AuthorAlice Maples is a Wellness Coach, Behavior Change Specialist, Personal Trainer, Yoga Instructor, Sports Nutrition Specialist and Beach Volleyball Enthusiast. Her life passion is empowering her clients and students to live healthy, happy and vibrant lives through thought provoking coaching and infusing humor (when permissible). ArchivesCategories |
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Why New Year's Resolutions Matter!1/4/2022 Are you one of those people who think “Screw New Year's resolutions, they never work and I’m always disappointed.” In Psychology we call that Learned Helplessness, a condition in which a person suffers from a sense of powerlessness, arising from a persistent failure to succeed." Well, guess what! It doesn’t have to be that way! In this article I’m going to inspire you to get you on the road to feeling confident in your abilities to set and achieve your goals!
Do your New Year's Resolutions sound like this: “I’m going to change my weight” ”I’m going to exercise more” ”I’m going to not be an a$$hole to my children” “I’m going to be a better partner to my spouse/boyfriend/girlfriend” All of those seem like noble causes, however THEY WILL FAIL, because they are not SMART. (Specific + Measurable + Achievable + Relevant + Time-based). The number one biggest issue is that they are not specific enough! For example: How much weight will you lose/gain? 1 pound? 30 pounds? Pro Tip: if you want to change your body composition (weight is one of the units we measure, but I like to also look at body fat percentage and muscle mass) - -I can help you determine how much is realistic for you to change based off your body type, schedule, eating habits, and workout routine. Also, we discuss how much weight specifically within a certain time period is reasonable to change! Many have unrealistic timelines of how long it actually takes which leaves them feeling discouraged and lacking in motivation. WHY are New Year’s Resolutions, aka Goal Setting so important? Your mental health, learning ability, daily performance, and so many more things are directly impacted! A word of encouragement: Successful goal setting and goal achieving is a skill set that can be learned and developed over time. But what is the biggest secret of ALL!?!?? You do not need to set your goals alone. You do not need to work on your goals alone. And most importantly, you do not need to celebrate your goals alone! Did you know that goals are exponentially more successful when you 1. Tell someone else about them and 2. You check in weekly to assess progress and recalibrate for future success! So how can you be successful?!?!? Schedule a complimentary 30 minute New Year’s Goal Setting Session with me to be completed before 12pm on January 14th #SMARTgoal :-). You can have a joyous, healthy, and fulfilled 2022 because you visualize, intend, and take action towards it! Click here to schedule! If this was helpful to you, please share! Cheers! Your Wellness Coach, Alice Maples
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I can’t begin to tell you how many of my clients have suffered from “Unconscious Overeating.” The “I opened a bag of chips and one Netflix show later, the entire family sized bag is gone!” or “I eat so healthy and I am still gaining weight,” and the list goes on.
A hot topic right now is “intuitive eating.” Meaning you eat when it “feels right” and “Poof!” You eat the exact perfect amount! Yay! Well, that strategy works for some, but not all people. Below we expose how Unconscious Overeating happens and explore 5 strategies to outsmart your subconscious actions! 1. Get enough sleep! In one study, they tested people when a participant got 9 hours of sleep versus 4 hours of sleep. When the participants got 4 hours of sleep they ate 300 more calories per day! The reason why this caused weight gain is because there was not also an increase in calories burned. If you do not get enough sleep on a regular basis your body doesn’t have enough time to recharge “your battery.” Your body pulls in energy from other sources and that is food! Unconscious eating! (2) What you can do: Especially if you are getting less than 7 hours per night, prioritize getting more sleep. 2. Make unhealthy eating super difficult! Location, location, location! Cornell University conducted an experiment on whether or not Hershey’s Kisses placement would impact consumption. It did! When candy was on a desk it resulted in participants eating 9 kisses per day vs. in a top drawer they ate 6 kisses per day vs. in a cabinet 6 ft away they ate 4 kisses per day. The closer and more easily accessed, the more people will eat! All unconscious!!! (3) What you can do: If you are going to have unhealthy snacks in your home or office, make it really hard to get to. Better yet, keep it the heck out of your spaces! If you do have treats in the house, and you are going to eat them, pre-measure the recommended serving size, PUT THE REST OF IT AWAY PREFERABLY IN A SUPER SECRET PLACE, and then enjoy your pre-measured goodies and zone out with your favorite streaming service. 