Category: Food and Diet

Thanksgiving History: Being Grateful for Life’s Thorns

It’s all about thanksgiving.

I’m going to guess all of you reading this post have experienced a major life event you considered to be more of a thorn in your side than a blessing you’d give thanks for. No doubt 2020 has rocked your world with COVID-19 and maybe brought accompanied economic devastation.

It hasn’t been a normal year for anyone, or an easy year for many. We’ve all been turned on our heads to some degree.

It’s been a thorn.

We don’t like thorns. They’re sharp and often draw blood. They might leave bruises or infections that take time to heal. They certainly make life harder to handle.

But there are profound life-growing lessons to be learned from painful, blood-drawing thorns, and joy can result from them. For it’s in life’s thorns that we learn more about ourselves, become humbled, and learn how to persevere.

They can also—if you’re willing—turn us toward God and make us more reliant on Him.

 

But even with these thorns, we have so much to be thankful for. So I’m going to focus this post on our upcoming American holiday, Thanksgiving. It’s a special day to focus solely on giving thanks; a day set aside to express gratefulness with and for family and friends, even if you have to celebrate and thank them via ZOOM.

While we don’t often think about celebrating or giving thanks for the thorns in our lives, they may be the first and most important things we should look to and have at the top of our “I’m thankful for…” list.

Even the Pilgrims, who are officially credited with celebrating the first Thanksgiving nearly 400 years ago, (we were supposed to have a big 400th anniversary celebration for their arrival this year), had encountered thorns prior to that celebration. Deadly ones. And the fact that any of them were still alive to tell about it may be the reason they gave thanks.

 

Pilgrim basics: my heritage—

Thanksgiving is special to me. It should be, since I’m a direct descendant of two Pilgrims who sailed from England to America in 1620. Actually, one was an true Pilgrim (Separatist) and the other was a cooper (barrel maker) who evidently wanted a change of scenery and a new life in a new land.

The group was a little band of mostly like-minded pioneers who wanted to worship God without fear, persecution or worldly influence in a way of their choosing. They bravely sneaked away to England on a tiny ship after signing a contract with an English company to plunk down a colony on our shores and start successful trading and businesses.

(On a side note, don’t confuse Pilgrims—Separatists, who wanted to completely separate from the Church of England—and the Puritans, who wanted to transform and purify the Church from the inside.)

When I think about the accounts of that first Thanksgiving—the three-day feast the Pilgrims celebrated with the Wampanoag Indians—I wonder just how many of them were thinking: “I’m so thankful.”

As the History Channel’s website, history.org, states:

 

“As was the custom in England, the Pilgrims celebrated their harvest with a festival. The 50 remaining colonists and roughly 90 Wampanoag tribesmen attended the “First Thanksgiving.”

 

One of the attending Pilgrims noted a Pilgrim attendance of 53, but let’s not quibble in numbers.

It was customary for these English people to celebrate a bounty with a feast and recreational activities, so that’s what they did. Food and sport. And they invited the Indians. (Yes, they really did.)

They were grateful to the Indians, especially for one of them who intervened early and miraculously in their lives to teach them how to add fish to the soil to improve the growing conditions for a good harvest.

They hadn’t expected the poor soil conditions in Massachusetts. It was not where thy planned to land and live. Farther down the coast in Virginia was the landing plan, but they had arrived too late in the season and had to settle for the more northern location.

They also missed planting adequately for the growing season in cold, bitter Massachusetts with its poor crop-growing soil. Their food rotted and became infested with bugs. Then disease, starvation and freezing temperatures decimated most of their tiny band of 102 immigrants in the first six months.

And this is where it gets personal.

My great, great, great, great… Pilgrim grandmother, Priscilla Mullins, arrived at Plymouth in Massachusetts with her brother and their two parents, ready and likely excited to start a new life. But within months, the teenager’s mother, father, and 14-year old brother had succumbed to disease and starvation, leaving her alone with the other survivors, which included only three other women. Her family, along with the other dead, was buried in unmarked graves.

Priscilla was suddenly an orphan in a strange, scary land.

A year later, what could she have been thankful for?

Was she at all thankful for those torturous thorns in her life?

I can only speculate, but knowing that she was a devout follower of Jesus Christ, I’m going to guess that she had a few items on her thankful list.

