Category health

A wise friend once told me, after a huge blow-up (among many) between me and an ex-boyfriend, “if you cannot respect each other and the boundaries you set, you may not need to be together.” At that time (just over 2 years ago), I was not in a place to receive that little nugget of wisdom. After feeling a failure at marriage, I’d found someone who accepted the parts of me that my ex-husband couldn’t, so I was holding tight to a relationship that, in itself was very toxic. Emotionally, I was very immature, in regards to relationships. It would take another year and a half and an even bigger argument (this time involving Rankin County Sherrif’s Office deputies), for me to actually leave that situation.

Upon reflection of that relationship, which left me confused and mistrustful of my own sound judgement in choosing partners, I realized that I allowed myself to compromise in areas of the relationship, in hopes that the good parts of it would somehow compensate for the bad. That simply didn’t work. Boundaries, basic compassion and respect, as well as open and safe communication were missing – on both sides. Every fight taught me a little more (mostly what NOT to do). With each brutal altercation the relationship began to wither – at least from my end. I quickly learned that for it to survive, we needed to understand and honor each others’ needs, adhere to agreed upon boundaries, and show compassion to each other on the most basic level. Unfortunately, my partner, despite my efforts to convey this new-found and hard-gained knowledge to him, was not capable of rising to that level of emotional intelligence, that I’d so rapidly and chaotically had to attain.

My only advice in the arena of relationships is this: pay kind attention. Learn to read and understand people, especially your partner. Honor boundaries. Communicate clearly and allow your partner to feel safe in openly communicating with you. Be as compassionate and respectful as possible, especially when angry. If your partner cannot do the same, chances are, he or she is not able to grow with you, and stagnation is fatal to a relationship.

Ive struggled the most with anger. Typically, when I’d feel hurt or wronged by someone, my first move was plunge the knife straight to the jugular, without restraint, my only goal to inflict 10x the amount of pain and emotional anguish on him, as what I’d felt. I never paused and considered the costs of such an approach. These days, I do. Contrary to the “sticks and stones” school of thought in regards to words, things spoken in anger CAN really cut deep, impact a relationship in ways that forever change it. Irreparable damage can be done. One fight may not cause an end, but many, over time and fueled with intentions to cause pain (instead of resolution and repair), can cause a relationship to die a slow death.

Accept and attempt to understand yourself so that you know what you will accept in a relationship and from a partner. Be honest and kind to yourself and your other. Love always wins.

Death By a Thousand Cuts…relationship advice from someone great at failing

Melanie Leave a comment

Hold on, I’ll Find You – a note to Self

Melanie Leave a comment

Ive often wondered what the world would be like if everyone lived out some self-actualization. It’s a brave act. To endeavor to do so requires not fitting in, going against a grain of social and societal or cultural norms on some level, since each person’s fulfillment of potentialities looks different. As a mom, my hope is for my children to discover early in life that being your true authentic self and responding to the call of your life’s purpose is the only way to happiness. Not sure who needs to read this but, it’s not your responsibility to make someone (even your partner) happy. Your job is to do the life’s work and purpose God set on your heart. You are called to be kind, demonstrate compassion and exhibit empathy to others. Happiness will happen to you and those who share your values will gravitate to you. That is a life fulfilled. Of course, it comes with costs, as anything of value does. Setting boundaries with those whose intentions and actions don’t align with yours is difficult.

4 years ago, I had to walk away from a relationship where I’d been unhappy for a long time. Wrongly, I didn’t recognize my responsibility in creating a space for myself where I felt loved and appreciated. I threw the entire task to my partner. It was unfair. I was “too much” yet I felt as if I wasn’t really enough. I wasn’t the person my partner needed- he voiced it in little ways, “why can’t you be like the other baseball moms” or when eyebrows were raised at my desire to pursue interests of my own. The way I dressed, the music I enjoyed, my approach to parenting – somewhere along the way (or maybe the issues were present the entire time) – we lost the connection that initially was enough to sustain the relationship. We just were not on the same path. Nothing was done at the expense of my children, but I do firmly believe that in order to fill others’ cups, you must fill your own. And I knew that to be the hallmark of an exemplary mother was to embrace my own self-actualization. If you are still struggling with finding a balance, or if you’re surrounded by people who don’t appreciate you for you, these words from one of my fav songs are a beautiful reminder:

“fight a little longer, my friend. It’s all worth it in the end. ” Tell yourself, “and when you have no one left to turn to, hold on, and I’ll find you.”

I’ll Find You by Lecrea (featuring Tori Kelly)

Here’s to finding yourself so that happiness finds you, my friends.

Who Else Wants to Be a Champion at Life, Work, and Taekwondo Tournament??

Melanie 2 Comments

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“Hard work beats talent, if talent doesn’t work hard.”

