I have made the decision to move my blog to
nancyoglesbywellness.medium.com. I would live for y’all to follow me over there, and consider creating content there as well.
Read all you can about writing on Medium and the many ways you can get paid. It will inspire you to develop content and shine your light around the world!
Hope to see you there!
I got pregnant and married when I was barely 18. (It was 1967 and that’s what you did.)
He was an alcoholic and was fired just about every month. We moved four times. He was physically and mentally cruel.
We were poor. I made one chicken last a week. We ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches a lot.
After one year I left.
Today, as I look back, I am immensely grateful that I had the strength to get out, that I had supportive parents, and that I saw opportunities that came my way.
Our challenges create the person we become. Never be ashamed of where you’ve been. Just look at how far you’ve come!
Good health is more than what you eat, drink, and how you move, so we’re going back into that self-care arena to explore a few quick and easy ways to perk you up in the middle of the day … ways that don’t involve monster drinks and caffeine. 😉
Even if you can’t get outside for a walk, you can step outside and take a few deep breaths. Maybe take ten minutes to look for flowers … and, if you can’t find any, run to the store, spend a couple of dollars and plant some yourself. No yard? No problem! Get a pretty pot and plant it on your balcony or that sunny spot in your office or apartment!
Did you know that sellers on Amazon have plants for sale? Yep! I love this Money Tree! What a great addition to your space AND your abundance! Or this 3-pack in gorgeous pots! Add some oxygen to your life!
You can’t always get outside when the weather isn’t cooperating, so here’s another quick perk-me-up: Wash your face! Soak a luxurious cloth in super-hot water, you can even add a drop of your favorite essential oil … I LOVE eucalyptus! Once the cloth is hot, wring it out, fold in half and place over your eyes. Leave it there until it cools off a bit, then repeat a couple of times. When you’re ready, scrub your entire face with the warm cloth, then rinse with ice cold water … You will definitely feel refreshed!
By midday you’ve probably already applied your makeup for the day, but if it doesn’t take long to reapply, you’ll get the added benefit of fresh makeup! What a great feeling! (As an aside, these Erase Your Face make-up removing cloths are awesome!) They have a 4.5 star rating with almost13,000 reviews!! LOVE THESE!
Another option for refreshing your energy is to try dry brushing. I learned about this when I was a student at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, and I LOVE it! It’s basically a body massage using a dry, natural brush. This is the one I use. (Proceed with caution if you have sensitive skin.) Midday isn’t the most convenient time to partake of a full-body dry brush session, but a mini-session is perfect.
For your midday pick me up, you want to focus on your hands and arms … it feels delicious! Starting at your fingers, use the brush in a circular motion moving up toward your heart … do both the top and bottom of your fingers, hands, and arms. Rinse off and apply a natural lotion. (I really like TruAura’s body lotion. It’s on sale right now and you can get it from my pal, Nancy Miller here.)
Why do I have it as a perk-me-up? Dry brushing stimulates your nervous system and leaves you feeling invigorated afterward … I’ll take it! And, it can help with flaky skin, increase circulation, detoxify, and improve lymphatic flow. A terrific return on your time investment!
So, here are some easy ways to boost your energy midday, or anytime … Let me know what worked for you.
I am so tired of advice to NOT use the snooze button. OK, I get it, going in and out of the sleep that you get during a few snooze sessions can be disruptive to your brain and overall energy.
But, what if you don’t use that nine minutes to sleep? What if instead you use that nine minutes (more or less) as a way of keeping you from falling back to sleep while allowing your brain to gently wake up? In today’s world nine minutes of quiet is a luxury!
Confidence that you won’t fall back asleep and will get out of bed on time allows you to relax and snuggle in, enjoy the warmth and coziness of your winter bedding, the squish of your pillow, and it allows you to float in this half dream state of gratitude.
Using the snooze button to your advantage is a wonderful way to give your mind permission to drift unfocused, to wander without the noise of the day, to appreciate warmth on a cold day …
Set your alarm to go off ten or twenty minutes early and give it a try. Ahhhhhhh …..
Alexa … snooze!
PS: I use an Echo Dot just outside the bedroom as my alarm. That way not even my arm has to leave the comfy warmth of my awesome blankets. 😊
TipTuesday … read this book. Always explore new information and revelations surrounding our beliefs. Always be a willing student.
Many years ago I ate a vegan diet. I didn’t feel well so after several months I added in fish, also known as a pescatarian diet. I was as abrasively self righteous as many vegans can be. So to all my friends, and former clients, I apologize.
After a few years of eating primarily vegetarian foods I was achy, had little energy, and the brain fog was not good. I added in organic chicken. Things didn’t get much better.
To make a long story short, I found out that I have a high sensitivity to oxalates. I now eat a very low oxalate, low carb/high fat (keto) diet and after much research, firmly believe that many of you can benefit from this way of eating.