 

My thorns—

About twenty years ago I started deliberately thanking God for the thorns He’s allowed me to get skewered by in my life. Why? Because it’s been in and through these thorns that I’ve grown the most emotionally and spiritually.

My thorns remind me that I’m really a helpless, puny human without much control over my life, although I often entertain, placate and blind myself by thinking I have more control over it than I do. The thorns keep my humble, relying on Someone greater than myself. The One who’s always in control. And that keeps me focused on and centered in my faith.

Surely, the memory and aftermath of being punctured by my thorns still hurts. After all, thorns do make you bleed. And they can leave nasty scars. Yet they have a tendency to remind you where you’ve ben, what you’ve survived, Who really got you through them, and where you should be going.

 

A (shocking?) admission—

What I’m going to write may shock or offend some of you, while others will nod their heads in collective sympathy and understanding.

As much as I still grieve and lament over my infant daughter, Victoria’s, death; as much as I still long to have her here with us; as much as I day-dream at every stage of life what she would look like and be doing, and mentally replay the dreams I had for her, I am grateful—thankful—that I walked that dark, horrible, thorn-ridden road. Because doing so brought me into a vivid, eternal life with the Supreme giver of life. A deeper, more fruitful, fulfilling and joyful life in the here and now, and in the eternal.

I’d like to think that it really didn’t need to happen that way. But in my heart, I know it did. I would have kept going just as I was, with one foot in the world and the other on a spiritual banana peel.

I’m thankful for those thorns. They remind me to Whom I belong, to Whom Victoria belongs. And they remind me that I will one day see my daughter face-to-face. And I will rejoice that we’ll spend eternity together. They give me one more reason to look forward to heaven.

Each year I move closer to that precious reunion celebration.

And give thanks.

 

Back to my Pilgrim family—

So what was Priscilla Mullins thankful for that cold fall day?

I can only guess.

Even though she was a firm believer in God, His word, and His promises, I suspect she went through the normal stages of grief all of us encounter: shock, fear, denial, anger, depression, exhaustion. Being a Christian doesn’t make you immune to suffering the effects of losing a loved one, of experiencing profound loss.

Being a Christian does mean, however, that you experience something in addition.

It means you grieve with hope, rather than without it.

Your grief is hopeful, not hopeless.

 

Priscilla may have sat at the table, thanking God for His protection over her and the other survivors, for the memory of her parents and brother, for the hope of the future, and probably for the new man in her life—John Alden, with whom she would have 10 children and produce more descendants in the United States than any other Pilgrims.

I often think of her and wonder if her unwavering faith and prayers for her children and children’s children paved the way for the blessings I’ve received in my life. Many of my blessings may be the result of her generational faithfulness.

For that, I also give thanks.

 

As my older son once said to me while he was in college, after making some big mistakes and suffering for them, and struggling against events not in his control: “I wouldn’t change a thing about my life. I don’t regret any of the mistakes or the problems. Because they all make me the person I am today.

And that person he is today just became a first-time father last Thursday morning to a beautiful, precious baby girl. Another descendant who made me a grandma.

I have been praying for this baby—Baby Ellie—for months. My heritage, my reward.

I’m counting a plentitude of blessings this year.

And I’m sure you can count both thorns and beauty in your life this Thanksgiving!

 

Invitation—
  1. What the thorns you’ve experienced in life?
  2. Did you consider these thorns blessings in any way?
  3. How is it possible for you to be thankful for them?
  4. How did God see you through them so they might become a blessing?

Next week, we’ll look at Advent and the importance of celebrating the coming of Christ more than two thousand years ago, and His future coming.

Until then, may joy and thanks abound this Thanksgiving Day. I’m going to guess you’ll never forget your 2020 Day of Thanks!

Blessings,

Andrea

“Beloved, I pray that you prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers” (3 John).


Andrea Arthur Owan, M.S., A.T., R., is a fitness pro, speaker, award-winning inspirational writer, memoirist, and senior-ordained chaplain (IFOC). She helps people thrive physically, emotionally, and spiritually, and recover from grief, loss and trauma.

5 Ways to Make a Fitness Habit Stick

Last week Friday, I headed to the gym for a morning workout. I thought I’d switch to a once-a-week morning exercise to see if what they say about morning workouts being better for fat burning were true. I was in high spirits, until I saw all of the cars in the parking lot and had to drive around it a couple of times just to find an open spot.

