Seahawk Shuffle

Join us tomorrow, January 31st, for a breath of fresh air and nice little jaunt as we get Puyallup in SUPERBOWL SPIRIT!! Dress in your favorite Seahawk attire (be creative - it could win you something) and join us at 7:30 a.m. at Bethany as we begin the fun-filled weekend with a run or walk for our hour together. Childcare is provided so please arrive in enough time to check kids in so we can hit the pavement together!

GO HAWKS!!!!!!

Start it off simple.

Beginning 2015 with some goals or resolutions? Super! Here are some tips for this week to help you get started.

1) Plan your workout sessions in advance. Be proactive in carving out your four, five or six hours a week in which you have dedicated to training. Get yourself into a nice little routine so that in six weeks when the rest of the country falls off the fitness wagon....you don't. Watch those around you who vow to "get in shape" this year; most will start to lose motivation by Valentines Day. Help them (and build in accountability for yourself) by inviting them to work out with you and keep each other on track long after the (what I call) the six-week-slack.

2) Find a super cool water bottle/jug/container and drink the toxins right out of your system. How much? HALF YOUR BODY WEIGHT IN OUNCES. Every.24.hours.

3) Write down a couple of goals for the next few months. Be specific! Examples:

• I plan to achieve running three miles without stopping by March 1st (go ahead and add a time on that if you want)
• I will eat two fruits and two vegetables of my choosing every day for the next four weeks (Many find it hard to meet this nutritional minimum)
• I would like to lose six pounds by the end of January 
• I will cut my coffee intake back to two cups per day until April 1st.
• I want to prove to myself that I can attend class without absences (pending no illness) for three straight weeks.
• I choose not to eat out in the months of January or February
• I will download an app and track my food/water/exercise until Valentines Day

Share these goals with someone and post them someplace you will see them every day. It will work - trust me.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Reclaiming BALANCE in social media.....

In my opinion, a healthy lifestyle encompasses a slew of things; everything from food, working out, relationships, sleep, stress, hobbies, work, and definitely social media. It's not going away and our children will not know life without it, so how can we be sure we incorporate it into our lives in a way that is healthy? 

I saw this article and thought I had to share. It has nothing to do with diet and exercise, but it IS about striking a healthy balance in our socially-tech world. I have been thinking a lot about these very things and trying to organize my thoughts about them in my head. This article does a great job in doing that for me! :)

Enjoy!

5 Questions to Ask Before Posting To Social Media

By Cara Joyner
January 14, 2014

Cara Joyner is a freelance writer and stay-at-home-mom living on the East Coast with her husband and two sons. After years of working in student ministry, she has come home to raise her boys and pursue her Master's in Clinical Mental Health Counseling. She loves hanging out with college students, watching Parenthood and eating chocolate like it's one of the food groups. Read more at carajoyner.com or find her onTwitter @cara_joyner.

Some guidelines for thinking before you post.

I was a freshman in college when Facebook came out and I distinctly remember thinking, “why would I need this? I have AOL Instant Messenger and MySpace!”
Well, times have changed. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram (and a slew of other sites I’m not cool enough to know about) have simultaneously brought us closer together and driven us further apart. With the exception of a few universally offensive statements or pictures, it’s a rule-free zone where we can interact with society while accepting minimal personal responsibility for the implications of what we do.
In absence of guidelines for healthy and polite social media etiquette, we are left to determine our own boundaries for navigating the seemingly endless opportunities available to us.
Before we snap one more picture of our hot chocolate topped with a foam leaf, perhaps we would benefit from a brief pause—an extra 30 seconds to ask five simple questions might suggest it’s time to unplug, or at least reconsider when and how we use social media:

1. Am I seeking approval?

If you’ve taken an introductory psychology class, you’ve probably heard of B.F. Skinner and operant conditioning. Skinner suggested that we learn behaviors through reinforcement.

When we view social media from a lens of discontentment, whatever we find will be colored with bitterness and ungratefulness.

When I seek validation through something I post and that little red flag starts popping up to notify me of each person giving me attention, it’s an addictive reward. And it works. I feel better, so I keep coming back for more. The next time I need to feel approval, I’ll return to the source that poured it out last time, and the cycle of reinforcement continues.What are the bigger needs asking to be met here? Maybe it’s a desire for community. Perhaps it stems from unresolved conflict with someone I love. Or maybe I just thrive on pleasing people and hearing their praise. If your interaction with the internet is driven by a need for approval, consider healthier ways to address this issue and choose to stop reinforcing the unhealthy ones.

