 Hello friends! I just completed a new workbook that I want to share with you. This workbook walks you through establishing new habits to fill your cup.
Do you feel like you have just barely enough energy to complete all of your have-to-do’s in a day? Do you want to have energy reserves to give to your want-to-dos? If so, this is the workbook for you! Simply send an email to me at [email protected] with the subject line “My Overflowing Cup” and I’ll reply with the 22 page PDF at no charge ($10 value). And, if you want to step through the workbook with others who are on a similar journey, let me know in the email that you want to join our guided support group starting October 23rd. I’m so excited to hear the stories of energy transformation!
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 A friend gifted me an old Garmin watch recently and it has been fun to see how it tracks my stress level throughout the day. So, what is the big deal about stress anyway? Why do our watches think it is important enough to track?
It is no secret that our stress levels impact our health. Stress in and of itself is not necessarily a bad thing. God gave our bodies an automatic response to prepare us to handle tough situations well. The problem in our modern society tends to be that the stressors we experience don’t have a defined end point so our stress response doesn't shut off. According to the Cleveland Clinic, long-term stress can result in high blood pressure, a weak immune system, and depression … to name just a few! So what can we do about stress? In some cases, we can actually address the thing causing the stress. Your job is stressful? Change jobs. But, as you can see with that example, these tend to be big changes that can cause more stress in the short term. So in most cases, the only real option available to you is to address your response to the stress. There are many different techniques and I encourage people that I work with to identify a few that they can try. What works for one person, or even one situation, may not work for another person or a different situation. Here are some of my favorites I have heard from people over the years:
None of these activities will actually change the situation that is causing the stress, but they halt the physical stress response in the body so that those long-term health consequences can be avoided. And, they equip you to continue your day as a contributor, despite the challenges life throws your way. What strategies have worked for you? What idea of your own or from the list above will you try?  The longer I work in the Health and Fitness industry, the more and more convinced I become about just how important sleep is for our health and well-being. Truthfully, the concept of good sleep being important for health is not new. It doesn’t take a preponderance of research to know that if you aren’t sleeping enough, you don’t feel so great. But in the past few years, as the wearable fitness tracking devices have become popular, we have gained even more solid evidence to prove and explain the connection between sleep and health.
Currently in the research, we can definitively say that getting a good amount of quality sleep is correlated with many different health outcomes. According to Harvard Medicine, risks of developing diabetes, obesity, heart disease, high blood pressure and even the common cold go up exponentially when an individual does not get enough sleep. We still don’t fully understand the mechanisms involved, but the correlations are clear. Getting enough quality sleep is multi-factorial. If you are in a stage of life where you are sacrificing your sleep to keep an infant alive, you deserve a round of applause, not a guilt trip! But there are a few tips that can help most of us to improve our sleep. Many of these suggestions are also found on the CDC website:
This is not an exhaustive list, but some of the more common ideas I often discuss with clients. Again, please do not feel guilty when there are circumstances outside of your control! You might be able to choose one or two things that can help, or you might just need to be amazed at what your body can accomplish even if it is sleep deprived during this season! I’d love to hear from you! What has worked for you or what would you like to incorporate in the next few weeks to encourage better sleep?  At the risk of beating the exercise drum to death, I have one more topic that I think deserves some thought: Exercise and Weight.
It is true that exercise burns calories. And that does help with weight loss. But there is an even greater benefit at play here that is less gratifying because it is less immediate. But it is powerful long term. And really, the way I should title this post is “Exercise and Body Composition.” While the scale is a useful tool, the real health gains are in fat loss, not just weight loss. Weight loss without exercise results in both fat and muscle tissue loss. Loss of muscle tissue results in lower metabolism. Weight loss with exercise, on the other hand, results in almost all of the lost weight being from a reduction in the fat tissue. And by at least maintaining if not building muscle tissue, metabolism is maintained or improved. So, while exercise in most cases does play a supporting role to diet when a person is seeking to achieve a healthy weight, it is still important. According to the CDC, one the weight is lost, maintaining a healthy weight is VERY related to how fit a person is. It just takes more calories to keep muscle tissue alive even at rest. So a more fit individual is burning more calories just sitting on the couch not even using those muscles! In the short term, it isn’t much. But over months and years, that extra calorie burn can really add up! I encourage clients to not be discouraged when they don’t see the immediate effects of exercise in their weight loss. As long as their dietary choices are on par, it is actually a good sign. They are creating a more fit and lean body and the weight will come off as their new metabolism kicks in!  School is about to start here. It has already started in a lot of places around the country. And the days are getting shorter. Anyone else struggling with their energy level with all of the planning and shopping and schedule-figure-outing?!
