Make This Your Most Enjoyable Christmas Season Part 2

I am sure you are all feeling calm and serene after reading last week’s article and now you are ready to take on another small challenge to make this your best Christmas. 

Right? 

I received some wonderful feedback from several of you about the great things you are doing to take control of your calendar and mend some sticky relationships all to beat the “crazies” out of ruining your holiday. 

Great work! You will be better for it!

One of the most difficult plates we spin during the holidays is our complicated relationship with food and drink. I find my appetite in a constant tug-o-war not unlike the imaginary angel on one shoulder and devil on the other each trying to convince me to do their bidding. 

When it comes to appetites I have found in my studies that many foods can act like drugs on our system causing strong addictive desires. This is obvious when it comes to sugar and without great resolve sugar usually wins the day.  The more sugar we eat the more sugar we want. It takes about 4-7 days (a mere week) to break that chain and begin to gain the upper hand against the cravings. Here are a couple tricks that will help.

We have all heard it before. Drink eight, 8 ounce glasses of water daily. This advice is up for debate among health professionals, exercise scientists and even YouTube phenomena. 

According to Adam Conover of “Adam Ruins Everything” we only need to drink when we are thirsty. This may be an oversimplification.  Thirst is only one of the many ways our bodies tell us we need water. Everyone is a bio-individual and our fluid needs differ from each other and from day to day. 

Most of us have trouble trying to gulp down the daily recommendation, but we have no trouble drinking 2-3 cups of coffee, an afternoon tea, a beer after work or a glass a wine or bottle of soda with dinner. All of those beverages are diuretics that remove water from the body. 

Remember what you learned in biology class? 

Depending on your age the body is made of 60-80% water. The cells cannot function without adequate water.  Water improves oxygen delivery, transports nutrients, cushions joints and organs, removes toxins, regulates body temperature, and empowers the body’s natural healing process.

Ok. Overall it looks like water is pretty essential to a vibrant life. We are all about peace and serenity this month so here is a simple math formula and challenge to help figure out this water thing. 

Take your body weight in pounds. Divide by two. The number you get is the number in ounces (generally) that you should strive to drink each day. So for example a 150 pound person would divide by two and find they should try to drink 75 ounces of water each day. 

This is very general. If you are drinking many diuretics, are currently pregnant, work out a lot or live in a very hot climate you may need to drink more water to compensate for your situation. I fill up 2 large water bottles every morning that measure what I generally need for the day. This helps me keep track. It took my body a week or so to adjust to the proper amount. Some days I drink it all and want more and other days I just can’t get it all in. That’s fine. 

Each day’s requirements are not exact. Learn to listen to your body. 

The holiday trick behind this is that being properly hydrated will stave off many cravings and keep you in optimal health throughout the season!! 

So simple AND cheap!

So if WATER is the first trick FAT is the second. What!? Yup.

Did you know that Dr. Ancel Keys' “eat low-fat for heart health” theory has been debunked and we all really need to be eating MORE FAT?

Wait! Don’t switch tabs yet! The caveat is in eating the healthy fats like olive oil, avocado, nuts and seeds, butter, other animal fats and even coconut oil. Coconut oil was recently in the limelight as part of another media fiasco with the AHA but that was also debunked. Coconut oil has many health benefits. 

Healthy fats are the building blocks for cell membranes and hormone production. They protect the organs, help make and regulate energy, help properly use proteins, cause food to taste good and most importantly to this article increase satiety. That means when we eat enough of the right kinds of fats we feel full and satisfied and don’t want to go back for seconds or thirds or extra dessert! BONUS! We get to eat butter AND feel great! 

Don’t be afraid to fry up some bacon and eggs. Slather it on your toast or sauté your favorite veggies to perfection. Fat is a macro-nutrient that we must consume for our bodies to work properly. Now, don’t go overboard! Strive for fat to be about 30% of your daily calories. That’s about 2-3 tablespoons of butter at a meal depending on your calorie count. 

In the end fat does not make us fat. Sugar makes us fat. It’s in the science.

Ahhhhh… the season is getting better and better isn’t it? 

We are already calm and not overbooked. Now we can be hydrated and eating healthy fats feeling full and satisfied. 

Oh! And you will sleep so well because your body is happy to have some of what it needs to rest and repair at night. It will be busy while you are peacefully snoozing in your warm cozy bed. 

See you next week with the third and final part of the triad; the soul. 

Sweet dreams my friend.

Sue Huber has been busy making cookies and creating secret gift codes for her family of six. Beside the kitchen you can mostly likely find her shoveling snow, hauling wood or sitting in front of the wood stove writing, shopping or studying online to become a Nutritional Therapy Consultant where mind, body and soul give the most complete picture of health. 

Wet your whistle and check the loo!

(Welcome to the new Wednesday edition of A Healthy Wife. Believing that being a good steward of our body is a spiritual responsibility, we will be focusing on some health and nutrition issues each Wednesday. A bit shorter and chocked full of info, Healthy Wife Wednesdays are unashamedly bold and colorful; A mouthful of facts and opinions to chew on all day!)

Wet your whistle and check the loo!

“Mommy, my head hurts.”

“Mommy, my tummy hurts.”

“Wow, someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.”

“I’m sooo hot!”

“Ugh! My skin is breaking out!”

My husband jokes that my first prescription for any ailment my family complains about is to ask, “Have you been drinking enough water?”

Water is a very basic and powerful “medicine.” Water is vital in circulation, digestion, joint lubrication, bladder and bowel elimination, skin and hair health and much, much more.

There are 2 main things to be concerned with when it comes to water and your health.

Quantity and Quality.

With over 2/3 of your body consisting of water it is pretty important that you get enough of it. You can survive weeks without food but only a few days without water.

You have probably heard several different rules and gauges for making sure you drink enough water. Should you drink a strict 8 glasses a day? What if you work out? Do coffee and tea count?

The best rule of thumb I have found is to take your body weight number in pounds, cut it in half and drink that number in ounces of water each day.

For example, if I weigh 150 pounds I divide 150 in half to get 75. I then try to drink 75 ounces of water each day as a baseline amount.

For me, anything I drink while working out does not count toward my baseline. For others it may. I sweat a lot and often find myself dehydrated. So for me, the more I can drink on a workout day the better.

If you are not into measuring out water and feel much more relaxed about the whole issue, then this other basic rule may work better for you.

Check the color of your urine. Seriously.

It should be very pale yellow to no color at all. If it is basic yellow to darker yellow you should be drinking more water. 

Some people judge their hydration by whether they are thirsty or not, but for me by the time I feel thirsty I am already dehydrated. Listen to your body and do your best to make a good decision. By the way, other drinks such as coffee, tea and soda will actually dehydrate you. These should not count toward your daily total.

The quality of the water you drink is just as important as how much you drink. This can be a very sticky subject with many opinions and facts to wade through.

In my opinion the best water to drink is filtered or cleaned using reverse osmosis. I have read too many problems with distilled, tap and bottled water.  One fact I found stated that up to 40% of bottled water is actually just regular tap water that may or may not have received any additional treatment, flavors, or sweeteners.

For more information, just Google any of these topics and you will have enough reading material to last weeks and I haven’t even mentioned containers and plastics. That could be a whole other blog. Plastic was okay –now it is not. Nalgene was good – now you need HDPE Nalgene… Good old glass is still by far the best, but not always convenient.

When you feel like you are up against the wall and there are no good choices left –then my health mantra will come into play.

“Pray hard. Do your best. God will take care of the rest.”

Now, go get yourself a tall glass of ice water. Drink it down and you will feel a whole lot better!