Once again so much time has passed since my last blog post! Four Corners has been buzzing with my first official fitness and lifestyle challenge, Om 4 The Holidays. We wrap up next week and it has been awesome to continue to share my love of yoga and help try to ground our energy amidst the craziness that is this time of year. To be honest, I try not to play into all of the “hype” of seasons — I think it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy and we actually have a lot of agency, but that said things did get pretty tense for me in a lot of areas of life between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Like many, feeling the pinch of the ongoing pandemic and navigating the daily emotions of renewed hope and also healthy stoicism.

I had promised a list of Seattle pandemic-proof Christmas activities but here we are already at the 18th! We landed on digital streams of Pacific Northwest Ballet’s The Nutcracker, Spanaway Fantasy Lights (I grew up doing this! Hidden regional gem!), tons of movies (I finally watched the 2019 Little Women and just loved it! But craving the 90s version), making pierogi, which is a feature of Polish Wigilia, and of course sending gifts to friends and family near and far.

We just received the rest of our wedding photos so we have been enjoying going through all of them and picking some out for what will inevitably be a belated-Christmas gift follow up with thank-you cards needing to go out still too!

As we get closer to January 2021, I wanted to touch on a few thoughts that have come out of the experience of doing this yoga challenge. First of all, I am hoping to lead challenges in the future but transparently, it was a ton of work and with hoping to pull of something a bit more polished in the future, I am not going to jump into offering anything in early January. Plus I think there is a ton of great exercise content out there already to choose from for your new year kickoff!

Where I do want to focus is on nutrition coaching. In my day job, I continue to find that coaching is my favorite part and passion: having real conversations; working one on one to help others reach their goals. I have a unique perspective when it comes to food and nutrition. I’m studied in both the macro-level of the food industry, as well as the latest in nutrition science. Ultimately, I believe it all comes back to the basics of building habits and removing roadblocks that are keeping you from your success; all while being realistic and an ultimate goal of living a happy AND healthy life.

If you are interested in working with me one on one for nutrition coaching, please reach out and we can discuss pricing and packaging.

On the topic of nutrition, since this week is our Third-Eye Chakra week in O4TH, it seemed like the perfect time to talk about what I’m eating lately.

While I’m not an expert on the topic, I would say at this point I have reached what feels like my comfort zone of Intuitive Eating. From intuitiveeating.org “Intuitive Eating is a self-care eating framework, which integrates instinct, emotion, and rational thought and was created by two dietitians, Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch in 1995.” It includes 10 Principles and while I won’t go into detail here on how I have or have not applied each to my routine these days, I’ll summarize.

After years of building, building, building habits and seeing the changes that it brought to my life, I can sit back a bit and trust that I know what works for me. I notice my hunger cues and cravings and I honor them. Sometimes that means getting up to grab some water or going for a walk and sometimes it means making a chocolate cake and enjoying every bite of my slice or two. Most of the time I’m eating balanced meals with plenty of veggies and lean proteins, but I have found that I thrive with more carbohydrates than some people and I don’t need to restrict them for performance or physique reasons.

In short, every “nutrition rule” out there, I have learned to take through the lens, but does this work for me? which I think is a critical piece missed in a lot of short-form content like click-bait articles, TikTok and Instagram posts. There is a lot of discernment in the approach (this is 100% going to be one of my words of 2021.)

I had a defining moment a few weeks ago when I started tracking my calories just for a few weeks to get a gauge for where my energy levels were at (things have fluctuated so much in quarantine!) and this was a purely objective research project; no emotion attached or assigning value to myself based on how much (or how little) I ate. After a few weeks of this I started having a ton of issues with MyFitnessPal’s app so I actually ended up deleting it and when I couldn’t find an easy swap, I took it as a sign to just let the practice go for now and trust.

I’ve been drinking a lot less alcohol but I’m also struggling with drinking enough water. I haven’t baked Christmas cookies because the thought of just me and Martin eating a batch didn’t make a ton of sense, but I also have been adding more grains to most of my meals and feeling more satisfied because of it, which probably has something to do with not craving the cookies!

The point of all of this is just the level of passive observance. I know the seasons of life will change and my habits will go along with it, but the push and shove of making major changes has come and gone. A better analogy now is continuing to canoe on a river that has some calm and some rougher patches.

Some of us went off cliffs this year with family obligations, injuries, illness, pregnancies, childbirth, grief, financial burdens and more. You might be in a season that takes a little more energy to navigate the waters of your own health and I hope you honor that.

I’ll be sharing a lot of my takes on the messaging the fitness world is putting out as we come out of this historic year, but the only word of advice I can give is come back to your intuition: does this ring true for me? You have the answer. You already know what you need.

Many blessings to you and your families and stay and sane this holiday season!