AMEN.

How to Start Healthy Habits when your Family is Not Supportive

Posted on January 19, 2012 by blogilates

 It’s hard changing your lifestyle and diet when someone else is buying the groceries. For anyone who is living with stubborn parents or unhealthy housemates, this post is for you.

I get a bunch of questions daily about how to deal with parents who are not supportive of their teen’s dietary changes. Moms can be very hard headed when it comes to diet. Sometimes the topic of what ends up on the dinner table can get emotional and offensive. After all, she is the one who has been feeding you these past years – why all of a sudden are you rejecting her “love” and “care”?

For those of us that are Asian, telling your family that you will no longer eat white rice can be an extremely epic and awkward event. It is an Asian staple. You have rice at everyday. They will probably not take you seriously and then just tell you that you’re too skinny already and encourage you to eat more. In fact, they will most likely just start scooping you larger heaps of rice and filling your bowl for you. Oh, and don’ forget that they won’t let you leave the table til you finish every last grain of rice in your bowl either.

I’ve gone through numerous diet changes throughout the years – Pescatarian, Vegetarian, Dairy Free, Paleo…and it’s hard and very frustrating eating with people who are not very mindful of your dietary standpoint. In college, I did not eat red meat or poultry and every time I came home for Thanksgiving, Christmas Break, or Spring Break, my parents just could not fathom the fact that I could not eat what they were eating. My mom would PURPOSELY make ribs for dinner and be like “Oh, you can’t eat that? Haha, just have one, it’s ok!” My dad would actually make me feel bad and say “People have been eating meat for millions of years, you’re being unnatural.”

Then when I moved to the East Coast, I officially gave up white rice. I replaced it with veggies – one of the best and easily effective things I’ve done with my diet. Again, when I visited home for the h0lidays my parents would BERATE me for not eating rice.

“Oh you’re not eating rice again?”

“How can you just eat vegetables? That’s disgusting, I could never do that.”

“You’re being unhealthy by not eating grains.”

These comments made me feel so uncomfortable at the dinner table. And even though they are my parents, I found it disrespectful that they chose to not respect my dietary choices. If you are serious about making changes to what you’re eating, you really need a supportive environment. What the people around you say or do will have an impact on how successful you are. Here’s what you can do:

- Start buying your own groceries

- Start cooking for you and for your family – introduce them to your style of delicious clean eating

- Educate your family on why you’re doing what you’re doing – back it up with scientific research. Seriously. Most people shy away from attacking you if you know your stuff.

- Announce it (or just slip it in a conversation). Let your family know how you want to eat. They need to be aware of your healthy habits. This also holds you more accountable for your actions because you know there are others watching.

A really good trick in getting your mom to be on your side is to go grocery shopping with her and asking her how to pick the best fruit or choose a good vegetable. These are life skills you should learn anyway. You guys can have great conversation/bonding time and this is your chance to show her you respect her guidance while educating her on your new dietary needs. This makes her feel important and also sets the stage for a successful dinnertime experience.

If you are really SERIOUS about cutting out rice or going vegetarian but don’t know how to tell your family, just follow the steps above. I can assure you that if your family or housemates really care about you, they will respect your decision and actually help you do what you want to do. So don’t compromise, don’t settle. You’ve got this. It’s your body and your health. Fight for it.

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This post was inspired by a question Glam.com (my ad network) and H&R Block posed to their authors: “How did you complete a goal without settling?” I thought this would be a good time to share with you guys how I broke away from eating rice and I how dealt with my parents’ stubborn behavior! Did you guys experience any of the same things?

WANTED! Awesome ideas!

Ok, I know this is a bit early, but I couldn’t stop thinking about this and coming up with… NADA!
What awesomeness should I do for my 18th birthday??!?!

SHARE! SHARE!

AWESOMENESS! 18 Tricks …

AWESOMENESS!

18 Tricks to Make New Habits Stick

By Scott H. Young
Wouldn’t it be nice to have everything run on autopilot? Chores, exercise, eating healthy and getting your work done just happening automatically. Unless they manage to invent robot servants, all your work isn’t going to disappear overnight. But if you program behaviors as new habits you can take out the struggle.

With a small amount of initial discipline, you can create a new habit that requires little effort to maintain. Here are some tips for creating new habits and making them stick:

1. Commit to Thirty Days – Three to four weeks is all the time you need to make a habit automatic. If you can make it through the initial conditioning phase, it becomes much easier to sustain. A month is a good block of time to commit to a change since it easily fits in your calendar.

2. Make it Daily – Consistency is critical if you want to make a habit stick. If you want to start exercising, go to the gym every day for your first thirty days. Going a couple times a week will make it harder to form the habit. Activities you do once every few days are trickier to lock in as habits.

3. Start Simple – Don’t try to completely change your life in one day. It is easy to get over-motivated and take on too much. If you wanted to study two hours a day, first make the habit to go for thirty minutes and build on that.

