stretch – Fantastically 40-ish

Mental health matters, self-care, Work/life balance

Less Stress – Wellness Wednesdays

Posted on June 30, 2021February 15, 2023 by nlchronicles

Over the last couple of years, I have purposefully been looking for ways to de-stress. I would only take self care seriously when I went on vacation but that’s not enough to sustain a stress free lifestyle. As variety is the spice of life, below are things that I started incorporating more regularly.

Yoga – I have taken one on one yoga classes to learn how to modify various techniques. The breath work in yoga has helped so much. I even did a yoga workout on PBS this morning that is chair based. It also helps with flexibility concerns so it serves as a win-win.

Massage – love love love to get a massage, especially deep tissue massage. That has helped so much with the arthritis symptoms as well as serving as an outlet to destress.

Prayer – some call it quiet time or contemplation time. This is so essential for me to bring stress down. It helps me to keep life in perspective. I tend to get a little hyper or think “what if’s” and this helps temper those.

Meditation – this is the most recent addition for me. I use a meditation app at night to just relax and breathe. And it helps me to fall asleep. Meditation is a great way to lower your blood pressure too.

Exercise – aerobic exercise is your friend. Walking and hiit workouts are such good ways to just get the stress out of my system. I love being able to just forget about what bothered me before the workout.

Beach. Outdoors. Nature – the ultimate stress reliever! Nature is a such a good way to disconnect from stresses, work, pressure. When it’s nice outside, I try to get out almost every day. Reconnecting with the earth keeps you grounded, research shows.

What things have you incorporated to reduce stress? What works well for you? See you next week!

exercise, self-care

Exercise – Wellness Wednesdays

Posted on May 12, 2021February 15, 2023 by nlchronicles

Welcome to Wellness Wednesdays! Today’s focus is exercise. Allow me to remind everyone that I am not giving medical advice, but just sharing my journey that has allowed me to move toward better health.

For most of my life, I’ve tried to incorporate some type of exercise. As a teenager, I ran track for a couple of years. I tried out for field hockey and made the initial cut to do conditioning but that level of running left me exhausted. Looking back, this should have been a stop sign to find out why I was so exhausted. In college, I worked out fairly consistently my freshman year and lost about 25 pounds. But when my course load increased sophomore year, physical activity decreased. After graduating, I worked at an hmo and went to the gym there several times a week but it seemed that I toned more than lost weight. And the saga goes on and on. Frustrating, yes?

Around 2011, I started having issues with my hip and so I chose yoga and stretching to help ease the concerns. And it worked! Another clue but I still hadn’t taken the time to put all of it together. I walked a good deal and did other higher impact aerobics but was just maintaining weight. Then I started following doctors and nutritionists who focused on PCOS. That was a game changer.

Basically, I had been doing a lot of the wrong type of exercises for me. While exercise is wonderful, the body believes there is stress and increases cortisol- your fight or flight hormone. Well with pcos, that hormone is hard to get back down and that increases the storage of fat and inflammation, especially in the gut. So I’ve changed to longer, slower walks and always stretch at the end. I try to do a yoga or Pilates based workout twice a week. Weight training probably once per week. I limit hiit workouts to maybe twice per month. Sometimes I cycle or do the elliptical at the gym, when available. And that’s it! After years and years and years of thinking that the harder I went, the more I would lose 🤯 I don’t have to do that. How amazing to have that revelation! And I have still lost 97 pounds in the process! 🤩

So I encourage you to find the workout that is best for you. Comments, questions? Drop them below and share what works for you. See you next week!

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Work, travel and exercise

Posted on November 14, 2019December 7, 2019 by nlchronicles

For about half of the year, I travel a good deal for work. As I write this, I am on a train to New York penn station so that I can head out to Long Island. I enjoy the flexibility of working from various locations but it can interfere with attempts to be healthy and, especially, to work out.

Initially, I just considered the additional movement of the day as exercise. You know- airport walking, train platform walking, wandering the stores, campuses, basically anything that got me moving while out for travel. But now I try to be more intentional about actually exercising while I’m on travel. I pack my workout clothes so that even if the hotel gym has only one treadmill, I’m going to use that one treadmill. I prefer the recumbent bike but it’s not available everywhere. I also use amazon prime to do a couple of easy stretch videos if that works better.

And when the weather is warmer, I’ll incorporate intentional walking outdoors and walking in the pool before anyone gets in. A coworker even looked up exercise classes at the local YMCA while we were in training for a week- wow, that’s dedication!! What tips do you have for exercising while working and traveling? Share your experiences; I look forward to hearing from you. Until next time 🥂…

My newest tip…pack a light sweatshirt for the gym because it can be chilly in there!

Scenes from recent gym adventures-