It’s common to get in a place of feeling stuck. You know you want to change but find yourself paralyzed from fear — fear of failure, of being uncomfortable, of the unknown. You may have an inner feeling of unhappiness with where you are, with your habits, your environment, and your relationships. You may think it’s better to hold on to the familiar and to the things you do well rather than take risks and leaps that might not pan out. All of these feelings and fears are completely normal.

However, 2021 is coming to a close, and as you reflect on the past year and your goals for 2022, you might also be thinking there are some aspects of your life you “should” improve. You may even be considering a new year’s resolution or goal for yourself — exercising more often, eating healthier, sticking to a financial budget, reducing your alcohol consumption, playing with your kids more, etc. Any and all of these resolutions are great, but the road to successful goal execution isn’t easy. In fact, most new year’s resolutions rarely make it past the first 30 days. And there is good reason for that. The ego. Your ego resists change. It’s uncomfortable, it’s unfamiliar, and, let’s face it, it’s just plain hard. Understanding this, and considering all that could go wrong, it’s important to create the most paved road to success as possible. Otherwise, you risk the ego convincing you that it’s easier to quit then continue pressing forward.

Below I have created a list of some actionable steps you can apply to any behavior you are looking to change (in this example, I will use the goal of exercising more).

1) Be Specific. What does exercising more look like? Exercising 3, 4, or 5 days per week? How long for each session (20-60 minutes)?
2) Start Small. Pick an actionable goal that seems easy and 100% doable. Do not expect to go from not exercising at all to exercising 5 days per week. Start small — 2 days a week and slowly add a day every other week.
3) Analyze. Discover how you spend your time currently by logging a few days on a time table. Can you find places where you can add in exercise and take something else out?
4) Schedule. Plan it into your life. Treat it like any other important event.
5) Find an Accountability Partner. Find someone willing to join you. Having another person you care about relying on you and encouraging you can be useful support to prevent you from quitting.
6) Make it Simple. Streamline the behavior so it’s the easy choice to make. Pick a gym on route from work to home, pack your gym bag and leave it next to your desk, find an exercise class you enjoy that’s at a convenient time.
7) Do Not Expect Perfection. Slip ups will happen; you can count on this. Just keep going back – again, and again, and again. Remember, it’s better to do something fairly well over the long haul than to be perfect for a short time and then quit altogether.
8) Give Yourself Rewards. There’s a reason sticker charts work for kids. Find some way to reward yourself for consistently exercising for a month. A massage, new tennis shoes, a day off the next week, etc.
9) Hire Someone. Okay, so you tried for 6 months, and you are still feeling stuck and unable to stick to it. Find a professional to help you. You can’t be a good at everything, and sometimes it’s better to leave it to a skilled professional to be your guide and help you when you are stuck.
10) Be Kind to Yourself. Be forgiving of slip ups, learn from them, and try again. Change is difficult, and it can be downright messy at times. Don’t beat yourself up and throw in the towel at the first sight of failure. Forgive yourself, and find ways to do better the next time.

As 2021 comes to an end, take those “should” improve goals and turn them into “will” improve actions. With a steady road, concrete steps, and the right attitude, you can truly set yourself up for success for 2022.

Over 15 years ago I made the conscious choice to pursue my career in exercise science and nutrition as a means to contribute to the greater good. I realized the most straight forward and effective way for me to improve others health and well-being in addition to extending their longevity was through the most basic principles: daily physical activity, whole foods-based eating, and mindfulness practices. This very belief is at the core of how I have coached my clients since the very beginning. I honestly believe that a lot of the chronic diseases, ailments, and discomfort that people struggle with all come from their own lifestyle choices. If we choose to treat our bodies and minds with care and respect, we can lead a healthy, vibrant, and fulfilling life.

