To take or not to take responsibility for our lifestyle choices?

There was no way I was going to read the following (which is paraphrased) and not get back to blogging...

"The advantage of modern pharmacopoeia is that we can abdicate responsibility for how our lives are lived. What and how much we eat, what and how much we imbibe, how much we work, the games we played etc.
Unhealthy habits can now be enjoyed and the disastrous results minimized by a little colored pill."

The fact that this is the basic rule under which our society now operates should scare the hell out of us. How do we change these rules for ourselves and our families? Is there a way that is viable for us to begin taking a bit of control and learn to be more aware of what our needs are? Can we realistically give up the "need" for instantaneous relief from whatever ails us?

Hmm how to begin such a process?
Of course (for those of you who know me well) it would be a no brainer to begin with our brain, the center of everything.

Do you know that the nerve cells that arise when we are still in the womb can live 100 years or longer? This is super impressive life-span when compared to the cells in the lining of our intestines which live only for a few days and red blood cells which have an average lifespan of three months!
In the old days it was believed that once the nerve cells died that was it, game over, they were not replaced but now we know that new nerve cells do arise and in more than one region of the brain...even in older brains not just the youth!
As always with knowledge comes responsibility, this time it is the responsibility to nourish the cells that we have and to do our best to stimulate the growth of new ones.
With this in mind we are going to begin discussing a series of thoughtful lifestyle choices that each of us can employ on a daily or weekly basis, that will help us be able to give up the need for a "quick fix" from a little pill by being more in tune to our needs and by being proactive with our health! In other words we will begin to learn the process of taking care of our brain so that it in turn can better take care of us!

I have spent a good deal of time thinking about gratitude lately. Really I guess it all started this week on Tuesday with a simple email. The message was from a woman who sounded confident and strong, clear headed and not at all sick. It was a simple, short message that changed the way I felt all week, hopefully for longer than that!

In the email this woman told me that she had been diagnosed with a motor neuron disease, which was causing foot drop on one side. Her goal was to have help getting in as good of shape as possible, so that she will be able to have the best quality of life as she adjusts to the progression of the disease that she has just been diagnosed with. She was looking for a personal trainer to supplement her weekly sessions with a physical therapist, (which by the way is who gave her my information and suggested that she get a hold of me, thank you Laura). 

Of course as with any potential client with an issue that I have not worked with before I got busy doing research.
The exact diagnosis that was given her last month was that of Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), often referred to as "Lou Gehrig's Disease" what is this exactly? Nothing quite as simple as foot drop sounds that is for sure! I'll let the ALS Association describe/explain exactly what this is.

"Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), often referred to as "Lou Gehrig's Disease," is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord. Motor neurons reach from the brain to the spinal cord and from the spinal cord to the muscles throughout the body. The progressive degeneration of the motor neurons in ALS eventually leads to their death. When the motor neurons die, the ability of the brain to initiate and control muscle movement is lost. With voluntary muscle action progressively affected, patients in the later stages of the disease may become totally paralyzed.

A-myo-trophic comes from the Greek language. "A" means no or negative. "Myo" refers to muscle, and "Trophic" means nourishment–"No muscle nourishment." When a muscle has no nourishment, it "atrophies" or wastes away. "Lateral" identifies the areas in a person's spinal cord where portions of the nerve cells that signal and control the muscles are located. As this area degenerates it leads to scarring or hardening ("sclerosis") in the region.

As motor neurons degenerate, they can no longer send impulses to the muscle fibers that normally result in muscle movement. Early symptoms of ALS often include increasing muscle weakness, especially involving the arms and legs, speech, swallowing or breathing. When muscles no longer receive the messages from the motor neurons that they require to function, the muscles begin to atrophy (become smaller). Limbs begin to look "thinner" as muscle tissue atrophies."

What a new challenge this will be, for both her and I. Together with a team of 10 health care providers we will be working as many days as possible to gently give her as much strength as possible for the months/years ahead.

What a different experience it was for me to discuss fat as stored energy with a person who is likely to need that stored energy to fall back on in the near future. How much easier is it to accept the fat vs. fit idea when one is faced with ones own mortality at an unexpected point in life? (I will add at this point that she is not obese whatsoever which would indeed in itself make life harder on her joints).
How frustrating is it to know that every bit of mobility lost will stay lost, there is no going back and trying to rehab what is gone with ALS. Once it is gone it is gone, period. This is not at all what I am used to in working with personal training clients.