4. Remind Yourself – Around two weeks into your commitment it can be easy to forget. Place reminders to execute your habit each day or you might miss a few days. If you miss time it defeats the purpose of setting a habit to begin with.

5. Stay Consistent – The more consistent your habit the easier it will be to stick. If you want to start exercising, try going at the same time, to the same place for your thirty days. When cues like time of day, place and circumstances are the same in each case it is easier to stick.

6. Get a Buddy – Find someone who will go along with you and keep you motivated if you feel like quitting.

7. Form a Trigger – A trigger is a ritual you use right before executing your habit. If you wanted to wake up earlier, this could mean waking up in exactly the same way each morning. If you wanted to quit smoking you could practice snapping your fingers each time you felt the urge to pick up a cigarette.

8. Replace Lost Needs – If you are giving up something in your habit, make sure you are adequately replacing any needs you’ve lost. If watching television gave you a way to relax, you could take up meditation or reading as a way to replace that same need.

9. Be Imperfect – Don’t expect all your attempts to change habits to be successful immediately. It took me four independent tries before I started exercising regularly. Now I love it. Try your best, but expect a few bumps along the way.

10. Use “But” – A prominent habit changing therapist once told me this great technique for changing bad thought patterns. When you start to think negative thoughts, use the word “but” to interrupt it. “I’m no good at this, but, if I work at it I might get better later.”

11. Remove Temptation – Restructure your environment so it won’t tempt you in the first thirty days. Remove junk food from your house, cancel your cable subscription, throw out the cigarettes so you won’t need to struggle with willpower later.

12. Associate With Role Models – Spend more time with people who model the habits you want to mirror. A recent study found that having an obese friend indicated you were more likely to become fat. You become what you spend time around.

13. Run it as an Experiment – Withhold judgment until after a month has past and use it as an experiment in behavior. Experiments can’t fail, they just have different results so it will give you a different perspective on changing your habit.

14. Swish – A technique from NLP. Visualize yourself performing the bad habit. Next visualize yourself pushing aside the bad habit and performing an alternative. Finally, end that sequence with an image of yourself in a highly positive state. See yourself picking up the cigarette, see yourself putting it down and snapping your fingers, finally visualize yourself running and breathing free. Do it a few times until you automatically go through the pattern before executing the old habit.

15. Write it Down – A piece of paper with a resolution on it isn’t that important. Writing that resolution is. Writing makes your ideas more clear and focuses you on your end result.

16. Know the Benefits – Familiarize yourself with the benefits of making a change. Get books that show the benefits of regular exercise. Notice any changes in energy levels after you take on a new diet. Imagine getting better grades after improving your study habits.

17. Know the Pain – You should also be aware of the consequences. Exposing yourself to realistic information about the downsides of not making a change will give you added motivation.

18. Do it For Yourself – Don’t worry about all the things you “should” have as habits. Instead tool your habits towards your goals and the things that motivate you. Weak guilt and empty resolutions aren’t enough.

NUEVO! NUEVO!

Well, my mom and I are starting this 90 day challenge which will target..
yes, our bodies and our eating habits.
I’M REALLY EXCITED!  And hopeful for the awesome results! I just hope neither my mom or I give up before we’re done. Our ending date is April 10th.
PRAY FOR US!
and you can see our progress HERE

Loved this!

A really good article! I hope I can acomplish that this year!

Enjoy!

The One Resolution You Need to Make in 2012

By Dayna Steele, Fast Company, Dec 13, 2011 As the New Year approaches, many of us are thinking about our resolutions. What will we vow to do this coming year to be better—both at what we do for a living, and as members of the human race?

There’s only one resolution you need to make and keep. Do this one thing and you’ll be good to go for the year: Do what you say you are going to do, otherwise known as accountability. This one resolution can have any number of permutations:

•If you say you are going to call, call.

•Promise to send someone information? Send it.

•Finish a job when you promised—or earlier—with quality work.

•Let people know as soon as you can when you are running late for a meeting or won’t make it at all.

•And, my personal favorite, make good on the promise “Let’s get together sometime.” Make a note on your calendar in the near future to set something up. Or don’t say it at all.

Every goal begins with your own accountability, whether it is business success, losing weight, developing your personal brand—whatever your goals may be this coming year.

Start now. This very second. Have a happy new year!

2011 in review (I thought this was pretty cool!)