Over the past couple months COVID-19 has completely uprooted our daily lives. It has taken the lives of many, closed down countless businesses, and has left us afraid to be within 6 feet of others, lysoling and bleaching everything, and overall being extremely concerned about the health and safety of elderly loved ones and those with underlying health conditions. What it’s also done, is reinforced the notion that living a healthy lifestyle… getting enough exercise, eating healthy food, sleeping enough… can save your life on a much more immediate basis than the abstract “over the long haul” thinking of the past.

Since this disease is very new there is not an array of available data to pull from. However, the CDC has extracted from the US hospital data that many of the sickest Covid-19 patients also had underlying medical conditions. Seventy-eight percent of all people put into intensive care for Covid-19 in the US have had an underlying condition like diabetes or heart disease: 32 percent had diabetes, 29 percent had heart disease, 21 percent had chronic lung disease, and 9 percent had compromised immune systems.

According to another study of 45,000 confirmed cases in China, fewer than 1.0% of healthy people who contracted the COVID-19 virus died from the disease. But that percentage increased to around 6.0% for people with cancer, hypertension or chronic respiratory disease, 7.3% for those with diabetes and 10.5% for those with cardiovascular disease. Patients who were 80 or older were also at increased risk, with 14.8% dying.

Most people who get sick with COVID-19 experience a local infection in the cells that line the airways in the lungs. This infection triggers an immune reaction that will eradicate the virus and allow for recovery. The typical symptoms may include fever, cough and shortness of breath, but they are temporary and usually a week to 2 weeks later completely recover. However, the elderly and those with underlying health conditions may have a dysfunctional immune system that leads to an uncontrolled immune response to the virus. This can lead to pneumonia, and then severe lung damage from pneumonia can result in acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), which in turn can cause septic shock. ARDS and sepsis are the primary causes of death in people with COVID-19.

If the mere thought of a possible heart attack or stroke isn’t enough to get people to rethink their diet and lifestyle choices, maybe a deadly pandemic will ignite this fire for change. Substantial evidence proves that 30 minutes a day of exercise, practicing 10 minutes of mindfulness, and eating a whole food-based diet can prevent, and in some cases reverse, medical conditions like hypertension, heart disease, diabetes, some cancers and autoimmune diseases. In our current situation (or a similar one that could arise in the future), not having these medical conditions can help protect you from possible death from a global pandemic like COVID-19.

I encourage you to reflect back on the last couple months and use this scary and alarming situation to raise awareness to the bigger problem that many of us have been ignoring for decades. Our general lack of desire or motivation to treat our bodies with respect by exercising daily and eating nutritious foods. How can we expect our body to defend us from dangerous pathogens if we don’t arm it with the very basics that help it operate at top speed? It’s like expecting a Lamborghini to drive well on regular unleaded fuel, it’s just plain madness.

Here are 3 simple goals to focus on to help boost your overall mental and physical health, both during quarantine and beyond:

Exercise for 20-30 minutes daily. That can be a walk, run, yoga video, dancing, weights circuit, whatever gets you moving.

Practice 5-10 minutes of mindfulness. That can be lying down and listening to soothing music, taking and focusing on deep, slow, deliberate breaths, following a guided meditation, or going through some daily stretches.

Focus on filling your plates with fruits, vegetables, high fiber whole carbohydrates, quality fats, and organic meats. Minimize sugar, alcohol, and processed foods.

It doesn’t seem like a lot, and that’s because it’s really not in the grand scheme of things. It’s just a matter of changing our mindset and instead of looking at it as work or just another thing we should do, think of it as a gift that you are giving to yourself and those close to you. I promise these few steps will make this quarantine much more bearable and help you be better prepared for future viruses and the next wave of COVID-19 that is bound to cycle around again.

A little over a year ago I was struggling with fatigue, poor performance in the gym, hunger all the time, stomach pains and discomfort, and coming down with frequent colds. Despite having a healthy diet and exercise routine I felt terrible. Fast forward a few months to last September and I ended up in urgent care due to debilitating stomach and back pains, coupled with nausea. After being treated with anti-nauseous medication I was discharged with no rhyme or reason to what the source was, except maybe it was food poisoning. I have had food poisoning before and that wasn’t it. Since I was a teenager, I have always struggled with gut issues off and on and could never get the help I needed to fix it completely. Sure, I would have times where I was feeling better, but never “healthy” like I should be given my nutrition and exercise routine. After being discharged from urgent care with no help of any kind I decided to seek out a naturopath to get to the root of the problem.

