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Note: During my run 12 weeks ago, I broke my iPod Nano … again (See weeks 13 through 16). I decided not to fix it or purchase the iTouch. Instead, I’ll wait till this September for the latest generation of Apple iPod to be released until I can run with music again and log my exact time, pace, and mileage.

RUNNING MIND

RUNNING BODY

Getting into sleep is not within your control: You don’t have power over it. The less you worry about snoozing yourself to sleep, the more likely you are going to the first stages of REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep. Accept that some things in life, such as snoozing, are beyond your control. Once you do that, aim to get deeper into Non-REM sleep, in which you experience rapid physical healing (and completely lose control), thanks to the large outflow of growth hormone. Studies have repeatedly show that people who spend more time on the REM stage of sleep compared to the Non-REM part are associated with clinical depression.

Tip #1: SLEEP NAKED. Cool off under your massive blankets (and still feel sexy). This keeps your body functioning at a calmer, more restful state.

Tip #2: DRINK CAMOMILE. The warm cup not only boosts your immune system, but also relaxes your nervous system, which helps to ease you into deep slumber. (P.S. Mild as it is, the herbal infusion is touted for fighting inflammation too).

Tip #3: STAY FOCUSED. Stop making a mental to-do list for tomorrow. Quit numbering your concerns of yesterday. Focus on your breath, then just listen to your quiet inhales and exhales. It’ll take your mind off. (Better the slow and deep than the short but shallow).

Tip #4: LOOSEN UP. Women are more likely to suffer from tight hips and lower back pain, including myself. As a runner, this following FitSugar sequence helps me gain the mental and physical flexibility I need before jumping off to bed:

RUNNING SPIRIT

LET IT ALL IN – BUT GO ALL OUT.

Always be able to give an account of yourself. You are not here to merely survive; you are here, now, present, to thrive for a purpose that only you and God alone know.

Always be aware of the things you are responsible to care for, but make sure you develop a strategy for sustainable development and prevent all the hard work you’ve done in the past to fall in vain. Progression requires accountability, that’s why I made the Making Miles worksheet.

View my weekly mileage progress here and my all-time PB (personal best) record here.

Remind yourself everyday, every week, every month and every year how far you’ve come to where you are today:

Set high standards, but never forget how far you’ve come to be where you are today. This is not about my running – it’s about you and becoming your best self. Stay awesome

♥

Muchaluva,
Stace.

Images courtesies of visual.ly / listal / Pete Barrett 

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Note: During my run 11 weeks ago, I broke my iPod Nano … again (See weeks 13 through 16). I decided not to fix it or purchase the iTouch. Instead, I’ll wait till this September for the latest generation of Apple iPod to be released until I can run with music again and log my exact time, pace, and mileage.

RUNNING MIND

• To sleep better, consciously cultivate a positive outlook: In a study published on the Annals of Behavioral Medicine, scientists Cornell University researchers followed 100 middle-aged Americans and measured their daily mood patterns as well as their sleeping habits. As expected, their result shows that those who hold a moderate and sustained positive feelings throughout the day is associated with better sleep quality, compared to the unstable mood-swingers. “While possessing relatively stable high levels of positive emotion may be conducive to improved sleep, unstable highly positive feelings may be associated with poor sleep because such emotions are subject to the vicissitudes of daily influences,” told associate professor Anthony Ong to HuffPost.

Does this imply that true, lasting happiness comes from within, as opposed to a reactive state of being largely dependent on external events? I believe so.

RUNNING BODY

• To cultivate a positive outlook, go on a diet: John Maxwell, better known for his portfolio of best-selling books on leadership, blogged to share the simplest way to cultivate a positive attitude in life.

From reading his entry, as well as his books on growth and attitude, learned that it doesn’t simply mean blindly injecting sugar rushes of optimism all over your body.

Looking at the world outside in a brighter light, meaning YOU control your worldview, involves deciding how YOU interpret a neutral circumstance, then framing them in a way that benefits the wellbeing of others and yourself. It’s a whole lot of physical workout that requires one weighty mental effort.