After scanning my membership code, and being greeted by a young, chirpy employee, I strode around the welcome desk and headed to the locker room. My mouth dropped at the number of people packed into the large facility.

Nearly every treadmill was taken. Every stationary bike had a sweaty, or soon-to-be-sweaty occupant. The free-weight exercise equipment area was packed. People swung weights, stretched, grunted and hopped around on nearly every square inch of the fake turf exercise area.

Where did all of these people come from!? I wondered.

Then it dawned on me—New Year, New Resolutions.

And I wondered how many of these well-intentioned, hopeful people would still be pumping the weights, spinning the stationary bike wheels, or padding the revolving treadmill a month or two from now.

If a recent Forbes article is accurate, only 25% of them will be able to make it past 30 days, and a measly 8% will be able to achieve them.

 

Those numbers are discouraging.

 

It could be that a lot of these just chose the wrong goal, latched onto someone else’s goal, or were mimicking what they read somewhere.

Or it could be that they picked the wrong activity, got lured in by the discount price, were told by their doctor that they needed to lose weight, or else; or they wanted to start out the new year feeling good about themselves by doing something.

Exercise is important for overall physical, emotional and psychological health, but just how can you increase your chances of success and steam past those dismal statistics numbers?

 

 

Upping your chances of resolution success—

How timely it was that after my morning workout my mom’s AARP healthcare healthy living newsletter Strive arrived in my mailbox. I peeled it open to see what they had to say about sticking with a new fitness program and making it a habit.

They gave four tips, most of which I’d agree with.

 

  1. Set doable goals.

This is a big one and a major factor in stick-to-it failure. People, as the old saying goes, bite off more than they can chew.

If you want to be able to walk 10 miles (consistently) on an outing by the end of the year, work backward to set your daily or weekly walking goals.

If just walking around your half-mile block leaves you huffing and puffing, then you might only be able to trudge down to the corner and back on your first try. Keep doing that until you’re walking at a comfortable pace and not gulping for air.

 

To avoid injury and stick with it, the rule of thumb is to NOT increase your mileage by more than 10% a week, and NEVER increase your mileage and your moving speed simultaneously. Focus on ONE or the OTHER.

 

If you’re just aiming for mileage, then the week after making it around your half-mile block three times (or daily, if you’re really pushing yourself), then increase your mileage by 10%, which wouldn’t be very far. But that’s okay. We’re not shooting for the Olympics here, (and all of those Olympians had to go through this type of baby-step training process when they started). We’re aiming for consistent, recreational fitness, to help you enjoy life better and add more life to whatever years you have!

Once you get to a week full of mile walks, then add another tenth of a mile. As you can see, the higher the mileage you’re capable of, the faster the gains as you get closer to the ten-mile goal. It’s like a snowball that gets bigger and gathers steam as it rolls along.

If your goal is to walk a half-marathon by a certain date, use this same formula and work backward. You may be surprised to learn that your goal is too ambitious. Don’t give up; just walk your own half marathon on a day your selected and reward yourself with a trophy, medal or something you’ve wanted to purchase. Or enjoy a nice meal out with your significant other. And then check races/walks in your area to see what the next nearest event is. It might be a fundraiser. That alone could be a great incentive for you.

 

But the most important part of this advice is that you must know what your goals are!

Too often, when I ask a client what their goals are, they give me the deer-in-the-headlight look. They don’t know.

So, your first step is to think long and hard about what your goals are (try to keep it to one per area—physically, emotionally, spiritually), and then write one down for each. Once you’ve achieved that goal, you can tweak it or add more. Just be reasonable. You don’t want to sabotage yourself from the starting block. It would be like lacing on clunky hiking shoes to run a marathon!

And if you find that you’ve taken on too much, or too little, feel free to adjust. It’s okay. You’re allowed to play around with this goal stuff. As long as you don’t play around with it so much that you doom yourself to accomplishing nothing, like a procrastinator does.

 

  1. Just have fun.

I know what their point is, and, for the most part, I agree with it. But as a former athlete, I can tell you that some of my days just weren’t fun. Far from it. They were painful, annoying, scary. Most of the time I was having fun, but not always. But I still had to drag myself to the gym to practice.

And you know what? Most of the time I was really happy I did. I felt proud of myself and much better after the practice. I felt as though I’d climbed an obstacle and achieved something.

