Watch Stress Disappear! - with Your Personal Pilates and Wellnes Coach

You can decrease the stress level in your life.

Many people begin coming to my pilates classes because they want to release the stress in their life. I can tell they are stressed because it's difficult for them to enjoy themselves when they are working out. They have trouble staying in the moment with their bodies.

No matter what you are going through: whether your car ran out of gas, or you stepped on a piece of glass, or your husband hit you, or your daughter just informed you that she has a VD, you CAN manage and decrease the stress in your life.

Why do I use such graphic examples? Because many of us have a dirty little secret which says, "She can't be referring to me. My life has REAL stress."or "But she doesn't know how I feel."

I may not know exactly how you feel, but I have discovered the source of stress control. But first lets look at what stress can do to your body. The body reacts by:

• Producing too much adrenalin. This causes compromise to the liver, heart, and adrenals.
• Over producing cortisol. This causes weight gain and depression.
• Excess insulin.  Weight gain and food cravings result here.

The source of keeping these side effects from happening: your thoughts.

Everything that happens to us physiologically is the result of our choice of thought. Too simplistic an answer? Think about it. The next time you are feeling really alive and happy, pay attention to your thoughts. You will find that they are positive. You will find that you can't feel really good and have critical, negative thoughts floating through your mind no matter what the outer circumstances.

People often remark that I am a very positives person. Is my life easier than yours? I don't know. But I am willing to put such a priority on feeling good, that I work on refusing to let negative people or influences affect me, and I work on becoming aware of my own thoughts so that I can do what it takes to shift them to gratitude and love. We can focus on something we like, or something nice that happened to us instead of on the negative thing that wants our attention.

You can do this in a police car, in an ambulance, in a courtroom, or in your bed at night. Again I use these example to help those of you whom I addressed above.

Working on this every day is the key to true health. Fitness and diet will all come together as we start with feeling good now. Do you agree?

The "Bad" Drink We Love - with your Online Coach

Coffee has gotten some bad press over the years.  "It has toxins." "It's addicting." "It is artificial energy." "It's too acidic."

We've heard that before, but some of the healthiest people I know, including me,  enjoy it every day. Lets unpack this.

Yes, coffee is acidic and we must balance this by eating as much raw food as we can. Fruits and veggies, raw almonds, and of course avoiding processed, sugar based, over cooked (yuck) choices.

More than two eight oz cups a day can be too much. Moderation is key in everything. Used other than during pregnancy, organic, pesticide free, coffee has several health benefits. 

Flavonoids and nutrients are abundant in good smelling freshly ground beans. Maybe that's why some of us love the smell only.

Coffee is a whole food with bioflavonoids (which are actually powerful antioxidants) and other nutrients. It has been researched and found that populations who drink organic, freshly ground from the whole bean coffee have much lower incidents of Alzheimer's.

Research also shows that coffee creates something called BDNS. According to Dr. Ori Hoffmaster, this process actually activates stem cells to rebuild! (lots of research being done around this.) High quality coffee activates this in the brain. It's like recycling brain tissue. This process also benefits muscle in a similar way.

Rancid coffee, or coffee broken down into isolate form can result in the same problems that MSG causes - destroying brain cells - and the resulting neurological effect. Isolate coffee is found in instant, and canned sweetened coffee or anywhere you see fast food versions like "cappuccino" from a machine.

When we are really picky about our coffee and don't overuse it, we reap the benefits of a mood enhancement, brain improvement and oxidative stress management. When we use instant, canned sweetened coffee drinks or stale ground coffee we make our body work harder to heal the oxidative stress caused by taking toxins in.

Try high quality coffee without the cream and sugar. You may wonder why you were using it. It could be that you were trying to cover the taste of rancid beans, or coffee isolate.  Keep the beans in the freezer. Learn the great flavor of coffee at its best. As you refine your palate for this and other foods, enjoyment and health will improve.

Now you have something to say when you hear coffee getting a bad rap.

Train Your Brain

We've been addressing fitness with a twist here. Yes diet. Yes exercise.  But these are merely the actions we take to improve our physical body.

Let's go a little deeper and look at what some call our motivation: the reason we take these actions.

We all have beliefs about things, including exercise, our bodies, pilates classes, our time... the list goes on. Did you know that even if we are objectively correct about one of these beliefs, we can deliberately change them to make things go better?

For example, we may think, "I don't have time to eat healthy."

We can ask ourselves to replace that thought with "I enjoy eating healthy and delicious food at every snack or meal." or "I always have something healthy and satisfying available to eat whenever I feel hungry."or "I have boundless energy." or "I feel like a teenager."

When we repeat new beliefs to ourselves, our life takes the shape of them. Remember moving to a new town and feeling new? Well your experience over time caused your belief and feeling of being new (and maybe a little socially uncomfortable) to change to, "I fit right in here!"

We can even speed up this process by creating strong positive emotions like joy, hope, or satisfaction. What an absolutely fun and rewarding activity! It can be done anywhere, anytime like my classes!

At first it feels a little like work. You may not have the good feelings right away. As you repeat your new belief, let's say three times a day for a week, and see those small changes begin, you will start feeling better and believing more strongly until it feels like part of you; you begin to KNOW.

Yes, you can try this at home. Choose a new thought; a new belief that you really want for your body or health. You will feel good now.