I have had an amazing rewarding 18 months or so spending a lot of time focusing my research/reading on my stroke clients issues, and they have been having fabulous results! It has been and will continue to be such a rewarding experience with good happy results, and now here I begin another journey, one that will not have a happy ending but will certainly make one woman as strong as possible to face what the future holds for her and will absolutely play a role in shaping how I view everyday life from here on out.

In just a few short days I have consciously become aware of being grateful for the ease in which I can move my joints, pick my feet up off of the floor and walk, for the ability to swallow, breathe, touch, feel and of course for the ability to speak, for without that ability communication is much more difficult.

Being part of this journey is going to be a humbling experience for me, as you can see it already has made me think long and hard about even some seemingly simple but vital things.

Keeping our brains fit and flexible with neurobics

If there is one thing that I have learned from working with my clients who've had strokes, it is just how much I have always taken my healthy brain for granted. I have never truly focused on any sort of strategy for keeping my own brain fit and flexible at all, until that is I started looking for ways to enhance workouts for my clients whose brains had sustained damage.

Once I started down the path of searching for everyday exercises for the brain, it became sort of like a scavenger hunt! One that makes complete sense when you stop to reason on the theories behind why different things work so well. Of course all I can do is read, read, read! The cool thing is, that with the ability to look at and image a brain, literally as it is thinking, neuroscientists are able to learn more about enhancing and improving our mental capabilities, this means a lot of fun reading for me to choose from!

I think it is just crazy that the new scientific evidence clearly shows that our brains do not have to go into steep decline as we age, in fact in 1988 a team of American and Swedish scientists showed that in adult humans NEW brain cells were generated!


This lays the responsibility of keeping our brains sharp and fit squarely upon our shoulders doesn't it?!

Here is where Neurobics enters the scene. Neurobics is a big key to taking charge of our mental health and fitness. Basically what Neurobics is, is a cute little name for literally giving yourself a mental workout! How do we do this? It is so simple, we do this by breaking from our routines and patterns, so anything that is non routine and unexpected is good. Why? Because by reliance on different senses than what is our normal pattern or routine we create new patterns for neuron activity in our brains!

Think of these exercises as you would think about the training that you give your core. Keeping your core strong and fit enables you to move and exercise with less difficulty and more efficiently, do the same for your brain!


Here are some great ideas, don't get discouraged if it is harder than you think, have fun pretend like you are a little kid! If you get frustrated just think how much harder these would be had you already sustained some sort of damage to that wonderful brain in your head!


Wake up to a different smell in the morning than you are used too, instead of coffee keep an aroma in a container next to your bed and release a little smell each morning for a week. This will link different smells to your morning routine thus activating new neural pathways


Put your toothbrush on the opposite side of the sink or in a different drawer


Brush your teeth with your eyes closed


Shower with your eyes closed


Move the shampoo to a different spot in the shower


Eat with chopsticks


Eat with chopsticks with the WRONG hand


Perform tasks (that are safe) around the house (this could just be moving about from room to room) while blindfolded


Write with your Wrong hand


Wear earplugs experience the world without sound


Don't drive the same route each day change it up


Swap cars with someone so that you are driving with different controls


Don't sit in the same chair at dinner, or while watching TV change it up!


Okay I'm sure you get the idea, no getting old and set in your ways!
Go for it, see for yourself how much fun and how challenging this can be!

Challenge for week of Jan 4th

I know that many of you saw this on our fb page, but for those of you that did not here is the challenge of the week.
Rid your home, and or office space of all the holiday goodies that may have accumulated! This of course does not mean eating everything in sight, as was pointed out as one option on fb (thank you Sam)! Pack it up and give it away (to someone that you know will welcome the goodies.) Or how about simply tossing stuff that has already seen it's best time for being eaten. If this seems incredibly wasteful to you, think about it this way, you will either waste it in the trash can or you will wear it for the next few months in the form of extra pounds! What will it be? Are you up to the challenge?

New year brings new changes at Fitness by Design!

A fresh year is always bound to bring new challenges, new rants and raves and new awesome accomplishments! There will be new recipes to share, and new ideas to kick around. What will never change is our need as humans to have a net in place that is always there to support us with our everyday healthy endeavors!
Last year Fitness by Design tried adding a forum to the website as a trial to see how many of you would get on and talk, or at least read in silence and be encouraged.
While there was plenty of traffic there was not a lot of talking going on, so I am making some changes! If I am going to do most of the talking this is a much nicer platform to use! I will be leaving the recipes on the fitnessbydesignseattle.com website as they will be cataloged easily.
I also am discontinuing the newsletter in favor of the blog. It is my hope that this will be more interactive!