Try the one-day John Maxwell’s diet:

1. Feed yourself the right “food.” If you’ve been starved of anything positive, then you need to start feeding yourself a regular diet of motivational material. Read books that encourage a positive attitude. The more negative you are, the longer it will take to turn your attitude around. But if you consume a steady diet of the right “food,” you can become a positive thinker.
2. Achieve a goal every day. Some people get into a rut of negativity because they feel they’re not making progress. If that describes you, then begin setting achievable daily goals for yourself. A pattern of positive achievement will help you develop a pattern of positive thinking.
3. Write it on your wall. We all need reminders to help us keep thinking right. Alex Haley used to keep a picture in his office of a turtle on a fencepost, to remind him that everybody needed the help of others. As incentive, people put up awards they’ve won, inspirational posters, or letters they’ve received. Find something that will work for you and put it on your wall.

RUNNING SPIRIT

LET IT ALL IN – BUT GO ALL OUT.

Hold yourself accountable. Watch after yourself in order to see how far you’ve come and keep going. Right now I don’t have my usual iPod nano to tell my pace like I usually do, but I don’t want to pressure myself to buy a new one hastily just to get the complete data of my runs. Without pace, I still have times to count on (find out why distances on the treadmill is not reliable).

Feel free to view my mileage progress here and my PB (personal best) record here. Remind yourself everyday, every week, every month and every year how far you’ve come to where you are today.

Here’s to making your miles:

Unplug, unwind. Take it easy, girl; there’s only so much human beings can do in one day. Might as well have a great one G’day!

♥

Muchaluva,
Stace.

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Note: During my run 10 weeks ago, I broke my iPod Nano … again (See weeks 13 through 16). I decided not to fix it or purchase the iTouch. Instead, I’ll wait till this September for the latest generation of Apple iPod to be released until I can run with music again and log my exact time, pace, and mileage.

RUNNING MIND

Stressed? Affirm your personal values to boost problem-solving skills, mood: The new study, reported in the journal PLoS ONE, involves researchers dividing 73 stressed college students into two groups: they asked the first group to do a self-affirmation exercise and the second to do a control exercise. Then, all participants were asked to perform tasks to test their problem-solving skills. The self-affirmation group performed with higher scores compared to the control group.

“Specifically, we show that chronically stressed individuals have impaired problem-solving performance and that self-affirmation can boost problem-solving performance under pressure,” wrote the researchers on the study.

The self-affirmation group were asked to write why certain values are important to them, so I’ll allow myself to do the same exercise right now:

• Integrity: Just as @RickWarren recently tweeted, “You grow stronger every time you choose integrity over popularity,” and the premise has been time and again proven based on my personal experience. Whenever I choose to be right and stay true, refusing to keep quiet about my own mistakes, tell lies, and badmouthing others’ names when I could’ve easily gotten ahead to higher positions if I wanted to, I was able to slowly, progressively, but surely advance to go on my daily lives with a sense of deep relief that I have nothing to hide. Even though it’s always harder to maintain your integrity than to just letting “conventional wisdom” control your behaviors, your heart grows stronger every time you face a challenging obstacle if you strive to protect this value. Honesty is still the best policy.
• Discipline: Self-control is invaluable to me because you can’t achieve anything without it. If you keep waiting for the perfect condition until you can do something, you will never get anything done. Self-control allows me to deplete my ego, shift my focus to others, and deliver my best even though at that moment, I may not be “in the zone” or in any other pleasant states where I can best carry out my responsibilities. I found a great way to discipline myself: Develop good habits persistently until they become your second nature.
• Perseverance: It’s easy to give up. But it’s important for me to persist because persisting like water cutting through rocks empowers me. Every challenge becomes a reminder that I am the one in control of my situation. I can choose to be a victim or the victor of the challenge, as opposed to letting circumstances take over me. Giving up is easy when conditions are hard, and that life seems unfair. But no matter what situation you’re in, there is always something good that you can highlight and hold on to until you make it to the finish line. I find that chanting Jason Mraz’s choruses helps me get through the day, thank goodness we have such an inspiring and talented singer alive today.

RUNNING BODY

- Image courtesy of listal

Dopamine activation aids weight loss efforts: On a recent study published in the Journal of of Neuroscience, U Penn researchers reported that when the nucleus accumbens, the small region of the brain’s reward center associated with addictive behaviors, is exposed to DBS (deep brain stimulation), obese animals are prompted to reduce their caloric intake to prompt weight loss.

