The Dangers of Sitting

Hello hello everyone!

Today I wanted to talk about something we do every single day...

Sitting.

We all do it, I'm doing it right now as I write this post, and we all know it's not great for you (blah blah blah), but! rather than just write a post that says "sitting is bad for you...stop it!" I want to tell you why it's bad as well as how to stand more.

Ahem, lemme step on my soapbox here.

The average American worker sits for 12-15 hours a day, between commuting, working, watching t.v., etc....that's a lot, and it's quite dangerous.

Your blood flow slows while you're sitting because you're not doing much and it doesn't get as much of a chance to flush fatty acids through your blood vessels, causing plaque to build up easier.

Sitting can also lower the fat-burning enzymes that manage triglycerides by up to 50%!

Your body continues to secrete insulin while you sit and your muscles start to respond less to the hormone which increases your risk for Type 2 diabetes.

Because your blood flow slows down, your brain doesn't receive fresh blood as fast as it should, causing the brain to function slower.

Your body starts to lose it's proper posture and functionality. Your hip flexors lose their range of motion, your abdominal muscles weaken so your lower back has to compensate which leads to bad posture and lower back pain.

Bad posture compresses your lungs and puts unnatural pressure on your spine.

*Did you know that for every 1-inch your head hangs forward you add 10 pounds of weight onto your spine?*

Phew! Now that we're done with the sad facts, let's start talking about easy ways to change it!

First, we all have to sit at some point, so let's make sure you have correct posture while sitting!

1. Knees should be at 90 degrees and feet on the floor
2. Elbows should rest next to side at 90 degrees
3. Lower back should have a natural S-curve, no overarching or flattening
4. Upper back should rest against the back of the chair
5. Head should be looking straight ahead, not leaning forward

Now! Let's breakdown tips to stand more between work and home.

At work:

• Sit on a stability ball rather than a chair
• Drink more fluid, it forces you to get up to use the bathroom
• Set a timer and take a standing break every 20-30 minutes
• Make sure you have correct sitting posture--place a tennis ball behind your back and the back of the chair, if you slouch forward, the ball with fall
• Do these stretches while you take your standing break

 Stretch tall up through your body, taking deep breaths

 Press your heel up towards the sky, squeezing your glute muscle

Lean forward into the foot on the chair to stretch your straight leg hip flexor

At home:

• Sit on a stability ball during TV commercials
• Walk around whenever you talk on the phone
• Whenever you're waiting in the kitchen for something to heat up, do tree pose

And finally! Let's talk about the benefits of standing more!

You burn about 120-140 calories standing versus 50-70 when you're sitting.

By replacing 30 minutes of sitting with standing it can help you lose up to 5 pounds in 1 year!

Who knew it was so easy?!

Now that you've read this, go stand!

Disneyland 2015 Part Two

Welcome back everyone!

If you missed part one to my family Disneyland trip, check is out here.

The next day we did our big day at Disneyland itself.

We started off the morning with my niece getting "princess-ified" at the Bippity Boppity Boutique

Afterwards my niece and nephew got to meet some princesses, but Belle was the biggest hit with both of them

When we got outside my favorite princess, Merida, was there to take pictures and sign autographs and I immediately got in line. Unfortunately, she was at the end of her time there so they were switching her out for Rapunzel.

 And yes, I met her too

Yes, that is a Merida bow and arrow set my parents bought me...yes I really am 24 ha!

The whole day was spent running around the park for different rides and taking family pictures

 "Helping" my nephew get the sword out of the stone

 The castle was stunning for the 60th anniversary

It was the first time I've ever been on the Dumbo ride, my sister and nephew are in the elephant behind us.

Since my niece got to do the Bippity Boppity Boutique we just had to get my nephew into the Padawan training. My brother wore a Wookie hat and I held a sign in front of my nephew that said "Pick me, my daddy, the Wookie, just got back from deployment"

And they picked him!

He got to fight Darth Vader

Afterward we took him to make his own lightsaber, with the help of Uncle Michael, our resident Star Wars expert

The lightsaber is bigger than him!