Enter the star of the show: Exercise! Harvard Health and the Mayo Clinic and a large body of research agree … exercise gives you energy! And most people know that if you were to ask them. Yet it seems the largest hurdle (well, maybe second to “not enough time”) that I hear from clients is that they just don’t have energy to exercise. How do we get past that feeling of not having enough energy so that we can be motivated to do the exercise that will actually give us energy? It’s a conundrum! I like to encourage what I call “The 5 Minute Rule.” Usually, when someone is, say, exhausted after a full day of work and they just really want to curl up on the couch for some social media scrolling … they aren’t physically exhausted as much as they are mentally exhausted. What seems to work is to just say to yourself, “I’m just going to get on the treadmill (or turn on the video, or walk out the door …) for 5 minutes. If I’m still exhausted, I’m done!” The vast majority of the time, you’ll feel great after those 5 minutes, remember why you wanted to get this exercise habit going in the first place, and have lots of energy for whomever you want to share your time with later in the day! What helps you to get started with your exercise when you just aren’t feeling it?  Truth be told, I chose this topic today because I need to hear this one myself right now. Between camping the past two weekends and my son having sleepover last night, I am sorely lacking in the sleep department recently!
There are many things that can affect sleep. Six pre-teen boys running around your house before finally settling down in the tents around 1am would be one of them! But in keeping with my theme, today’s topic is about exercise. When I work with clients who know that they want to improve their sleep habits, as a Health Coach, my first go-to is to discuss exercise. A wide body of research indicates that exercise does help you to fall asleep faster and to improve your sleep quality once you are asleep (see this article from John Hopkins). There is still some conflicting evidence regarding exercise right before bed. The Cleveland Clinic has determined that the myth has been debunked by recent research. My advice is to exercise when it works best for you. It may be some trial and error. If exercising at night works best for your schedule, give it a shot! I had a client who’s bedtime routine included a workout on his rowing machine before a shower. If you find that it keeps you up, then either decrease the intensity and try again, or pick a different time of the day to try. But you won’t know until you give it a shot! I’m tired, so I won’t get into all the details about the theories behind why exercise helps sleep and why good sleep is important for overall health … maybe I will tackle that on another post! What do you do to help you sleep well?  It is no secret that I am a bit of an exercise nut. Thankfully as a kid I didn’t really have the coordination to excel at many sports ... but cross country I could manage. Don’t let me fool you, I was not then and am not now a “good” runner. I have always been very middle-of-the-pack. But lucky for me, running is a sport that you can do long after high school and college. And you don’t have to be good to participate. So at a young age I fell into a lifelong form of exercise that I do, mostly, enjoy. (Come on ... no one loves to run all the time!)
Later in life as I became a fitness professional, I learned more about the many benefits of exercise. So many, in fact, that I’m going to do an entire series! This post is about stress. Stress is nothing new, but the COVID pandemic multiplied it. According to the World Health Organization, depression and anxiety cases increased by 25% during the pandemic. Yikes! There are many ways to deal with stress. Speaking with a counselor remains high on my list of recommendations! But because I’m a health coach not a counselor, my first response when I am working with a client who wants to better manage their stress is often to ask about exercise. While exercise will not change the cause of the stress, it does mitigate the physical responses that stress has on your body. It literally diffuses the physical stress response (think tightened muscles, increased heart rate, etc) because exercise is a physical stress on the body … and then it is over. Your body then knows how to stop the stress response when the exercise ends. If you are intrigued, there is more information about this from The Mayo Clinic here. The harmful effects of stress are due to chronic stress. Exercise helps to make sure the stress response ends and therefore isn’t chronic. In addition, regular exercisers simply have a higher capacity to deal with whatever challenges life throws their way. Their overall health is better, their weight is better, their mood is better. Their stress level is lower in general so that they have a greater capacity to deal with stress that does come along. I love how Harvard Health describes it here. So, what is your go-to when you need to manage your stress?  I was enjoying a little “girl time” this weekend with some friends while camping. We left the guys to entertain the small posse of children while we took the dog and did a little hike. No one whined! It was amazing!
