I want to address a universal need in all of us. That is, the need to emotionally be “bought in” what we are investing in health-wise. Why? Because we can know a lot of information about health and even see pretty clearly what we should or shouldn’t be doing but if we really aren’t “feeling it” or “ready,” then the chances of that change happening isn’t high. The word for that is sustainability. We want good health choices to be sustainable!  

The encouraging part of sustainability is even small changes can make a big difference! For example, on the one hand, to have a store bought salad for lunch every day might seem like a good choice. That is, until you find out that the dressing has a lot of extra calories and not necessarily great ingredients. You realize that a homemade dressing would have better oils and less chemicals.  So, we make the change to just include our own homemade dressing and use half the amount of dressing.  Lunch suddenly becomes better for us and the calories add up to lost pounds. (In case you are wondering, this is a real life example). After a month or two, our blood pressure is down and we might even be able to get off blood pressure medication.

Another example is our nighttime routine.  Maybe we just start trading a TV show for a few minutes of reading and 30 extra minutes of sleep a night. That doesn’t sound like much, but in a week, you would gain almost 3 hours of extra sleep. Did you know that we sleep approximately 2 hours less a night as a whole of American women than we did 40 years ago?  This fatigue cascades of in our body into an increased brain fog, more errors in work and inflammatory hormones being released into our body. 

It is universally recommended that the absolute minimum amount of sleep is 7 hours but even 8 or 9 hours is what really recharges and repairs.  It’s especially important at our stage of life (midlife) to give ourselves every advantage because there are so many things we can’t control, this is one knob we can turn for our advantage.  For me, it’s just about habits.  Any good, small habit change you can incorporate is a win. 

So, I want to encourage any of you who are working on your health, energy and well being to keep going.  Small changes will add up!  

Lastly, we had a wonderful first event at the Farmstead for My Second Act on April 27th!  I want to thank all of you who participated.  You allowed me to present my thoughts and gave great feedback. It was so encouraging and special to learn from you and hear all of your stories.  

Here’s to taking control of our health and futures.