As women all too often we try to do a million things at once — and then we suddenly wake up to the unpleasant reality that this just isn’t possible.  You’re only human — and capable as you may be, you can only take on so much.  So in the spirit of digging out from under, here are some tips for dealing with overwhelm.

• Identify: A big part of feeling overwhelmed is not knowing where to start.  Try to pick three areas of your life: personal, relationship and career/professional and write down ALL the nagging things (both big and small) that are rippling under the surface and effecting your peace of mind.  This “brain dump” alone can be useful in that it shows you what you really need to deal with so that it’s not as  Getting Things Done author, David Allen so aptly terms it, “a nebulous mass of undo-ability“
• Prioritize: Once you identify the items in each category, rank them on a scale of 1 to 5.  1 being very important, 5 being very trivial. 
• Decide: Of all the #1 items on your to-do list decide: 1) which are the ones that are the most important to you in terms of life goals, values, passions and 2) which tasks/projects once accomplished will give you the most bang for your proverbial buck.
• Act:  Break your top 3 most important tasks into 3 actionable subtasks and decide what is the next “actionable” step that you could take towards its attainment.  Many times we feel overwhelmed because we see a mountain and think we are supposed to leap over it…we forget that it is a process and that it is made up of lots of smaller tasks which are victories in themselves.  So “clean out attic” (something I just did a few weeks ago) becomes “call carting service to rent dumpster” and “buy plastic organizers“, etc.
• Assign:  Tim Ferris, in his worthwhile (if a wee bit optimistic) book, The Four-Hour Work Week talks a lot about the importance of farming out tasks that you do not need to do.  He is a big proponent of leveraging high school and college students — even virtual assistants overseas to handle mundane tasks that can be real time-wasters
• Just Say “No”: Too many people (women, in particular) are uncomfortable with saying “no”.  I’m not always great at it myself….but I’m getting better.  I think a reasonable way to avoid getting committed to projects you’d just as soon leave alone, is to buy yourself sometime and never answer on the fly, if possible.  You can save yourself a great deal of kicking yourself afterward by going with something like, “I really can’t commit to that right now because I have a lot going on and always want to an excellent job on whatever I commit to.  I’m going to look at my calendar and commitments and get back to you”.  Then afterward do some soul searching and make sure that you are doing something that you want to do or feel is important to do.
• 6 A Day:  The legend is that Charles Schwab paid a friend $25,000 for this idea because it radically improved the effectiveness of his organization.  Pick 6 (no more, no less) of your high-priority, next actionable step tasks and do them each work day.  Where will you get the most traction on the things that matter to you most?  Whether it is having a better relationship with your kid — or getting  that new client.
• Let Go:  Overwhelm is often a product of staying on the treadmill of success for a long time and not realizing that you need at least one (preferably two) days off per week.   Stephen Covey author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People calls this “sharpening the saw”.  The joke is that this guy is trying to saw this tree with a dull saw.  He’s sweating, straining, not being very effective.  So another guy says, “Hey, why not take a break and sharpen that saw?”.  To which the first gentleman replies incredulously, “Can’t you see I’m trying to cut down this tree?!!“.  In other words, if your mental “blades” are dull and rusty you can’t be very effective.

Just some thoughts to get this thing rolling in the spirit of  “Hey, I’m doing the best I can.  Doing pretty darn good — and trying to get a little better every day“.  I hope you find some of these tips helpful in reducing your stress load. 

Now if you’ll excuse me…I need to go and remind myself of what I just wrote .

  Geralyn Coopersmith, MA, CSCS is an exercise physiologist, certified personal trainer, author of Fit + Female:  The Complete Fitness and Nutrition Game Plan for Your Unique Body Type and the creator of The Best Me Ever, a comprehensive weight loss and wellness system just for women.  It’s a first of its kind program designed to fit into a busy women’s life.  Lose weight and look great — 90 Day Unconditional Money Back Guarantee!!

I think far too many people begin a weight loss or fitness program with unrealistic expectations.  Men often fool themselves into believing (on some subconscious level) that a few weeks of bench pressing is going to turn them into the guy on the cover of Men’s Health.  Women, on the other hand, often think that a particular workout (such as yoga or Pilates) is going to make them “longer and leaner”.

