What are your sleep habits trying to tell you?

Sleep is extremely important for your mental and physical health and athletic performance. Do you sleep enough? 

Ideally, the adequate amount of sleep to promote optimal health and to avoid the health consequences is between seven and nine hours. If you are Campy, it's 20 hours a day. Because sleep affects how your body performs and functions when you are awake, how much you sleep and the quality of your sleep are equally important. Without a good night's sleep, your immune system, ability to think and learn, glucose metabolism, reaction time and mood can become compromised. Therefore, sleep is critical in athletic success and optimizing health.

For most athletes, you probably squeeze in workouts early in the morning or late in the evening due to a busy, rushed and exhausting life schedule. If you are like most sleep-deprived athletes, you've likely become very accustomed to relying on your alarm to help you get out of bed - regardless of how tired you felt the day before. In addition, there's likely an extra cup or two of coffee to survive the day and sadly for many, energy drinks are the norm for an afternoon wake-up.

It's important to practice good sleep habits such as;

• Sleeping in a quiet dark room without electronics
• Avoiding stimulants and alcohol in the afternoon/evening
• Having a regular bedtime and wake up routine
• Not eating a large meal too close to bed
• Minimizing very early or very late training sessions
• Allowing yourself one day a week to wake-up without an alar

If you've recently noticed a change in sleep pattern or you chronically suffer from restless sleep, this may be a sign that your body is overly stressed.

It's one thing to intentionally limit yourself from adequate sleep but what if you are unable to get a restful night of sleep? What are your sleep habits telling you if you are constantly waking in the middle of the night, tossing and turning and perhaps, waking-up covered in sweat?

Here are a few thoughts as to what your sleep habits are trying to tell you:

• Increasing your training load (volume and/or intensity) without adequate rest and recovery can overload your system. This can increase inflammation, which alters serotonin function, which affects your mood and sleep. Additionally, lack of proper recovery can lead to higher resting heart rate, an inability to increase your heart rate when exercising and decreases the strength of your immune system. If you are not sleeping well, you may not be adapting well to your training load - either from too much volume/intensity, not enough fuel/nutrition to support training, inadequate recovery, or a combination.
  
• During sleep, your liver is a very important organ. Your liver secretes glucose to maintain blood glucose levels and supply the brain with fuel. By the time you wake-up, 60-80% of your liver glycogen has been used by the cells in the body (this is why you should eat a small snack before your early morning workout). If you are not refueling properly post workout or exercising late in the evening, you may be experiencing night-time hypoglycemia. Signs of low blood sugar include sugar cravings, night sweats, rapid heartbeat, headache, nightmares and lack of appetite or nausea in the morning. If you are not sleeping well, your blood sugar levels are likely out of balance and need to be corrected through a dietary intervention.
  
• Insomnia is a common feature among individuals who are following a low carb or low calorie diet. Serotonin is a brain neurotransmitter that helps calm your brain to help you sleep so it's no surprise that the dieting or overtrained athlete would suffer from sleep issues. Whether you are having trouble falling asleep or staying asleep, your diet could be to blame. Two red flags that your diet is to blame is if you are relying on sleep aids to help you fall asleep but also relying on stimulants such as caffeine, to maintain energy levels throughout the day.
  
• Stress can make it difficult to fall asleep and stay sleep, which means sleep quality will be heavily affected. With so much on your mind, it's easy to feel tense and anxious, causing you to toss and turn. It may also be difficult to lower your HR or blood pressure, making you feel tense. Instead of becoming addicted to sleeping aids, get to the root of your sleeping issues. Don't let insomnia take over your life. Reach out to a professional who can help. For starters, keep a note pad by your bed to right down your thoughts instead of trying to sleep with too much on your mind.
  
• Dehydration can affect your sleep just as overhydrating can affect your sleep. Dehydration can disrupt your body's normal rhythm (similar to overtraining) so that you don't feel tired when you should - you are exhausted in the morning but feel alert in the evening. You may also feel a dry throat at night, which causes you to overdrink throughout the evening. Overdrinking can cause excessive urination - or frequent trips to the bathroom in the middle of the night. Be mindful of your fluid intake - including alcohol and caffeine. Try to spread your fluid intake out over the course of the day and stay well hydrated during your workouts. 

What are your sleep habits trying to tell you?

Athletes: 4 mistakes that you keep making

You were born to make mistakes. No one is perfect. Some of your greatest achievements will grow out of the mistakes that you made in your past. 