- Image courtesy of NIDA

Senior author of the study Tracy L. Bale, Ph.D., said that DBS, a possible therapy for major depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder, reverses the brain’s response to dopamine deficits by activating the reward-regulating receptors in the brain. ”Based on this research, DBS may provide therapeutic relief to binge eating, a behavior commonly seen in obese humans, and frequently unresponsive to other approaches.” Binge eating is often defined as the uncontrollable consumption of high-caloric foods within a short period of time. In the fast-paced world today, this behavior has never been more prevalent.

Thankfully there is a much quicker and equally effective way to stimulate dopamine release. Music, for one, and getting plenty of sleep. The brain uses very little dopamine while you’re snoozing, so sleeping long helps build up an ample supply of dopamine for the next day.

Tyrosine, an amino acid abundant in certain foods such as almonds, avocados, bananas, sesame seeds, pumpkin seeds, soy products and other high-protein foods, helps your body to produce more dopamine as well.

RUNNING SPIRIT

Maintain your accountability, because every minute you spent investing on your health strengthens you as it becomes an invaluable capital for life. Remind yourself everyday, every week, every month and every year how far you’ve come to where you are today. Feel free to view my mileage progress here and my PB (personal best) record here.

Click the button below to download your very own weekly Making Miles worksheet and start seeing yourself progress

Rule of thumb: Always opt to plod rather than sprint. Once you’ve crossed the starting line, whether it’s 2-K or 10-mile distance, always pretend you’re in a marathon – and this doesn’t only apply in running.

P.S. Connect with me on Nike+ Running! Run over 50 miles and you’ll earn a trophy like I did In the meantime, though, because of the other day with my iPod Nano (second time this happened now), I don’t think I’ll be able to run with music, track my pacing, and count my miles accurately in the meantime.

♥

Muchaluva,
Stace.

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Note: I’ve revamped the Making Miles worksheet a bit, as well as changing the pseudo-haiku catchphrase into something far simpler (See below) Also, during my run 9 weeks ago, I broke my iPod Nano … again (See weeks 13 through 16). I decided not to fix it or purchase the iTouch. Instead, I’ll wait till this September for the latest generation of Apple iPod to be released until I can run with music again and log my exact time, pace, and mileage.

RUNNING MIND

Lately I’ve been listening to plenty of podcasts while driving to and from work. One of my favorites is SciAm‘s 60-Second Mind.

An interesting episode discussed a study published on Psychological Science on the perception of time. Findings from the study show that when we dedicate our time to doing selfless tasks, it’ll feel like we have more free time to do more. Busying ourselves selflessly also empowers our sense of self.

I thought this as a great idea to motivate ourselves to work harder. It’d be useful to construe every task from your to-do list, so that, at least, checking off errands would mean something to others, even though the tasks may feel like a waste of time for me.

Check out some of my favorite 60-Second episodes:

• When old habits die easy [link]
• Keeping secrets weigh you down, literally [link]
• How to gain self-control [link]

RUNNING BODY

Face it: You need to recharge.

A minute is a minute, but you’re human too.

No matter how busy your schedule seems, no matter the zillion tasks you have to get done on your to-do list, always set aside a little “me time” everyday.

Take care of your body. Whether you like it or not, it is with you wherever your mind wanders, for as long as you’re living on this planet.

RUNNING SPIRIT

Keep yourself accountable. Watch after yourself in order to see how far you’ve come and keep going. Right now I don’t have my usual iPod nano to tell my pace like I usually do, but I don’t want to pressure myself to buy a new one hastily just to get the complete data of my runs. Without pace, I still have times to count on (find out why distances on the treadmill is not reliable).

Feel free to view my mileage progress here and my PB (personal best) record here. Remind yourself everyday, every week, every month and every year how far you’ve come to where you are today.

Here’s to making your miles:

Remember to take some time every day to unplug and unwind. There’s only so much things human beings can do in one day. So … might as well have a great one G’day!

♥

Muchaluva,
Stace.

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Note: During my run 8 weeks ago, I broke my iPod Nano … again (See weeks 13 through 16). I decided not to fix it or purchase the iTouch. Instead, I’ll wait till this September for the latest generation of Apple iPod to be released until I can run with music again and log my exact time, pace, and mileage.

