weight loss

Focus on Family, Not Food This Thanksgiving

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Family before Food this Thanksgiving to Keep on Track

Many people fear putting on a few pounds during the Thanksgiving Holiday.  The trick is to remove the focus on food and put it on family, friends, and fitness.  Here are five tips, a song, and a poem to make this a great, healthy Thanksgiving.

Think Friends and Family Before Food.

Change the focus of Thanksgiving from food to family and friends.  Thanksgiving is a time to catch up with people and tell them how much you love them.  Make memories instead of eating too many marshmallows with your sweet potato pie.  Indeed, you can’t eat if you’re talking with someone.  Focus on the fellowship, slow down, and eat more slowly.  It will allow your food to digest more. 

Here is a case in point. One of my most memorable Thanksgiving memories was the 1974 Dallas/Washington Football Game. We were sitting in our home in New Jersey after Thanksgiving Dinner. My Dad, Big D, a transplanted Texan from Dallas, was sitting in his easy chair distraught. I was pacing back and forth as I would do in a crucial game. In contrast, my great Uncle John, who recently turned 80, sat on the couch snoring after too much turkey.

My Dad and I were up in arms because the Cowboys were down 16-3 late in the third quarter, and Roger Staubach, the Hall of Fame Quarterback, was knocked out of the game. The Cowboys had to win the game to get in the playoffs. In walks the Cowboys’ untested rookie Clint Longley, who, from that date on, became known as the Mad Bomber.

He drove the Cowboys down the field twice and got them within 7 points with only 28 seconds remaining. But the Mad Bomber was not done. What happened next changed the course of the game and made for a memorable Thanksgiving.

Clint reared back and threw a 70-year pass to a wide-open Drew Pearson. He was so wide open because no one thought the Mad Bomber could throw 40 yards, let alone 70. The Touchdown changed the trajectory of the game and made for a hilarious and exciting Thanksgiving

Big D, a crazy Cowboy fan, jumped up in the air with his fist raised high and inadvertently smashed our Longhorn lamp hanging from the ceiling. This sent glass shattering and the Longhorn horns (yes, like Bevo) attached to the light crashing to the ground.

Of course, this promptly woke my Uncle John from his turkey-induced sleep and scared him so much that my Aunt Marie had to take him home. Next, my Dad grabbed me and lifted me in the air as we jumped up and down victoriously. What a memory! 

Exercise to Burn and Earn

One of my annual traditions for Thanksgiving is to work out before the Thanksgiving feast. In recent years, this has been doing the Peloton turkey burn ride that occurs about this year at 9:00 central on Peloton. In prior years, I have done similar things, but like the Cedar Park Turkey trot, the critical thing is to burn and earn the calories you will eat later. Now I’m the way Adam Sandler, but I decided to make a song about just this point, and it’s called Turkey Burn. I’m going to sing it to you here now, but I’ve also included a link to our podcast where you can hear this song performed live with all the lyrics, so here goes nothing;

Turkey burn, turkey burn,
All those calories you need to earn,

Ride your bike for about an hour,
Then hurry up and take a shower,
So you cleaned up and look like a winner,
When you eat your Thanksgiving Dinner.

Turkey burn, turkey burn,
All those calories you need to earn,

When you’re done, you can take a brief rest,
Sit around awhile and talk to your guest,
Then, it is time to get back on your feet,
Take a nice walk, don’t eat another treat.

Turkey burn, turkey burn,
All those calories you need to earn.

Now it is time to help others out,
So you don’t look like a lazy lout,
Wash the dishes before the big game,
With these tips, you won’t be lame.
This Thanksgiving Day!

Track Before You Attack

The best way to lose weight is to track what you eat.  By consciously tracking your food intake, you will better understand portion control and the trigger foods you need to avoid. Engaging in battle, whether in war, a project, or, in this case, Thanksgiving dinner, without a plan, is asking for trouble (and extra pounds. The best thing to do is plan and track what you eat beforehand.

Now, I use Weight Watchers as my tracking mechanism, but you can use something else. The key is to track what you eat and understand your portions.

