As we approach peri menopause and menopause between mid thirties and early fifties our nutritional needs change as our hormonal picture begins to shift. The cortisol our adrenals produce becomes relatively higher than the sex hormones we produce and that together with a slowing thyroid can throw us into insulin resistance, which means our bodies process sugars less efficiently paving the way for weight gain especially around our middle, which is unhealthy for our hearts. This is an abbreviated, and simplistic explanation of the process, but the bottom line is the way we eat and how much we move at this time in our life has a direct relationship to the quality of life we are likely to experience down the track.

There are many things we can do but, one simple measure we can take is to cut way down on the white stuff in our diet white sugar, salt, flour, and potatoes and every thing made with them. These things behave like sugar in our system, and quickly bump up our blood sugar levels and our hormonally imbalanced systems struggle to cope with the overload, consequently we gain weight rapidly.

Protein on the other hand helps our bodies maintain healthier blood sugar levels. So slow down on the bread especially wheat, and up the fish, eggs (free range if poss), nuts, seeds, soy dairy ( if tolerated) and lean meat. Add a healthy dose of exercise and watch your weight drop.

Cheers,
Nancy

If you enjoy reading about exercise and putting together your own individualised program our system is for you.
Our system is very effective. We’ve been using t for over thirty years with great for ourselves and our children.
Our eldest is currently competing in Costa Rica at the World Surfing Games the Olympics of surfing, so to speak and has showed good stamina and fitness to see her through the early rounds, with good scores, for a relative rooky to international competition.

Our system is easy to understand, is quick to put into practice, and is excellent value. With commitment, you can achieve great results with this system and garner great satisfaction in doing so.

Visit www.flexibilityplus.com and let us know how you get on

Cheers

Nancy

Get a big enough why: There’s enough in these two blog posts to supply that though isn’t
There, if painful premature death isn’t a big enough why than I don’t know what is. Since none of us think that’ll ever happen to us though sometimes even if we’ve had a close brush, maybe we might need to appeal to our vanity to find  the motivation, fear of abandonment, or pride, whatever it is “carrot and stick” yourself in whatever way you need to get yourself moving

Explore the reasons you are stuck in an unhealthy lifestyle: Without this step no amount of knowledge about nutrition and exercise and their importance will make a bit of difference. We often avoid this kind of self exploration because it deals with emotions, painful ones at times, but without resolving these we cannot clear a path that will lead us to a better lifestyle. For example I had to understand that my weight issues all those years ago had to do with my using food to sooth painful emotions like homesickness, desperate loneliness etc. Once I made the connection and found some strategies to deal with it. then I could move forward with my fitness and healthy eating

Commit to Change: Make a written contract with yourself if necessary, if that works for you. Hang it on your bedroom door or the fridge! Get buy in from loved ones to goad you into keeping you on track. Maybe you could return the favour.

Schedule it: Just like any other appointment make exercise and healthy eating appointments with yourself, and record what you’ve done in your diary so you can track your progress

Visualize the Benefits: Spend 10 minutes each day visualizing all the benefits that will come to you from leading an active nutritionally sound lifestyle. Why is this such an important tool used by top athletes and business people everywhere? Because, seeing is believing! Believing creates in us the desire and motivation to bring the visualisation into reality

Finally, in this economically challenging time we may feel there are more important things to do than committing to fitness, but this is a miscalculation. Exercise is a tremendous buffer against stress, once you learn to enjoy it you’ll find it will take you out of most negative mind states, because of the endorphins the happy brain chemicals that are released with exercise. Having a strong healthy body helps you become mentally stronger because it literally helps rewire your brain. See one of our earlier posts on exercise and the brain for more on this. Optimal nutrition will keep your medical bills down, because you will be healthier. It will keep your household expenses down because preparing your own wholesome food from scratch is far cheaper than going through the drive through. So there is no time like the present to invest in an exercise and nutrition plan. For information on how to do this go to our website www.flexibilityplus.com to check out our products and benefit for yourself and your family.

Yours in health,

Nancy

I was talking to a friend the other day and she was telling me about a woman she knew who was taking part in a triathlon after getting on a bike for the first time in her life just a few months before. She had never been fit, and had never taken part in anything like this in her life. Not being particularly competitive by nature nor having any belief that her body could do what she was now putting it through to prepare for this event she surprised herself, her family and friends. Even her harshest critics were murmuring their admiration.

She was so inspired after hearing about another woman who had overcome all sorts of obstacles to complete this challenge. She put down the remote control and got cracking on figuring out a way to what to her was seemingly impossible. She focussed whole heartedly on the desired our come a slim, svelte body that she could do all sorts of things with most especially have the energy to enjoy her young boys in.