RUNNING MIND

Things you need to maintain consistency: General psychology tells us that when it comes to intrinsic motivation, the kind that has nothing to do with external factors to push you forward, there are 3 things that makes us feel fulfilled:

1. a sense of competence,
2. relatedness to other people, and,
3. strongest of the three, autonomy (the sense of freely choosing what to do)

These pillars of personal satisfaction, also called the self-determination theory among psychologists, has been proven true in multiple studies since the ’70s, as proposed and developed from earlier works on motivational psychology by Richard M. Ryan and his colleague Edward L. Deci.

Steps to a better self: (adapted from Marina Krakovsky’s feature, “The Secrets of Self-Improvement: Meet your goals with research-proven tips and techniques” on the March/April 2012 issue of Scientific American Mind)

No matter what kind of goal you have, these tactics can help get you there.

1. Maintain Realistic Expectations

• Visualize your success along with the specific obstacles you will face.
• Avoid situations that trigger the habits you want to break.
• Forgive yourself if you slip up; keep moving forward.

2. Find What Motivates You

• Think about how making this change will help you become the person you aspire to be.
• Try to come up with fun ways to work toward your goal.
• Imagine how achieving your aim might strengthen your relationships with other people.
• Find a way to measure your process and track your accomplishments.

3. Take Baby Steps

Set short-term, achievable objectives that add up to a big change.

4. Formulate Action Plans

• Prepare yourself for specific situations: “If I am offered a cigarette, I will say, “No, thanks.’ “
• Frame your intentions as positive actions: “I will say, ‘No, thanks,’ ” works better than “I will not take it.”
• Picture yourself carrying out your plans.

RUNNING BODY

Why one instance of overeating leads to extra-overeating in your next meal: Overeating, like any other behavioral dependance in life, is linked to biochemical alterations and chemical irregularities in the brain, particularly in areas associated with addiction and drug abuse. Though not necessarily a causal relationship, eating a meal exceedingly high in fat, sugar, and salt in one sitting changes your brain in a seemingly harmless way that may trigger future addiction to eating higher-caloric meals with little nutrients.

Unbeknownst to you, your brain perceives the two slices of rainbow cakes and half a bag of chips as one afternoon hour of pleasure. Later on, you might end your day with four more rainbow cake slices and finish the rest of the chips, plus, perhaps, a bag more.

By increasing the amount of pleasurable foods on your palate, you’re also increasing the reward center’s threshold in the brain, which is the same circuitry that governs those who are gambling-addicted, cocaine-buffed, and alcohol-abused. The mere taste of junk food on the tongue triggers the release of dopamine, a neurotransmitter associated with motivation, punishment, and reward.

Just one slice, or one sip of beer, is enough: Be aware of your pleasure portion-control, lest you develop an addictive behavior that’s way beyond your baseline levels of neurochemical density. ”To start an addictive cycle, dopamine must be felt, and for that the brain must have ample dopamine receptors,” explained Katherine Harmon on ScientificAmerican.com. “In many substance abusers a low level of dopamine receptors, either from the outset or caused by the behavior, means they increasingly have to seek more dopamine-inducing substances to reach a level of neurochemical reward they can enjoy.”

Any unhealthful behavior continuously reinforced becomes a downward spiral on both your physiological health and psychological wellbeing. Avoid unnecessary pounds and quit corrupting the brain circuitry, but don’t go on depriving yourself completely of the sweet, little pleasures of that rainbow cake.

Or …

As an alternative, have good sex frequently: It’s not just the surges of dopamine. One hot session promotes the release of exercise-induced endorphins and bonding chemical oxytocin while relieving stress, headaches, migraines, upping your chances of a positive, long-term change in self-esteem.

RUNNING SPIRIT

Whatever it is in your life you’re building mileage of – be it a weight loss program, a habit removal, a career change, or a sleep schedule - keep yourself accountable to ensure success. If you want to move mountains, you’ve got to count every mile you’ve covered.

Click the button below to download your very own weekly Making Miles worksheet and start seeing yourself progress

Rule of thumb: Always opt to plod rather than sprint. Once you’ve crossed the starting line, whether it’s 2-K or 10-mile distance, always pretend you’re in a marathon – and this doesn’t only apply in running.

P.S. Connect with me on Nike+ Running! Run over 50 miles and you’ll earn a trophy like I did In the meantime, though, because of the other day with my iPod Nano (second time this happened now), I don’t think I’ll be able to run with music, track my pacing, and count my miles accurately in the meantime.

♥

Muchaluva,
Stace.