You can stick to your planned portion size by building a proportion plate.   You can take a paper plate and draw the size of your portions.  You can also use something like a Bento Box with built-in portion sizes.

The rule is always to figure out what you will have before sitting down to Thanksgiving Dinner.  Like a good soldier, never eat without a good plan of attack. This preparation gives you a sense of control and confidence in your choices.

Hydrate and Take the Edge Off Of Your Hunger

Another way to keep your weight down during Thanksgiving is to ensure you’re grazing before the meal. This sounds counterintuitive, but in reality, it makes much sense. If you’re filling up on vegetables and hydrating yourself with water (not high-octane things like alcohol), you’ll have less room for the turkey, the stuffing, the sweet potato pie, the marshmallows, and all the other stuff.

This is an old trick that I’ve done many times. It doesn’t mean you should graze on candy and pie before dinner. It means eating celery without the cream cheese, carrots, and other things, like a relish tray, that will ensure you’ve filled up now but not bloated before dinner. Therefore, you’ll have less room, and you’ll have better portion control.

Be Thankful and Give to Others

The last rule is to focus on thanks and giving instead of eating and the peculiarities of others.  By thinking about others going without, you will be inclined not to overindulge.  Better yet, find a way to serve others through organizations like Mobile Loaves and Fishes.  Here are a few other ways to give and give thanks. 

1.  Show appreciation to your family and friends who help you daily. No person is an Island, and our loved ones help us accomplish the mission God has given us!

2. Be thankful for your vocation. Your vocation gives you exciting, engaging work that, quite frankly, puts Thanksgiving dinner on the table (of course, sometimes it prevents you from eating it).

3. Express thanks for the inheritance you received from those who have led the way. Remember those who have passed, and be thankful for the memories.

4.  Help with the dishes and clean-up.  Others will be thankful for another way to burn calories.

For the ultimate blog on thankfulness and Thanksgiving, read this blog: The Power of Gratitude-The Story of the Thanksgiving Calves

A Poem of Thanksgiving

I want to close with a short poem I wrote for Thanksgiving week.

Better attributes you’ll never find,
Then those of being loving and kind!
Showing God’s smile day by day,
Lightening the load along the way.

In this week of thanks and heart,
All of us must do our part,
To spread good thoughts everywhere,
To show all you really care!

Unlock the Body’s Self-Healing Secrets

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This is the second week in a row that I am touting a book on the Change Well blog and podcast. I have heard good things about Bill Bryson’s The Body for several years, and now that I have read it, I can see why! The body has amazing ways to heal itself.

The human body’s mysteries are as riveting as any thriller by Baldacci or Patterson. Even though the human body is the most studied topic in science, we are just beginning to understand its astonishing features.   The quote below is just one incredible fact about the body from a book chock full of them.

“Unpacked, you are positively enormous. Your lungs smoothed out, would cover a tennis court, and the airways within them would stretch nearly from coast to coast. The length of all your blood vessels would take you two and a half times around Earth. The most remarkable part of all is your DNA (or deoxyribonucleic acid). You have a meter of it packed into every cell, and so many cells that if you formed all the DNA in your body into a single strand, it would stretch ten billion miles, to beyond Pluto. Think of it: there is enough of you to leave the solar system. You are in the most literal sense cosmic.”

Bryson, Bill. The Body (p. 17). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

After reading about the fantastic gift of the body, I was grateful. But I was also upset when I reflected on the many years that I had not taken care of my body. Indeed, I had made a mess of the miracle of me. I had to take action both spiritually and physically, or I would succumb to one of my self-induced ailments.

Before I decided to change well, my inflammation markers were off the charts.  Also, my blood sugar was in the pre-diabetic stage, and the power of my heart contraction was half what it should be.  I was in a bad state, and my health showed it.  I had severe bronchitis three times a year with at least one bout of walking pneumonia.  I would almost fall asleep while driving home from work and suffered from sleep apnea.  I threw out my back multiple times, which was impacting me at work.

Why am I telling you all this? I don’t want to make you feel sorry for me or yourself if you are in a similar situation. Instead, I want to go over what I did to get well with the help of the fantastic gift of the body. 