The naturopath I met with ran some tests and found that I had two different parasites, h-pylori, an inflammation marker of 315, (50 and below is ideal), I was excreting 30% of the fat I was consuming, and my antibodies were almost non-existent. That makes a lot of sense as to why I was hungry all the time, getting sick often, performing like garbage in the gym, and ALWAYS tired.  After following a diet and supplement regimen within a couple months I started to feel like myself again. After 7 months of treatment I retested and even though I wasn’t completely healed things were A LOT better. H-pylori and both parasites were gone, my inflammation number went down to 3, I am almost absorbing all the fat I’m eating except 6%. However, my immune antibodies were still low, and my good and bad bacteria was still uneven. Now just a few months later I feel like a completely different person. No stomach pains, no fatigue, I have avoided several colds being passed around, and I’m physically capable of doing things I couldn’t dream of a year ago. Making PR’s in lifts, climbing mountains, running Spartans, and feeling like I should have for a long time.

The reason I am sharing my story is in hopes that someone else who is struggling can finally get the help they need. Your gut health impacts everything else, and it doesn’t matter how great your diet is, and how often you exercise you can still fall susceptible to gut dysfunction. Food intolerances, stress, environmental exposure, genetic disposition, it all can wreak havoc on your digestive health. If you are suffering from any of the following: extreme fatigue, frequent colds, poor physical performance, bloating, gas, stomach cramps, headaches, skin irritation, mental fog, insomnia. Then I encourage you to seek out a naturopath to get you on the journey to a healthier life, I wish I would have done this years ago. I learned that I have food sensitivities to both dairy and gluten and it was eating these two items that got me into the bad place I was, on top of stress and chemical exposure (xenoestrogens).

Now I avoid dairy and gluten, follow a mindfulness practice, have gotten off hormonal birth control, only use clean beauty and cleaning products, and buy all organic food, as well as keep up with a well-rounded supplement plan.

Here are the top signs of underlying gut dysfunction:

1. Digestive issues like bloating, gas, stomach discomfort or diarrhea.  In large, this is due to the health; both number and diversity, of the bacteria living inside your gut, intestines, stomach and colon otherwise known as microbiome. Symptoms such as bowel irregularity or gas occur when the balance of bacteria is not right.
2. Sugar Cravings. Scientists have discovered that gut bacteria actually secretes special proteins that are similar to hunger-regulating hormones; leptin and ghrelin. These types of bacteria try to get us to eat foods that they thrive on like sugar so they secrete the proteins to make you crave sugar more and more. Scary.
3. Chronic Bad Breath. Having less-than-optimal gut flora can make you vulnerable to health conditions linked to bad breath such as kidney infections and poorly managed diabetes. So bad breath is a sign that gut flora isn’t optimal.
4. Moodiness, anxiety and depression. A compromised gut will affect your ability to use serotonin and vitamin D within your body. The majority of serotonin and about half of your dopamine is made in your gut. If you have leaky gut, your body will lose much of the serotonin and dopamine it produces.
5. Diabetes. Scientists have concluded that one possible cause and effect between intestinal bacteria and diabetes is that certain bacteria incite an immune response. Within the intestinal bacteria population, there are microbes that form toxins that enter the gut and then cause inflammation throughout the body. This inevitably impacts liver and fat cells that affect overall metabolism and insulin sensitivity.
6. Autoimmune Diseases. There is growing evidence that increased intestinal permeability (leaky gut) plays a role in various autoimmune diseases including celiac disease and type 1 diabetes. Scientists now believe that besides genetic and environmental factors, loss of intestinal barrier function is necessary to develop autoimmunity.

