8 Nutrition and Exercise Tips

Here are some tips I have come up with to help you with exercise and nutrition:

1) Breakfast – We’ve all heard that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, but let’s not forget that it is what we eat in the morning that really counts. Some quick and easy items are: cold cereal, low fat milk, juices, whole grain waffles, and fruit.

2) Group Physical Activities – Plan a few weekly events with friends, family, coworkers, fellow students, or neighbors. This could be a weekly walk around the neighborhood, weekend swimming time, a family bike, or a camping trip.

3) Move – If you’re moving you aren’t standing still. Find a way to spend 5-10 minutes of every hour getting up and doing something physical. This may include climbing the stairs, stretching, or walking around the block or office building.

4) Healthy Snacks – Snacking throughout the day doesn’t have to be unhealthy. Try eating carrots, broccoli or whatever your favorite raw vegetable is during the day. This will help boost your energy, keep you full, and will help you acquire the daily servings your body needs to maintain a healthy diet.

5) Work Out – There are ways to get a good workout without having to buy an expensive gym membership. Do some research on at-home workouts, check out your television service offerings, get online, or find books or videos at your local library. They are key to a good workout and working up a sweat. Overall, simply find a way to get your heart rate up for at least 30 minutes a day.

6) Vegetables and Grains – Try to eat more vegetables and grains. Whole wheat pasta or breads like pita can taste good and are good for you. These will give you complex carbs for energy, as well as fiber, vitamins, and minerals.

7) Balanced Diet – Too much of anything can be bad, right? Try to balance out your food choices over the day and week. Pick different snacking options and have breakfasts and dinners with health variety. This will allow you to get all the nutrients you need to stay healthy. Plus the variety will keep you going.

8) Have Fun – Try a new activity or sport. Participate with friends and family. Eating right and getting exercise doesn’t have to be a burden. If you have the right outlook it can be a joy. Making eating right a fun and balanced part of your life while setting realistic, short-term goals.

Ian Holtz,
Manager, Business Development

Conquering Those Hard-to-Break Habits

Visit our Website Past Newsletters Conquering Those Hard-to-Break Habits April 11, 2011   My motivation to kick my rear in gear usually starts about this time of year. Being in a swimsuit in January isn’t an option so all good intentions get ignored, but starting about April, I know I can’t hide behind my sweaters and jackets for much longer. I have to face all the bad habits I have been enabling since the previous summer; eating dinner in front of the TV, skipping breakfast and being so hungry at lunch that the quickest thing to grab is usually not healthy, and of course my favorite winter activity of cozying up on the couch with Netflix instead of hitting the gym. This go around I was lucky enough to speak with one of our nutritional affiliates and ask some important questions; how do I change my habits and how do I stay accountable? I want to make this a lifestyle change instead of always ending up in the land of crash-diets and quick fixes. It hasn’t been easy to overcome a lot of these bad habits but it has definitely been worth the struggle; I don’t have pizza buffets and cheesy fries on the mind nearly as much as I did in the beginning! No matter what bad habit it is you are trying to derail this article will help you prepare to bid it adieu! Read more on this topic here…   Britney Kirsch Account Manager

Can a Candy Bar Give you the Flu?

Visit our Website Past Newsletters Can a Candy Bar Give you the Flu? March 22, 2011   Even as a child I never craved sugar. Give me beef jerky or pickles any day over candy or chocolate; pretty much anything high in sodium and I’m a fan. So when my fiancé came home the other day with two boxes of Samoa’s there was no temptation to consume these cookies. I am trying to watch my nutrition and so why bring anything into the house that I will devour. You will never see me buying Pringles for the house, they’d be gone in an hour, but I can deal with not eating sweets so the Girl Scout cookies didn’t bother me… at first. There they were sitting right in front of me and I began that internal conversation that starts right before I am about to do something bad. “I don’t even like sweets that much, but you can only buy them once a year, what is one cookie going to do, you only live once…” And I was sold. That little Samoa was right where it should be, in my mouth and just as scrumptious as I remembered. Just because I don’t crave sugar, doesn’t mean they aren’t delicious. Without thinking, I gobbled one more and then another. Oh no! Nick grabbed the boxes, seeing the lack of self-control and despair in my eyes, and he put the boxes on top of the fridge. Shortly after my battle with the cookies we left the house to run a few errands. Upon our return we discovered two shredded Girl Scout cookie boxes and one VERY full and naughty looking Jack Russell Terrier. He ate every last one. Nick was so upset. First, he had just bought the cookies and hadn’t even had a bite yet. Second, dogs shouldn’t consume chocolate. But me, I was ecstatic. I wanted to hug that dog and tell him thank you! Assuming he would stay well all of my temptation was gone and after reading this week’s article, the dog could very well have saved me from getting a cold! Don’t worry, I’m working on my self-control. Read more on this topic here… Britney Kirsch Account Manager

How do we get our ‘Organizational’ Nutrition?