As impressive as the fact that our DNA, if laid out end to end, would reach past Pluto is the fantastic self-healing property of the body and its inhabitants.  We have beneficial microbes inside our body that protect us and can heal our inflammation if we provide them with hospitable environments.  Likewise, digesting magnesium through leafy vegetables and nuts can help with heart health by providing nutrients that support the heart to beat more efficiently.  One last example is the regenerative nature of sleep.  As stated in a recent blog, lack of sleep can cause weight gain, stress, and inflammation through excessive cortisol.  But getting enough sleep (at least 7 hours) provides many benefits as we shall see. 

These are just three of the body’s astonishing self-correcting mechanisms. Let’s examine the abovementioned problems (inflammation, Type 2 diabetes, and lack of immunity) to see how the body’s self-healing processes can correct them.

Reducing Inflammation in the Body

Increased inflammation markers, such as C-reactive protein (CRP) measurements, are one of the surest signs that your body is not healthy. When I was at my most unhealthy, my only out-of-range tests were C-reactive protein and slightly heightened glucose levels. The problem is that the CRP test, although inexpensive, is not always part of a standard platform. It was only when I ordered a more extensive physical that I found that my CRP was so out of range that it was literally off the paper!

In my case, the CRP indicated a heart problem, which was confirmed by further tests.  Besides my prescribed medication, I decided to use my body’s healing properties to control the inflammation. 

Here are five things that I did to get the inflammation under control.

 Improved Hydration.  I was chronically dehydrated due to my habit of 5-6 diet Cokes a day and lack of drinking water.  Staying properly hydrated helps to flush out the toxins in your body that cause inflammation.  The water in Diet Coke is more than offset by the caffeine in the soda.  Additionally, artificial sweeteners and coloring in Diet Coke and other processed products can cause inflammation.  I changed to naturally carbonated water with lemon to get my eight glasses daily for the day.  

Improved Diet.  I changed my diet to include more vegetables such as Brussels sprouts and broccoli and added more Omega-3 fats with some fish (I still do not love fish) and walnuts (which I do).  I also switched from my nightly snack of ice cream to yogurt flavored with berries and a bit of sugar-free vanilla mix.  This change had two benefits.  It removes the harmful sugar and fat in ice cream while adding the probiotics inside the yogurt.  More on the wonder of probiotics and gut health will be discussed in the next section.

Increased Vitamin D.  One of the most beneficial elements in reducing inflammation is Vitamin D.  The CDC reports that up to 90% of people in Northern regions do not get enough Vitamin D.  This was the case with me, confirmed by my extended blood panel. 

The best way to get Vitamin D is through sunlight, but there is often not enough sunlight during the winter months to get enough.  In one of the most interesting anecdotes in The Body, Bryson explains the importance of Vitamin D and how evolution and modern life have made it impossible to consume enough of it.

“Vitamin D is vital to health. It helps to build strong bones and teeth, boosts the immune system, fights cancers, and nourishes the heart. It is thoroughly good stuff. We can get it in two ways—from the foods we eat or through sunlight… (however) the slow evolution of different skin tones worked fine when people stayed in one place or migrated slowly, but nowadays increased mobility means that lots of people end up in places where sun levels and skin tones don’t get along at all. In regions like northern Europe and Canada, it isn’t possible in the winter months to extract enough vitamin D from weakened sunlight to maintain health no matter how pale one’s skin, so vitamin D must be consumed as food, and hardly anyone gets enough… To meet dietary requirements from food alone, you would have to eat fifteen eggs or six pounds of Swiss cheese every day…”

Bryson, Bill. The Body (pp. 29-30). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

I will not eat six pounds of Swiss cheese or return to my previous weight, so I take a supplement.

Exercised Moderately.  One of the best ways to reduce inflammation is to get off the couch.  Exercise increases circulation and helps you to sweat out toxins.  You do not have to do a lot to get the positive benefits of exercise in reducing inflammation.  Walking 30 minutes or doing moderate weight lifting or stretching reduces inflammation while avoiding the risk of injury.