My vegan/pescatarian diet consisted primarily of smoothies made with a base of spinach, almond milk, nut butter for breakfast. I’d have beans on my salad, nuts, beets and make bean soup or chili for dinner … everything extremely high in oxalates. 😫
First, I hate the word ‘diet’ because it implies weight loss. For me, my diet is made up of super clean foods that my body tolerates well. I buy organic, pastured and grass fed, local when I can. I eat about 2-3 ounces of chicken at lunch and rarely more than 4 ounces of grass fed beef or pasture raised pork at dinner. Far less than the average American, and raised using regenerative agriculture methods.
There are several ways that oxalates can cause problems and I’m not going into all of them here but I highly recommend doing some research. You’ll have to go beyond kidney stones. That is the most common issue you’ll find.
Oxalates are what led me
to the diet that works for me.
Here are some symptoms that I have learned over my four years or five years of research:
The sad thing is that oxalates are in what so many of us think of as healthy. Spinach, chard, nuts, beans, seeds, grains … and finding accurate information on what is high or low oxalate will make you crazy.
I recommend starting with Dr. Susan Owens and if you feel you need to learn even more, join her Facebook group, Trying Low Oxalates. Just know it’s a time investment, 😊 and not something you can do overnight.
Aside from having amazing energy and no more urinary tract issues, I had the best lipid profile I’ve ever had. I have a familial tendency to high cholesterol so I requested my doctor order a comprehensive lipid panel. (If you want the name and what it measures, reach out.) here are some of the results. All great news!
I am happy to support anyone who wants to give it a go as I’ve spent the last 4-5 years figuring it out for myself. It will be a different journey for you, but hopefully one that will bring you to new levels of health!
Visit my website and reach out via the contact me form. EnjoyLifeBeWell.com
A day late, but not a 💵 dollar short!
Pick one day a week, 📆 maybe Finance Friday, to check on your finances. It doesn’t have to be time consuming. Look over you debit and 💳 credit accounts to make sure the charges are what they should be, that your balances are what you expect, and that you’ve got necessary payments scheduled.
Just checking in once a week will help you avoid unnecessary fees, and will alert 🚨you to any suspicious activity. You don’t want to miss an opportunity to fix overcharges. 💸
Online banking makes this so easy that you can do it while catching up on your favorite tv shows. 😊
Finances are a major source of stress for many families. Any steps you can take to reduce stress also reduces health risk, and believe it or not, knowing where your finances stand is the first step in ensuring they’re where you want them to be, or toward developing a game plan to get them there.
If you’d like a second opinion on whether you’re making the best financial decisions, I have a colleague who is a financial planner extraordinaire! She will go over your info and offer suggestions on next steps … and that consultation is absolutely free.
You can contact me via my website at http://www.enjoylifebewell.com
Coming soon! (Along with a Special Offer!)
Every month my team does a 10-day healthy living challenge. We renew & reset! There’s a private Facebook group with recipes, workout ideas, motivation, Q&A’s, and contests … supportive, educational and fun!
Right now we have a seriously low-cost Introductory Kit available that allows you to give it a try before you commit. Happy to share the details!
(Seriously … low cost!)
I just got off the phone with your DNA. Yep, it’s true. It called because it’s concerned that you aren’t aware of its fragility now that you’re getting a little older. Sure, sure, you could do a lot of things when you were younger (and you did), but now your DNA is starting to feel a little out of sorts.
What’s happening as we age is that DNA repair is a bit slower unless we provide a solid nutritional base of fresh fruits and vegetables. It’s just not enough that we drop a multi-vitamin or supplement with vitamin A, C and E. As a matter of fact supplementing with some of those individual antioxidants, or multivitamins has proven harmful. Many studies show supplementation increases the incidence of cardiovascular disease, cancer and increases mortality from all causes. Now what?
Don’t want to read further? Just watch this two-minute video. It’ll make your DNA happy!
The key is to actually eat fruits and vegetables. Your DNA responds to nature’s packaging. When you eat an apple you’re not just getting vitamin C or A. When you eat broccoli and kale you aren’t getting three vitamins or seven antioxidants, you’re getting a nutritional package made up of hundreds of phytonutrients. Your DNA responds to whole foods because it has evolved through hundreds and thousands of years of eating the whole package. It does not know what to do with single nutrients isolated in a lab.
There is a lot of information on the internet, and a lot of misinformation. In researching this topic I came across a site that put forth specific antioxidants for DNA repair, including beta-carotene and vitamin E, both of which have been shown to cause an increase in overall mortality when taken alone or together. That’s simply irresponsible. Instead of taking supplements, make sure your diet includes nature’s packages high in those antioxidants: spinach, carrots, sweet potatoes, peanuts, sunflower seeds and almonds, to name a few.
Don’t want to read further? Just watch this two-minute video. It’ll make your DNA happy!
