Healthy Living Made Simple

Drink lots of water, take deep breaths, choose good supplements, eat all your vegetables, eat more protein, eat fewer carbs. With all the healthcare advice out there these days, and much of it contradictory, it makes healthy living seem like a complicated endeavor! In fact, all that advice can make a junk-food diet look attractive in its simplicity. But don't panic! Healthy living can be simple.

You know what makes you feel good and what doesn't. If drinking plenty of water, taking certain supplements, or eating multiple small meals a day makes you feel better, then you already know more than the experts. Similarly, you probably know which of your "bad" habits make you feel ill, like eating too much sugar or spending too much time at your desk. If you are not sure what makes you feel better or worse, keep a diary for seven to twenty-one days. Log your daily food intake, exercise, level of stress, amount of sleep, and anything else that might affect your level of health. Notice what happens when you add or vary any of your habits.

Once you have discovered two or three really great habits that make you feel good, adopt them for the year. To keep things really simple, choose no more than three great habits. If exercise makes you feel good, adopt the habit of exercising a few times a week. If adding fresh fruits or vegetables is good, resolve to add them to your diet on a regular basis, but don't break the bank. Do what makes you feel good in moderation, and in a way that will be easy for you to remember. If you want to add vitamins or supplements into your life, help yourself remember by putting the bottles or packets in your car, your purse, your pocket, your lunch, or your top desk drawer. Don't kick yourself when you forget to take the supplements, and take them whenever you see the visual reminder of the bottle. Of course, consistency is always great for health, but in the beginning do what you can to make healthy living a rewarding and pleasurable experience rather than another item on your "To Do" list!

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By Alan Joel

Alan Joel is a Doctor of Chinese Medicine and nutritional counselor. He is also an independent distributor of Simplexity Health, producer of all-natural blue-green algae products for people, pets, and plants. For free health tips and to order blue-green algae online at wholesale prices, visit http://www.prosperity-abounds.com/order.html and http://prosperity-abounds.blogspot.com

Got Fear of Aging?

After spending the last several decades in a Madison Avenue culture of youth and beauty, many baby boomer women are feeling uncertain of our place in a society that seems not to honor or appreciate the aging. Our roles are changing and many of us are starting to panic as we see the sands of time beginning to scrub away the luminescence of our youth. As we approach midlife, questions begin to surface.

Will I become invisible as I age? Will I be respected? Loved? Why do my looks matter so much? What am I so afraid of? Who am I now that I'm no longer of reproductive age? Is this the beginning of the end? Is everyone this scared of dying? Is it too late to make a difference? How do I do that?

The boomer generation has come to a crossroads, and the direction that each of us chooses to take will determine how we experience the rest of our life. We can buy into our fears and invest great quantities of time, energy and money trying to resurrect the past, or we can accept the ongoing circle of life and look for new opportunities. Rather than allowing our fears of aging to determine our experience of aging, we can each take hold of the wheel and steer ourselves toward a new reality, one that supports us in being vibrant, active and engaged members of society.

"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself - nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance." These wise words from Franklin D. Roosevelt point us toward a profound truth - fear is the enemy (and, I would add - especially when it comes to aging). While you are most likely familiar with the first part of that quote, it's the latter that best describes what happens to us when we allow our fears and expectations to go unchallenged. How can we move gracefully into the rest of our life when our unbounded fears of aging paralyze our efforts and keep us retreating while trying to hold on to who we were?

For most of us, it's these unconscious and unexamined fears that keep us from experiencing the life we truly want. We allow anxiety to fill the space between what was and what we believe is coming. Many of us are looking at the coming years through a lens that is clouded by fear. As we disengage from the roles we played in our younger years and begin to explore other options, we're likely to experience a certain degree of discomfort. In addition to the uncertainty of feeling out a new role, our deep-seated fears about aging will surface.

What's a woman to do? Instead of letting them haunt you, explore your framework of expectations and fears - knowing they will boomerang right back as your reality if you allow them to fester. Understanding the genesis of our fears and the process that holds them in place can help us put them to rest.

Have you noticed that most of the things in life that frighten us are maintained by the absence of scrutiny? Once we move them out of the periphery and into full view, it is possible to tear down the self-limiting beliefs and fears that control us and replace them with the perspectives and beliefs we choose. In other words, before we can consciously create a fresh start, we need to explore what we've been expecting (and unknowingly asking for).

In order to gray gracefully and arrive at a place of joy and acceptance, I needed to confront the negative fears, expectations and beliefs I held about aging - and consciously order up something different. We can all benefit from taking some time to write down our fears, limiting beliefs and expectations about getting older.

