Get the Most Nutrients for Your Buck
4 years ago, I planted asparagus starts.
Tadaaa! We finally have some thick enough to enjoy.
- Leafy greens such as kale, chard, spinach, and lettuce (my kale’s still growing from last year!)
- Rhubarb – it’s like a weed!
- Strawberries
- Blueberries
- Summer squash, such as zucchini
And for those of you who are wondering, the egg shells around the asparagus are there to keep the pesky slugs away. The shell edges are sharp, and gives slugs little (or big) paper cuts when they slither over them, so it deters them. Kind of morbid, but it’s a natural pest repellent!
Live well!
Sitting for Your Spine is Like Sugar for Your Teeth
Here’s an interesting infographic I found on the Web. It’s true that sitting is terrible for you! Our bodies are just not built to sit for long periods.
If you are a desk worker, sitting is a part of your daily life. It seems hard to make a change to that – after all, we have to make a living, right? But even a few minutes can make a difference. Challenge yourself to get up every hour and move. Setting an alarm may help those who really get into a zone. Walk around the building, get a drink of water, and stretch. Some folks take periodic walks with co-workers, and I’ve even heard of meetings taking place while everyone walks around the building. That’s innovative, productive AND healthy!
To go even further, ask your employer if they will allow you to get a standing workstation. It’s becoming pretty standard, so you may be surprised at what you hear. Some folks even have a treadmill workstation, which is truly ideal. All you have to do is just walk at one mile an hour and think of the benefits your body is getting!
We’d love to hear ways you are incorporating movement into your work day!
Wise Words
Many of you follow our Facebook page, which is much, much more active than this blog. We post tips, tidbits, and thoughts that don’t feel like they deserve an entire dedicated post in a blog. Among the Facebook posts are various inspirational quotes that I think are worth sharing. Today, I was reminded of one of my absolute favorites, and it’s definitely blog-worthy.
By the way, if you haven’t already, come visit us on our Facebook page: www.facebook.com/livewellusa.
Limited Time Offer – Free Wellness Assessments
To reach your goal, you must know where you are, in addition to where you want to go. This is the same for health, and we do this through our wellness assessments.
Our Eat-Well Move-Well Think-Well Innate Lifestyle Program participants gather every 3 months to complete a progress assessment. The resulting 9-page customized report draws data from an in-depth questionnaire, a physical assessment, and for our participants, data from their daily Success Journal. It’s an amazing tool. It’s so important to see where you are on the wellness scale, and how you are changing over time.
We are making these wellness assessments available to EVERYONE! We are offering it for FREE, for a limited time.
There is no obligation to enroll, and the customized report will be yours to keep. The assessment dates are listed in the right column of this website.
The assessment provides you with information on how you eat well, move well, and think well, as well as giving you an accurate picture of your health, and your potential.
Call or email us to save a spot!
Happy New Year!
Happy new year to you! This is a great time for reflection and renewal, especially around health and wellness. Many are motivated to finally change their life for the better. The air is full of hope and inspiration. It’s a great time!
But how good is the effort if the changes don’t last long-term? Short-term change does nothing to help you from developing a chronic illness, which accounts for 80% of deaths in our society. Short-term change does nothing to help our quality of life 5, 10, 20, 40 years from now.
Don’t we want to be 90 years old and feel like we’re 40? We definitely can.
We are committed to helping you develop good habits for a lifetime. It’s the only way to true well-being.
So, here are some tips to get started right.
- Take 5 minutes and identify 3 healthy behaviors you’d like to add to your life. Write it down, so you can see it plain and clear. Then, describe how your life would change if you adopted these behaviors for the rest of your life. How would you feel, emotionally and physically? Be as specific as possible. It only takes a few minutes and is amazingly powerful. It helps you to articulate what is important to you, and to help you focus!
- Look for healthy choices that are easy for you. “No pain, no gain” does not ring true in health. If starting off the day with a big glass of water seems easy to you, do it! Do it, and do it every day. Is it easy for you to wear a pedometer and keep an eye on how much you walk each day? Then do it! Just do it. How about walking every day to the mailbox? How about eating a fresh fruit or vegetable with every snack or meal, even if it’s just one apple slice or carrot? If you think that’s sustainable, do it. Do it, because once it becomes second nature to you, you will add more healthy choices. The walk to the mailbox will, over time, become a 30 minute walk. The one carrot with dinner will become a salad. It may not happen right away, but it will. We’ve seen it happen with our participants! However, if you try to do something that feels like it will be hard and painful, it will cause stress, and more importantly, you will likely not be able to sustain it for the long-term.