My sister and I were standing with our backs to the window and suddenly heard pounding 

The stormtroopers were walking around and scared the crap out of us.

We watched the new parade and the new fireworks show. Both were extremely beautiful and when it started to "snow" during the fireworks we all got a little choked up watching the amazement on the kids faces.

It was an amazing trip to celebrate with my entire family.

Disneyland 2015 Part One

Hello hello everyone!

Thank you all for your kind words on my last post about my mental illness, everyone has been so supportive and one woman even came up to me at work to say that I'm doing good and to keep my head up. It means a lot to me.

Recently my family and I went down to Disneyland for a big get-together to celebrate my brothers, Michael, and my stepdad's birthdays (they literally share birthdays within 4 days of each other) and in a way to celebrate my oldest brother being back from war in one piece.

Of course we would go on the day the 60th anniversary celebrations started. The first day we got down there we actually couldn't get into the park. By about 5pm they closed the parks down because they were at 100% capacity whomp whomp whomp. So we all went to dinner and watched the fireworks from my parent's hotel room.

The second day we went to California Adventure and thankfully the crowds were way smaller. My niece and nephew have never been to Disneyland so this was exciting for both of them.

We rode the Cars ride first and both kids got to "drive" the cars, and they both won! (We didn't race each other thankfully)

My nephew was eerily good at "steering" in the correct direction whenever we turned.

We rode on the ferris wheel, some rode in the non-swinging ones, but Michael, my sister Nichole, my nephew, and I rode in the swinging ones and it was a blast. Gaving (my nephew) squealed like crazy and laughed, it was just adorable.

The kiddos got to meet Donald

We wandered the park for a bit and met up with my best friend, Molly, who works at Disney

We stayed to watch World of Color and I wish I could have gotten pictures of it. It was touching, funny, and beautiful. When they started playing the Star Wars theme people lost their minds. Every adult was cheering I swear. It was amazing.

By the end of the day my feet ached like I had walked in high heels all day, but it was all a blast!

Stay tuned for part 2!

Being Honest

Hello everyone!

It's been a long time since I last blogged, too long for me to remember and I'm far too embarrassed to actually look up the exact date. I've had my reasons for staying away and today is the day for me to get into them.

I try to keep my blog motivating and happy, partly cause who wants to read a depressing blog and I know people from the gym I work at read my blog. I don't want to bring anyone down, but this is also a personal blog and I have to be honest with what is going on.

I've suffered from clinical depression and anxiety since I was 15 and I've been on and off my medication for years, never with the advisement from my doctor. Since 2012 I've been on my medication steadily and for the most part controlled my depression and anxiety. 

However, a few months after everything starting normalizing in my brain things started to get oddly out of hand. I'd have mood swings I've never had in my life; they started being slight, barely noticeable and have snowballed overtime. I brought it up to my doctor who suspects I have type two bipolar disorder. I've not been officially diagnosed, but I'll be seeing a psychiatrist soon to figure out what is going on and what to do from there. 

Overtime my episodes went from one random swing here and there to multiple extreme swings within 2 hours. My depression has become more prominent and it's made it hard to function. I've always felt a little distant from the depressive state I was in in the past when explaining it to people because I always felt that I had beat it. It's disheartening to know I'm back in that same dark place.

Some days it's next to impossible to get out of bed and I have anxiety attacks thinking about going to work. I've had multiple breakdowns over nothing and some days no energy to even eat. In my darkest times in my past I used to self-harm by cutting myself and promised myself I'd never go back there. Lately those thoughts have crept back in, I doubt I'd ever hurt myself, but the fact that my head is back in that dark space worries me.

In the end I spend most of my time lying on my couch reading or worrying about doing housework. At work I try to stay out of my negative headspace so I can be present for everyone there.

I haven't consistently worked out in ages and it's starting to show. I'm at the heaviest I've ever been and that triggers my past eating disorder to rear its ugly head.

I've found writing to be a healthy substitute to self-harm, hence this blog post. I don't know what the future holds for me with my illness, but I wanted to be honest with everyone about what is going on.

I'll be back soon with a post about my recent family trip to Disneyland.

