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Showing posts from February 26, 2018

Dear Mark: Improving Exercise Stress Tolerance, Stress and Athletic Performance, My Stress Practices, Non-Negotiable Stress, and Distractions

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For today’s edition of Dear Mark , I’m answering five questions about stress. First, how can someone handle the stress from training five days a week, assuming they don’t want to cut back on gym days? Second, what are the negative effects of chronic stress on athletic performance? Third, what do I do when I’m stressed out and Primal Calm isn’t cutting it? Do I have any practices? And fourth, how can a working mom with three little kids deal with non-negotiable stress? Fifth, can distractions like TV or movies help us deal with stress, or are they just ways to ignore the problem? Let’s go: I’d like to know more about how to best combat stress from HIIT other than just don’t work out 5 times a week. Don’t know that I’m willing to sacrifice days at the gym. Thanks!! My first suggestion—and the best one—is to sacrifice days at the gym. Five days is excessive for most people, and since you’re complaining about too much stress, you appear to be most people. Drop a day or two and you’l

Primal Starter: Small Wins

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They say it’s the little things, and maybe it is. Success isn’t honestly built by daily yearning for a dramatic goal after all. It’s constructed by the small wins we plot along the way. Teresa Amabile, author and Professor at the Harvard Business School,   calls   this the “progress principle.” Amabile and her associates studied employees’ daily diaries that her team designed. They found the efforts of tracking small achievements each day (as well as reflecting on challenges) enhanced workers’ motivation as well as creativity. The chance to consider and record one’s progress, she explains, helps us appreciate our “small wins” and boosts our sense of competence. We can then   “leverage” that confidence   (as well as lessons learned from the reflection) toward subsequent, larger successes. Amabile stresses   there’s always some progress to recognize in a day, even on the most challenging or discouraging days. Yet, too often we downplay our progress or even talk ourselves out of it for

Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye

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^^Teenage Mazen picked out his rad outfit! How was your weekend? I feel quite guilty because we ate out SO many meals! Rather than bump up our grocery store trip to Friday, we got take-out Thai for dinner Friday and ate out on Saturday. The kitchen will be reopening this week with a big box from Blue Apron! Fresh rolls, spicy beef noodles, panang curry. Mazen read this ENTIRE book to me! I was one proud mama. The House Fairy brought Mazen a fossil dino egg for a few days worth of good manners and choices. He started chipping away at breakfast. Protective eyewear required! : ) We had buttered toast and banana – oat – peanut butter smoothies for breakfast. I took Mazen and Sylvia to the gym. I worked out, saunaed, showered,  and had time to read a few pages of my book before going to get them at noon for lunch. Sarah and I made plans for lunch at Three Notchd (which is nice and kid friendly!) and the kids had a blast. I decided to go big or go home and got the sliders