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 3,600 times in 2011. If it were a cable car, it would take about 60 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Goodbye 2011

It’s kinda weird, knowing this is my very last post of 2011. For me personally, this year passed by WAAAAY to fast, but at the same time, all the things that happened… WHEW! It also kind of feels like I could have fit all of that into decades.
I’ll probably have thins tiny pang of guilt looking at the tiny amount of posts this year, yet I won’t promise that I’ll do better…
because I honestly don’t know. haha

The biggest emotion I have right now though is thankfulness. I’ve been given so many blessings this year, and second chances not many could even dream of having. I just want to thank you all who prayed for my grandma and her battle with Cancer, I know that your prayers were what kept her through!
I am so blessed to have her in my life. I pray that Jesus grants us the privilege to have her in our lives more many more years to come. At LEAST till one of us gets married

Well, here are a few tidbits of what I was able to do this year. It makes me smile.

1. Saw the world (okay, okay, my personal world.. GOSH!) covered in white during February when we came to visit our grandparents.
2. Had my first birthday with them in years and for the first time in my life, and probably got more money than all of my other birthdays combined! haha
3. Had a radical 17th birthday (I DIDN’T DIE! YAAAY!)
4. Went to a witnessing event at a beach and got to see my old friends and make new ones!
5. Learned a lot of lessons through one particular hard experience, and to appreciate my friends SO much more because of an accident.
6. Found out we were moving.
7. Moved to a completely new environment, but totally thrilled at the opportunity to live closer to family.
8. Stood along with my grandma as she battled cancer and kicked it in the ass! TYJ!
9. Met new friends.
10. Started going to a new dance school which is EXTREMELY awesome!
11. Went to an audition for Disney. (turned out to be kinda… wehhh, lets say they didn’t give all the details. haha SO instead of being auditions to act or be a model or whatever, they were auditions to a CAMP where you learned about acting, THEN from there, if you were lucky, they’d MAYBE select you for something, though not before taking 2,000 dollars daily for the camp from your pocket. Oh well, it was an exciting experience nonetheless haha)
12. Went to a homecoming dance.
13. Found a great house and moved again!
14. Saw the Lord constantly supply for our every need and even wants!
15. Rode a horse!
16. Miraculously was able to make it to Cervantino.
17. Went on my very first plane ride. AHHH! AAAH!!!
18. Went on my very first trip all by myself!
19. Bought a guitar!
20. Learned new things on my guitar.
21. Had an awesome thanksgiving with family in Minnesota.
22. Was in a Christmas play for my dance school.
23. RACK’ed for Christmas! Which was very fun, and I’m looking forward to doing more next year!
24. Had my Christmas Eve turned upside down and come crashing to the floor… literally… (small accident, I’ll have to tell you about it later. Ahem.)
25. Had a wonderful Christmas with my family and my grandma got me the coolest presents ever!
26. Was able to buy myself some bongos! HURRRAAAH!
27. Wrote a song!
28. Made a birthday video for a friend.
29. Got my very first part-time job.
30. Got to see someone I met when I was little and whom I hadn’t seen for YEARS! … and… became friends! (uh huh, Leslie girl, that’s you!)
31. Saw so many of my prayers answered before my very eyes

Wow…
Yes, there have been just so many things. For my emotions as well this has been a roller-coaster year, but I believe they’ve all helped me to grow. I really am excited about the many new experiences and opportunities I KNOW this year will bring!

Thanks for sharing these little adventures with me!

A job well done for all of you this 2011!
2012… WELCOME!

 

 

Merry Christmas!

We may not be perfect, things and people may not be perfect, situations or events may not be perfect… and yet, isn’t that a great part of what the celebration of Christmas is all about?
A loving father looked upon his beautiful creation–his children–yet realizing their own faults and shortcoming and that emptiness and longing for love and forgiveness that each one had, he sent his Perfect son, Jesus to a world full of imperfections.
The women who would be his mother was in a pretty imperfect state to have a baby.
The timing for his birth couldn’t have been less imperfect.
A stable to call his first home, a manger as his first crib, tattered cloths as his first garments, and animal noises as his first lullaby. Nothing close to perfect I would say.
Yet the biggest miracle of Christmas is that He broke through those imperfections, He used them as a testimony that God doesn’t need perfection to bring his love, hope and salvation to the world. In fact, from what I see, He is quite fond of using odd and totally bizarre circumstances and turning them into something beautiful, something everlasting. I guess I could some that all up as: God loves to use broken things.

Linky Link! Christmas edition #1

Linky Link! Christmas edition #1.

Awesome ideas!
My only regret is that I didn’t see her blog sooner

Obvious reason.

Talking about toys in the car, the topic of porcelain dolls came up:

Dad: “You know the dolls I really liked? The porcelain dolls.”
Me: “Yeah, those were ok.”
Mumbles of pro’s and con’s filled the car.
Me: “I vaguely remember playing them in the small white house.”
Sunny: “We played with them in the last house in J. too.”
Me: “Oh. Really?”
Sunny: “…We never played with them that much.”
Me: “Yeah well, the thing is that–well, I mean, they were very pretty and all–but they were… I don’t know, too delicate to play with well…”
Misty: “No. It wasn’t that they were too delicate.

“It’s just there never was a Ken.”