Do you understand the meaning of this phrase?  I asked my 9 year old, Jack.  He didn’t, so I explained: “you can have talent the size of a mountain, but if you don’t work to improve, you can still be beat by someone with less talent, who works harder.  You should always be the hardest working person in the room, no matter how much or how little talent you have.  Champions work hard.”

Jack: “Well, mom, then it’s a good thing I have both!”

I love his modesty.

Our district taekwondo tournament is this week, which prompted this conversation on our way home from class one night.  Tournament is a great opportunity to practice performance improvement and test prep under tension, a character-building event that grows you into a better martial art athlete.  Even if you don’t bring home a medal, you bring back knowledge and experience- true gold.  Medals break, get lost, wind up in the backs of drawers.   Knowing you’ve pushed yourself, tested your fortitude by entering a tournament- that feeling of accomplishment will never be lost.

The Champion’s Mind by Jim Afremow has some great nuggets of advice for those who want to improve in any area of life, especially athletics.  Here are four suggestions from the book and ways I’ve found to apply them.

  1. Stay focused on the here-and-now.  Ive used this a lot, especially with kids and schedules.  It’s easy to keep the mind distracted with all that needs to be done, meanwhile what is currently happening is missed: life.  Also, as a taekwondo student, this has helped me to approach each class with the attitude of “Ive got one shot and it’s now, so it needs to be the best you’ve got today.”  No complacency.  I strive for this with every class because I want to gain the most out of each, make it really count toward my improvement.  Im not talented, I just work really hard.
  2. Control what you can.   Working in a busy NICU is chaotic and there are many situations beyond my control.  It is a highly emotionally and mentally intense vocation, but focusing on the things I can control has served me well for years.  You likely will never have a perfect tournament situation.  Bad calls, poor judging, an unexpected injury or your performance is just “off” that day are things you cannot control.  But you can control how much time/effort you put into preparing for tournament, your rest, fueling your body with healthy food, having a positive outlook. Your job is to do what you have been coached to do with the right attitude and to the best of your abilities.
  3. Take what you do seriously, but take yourself lightly.  Earlier this year, I got into weight-lifting.  By “got into”, I really mean addicted!  I love it, for so many reasons!  Ive gotten really serious about keeping track of my progress, learning about how to eat, train and sleep to change the body composition. I even started a 2nd IG account to track it all (mel_e_instafit) Serious!  But I do take myself lightly.  Im the first one to laugh at myself when I mess up trying a new exercise (hip thrusts!) or attempt a healthy diet change and don’t succeed well (asparagus- blech!).  As a tkd tournament competitor, work hard to be the best, but remember that tkd is what you do, not who you are.  Enjoy the opportunity to test yourself.  If the worst thing happens, you feed the “good wolf” by learning what to do different next time, and you move forward.
  4. Train like you are #2, but compete like you are #1.  The first half of this is my entire tkd life story.  Having very little athletic background, I have always felt like I needed to train harder than anyone else.  I feel a hunger to prove that I can do better EVERY time I take class.  I hope that never goes away because it drives me to keep standards high for myself. When it comes to competing, accept that you are prepared and focus on what you WANT to happen, not on what you fear.  I am using this visual imagery now, with my board breaks, which are the reason I have no-changed twice.  I am putting in extra practice (thanks to my lovely board-holding husband) but also focusing on me breaking my boards at testing, instead of thinking about how awful I will feel if I don’t break.  The mental image of me smashing my foot through that plastic blue board is so much more satisfying to think about. BAM!  Just writing this makes me want to practice!

Being a champion is a mindset that you must adopt on a daily basis, in order to become one.  Its that whole “dress for the job you want” sort of philosophy.  I hope these suggestions benefit others as much as I feel they are helping me.  Best wishes to everyone competing in tournament!  You are one step closer to becoming a champ, just by showing up.

If you’d like some really great tips on motivation, tournament, test prep, or just taekwondo in general, head over to this very cool blog by my instructor, Mr. David Dear.

Girl Meets Macros – In Pursuit of Strength

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 “The tiny ant has a strength advantage because of the ratio of surface area to volume. An ant need only lift a small measure of its own weight relative to the strength of its muscles. ”  When I think about physical strength, I think of ants.  Their strength is relative to their size.  They may be small, but they are strong!  The more I strive to gain physical strength, the more I have come to believe that strength is beautiful and personal and achievable. 

Who doesn’t want to be a stronger person- in every way possible? Admittedly, I’m super impatient when it comes to myself and health/fitness results.  That whole slow and steady wins the race malarky? Sounds great for everyone else, except me.   I make a decision, set goals, create plans, and wanna see results.  

As 2015 approached, the desire to see measurable change in my physical strength gained momentum.  I, like so many others, vowed to see a physically stronger Melanie staring back at me from the mirror, come 2016, someone who could balance marriage, family, career, health, and recreation- and lift my body weight.  It’s 6 weeks into the new year and I am still just as fired up about all the wonderful things 2015 promises!