And that brings me to the next part of having fun: the better I got, the more fun it was!

When you’re just starting out a new activity, it can feel laborious and not worth the effort. The brain actually rebels with the new moves. But after a while, when new neurons are formed, your body responds better, it builds up a motor memory, and you can do things faster and better.

So whether you’re taking up salsa dancing, violin playing, (like a former co-worker of my husband who took up the violin after retirement and a horrendous round of chemo for cancer), swimming or hiking, remind yourself that it will get easier—if you stick with it.

 

  1. Track your progress.

Not only is it motivating to keep a record of your improvement, it’s also essential to sticking with and meeting your goals!

 

That can’t be stated enough. Research shows that those people who don’t write down their goals and share them with someone else are unlikely to succeed.

 

So get yourself a notebook and track your progress. Post a chart on your refrigerator or laundry room wall. I have a chalkboard calendar mounted on the utility room door in our laundry room that I mark my weight loss (or gain!) on every other day after I weigh myself. It keeps me honest and tuned into my goals.

It’s when I ignored my weight for an entire year that I packed on an extra 15 – 20 pounds my frame (and knees) couldn’t afford for me to pack on. It’s agony trying to get them off, but my new reduced-acid diet, workout program, and every-other-day weigh-in keep me motivated.

I also like to use a notebook at the gym to record my progress. When I notice that I’ve plateaued in my workout, I can change it up and re-start the body’s adaptation system.

 

  1. Reward yourself.

When you reach a milestone, treat yourself, as I mentioned above.

It may be that you can enjoy a rummage-through-your closet day to try on pants and skirts or other items to see if you can reduce a size. If so, toss those too-big clothes and buy yourself a couple of items to replace them. Don’t go too wild if you’re planning to lose more weight. Save the big treat for when you’ve reached your final goal.

If you’re still working, treat yourself to a vacation day.

It’s okay to pat yourself on the back for doing a good job. And if you’ve enlisted someone else as a cheerleader, include them in the celebration with a thank you gift.

 

And I’ll add another goal to the list.

 

  1. Even if you hit a snag, don’t give up.

Know that there will be obstacles and setbacks. Life is like that. Don’t be surprised by them.

If you’ve found that you’ve already dropped the ball on your goals the third week of January, don’t be discouraged or give up. If you’ve determined that you picked the wrong activity, try another one. If you’ve overdone it and burned yourself out already, re-set and try again.

And don’t let anyone else sabotage you. Unfortunately, a lot of people don’t like it when they see someone else succeeding at what they know they should be and could be doing.

Your consistency and passion (not your berating and belittling) may be just what they need to join you and set their own positive goals!

 

Until next week,

Get out there and enjoy the fruit of hitting your goal!

Blessings,

Andrea


Andrea Arthur Owan, M.S., A.T., R., is an award-winning inspirational writer, fitness pro, and chaplain. She writes and works to help people live their best lives — physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

2020: What are the Best Diets?

Well, the results are in, and you may not like what they have to say about your favorite diet.

U.S. News & World Report loves to provide “Best” rankings for a slew of categories, such as doctors in every specialty and colleges. Now their panel of experts has weighed in (no pun intended) on what they have whittled down to the top 35 diets overall. You might be surprised to learn where your particular diet lands on their favorite list. I’ll cover the top 5 only, and then tell you how the popular Keto ranks and why, but you can go to the link at the bottom of this post to see all 35 diets.

How the top 5 diets rank and why?

Okay, here’s number 1.

Drum roll, please. Brrrrrrrr….

 

  1. Mediterranean Diet

No real surprise here. This diet has been studied and emulated for years. But which country bordering the Mediterranean are they following the recipes and food of? They all tend to eat slightly different foods.

I think by now most people know that people that live in this part of the world consume good oils—like olive oil and good fats that primarily come from fish, but other key take-aways to any Mediterranean diet are that these people:

  • Have active lifestyles
  • Eat in a way that helps control weight
  • Consume low amounts of meat, sugar and saturated fat
  • Eat a lot of produce, nuts and other healthful foods
  • Eat primarily organically-grown fruits and veggies (that come from smaller or personal farms)

If you’d like more information on what foods to eat in what amounts, see the consumer-friendly Mediterranean diet pyramid developed by experts in a Boston food think tank.

(Who knew there was such a group!)

This diet was also awarded kudos for being nutritionally sound and having diverse foods and flavors.

