was a complete stranger to her and she rightfully denied me the opportunity to occupy her space when she didn't know who I was.  My family laughs about it now, but really, it is not funny.  Watching that disease ruin my great-grandmother's elder years made a lasting impression on young me and I told myself I wanted to avoid that outcome in my own life at all costs.

Today, not only do I want to avoid this outcome, I am passionate about helping others avoid it as well.

We know a bit more about Alzheimer's and dementia than we did thirty years ago.  We know that yes, it can be genetic, though for every person who has the gene, it's debatable as to whether the gene gets expressed.    We know that it is inflammation of the brain.   And we know that it is no longer an old person's disease.  It is a young person's disease.

That's right, what you are doing or have done in your 30's and 40's may very well be or have been sowing the seeds for dementia later in life.  Inflammation is slow and silent when it starts.  By the time you are aware of it, whether it's in your brain or your gut or your joints, it has probably been lurking for years, possibly sending signals that were dismissed or ignored.  Chronic insomnia in the first half of your life is a predictor of Alzheimer's during the second part of your life. I've been coaching for some years now, and I am hard pressed to remember a client who didn't present insomnia or poor sleep habits during their initial client consultation.  

If you are not hearing alarm bells, they are there.  Here's some tough love: checking your email or social media at 2:00 a.m. is causing inflammation in your brain and it's slowly killing you.  I used to be so guilty of this!  So here's the good news:  you can take action right now, commit to loving yourself healthy, and start improving your sleep patterns.

Three Things You Can Do Now to Improve Your Sleep:
1.  Stop using your cell phone as your alarm clock.  Or at a minimum move it so far away from your bed that you have to physically leave the bed to turn it off.   In fact, if you can remove electronics from the bedroom that would be best for your sleep cycle.  All emit a signal that disrupts your circadian rhythm.  How?  The light emitted by electronics signals the brain to delay the discharge of melatonin needed for sleep.  Beyond that, their physical proximity is a temptation few can resist given our social media and e-mail addicted tendencies.  Give in and it creates a cognitive stimulation that disrupts your sleep cycle. (Source).

2.  Go to bed and wake up at the same time every day.   "Waking and sleeping at regular times reinforces a consistent sleep rhythm and reminds the brain when to release sleep and wake hormones," according to Dr. Frank Lipman.  In other words, your body is your ally, it wants you to sleep well, and to do so you need to have consistent sleeping and waking times.  Aim for 7-8 hours of sleep each night.  

3.  Create a bedtime ritual.  Create a ritual around going to bed.  Light a candle.  Massage your feet.   Put on soothing music.  Write in a gratitude journal.  Have a practice at night that helps you wind down and motivate the relaxation response in the body.  "A ritual sends a signal to your body and your mind that it is time to slow down and fall asleep, " (Dr. Gerard T. Lombard, Sleep to Save Your Life, p. 45).

Note:  Some of this content originally appeared in a post I wrote in June 2016, What You Need To Lose Weight That Is Not Diet and Exercise.

Recently, I had a couple of friends over for Girl Time.  They were invited to wear pajamas, bring creative projects or not, explore creative projects or nap or pet my dog, and eat nourishing foods or not.  See the "or not" part?  That's the important part.  My whole aim was to give myself and my friends permission to do or to be exactly what they needed in the moment.  Some of us did vision boards, like mine above.  Others colored or brought personal projects to engage their creativity.  And when they left or after they got home, I got text messages that included, "I didn't realize how much I needed that."

What I see in myself, my friends, and my clients is a lot of saying yes to other people which leads us to saying no to ourselves.  The "That" my friend was referring to in her text message is a permission slip.  While we were probably seasoned  about asking for one from our parents when we were kids, we now don't know who to ask to give us the permission slip to take care of ourselves.

The whole reason I have a job is because we are not taking care of ourselves.   Our culture has a large story around it's selfish, or there's not enough time.  And therein lies the issue.  To be our most productive, contributing members of society whether that's as a mom or dad or professional or both or sometimes all three as a single parent, we need to have charged batteries.  If you are never writing yourself a permission slip to do the things which help you charge your batteries, eventually you become depleted, your immune system starts to struggle (quietly at first before developing into a full-on roar), and things begin to fall apart around you.  

No one benefits when you are depleted, when your batteries are dead.

Writing yourself a permission slip is a key to staying healthy.  When you think about what would help you charge your batteries, restore and recover, what does that look like?  What activities help you calm your nervous system?  If you were to write yourself a permission slip right now, what would it say?  Some days mine would say, "Please excuse Molly from vacuuming, she needs a warm bath with epsom salt and lavender oil."   My invitation to you is pull out a piece of paper and for the next few minutes, write yourself a permission slip.  And then, those activities or lack of activities on that piece of paper, respect yourself so much that you actually follow-through with your permission slip sometime in the next week.  You are worth it.  The world is a better place when we each take great care of ourselves.