Organizations grow through a developmental life cycle process similar to human beings, or at least, we can see the similarities. Therefore, we can consider organizations to also be organisms. They have a life process. If this is the case, then how do we properly feed and nourish the organization in order to foster health? Some companies are too fat, some are too lean. Some companies come from “dysfunctional families” and carry disease. Do you think the basic nutritional principle of “garbage-in, garbage-out” applies to our organizations’ health? What is the right nutrition for healthy organizations?

Some food for thought

As organizations grow and develop they may need to focus on getting their calories from different sources. According to the organizational life cycle guru, Ichak Adizes, at inception the organization needs to focus on sales or “entrepreneurship.” In infancy the company needs to focus on performance and execution. In the rapid growth stage the company will continue to focus on performance, production, and sales. Then in adolescence, the organization focuses less on production and more on systematizing and consistency while still focusing on entrepreneurship. As the company moves to prime it will re-focus on production as well as systems and sales (“Corporate Lifecycles” Ichak Adizes 1988).

One size does not fit all!

• Challenge your assumptions. Are we doing things just because that’s the way we’ve always done them? Our organizational muscles can get  flabby and weak. We need exercise!
• “Where the mind goes the energy goes.” Are we aligned as an organization about where we are headed and what we stand for? Do we have an organizational intention that we all know and focus on? Our results are based on our practices. Underlying our practices, are our intentions and beliefs positive and forward-looking?
• Do we take as good a care of our people as we do our computers and printers? Do we maintain them regularly, or only when they break down?
• Are our leaders emotionally intelligent? Do they get the coaching, feedback and information they need to be the best role models for the health they seek in the workforce?
• Create Energy. Do we exuberantly celebrate our successes, use our setbacks as learning opportunities, and create times of rest and repose? How are we creating good energy versus stress and burnout?

A healthy diet and regular exercise builds strong organizations every way.

Just some food for thought.

Patrick Hiester
Vice-President, BizPsych

Ideas for Healthy Weight Loss

Visit our Website Past Newsletters Ideas for Healthy Weight Loss March 7, 2011   Wellness, wellness, wellness! It seems to be the new buzzword going around. Starting about mid-year in 2010 many of our clients wanted to know what we could offer for wellness. We brought nutritionists to benefit fairs and we even increased our nutrition and fitness trainings, but as a psychology firm, we knew that there were so many behavioral components to your health and we wanted to offer more. As an Account Manager, I make an effort to experience what our clients are experiencing so I met with the nutritionist and completed a full assessment. I know what I need to do to lose weight and be healthy; eat more vegetables, exercise more, calories in vs. calories out…yada, yada, yada. However, the assessment delved so much deeper than I had imagined. I didn’t realize how connected my eating was with stress, sleep, and a few bad habits I didn’t even realize I had. At one point during the assessment, Deb, a nutrition affiliate, asked me, “How much water do you typically drink in a day?” I looked at my coffee mug and embarrassingly stated, “There is water in my coffee.” I didn’t even realize how thoughtless I had become with my health and how noticeably my habits were impacting my life and state of well-being. It’s not that I didn’t know that it’s important to strive for 8 glasses of water per day but I think I put “healthy living” on the bottom of my to-do list. Our theme for March is “Food for Thought.” So think twice about all of those Girl Scout cookies and sit back and enjoy this month’s articles for information on making steps toward a better you. And as an added bonus we have our very own nutritional affiliates writing them, so a big thank you to Custom Life Solutions for your insight, knowledge, and new partnership with MINES as we provide our clients with a more holistic approach to that little thing called “wellness” Read more on this topic here… Britney Kirsch Account Manager

Cooking for One

When you are living alone, cooking can sometimes be a great challenge.  Often, with the many activities that fill our lives — from work to play — it is difficult to make time to create healthy, home-made meals.  I grew up in a household with four children where my mom created feasts for dinner each night, so my cooking style is more conducive to making meals that could feed an army, rather than just myself.  After living alone, I discovered that this led to a lot of waste as I was never able to eat all of the food I made each night and, looking for variety in my diet, discovered that left-overs never got eaten.

Once I had come to terms with my reality, I learned to organize my meals in a way that would allow for variety without waste.  Here are some of the tips I discovered that may help you identify opportunities to spice up your single dining:

1. Plan out your week
   If you know that you are going to be tied up for the next two days with activities, don’t cook a big meal.  Planning for your left-overs can mean the difference between eating or discarding a perfectly good meal.
2. Use less spice
   The less you prep your food before cooking it, the more versatile it can be in left-over preparation.  Try cooking 3 chicken breasts with a simple salt and olive oil coating, rather than adding bar-b-que sauce, so you can eat one tonight, shred the 2nd for a chicken salad, and use the third in a chicken noodle soup.
3. Grab veggies and fruit in limited quantities, but often
   Especially if you live in an area with a walkable grocery or market, grabbing veggies and fruits on the way home from work means fresher produce that isn’t spending time waiting on your counter to be used.
4. Purchase “family-size” of common meats and separate to freeze
   This can save you a lot of money from month-to-month.  Family packs are usually much cheaper and separating and freezing those packs into meal-sized portions means you can grab a batch to defrost and cook when needed, rather than purchasing several smaller packages.

For more tips on Nutrition when you’re single, check out this article on the MINES website.

Ryan
The MINES Marketing Team