These are just the big red flags. There are other symptoms such as fatigue, headaches, joint aches, hypothyroidism, food sensitivities, constipation, getting sick often, brain fog and memory issues to name a few. The point is gut issues can be the root cause of a whole host of symptoms. I encourage you to seek out a naturopath to help you investigate what’s exactly causing these symptoms and get you on the path to recovery. Scientists are finding out how much a healthy gut impacts the health of the entire body, and should not be overlooked!

Let’s face it, dieting is hard. Hard to follow, hard to stick to, hard to enjoy life while on one. This is probably why so many people fail at diets, because they can suck. What if we re-framed the dieting mentality toward healthy living and better nutrition without sacrificing all our favorite foods or compromising taste? What if instead of saying foods are bad and off limits, we practice more mindful eating practices that help us enjoy some foods that are deemed less healthy? What if we decided to go back to the basics and nurture a better relationship with food so that we could stay on track and lose weight?
In learning anything… a sport, an art, an instrument, etc, it’s always best to master the basics, build on them, and then modify them to fit your personal style. Sometimes, you hit a slump and it’s usually helpful to go back to the basics to get your rhythm back. Mastering the art of healthy eating and exercise is no different. So, Let’s get started!

Using the hunger scale
Intuitive eating is the concept of eating when hungry, stopping when full, and relying on natural hunger and fullness cues to decide when to eat and when to stop. In using the Hunger Scale you want to start eating before reaching 3 and stop eating before 6. By avoiding dropping below 3 you avoid the risk of being so ravenous that you over eat or make poor food choices. By stopping before you get to 7 you are reducing over consumption of calories and the chance of losing the ability to detect fullness over time. Before eating ask yourself where do you fall on the scale, if it’s not around 3-4 identify if you are wanting to eat for another reason besides hunger and try to redirect that desire. Take at least 20 minutes to eat your meals with minimal distractions. By slowing down meal times and setting your fork down between bites you can allow the fullness cues to trigger before you have eaten too much food pushing you past 6.

Mastering portion sizes
Use your hand as a general guide for appropriate portion sizes. See the picture below.

Don’t drink your calories
Beverages are the worst offenders when it comes to trying to shed pounds. They do not produce the same feeling of fullness you get from chewing food, and they often are loaded with a lot of sugar and carbohydrates. I am not just talking about the obvious sodas and Frappucinos, even juices, alcoholic drinks, teas and smoothies can all add unwanted pounds. Read nutrition labels for all drinks, look at the sugar grams and total calories, and remember artificial sweeteners come with their own host of problems too. If you must drink alcohol avoid sugary mixers and pick drier wines or lighter beers.

Ask if the calories are worth it 
Savor the foods you love in smaller portions and pass on the less satisfying sweets and snacks. Before eating something not-so-healthy ask if it’s worth the calories. If it is, enjoy it, savor it, and pass on other items that you are less excited about. Take a bite of something and if isn’t that great toss it.

Flip the ingredients
Enhance the healthier foods and reduce the less healthy foods so you don’t have to completely omit the forbidden foods from your diet. Here are some examples: instead of having a burrito wrapped in a large flour tortilla have a burrito bowl, instead of having a bowl of ice cream with some strawberries on top, have some strawberries topped with a spoonful of ice cream, instead of having steak and potatoes with a side of spinach, have a spinach salad with some chunks of potato and slices of steak.

Add more fruits and vegetables
Aim to have a serving of fruit or vegetable every time you eat a meal or snack. Add them to items you already eat like sandwiches, soups, yogurt, eggs, rice, etc. Have veggies and fruit that are ready to eat or can be quickly prepared. If you don’t have time to chop your own fruit and veggies buy them pre-chopped, spiralized, or riced so you are more likely to use them as a snack or when preparing your meals.
Ask yourself if you are already putting these practices in place. If not, let’s get back to the basics and start incorporating these techniques in your everyday eating practices before trying out the next diet trend. Because no one enjoys dieting, so let’s find ways to still enjoy the food we love in small doses and still lose weight and feel better.