Now I’m all for believing that great things are possible for all of us (both physical and otherwise).  But on the other hand I am also a realist.  Therefore, I always ask my clients to do an honest assessment of what fit might look like on them. 

Unfortunately, the media (women’s magazines mostly) help perpetuate the notion that if you do this workout for a month you are going to look like a particular celebrity or model.  But fitness doesn’t make people gorgeous (wise selection of parents usually does that), it makes people fit. 

For example, 8 weeks of a fitness walking program is going to do amazing things for you by potentially  decreasing: your risk of heart disease, your blood cholesterol, your blood pressure, your body fat percentage… on and on.  It will not, however, turn you into a bathing suit model.  Going into a program expecting to end up looking like Gisele by the end of it, is a sure-fire recipe for disappointment.

It is essential to remember to measure yourself by your own yardstick.  For example, if you have short legs…nothing is going to make them longer (they’d need to replace your femur to do that — sounds painful

– and messy), but exercise sure can make them leaner(which actually can give the illusion of greater length).  Likewise, if you have smaller breasts, exercise is not going give you massive cleavage (although having defined pecs actually can give the illusion of greater cleavage). 

The point is that being healthy and fit turns you into the best version of yourself.  Not somebody else.  Understand this from the get-go — embrace it and get inspired by it.  Remind yourself, you’re not aiming for the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, you’re going for you looking better and feeling more comfortable in a bathing suit than you ever have before.  And (far more importantly to my mind) you are going for you being the healthiest version of yourself that you’ve been in years (maybe ever).

By starting with goals that are based around what is and what realistically could be you are setting yourself up for success and tuning out the culturally reinforced notions of what you are “supposed” to look like.   You’re supposed to look like you — only better .

  Geralyn Coopersmith, MA, CSCS is an exercise physiologist, certified personal trainer, author of Fit + Female:  The Complete Fitness and Nutrition Game Plan for Your Unique Body Type and the creator of The Best Me Ever, a comprehensive weight loss and wellness system just for women.  It’s a first of its kind program designed to fit into a busy women’s life.  Lose weight and look great — 90 Day Unconditional Money Back Guarantee!!

Depression has long been associated with a variety of physiological symptoms, including joint and muscle pain.  Now a new study out of Hebrew University in Jerusalem has found having the blues is also bad for your bones.

Researchers looked at scientific data on over 20 thousand people and found that there is a clear association between depression and having lower bone density.  Apparently, depression increases the activity of osteoclasts – specialized cells responsible for the breakdown of bone.

This is important because osteoporosis is the most widespread degenerative disease in the so-called “developed countries”. 

One in three women will develop osteoporosis in her lifetime (and one in five men). Young women suffering from depression are actually at the greatest risk, because they are still in peak bone-building years.

So add this to the list of reasons that people who are (or think they maybe) suffering from depression should get medical help.  Symptoms of depression, include:

• Loss of interest in normal daily activities
• Feeling sad or down
• Feeling hopeless
• Crying spells for no apparent reason
• Problems sleeping
• Trouble focusing or concentrating
• Difficulty making decisions
• Unintentional weight gain or loss
• Irritability
• Restlessness
• Being easily annoyed
• Feeling fatigued or weak
• Feeling worthless
• Loss of interest in sex
• Thoughts of suicide or suicidal behavior
• Unexplained physical problems, such as back pain or headaches

  Geralyn Coopersmith, MA, CSCS is an exercise physiologist, certified personal trainer, author of Fit + Female:  The Complete Fitness and Nutrition Game Plan for Your Unique Body Type and the creator of The Best Me Ever, a comprehensive weight loss and wellness system just for women.  It’s a first of its kind program designed to fit into a busy women’s life.  Lose weight and look great — 90 Day Unconditional Money Back Guarantee!!

Thou shouldst eat to live; not live to eat ~ Socrates

My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four.  Unless there were three other people ~ Orson Welles.

When I was a kid I had a plate with an angel’s face on it that said, “Be an angel, eat it all“.   In fact, when I was growing up we were always told to “clean our plates” because there were, “children starving in Biafra“. 

