Food Moment

I never realized how many calories you can burn while camping. I haven’t gone camping since I was a little girl and even then I don’t think I was really camping. It was more like a getaway to the forest where my parents, their friends and I had a fire but I don’t think we ever stayed over night.

Our camping trip last week was a success! We were at the Ice House reservoir for two days and one night which was enough time to relax and enjoy nature. I can say that if people camped on a regular basis, they would not have a weight problem. Just setting up the tent was a major workout and some other things we did included:

• swimming in the lake – with an easy access to the lake, you can jump in there as often as you want and we all know swimming is a great exercise.
• hiking – I don’t mean just walking. I’m talking about getting lost in the forest, climbing rocks, climbing hills, etc. We took a 30 minute hike away from our tent which turned out to be a major cardio workout. We found ourselves climbing hills and rocks back and forth. I was more exhausted than I am after a good run!
• biking – okay so we did not bike but we thought about it a lot and it’s something I’d like to get into. I haven’t gone as far as purchasing a bike yet. Any recommendations?

Our dinner wasn’t exactly health oriented but with the amount of exercise we were doing, we didn’t care! We had s’mores for dessert; best dessert ever in my opinion!

 After having this amazing camping experience, I hope to go camping in Yosemite next year with bikes.

What are some of your favorite camping spots and activities?

This week I want to focus on our minds. Eating healthy is just a fraction of our overall well-being. If I was to present this to you on a pie chart, you’d notice that our powerful mind takes up a large percentage of our wellness. In my opinion, you cannot really be healthy until you take care of the mind first.

Today I’d like to talk about the small stuff. This is something I, myself, am working on as well – trying to dismiss things in my life that don’t make a difference.

Small Stuff: things that happen to us on a daily basis and impose some kind of inconvenience. For instance, I spilled coffee on myself the other day on my way to work. I really freaked out initially and my good mood quickly disappeared. After thinking about it in my head for a little bit, I thought to myself, “It’s just coffee and a stain. I have a sweater to cover it up.” Another example of “small stuff” would be getting the wrong food ingredient at the grocery store then coming back home and beating yourself up over it, then taking it out on your spouse. It could really be anything and the funny thing is that it’s usually something minute yet it can linger for hours.

So how do you handle the small stuff? Here is my take on it. When you are faced with the small things in life that are a pain in the behind, you have to recognize them as just small inconveniences. They will happen no matter what and before you flip out completely, try to think of an immediate solution. Ask yourself these questions:

• Can I do anything to fix the situation immediately. If you can, resolve it.
• How does the inconvenience affect my whole day? What impact does it have on my life?
• Is the inconvenience worth thinking about? If not, dismiss the thought immediately and move on.

The worst thing that you can do is dwell and worry about something that you cannot control. Why? Because you’re wasting time. Like I said earlier, usually the stuff is so minute that once it is resolved you don’t even notice it anymore. It is the initial reaction that can quickly escalate throwing your focus and productivity out the window. Just remember, as long as your house is not burning down and you have food to eat, everything else is just an inconvenience!

The cool thing about this approach is that once something happens, you always have a choice. You can choose to either fix it if you can ( after you assess what happened) and then you have a choice to either dismiss the situation or dwell on it.

Productive and successful people out there are really good at dismissing the small things. It’s easy to think that successful people never have anything negative going on in their lives. Oh, they do. They are just very good at handling inconveniences. Their time is just too precious to devote to worry and they know it.

This technique is very effective, however, it takes practice. You have to remember to be aware, focus and remind yourself that you have choices. You can choose what to think and do in any given situation. Practice, practice, practice!

I think I have said enough! This week’s goal is to not sweat the “small stuff.” Let me know how you do :)