This week we’re bringing you five more bloggers to help you get a fresh take on health and happiness.
Jill Fit
Jill Coleman has spent the entirety of her life being athletic, and being good at it; she danced and played sports through childhood and high school — earning 4 Varsity letters and “Athlete of the Year” during her senior year. In college, she studied exercise science and nutrition, and eventually entered the world of fitness competitions.
She faced some negative self-esteem and went through several crash diets cycles, but had spent years growing to love herself. Now, one of her biggest goals is helping other women realize their true worth, so they can live without body shame.
In her latest blog post, Jill discusses why you shouldn’t be afraid to talk about your workouts on social media. When she asks her clients to post workout selfies, or check-in for their workouts, many of them come back with the same questions:
“Will I annoy people?
Will they get sick of seeing me working out day after day?
Will they take offense to my posts and unfollow me?
Am I bragging???”
Jill believes that if you are consistently putting in the hard work to strive for more, or “level up,” then you should be proud of your efforts. Her main question is, “what if we just assumed that most would instead actually like seeing the posts daily and maybe even feel motivated themselves to join in?”
If your friends/family/followers are annoyed by your gym selfies, or your accomplishment posts, do NOT apologize for leveling up, take the “so what?” approach and continue with your path to success.
Zen Habits
Leo Babauta lives in Davis, California, and started Zen Habits to help others find simplicity and mindfulness in daily chaos (he has six kids, that’s a whole lot of chaos).
One of his latest posts is titled, “The mindfulness of Pure Experience,” and at its base it talks about how our pure sensory experience consists of smelling, tasting, feeling, hearing, and seeing, but we almost never let ourselves stay in the place of just experiencing these sensations.
Leo states that being caught up in life – in our situation, in ourselves, in other people – means that we can take notice of our sensory experience, but then we almost immediately start to judge it. When we notice our sensory experience, we wish it was different, and it causes anxiety, fear, and frustration.
To find mindfulness in the Pure Experience, we need to stop judging our sensations; this includes being content (instead of unhappy), and even letting go of happy feelings when they move on (instead of clinging to them).
Maria Marlowe
Maria Marlowe considers herself a “food evangelist,” promoting a protocol for breaking bad food habits, such as late-night eating, craving sugar constantly, and eating too much.
In 2013, she opened a private Integrative Nutrition Health Coaching practice in NYC and has since helped hundreds of busy women take control of their diets. She started a 3-month group class, continued to help her clients get incredible results, and then produced several meal prepping outlines, which include shopping lists and recipes.
Her website is filled to the brim with healthy, delicious, and easy-to-make recipes, all of which involve natural, un-processed foods. You can find all of her recipes here (http://mariamarlowe.com/recipes/), divided up by “Breakfast,” “Entrees,” “Sides,” and “Desserts.”
Because she knows that kicking a sugar habit is easier when you have equally delicious- but healthier- alternatives on-hand, she provides a 6-ingredient recipe for “Cookie Dough Bliss Balls.”
Sarah Wilson
Sarah Wilson has been in the journalism world for 20 years, being featured on television, radio, in magazines, newspapers, and online; along with all of this, she was a host on MasterChef Australia, and is the author of I Quit Sugar (a New York Times bestseller).
She runs a personal blog that features life advice, insights into being happier, and recommended hikes in various cities, states, and countries; at the same time, she runs a food site/blog, dedicated to bringing readers healthy recipes and news on recent scientific studies.
In a recent post on IQuitSugar, Sarah talks about a recent study that shows a link between sugar intake and sadness. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends we reduce our intake of “free” or “added” sugars to no more than 5% of our daily intake (around 6–9 teaspoons). The dangerous side of sugar has been known for a long time; too much of it can cause obesity, Type 2 Diabetes, heart disease, and a whole slew of other heath issues.
The new study set out to discover if those with pre-existing mental health disorders were more prone to eat a higher amount of sugar than those without any pre-existing conditions. First, it found that men and women with pre-existing conditions who ate a lot of sugar were more likely to develop depression when compared to those who ate less sugar.
However, it also discovered that without a pre-existing mood disorder ate the same amount of sugar as people with one, which puts into question the theory that suffering from a mood discover causes us to eat more sugar.
Happy Fit Mama
Angela, the blogger behind Happy Fit Mama, is an ACSM Certified Clinical Exercise Physiologist and RRCA Running Coach; she writes about her weekly workouts, training routines, and healthy family-friendly recipes. If you’re looking to mix-up your typical exercise routine, or need some motivation and inspiration, look no further.
As a primarily-running athlete, she mostly posts about running workouts, all of each are great for switching things up. In this post, she lists three different treadmill workouts for when it’s too cold out or your schedule is too packed for an outdoor run. Treadmills are great because you do not have to plan a route, it keeps accurate track of your pace, and you can adjust the speed/terrain at any moment. Her “Treadmill Pyramid Hill Workout” is a great long-term speed workout for when you don’t feel like actually running fast. If you want to give it a try, just follow this outline:
Warm up:
1 mile @ easy pace, 1% incline
Put in the work:
8 minutes @ 2% incline
6 minutes @ 3% incline
4 minutes @ 4% incline
2 minutes @ 6% incline
4 minutes @ 4% incline
6 minutes @ 3% incline
8 minutes @ 2% incline
Cool down:
1 mile @ easy pace, 0% incline
This may look easy in writing, but pyramid workouts are no joke. If you want to make it more of a HIIT-focused session, mix in some 30-second periods of sprinting during the lower inclines.