As an athlete, I like to think of mistakes as learning opportunities. There are no bad decisions but instead opportunities to adjust, learn and to improve.

When Karel raced his first IM in Lake Placid in 2013, he told me he made a few rookie mistakes. He grabbed his wrong transition bag from the hanging rack of bag as he was entering the T2 changing tent so he had to run back to the rack to exchange his goggles and wetsuit for his run shoes and visor.
On the bike, he took a swig of his gel flask and put the flask upside down in his tri top pocket...opened. A few miles later, his leg felt incredibly sticky with every pedal stroke. It wasn't until he reached back for his flask that he noticed that his entire flask emptied out in his tri pocket and essentially onto the side of his body. 

Now I wouldn't call this rookie mistakes as I feel even a veteran athlete is vulnerable to these mistakes but as athletes we must be able to reflect on races to learn from them to hopefully prevent the same mistake happening more than once. 

Thankfully, Karel has made it a habit to repeat in his head as to what color bag to grab before entering the changing tent in an Ironman and he always remembers to tightly close his gel flask and put it in his pocket right side up. 

If there is one thing that I have learned in endurance racing over the past 8 years it's that there is always something new to learn on race day. 

As athletes, we know that race day comes with a variety of uncontrollables so when it comes to focusing on how we prepare our bodies for race day, we want to direct a lot of energy to how we train for races. Unfortunately, for many athletes, the season starts with a high level of motivation and energy as well as good intentions so on paper, you look perfect. But I find that for many athletes, it takes a few seasons to learn some valuable lessons as to how to train smarter, reduce risk for injury and to keep the body in good health. 

As an athlete, the best investment you can make on your future success as an athlete is to be able to identify your own weaknesses. If you find it easy to put blame on yourself for making the same mistakes over and over but do not hold yourself accountable to making the necessary changes, you are not learning anything from your mistakes. 

As you know, life passes by very quickly when you are in the peak of your season and it's very hard to fill in the gaps when you did not do what you should have done when it needed to be done. Far too often I hear athletes saying the following statements when they recognize their weaknesses and this usually happens when an athlete gets injured or a few weeks out from a key race. 

"I need to stretch more."
"I need to do more strength training."
"I need to eat better."
"I should have recovered better."

As we enter a New Year, you have the opportunity to start a new season of making good habits AND sticking with them. Admit that you did not stretch enough last season, you stopped strength training after a few months, your healthy eating habits got pushed aside when your training volume increased and you pushed too hard on your easy days which caused you to feel tired on the days when you were expected to perform hard. 

It's ok to admit that you made some mistakes but I am here to make sure that you do not make those same  mistakes again in 2015. 

So here are your lessons learned for 2015:

1) Stretching Make stretching part of your daily routine. This includes dynamic warm-ups before all workouts, foam rolling/trigger point therapy to identify "hot" spots and active stretching to loosen-out the body post workout and in the evenings before bed. You can find 5 minutes a few times during the day to make stretching happen. 

2) Strength training
All athletes should follow a periodized strength training routine that addresses functional strength exercises that will transfer fitness gains in your sport. There must be a smooth progression of how you incorporate strength training in your routine as you do not want to risk injury as you try to prevent injury.
In the Trimarni 8-week transition plan, I have your first 8 weeks of foundation strength all laid out for you with corresponding swim,bike, run workouts as well. This is an easy way to not only help you build good foundation strength before you start incorporating more dynamic/complex, intense strength exercises into your strength routine but it is also a no-excuse way to kick-start your strength training routine. If anything, you can at least tell yourself that in 2015 you followed a well-designed strength training routine for 2 months which may be longer than you lasted last year. 

3) Healthy eating
What's eating better? Perhaps you define it differently than my definition but the bottom line is that you likely have a few key areas that you'd like to focus on that you feel are preventing you from reaching your health, performance and/or body composition goals. This doesn't mean you need to be extreme, restrictive or obsessive about eating in order to "eat better." But perhaps you need to make more time for meal planning and cooking. Maybe you find yourself overeating in the evenings because of poor eating choices throughout the day. Maybe you aren't spending enough time understanding your sport nutrition before, during and after workouts. Maybe you are just trying to get more fruits and veggies into your diet or eat more real food. Whatever eating better means to you, focus on making only a few small changes at a time or else you are destined for failure as you can't expect to change everything all at once and keep those new habits for the next 10-12 months.
If I can give you one tip it would be to recognize that your eating habits will change throughout the season accordance to your training plan. Be mindful of how an increased training load will affect your cravings, appetite and macronutrient distribution. Don't let this scare you if you feel like you don't know how to eat in a periodized training plan. My tip for you is to not start the year eating a plant-strong diet made of real food and then find yourself skipping meals, eating ice cream for dinner and passing on your pre-workout snacks when your training load increases. Put a great amount of energy on your daily diet and fueling regime throughout all phases of your training plan to get the most out of every workout. 