Now I was a sensitive kid, so it made me really sad to think about those hungry children in Biafra.  I wasn’t even sure where Biafra was, but it sounded very far away.  Moreover, I didn’t understand how my eating lima beans in New Jersey was helping them out. 

I thought a more logical solution would be to put those beans in a box (along with that slab of liver that I also didn’t want) and simply send them to Biafra.  But for reasons never made clear to me, my parents never went for that.

Now that I’m a mom, I take the opposite approach.  I don’t ever force my 9 year old to clean his plate, because he has always had the innate ability to know when he’s full — and stop eating.   And that’s an ability I don’t want to mess with.

It’s fascinating to me.  It doesn’t matter how much he might be enjoying a particular food (even ice cream or cake) whenever he feels full — he just stops eating.  He doesn’t feel the need to finish everything just because its there — or even because it tastes delicious.  And that’s a powerful tool which will set him up for a lifetime of stress-free weight control. 

If you watch babies eat and then push away the nipple or close their mouths to the spoon, it would appear that all of us are born with this innate ability to self-regulate our intake.  But, unfortunately most of us lose it somewhere along the line.  At some point in time (for most of us) food becomes more than fuel for our bodies and we start eating for other reasons.  In this country we eat because:

• It tastes good
• It’s a social activity
• We are bored
• We are stressed or upset
• It’s “time” to eat

I believe that women as a gender, tend to have a more dysfunctional relationship with food than men, because of the added societal pressures we face to stay slim.

For too many of us food is either something we love but feel totally out of control with.  Or something we avoid as much as possible, because we fear we’ll gain weight.  Very few of the women I know feel completely comfortable with food. 

The fact is, we all need to develop a healthy relationship with food, because we need to eat several times every single day.  Food isn’t something that you can avoid — like cigarettes or alcohol.  It isn’t (or rather shouldn’t be) a vice.  In a perfect world, all of us would view food for the fuel that it is, try to make good choices every day and occasionally enjoy the pure pleasures of taste –without going completely overboard. 

Geralyn Coopersmith, MA, CSCS is an exercise physiologist, certified personal trainer, author of Fit + Female:  The Complete Fitness and Nutrition Game Plan for Your Unique Body Type and the creator of The Best Me Ever, a comprehensive weight loss and wellness system just for women.  It’s a first of its kind program designed to fit into a busy women’s life.  Lose weight and look great — 90 Day Unconditional Money Back Guarantee!!

There have long been misconceptions…about training and conception. 

Norwegian University just released a study which analyzed exercise and it’s impact on fertility over a ten year span.  Researchers studied 3000 women and found that two factors were associated with increased likelihood of infertility:

1. Training every single day
2. Training to exhaustion (regardless of frequency and duration)

This turned out to hold true even after researchers adjusted for other infertility factors (body mass, smoking, previous pregnancies, etc.).

In fact, women who worked out every single day were a whopping 3.5 times more likely to have fertility problems.  Those who exercised everyday to exhaustion had the HIGHEST risk of fertility problems.

The good news is that these factors were reversible, so once training was reduced to more moderate levels (of frequency and intensity) fertility levels rose as well. 

Researchers believe that extreme energy expenditure of exhaustive exercise alters the body’s ability to maintain the normal hormone function essential to the fertility.

That said it’s important not to stop working out all together because good overall fitness is still important for general health, including fertility.  In fact, very low levels of fitness (and obesity) are also associated with conception problems.

Moderate exercise 3-5 times per week is probably fine and beneficial for most women, but every woman is different.  Women should be particularly concerned when their training is associated with missed periods, irregular periods or no periods at all.  Menstrual irregularities are a powerful indicator that hormone function is being negatively impacted by training. 
Geralyn Coopersmith, MA, CSCS is an exercise physiologist, certified personal trainer, author of Fit + Female:  The Complete Fitness and Nutrition Game Plan for Your Unique Body Type and the creator of The Best Me Ever, a comprehensive weight loss and wellness system just for women.  It’s a first of its kind program designed to fit into a busy women’s life.  Lose weight and look great — 90 Day Unconditional Money Back Guarantee!!

I shot a segment today for Eyewitness News here in the NYC Area.  It will air this coming Monday, during the 5 PM news.   I won’t spoil the segment, but in doing a little research for the piece I found some rather amazing information.