2. Am I boasting?

There’s sharing excitement and then there’s bragging. Truthfully, we each know which camp we fall in.
When the Apostle Paul described what it meant to love others, he specifically mentioned that love does not boast. That post isn’t “just a picture” or “just a tweet,” it’s an opportunity to love others in a way that reflects Jesus. Or it’s an opportunity to show them something quite different, something that looks nothing like Christ.
Examine your motivations and walk away before using social media as the adult version of show-and-tell.

3. Am I discontent?

Are you looking for something “better”? If so, walk away. Nothing you will read, write or see is going to solve this one.
Instead, ask yourself why you are discontent and address those needs. When we view social media from a lens of discontentment, whatever we find will be colored with bitterness and ungratefulness. Their lives will begin to look brighter than ours, while our lives will take on a sense of lacking.
Let us not forget—their world is as ordinary as ours and our life is as exciting as theirs. Do you believe that in your core? If not, take a break. Deactivate your account for a couple months. Create space to reevaluate and look for answers in the places you’ll actually find them. Stop asking the virtual world to solve dissatisfaction with the physical one.

4. Is this a moment to protect?

When my son crawls into my lap, he doesn’t want me to take his picture and shoot it across Facebook. He doesn’t care who else thinks I have a cute kid. He just wants me to hold him and see him. To feel his soft, chunky arms and to focus on the way his eyelashes move when he blinks.
When we interrupt lunch with a friend in order to quote her on Twitter, we invite hundreds of people into a conversation that could have been sacred; and we miss the sweet memories that may have formed had her words remained simply between the two of us.
Not every great moment needs to be shared. In fact, some of the best times are most enjoyed privately. If we suspend the present in an attempt to capture its beauty in 140 characters or less, we sacrifice our experience of the moment itself. We also rob each other of something that has been lost in our digital age—keeping a handful of memories between us and those we are closest to, or even just between us and God.

5. Is it kind?

Let’s return to Paul and his call to love. “Love is patient. Love is kind.”
Our culture tells us it’s our right to comment on everything, regardless of whether it was addressed to us and without consideration for how it might affect others.

We have been given covered space from which to throw grenades, without requiring us to take responsibility for the weight of our words.

We’ve replaced face-to-face confrontation with sharp comments and mocking memes. We write demeaning tweets addressed to celebrities or openly criticize individuals we have never met, hiding behind the convenience that they cannot directly defend themselves and nobody is putting our personal lives on display for public criticism.
We have been given covered space from which to throw grenades, without requiring us to take responsibility for the weight of our words, their effect on other people and their reflection on the Church. Jesus said the world would recognize us by our love. What messages are we sending?

A Better Way

Social Media seems to be built around the idea that it can infiltrate nearly every part of our lives. And if we let it, that’s exactly what will happen. We are the ones who say when its reach becomes unhealthy.
As children, our parents laid out rules for our protection and as adults we took on the task of caring for our own well being and personal growth. It’s our job to set boundaries and ask tough questions, tending to the bigger picture of our relationships and the way our actions reflect Christ’s love for this world.
It’s worth noting that these are questions we ask of ourselves, not criteria for interpreting and evaluating others. We cannot know their hearts anymore than they can know ours.
Let us pause and give ourselves an honest moment to reflect—bringing discernment, love and wisdom to each picture and word we share.

Anybody for a New Year's Challenge? 30/30.....

First, watch this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUaInS6HIGo

Okay, are you convinced that just 30 minutes of activity a day will change your health/life? I sure was. This video was suggested to me by my 7th grade sons P.E. teacher. What a find!!!! And oh how happy I am that we have this kind of knowledge in at his school.  *Huge* in terms of adults helping us to educate our youth.

So, here's the deal. From January 6th to February 4th, we are going to see if we can do this. 30 minutes a day for 30 days, or 30/30, I am calling it.  What kind of exercise, you ask?  Anything will do.Walking, jogging, swimming, etc. It's not what you do but the consistency in how you do it. I plan to walk.....I need some fresh air and daylight here in Washington state.  

It's best if you journal your activity, too. Note the date, time, length of exercise (it often leads to longer sessions once the endorphines kick in), and your RPE which is Rate of Perceive Exertion. (That is, on a scale of 1-10, how hard was the session. "1" is lying on the couch, "10" is total exhaustion.  I want you at a 7 - 8.)  Track your progress....it will work!!!! 