4) Recover harder

Athletes are notorious for making easy days too hard and hard days too easy. You must understand the purpose of rest days for they have a place in every athletes' training plan. Whether you choose to take them or not is certainly up to you but I highly encourage you to take advantage of your intentional rest days before you find yourself taking too many unintentional rest days with a tired, burnout or injured body.  Your goal as an athlete is to adapt to training stress. Yes, you may look like a really great exerciser but more so, you want to be a really great athlete. And really great athletes rest their bodies hard. 

Athletes strive for improvements in fitness and this is often the reason why athletes are scared to take a day off. Or even worse, an athlete makes the excuse "it's my recovery day" so the alarm goes off at 5am for an easy swim bike or run. Hello...when did sleep stop being a form of recovery??
As a suggestion, I often find that my age group athletes do really well with a day off (or at least a morning off from working out) later in the week as the season progresses (around 4-6 weeks out from taper) whereas Monday off or a true active recovery day (following waking up rested) is best applied in the beginning part of the season when athletes are more fresh and motivated to start a training plan but also slowly adapting to training stress so that continued stress as the week progresses is very important mentally and physically. Because the entire point of training is to place intentional stress on the body AND adapt to it, there is certainly going to be more to balance as the season progresses so there really isn't a time in your plan when rest isn't allowed. My suggestion is to take advantage of all of your rest days and active recovery days when they come and this includes taking care of yourself emotionally, nutritionally and spiritually when you aren't training on those days. Pay attention to red flags that your body needs a rest day or a change in the routine to ensure that you are training hard but recoverying harder. 

 You know the mistakes that you made last year and perhaps one or more of the mistakes listed above are on your list. So should you once again go into next season being more focused, disciplined and serious? 

I believe that part of the reason why athletes make these mistakes is because they are so performance focused. There is such great passion to all things related to training that the athlete starts the season with very high expectations as to what he/she can focus on to be a better athlete but then life happens and it seems like all of a sudden, there is less time to get everything done. So training takes priority and everything else that can help make you a better athlete gets pushed aside. 

Remember that your season success relies on your consistency with training. Rather than spending all of your energy on training harder or training longer and getting in the workouts, focus on training smarter. Believe me when I tell you that your sleep, recovery tactics, fueling, daily diet and stretching/strength training routine unlocks great performances. These mistakes that you keep making are possibly the keys that you have been forgetting to make a high priority in your daily training routine. 

I'm sure there are other mistakes that we  have all made that are not on this list but I find that season after season, I hear athletes making these same four mistakes over and over as the season progresses. 

Everyone makes mistakes. That's life. But the key is acknowledging that with a little more effort in 2015, you may find yourself preventing these mistakes from happening and setting yourself up for a great season of training and racing

Did you stretch yet today? :) 

Oakley Women event - my top 3 tips for improving your lifestyle

Feb 6th - Orlando Lens Crafters Summit with some of the Oakley crew

Do you have goals that you want to achieve in life? 

I love goals because they give every day a purpose. They give you a reason to get up in the morning but also a reason to get excited for another day. I find it really important that in order to reduce risk for disease, boost performance and to live a healthy and active quality life, we have to have goals in the area of life, nutrition and fitness.

Goals are super simple to create in your mind but the doing is the hard part. 

A common issue in our society is the tendency to skip steps when it comes to changing your lifestyle. You only get one life...why do we feel the need to rush it all the time?

For example: 

There are very precise steps in making a Meringue topping. 

Separate egg whites

Separate the eggs and place the whites in a large bowl. Let the egg whites stand at room temperature for 30 minutes before you start to make the meringue. (Egg whites that have been allowed to stand at room temperature beat to a greater volume than ones taken directly from the refrigerator.)

Beat egg whites to soft peaks

Add cream of tartar and vanilla before you begin beating the egg whites (cream of tartar helps stabilize the meringue).