Supported the body’s detoxification systems. The liver and the lymphatic system are two of the human body’s most amazing components.  The liver is so vital that if it shuts down, you will die in a few hours.  It cleanses out toxins that cause inflammation and other harmful effects.  The best way to aid this vital organ is to cut down on alcohol and not become obese or overweight.  When I began to reduce my weight and alcohol consumption, my liver improved and aided in further reducing inflammation. We will cover the lymphatic system more in discussing how to improve immunity.

These five steps helped me get my inflammation makers in the low range of standard and immensely improved my heart health and immunity, as further discussed below.

Reducing the Risk of Type II Diabetes

Type II diabetes is at epidemic levels in the US, with one in ten Americans having this chronic condition.  It has many harmful effects, including loss of limbs, heart problems, loss of eyesight, and reduced liver function.  I was in a prediabetic state when I decided to take action using the five steps above and these two additional steps.

Reduced Sugar and Artificial Sweeter Intake.  I had a giant sweet tooth before making changes to reduce the chance of diabetes.  I stopped my ice cream and Peanut M&M habit and switched to fruit if I needed something sweet.  Eating fruit whole provides fiber, another critical element in tackling inflammation and helping to keep your metabolism regulated.  I have also cut down on artificial sweeteners since they can somewhat mimic sugars in the body.  I have also substituted refined sugar with honey for those sweets I occasionally eat.

Improved gut health through probiotics.   I have also increased my probiotic intake by eating Kimchi, non-fat plain yogurt, and other probiotic-rich foods.  My favorite chapter in Bryson’s book is on the microbes that live in our gut and are essential to the efficient breakdown of food.  One interesting fact in the chapter is that roughly half of the cells in the body are microbes, and half are human cells.  Additionally, studies have shown that thinner people have more varied microbes in their digestive tract. 

These two positive steps and the five in the previous section have helped reduce my glucose to normal levels. In the last nine years, my yearly tests have all remained in the normal range.

Improve Immunity

The improvement in my immunity from these actions and those about to be mentioned have been nearly miraculous.  I no longer spend two months a year with either bronchitis or pneumonia.  I have had neither since reducing my inflammation and glucose to normal levels.  In addition, there have been two other keys.

Improved sleep.  In previous blogs, I have discussed the steps (CPAP, sleep hygiene, mindfulness, and others).   Here is the most recent one.   Besides helping you control your weight and work more efficiently, sleep is your body’s way to restore and reset your immune system for another day.  It is often the case that we become sick because we are rundown from a lack of sleep.  I know this to be a fact in my case.  Bryson explains the therapeutic properties of sleep in his chapter on sleep.

“Sleep has been tied to many biological processes—consolidating memories, restoring hormonal balance, emptying the brain of accumulated neurotoxins, resetting the immune system. People with early signs of hypertension who slept for one hour more per night than previously showed a significant improvement in their blood pressure readings. It would seem to be, in short, a kind of nightly tune-up for the body.”

Bryson, Bill. The Body (p. 310). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Taking Care of the Lymphatic System.  The lymphatic system is critical to our immunity.  It produces lymphocytes and other immune cells that fight off infection.  Keeping it working correctly is vital to improved immune response.  How can you help keep your lymphatic system strong?  Exercise is crucial since it moves the lymph fluid around.  Unlike blood, it is not pumped by the heart.  Instead, you exercise your lymphatic system and keep it in proper order by exercising yourself!

These are just some ways to help your body help itself!  Look for ways to heal yourself naturally.  You may not always find the solution, so work with your doctor. However, as I found in my extreme case, the body is a miraculous gift!  Often, the way to change well is to support your body’s natural healing properties.  I highly recommend Bryson’s book The Body to learn more about the miraculous gift of the body.  And until next time, honor your body by changing well!

Six Amazing Tracking Tips for Weightloss and Wellness

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Last week’s blog was a little out there even for me.  I enjoyed tying the ideas and lives of Winston Churchill and David Bowie about purposeful change together.  If you have not already, you should listen, even to hear me imitate the musical chameleon, Bowie.  But for today’s podcast, I decided to reel it back into a topic a little less out there, a little more meat and potatoes!   That is the importance of tracking your wellness journey, whether it be the meat and potatoes you consume, the steps you walk, or those moments of serendipity that bring you happiness each day!

