To understand the importance of making small deficits in your food intake each day we must first understand metabolism. What is metabolism? Metabolism is all the chemical reactions that happen in your body to keep you alive and moving. The total amount of energy that your body requires in a day to live and move is called total daily energy expenditure, and has four components: Basal metabolic rate - basic life sustaining functions such as breathing and blood circulation Physical activity - intentional exercise Non exercise activity thermogenesis (also known as NEAT) - energy needed for all other movements outside of exercise, such as brushing your teeth, writing an email, cleaning the house, etc. Thermic effect of foods (TEF)...
It's Sunday afternoon, you feel a burst of motivation to finally get back on track with your fitness routine. You start day dreaming about how amazing you'll feel and how great you'll look once you finally find that consistency with getting active and working out. Before you know it though, the week is almost over and you haven't made a single step in the direction of that goal. You find yourself defeated (again) and wonder how the heck you're ACTUALLY going to do this? How are you going to make this happen? How are you going to FINALLY find consistency with getting active? I have been there more than once, and still have moments where I struggle with this, and...
Rewilding is a return to our roots, a reconnection with the natural world from which we come from. It’s recognizing that we are part of nature, rather than separate from it. It means to embrace our planet and become aware of it’s beauty and abundance, but also its fragility. Micah Mortali explains in his book, Rewilding, that human rewilding is “a return to our essential nature and an attempt to reclaim something of what we were before we used words like ‘civilized’ to define ourselves”. We live in a society that is disconnected from the natural world. Think about your typical weekday. Many people wake up in a heated house, take their car to work, and sit at a desk for...
Jungian Psychology explains that there are 12 Feminine Archetypes, in this blog post I'd like to focus on the 7 that resonated most with me; the Innocent, the Caregiver, the Explorer, the Sage, the Outlaw, and the Ruler. These may have different names depending on which resource you're looking at. Each archetype represents a different type of person with certain characteristics and energy. I like to think of the archetypes as personifications of energy within. We can usually see parts of all of the archetypes within ourselves, but are often drawn to and associate with one or two of the archetypes more strongly than the rest. We can use these archetypes to reflect on the qualities that we already possess,...
This past week has not been easy for me. I hurt my back on Friday morning and was down and out all week long. I hadn't had back pain for years, and there I was on the ground not able to get back up because of a spasm, or a pulled muscle, or something! After a few minutes I gathered my composure and crawled to a nearby railing to help myself stand back up. I wasn't able to do much at all for the first five or six days and then things started to improve over the past few days. I had to cancel classes, reschedule a workshop, and put on hold some upcoming projects because of this injury, which...
