by Dan | Aug 28, 2016 | Exercise, Family, Goals, Motivation, Wellness/Health
Accomplishments are something we need to be proud of, celebrate, and take pride in! When it comes to exercise, if it were so easy, then it would not be such a struggle to get people interested, or motivated, in doing it. Accomplishments can come big or small, and any improvement, and attempt at improvement, is an accomplishment.
Dig deep, keep going, those accomplishments will come. It is no different than starting to exercise, or lining up for your first walk/run 5K. You have to start sometime, somewhere!
You have to start in order to accomplish anything! Making that decision is probably the hardest part because convincing ourselves of that is what is hard, not the actual activity itself.
Is it a struggle some days to get out and get moving? Absolutely. Is it a struggle sometimes to finish? Absolutely. But, what you can really only describe by actual feelings after you have accomplished something challenging in your life is what it is all about. Words can only come close, but that feeling when you finish something, cross a finish line, or whatever that accomplishment may be, is truly exhilarating!
Pride! Joy! Relief! Happiness! “I did it!” Nobody can take your accomplishments away from you, and you are the one setting the tone! Go for it! Is it easy? No! Nothing worth working for is!
But when that work is done, you can sit back, relax, and truly enjoy the ramifications of that accomplishment, or the view that you can see afterwards! It can open up an entirely different perspective on your life!
Take it all in! After all, you earned it! Then relax, think about what you just accomplished, and I will bet you will tell yourself, “you know, that really was not that hard! Now what can I do next?” The sky is the limit!
You earned it. Celebrate well. Enjoy all the benefits you will get after being successful with what you accomplished. Then, put your head down, take a deep breath, and decide what you are going to do next! Just remember, make your accomplishment attempts reasonable. They don’t have to be like watching an episode of “Mission Impossible”. You set the tone. They are for you! Keep reality in perspective, and enjoy the ride along the way! Keep moving everybody!
Dr. Dan
Consecutive Exercise Day #: 3257
by kelsey | Aug 25, 2016 | Cooking Tips, Diet, Family, Food, Weight Management, Wellness/Health
School started today in Watertown! It’s always an exciting day for families! It also means getting back into the routine of school lunch and snacks after school! If you’re a parent with school age children, you have probably witnessed this scenario many times: your child comes home from school and they are starving! They rummage through the cupboards and try to find something “good” to snack on until supper is ready. Snacks in between meals help provide the body with energy and aid in metabolism and blood sugar control, but the key is making a healthy snack as junk foods will only provide empty calories, leaving you hungry and looking for more later on.
Below are some healthy snacks for kids. Print off this list and let them pick a healthy snack afterschool!
Healthy Snacks for Kids
Inside-Out Sandwich: Spread mustard on a slice of deli turkey. Wrap around a sesame breadstick.
Rocky Road: Break a graham cracker into bite-size pieces. Add to low-fat chocolate pudding along with a few miniature marshmallows.
Mini Pizza: Toast a whole-wheat English muffin, drizzle with pizza sauce and sprinkle with low-fat mozzarella cheese.
Spread mustard on a flour tortilla. Top with a slice of turkey or ham, low-fat cheese and lettuce. Then roll it up.
Sandwich Cut-Outs: Make a sandwich on whole grain bread. Cut out your favorite shape using a big cookie cutter. Eat the fun shape and the edges, too!
Banana Split: Top a banana with low-fat vanilla and strawberry frozen yogurt. Sprinkle with your favorite whole-grain cereal.
Apple Pie Oatmeal: Make one packet of microwave oatmeal with low-fat milk. Mix in 1/4 cup unsweetened applesauce. Sprinkle with apple pie spice or cinnamon.
Mix together peanut butter and cornflakes in a bowl. Shape into balls and roll in crushed graham crackers.
Microwave a cup of tomato or vegetable soup and enjoy with whole-grain crackers.
Fill a waffle cone with cut-up fruit and top with low-fat vanilla yogurt.
Sprinkle grated Parmesan cheese on hot popcorn.
Peel a banana and dip it in yogurt. Roll in crushed cereal and freeze.
Spread celery sticks with peanut butter or low-fat cream cheese. Top with raisins.
Stuff a whole-grain pita pocket with ricotta cheese and Granny Smith apple slices. Add a dash of cinnamon.