Beat the egg whites with an electric mixer on medium speed until soft peaks form. At this point, they will curl over when the beaters are lifted.

Add sugar gradually

Add the sugar, 1 tablespoon at a time, while beating on high speed. The sugar must be added gradually as the egg whites are beaten to stiff peaks (tips stand straight). Adding the sugar too quickly will knock air out of the egg whites and make them difficult to mix thoroughly.

Beat egg whites and sugar to stiff, glossy peaks

Continue beating on high speed until the sugar dissolves and stiff, glossy peaks form. When you lift the beaters, the tips will stand straight up. The mixture should also feel smooth when you rub it between your fingers; you shouldn't be able to feel any sugar granules

Spread meringue over filling

Quickly spread the meringue over the hot pie filling. Spread the meringue to the edge of the pastry to seal it and prevent it from shrinking when it bakes. The hot filling helps to cook the meringue from underneath and prevents weeping.

Curl peaks

Curly peaks give a lovely texture to a meringue pie top. Use a spoon to swirl and twist the meringue.Bake the pie as directed until the meringue is a golden brown. Let the pie cool for an hour on a wire rack, and then refrigerate for 5 to 6 hours before serving.

As you can see, there is no rushing or skipping steps when you make a meringue topping. If you rush the process or skip steps, you have wasted a lot of time and money. 

But in life, many people often try to skip steps when changing lifestyle habits. Jumping on quick fix diet trends or elimination diets, signing up for races without doing the prep work necessary or wanting to move up the corporate ladder without putting in the time or learning the critical skills to succeed. 

So when you are bored, comparing yourself to others to feel vulnerable or frustrated with your body, I am sure it's easy to search for something better. Perhaps a quick fix to instantly make you feel better. But as we all know, quick fixes do not solve long term issues. 

An athlete who signs up for a marathon 16 weeks down the road has plenty of time to build a strong foundation with his/her body and then gradual increase intensity to get faster before he/she goes longer. However, the athlete who is not motivated or struggles to find the time (or excitement) to train for the race may feel pressure with 4 weeks to go and then try to squeeze in too much, in too short of time. This ultimately creates haphazard training but also a body that is not prepared to sustain training stress or the racing distance. Sure, there may be the athlete who can pull this type of training off but we all know that short term changes and consistency bring long term, lasting results. 

As a health professional,it is my goal to make sure that my followers, athletes and fitness enthusiasts increase the odds of living a long active and healthy life. With the top leading causes of death being heart disease, cancer and respiratory disease, I want to help you live a healthier lifestyle.

Everyone has their own definition of health . Healthy living, healthy body weight, healthy eating. You may rank your health good at one time in your life and it may improve or get worse at another time in life.  So when it comes to living a healthy life, there are a few things that you can do to reduce the risk for disease and improve quality of life.

Eat a balanced, varied, wholesome diet, exercise regularly, get good sleep, focus on stress management, don’t smoke, get routine check-ups, and maintain a healthy weight.

Because “healthy living” can be a bit overwhelming with all the information out there from TV, magazines, doctors, research and “experts”, I am going to share my top three ways that you can immediately improve your health. These are not temporary suggestions. The more often you can focus on these tips, the greater change you will improve your health and quality of life. 

1) The first one is MOVE YOUR BODY DAILY. Yes, getting to the gym or breaking a sweat is great and training for and finishing a race can be a great accomplishment. But one thing that we often forget that our body was designed to move and every time we move our body we have the chance to improve our health. 

I find many athletes who are training for races begin to get a bit "lazy" when it comes to daily activities that can help to burn calories (ex. if you are choosing training as a fun way to help you lose weight in a healthy way) or keep the body in good health (as we know, too much sitting can be a health problem). Rather than taking the stairs, parking far away or taking the dog for a long walk every evening, athletes often place too much focus on structured training and forget about the beauty of unstructured movement (and often times, athletes do not fuel properly to properly adapt to training stress in order to be consistent with training). 

Did you know that if you walk 3.5 miles per hour for 1 hour a day you can burn 225-265 calories? That may sound like a lot all at once but how about if you only worked out 3 days a week for 30 minutes to an hour (which is very doable for most people even with a super busy schedule) or stuck to your normal training plan for racing and then on the other days you walked for up to hour throughout the day? In one week you will not only burn over 1000 calories just from walking but you will also find it a lot easier to stay consistent with exercise when you don’t take an all or nothing approach to working out. 

