Form Fit - Health and wellness blog

Relax your Eyes

9/29/2021

When you and your children spend time staring at phone's it will begin to affect the eyes. Your eyes are a muscle and when they are looking at phones, computers, reading books, and even just being inside all day it means are eyes are having to work a lot (the muscles are being contracted) all day long.

Your eyes get to relax when you go outside and look at something far away, so I would love for you to go outside and look at something far off in the distance to help to relax the muscles in the eyes. Help you and your children have good eye health by getting outside, looking at things far away, and just enjoy all of the beauty that the outside holds.

Helping Moms Get Unstuck

9/27/2021

Holistic health coach Melissa Rohlfs is a wife and mother to two children who has experienced her own sense of overwhelm and now works to help moms become calm, confident and healthy in their motherhood journey.

In todays era of homeschooling, quarantining, mask debates and more she has noticed many mothers having more anxiety as their children return to school coupled with a sense of relief that life is returning to normal. As a way to manage this sense of overwhelm and anxiety Melissa suggests that moms block out 10 minutes a day in their calendar to take a break and decompress and get their emotions in check. Many times doing a “brain dump” and getting all of our thoughts out of our head can help us stay focused and centered.

Another suggestion Melissa has is to be prepared to say no. Before responding with an automatic yes to all favors asked of you, ask to have some time to think about it and look at your schedule. Tell the person asking for your time that you will get back to them within 24 hours and if it doesn’t fit in your schedule time wise, or you feel like you’re already committed to too many things, it’s absolutely ok to say no.

Often overlooked, Melissa believes eating properly and following a healthy lifestyle also helps moms keep their anxiety in check. Binging on sugar, simple carbs and alcohol can have significant impacts on a woman's health and emotions. There is generally an underlying reason why moms are using food and alcohol to relax or feel happy. She suggests asking yourself the hard questions of why or what am I looking for in this experience? Most often it’s not the sugar rush but some deeper level of discontent.

If you are struggling with feeling stuck and eating unhealthy, I would love for you to join us. Practice healthier living, with meal plans, exercise, and tons of other information to support you on your health journey as a busy mom.

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hanging is not just for kids

9/22/2021

Hanging is a very important movement pattern for us as humans. Our shoulders are designed to move in many different directions, they are a very mobile joint, yet, most of the time in our everyday life, they are down at our sides. And we are surprised when they become injured when we start to push heavy things over our heads, like shoulder presses and picking up our children and bringing them up to our hip or something; yet most of us haven't been doing these movements and now we think we can with 10-15 pound weights!

And unfortunately, what happens is for many of us, once we hurt ourselves, we think it's the workout that we've done, or we start to question that we've pushed ourselves too hard. But really, it's not the workout design, that's usually the problem, the problem is more about the lack of movement in your own body. So if you are not moving your arms over your head, often, then please don't go out and start lifting heavy weights over your head. It's just it's they're not ready for it.

Instead take some time to prepare yourself.

One way you can do this, is by putting yourself into a position where your arms are over your head and load that position. You can do this by practicing hanging from a bar. We have a pull up bar in our house, and we use it for our children and for ourselves. And I'm gonna be honest with you, I can't do one single pull up, my upper body strength is not there. So what I use it for instead is just for hanging from, it helps to open up my shoulders, it helps to kind of reset my positioning from being in that rounded forward posture most of the day.

It helps to reset everything, it opens up the shoulder complex, and stretches the muscles in our chest. This is truly one of the best things that you can do for your shoulders. If you deal with impingement, if you deal with mid back rounded shoulder or you've got this forward head posture, that's another thing that just getting into that hanging position can help.

So either grab the kids and head to a park or buy a pull up bar through Amazon and begin using it now. Also make sure your kids are practicing it, as most of them will be able to hold themselves up from a young age, and the adage is true, if you don't use it you lose it. So give them an opportunity to be one up in life by starting them out early with this.

If you are dealing with aches and pains from life as a mom than I would encourage you to grab my FREE E-book on the 3 steps to fix your posture along with 5 quick exercises you can do daily to help you start to feel better.