She got her self a trainer who helped her work out a training schedule, she discovered about healthy eating, threw out everything from her kitchen that sabotaged her efforts. Her trainer helped her put together and training eating plan and she had her partner and kids cheering her on. When she first started it seemed like her muscles wouldn’t stop screaming at her but with the help of her trainer urging her on, in time they gave up their protest and she began to feel and energy and aliveness and a sense of satisfaction in her accomplishing about what she was asking of her body to do each day. She began to fee comfortableness in her own skin that she had scarcely experienced since childhood and she actually began looking forward to her daily workout.

On the day of the race she was so excited she could barely wait for the start gun to sound. Her elation when she crossed the finish line was a high water mark in her year, the spin offs have been immense she never misses a workout if she can help it even after reaching her target weight, the sheer pleasure of keeping her body, fit, strong and flexible keeps her motivated and she is so grateful.

Feeling like this is a choice. Its’ taking one step and then another step and then another step until you accomplish your goal and have the satisfaction that goes with it. We invite you to take a look at the products we’ve created from our experience, passion, knowledge about the benefits you can derive from fitness. To learn more go to www.flexibilityplus.com.

Yours in health,

Nancy

I was talking to a friend the other day who said, “People don’t purposefully not exercise, they just don’t allow any time for training, so days, weeks, months, maybe years go by, and they still think that one day they will start to exercise…”

And then they get to 30, 40 or 50 and find they have developed some chronic health problem, and their quality of life just continues to decline as their body develops more and more aches and pains.

So, here are some steps you can take if you are one of those people who just can’t seem to find the time to exercise:

1.    STOP thinking of exercising in 15, 20, 30, or 40 or more minutes chunks of time.

2.    Instead think of exercising in 30 second increments – (you do have 30 seconds you can spare, or is life just sooooo full, you can’t spare 30 seconds?)

3.    Now think of an exercise you can enjoy doing for 30 seconds. (It can be anything – walking, running, dancing, skipping, etc).

4.    Do that exercise for only 30 seconds. No more! Because remember, for weeks and weeks you have been promising yourself to exercise and time deprivation has been your excuse, so prove that you can find extra time (but only 30 seconds).

5.    Now, buy or find a book with blank or lined pages, and write down the date you trained for 30 seconds and the exercise you did for that time. And write down below that first entry the next date and the time you plan to do this 30 seconds of exercise again.

6.    Stick to that entry date and time and train exactly for 30 seconds, then stop! Record the exercise and length of training and under that entry write down the next time and date you plan to train.

7.    Do this for one week. (Train no more than 5 of the 7 days in a week.)

8.    After one week, ask yourself, “Can I increase my training to 1 minute?”

9.    If, “Yes!” then train for 1 minute, no more than 1 minute! And follow the same system of entering in times and dates.

10.    After one week of 1 minute training, ask yourself, “Can I find time to train for 1 ½ minutes for 5 days of the coming week?”

11.    If, “Yes!” Then follow the same routine and pattern, and week after week continue adding 30 seconds to your training until you feel satisfied with the duration of your training, and stick to that and you will have broken through the barrier of exercise procrastination.

Note: As you increase your training you may be wanting to follow a varied and interesting exercise program.

If you want easy to follow information that will give great results check out our website www.flexibilityplus.com

All the best

Jonathan

Some years ago I had to take my mother who was in her eighties to the hospital because she had a blood nose that she found difficult to stop bleeding.
After taking her inside and making sure she was being properly looked after I had to go back to my car and make sure where I had parked was OK.
For about 5 minutes I was sitting in the car near the hospital main entrance and I was absolutely shocked at the numbers of people continually going through those hospital doors.
So many of them looked unwell, unfit and unhealthy (I guess that is what you’d expect). But it was the big numbers that got to me, that were going through those doors, in such a short period of time.
It got me thinking about what choices had these people made in their lifetime to end up at this place. Most were nowhere near as old as my mother, who had played golf well into her seventies and was still active in her early eighties.
I thought about how important it is to make good decisions throughout your life.