Some in the wellness industry give tracking a bad name. Some firms even want you to buy prepackaged foods, mixes, and pills so you can avoid what they consider the mundane practice of tracking. Buy our food, lose weight, and leave the monitoring to us! Do our specific exercise routine and watch your muscles grow and your stomach shrink. Better yet, take this pill or shot, and you don’t have to exercise or watch what you eat. 

Let me debunk these claims of the wellness industry.   First and foremost, people like to choose their food and want variety. You should feel liberated in your food choices, not restricted.  Also, what you gain in convenience from prepacked food, you lose in knowing how to eat nutritionally for your body type.  Lastly, when you run out of money for the next shot or order of prepacked food, you have no habits to fall back on and gain weight.  Trust me.  I am the guy who tried every prepackaged diet and exercise routine until I went old-school and decided to take matters into my own hands.

Today, I track the food I eat, my daily exercise routines, and even the beneficial habits I want to adopt and the bad habits I want to limit. It may seem like a lot of work, but trust me, it’s worth it.  Like a science experiment, you must track all variables in your wellness journey. And just like in business, you can only improve what you track. This is not just a personal journey but a proven method that I urge you to consider for your wellness journey.  

The human body is one of the most complicated organisms on the planet.  New things are discovered daily despite being the most studied topic since the existence of science.  Also, no two people are exactly alike.  What works for one person may not work for you.  Therefore, owning your wellness and tracking your habits and the outcomes they produce is essential. 

For ten years, I have tracked my activity, food intake, habits, mindfulness, and sense of well-being. The result? I lost half my body weight, eliminated sleep apnea, improved my disposition, and became more fit.    Here are some recommendations for those of you initiating a tracking habit.

1.  Track everything you eat or drink. 

The best way to lose weight is to track what you eat.  You will better understand portion control and the trigger foods you need to avoid by consciously tracking your food intake.  You use this and weekly weight tracking to determine what works and what foods to avoid.  That way, you can focus on what works rather than trying everything that doesn’t! 

2. Track before you attack. 

The first rule is always to figure out what you will have before departing.  Most restaurants now post nutritional values on menus on their website.  Read the menu, pick your menu items, and record the calories before departing.  Like a good soldier, never eat without a good plan of attack. This preparation gives you a sense of control and confidence in your choices.

3. Indulge but count.  

You can indulge a bit on vacation or a celebration.  While on Vacation, I shared a few desserts with my wife for the first time in a long time.  But I also carefully tracked everything I ate to know I was in striking distance for the week.  By monitoring and not attacking the buffet line, I could enjoy some of the colonial recipes and comfort foods in Virginia on a recent vacation in a controlled manner.  I was able to indulge and avoid the bulge!

4.  Gamification.

Tracking your food, habits, and activities can become mundane, so make a game of it.  I use the Fitbit application and the WW application to track food activity.  In the WW application, I try to get a blue dot award (staying in a recommended point zone) five days a week.  By striving for the Blue Dot, I had fun and learned different approaches to balance activity and food intake.  Likewise, I have step contests with my friends on the Fitbit application and engage in friendly banter and competition.

5. Listen to Your Body and Record Your Well-Being. 

Your body knows what it wants.  That is the reason too many hamburgers and fries cause you to indigestion.    Feed your body with the good stuff.  Choose vegetables and fruit over candy and sugar.  Remember, just like listening to someone, you must listen to your body closely to understand what it says.  Then, record your well-being and compare it to your activity, habits, and food intake. You may think your body is saying I need sleep when, in reality, your body is saying I need to exercise and get energy, or I am dehydrated and need water. 

6.  Three Applications that Help You Track.  

Here are three applications that have helped me track.