In 2002 they did a study in England and Ireland where they asked women to walk up the stairs at work each day for 8 weeks.  They started with one flight of stairs and gradually worked up to walking 200 steps which took most people about 2 minutes.  They went up the stairs 6 x during the work day – for a total of 12 minutes of work.  Now mind you this wasn’t all at once, rather just 2 minutes at a pop.  The results?  In just 2 months these women increased their HDL (the good cholesterol) and improving the ratio of good cholesterol to bad.  They improved their work capacity (as measured by their “VO2 Max” and a decrease in the production of metabolic wastes during exercise).  Experts calculated that in just 8 weeks they had decreased their of having a heart attack by 33%!!   Working out just 12 minutes a day — and not changing their diet or anything else.

Then another study built on that and looked at a much larger group of individuals.  But in this study they only had them do only 100 steps/day for a total of 6 minutes of work spread out in their work day.  And guess what?!  These folks had similar benefits to the point that they decreased their risk for cardiovsacular disease by about 20%.  In just a few weeks with 6 minutes of exercise per day.

Now nobody is saying that these people became hard bodies from these workouts, but the fact is they had a tremendous impact on their health and their risk for having a heart attack.  That’s significant because every year 1.1 million people in the US have a heart attack and about 1/2 of those will be fatal.

This is really great news, because everyone has 6-12 minutes/day to exercise.  Best of all stairs are free and found everywhere…at home…at work…in the park…at the mall…you name it.  There is really no excuse! 
Geralyn Coopersmith, MA, CSCS is an exercise physiologist, certified personal trainer, author of Fit + Female:  The Complete Fitness and Nutrition Game Plan for Your Unique Body Type and the creator of The Best Me Ever, a comprehensive weight loss and wellness system just for women.  It’s a first of its kind program designed to fit into a busy women’s life.  Lose weight and look great — 90 Day Unconditional Money Back Guarantee!!

Stress Reduction Sunset at Esch Beach

Several of my entrepreneurial friends and coaching clients feel extra stress as they move through seasonal transitions.  The slower paced days of summer kick in to the high paced energy of Autumn immediately after Labor Day weekend. The abrupt change, no matter how well planned for,  can be stressful.

Stress is defined as a state of mental or emotional strain resulting from adverse or very demanding circumstances. Science has proved that stress damages our DNA and can shorten our lifespan.

Have you ever been so stressed out that you notice a change in your complexion, body weight, or sleep patterns?

Getting control of stress is paramount to living a healthy lifestyle.

If you are experiencing a lot of stress, act now to eliminate as much anxiety as possible. I’ve found the best way to handle stress is to learn to relax your body with stress management techniques. Regular exercise, yoga, soothing music, meditation and breathing exercises can be very helpful in relaxing your body, mind and soul.

Lower transitional stress levels by implementing some of these stress busting ideas today.

Seasonal Stress Reduction Action Plan:

1. Create a Joy or Gratitude Journal

Observe and record ten things that bring you joy or that you are thankful for every day.

2. Be Quiet

Schedule 15 minutes every day to get centered and attract the feeling of peacefulness.

3. Move your Body

Schedule time for some sort of body movement every day.

If you don’t like to exercise, consider these options: Dance to your favorite song, walk on a woodland path, stroll on the beach, ride your bike. Just get moving.

4. Listen to Music

When you are feeling overwhelmed, listen to your favorite music to lift your spirits. Soothing music is a universal stress buster.

5. Make Time For Extreme Self-Care

Plan a minimum of 30 minutes every day to do something just for YOU.

6. Add More Healthy Foods to Your Diet

Make sure you are drinking plenty of water, eating leafy green vegetables and
snacking on lots of of fruit every day.

When you start to live a lower stress lifestyle, you will be amazed by how much better you feel. Your friends and colleagues will notice your transformation and you will be walking on the path of true balance.

You deserve to take better care of YOU.