My Fitness Gameplan

Welcome back!

As a trainer I am constantly keeping my clients' goals in mind when I create a workout. Want to work primarily on upper body strength for a sport, check! Lose weight during a contest, check!

I've really come to the conclusion that I can train other people no problems, but apparently I can't train myself.

How does that make any sense??

My biggest flaw has been consistency. I've lifted here and there over the years, but never anything consistent. After I lost a good portion of my muscle back in 2012 from my eating disorder I've struggled with gaining muscle back. I've tried all manner of exercise routines to gain muscle and in the end I haven't seen much change. A lot of that has to do with consistency, but I didn't know if maybe I was doing something wrong.

Recently I reached out to my personal training boss here at the gym I workout for some advice and direction. She has thankfully taken me under her wing and put together a routine for me. One of the biggest problems we encountered with my training has been my shoulder position. Over the years I've worked desk jobs and my shoulders have started rolling forward, even though I've worked hard on having better posture.

I'm limited to the kind of lifts I can do; in essence we're starting from the basics to set a solid foundation. I won't lie, it's frustrating. I'm learning patience which I haven't been blessed with a lot of.

My other biggest challenge has been eating. I don't eat nearly enough for my activity level and so my body doesn't function the way it should. It's difficult for my body to put muscle on when I'm not fueling it enough to do so. I've been working on eating more protein throughout the day besides just more food in general. Out of nowhere my body just woke up and seemed to want to finally eat a normal amount of food. I attribute it to my body realizing it wasn't supposed to survive on 800-1000 calories a day and finally decided to make up for lost calories.
I seem to have found my spirit animal

I'm being smart about what I eat so I'm not just shoveling junk food into my mouth.

It'll be interesting to see where this journey takes me, but I plan to keep this little page updated more often so you can follow along too.

Don't forget to like my Facebook page, follow me on Twitter, Bloglovin, and Instagram as well as share with people you know!

A Little Check-In

Hello hello everyone!

Sorry I've been so absent practically all over social media! It's been crazy trying to sort out my schedule and I've had a little medical problem pop up again.

Normally I try to keep this blog pretty upbeat, but it's also a blog about my life so I wanted to include you all in what is going on. 

Back when I was 15 I was diagnosed with clinical depression and anxiety. It really popped up after a traumatic experience and I was harming myself and considering suicide. My doctor put me on medication and counseling and things got better. Throughout the years since then things have been up and down. I've had times when I stopped taking the pills because I felt better and just ended spiraling back down into my depression.

This last round in 2012 I was put back on my antidepressant for good. I was underweight and eventually everything evened itself out and I got better and was back to normal. However, sometime last year I noticed that my depression and anxiety would creep up on me for no reason. I was having panic attacks regularly and would cry at the drop of a hat at absolutely nothing. 

I knew something wasn't right and my doctor agreed that something else was wrong that was fueling my depression and anxiety to pop back up in a cycle.

I go through times when I'm perfectly fine and then others when I can barely drag myself out of bed and have panic attacks just lying in bed.

Currently I just finished going through a downswing and am slowly climbing my way back to normal. I understood that while working out and eating healthy are good for my body and would help somewhat with my depression, it also just wasn't happening. I didn't want to guilt myself or negative-talk myself into making it in for a workout. So I just didn't. I let myself hermit and be quiet when I had the time and then focused on the obligations I had with other people; work, training clients, and therapy with my grandma.

Now that I'm feeling better I plan to get back into the swing of things.

Thanks to all of you who stick around during this lulls when I drop off the face of the earth.
I'll be back soon with some new things!

Our Engagement Photoshoot

Hello everyone!

I wanted to share with you all the amazing photography skills of our wedding photographers who did our engagement photos. 

When I first saw them on Facebook I was absolutely blown away by how stunning they look.

Without further adeu, here are the pictures!
Word of warning: Very picture heavy!

 

 

We had to hold poses for a long time so they could get every angle just right and we ended up cracking up too much that they had to keep reminding us to stop talking and laughing haha! It was so much fun and everything is just stunning!