 

  1. DASH Diet

Okay, I must admit I’d never heard about this diet, which stands for Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension. But evidently it’s known for fighting high blood pressure and its nutritional completeness, safety, ability to prevent or control diabetes, and its role in supporting heart health.

It emphasizes:

  • fruits
  • veggies
  • whole grains
  • lean protein
  • low-fat dairy

It turns its thumbs down on:

  • fatty meats
  • full-fat dairy foods
  • tropical oils
  • sugar-sweetened beverages and sweets

Under the pro category, this diet was noted for being heart healthy and nutritionally sound.

 

  1. The Flexitarian Diet

Here’s another one I’d never heard of, which came about in 2009 when dietitian Dawn Jackson Blatner published her book The Flexitarian Diet: The Mostly Vegetarian Way to Lose Weight, Be Healthier, Prevent Disease and Add Year sot Your Life.

This diet—which is the marriage of flexible and vegetarian—emphasizes fruits, veggies, whole grains and plant-based protein. But Ms. Blatner says you can be a vegetarian most of the time but still enjoy an occasional fatty burger or steak when the urge strikes.

It was noted for its flexibility and abundance of tasty recipes.

 

  1. WW (Weight Watchers) Diet

Weight Watchers has done a good job evolving with the times and bringing their diet up to the modern research. It scored highest for overall weight loss and fast weight loss. But WW is also focusing on healthy living and overall well-being.

A big plus to the WW diet is the support system, via in-person accountability and support workshops and on-line or phone chats. The support people are trained in behavior weight management techniques.

With no foods being listed as off-limits, this diet scored big for being able to eat what you want, and for the flexibility in shaping your own diet.

 

  1. Mayo Clinic Diet

I did this diet as a high school junior. Way back then, it focused on very high protein meals, with eggs and meat being the centerpieces. I lost a heap of weight in two weeks, in time to be a bit more svelte for the National Gymnastics Championship.

Now it focuses on making healthful eating a lifelong habit. It also earned high marks for its nutrition and safety.

Mayo’s diet is focused on helping you get your eating habits straightened out and breaking bad habits and replacing them with good ones. They also have their own unique food pyramid, which emphasizes fruits, veggies, and whole grains, which allows you to eat more while taking in fewer calories.

According to Mayo, someone on the diet can expect to lose 6 to 10 pounds the first two weeks (!), a lot of which I would expect to be water, and then 1 to 2 pounds weekly until you’ve hit your goal weight. I’m not sure what you do when you hit it, but that is probably in the book.

The 6 to 10 pounds seems like a lot to me. I’ve read a lot of information cautioning people against losing that much weigh that rapidly—for heart reasons, and also for the inclination your body has to reset your calorie point to a lower per-day need before kicking into starvation and fat-storing mode with such drastic weight loss.

But they’re Mayo, and they’ve undoubtedly done their research and checked it twice.

It got additional marks for being nutritionally sound and allowing you to shape your diet.

 

  1. MIND Diet (Tied with Mayo and Volumetrics below)

The Mediterranean-DASH Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay (MIND) is another new one to me, but it’s definitely keeping up with the current concerns on maintaining mental health, as it aims to prevent mental deterioration.

One expert found it to be a healthy, sensible plan backed up by science. (I always love how they throw that in, and then we learn a decade later that “new” science has deleted the old facts.)

What this diet does is take both the DASH and the Mediterranean diets and focus on the foods in each one that specifically affect brain health.

I’m always a little concerned when diets focus too much on one aspect of health, but evidently this diet has been found to reduce Alzheimer’s risk by 35% for people who followed it moderately well and 53% for people who really adhered to it. So I think it deserves a closer look.

It does focus on fewer carbs than is currently recommended by our government guidelines and is known to bring on quick weight loss.

The pro category had marks for its blending of two proven healthy diets and its brain-power boosting focus. The cons were that the diet details were not “fleshed out” and the recipes and resources were slim.

 

  1. Volumetrics (Tied with Mayo and MIND, above)

Penn State University professor Barbara Rolls pioneered this diet, which experts say is really more of an eating approach than a focused diet. It’s designed around:

  • learning how to decipher a food’s energy density
  • learning how to cut that energy density in meal planning and eating
  • making choices that fight hunger

Food is divided into four groups: very low-density, low-density, medium-density, and high-density. You might already guess that non-starchy fruits and veggies would fall into the very-low density category, while crackers, chips, chocolate candies, cookies, nuts, butter and oil fall into the very-high level.