- Get the facts. You may be shocked to learn that chronic illness rates are skyrocketing, regardless of the amount of medications and medical interventions we are prescribing. It may inspire you to learn that eating an additional serving of produce a day, or walking 30 minutes has a huge impact on your health – that studies show the benefits outperform medications. You may be left in awe when you learn how perfect our bodies are designed, and just giving it the right ingredients can result in miracles. We have provided some of this type of evidence-based information on this website, but we also encourage you to contact us to schedule a free wellness assessment, where you will get such info in addition to your customized 9-page report.
- Eat well, move well, think well – all are important. You can’t achieve true health without all three. When looking for healthy choices that are easy for you, remember to think in all three areas. Thinking well can often be neglected, and yet many of us believe it’s the most impactful of the three.
Remember, we will be scheduling wellness assessments this month, as well as launching a new “pod” for our Lifestyle Program. Contact us for details.
We wish you a happy and healthy 2012!
Short and Impactful
In the age of social media, you come across a lot of garbage and useless information. But once in a while, you discover a gem.
Here are 2 videos that I love. They are short and sweet, but gets the point across. They are both entertaining but extremely informative, and can shift your perspective on wellness. I encourage you to watch them both, and share them with your friends. You might even consider using social media. 
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How eating an acidic diet can wreak havoc
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23 1/2 hours
Thank you!
Happy Thanksgiving to you all!
Today, we are grateful for the opportunity to interact with people like you, who care about your lives, your health, the health of your loved ones, and the health of the community. Whether you are a participant in our program, or happened upon this site by chance, you are part of the force of change!
Thank you for your inspiration, being role models in society, and for being part of the LiveWell USA “tribe.”
With gratitude,
Yohko & Joe
Who cares about quantity of life – let’s talk about quality!
When we talk about health and well-being, we often talk about how long we will live. It’s definitely true that allowing your cells to express health will enable them to live longer. And, since we are really a collection of 75 trillion cells (give or take) working in harmony, it’s easy to see that taking care of these cells is super important.
But let’s be honest. In our world, there are many hazards that are out of our control. Car accidents are a common sighting, natural disasters threaten every continent, and many remind us that 2012 is looming around the corner. What we really want is QUALITY of life. And not just now, but for our entire lives, even if we live to be 120.
As a society, we’ve come to believe that getting old means getting sick. The more candles on your birthday cake, the more pills in your pillbox. This is unfortunate, because it means we are giving up on something we very much have the power to control. Science and research has shown beyond a doubt that our lifestyle choices TODAY make every difference in how it affects us as we age.
And they are in those 3 areas we know are fundamental to true well-being: Eat Well, Move Well, Think Well. Check this out:
- “People who do not eat fresh fruit every day have a 32% greater chance of a fatal stroke and 24% greater chance of a fatal heart attack.” (1)
- “Swedish researchers found that people who ate one apple a day had 60% less risk of kidney cancer than non apple eaters.” (1)
- “A 50% reduction in the incidence of colon cancer was observed among those with the highest level of physical activity across numerous studies.” (2)
- “Risk of heart disease is also associated with depression; individuals who are clinically depressed have a 250% greater chance of developing heart disease, and depression is associated with a lower chance of 5-year survival following a heart attack.” (3)
The thing is, it doesn’t take deprivation, struggle, or crazy military boot camps to claim the quality of life you deserve. It takes just a few things:
- Become aware. The evidence is clear – what we eat, how we move, and how we think is the greatest single determinant of whether or not we are sick or well. Educate yourself – we are happy to help!
- Focus on adding good stuff to your life. Just pick one, or several good choices that you can start making today, and don’t worry about the rest! It will all sort itself out over time. Give yourself permission to go slow…too many programs out there are focused on making short-term behavior modifications. We are interested in making changes for the long-term. Slow and steady wins the race!
- Get support! This is your life, not a fad diet or a week-long boot camp. You’re talking about improving your life, the QUALITY of your life…for the short term, and definitely the long-term. So tell those you love what your intentions are, and ask for their support.
We want to be age 90 and feel like we’re 40. We want to look around and say, “I’m so thankful for my 75 trillion cells, they’re thriving!” We want a high-quality life, which is impossible to achieve with disease, illness, stress, pain, and suffering. And hey, as long as natural disasters, car accidents, and 2012 predictions are kept at bay, you’ll be treated to quantity of life as well.
Live well!
