A series where I curate the latest news in health and wellness from around the web into actionable insights, so you can become a powerful wellness architect, and help your team perform at their best and thrive.
What a start to 2021.
The inauguration of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, along with the moving poem written and read by the youngest inaugural poet, Amanda Gorman. Please watch if you haven’t already.
The passing of Larry King
The easing of Winnipeg COVID-19 lockdown restrictions. Although there has been some more backlash against the Manitoba government and public health officials, in light of knowledge that certain gym locations have remained opened.
"Our public health orders don't apply to any levels of government, so they don't apply to federal, provincial or municipal governments.”
A blockbuster trade between Winnipeg Jets, Patrick Laine and Jack Roslovic, and Columbus Blue Jackets, Pierre-Luc Dubois.
The amount of Netflix shows I’ve crushed. New Girl, it’s been a slice. Any recommendations for me?
A Bernie Sanders meme taking social media by storm. This is hands down the best one:
The growing number of subscribers and supporters of this newsletter. Welcome new readers! I’m so glad for your support and engagement.
With all of the news and information put onto us everyday, it can feel overwhelming. I continue my aim at bringing you the newest health information in the form of a nicely packaged experience. This experience is enhanced by the consumption of coffee, FYI.
One things for certain: we are only as healthy as the system we are put into. Whether you’re a leader with the leverage to make policy changes within your organization, an employee that wants to voice their right for healthier corporate policies, or a parent trying to create a space of greater well-being at home, hopefully you can use the information provided in these digests to better influence those around you.
Also, please check out the subscriber-only free resources here!
How to navigate this report
Information: Your update of current wellness news. You will learn about a wide-array of health and wellness topics, respecting the Deep Health Model.
Comprehension: A quick glance at topics I’ve been contemplating this week.
Transformation: Where the magic happens. Your call to action, with suggested steps to leverage these new findings to better influence the health of yourself and those around you.
Information: Your curated wellness archive update
Organizational Well-being / Workplace Wellness
Media advisory - Morneau Shepell reveals research on Canadians’ mental health at 10th annual workplace summit (Event)
“With so much uncertainty and change throughout 2020, Morneau Shepell’s research shows the mental health of working Canadians has declined significantly, in large part due to a sharp increase in burnout and worsening isolation, optimism and psychological health.”
4 Happiness-Boosting Benefits Your Company Should Offer Employees in 2021(Article)
Sleep Health
Is your brain sleep deprived? (Article)
“Research is showing that brief bursts of brain activity during deep sleep, called sleep spindles, effectively move recent memories, including what we learned that day, from the short-term space of the hippocampus to a kind of hard drive.”
Deep sleep has restorative power to clear waste from brain (Article)
Physical Well-being / Fitness / Nutrition
7 in 10 consumers say they will keep cooking at home after the pandemic (Article)
We’ve told 100,000 clients, “There are no bad foods.” And we’re not about to stop. Here’s why (Article)
The Olfactory Landscape (Article)
“A loss of smell, anosmia, can have considerable impact on our sense of well-being. Referred to as an “invisible disability” (Boesveldt and Parma, 2021), it can be a harbinger of the onset of diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and most recently COVID-19.”
Feed Yourself Like You’d Feed a Loved One - The Happiness Lab (Podcast)
Chen X, Zhang Z, Yang H, Qiu P, Wang H, Wang F, et al. Consumption of ultra-processed foods and health outcomes: a systematic review of epidemiological studies. Nutr J. 2020 Aug 20;19(1):86 (Research)
Social-Relational Well-being / Diversity and Inclusion / Culture
NFL Makes History With Sarah Thomas, The First Woman To Officiate A Super Bowl (Article)
King toppled from throne by gender-neutral card deck (Article)
“If we have this hierarchy that the king is worth more than the queen then this subtle inequality influences people in their daily life because it’s just another way of saying ‘hey, you’re less important,” she said in an interview. “Even subtle inequalities like this do play a big role.”
Mental & Emotional Well-being / Mindfulness / Creativity
Boosting our sense of meaning in life is an often overlooked longevity ingredient (Article)
“Research reveals that people who believe their existence has meaning have lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol and more favorable gene expression related to inflammation.”