The pro checkmarks for this diet were that it is filling and no food is off-limits. The negatives included lengthy meal prep, and if you don’t like fruits, veggies or soups, sticking with it could be tough.

 

The list continues with a total of 35 rankings, including Jenny Craig, Nutrisystem, Dr. Weil’s Anti-inflammatory Diet, Dr. Dean Ornish’s Diet, Vegetarian, Vegan The Engine 2 and Paleo.

 

But where did the Keto diet fall?

In spite of its increasing popularity and the medical attention it’s receiving, experts rated this popular diet near the bottom, at #34, behind Paleo (at 29), and Atkins (32). And even though more research is being done on the effects of this diet, a July 2019 Journal of the American Medical Association Internal Medicine (JAMA Internal Medicine) stated that “enthusiasm outpaces evidence” when it comes to a keto diet having a dramatic effect on diabetes or obesity.

A friend of mine from high school is a keto-type diet aficionado and it has helped her tremendously with her diabetes control and weight maintenance. She said it was such a relief to no longer have to count carbs for her daily glycemic intake measurements. The last time I saw her, she looked healthy and had a ton of energy.

Granted, that’s anecdotal evidence, but it’s important to her and her health. Since it takes a long time to do research, it may be that the evidence is just taking time to catch up.

 

To see the entire list, read the overviews, and get more information on each of these diets, see the report.

 

And until next week, (when I’ll tell you about the new diet geared toward people suffering from acid reflux that my husband and I have embarked on),

Happy Dieting!

Andrea

*This list is to serve as general information and not to be intended as an endorsement of any diet plan or a prescription. Always consult with your physician or personal health practitioner before beginning any diet or exercise program.


Andrea Arthur Owan, M.S., A.T., R., is an award-winning inspirational writer, fitness pro, and chaplain. She writes and works to help people live their best lives — physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

5 Ways to Avoid Stress-Eating

I’m actually on my way to the great Northwest to attend the wedding of my older son’s best friend. He spent a lot of time at our house throughout their college years and is like a nephew to us. After the wedding, we’ll be exploring the area and then driving south to visit relatives. We’re excited.

But we’ll be confronted with a dilemma, one many people confront when they’re traveling or attending celebrations.

 

We need to keep a close eye on our nutrition plan while we’re away.

 

We don’t want to do any stress eating, any lazy eating, any “just this once” eating and then watch our waistlines enlarge and our clothes tighten.

To that end, we’ll have to maintain some self control, and frequently remind ourselves just how lousy we feel when we break down and eat something we know gives us problems, that will likely make us sick, and regretting that we ever opened our mouths and poked the food inside.

 

Just as I’m about to fly away, Harvard Health hits my email inbox with an article on how to avoid Stress Eating. I’m going to share some of the highlights with you. Hopefully it will help all of us as we work, play, and celebrate!

 

5 ways to manage, and avoid, stress-triggered eating—

 

  1. Make sleep a priority!

This is SO important for your health. Get 7 – 9 hours of good, restful sleep each night. Try to make your bedtimes and wake times as consistent as possible, even on the weekends. Stop watching television or using screen technology at least an hour before bedtime. Use the bedtime function on your smart phone and stick to it, with the screen switching to a warm color a couple of hours prior to going to bed and staying that way until the wake up music goes off.

For the last couple of weeks, Chris and I have been making a point of shutting down the electronics at least an hour before bed, grabbing a book and reading until 10:00, our designated in-bed time. The positive effects have been amazing! We’re enjoying the quiet and proximity to one another, and the melatonin cranks up in the limited light, preparing our bodies for a restful sleep.

 

  1. Take some time to meditate on how you view your work/life situation and what about it makes you stressful

Going through this process is about identifying whether or not you can change your response to any stress in your family or work life. Maybe you need to add more meditation to your life, learn how to take deep breaths and not get so wrapped up in life or work drama. Finding a support group—for over-eating—is also helpful.

 

3. Plan ahead for potentially stressful times

Know you intend to overeat at the holidays, or when a big report or presentation is due at work? Take some extra self-defense steps to curtail the eating. Keep healthful snacks around, make sure you focus on the work or event and don’t procrastinate about the time it will take to prepare. Design stress-reducing activities for the holidays, and resist over loading yourself during these high-stress times.

