HelloHealth Today

For women at work, endurance plus resilience equals career stamina. Having our eyes on the horizon propels us forward into unchartered territory yet to be explored. We tell ourselves that out there lies all that is missing in the present. We need that missing piece so we can achieve our goals. We respond by working harder, longer, and with more discipline. Having our eyes on the horizon means not only are we never satisfied, but we also never rest…which means we don’t tap into the wellspring of energy that comes from having a hugely satisfied sense of accomplishment. Instead, We trade restorative energy for more work toward the goal. But we work so hard without enough sleep, rest, and recovery that we begin to get diminishing returns. This is one recipe for burnout for a women who is an expert in her own right who expects to be self-recharging.

Action Steps for the Week:
1. When you feel discouraged, tired, unmotivated or fatigued, ask yourself if your eyes are on the horizon. Asking yourself this simple question can be like taking a big breath and letting it out.  You’ll just start feeling better.

2. Place your health journal or a notepad on your night stand. Before you go to bed, write down the single most importnat thing you got done today. 

3. Give yourself an 8 hour sleep opportunity tonight. In the morning, record how sleep makes you feel. This goes a long way toward you realizing the true value of sleep — it’s so much better after hard work and sleep makes reproducible high performance possible. 

For executive women, there is often a narrative related to health and work that consistently separates the body’s needs from what work demands. No woman with ambitious goals is immune. When you want big things to happen, you’re willing to put in the time and effort and our society tells us that hard work is necessary so we don’t think it should feel any different. Sacrificing sleep and exercise to put in time at work will serve your career to an extent, but it won't give you career stamina or enjoyment in life. Part of the antidote is to strengthen your Internal Observer.

The Internal Observer is not a positive voice. It is a neutral observer. It notices. It doesn’t judge thoughts or feelings as being either positive or negative. It just notices that the thoughts or feelings are there.  

Action Step: When you find yourself feeling angry or resentful toward others, worried or afraid of what might happen, or when you feel ashamed, recognize the thoughts you’re having as pretty negative and wildly unhelpful. Choose to dial them down. Look for the referee in the game — the one I call your Internal Observer. Ask your Observer what’s really going on and listen for any suggestions that might come.

The act of trending toward health involves periods of acceleration and deceleration lying between speeds of zero and 60. We all have to practice heading in the right direction by using a dashboard of leading health indicators. Getting enough non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT) is one of these. It’s proxy is steps per day.

Action steps for today:

#1. If you do not currently use a fitness tracker - start. This can be a pedometer, smart watch, or other kind of tracker like a fitbit.

#2. Start recording your steps per day in your health journal. Doing this in long hand will help your mind realize how important the number truly is.

#3. Make the changes you need to improve your step count to 8,000 daily. 

Dr. Mohan's book, The Women's Guide to Health can be purchased through www.herprescriptions.com.
Health Journal pages are available for free download: www.hellohealthtoday.com/healthjournal.
Register for Dinner and a Download: Sleep, Rest, and Recovery: www.dinnerandadownload.com.

Improving your health depends on becoming an expert on your own mind, body, and spirit.  The key to becoming such an expert is being rigid about organization, note-taking/record-keeping, and time for personal reflection.  Women who are most successful in achieving their health goals have cultivated the habit of recording four variables each day: sleep, exercise, food, and health numbers. The reason these women are so successful in achieving their health goals relates to their habit of keeping a health journal that harnesses focus, attention, motivation, and insight.  A journal is not only essential in gaining knowledge about yourself.  The act of gathering the data and recording in your journal is the most important action you can take because it activates your problem-solving brain—giving you control over your daily activities and food choices.  This puts you in command of each area of your health, every day.

Here is your action step for today: Place a 30 minute time for REST onto your calendar from 9PM to 9:30PM.
www.hellohealthtoday.com

Minimum health requirements:
1. Get 7 hours of uninterrupted sleep nightly. Bonus points if you go to bed at the same time every evening and wake up at the same time very morning whether it’s the weekend or not.

2. Get enough aerobic exercise through walking, running, swimming, or cycling. The time required is about 150 minutes weekly. So you don’t have to do it every day, but you do need to put in the total time broken up during the week.

3. Strength train for 20 minutes twice weekly. Again, not an every day thing, but hardly anyone strength trains and data suggests only 1 in 4 American women do this.

4. Eat a diet consisting of at least 5 pieces of fresh produce daily, is low in salt, sugar, and saturated fat, AND in moderate quantities that do not exceed your daily caloric needs.

5. Move enough - take at least 8,000 steps each day

6. Maintain good relationships with other people.

Start a health journal. If you haven’t already, you can download health journal pages free of charge from our website: www.hellohealthtoday.com/healthjournal.

Dr. Mohan discusses leading health indicators and compares them to lagging health indicators. Here’s your action step for today — download health journal pages from our website: www.hellohealthtoday.com/healthjournal.

After discussing the role of drag on stagnating a career, Dr. Mohan describes how the bioreserve reflects aging and impacts personal energy levels. Proactive health can help buffer against age-related declines in personal well-being. The health landscape for executive women demands the use of health as a leadership strategy. The action step for this week is to practice defending a regular half hour walking time.