3 years ago, I embarked on a fitness mission:  drop some pounds, tone a little, enjoy the process.   At best, the goals were a place to start, albeit not specific enough, and, thus not well-suited for carrying out.   What happens after the pounds are dropped and muscle is toned?  Thankfully, my aspirations evolved and I began to look beyond mere aesthetics and ask myself what, precisely, do I hope to gain from my fitness endeavors? (Besides an excuse to make Nike capris part of my daily wardrobe-which I have).  What is the one MOST important outcome I hope to achieve? Strength. My answer is strength.

I tend toward the side of obsessive when I decide to take on a new goal,  so to gain strength, I started extreme:  workouts were tailored for increasing strength, meaning heavier weights, fewer reps, longer rests (so that the nervous system can recover), more consistent gym sessions.   I documented everything (I am a nurse, after all), from the food I ate, the amount of water I drank, and everything else that had to do with seeing results.  I weighed weekly, and even took pictures and measurements (that no one will ever see).   Doing all of these things- I just didn’t feel like I was getting the results I wanted:  little more muscle and lots more strength.  I felt I’d hit a wall.  Until…

Enter the Macros

I came across a great article about food intake and growing muscle.  Perhaps my diet, while healthy, just was not able to do what I wanted it to do.  I needed to make my food work for me.  I decided to track macros.  I thought it would be fascinating to see what MY body, MY muscles could do. Macros, simply put, are the main nutrients: protein, fat, carbohydrates.  I’m no stranger to macros.  I calculate them daily for my patients.  I know that it takes 80-120 cal/kg per day, 3-4 g/kg/day  of protein, and 2-3 g/kg/day of fat to induce weight gain in an infant.  What I needed to learn was how to grow muscle in adults. I started by choosing a daily calorie goal (something I had not been tracking) and a macro ratio:  60/30/10.  This means that 60% of my calories would come from protein, 30% from carbs, 10% from fat.  I soon discovered that this was an extremely low fat intake goal in comparison to my total caloric intake and a bit unrealistic for someone just starting out and after 4 days, changed my ratio to 50/30/20.  Once I calculated my goal calorie, protein, carb, and fat intake per day.  I wrote the daily goal in a small notebook to toss into my purse and proceeded to log macros.

Soon I was reading labels like crazy and found that I needed to a good source to find nutrition info on various foods (like veggies and fruits, which should be consumed in mass quantities).    More ingredients and a complex recipe, I realized, meant spending a little extra time and effort to tally the macros. I followed some advice from various articles and don’t “sweat the small stuff”-  in other words, I round numbers.  The  entire experience has been an eye opener.  Although I was eating “healthy,” I was eating more fat than I recognized- it’s hidden in so many foods.

Advice from a newbie:

1. Make goals specific and know your purpose for doing this- you can remind yourself of what you want to accomplish when you are tempted to stray from the plan.  Expect times of decreased will- power and make plans to counter those times.  I found that acknowledging the fact that I’m tempted to eat “just to taste” the food makes the food less attractive, especially when I think about how temporary the pleasurable taste will be.

2. Calculating and meal planning takes extra time and effort but that’s ok.  Make it work.  I remind myself that busy people do it all the time and feeling strong and healthy is worth the investment.

3. Expect to fall outside the limits of your intake, at times, but be mindful of how often this happens.  Eating meals out, I found, was the biggest saboteur of staying within the limits daily goals. It’s difficult to measure macros from food not cooked oneself.  Eating most meals at home is my solution, which is both healthier and saves money- a win-win for our family!

At just over 6 weeks into macro-counting, these are the tips I have to offer so far, based on my humble and limited experience. I have tailored my counting, to accommodate my schedule. I log every other day and am often able to gauge approximate fat/calorie intake without writing everything down.  The process continues to evolve as I learn more about building muscle, my work with weights becomes more consistent, and balance it all with cardio.

Progress on the Horizon

“Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.”

Frank Zappa

Progress, too, is unique to the individual and happens in many little ways. lt may come in the form of being able to increase on weight squatted or a change in a measurement or even someone noticing the increase in muscle tone.  All these things have happened along the way and serve as motivation to continue.  These little goals are part of another, larger reason to gain strength, and keeping that thought close at hand helps me to stay on track.

To Infinity and Beyond

I may not do this for life, but I’m certainly learning lots and looking at food differently, these days.  Im seeking to learn more about the entire process, asking questions of others who have been there, done this.  In time, I hope to gain a better understanding of what MY body needs for energy and strength and to find a balance with it all.  It’s a dynamic process and quite exciting to discover what wonderful things this little pile of muscle and bone can be pushed to achieve.  I’m most thankful for my health.  Truly, it’s a blessing and worth the investment of both time and effort, because, I believe, it equates to a happy, long life, serving the purpose for which God intended.