Mix together ready-to-eat cereal, dried fruit and nuts in a sandwich bag for an on-the-go snack.
Smear a scoop of frozen yogurt on two graham crackers and add sliced banana to make a yummy sandwich.
Microwave a small baked potato. Top with reduced-fat cheddar cheese and salsa.
Make snack kabobs. Put cubes of low-fat cheese and grapes on pretzel sticks.
Toast a whole-grain waffle and top with low-fat yogurt and peaches.
Mix together low-fat cream cheese, mixed dried fruit bits and shelled sunflower seeds. Spread on a toasted English muffin.
Blend low-fat milk, frozen strawberries and a banana for thirty seconds for a delicious smoothie.
Make a mini-sandwich with tuna or egg salad on a whole-grain dinner roll.
Sprinkle grated Monterey Jack cheese over a corn tortilla; fold in half and microwave for twenty seconds. Top with salsa.
Spread peanut butter on apple slices.
Reference: Academy of Nutrition & Dietetics
-Kelsey
by Dan | Aug 14, 2016 | Exercise, Family, Goals, Motivation, Wellness/Health
Our new clinic ad campaign: Jump Start your Wellness by encouraging you to go out and get active! We provided many jump ropes to patients, and other individuals to start getting active, and jump rope! We all did it as a kid, so we want you to continue to do it now. It is like riding a bike…you never forget how! Now for some of you, just like me encouraging to get out and be active for years, it may take a little more encouragement!
You might think this may be boring, or you are not too excited to give it a try, but like most things, you don’t realize how much fun it can be. When we were shooting our commercial, and having all of our employees out jump roping, everybody was laughing, and having a great time! Who says exercise can’t be fun. This is how it should be!
Just get out and move! Jump Start your Wellness!
Don’t worry if you think you won’t look graceful starting! Like everything, it takes a little practice.
Sorry Joan!
Just like I have been saying for years, it is always easier to exercise, and have more fun, when you are doing the exercise in a group!
So, what are you waiting for? Grab your jump rope, and make time to jump start your wellness!
Keep moving everybody! Exercise for the Health of It!
Dr. Dan
Consecutive Exercise Day #: 3243
by Dan | Aug 7, 2016 | Exercise, Family, Goals, Motivation, Wellness/Health
We all have our own plans, thoughts, ideas about things we want to accomplish in our life. As we continue on this adventure, and start getting into thoughts of goal planning for next time, I think it would be important to begin with a little different perspective on how to go about coming up with your goals. We all need motivation to help convince ourselves to keep trying, and what that spark would be that will get us going to take on new things, new adventures, new plans for our life. Maybe we need to consider it a different way. Maybe we need to take ourselves out of the equation when deciding on our goals. Maybe, it’s not about us, as individuals. Maybe we need to think of others, and what we can do to help somebody else out. Or, if we take care of ourselves, how will that impact other people in our lives who care about us. As individuals, we all have unique traits and qualities that somebody can learn and benefit by. By focusing on things this way, maybe that in and of itself will be something that would actually motivate us as individuals.
The picture posted at the beginning is one of my training partners Steve, and I, as we are about to cross the finish line at the Disney marathon…Steve’s first. That was a goal he had…to run and finish a marathon. I have talked on Steve before and his health issues he underwent to be able to get to that point. My goal then was not to run a personal best in the marathon for me. My goal was to do whatever I could to help Steve get to the finish line and achieve his goal. It was not about me…this time, my goal was about him. I look back on this picture often. The emotion of Steve’s face as we are nearing the finish line says it all. Everything he had gone through to be able to get to that point, the health scare, the work, the dedication, the discipline…to cross that finish line! That was also my reward. It was all worth it to me as well. The journey we went through to get to that point. There is no better feeling of accomplishment for me than knowing I helped him achieve his goal. It was not about me…this journey was about him…and I got to play a part in it!
Find that purpose in your life where you can make a difference on somebody else’s life. What is that purpose? What is it for each of us as individuals? Each one of us has to answer that. But, it you can keep some of the major underlying reasons for achieving your goals not be about you, but about someone else in your life, you will be more happy and successful that you could imagine. For each of us, we focused on our health, but the main reason we even made that a priority was our own individual families.