(certainly - this doesn't apply to athletes who are unable to keep on weight and should be applied on a case by case basis such as athletes peaking for a big race. I am not encouraging inactivity but my message is to move your body more for health purposes instead of seeing exercise as black or white - all or nothing. So next time you need a break from training or feel like you just don't have energy to workout, just move your body for a walk or do some yoga).

2) The 2^nd tip is to EAT A MORE BALANCED DIET. Now this is where a lot of confusion occurs because what is a healthy diet? Without over thinking the topic, consider that real food is packed with vitamins and minerals and not wrapped with a fancy label telling you how healthy the food is.We want food that the body knows how to digest and absorb and contains the necessary nutrients that support optimal health and metabolism. By prioritizing a real food diet as often as possible, emphasize a plant strong diet filled with fruits, veggies, whole grains, heart healthy fats and quality protein. And don’t forget to stay hydrated with water thoughout the day. Keep in mind that food should energize you, satisfy you and nourish you so anytime you eat, keep in mind that you want to feel better after you eat then before.

3) My last tip is one of my favorites and probably the most beneficial tips in creating a more healthy lifestyle and that is SLEEP. Did you know that restless or inadequate sleep can increase risk for Depression, weight gain, cravings, health problems (Heart disease, heart failure, irregular heartbeat, high blood pressure, stroke, diabetes) , poor concentration, faster aging, forgetfulness and can impair judgment. Try to aim for around 7-8 hours of sleep most days per week. For many people, late night snacking, computer or TV are the main reasons why people stay up late.

Hopefully these tips were not overwhelming. The key to making changes is to aim for progress and to create a positive environment for success. 

Create a plan as to when you will workout, what you will eat for meals and when you will go to bed for two weeks. 

Two week is not that long to form habits but it is a manageable amount of time to be consistent. 

This way you can make realistic changes and reflect on what’s working or not working as you work hard to reach your goals and hopefully live a more balanced, healthy and active lifestyle. 

A few more pics from the event: 

My awesome coach, hubby, bike mechanic and partner in life.

My talks always include samples of a Trimarni creation. YUM!

Goal sheets! What's the point of an action plan if you don't have goals?

Yummy! My Trimarni chiachoco heart healthy mix

Changing some lifestyles.....

Boost athletic performance with restful sleep

After 6 consistent, quality workouts last week, it's time to reward my body with a restful night of sleep. 

As an athlete who is passionate about training smarter in order to train harder, I feel absolutely no guilt when I see all of my alarms set on "OFF."

Yay for no-alarm Mondays!!

As a coach, I see and hear far too often of athletes waking up super early for a recovery workout. Or, after days and days of early morning wake-up calls to squeeze in the training in a time-crunched lifestyle, the body is no longer performing but the athlete feels a sense of guilt if he/she doesn't workout the same time, every day. Sure, active recovery is great and I am all for it in a balanced training plan, but never at the expense of getting a good night of sleep. 

Restful sleep is not only important for overall health but for athletes, it's crucial for rest and recovery. 

For the fitness enthusiast and health conscious

Did you know that restless or inadequate sleep can increase risk for depression, weight gain, cravings, health problems (heart disease, heart failure, irregular heartbeat, high blood pressure, stroke, diabetes) , poor concentration, faster aging, forgetfulness and can impair judgment. Try to aim for around 7-8 hours of sleep most days per week. It's likely that for most people, you can not sleep in any longer to get the recommended amount of sleep for you may risk being late for work or you may not be able to workout first thing in the morning (which may help with better sleep in the evening). So I recommend getting to bed earlier, especially if you are a 11pm or later "lights-off" type of person. Address late night snacking, computer or TV use as well as your diet patterns which may be causing you to stay up late or get a restless night of sleep. 

For the athlete

I think most athletes and coaches understand the importance of quality sleep and how sleep is a big part in the recovery process from intense training. However, this is one area where many dedicated, hard working and motivated athletes fail to succeed because a "no-alarm" morning or day-off from training may cause you to think you are slacking, being lazy, will gain weight, will not perform well, etc. because of a missed workout day. Also, many athletes are stuck in black or white thinking and a day off from training means no movement, no stretching, little focus on wholesome eating etc. Once again, I stress the importance of balance in the life of an age-group athlete. 

So in reality, sleep deprivation or inconsistent sleep, alongside not allowing room in a periodized training plan for adequate recovery will only increase the risk of a decrease in athletic performance and increase risk for injury, sickness and burnout. 