Shann Vander Leek is the Founder of True Balance Life Coaching and Co-founder of Seize True Success. She is a Coach Training Alliance certified professional coach, and certified yoga instructor. Shann is a prolific blogger, published writer and co-author of the Best Selling Book – Wake Up Women BE Happy Healthy & Wealthy. Shann’s personal style and direct approach have guided and inspired many in overcoming personal and professional challenges. Her background in sales, marketing and client development, along with leading a talented sales force for many years prepared her for the business of professional coaching. Shann inspires women in transition to create balance in their lives through personal coaching, yoga and creative expression. Telephone and email consultations make her accessible to clients all over the world. To find out about her Coaching Programs for Women, call Shann at 231.668.111 or visit www.truebalancelifecoaching.com

Yesterday I had the amazing experience of spending the day in a workshop with Tom Myers.  Tom is the author of the sensational, Anatomy Trains, which details how fascia effects the entire body and virtually everything we do in day to day life. 

Now most of us in the fitness world don’t think too much about fascia.  We think more about muscles — which is ironic since fascia is a critical component of muscle.  It’s not surprising then that most lay people don’t think about fascia.  In fact, most people don’t even know what it is – unless they’ve been told that they have ”plantar fasciitis”. 

But fascia isn’t just on the bottom of the foot — it is virtually everywhere in the body.   Muscle fibers are covered by it, bunches of muscle fibers (known as fascicles) are covered by it, the entire muscle is covered by it, it continues on past the muscle to create the tendon — and it attaches the tendon to the muscles at the periosteum (which is fascia covering bone).

According to Myers (author of Anatomy Trains and leading fascia expert) there are 7 layers of different types of fascia on average in most parts of the body.  Some areas have as many as 20 layers.  In fact, there is a layer of connective tissue like a pair of panty hose pulled up over the entire body to the top of the head (called the fascia profundis).

Why should we care?  Well…

• Muscles can’t develop properly when fascia is knotted up
• Fascia can dramatically alter our posture
• Imbalances in the fascial lines of pull can contribute to over use injuries, pain and dysfunction
• Problems in fascia in one part of the body can cause pain somewhere else — sometimes a part of the body far from the site causing the pain
• Fascia actually contracts (thanks to recently discovered contractile cells called myofibroblasts) - helping the muscles contract, providing the body with better strength and protecting the lower back from injury
• Once you stretch fascia, it stays stretched…although your central nervous system might move you back into familiar/habitual postures.

Some things that we do to improve the health of our fascia:

• Get regular massages from a qualified bodyworker/LMT (if at all possible).  It’s not just an indulgence, it can help improve the health of muscles and many bodily systems. (Tom was a student of Ida Rolf’s but is the creator of a unique type of bodywork known as KMI Structural Integration. There 12 session work addresses each of the fascial planes)
• Use foam rollers, balls, massage sticks, your hands (or a friend’s) to work out knots.  Roll or knead them over your body until you find a tender spot.  Then try to roll over the spot until the knot yields.  You can do this before or after you workout — or on off-days as part of your recovery.
• Make sure you warm-up before you workout.  Fascia’s contractile properties don’t kick in until at least 15 (probably closer to 20 min) after you start working out.  This includes getting warm and stretching.  Static stretching can be particularly effective for this.

Geralyn Coopersmith, MA, CSCS is an exercise physiologist, certified personal trainer, author of Fit + Female:  The Complete Fitness and Nutrition Game Plan for Your Unique Body Type and the creator of The Best Me Ever, a comprehensive weight loss and wellness system just for women.  It’s a first of its kind program designed to fit into a busy women’s life.  Lose weight and look great — 90 Day Unconditional Money Back Guarantee!!

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about why the fitness industry hasn’t been more successful in recruiting people in to adopting a healthier lifestyle.  I can’t help but wonder if we (as an industry) have unrealistic and distorted expectations about what people will actually do.

The other day I was listening to Gray Cook on one of the StrengthCoachPodcasts (which for anyone who doesn’t know about it — is an amazing free educational resource that every fitness pro should be listening to) .  Anyway, Gray (who does a regular segment on the podcast) was talking about his friend Jon Torrine’s “StrawberryPop-Tart” approach to nutrition.  

Jon Torrine, is a brilliant guy who is the Strength and Conditioning Coach for The Colts.  He told Gray about how he gets his players who don’t like to eat breakfast to start.  Rather than telling them he wants them to have a tofu-veggie scramble for breakfast…he starts with something he thinks he can get buy-in on.  “Could you eat a Strawberry Pop Tart?”.  Talk about getting your foot in the door.  Brilliant, I mean…come on…who doesn’t love a Pop Tart?!   That white frosting made of…well okay…not quite sure what…but something deliciously sugary and inside that yummy…”real” fruit filling!