Steve and I are each missing one member of our families in this picture…Molly, my daughter, and Jeff, his son. Otherwise this is the rest of our families. This is the reason we want to take care of our health. This is the reason we want to be around…to spend time with them, and for them to spend time with us. It is about them! The journey along the way is just the benefit we get in the process.
What is that journey for you? And when you do decide to go for it, where will it take you? I am going to post next on actual goal setting, and how to “go”al for it! Keep this concept in mind that “it is not about us”. Make it about somebody else, whether friend, family…God…whatever it may be. When you do things for somebody or something else, it can be even more rewarding! The thing that helped motivate me in this way was reading the book by Rick Warren…”The Purpose Driven”. This is what he talks about as well. If you have never read, do it!
That journey can truly be a success, not just a destination. A success that keeps on going, and keeps on benefiting you. That is how it can be for you! Enjoy the journey! Keep moving everybody!
Dr. Dan
Consecutive Exercise Day #: 3236
by Dan | Jul 31, 2016 | Exercise, Family, Goals, Motivation, Wellness/Health
Everybody has a story to tell. A story that explains how certain things in their life took place…whether by choice, or by chance. This particular story occurred by choice. When I take care of my patients, I see many times how our health choices, or lack there of, influence our overall health. I hear regrets from patients, and how they wish they could have changed things, had then known back then what they know now. But, unfortunately, we know this, and they know this, already. They knew it long ago. They just did not want to think about it back then, as life was going good, and how could their health possibly be a factor in things. How could their choices then make such a difference now. Well my story focuses on my family…my wife and my kids. Too many times I would hear from patients that they want to be around to see their kids graduate…to walk them down the aisle of their wedding…to be able to spend time with their grandkids. This is where we all have to take a step back, and refocus.
We have to literally STOP! What is it we want? What is it we want to accomplish? Once again, what is our goal/goals? One story in particular helped me come to realize what I wanted to accomplish.
My story is about this individual pictured above. When this picture was taken, this individual had just turned 52 years old. He was approximately 5’8″, and weighed over 300 lbs. Over the course of the next 11 months of his life, he suffered 2 heart attacks, and 3 strokes, the 3rd stroke which he ended up dying from. He passed away before he was 53 years old. He left behind 10 kids, and those 10 kids went on to create 35 grandkids. His first grandchild was born 1 month after he passed away. He never got to see any of his grandkids. He still had his own kids that had not even finished high school yet. He missed out on a lot of things in his family’s life. I was born 16 years after he passed away. This was my grandfather. I never got to know my grandfather. I never got to spend any time with him. I am told he was quite a comedian, and a practical joker. Maybe that is where I get some of my talents from. Over the years I have always felt cheated by the fact I never got to meet him…spend time with him…get to know him…to love him. And he never got to know me! I decided that if I had anything to say about it, or be in control of it, that I would never let this happen to me. So, on 9/26/07, I made a challenge to myself. I wanted to see how many days in a row that I could exercise. How many days could I go without missing any? I wanted to be as healthy as I could so this would not happen to me. I wanted to see my kids grow up, and see all of their accomplishments, and to be able to see their kids. I want to someday be a grandpa! I want to be able to know what that feels like. I want my grandkids to know me! I may have never met my grandfather, but I learned a lot from him. I learned that if I don’t want this to happen to me, I am going to have to take care of my health… and that you do have some control over your duration of your life. Now, there are always circumstances that come up that as humans we have no control over. But we need to learn to control those factors in our life that are controllable. In the end, we will all benefit from this. But there is no question. This takes discipline!
There are always things that come up. Things that need to be done during the course of the day. Some important, some not so important. The key is trying to figure out which ones are really the important ones. Then we need to make exercise and our health a priority. If anybody ever said that exercise was easy, then I don’t think that they did it for very long. It takes work. It takes dedication. It takes discipline. Over time, exercise will get EASIER to do, but I have never said it was easy! But, it can also be fun, and it can create fun. Make it enjoyable, and overall your life will be more enjoyable. That is what true success is! As the famous Dr. George Sheehan, who help start the running revolution, stated:
I can’t say it any better than this! My success is going to be that hopefully I will be around longer to see my family grow, and to spend time with them. That is true success. My kids cheered me on in races when they were little, just like to first picture shows. I got to return the favor. They were great experiences that I get to remember forever. Hopefully, I will get to see my grandkids, and cheer them on as well! My consecutive exercise streak has not ended yet since that day in 2007. I am still just as excited to be active now as I was then. I keep those same motivating factors in my mind at all times…Sarah, Megan, Molly, and Nick…my family!