When it comes to adequate sleep vs the sleep deprived, there is not one specific category for those who sleep well and those who do not. But I think most athletes who sleep well, know how much sleep they need to feel rested.  If you want to see if you are in need of more consistent sleep, try going to bed without an alarm as early as possible on a Friday after a long week of training and balancing life/family/work and try waking up without an alarm. Be sure to keep your room dark and without outside noise. This may show you how much sleep your body is in need of to fully recover. However, although 9-10+ hours of sleep after a hard training block or week of life/training may be needed, on average, most healthy individuals will report needing around 7-8 hours of restful sleep a night to perform optimally in sport and in life. For many, this may be a fantasy to get that much sleep. 

For many athletes, even skimping on 30-60 min of sleep a few days per week can cause a host of health and performance issues...especially if the inconsistent sleep habits are occurring overtime. 

-Sleep deprivation may negatively affect glucose metabolism and cortisol which may increase the risk for insulin resistance, impaired recovery, a suppressed immune system, inefficient use of energy during workouts and increased cravings. 

-Sleep deprivation may affect mood, concentration, alertness, skills and judgement. All very important components of performance when it comes to using and moving your body especially for triathletes while riding a bike or for other athletes who require skills and concentration to perform. 

The key to any balanced training plan is consistency. Perhaps one or two nights per week you are sleeping only 6 hours due to an early morning workout or a late night of meetings/errands, etc. That may be fine for you can catch up the following day by going to bed a bit earlier so that you do not put yourself into sleep dept. Just like with training, you do not want to take too many risks with your body or else you may fall into a deep hole that you are unable to get out of. 

Try to make restful sleep part of your routine and this may mean modifying your workout routine slightly in order to get your body into a good sleep cycle. Although you may not have to modify every workout, every day, consider allowing at least one day per week to wake up without an alarm for a workout (you still need to go to work). You want to make sleep a priority in your routine, just like wholesome eating, stretching and training smart.  

If you are an athlete who is training for an event and is following a 8, 12 or 16+ week training plan, remember that you are using your body to perform in order to adapt to training stress. If you feel strongly about your "EZ" am workout of strength, swim, bike or run am because you are stuck in a routine and feel like life can not go on if you don't workout every morning, keep in mind that every movement you make burns calories and planning intentional off days can help with consistent training. Consider an evening yoga class, a long walk with your dog, a lunch break stretch or playing with your family in the evening as great energy boosters on a day "off" from training. As you sleep in and/or take a day off from training, bottle up all that unused "training" energy for a quality and consistent next 5-6 day block of training. 

Campy - the cutest professional sleeper. 

 

What's more important? Diet or Sleep?

There was a really interesting article that I came across a few days ago: Workout or Fix a meal? In the article, "findings suggest that one healthy behavior can take time away from another healthy habit, and that public health recommendations need to take into account the time people have for beneficial lifestyle habits on a given day."

Now if you want to lose weight or change body composition , you may be thinking to yourself that you know that diet is just as important as exercise but if you are an athlete, this is likely going to ring a bell when you think about how much attention you place on your cardio routine but often feel like you don't "have time" for stretching, good sleep or meal planning. I think one of the most common reasons why triathletes don't strength train is because they say "I don't have time."

"There's only so much time in a day. As people try to meet their health goals, there's a possibility that spending time on one healthy behavior is going to come at the expense of the other," Tumin said. "I think this highlights the need to always consider the trade-off between ideal and feasible time use for positive health behaviors."

I remember writing an article not too long ago (December) on my blog about sleep and exercise and which one being more important? So many athletes sacrifice quality sleep for training and I often find it being a limiter in quality, consistent training and racing. Not to mention that culprit for moodiness, stress and feeling exhausted throughout the day. There are many people who have extremely bad sleeping habits and choose to eat large meals before bed, sleep on the couch or just don't feel as if sleep is important and then there are those who won't even think twice about skimping on sleep. 

I wanted to repost my article along with a yummy recipe as you think about some of the habits in your life and how you can tweak things to create a more balanced, healthy and active lifestyle. 

SLEEP

The other day I posted on my Trimarni facebook page about how much I value sleep. Appropriately, there was an excellent article from the Washington Post showing and explaining how sleep can affect disease, appetite and other health problems.

                                    

I highly encourage you to read the article if you are someone who struggles with getting a restful night of sleep, most days per week.