On the ride to the coffee shop afterwards (cause … no kids!), the topic of health habits came up. I was asked to chime in regarding their questions regarding some different tactics they had tried. None of them were bad ideas really, but none of them had stuck. It felt to me like everything they had tried was a little on the extreme side. As an example, one woman talked about how difficult it was for her to make two different meals to satisfy the different dietary needs of the family. So, that all led to a little discussion about habit stacking. I encouraged them to consider making one smallish change. One that doesn’t rock their world and feels very doable long term. Over time, that change will become a little bit more normal. Then it’s time to choose the next small change. Rinse and repeat. It’s not a quick fix, but by golly, over time you may just find you have done a major overhaul of your health habits by taking one small do-able step at a time!  Not only am I having fun with starting my own private health coaching business, but others see what I am doing and want to support me! I have never seen myself as an entrepreneur, but it seems I’m a pretty quick study when I put my mind to it. Ladies and gentleman, this is the blog post of a recent recipient of a Level Up Mini Grant!
I found out about the grant through my involvement with the West Virginia Women’s Buisness Center and applied. After completing a relatively short application and submitting a “Lean Canvas,” which I learned is basically a short and sweet business plan, I was notified that I was awarded the grant! The grant will allow me to “Level Up” my business by providing the funds for certifications and for computer programs. I’m looking forward to taking the exam to become a National Board Certified Health and Wellness Coach. The grant will also be used for continuing education that will serve to grow my skills and knowledge as a coach. Also, I have already been experimenting with the free version of an online platform called Healthie to use as an interface for my coaching clients. It has been fun to play with the features that help me leverage my time with tasks such as billing, note taking, form intake, and scheduling. It has also been fun for my clients to use the goal setting tools and reminders and the video chat feature. I look forward to providing even more services as I use the grant to access even more features of the program. Thank you so much to the West Virginia Women’s Business Center and Partner Community Capital for believing in me and helping equip me to take my business to the next level!  There are a lot of ideas out there on what it takes to change a habit. Most people are familiar with the thought that if you do something for 30 days, it will then be a habit. I don’t necessarily disagree, but I think there is a lot more to it than that. And the danger in that concept is that if you miss a day, you are back to square 1 … which for a lot of people is enough to send them into a tailspin. (I’m a failure … I’ll never get this right … etc. Been there?!)
The way I explain habit development to clients is using the analogy of a hiking trail in the woods. Imagine that like Anne of Green Gables, you have a trail through the woods that links your house with that of your best friend. That trail has been there for years and because you spend every day with your friend, it is nice and clear. Suppose one day you decide that you want to make a new trail so that you can walk past a particular berry bush on your way to your friend’s place. The first time you go that way it is going to be very difficult. You will have to do a lot of work to clear the new trail. But the more often you take that trail, the more clear and packed down it will become. The old trail is still there, but every day it becomes more overgrown because you aren’t walking down it. If you do take the old trail one day, it doesn’t mean your new one is totally gone. You just want to get back to the new one to continue the process of making the new trail wider, more packed down, and easier to travel. And by traveling the new trail more often, you are also letting the old trail become more overgrown and forgotten. This is literally what is happening with the neurons in your brain as you are establishing a new habit. New pathways are being built that make it easier to do the new habit each time. And concurrently, the old pathways are being forgotten. If you slip into your old pattern one day, you simply need to get back to the new one the next time. It is still there! And, it gets easier every time you do it. What new habits are you developing new neural pathways for? Comment below! |
AuthorKatie Kolb - Health Coach Archives
November 2024
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