3. Prioritizing meal prepping & home cooked meals. I know this is not as sexy as you want it to be. The excuses “I don’t have time” and “I’m a terrible cook,” flash like bright lights whenever this is brought into the conversation. But, as much as I hate to tell you, IT WORKS! When my clients take the time to plan their menu, prep their meals for the week, and cook from scratch as much as possible, they always have phenomenal results! First, they gain back a ton of time, then they have to make less decisions throughout the week, they eat healthier, they spend less money, and have more quality time with their loved ones. My eyes tear up every time they report this. Yes, I feel my heart bursting with joy and love even right now. You may be asking yourself, why home cooked and not processed? Did you know that in order to make foods more delicious and ADDICTING, food producers load up on secret sugar, salt and fat to make normal foods “taste better.” Example: did you know common pasta sauce has 6-12 grams of sugar (1.5-3 sugar cubes) per HALF-CUP serving?! That’s the same amount as a cookie! (4) 4. Use Non-Food Related Comfort and Rewards. This global pandemic has been really hard for so many reasons. One reason it has been hard is because it has robbed us of important social connections, community events, and simple pleasures from our previous lives. What you can do: When you are feeling down, or bored, or <<insert undesirable feeling>>, you can replace it with another pleasurable activity. Examples: Phone a friend, take a walk, listen to music, play games, arts and crafts, or you can do an internet search: “how to have fun without eating.” It’s not silly, it’s helpful. 5. Visualization. Next time before making a food decision, imagine yourself in the future. Let’s say you are fully vaccinated and it is safe to travel! You are planning a beach trip with a bunch of your friends. Imagine yourself enjoying it with vivid imagery. “This process fires up the regions in your prefrontal cortex that process abstract concepts like the future and therefore causes your brain to intuitively weigh the future more heavily in its decision-making process.” The research shows that this “episodic future thinking” reduces the intake of tempting, calorie dense foods.” (5). What are you visualizing?!? Things to remember: -Lasting change takes time. Be patient with yourself! -Get help! This article was very dense with information and tips, but know, you do not have to do this alone! Getting a guide, like myself, can help you take out the guesswork, offer a different perspective, give strategies, a plan and accountability. -No matter what, you are a beautiful, wonderful person. Living a healthy life starts with treating yourself with love, compassion and understanding. You deserve that. I hope this article helps give you some understanding, guidance and support! Let me know in the comments what was helpful! ___ Article by Alice Maples Alice Maples is a Wellness Coach, Behavior Change Specialist, Personal Trainer, Yoga Instructor, Sports Nutrition Specialist and Beach Volleyball Enthusiast. Her life passion is empowering her clients and students to live healthy, happy and vibrant lives through thought provoking coaching and infusing humor (when permissible). Contact Alice for more information, coaching, speaking or writing opportunities: Contact@Recesseveryday.org Websites: Alicemaples.com | Recesseveryday.org Instagram: @alice.maples | @recesseverydayorg __________ Bibliography:
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Death By Loneliness3/26/2021 The Loneliness epidemic has been raging and with the help of our friend Covid-19, has gotten even worse. Did you know that feeling lonely LOWERS your immune system? Meaning if you feel lonely your body will have a harder time defending itself against VIRUSES!
Oh wait, there’s more! Social isolation predisposes the lonely to serious conditions like: -Heart disease -Stroke -Metastatic cancer -Alzheimer’s disease -Neurodegenerative disease -Cellular changes that result in chronic inflammation -VIRAL INFECTIONS PEOPLE And more. ***At bottom of article you will find years of research that supporting these claims- - and also note this research was done before the pandemic started so the numbers now will be much worse*** Did you know that 50% of the population is feeling lonely?!?!? So if you have 10 friends, 5 of them are lonely. This is not ok. This is where I come in! Hi! I am Alice Maples and I am a Wellness Coach with a specialty in Behavior Modification. As a coach, I identify the problem and guide my clients to solutions. But since I am writing this article I am going to outline some choices to empower you to take action and save some lives. Here’s the nitty gritty. We have a choice. We can either cry in a corner by ourselves and play victim to our circumstances (we know how that turns out, as outlined above). Or, we can start to take action for ourselves and for the people we love in our COMMUNITY, not just our immediate family and friends. Step 1: Educate yourself Did you know that most people are HORRIBLE listeners? As a part of my multiple leadership trainings, we always practice being the best possible listeners. Before doing any of the below steps: PLEASE READ THIS ARTICLE: “How to Be a Good Listener” by Moshe Ratson, MFT, PCC No, I’m serious. Please if you do one thing today, please read the above article. Excellent. Now that you have read that article and magically came back to this one, now it is time to DEVELOP THE HABIT OF CREATING COMMUNITY AND CONNECTION. Step 2: Check in on someone you care about Sometimes it takes is a quick phone call: -Make it a priority to check in via a surprise phone call on people. One of my personal training clients who I have known for years is one of the most successful movie producers of all time. Do you know what he does? Even when he is on set around the world he still makes it a priority to check in on me in between training lulls. He’ll call “Is everything ok?!” When I respond “Yes, thank you.” He goes: “Ok good bye.” Then he hangs up. Reasons why I love this so much: 1: Defeats the “I don’t have time” argument. That call lasts under 30 seconds, but it has impact. 2. Shows thoughtfulness. We all exist in our separate socially distanced cells at the time this article is written, but we can still reach out. 3. Defeats the “I don’t want to disturb them” argument. Guess what? If someone doesn’t want to talk to you, they won’t answer. So, who are you going to reach out to? Level 2 of Improving Social Connections:
