07.20.23

FIELD NOTES

Hello friends,

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How do you generally look at life? Are you a glass-half-full or glass-half-empty type of person? If you have something you know could use some work, what's your typical response?

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I am currently completing a new mentorship and came across this line, "frame deficits as opportunities," and it got me thinking.

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I like to think I'm a bit of a go-getter. I have a lot of confidence in my abilities to do (or not to do) things but, more so, I try my hardest to take everything as a learning opportunity. Even if something isn't very fun to experience, I really do believe that we can utilize those events/lessons in a positive way. If anything, we've just learned that we don't love that thing - that's great!

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This train of thought got me thinking about how my environment and behaviors can factor in to that camp of thought, too. I started to notice that if I don't have certain elements under control, I tend to feel worse and/or have a less optimistic outlook.

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And this thought, led me to my topic today - which are our health-promoting behaviors and habits. Sometimes I call these basic lifestyle guidelines, which is a term I learned in my OPEX CCP cohort.

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Basically, these are the things you hear literally everyone preach about, but don't always take as seriously as we all should: sleep, hydration, sunlight, quality foods, intentional movement, steps, a mixture of strength & aerobic work... the list can go on.

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So, I wanted to break these down a bit more because what I'm connecting more and more often is that these, and my adherence to them, directly impact my outlook on life too. Without further adieu, here's my framework for general health promoting behaviors we should all try to work on:

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Sleep - aim for 7-8 hours of quality sleep. For most of us this will take some adjusting our night-time routines and possibly how our rooms are to improve this but our sleep can directly help our recovery, energy, digestion, mood, and chronic stress too, among many other benefits. If you have a hard time with this, try reading (not from a screen) before bed and keeping a cool room.

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Hydration - aim for half of your weight (in pounds) in ounces of water per day. Most of us have some type of "drink water!" drilled into our heads from a coach or parent growing up. They were right. Water helps with a ton of things like recovery, body temperature regulation, keeping our organs properly functioning and more. However, hydration isn't JUST about water. We also want to keep in mind our relative fluid balance, which includes considering your electrolytes. I made a brief video about this on instagram.​

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Sunlight - aim for time in the sun, ideally with about 50% of skin exposure. Now, if I'm being honest, this one is probably the toughest for me, but I like to reframe it as time outside. I don't like to put a time restraint on this, though, because, for me, the more time I get outside, the more I want to be outside. Sunlight exposure can help improve your sleep (hmmm see the relationship now?), your mood, and regulate your immune system because of the increased vitamin D production that UV light helps with.

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Intentional movement - try to move with purpose each day. Everyone understands that movement Is a huge key to life. It can help build strength and improve our quality of life and ability to complete our day-to-day tasks. I say this because these are things a lot of people take for granted but for any adaptive or aging clientele, this is something they have to keep in mind every day. Not to mention the power of movement in terms of our mood and, you might've guessed it, recovery as well. So, move more.

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Incorporate strength work & aerobic work. This plays into movement, but in short, it's important to do both. Strength work (resistance training) will help you build and maintain your muscle and strength, which will help you resist entropy as you age and aerobic work or other cardiovascular work will help improve the health of your heart, lungs, and blood vessels. Improving both can help improve your quality of life and ability to do rad things. Not to mention a decreased risk of a variety of diseases.

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Try to focus on quality foods. Aim for simpler food options about 80% of the time. Keep protein in mind here. Give yourself the flexibility the other 20%. This ties into where some people get really into eating whole foods and the benefit of "whole foods" versus processed is simply that they are simpler foods with less added ingredients. I think we can all acknowledge that this is a good thing, but they can also go bad faster and are more expensive. I will always encourage people to try to eat these foods but they aren't the only way to have quality foods. There are a ton of frozen options that work just as well and are often better suited for peoples lifestyles.

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Find a creative and fun outlet. This one is something I didn't appreciate until recently in life. Find something you enjoy doing and keep at it. Give yourself and your mind an outlet to explore with. Find what you enjoy and keep doing it. This provides a source of freedom that can be hard to find. When you find it, keep at it and keep the pressure off.

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We can definitely keep going with this list, but let's save that for another day.

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Try to improve these areas of your life and then audit your perspective on whatever else is going on. And vice versa. If your sleep needs some work, imagine how things might be when it improves. If you aren't moving a lot, imagine how your life will be if you move more.

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I'm always surprised how much these behaviors and my perspective on life correlate so I would imagine you will be too.

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And while you think on that, I'll leave you with this again...

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Frame deficits as opportunities.

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Until next time,

Alli

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113 Cherry St #92768, Seattle, WA 98104-2205
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