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Are you feeling overwhelm?

9/20/2021

Many moms feel overwhelmed today. We’re raising kids while juggling careers, volunteer commitments, aging parents, kids sports and activities and of course most recently, a pandemic.

Gina Fontaine is a mother of two, a personal trainer and author of the book You are a Supermom. After living through several difficult moments in her family she began recording her thoughts and from there her book came to life. Her advice and tips for moms who are feeling overwhelmed help them to reclaim their superpower.

Gina has 5 myths she covers in her book that she believes need to be debunked. Her number 2 myth is that moms are master multi-taskers. There’s no doubt that moms are great at multitasking but research has shown the brain can only focus on one meaningful task at a time. Long term, multi-tasking puts us in a chronic fight or flight feeling. It’s better to make lists and focus on each task individually.

Another tip Gina has to moms is to learn that taking care of themselves and keeping themselves calm will help calm the swirl around them. She encourages moms to know that it’s okay to put themselves first and to fill their cup so they have more to give to others.

Listen in to Ep. 20 on Raising Healthy Humans to hear more from Gina and her tips and tricks to combat overwhelm. Don’t forget her book You are a Supermom is out and available now.

Helping families to ease stress and anxiety

9/16/2021

Dr. Alyssa Runyon believes that in order for people to heal from chronic pain and chronic stress they must move from a near constant state of fright or flight to a parasympathetic state. A parasympathetic state is a persons rest and digest or recover state after a stressful event. In todays world, we are constantly “on” which means our sympathetic system is in overdrive and our body doesn’t get the rest and recovery it needs to heal from pain and stress.

After a stressful event that raises your cortisol level it takes the body approximately 20 minutes to recover from the event. One way to help your body recover is through proper breathing techniques. Utilizing proper breathing patterns such as extended exhalations is one of the most potent and powerful ways for your body to recalibrate your nervous system.

Other ways Dr. Runyon suggests you try for resetting your parasympathic state is by:

splashing water on your face
rubbing your ears
slow down your eating
take a laugh break.

These techniques also work with children.
Dr. Runyon has amazing tips and techniques in my podcast Helping Families to Ease Stress and Anxiety-Ep 14. Tune in to hear our entire conversation over at Raising Health Human

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How to get better at pushups

9/3/2021

Whether you are working on taking your pushup from your knees to your toes or you are wanting to be able to do even more pushups. These tips will help you to become stronger with your pushup and will provide you with different variations for your pushups which will in turn help you to become stronger.

kids in the kitchen

6/16/2021

kids in the kitchen

Having your children help in the kitchen is one of the best ways for them to become adventures eaters. The more they are surrounded by different foods and interacting with them through the cooking process the more likely they are to actually try the foods being set down in front of them at the dinner table, and this can be started at a very young age. It is also a great way for them to work on skills that are needed in life.

Here are some ideas to help you to get your children involved in the kitchen.

Toddler- get a Learning Tower so they can join you at the counter and help pour pre-measured ingredients into mixing bowls. Don't want to spend the money on a Learning Tower, set them at your dining room table with a bowl filled with some spices and have them mix them, it's always fun to have them smell each of them before they put them into the bowl and even allowing them to taste them if they are curious. Let them snap the ends off of green beans and asparagus as this is always a fun thing for them at this age. Even pulling the silk off of corn can be done at this age. Let them also put the finishing touches on the food by sprinkling a little bit of salt and pepper on everything before it goes into the oven or onto the cook top.

Ages 4-8 - This is a great age for them to begin learning how to whisk and stir batters. have them practice cutting up fruit and vegetables with a small pairing knife (my daughter always loved chopping the tops off of the strawberries), tearing the lettuce to go into the salad and tossing all of the ingredients together, setting the table, clearing the table, and learning how to unload the dishwasher.