Now I know that a lot of purists would poo poo this kind of approach saying something like, “OMG those are terrible for you!” or “they are filled with chemicals and preservatives” or “don’t you know they are loaded with empty calories?”…blah, blah, blah.  Meanwhile, the bottom line is – these guys aren’t eating ANY breakfast.  

Objectively speaking, from the standpoint of nothing in your system after fasting for 8 hours vs. a  Pop Tart…guess what?   A Strawberry Pop Tart is better.  It’s a “breakfast”.  And that reality of the situation is that the tofu scramble (at this point in time for these particular folks) is just not happening. 

Then once they get comfortable with that they might want to take it to the next level…maybe next it will be white toast with jam…then maybe they’ll move on to multi-grain toast with all-fruit spread…you get the idea.  Before you know it they could turn into one of the healthiest eaters on the planet.  The point is we need people to start somewhere. 

What WILL people do vs. what SHOULD they do?  Take a walk for 30 minutes vs. — they SHOULD do 15 minutes of warm-up, then 30 minutes of resistance, then 30 minutes of energy system development (cardio)…come on!  Most people aren’t doing anything!   So a 30 minute (even a 15 min) walk is quite literally – a  HUGE step in the right direction. 
Geralyn Coopersmith, MA, CSCS is an exercise physiologist, certified personal trainer, author of Fit + Female:  The Complete Fitness and Nutrition Game Plan for Your Unique Body Type and the creator of The Best Me Ever, a comprehensive weight loss and wellness system just for women.  It’s a first of its kind program designed to fit into a busy women’s life.  Lose weight and look great — 90 Day Unconditional Money Back Guarantee!!

The writer, H. L  Mencken, said famously, “No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public“.  This statement is as true today as it was in the first half of the last century when he said it (hello…Celebrity Rehab?  Dance Your Ass Off?….but I digress). 

Unfortunately, I think you could tweak this statement to something (less pithy but equally true) such as, “No one will ever go broke betting on the worsening health habits of the American public”.   

Now I don’t know much about finance (and I’d like to think of myself as an optimist), but judging from what I see whenever I travel around the country — I don’t think the current trends in America’s poor health are likely to change.  That said all this obesity, hypertension, type II diabetes and more will make for some secure long-term investments in the following industries. 

Pharmaceuticals - Folks are going to need “meds” (and lots of them) to stay alive and live as they always did – without the annoyance of good nutrition and exercise.  Most Americans will end up taking prescriptions for: hypertension, Type II diabetes, heart disease and joint aches and pains from being overweight and out of shape.  

Knee, Hip and Shoulder Replacement Technologies – Americans aren’t taking care of their joints.  Between not exercising, not stretching and gaining tons of weight we are banking on installing a few replacement parts to get us through our Golden Years.

Those Motorized Wheel Chairs – These won’t be reserved for those with legitimate health problems.  With obesity in epidemic proportions more and more folks aren’t going to be able to walk around — even after their joint replacements.  Maybe the movie, Wall-E wasn’t so far off.

Any Food Chain Which Has A Lot Of Menu Items Which Are Deep Fried and/or Covered in Cheese (Preferable BOTH) -  I ate at an Applebee’s recently and the waitress asked if I’d like to “start” with a ” Kahlua mudslide” and maybe a nice plate of fried mozzarella sticks.  Downing about 2,000 calories before lunch?  Yep…sure sounds like a good plan to me. 

Diet Programs- In a world where you’re eating 2000 kcals before lunch you’re going to need a whole lot of these. 
Geralyn Coopersmith, MA, CSCS is an exercise physiologist, certified personal trainer, author of Fit + Female:  The Complete Fitness and Nutrition Game Plan for Your Unique Body Type and the creator of The Best Me Ever, a comprehensive weight loss and wellness system just for women.  It’s a first of its kind program designed to fit into a busy women’s life.  Lose weight and look great — 90 Day Unconditional Money Back Guarantee!!