Hi friends!
Here is your Tri-Tip Tuesday, sharing my current thoughts on food, fitness, & travel. Please forward this to others if you think they may be inspired.
Food: redirect your focus
The wellness journey is an ongoing effort. Throughout life, there are many phases and personal seasons, which can affect the time and commitment level you dedicate towards your nutrition and fitness goals.
I hit a pivotal point in my personal journey, when my mindset and my "why's" changed. When this happened, living a healthy lifestyle became so much more enjoyable, and more sustainable, especially through the ups and downs of my seasons.
I spent decades lost in diet culture, putting extreme pressure on myself to be "perfect" in efforts to control how my body looked. I was tunnel-visioned, focused on dieting, chasing a number on the scale, and trying to change my body.
Then, there came a point where my priorities shifted to more meaningful goals. Now, I'm all about nutrition over calories, strong over skinny, preventing chronic disease, and aging gracefully with independence.
Diet Mentality:
- Food is the enemy - creating food rules where entire food groups are off limits, good/bad, etc.
- Focusing on bad habits - giving too much attention to areas you are failing.
- Short term mindset - crash dieting to "lose x amount of pounds in x amount of days.
- Enforcing negative body image - fixating on body parts you want to change or don't like about yourself.
- Scale driven - chasing an arbitrary number on the scale, because toxic diet culture and pop culture says "we should weigh this".
- The finish line - thinking, if I can get to this point, the journey will be over and I will be happy.
Health Mentality:
- Food is fuel, and food is medicine - what we choose to eat affects our mind, body, and soul. Choosing nutrient dense foods not only optimizes how our body feels and functions, but may literally prevent and reverse chronic diesease.
- Focusing on good habits - daily choices matter, and they add up to huge shifts in your life. Little things like daily walks, weekly strength training, drinking water, eating protein at each meal. The basics.
- Long term mindset - slow body composition changes win in the long run. Building muscle and losing fat takes time. Healing your mindset and finding peace in your journey is transformative.
- Body neutrality & positive affirmation - value how your body functions and feels over how it looks. This perspective helps you develop self-acceptance, while still working to care for yourself in ways that promote overall health. Your body is your temple, and it is a fascinating machine that can serve you well if you treat it right.
- Non-scale victory driven - pay attention to your victories along the way. Noticing strength improvements, keeping up with your grandchildren, being comfortable performing tasks that used to be challenging. These are your big wins.
- A lifelong journey - we are building a house from the ground up. Don't rush the foundation, and don't rush other steps along the way. We are in it for the long haul!
I encourage you to make the shift from Diet Mentality to a Health Mentality, and your wellness transformation falls into place so much easier!
Fitness: aging is a privilege
Aging is inevitable, and it is a privilege. Aging with grace and power is a choice.
As we age, we naturally lose muscle, strength, and mobility, unless you actively maintain efforts to prevent it.
Strength training and daily movement are the most powerful tools we have to keep our bodies running strong and metabolically healthy. Staying sedentary on the other hand, is a guaranteed way to lose strength, lose metabolic function, feed inflammation, and drive immobility.
In order to get energy, you need to give energy. And once you do, it feels so incredible, you won't want to stop. It's never too late to start. Keep those joints moving!
Travel: slowing down for the holidays
Aaron and I have been on a whirlwind of fast paced travel in 2024. We left the Florida Keys in April, and traveled all the way up to Newfoundland Canada, and through the Midwest back in the US.
While we were traveling through Wisconsin, Minnesota, South Dakota, and Utah, we were unplugged and out of the RV Parks, which felt incredible.
After traveling quickly for seven months straight, we are excited to finally be back on the west coast, and slowing down for the holidays. We are back in an RV Park again and it feels so good to have water and sewer hook ups, in-house laundry, long showers, and consistency again.
Make it a great week!
Christine Irene
NASM-CPT, Senior Fitness Specialist, Precision Nutrition Pn1 + Pn2 Certified, & Full-time Traveler
"The safest way to get what you want is to deserve what you want." - CHARLIE T. MUNGER
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