Meetup.com This website is still alive and well! Whatever your interests are, there are likely people in your area that also share them! Clubhouse App currently on Apple! This is all the rage right now, and I am a fan! Message me below if you would like an invite. If you are not familiar, this is a social application where there are different rooms with different topics that are Live! These are not recorded conversations, but are happening in real time. It’s kind of like this. You get invited to a conference (the app). Then there are different presentations (“rooms” within the app) and there are lecturers (moderators) and audience members (people that join the room)! It’s pretty interesting and there are plenty of resources on the web to learn even more. If you know me, you know I have a bazillion more ideas about how to combat this problem! But, I hope this article brought some awareness to this dark, cold killer and some healing, loving solutions to soothe any aching hearts out there! If you learned something from this article please comment what impacted you! And if you really liked it share it with someone you love! Sending love to you, Alice Founder of Recess Everyday LLC “Making the World a Happier, Healthier, More Connected Place” Recesseveryday.org Email: Contact at recesseverday dot org Bibliography: https://www.forbes.com/sites/neilhowe/2019/05/03/millennials-and-the-loneliness-epidemic/?sh=56c1792c7676 https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/11/29/457255876/loneliness-may-warp-our-genes-and-our-immune-systems https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/11/18/1514249112.abstract https://www.wikihow.com/Be-a-Good-Listener
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What is Wellness Coaching?3/26/2021 What do these people all have in common?
A Wellness Coach is basically a professional question asker. The research shows that when someone is told what to do versus when they create the solution themselves, they are much more likely to follow through with the action to completion if they originated the idea. Wellness Coaching follows an incredibly powerful process:
**SWOT Analysis= Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats Wellness Coaching FAQs: How expensive is Wellness Coaching? Depends! Some companies offer wellness coaching as an employee benefit. For example, I am an independent contractor with Gympass and I can be booked directly through the app. Others range from donation based to thousands of dollars an hour! How long are sessions? Typical sessions last 30min-1 hour. Where do sessions take place? Wellness coaching sessions can be conducted in person, over the phone, or via video conferencing. For example, many of my clients "go for walks" while we have our sessions. What is the flow of a session? During the first session it is a chance to do an overview of where you are, what you have done up to this point, where you want to go. (This is basically what happens, but depending on whether you sign up for a program or simply have a session, the first session will vary). Follow-up sessions follow a similar process but are more heavy on accountability to your goals and recalibration of what works and doesn’t work in getting you there. How long will it take to reach my goals? Research has shown that lasting behavior change takes 90-365 days to develop. How can I get coaching with you? I offer both coaching programs and a la carte sessions. My upcoming program starts April 4, 2021 through July 2, 2021. This 90 Day program is specifically designed as a post-covid wellness reintegration program. We will look at what habits you want to leave behind and build the ones that you want. The application period is from March 25-March 31, 2021. You can apply here! If you miss this session, the next coaching program will start in early January of 2022. For testimonials, services and more information visit my website recesseveryday.org! ____ Alice Maples is a Wellness Coach, Behavior Change Specialist, Personal Trainer, Yoga Instructor, Sports Nutrition Specialist and Beach Volleyball Enthusiast. Her life passion is empowering her clients and students to live healthy, happy and vibrant lives through thought provoking coaching and infusing humor (when permissible). Contact Alice for more information, coaching, speaking or writing opportunities: Contact@Recesseveryday.org Websites: Alicemaples.com | Recesseveryday.org Instagram: @alice.maples | @recesseverydayorg References and Further Reading: https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/health-coaching-is-effective-should-you-try-it-2020040819444 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6125027/ https://www.webmd.com/balance/guide/life-and-wellness-coaches#1-3 https://www.physicianspractice.com/view/why-healthcare-needs-health-coaches |