I see some young energetic people in their twenties regularly smoking, eating fast foods, and they so often get a cold, or some other illness.
Its as if their bodies are giving them early warning signs that they need to alter their life style, they need to drink way less (if any) alcohol, they need to stop smoking, and they need to eat wholesome food. But they don’t seem to take any notice and I wonder if in another twenty or thirty years they will be walking through a hospital door because they have a kidney complaint, or their heart isn’t quite working how it should, or they get dizzy often…
We all need to take stock of what we do now, because what we do now does matter!
Our system of exercise and nutritional advice is sound and solid with heaps of variety. There are over one hundred different exercises so there are different ones suitable for every level of fitness. The nutritional information is easy to follow and full of excellent advice plus recipes.
Check us out on www.flexibilityplus.com
Enjoy life!
Jonathan

Even if you don’t have the hour; the 45 minutes or even the 30 minutes, there’s no excuse to totally for go your exercise completely. Even as little as 15 or even10 minutes of brisk walking, stretching or weight training will make a difference. Remember the effects of exercise are cumulative so every little bit counts. And you know what’s interesting once you get up and on the move you rarely just do the 10 minutes that was all you thought you had time for. Because once you are up and out of that chair with each minute of exercise you gain more momentum and the joy of working towards achievement of your fitness goals, or even more basic than that the wellbeing you feel from just the deep breathing involved, the sun or wind on your face if you’re training outside, etc. means you’re in the groove and just feel like keep going.

If all you really have is ten minutes between appointments and you haven’t time to get outside or the weather isn’t being cooperative ten minutes to limber up with some simple stretching exercises will do you a world of good. For ideas see our products on our website www.flexibilityplus.com.

Cheers,
Nancy

Thought you were of the hook huh?

Just because you’re on the road’s no excuse to slack off. Trust me your body will thank you if you find a way to stay with a routine even when you have no access to a gym etc. The effort you make to stick with it will mean being able to slide effortlessly back into full gear when you return and avoid the typical readjusting that your body makes when you start all over again after a break, which usually equals lot of muscle aches and pains. This in itself can be so off putting that it can derail your entire effort to maintain a fitness programme.

So here are some tips when you are on the road:

1.    Case the joint and find the parks, walkways, or bush trails near your accommodation, conferences venue etc.
2.    Set your alarm 30 to 45 minute earlier than usual and hit the pavement, sandy beach or pebble stone path before breakfast. Your clarity, efficiency, and productivity will improve out of sight.
3.    Take your business partner, colleague, or client with you and do some business while you walk during a lunch time break. You won’t over eat at lunch and you might even be able to fit in an extra engagement with the time you save.
4.    Invest in one or more exercise rubber bands. They come in different resistances and give you a great resistance workout when you don’t have access to weights. You can do this while watching the 6 o’clock news before heading off to your evening sales presentation or conference dinner.
5.    If you’re feeling like connecting with your inner child, slip into some comfortable trackies and head for the local playground. Find some out door stairs, low balance beams, a climbing frame, and a set of monkey bars go for it and have blast. After 20 minutes of playing you’ll have wonderful healthy glow and feel like a kid again!

I feel so inspired I’m heading up and down the stairs for some of my own advice

See ya later,

Nancy

•    Next keep fit and supple. Keeping your spine and limbs flexible will go along way to keeping your skeleton strong. Don’t underestimate the power of resistance. When you take weight bearing exercise such as walking and even more if you train with weights you strengthen and grow your muscles and in turn the stress you put on these helps fix calcium in the matrix of the bones. Yup it definitely contributes more than just a good look.
•    See a chiropractor or osteopath once a year
•    Watch the amount of protein you take in. Protein is highly acidic and your system responds by leaching calcium out of your bones to neutralise the acid, so overdoing the beef burgers is definitely bad news for your skeleton
•    Mineralise your system with plenty of nuts, seeds and root vegetables
•    If you have arthritis definitely check your self out for food allergies and take 1000mg EPA/DHA fish liver oil  or 300g GLA from flax seed oil
•    If you are female and postmenopausal and have osteoporosis, consider natural progesterone  as a cream, not as HRT). Natural progesterone is bioidentical to what your own body produces and is manufactured from plant sterols

In sum chow down on the soybeans and lube up those joints with some first class oils, expose some skin, and strut your stuff in the sunshine!

Happy groovin y’all

Nancy

Here are some great tips to help you start and keep exercising:
•    Workout why exercise is a must for you. We never really do something if it‘s a want, or a should, we only really do them if they are musts for us.
•    Make yourself accountable to your spouse, best friend, sister/ brother, who ever’s in your life who’s opinion counts to you and make a pact with them that they will hold your feet to the fire
•    You can do the same for them. Choose someone reliable and committed to the programme, though not someone who’s going to drag you into every café for black forest gateau and double malted milkshakes. The family pet doesn’t count either I’m afraid, they’ll love you no matter what shape you are in especially if there’s more biscuits in it for them.
•     Carrot and stick yourself, as long as your rewards aren’t edible ones!
•    Finally you can’t go past a good coach for keeping g you on track. Products like ours would be a definite plus. Course you have to use them for it to work. I was talking with a friend I sent material to in January and she still hasn’t put it in to action though she knows she should. Which takes us right back to point number one!

Don’t stop training if you have started and start now if you aren’t already!

Nancy

www.flexibilityplus.com