Ask yourself:

What are my worst fears about getting and looking older? Which stereotypes have I bought into? What do I believe might happen as I age? Why wouldn't I still be valued? Loved? Desirable? What's the worst thing that might happen to me?

Take the time necessary to allow your thoughts to surface and write them down. Do not edit or judge the things that come up. Most of our fears and expectations are held in place by our past programming. The only way to change a stereotype is to challenge it! Don't believe everything you think. Facing our fears and concerns about aging head-on is often the best way to lay those issues to rest and make room for a point of view that celebrates the amazing woman we've become.

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By Maggie Crane

Maggie Rose Crane is a leading-edge baby boomer on a quest to age with grace, gratitude and gusto. In her refreshingly candid book, AMAZING GRAYS A Womans Guide to Making the Next 50 the Best 50 (Regardless of your hair color!), she shares experiences, insights and useful information to guide maturing women through the ups and downs of staying vibrant, active and inspired in a culture obsessed with youth and manufactured beauty. At the core of her message, shared through writing, speeches and workshops, Maggie exposes the fears and anxieties that haunt many midlife women and reveals how to mindfully navigate the turbulence with wisdom, perspective and practice. We invite you to join her in a growing movement of Amazing Grays, women who have decided to embrace their age - knowing the best is yet to come! Learn more at http://www.maggiecrane.com

Just an Ordinary Woman

I want to see if I'm in one of the latest glamour magazines on sale this week. I mean honestly, I deserve to be on one of those pages. After all ... I am a woman. Right! But, unfortunately, just an ordinary woman.

I can't get past the latest "Desperate Housewife" advertisement with all those ladies in red. Is that really what the stereotypical desperate housewife looks like? After-hours, I assume! I mean with all the domestic work she has to do for the day, the outfit seems rather far-fetched.

Not that all women are just housewives. They can do the chores before work, go to gym and find themselves a shower away from their plush office and executive chair. Like in the soaps on TV.

So often people ask women what they do. The answers vary from sole supporter of a family to so many different categories that housewife and executive are merely small fractions in the equation. They may be extremes in your eyes because either you're educated with a certificate or degree ... or, you're just a housewife doing menial chores and raising your children. But wait ... there's more!

There's the type of woman that actually works long, exhausting hours without pay. Hubby brings in the money and ... let's say no more. Then there's the type of woman who works long hours doing the mundane, pedestrian chores and her share in the community. She earns money baking, making clothes, typing or looking after other women's children while they work. There are no benefits or material rewards ... just the basic fee to keep her supporting the family.

The woman that spends her time in the field cultivating crops and looking after the livestock is also somewhere in this equation.

And somehow it's these women who are never seen in magazines or on television. Unless it's in an advertisement of a product or service that the ordinary women may need to make their lives easier. And these ordinary women are not the desperate housewives you see on television, though they share the same brand name.

Housewife or executive, teacher or minister, they all have one thing in common: motherhood (if that is the choice they decide to make). And motherhood in itself is a career. A mother has to look out for the emotional welfare of her children satisfying their needs and raising them to become responsible adults.

When we stop to look at all the careers a mother practices without qualification on paper, we have to take a deep breath and then pause.

Motherhood entails being an accountant, a sports agent or manager, sports coach, or promotion manager. It also requires experience in nursing, psychology and health education; being a dietician and nutritionist. A mother should have her own mini pharmacy, and have a license to be an emergency driver to hospitals or the veterinarian. She can be an amusement and recreation officer, taxi driver, video camera operator, photographer and travel agent. A mother is a hairdresser, cosmetologist, fashion consultant, and tailor. She is an animal trainer, housekeeper, landlady, fence erector, interior decorator and landscape artist. Mothers bake, cook, order out, host, serve and clean. They are laundry specialists, painters, filing clerks, social workers, answering services and public relations officers. They are data base administrators, home management advisors, teachers, pastors, producers, judges, lawyers and financial analysts.

But above all, mothers are women. And each woman has her own load and burden to carry. Perhaps it's infidelity, cancer, poverty ...

With Mother's Day comes the annual family blessings that each member bestows upon her ... often not to genuinely give thanks or show respect ... but, merely to uphold a public holiday. It also helps her the next day to answer those inquisitive questions of how her family spoilt her on the one specific and yet very small and insignificant day of her year and life. Compared to the laboriousness of her existence, one Mother's Day is just not enough.

There are good mothers and selfish mothers, healthy mothers and ... But, let's not spend any time going there! That's content for a whole new article. It's in being who we are to the best of our ability that really makes the difference.

Give respect, honour, love, compassion, commitment and understanding. Make every day mother's day. And do note there are no capital letters attached to the day, because it's not the day that should be celebrated, but the woman behind all her sacrifices ...

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By Karin Steyn