This singe-nutrient focus hasn’t been around very long. It began in mid-1930 with vitamin B and a semi-synthetic vitamin C, but really took off when Linus Pauling got on board with a high-dose Vitamin C regimen in the 70’s. Prior to Pauling’s interest, there wasn’t much to intrigue the general public, but the cover of the April 6, 1992 issue of Time magazine was a colorful pile of pills with the lead article, “The Real Power of Vitamins: New research shows they may help fight cancer, heart disease, and the ravages of aging.” Unfortunately, the research was flawed, but the supplement makers were all over this and the rest is history. Except that …
In 1994 National Cancer Institute found that smokers who were taking vitamin E, beta-carotene or both were more likely to die than those on placebo. In 1996 another study showed higher mortality from cancer and/or heart disease in the supplement group.
In a 2004 review of randomized trials involving over 170,000 participants, researchers concluded that those taking vitamins C, E, A or beta-carotene had higher mortality. When reviewing the seven best studies, mortality rates were 6% higher in the supplement groups.
Burnt out now? Just watch this two-minute video. It’ll make your DNA happy!
I could list study after study, from 2005 through 2011 showing a strong correlation between vitamin supplementation and an increased risk of death from cancer and heart disease. I’m betting you’re just not that interested in reading all of them. If you are, I invite you to read this article in The Atlantic.
The bottom line in DNA repair is to toss those multi-vitamins in the garbage and focus on whole foods. The USDA recommends that we get 9-13 servings of fruits and vegetables a day. I would add that you should be thinking variety as well. If all you eat is grapes and oranges, you’re not getting a full spectrum of nutrients. If you or your loved ones subsist on green beans and corn, you aren’t even close to getting the nutrients you need. Variety. Fresh.
I’ll let Dr. Avery, an oncologist from the Cancer Care Center in Montgomery, Alabama have the last word on DNA repair. Click here for this two-minute video. It’ll make your DNA happy!
What do you think drives good health? Do you automatically think about diet and exercise? Those are definitely two important elements of health, but there are some others you might not realize have a big impact as well: Spirituality, community, self-esteem and self-worth.
It might seem a bit cumbersome to try to tackle all of those in one blog post, but in reality it’s quite simple and they can all be accomplished easily if you add one activity into your life: Volunteering.
When you volunteer you become a part of a community of people that have at least one interest in common with you. Because you are sharing yourself with others, helping someone or something, you begin to feel good about yourself and as a result your self-esteem and self-worth expand.
As many of you know, I volunteer at an animal shelter and I am rewarded by the friendships and camaraderie with staff and volunteers, the joy of seeing pets find their forever families and having the opportunity to spend time with some of these precious animals. I go home feeling happier and more in balance than you can imagine … There’s not much that’s healthier than that!
I have friends who help cook and serve meals at a homeless shelter, play games with families at Ronald McDonald house, help with gardening at non-profits, usher at church, serve as prayer chaplains to their congregations, support staff at battered women’s shelters, help out seniors who need home repairs, greet people visiting someone in the hospital and re-shelve books at the library.
There are so many opportunities, some formal, some just in the moment. In my neighborhood little magical things happen:
So, make healthy choices when it comes to food and exercise, but don’t neglect that spiritual side that craves connection. Take it to the streets and be the change!
Today I thought we’d take a breather and check in to see if you’ve made taken any of the steps we’ve talked about so far: Adding in veggies and fruits and walking out five minutes and back five minutes.
Have you started doing either? Did you make a plan to get more fresh fruits and vegetables into your daily diet? I understand that this might cause a bit of discomfort, but accomplishing these two things will set you up for success as you move toward a healthier lifestyle. Learning you can achieve a goal, and sustain it, is the key to lasting change.
Simple change doesn’t equate to easy. Any change requires thought and in today’s fast-paced world, our intentions are often crowded out by the mental clutter of the day.
Consider putting yourself first. Do you cringe when you hear that? Do you shut down knowing that there’s no way you can find any time? We often put everything else ahead of our own needs. We take the kids here or there, get meals together, dash to the store for a much-needed item, volunteer, take classes, organize charitable events, attend events for family and friends, take the dog to puppy class, support our parents either by visiting or helping with their needs … All of the above! And I didn
’t mention anything related to work and career. YIKES!
I know it’s easier said than done, but when you put ‘me’ time into your life, when you put yourself first and energize yourself through healthy habits, you will find that you have a more positive outlook and more vibrant energy. Nourishing yourself (body, mind and spirit) brings with it unimaginable results. Your words are kinder and more loving, you will have time to listen, and your creativity will be reborn.
I was once in a competitive sport that was scored by speed and accuracy. The most important thing my instructor ever told me was, “You must slow down to speed up.” After that, I was unstoppable, going on to win the state and regional championships. What was the lesson? The more we rush, the less effective our movements. This wasn’t just a sports lesson it was a life lesson. It holds true in every aspect of life.
Find a way to relax into your life. Slow down and take some time for yourself. Trust me, you’ll find you have more time than you thought possible.
Nancy Oglesby, the Practical Health Coach
Simplifying Healthy Lifestyle Changes
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