Exercise to have fun! Exercise to be happy! Exercise for the Health of it! Our run club is excited to meet and go out and run…to interact and be social…to take care of ourselves. Remember, in life, for the majority of issues that come up, we do have choices.
Make good choices. Choose to be healthy. Choose to be around as long as we can, and are able to be in control. Choose wisely! My story of my grandfather comes to light even more now. I will turn 52 in October. I have a lot of things I want to do yet. I have a lot of time I want to spend with my family! Enjoy the ride along the way! My consecutive exercise streak goes on. When it will end I don’t know. But when it does, I will just another one! Exercise for the Health of it! Keep moving everybody!
Dr. Dan
Consecutive Exercise Day #: 3229
by Dan | Jul 10, 2016 | Exercise, Family, Goals, Motivation, Wellness/Health
I have been posting lately about different adventures that have been going on. I will still continue to do that, as they come up. Now, it is time to take on a new subject: Exercise for the Health of It! Time to discuss all that exercise can do for us, and why we need to do this. We all know reasons why exercise is good: It can decrease our blood pressure; decrease our risks of heart disease; decrease our chance of developing diabetes; help prevent osteoporosis; improve our mood overall, decreasing our anxiety and potential for depression, just to name a few. So if we all know that, they why are we not all doing it? What else is there that needs to set a trigger to get us motivated to do exercise? This answer is as individual as the individual, and only we, on our own, can figure that out. Time to make a list of our goals. What is it we want to accomplish? What do we want out of life? What more is there to experience that we have not already done? What if…I did things differently? What if…I were to go back in time, and change things that I know would be better now? What if…we constantly ask ourselves this all the time…what if? Clearly, we cannot go back in time and change things, we can only go forward. But, we can make a difference in our lives from this point on. The only time it is too late is when we are not here anymore. So, what are you going to do about it? What are your desires? Your needs? Your talents? How can you use all of these three components, as author Matthew Kelly writes: “How do YOU become the best version of YOU that YOU can be?”
Here are a bunch of us from yesterday’s Lake Kampeska Triathlon. Most of us are all members of the Watertown Area Run Club as well. What are we trying to achieve? I can speak for sure for me: I am trying to be as healthy and active as I can so as to enjoy as much of life as I can, for as long as I can. I want to spend time with my family. When the time comes that I am no longer here, I want to confidently say “I lived my life to the fullest, and I have no regrets!”. Will you be able to say that? If not, what are you going to do about it? Time to “Exercise for the Health of It”.
Sarah and I have a great time competing in all of these different events. That is how we started dating…by running together. We were in the same medical school class, but starting going out our second year. I saw her running on her own a few times, so then later, when I would go run, I made sure I would run by the house she was living in. She noticed! We started out by running together…and the rest is history! I may be the one having the consecutive running streak going, but she is my rock…my reason for doing all of this…my everything! I won’t even begin to imagine what life would be without her. If I was not a runner, our lives would be totally different, and we would probably never have been together. I will always be appreciative of running just for that!
There are many different reasons of how exercise can be healthy. Here is a good summary.
This is what this series is going to encompass. Even though there are a lot of things on this picture, this does not cover all of the reasons exercise is good, and why you should “Exercise for the Health of It”…but it is a good start. One main reason to keep in mind as we go on this current journey is the following:
You are saving your life! Don’t let anyone tell you anything different. Some day, ones who for whatever reason may be critical of what we do, will figure it out. They will realize they should have made some changes. They will be asking themselves, “What if” I had done things differently? Why didn’t I “Exercise for the Health of It”? Remember…no regrets. Do something about it now! And if you are, then keep doing what you are doing…for you! Invariably, this will be a benefit to all of those around you who are important, because you will get to spend more time with them. Is that not what life is about?
Keep moving everybody!
Dr. Dan
Consecutive Exercise Day #: 3208
