Loving Life

When stress finds its way into your life, it can make you do things that your body does not handle well. Eating more and moving less is often the result of high stress levels. Those things lead to health concerns as the body begins to store the extra calories that the added food intake brings, just in case you need those calories at a later date. Unfortunately, many of us never need those stored away calories and they help add to our stress as summer approaches and visions of beaches and swimming pools become nightmares when we realize our bathing suits do not hide our spare tires.

I once thought it might be a good idea to tattoo my extra flab to look like an inner tube, but I couldn’t figure out where to put the air valve. Instead, I decided I should be more active. Have you ever jumped into an exercise program after gaining 50 or more extra pounds? It is like trying to catch a moving car while carrying 10 bags of groceries… at some point something is going to hit the ground. It was usually me. So instead of going from sedentary to gym rat in one day, I started by taking walks around town. I am fortunate to live in an area where the climate is nice most of the time (9 months of the year, it is tolerable to walk around), so my wife and I will walk from our house to various locations around town and back. We try to switch it up, starting in one direction one day and the other the next day. It makes it more fun and not as monotonous. One of the biggest negatives for me when doing exercise at the gym is the repetition of the same stuff time after time. So I try to keep my walking fun. I have Pokemon Go on my phone and that keeps me motivated to walk that extra kilometer to hatch an egg…

But walking alone won’t undo all those stress eating binges and Netflix weekends when you have 20 or more pounds to lose. I drink a cup of SlimRoast coffee every morning to help my system burn more calories and to curb my appetite during the more stressful time of the day (you know, going to the office and dealing with all those type A personalities who hold your livelihood in the palm of their hand) where it is easy to find junk food to help you cope. I also drink a lot of water. Water helps hydrate you and it also decreases your need to eat because sometimes, when you feel those hunger pangs, it is really your body asking for more water. At home, I have an alkaline water ionizer that turns my tap water into healthy alkaline water. When I go to work, I fill a large water bottle with this elixir and take small sips throughout the day. If you don’t want to spend the $800 on the water ionizer, you can get mineral drops that turn any bottled water into alkaline water in seconds. Then you can still fight off the acid producing sugars in your system and help prevent growth of tumors.

After spending some time with my mother in chemotherapy a few years ago, I learned that too much sugar in your diet is actually helping cancer grow, because cancer thrives in an acidic environment. The nurses told me that avoiding sweets gives the chemotherapy a chance to kill the cancer, but if you are going to eat sweets, follow it up with alkaline water to cancel out the acidity in your bloodstream. By all means, check with your doctor, as I am only repeating what a nurse was telling a patient who was undergoing treatment. I lost my mother to cancer and I was determined to do what I could to be around for my grandkids, so I started drinking alkaline water since that time. Time will tell if that was a good choice, but I am not going to take a chance that my snacking is going to help any cancer grow in my system…

So by drinking coffee and alkaline water, I have been fighting off the stress induced weariness that I found to be so difficult to overcome in the past. Instead of going to lay down as soon as I get home, I have some water and go for a walk with my wife. If the weather is rough, we stay home and find something else to do that does not involve sitting on the couch (you folks get your minds out of the gutter). We are trying to eat healthier, less processed sugars and more protein. We love life and want to keep ourselves around so that we can be able to meet our great grandkids in a few years.

Have you had a success story of how you are beating stress and becoming healthier? We want to hear it (please don’t plug your programs – this is not what we are after), so leave a comment. One commenter will receive a Tee Shirt!
(Comments are open for 14 days – we will choose the winner randomly – only if we get 10 or more people commenting).