walking

Planning and scheduling time with those you love is obviously crucial to maintaining a healthy and happy relationship. We are all so busy these days that it’s always a good idea to schedule time to reconnect.

If you’re like most people, your dates/special times are based on “calories consumed,” whether that means eating at a new restaurant, getting snacks at a movie, meeting for a fancy coffee or a glass of wine after work. These things can be great ideas for spending time together but once in a while why not try  looking at the opportunity to be with those you love a little differently?

Plan your time with loved ones based on “calories burned.” What I mean is to pick activities to do together that are focused on being active and expending calories.

Whenever I visit Europe — whether to explore a few former Soviet bloc countries or to take a  2,000-mile driving trip through Italy and Switzerland’s Ticino region — I’m always struck upon “re-entry” into the U.S. by how BIG everything is here at home.

We drive big cars, especially here in Colorado, where every other vehicle seems to be an SUV. Our cars have big cup holders for our venti Frappucinos and Big Gulp sodas. We live in big houses that we furnish with stuff we buy at big-box stores. Our big refrigerators – and often an extra freezer – are crammed full of food we purchase at big supermarkets. And, alas, we ourselves are big, and getting bigger: According to the American Heart Association, more than 70 percent of American adults are overweight, and of those, nearly 38 percent are obese.

Europeans clearly do things differently from us. Yet their ‘smaller’ lives seem in many ways richer and fuller. I’ve begun to notice some of those differences that we might do well to consider. Here are five that really struck me:

by The FIRM Master Instructor Jennifer Ray

I think we can all agree on one thing: Life is busy. With that said, who has time to exercise?

I’m not here to scold, because we are all guilty of making excuses as to why we don’t have time to exercise. And I’m not saying these excuses aren’t often legitimate either — sometimes there really aren’t enough hours in the day! What I am here to do is offer easy solutions to a problem that faces us all.

We all know that the key ingredients to weight loss and maintenance are exercise, healthy nutrition and proper rest. But what happens when you feel like you’re no longer getting results with your exercise routine? Does this mean that exercise doesn’t work anymore? Not a chance! It could just mean that you need to break out of your current workout rut — variety is the spice of life, after all!

Here are four signals that your routine might need a tune-up:

1. Your workout bores you.

You used to enjoy walking outside, so why do you dread your walk workout each day? It’s easy to get bored if you stick with the same routine for too long. Sometimes it helps to add variety to your walks. For example, try listening to music when you walk, adding speed or hill intervals, or bringing a family member or friend along with you. I’m sure your family pooch would welcome a stroll around the neighborhood! If all of that isn’t enough, then maybe it’s time to try a new activity. Maybe you’ve always wanted to try biking or are interested in taking a dance class? Change can help keep your workouts fun and interesting, giving you something to look forward to.

When it’s time to leave home, consider the planet as you make your plans. These simple practices take little effort but can make a big impact on the environment — not just for Earth Day, but every day.

1. Start before you go

Unplug your electronic appliances when you leave home for an extended time, especially those with digital or LCD displays such as TVs or microwaves — these suck a lot of power whether they are switched on or not. The Department of Energy estimates that so-called “vampire” or “phantom” energy waste accounts for 5 percent of total electronic energy consumption in the United States. You should also make sure your thermostat is turned down or off, and reduce the setting on your water heater.

If you’re trying to add more activity and movement to your life, one place to look for inspiration is your children. When we were kids, we never said, “I have to go exercise.” We just wanted to play and move. Here are four things about being active and healthy that you can learn from kids:

I spent part of the holidays in Los Angeles this year, surrounded by a sea of asphalt and traffic sprawling for hundreds of square miles. Shuttling between relatives and friends on the maze of 14-lane freeways, I soon felt spiritually exhausted by the visual din of billboards, power lines, parking lots, storefronts, neon signs and cars blowing past at 80 mph.

My feet have served me well.

Although I wasn’t an early walker, I have always been an enthusiastic one. Family lore has it that I was tied like a dog to a stake in the backyard because I was such a dedicated wanderer. Living close to a river meant that my trailblazing could lead me to trouble, so my mother kept me tethered. I maintain that she could have simply kept an eye on me but, it being the ’60s and all, perhaps that would have cut into her cigarettes and activism.

If you want to start a debate at the next party you go to, bring up birthing politics. Hospital or home birth? Drug-free or an epidural? Birthing tub or stirrups? And remember that not so long ago, there was only one option. It was called, “You’re doing this now, whether you want to or not.”

The National Institutes of Health, in monitoring obesity and overall public health, has announced the impact of “holiday weight-gain” on the long-term issue of obesity. Are the 5 to 7 extra pounds between Thanksgiving and Christmas really an issue? No, not really. Most people will take the initiative after the new year and get most of it off. But it’s the most of it that’s the problem. There seems to be about 1 extra pound that lingers each year, and that yearly pound is beginning to look like a possible cause of the slow, age-related (upward) movement of the scale.