WW application.   I am amazed at this application and consider it one of the best mobile applications I have ever used.  This is coming from a guy who built applications for a living.  The best feature is its tracking application, which allows you to scan food bar codes and track the WW points that you use.  It also has a Connect feature that will enable you to connect to other people on the Weight Watchers journey.  In addition, it has a feature that allows you to reach a Weight Watcher employee any time of the day through instant messaging to answer questions and provide inspiration.  This feature once prevented me from eating a seemingly healthy wrap, which was half my allotted food intake!  This application has a monthly subscription, but it is worth it if you want to lose weight.  My Fitness Pal is an alternative free application, but I like WW’s features.

Fitbit is a fantastic application and tool. I use it daily to track my exercise, measure my heart rate and sleep, and participate in competitions with my friends. I no longer have a watch; instead, I wear my Fitbit as a watch. It also has a feature to track the number of glasses of water I drink daily, another critical element of weight loss. One of my most prized possessions from Fitbit is the 100,000-step Olympian Sandal for walking 50 miles daily. 

Happyfeed is a simple but powerful application! Each day, it reminds you to log three things you are happy about. This helps you think of the good stuff and not get depressed. The app also has a feature that allows you to add pictures and look at history.

Streaks allows you to set repeating habits and track them daily. Establishing habits and tracking them is vital in achieving goals related to weight loss and other areas. Some of my habits that help with weight loss are journaling for 15 minutes daily, writing a blog weekly, and praying daily.

In closing, you need to track to keep on track and change well.  You can only change what you measure, and by tracking, you better know what habits you need to change.

How to Stay Healthy in the City That Never Sleeps

Don Grier

I just got back from the city that never sleeps last week.   My wife and I had a great time with our son and his wife, and we got a lot of exercise.  We walked at least 12,000 steps each day.  New York could also be called the city where everyone walks. 

When I weighed in on the day I got back, I was half expecting to have dropped a few pounds. However, I was shocked that I had gained 5 lbs. in 5 days. How did that happen? I ate a little more, but not to excess. I did not eat pizza, steaks, or more than a beer a day. The extra exercise should have countered it. 

After reviewing my Fitbit data while trying to soothe my aching muscles, I identified the twin culprits.    I should have known since both problems have waylaid my wellness journey in the past.  The person who barely sleeps and seldom stretches went to the city that never sleeps and always walks! 

Too little sleep and insufficient stretching have been the two most significant negative factors in my health, including during my weight loss journey when I lost 170 pounds. Here are just a few anecdotes to prove my point. If you want to read more about my wellness journey, read our blog page. You can also listen to our Change Well Podcast.

1. Impact of Sleep Apnea on Health. 

I had undiagnosed sleep apnea as I was heading to my peak weight.  Sleep apnea is a severe sleep disorder in which breathing repeatedly starts and stops.  I thought I was tired from too much work, but I was not getting a restful sleep.  I also was impacting the sleep of others, as my kids noted (and recorded) on a vacation trip.

I went to a sleep study, where they confirmed sleep apnea and prescribed a C-PAP. As you see below, a C-PAP is a medical device that forces air through a mask to open up your airways. Even though I looked like something out of my Son-In-Law’s Steampunk movies, I wore it every night for a year until I rectified the condition.  The impact of getting more sleep was immediate and positive. In one month, without changing other habits, I lost twenty pounds.

Sleep apnea causes several conditions that lead to weight gain. The first one is metabolic syndrome, which includes high blood pressure, abnormal cholesterol levels, high blood sugar, and an increased waist circumference and is linked to a higher risk of heart disease.  I had all of these, including yet-to-be-diagnosed with heart disease. Another symptom is daytime drowsiness and irritability, which makes it harder to exercise and raises the level of cortisol. 

I could go on discussing how lack of sleep wreaks havoc on the hormones that control appetite, but the bottom line is that sleep apnea and lack of sleep must be tackled head-on. I got so much benefit out of my C-PAP that I took it with me on all my business trips. It was a pain lugging it around in airports and finding distilled water late at night once arriving (the machine requires it), but that ugly mask in an equally non-stylish grey case saved my life and my health.  And after a year of using it and losing a great deal of weight in part because of it, my sleep apnea was resolved.