Ages 9-12 - Great age for them to start becoming more involved with helping in the kitchen and starting to cook basic meals independently. There are many subscription services that send a box each month to kids that include recipes and a fun kitchen utensil, we love Kidstir for this. You can also have them find recipes in cookbooks or online they want to try. Once they pick it out have them write out the ingredients they need from the store. Once you have everything be on the sidelines ready to assist as needed.

Ages 12+ - they should be able to independently make easy meals for themselves including making a sandwich, eggs, pasta, and macaroni and cheese. Have them help make the side dishes or even give them a night to be head chef! As they get older and more comfortable then the recipes can become more complex.

The key is to make it fun, don't act as if it is a chore for them to do or you will automatically get push back from them. We have found that watching cooking/baking competitions help our children to get into the kitchen more. My children love doing competitions in the summer where they each make a dessert, we have the grandparents over for dinner, and then we all judge which one was the best. Now that they are older we have started to place each one in charge of dinner one night a week; this is fun for them as they are in complete control with what is being served, the preparation of the meal, and then the adults do the clean up.

Have you gotten your children in the kitchen?

Join us over in our Form Fit Mom Community on Facebook for more fun ways to help your children get involved in a healthy life.

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Children & Exercise

5/25/2021

Children have been greatly impacted by 2020 with one of the biggest problems being their sedentary lifestyle. In a world where they already were sitting more, 2020 put almost a complete stop to movement for our children. The Journal of Nutrition and Physical Activity mentions that only 4.8 of children (5-11) and 0.6 of youth (12-17) were meeting the daily guidelines for daily activity.

They found that the children who were able to get their daily activity in were the ones with parents encouraging them to get outside and play, were getting out and moving with them, or those that had a dog to take out for walks.

Getting out and encouraging your children to move more is one of the greatest things we can do to help raise children that will be healthy and happy. Don't worry about them exercising, just have them get outside and play. The more you can get your children moving it will help to improve blood flow to the organs, especially the brain. More blood flow allows our bodies to make its own internal medicine (called Nitric Oxide) which will help to decrease inflammation. The faster your blood flows through the vessels the more it stimulates them to produce nitric oxide which are the nutrients for the organs.

So how can we get our children to move more?

Allow your house to have more movement spaces for them. Hang a pull up bar in a doorway so that everyone can practice hanging on it when they walk through the door, to help get more movement in while at home.
Get outside yourself and your kids will usually follow suit. Play for a bit with them and then allow them to continue to play on their own.
If they are interested in using weights, feel free to let them use them for fun, but be cautious about having them lift heavier weights prior to Puberty as they need to have proper testosterone levels to help with proper recovery.
Make sure they are moving through different modalities to keep from having overuse injuries occur especially for those that play sports. It's great that they are playing sports but have them practice other sports for fun so that they are moving their bodies in different ways as well.

Ideas for movement in your home:

Go for family walks or bike rides
Create obstacle courses in our outside the house
Floor is lava or dance parties
Hide and Seek
Water balloon tag

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want to sit on the floor with your kids?

3/22/2021

As a mom we find ourselves on the floor A LOT! Whether it's playing a puzzle or reading a book with them, cleaning up after them, finding something that fell under the couch, or just getting down to their level more we are sitting on the floor quite often and we may start to feel the aches and pains of this. So I wanted to share a few tips with you on how you can sit on the floor more comfortably, how to know when to move, and what is the best way to sit on the floor.

Join our Facebook community for more tips and tricks to help get you moving more and moving more of you!

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Wrist Pain Relief

2/22/2021

One of the largest complaints I hear from mom's is that their wrists hurt. Whether you spend a lot of time carrying your child around, or are getting back into the gym and doing planks and pushups you may have started dealing with some wrist pain and tension.

Our wrists are working OVER TIME and if you haven't been using them as much or are constantly have them in a relaxed position (think typing on a computer) the inside of the wrist can get tight, which causes pain and tension when you begin to work them in the opposite direction.

So I wanted to provide you with some stretches and exercises you can do to begin strengthening those wrists and hopefully begin to ease some of that pain and tension.

Feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions or if you would like help with any other tension areas.