Why there’s so much money in mindfulness (Article)
Environmental Well-being / Nature
CES 2021: Home health havens (Article)
“Noting that health is at the forefront of consumer’s minds and that the pandemic has shifted major activities to the home, Deeptha Khanna, chief business leader of personal health at Philips, foresees a permanent shift to home technology that aids people in self-navigating a spectrum of health issues outside of hospitals.”
Comprehension: The Key 3
Things I’ve been contemplating this week
I’m curious to know on what turning food into math problem does from a psychological perspective to the majority of people.
Does it cause unease? An affinity to eating well? An unhealthy relationship with foods and our bodies? Extra stress and anxiety around wether we ate our exact protein target, and possible missed out on our #gainz?Whatever the case, calorie counting can be a touchy subject. Especially for those whose livelihoods depends on having the secret formula for the “right” amount of calories for your body, and you can only get this information by becoming a client.
There are simply too many downsides to long-term calorie counting, especially if we already have a challenging relationship with food. For starters, measuring the specific number of energy requirements for our goals is far more complex the elementary math.
From coaching many people over the years, I’ve come to realize that if your goal is simply to eat better and live a healthier life, there isn’t really a need for counting calories and macros.Unless…
Unless this change helps you. Wherever you are on your wellness journey, if you’ve stumbled into ‘If It Fits Your Macros,’ MyFitnessPal, or some other calorie counting method, and these changes cause an increase in awareness of nutritional composition of foods leading you to making healthier choices, then great!But understand that counting calories is not the end game. It’s simply a means of teaching us awareness. Important? Yes. Necessary for the long-term? No.
Okay, you might have to take some notes in the beginning, but don’t worry. This is just to create self-awareness of your calorie intake, as well as an understanding of nutritional value of some foods. From then on, it’s no notes.Like counting calories, journalling our food intake doesn’t have to become the way of life. It really just helps us do a few things, namely - shed light on what we are ingesting. And if you have a coach, getting some support on what types of foods you need to add in or eliminate in order to move you closer to your goals.I’ve seen great success for clients simply journalling food for two to four weeks, and then moving on with their life. So long as this increase in food awareness led to healthier choices thereafter.
Note how everything I’m saying is basically not blanket-statements, and could start with the preamble, “It depends.” Everything is context depended, people.
The issue with telling people, “You just have to listen to your body,” is that this advice is so highly subjective, and dependent on many variables. Although well-intended, it usually gets lost in the bigger picture.
Consider a scenario: What does “listening to our body” mean when we have friends over watching football, eating snacks, and drinking some tasty, craft beers?
Sometimes, we need to add positive constraints and structural cues to nudge us in the right direction.
Get up and move around every commercial break. Grab some water.
Drink lower alcohol percentage beers, and drink them out of glasses so you can see how much you are consuming.
Limit your drinking to only one or two alcoholic beverages.
Consider opting for beverages with a lower alcohol percentage.
Eat slowly. Pick a friend who eats the slowest, and try to eat slower than them. (You can do this secretly, of course.)
Take light, low and slow breaths to help calm your nervous system and aid in digestion.
Eat away from the television. Only bring water or your beverage to the couch.
I could go on. The minds the limit with these. But the idea is that in order to just, “listen to our bodies,'“ we need to be in the right setting, with proper systems in place. These act as the guardrails, keeping us in our lane and on track to achieving our larger goals. And by trusting the right system, we can better learn how to listen to our bodies.
Over time, your confidence will build, and your knowledge will grow around what foods make you feel healthy and deeply good, not merely surface-level mouthfeel and tastebud good.
Transformation: Your Call to Action
What to do today
Your intuition is powerful. Leverage this self-discovery question to guide yourself towards making “one percent healthier” choices today.
Is this action useful for helping me reach my goals?
What to do this week
Check out this movement practice I made. A simple 14-day habit tracker to help you scale up or shrink back your daily movement to help you keep consistent. This has now been added into the free resource section. Please refer to ‘Free Wellness Tools, Infographs, & Programs.’
Please let me know if you enjoyed this issue, and if you followed through on any of your call to action items.
Feel free to share the content in your social media, with your family and friends, in your company wellness newsletter, or, just use it to take some small, healthy action today!
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