Reflection - a great first step

Have you reflected on your habits lately?

Happy Monday and welcome to our first official Noosletter! We are so thrilled to be here. Today’s post, like many, will be centered around the importance of reflection. Life is busy, and it’s easy to turn into a creature of habit… but have you stopped to think about what you’re doing?

Nutrition

Everybody eats. We all do it and it’s very personal. But have you reflected on why you eat? It’s because you’re hungry… right? 

 Let’s take a step back for a minute. 

What exactly is hunger? Simply, hunger is an urge, like a racing heart, a full bladder, or goosebumps. When you get goosebumps, you put on a sweater. When you get hungry you eat, right? If only it were that simple. For a lot of us it’s an urge we’ve become obsessed with.  

Is hunger driving your food choices or is something else? Menus and recipes are at our fingertips, UberEats is at our door, and cravings are assuaged almost as fast as you can conjure them up. Not only has food become extremely accessible, it’s also become highly pleasurable.

Times have changed since the early days of hunting and gathering, but food has the same purpose: to sustain and nourish us.

So what drives your food choices? And how do these choices make you feel? Eating is just another urge we have, so why has it become so complicated and consuming?

Have you stopped and asked yourself why you eat?  Is it for fuel? Is it for nutrition? Is it emotional (think finishing a bag of chips while watching a show, celebrating a special occasion, or comforting after a bad day)?

It sounds simple, but sometimes just identifying whether you are eating to nourish your body or to cope with emotions is enough to shift your habits.

Movement

Oftentimes, we think about movement as formal exercise - counting calories burned, seeing results on a scale, or a change in your pants size. But what are your overall movement goals? Is it to increase endurance? Swing a golf club pain free? Play with your kids or grandkids? Relieve stress?

Today’s focus is about understanding your relationship with movement… How much do you move in a day? Is it enjoyable? How do you feel during and after?  We will dive into different types of movement over the next few weeks, but today’s purpose is to pause and reflect - what is movement to you?

Behavior

Why do we do what we do? A lot of our daily actions are habits - things we do on autopilot - like brushing our teeth, filling up a water bottle, driving a car… the list seems endless! While many habits can be extremely helpful (can you imagine getting in your car every day and not knowing what to do first?!), we can all think of a habit or two we want to change. 

Our daily habits, done consistently over time, are either helping or hurting us.

Throughout this project, behavior will be the common thread through nutrition and movement.

Consider running an experiment: identify your habits. Which ones help you, and which ones could you do without?

It seems like a simple exercise because it is. Once awareness is elevated, there is opportunity for change.

How we spend everyday is how we spend our lives.

Until next time….

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