As for how much is enough?  I think that differs person to person but it also has to do with your lifestyle routine. We know that the body is constantly repairing when we sleep...and working. So for an age group athlete who not only trains for races/events but has a full-time job (parent or in an office), sleep is vital for consistent gains in life and to minimize risk for illness and injury. You do not have to prove you are a superhero by being able to function with only 4-5 hours a sleep.
Additionally, as you will read in the article, a restful night of sleep is the key. Good sleep means that for most nights, when you fall asleep, you are out for enough cycles to wake up feeling rested. I know for myself that I've learned that I can only afford one to two nights of sleeping 6.5-7 hours for anymore I struggle with activities of daily living. My energy fads as the week goes on, I have more afternoon cravings, I don't think as clear, I don't recover as quickly, I feel moody at times and my performance suffers with training. However, with only one to two nights of 7-hours of sleep, I know that a good night of sleep for 8-8.5 hours (depending on my training phase) most days of week will help keep my life in balance. So, the issue is not trying to make time for more sleep but rather, making sure sleep is the priority and making everything else fit in for a consistent life routine.

In other words....are you the athlete/fitness enthusiast who falls asleep at 9pm, wakes up at 11pm to get a snack because you are hungry, you go back to bed at midnight (falling asleep with the TV on or browsing through your iPhone/pad) and then wake up at 3am to go to the restroom because you had a bowl of cereal w/ milk at 11pm (or before bed) and then you jump out of bed at 4am when the alarm goes off so that you can do your 3-mile recovery run?

Sit down with a piece of paper and make sure you have your priorities in the right place:
Make time for sleep
Make time for a healthy diet

Don't expect to life a busy, go, go, go life and hope to find the time tomorrow because you will be "good" tomorrow. If you are currently training for an event and find yourself like a zombie by thurs or friday, perhaps it is more beneficial for consistent quality training to take a rest day on Wed or get a little extra sleep by modifying workouts mid week than trying to be a superhero and expecting your body not to fail you from Mon - Sun, week after week after week.

DIET

So, then the question comes into the diet - does a healthy diet override quality sleep or is sleep more important than a healthy diet?

I am sure you can guess my answer.

It's all about balance.

There is a great saying that "you can not out-train a poor diet". In other words, if your diet is not balanced in a way to support the metabolic processes during activity, don't expect to eat whatever you want and however much you want and then just "exercise" your way to "good" health. Sadly, it doesn't work like that.

I find that when it comes to creating an individualized, balanced lifestyle, people are always quick to think about the person who is an anomaly. You know, the one who can eat whatever she/he wants but still has great race results or has the "perfect" body (if there is such a thing). Or the person who ate only x-foods (aka followed x-diet) for 3 months and lost 30 pounds and now feels amazing. When was the last time you just thought about yourself and didn't compare your life to others....wishing that you could be like others or questioning why others have it so easy or why they can do it and you can't?

I think about my own journey in the past few years and I am very proud of my own changes in regard to living a lifestyle that I feel is balanced and healthy. As a health professional, I am not forcing my lifestyle on others but rather helping to inspire and motivate you to think about what it is you can do to make for a balanced life. Certainly, some of the things that make me feel healthy now were established overtime so when it comes to the diet, you can't expect to feel the positive rewards overnight.

This blog post is simply to show you that your life is your life. If you can give a little thought every day as to what works and doesn't work (depending on what you want to "feel" like and be doing now, in 10 years and in 50+ years) and how you can make small changes for tomorrow, I have a feeling you are going to feel so much more balance in your life and overall, a better way of enjoying your time on Earth.

To keep you motivated in the kitchen, here are two yummy creations that will make you feel great....and with a happy belly, I am sure you will sleep better in the evening.

Enjoy!

Colorful Seasonal saladOrange slices
Carrots
Celery
Tomatoes
Leeks
Leafy green lettuce
Edamame
Corn
Quinoa (Red or white)
Cranberries
Pumpkin seeds
Sliced almonds

Lemon Tahini Dressing (or spread)  

(As featured in my lastest monthly Plate Not Pills Article on LAVA: Manganese)
3 cloves garlic
1/4 cup tahini (sesame paste)
1/2 cup lemon juice (1 large lemon)
1 tsp lemon zest
2 Tbsp water (add more for desired consistency needs for a dressing)

1. Combine ingredients in small blender (ex. Ninja cup blender) and store in glass jar or Tupperware container in refrigerator.