C-PAP Machine

2.  Anxiety and sleep deprivation. 

Sleep apnea is not the only thing that detracts from a good day’s rest.  Anxiety and worry can cut into your sleep time and can cause weight gain and lack of productivity.  I still struggle with getting enough sleep, and more often than not, it is due to the worst casting of upcoming events or replaying negative things from the day before. 

The impact of less than seven hours of sleep due to anxiety is harmful to health.   I have now tracked my eating and health habits for ten years in Fitbit and the WW applications, and the number one factor correlating to a weekly weight gain, in my case, is not getting enough good sleep.  I have maintained my weight through a momentary eating binge or a weekend on the couch, but if I have had a bad week of sleep, I will gain.  Everyone is a bit different, but that is the case with me. 

3.  The Benefits of Stretching.

Now, let us switch to my other nemesis: stretching. Some people love to stretch; I hate it! However, after tweaking my back numerous times and having all the flexibility of the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz, I know I need to do it.

The health benefits of stretching are well-documented.  One of the most significant benefits is that it helps prevent injury.  I know this firsthand from the times I have been laid up in bed due to a back spasm or my legs locking up on me.  However, these problems have significantly reduced since I started my daily stretching habit.

Another benefit of stretching is reducing anxiety. Deep breathing practices combined with stretching have been shown to reduce stress and stress eating. You do not need to be a Yogi to benefit from stretching, deep breathing, and meditation. As for me, I stretch in a pool while silently praying. The pool’s buoyancy helps me with my tight muscles and ability to do stretches that require balance, like a hamstring stretch.

Now that we have examined the adverse effects of not sleeping and stretching and the positive benefits of doing so, let’s return to my recent trip to New York.  NYC is called the city that never sleeps for a good reason.  If you are anywhere in the city, you must deal with street noise at all night hours (even eight floors up as we were) and light pollution (in our case, we are directly across from the Empire State Building).  Even though I wore a sleep mask and earplugs provided by the hotel, I could not sleep well.  Also, anxiety from having to make a big decision and meeting new people for the first time seriously curtailed my sleep – an average of less than 4 hours of sleep for the time I was there. 

Next, let’s look at my failure to stretch.  Despite walking the whole High Line, Chelsea Market, and most of Brooklyn, I did not do as much as a calf stretch.  This contrasts with my wife, who had scheduled a robotic massage from Aescape.  If you are interested in seeing what a robotic massage is, I have included a link to a video from Aescape, a company mentioned on The Late Show.  The result of my lack of stretching and my wife’s forethought in scheduling a massage is I tweaked my back on the return flight, setting me back a few days while she was back at it the day we returned to working at our Apiary.

4. How to Sleep and Stretch Better

My previous experiences and a recent trip to  New York indicate the importance of sleep and stretching on health.  Here are four practices to help you sleep and stretch more.

1.  Establish a relaxing pre-sleep ritual. To sleep better, you need to quiet your mind before going to bed.  Read a book.  Listen to quiet music. Pray or meditate.  And most importantly, turn off the TV and your phone.

2.  Limit noise and light pollution. This may not be possible in cities like NYC, but try your best with blackout curtains, earplugs, and sleep masks.  Also, if you can, turn off your Wi-Fi.  I have found that turning off the router at night helps with sleep.

3.  Turn on white noise or natural sounds.  I have found that listening to the ocean or rain sounds helps me sleep.  Several manufacturers make devices that play soothing sounds for sleep

4.  Stretch to reduce anxiety and encourage sleep.  Keep up your daily stretching habit when on vacation to relieve muscle tightness and stress.  No matter the small size of a hotel room in NYC, you can still find room to do a calf stretch.  Better yet, have the forethought to schedule a massage like my wife.

I will close in my usual manner with a song.  I may not be Frank Sinatra, but I started spreading the news about the importance of sleep and stretching in NYC and worldwide.

Start spreading the news, you need it today,
You must sleep and stretch in New York, New York.
These ragged boat shoes have walked all day.
Right to the very heart of it in old New York.

I want to sleep in the City that never sleeps,
And find I am rested well; top of the heap.
My muscle fatigue is melting away,
I got a robotic massage in old New York.

If you can sleep and stretch there, you can do it anywhere.
It’s up to you, New York, New York.