 

  1. Burn off the tension, or take your frustrations out on the gym equipment or pavement

Make sure you stick to your exercise regimen and don’t let others or their schedules squeeze out your exercise. Like sleep, exercise helps keep your fat-accumulating hormone (cortisol) at bay and your brain alert and healthy. Exercise needs to be a non-negotiable.

 

  1. Consider a doctor consult or counselor who can talk you through it and give you some great options for behavior modification

If, after all of the first 4 ideas and practices fail (and you’ve given them a honest, focused shot), it might be time to get some professional help.

 

BONUS TIP: If you struggle in this area, make sure you always take your burden to the Lord in prayer. It is helpful to pray in any situation where you feel stressed or weak, or on the verge of caving in to temptation. God stands ready to come to your aid and provide you a way out!

 

Good luck, and I’ll meet you back here October 2!

Blessings,

Andrea

 


Andrea Arthur Owan is an award-winning inspirational writer, fitness pro and chaplain. She writes and works to help people live their best lives—physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

How to Build Friendships: Taking the Whole Person Into Account

In this over-saturated, social media-driven world, we are finding ourselves lost, lonely, depressed and needing to return to the basics of life. (Anyone remember the song with that title by 4Him? I’ll supply the link at the end of this post.)

 

Building friendships and having a rich life—

Last month we started a series on developing and building friendships, something all of us need. Even the most righteous and Spirit-filled believer needs someone with skin on her. Even our Lord had His special twelve, and his intimate three. Why would we think we could go it alone?

 

First things first—

When you’re looking to make new friendships, deepen old ones, or considering whether or not a friendship has run its course (yes, that does happen), the first thing you can examine is you.

 

Take your whole person into account.

 

You’ll want to take a deep, introspective look at the five components of you, as a human being. Those components are:

  • Physical
  • Intellectual
  • Emotional
  • Social
  • Spiritual

These five components are needs you have. Needs that—when addressed and enriched—can provide you with a healthy, well-balanced and happy life.

To get started, you might ask yourself the following questions?

  1. What is my current physical (health) state, and what do I need to do to improve or maintain it? What kind of physical activities do I enjoy and does my body respond positively to? What physical activities enhance my other needs?
  2. How can I stimulate my intellectual side and keep my brain and cognitive functions active and as young as possible? (Physical activity is important for this too.) Would I like to learn a new language? Learn to play a musical instrument? Take a gourmet cooking class? An art class?
  3. Would I make new friends and receive more social stimulation if I join a fitness class or a local hiking or cycling group? Would museum memberships or outings stimulate my brain? What about book clubs, or newcomers club if I’ve recently moved to a new area?
  4. Is there a fellowship or Bible study group I could join that would enrich me in multiple areas—intellectual, emotional, social, and spiritual? A volunteer position?
  5. Is there something you and a current friend can do together? A friend of mine has a weekly, standing lunch date with another friend of hers. Sometimes they sit for hours and chat while eating. Gathering around a meal is one of the best ways to learn about one another and deepen friendships.

 

This same friend and I had a marvelous day at the zoo on the first day of spring this year. I’d been lamenting the fact that my boys were grown and gone, and we would no longer celebrate the first day of spring together with a “spring fling” day, when I’d give them the day off from home schooling, and we’d hit the zoo and swings at a local park.

But while languishing in my self-pity, the Lord reminded me that I wasn’t dead yet and that I could still celebrate spring fling day with a friend. We had a glorious time together, and ALL of the animals (except the rhino) were out on full, happy display for us on the gorgeous first day of spring. It was truly a day made in heaven! I even took pictures and texted them to the boys. “You’re at the ZOO!” came the return texts. Sharing the day with them that way resurrected some sweet memories for them. And I made a precious new one with a special friend!

It was a stimulating day physically, (3 weeks post-surgery, I hobbled around in a knee brace), emotionally, intellectually, socially, and spiritually.

A win-win all around!

 

Your turn—

Spend some time this week meditating on which areas/needs you’re not meeting and jotting down some ideas that could get you going in meeting them. Really take your whole person into account.

And here’s that YouTube video of the song—

 

 

 

Next week we’ll talk about getting out there and finding places to gather.

 

Blessings,

Andrea