grow older better

Tag: yoga

  • Changing My Diet, Exercising, And More

    healthy_food

    This past year I have made many changes in my both diet and my exercise habits and I thought I’d post about it.

     

    Earlier this year I started doing yoga maybe once or twice a week and then tried every other day. At some point I just knew that 20 minutes a day every day seemed to be worth aiming for.

    So that’s what I’ve been doing – with an occasional missed day – but not very frequently – and never two days in a row.

    Additionally I’d been reading bad stuff about wheat and realized that I have had what feels like an addiction to bread. I don’t get that way when I make my own bread, but this feeling happened with what is considered healthy and local, but store-bought bread. So I decided – okay – I’m eliminating much of the wheat from my diet.

    I feel so much better and I no longer have many of those cravings for bread or wheat yummies like donuts and cookies.

    I also cut back on dairy by eliminating milk. I’m now only using almond milk in my coffee but I still eat cheese and Greek yogurt.

    And I added more fruit, garden fresh vegetable, and stayed with my usual consumption of nuts.

    The upshot of all of this is that I not only lost weight but also inches around my hips and my waist.

    And having a puppy again has gotten me outside walking a LOT – no matter what the weather is.

     

    I’m not sure which of my changes was the most relevant – and as a researcher, I should be interested…but I’m happy with the results so…..

     

  • Learning The Hard Way – Again

    hibernating

     

    Are you a winter hibernator?

    I am – and it is not a good thing for our bodies.

     

    [Maybe bears can do it –I can’t.]

    In the winter, I tend to just take walks and do some stretching to keep my hamstrings flexible – but otherwise I kind of become someone who sits too much – and as we know, that is not good for a body.

    As we get older, it seems we need to keep all parts in flexible working order and to do that, we cannot hibernate!

    downward dog poseI re-learned this recently when I started back into doing yoga! 

    I had lost a real lot of my flexibility – and could not easily [or even] do much of what was so easy before I hibernated!!

     

     

     

     

    The obvious moral of the story is that we all need to do a variety of exercising to stay flexible – and as we age, it seems we cannot take off for a long period of time without it having a major impact.

    OUCH!

     

    Comments? Thoughts? Thank you…..