We live in a culture that doesn't support taking 30 minutes a day to care for your health, but I am suggesting you be selfish and demand that 1/2 hour be your medicine, prevention, and stress relief for 30 days! Now, if illness or an unforeseen circumstance comes up and you can't find 30 minutes, not to worry! You can tack on minutes to the next day or over several days to make it up.  See? You don't have to throw in the towel.....ever! This isn't about weight loss (although it will likely lead to it) but creating time when you think you don't have it and developing a habit that benefits your health in ways you never dreamed possible.

You in? Good. Enjoy the end of the year and I will check back in on January 6th!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

B2B Annual Turkey Burn! Join Us?

B2B Annual Turkey Burn!!

Thanksgiving Day, November 28, 2013.

Bethany Baptist Church

All over the age of 12 are welcome to participate!

(Childcare will be provided for those under 12.)

Come join us from 8:00 - 9:30 for a fun work out, 

guaranteed to allow fpr

extra calorie consumptions later in the day!

**New guests/participants, please arrive a few minutes early for check-in.**

AH!!! Finally....a fact..... Pesticides are messing with our hormones!!!

Attention all health conscious Friends:

This story was released today on KOMO news.  This is a start the media attention awareness that pesticides are causing harm to our bodies!! Don't assume this pertains only to endometriosis....it won't take long for these same researchers to link many other illnesses, diseases and certain types of cancer to the use of chemicals that, when ingested, wreak havok on our hormones and trigger hormone-related disease.  THANK YOU, Fred Hutch, for finally declaring this truth. Now what, you ask? 

AVOID PESTICIDES by buying ORGANIC foods as much as possible.  

 November 5, 2013 - My emphasis in blue :)

SEATTLE – Researchers at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center have discovered two pesticides they believe cause an increased risk of endometriosis, a condition that can lead to infertility in women.
Endometriosis occurs when the tissue that lines the inside of the uterus grows outside of the organ and attaches to other structures or organs. The condition most often affects the ovaries, fallopian tubes and lining of the pelvic cavity. While it is not fatal, endometriosis can cause chronic pelvic pain, painful menstrual periods and infertility.
The condition affects up to 10 percent of reproductive-age women.
“For many women, the symptoms of endometriosis can be chronic and debilitating, negatively affecting health-related quality of life, personal relationships and work productivity,” said Dr. Kristen Upson, a lead researcher at Fred Hutch.
Unfortunately, Upson said experts don’t know why endometriosis develops in some women and not others, making it difficult to prevent. To learn more, a team of researchers at Fred Hutch conducted a study to discover what role environmental chemicals might play in a woman’s risk of developing the disease.
Researchers looked at 248 women newly diagnosed with endometriosis and 538 women without the disease within Group Health Cooperative. They found women with higher exposures to two pesticides – beta-hexachlorocyclohexane and mirex – had a 30- to 70-percent increase in endometriosis risk.
“Since endometriosis is an estrogen-driven condition, we were interested in investigating the role of environmental chemicals that have estrogenic properties (did you just read that?!?!) such as organochlorine pesticides, on the risk of the disease,” Upson said.
Beta-hexachlorocyclohexane and mirex have both been banned in the United States for decades, Upson said. But, women are still exposed through diet, particularly meat, dairy and fish.
“We found it interesting that despite organochlorine pesticides being restricted in use, these chemicals were detectable in the blood samples of women in our study and were associated with increased endometriosis risk,” Upson said. “The take-home message from our study is that persistent environmental chemicals, even those used in the past, may affect the health of the current generation of reproductive-age women with regard to a hormonally driven disease.”
Pesticides have been shown to have adverse reproductive effects in laboratory studies, altering the function of the uterus and ovaries, as well as hormone production.
“Given these actions, it’s plausible that organochlorine pesticides could increase the risk of an estrogen-driven disease such as endometriosis,” Upson said. “We hope our findings will help inform current global policymaking to reduce or eliminate their use.”

Better late than never, so I'm happy. But be advised, Friends....CHEMICALS CAUSE CHAOS.  Reduce your exposure through foods, cleaning supplies, make-up, etc. It's high time we start addressing this truth and begin preventing instead of treating. And if you have daughters, you have the opportunity to be hugely influential on her delicate hormone chemistry by teaching her the importance in avoidance of chemicals that will alter her finely-tuned chemistry.

This is SPOT ON!

 

If only we could get the two to work together~we'd see a dramatic decrease in chronic illness and disease....an entirely different country.