Clarity Wellness

Everywhere I go on social media this month I see posts on how to stick to your dietary plan over the holidays, nasty ingredients that are in your favorite dishes, and recipes for healthier options.  I'm all for eating healthier (obviously!) but aren't the holidays stressful enough?   Case in point: one of my family favorites at Thanksgiving is a corn pudding that we've been eating for as long as I can remember.  It's pretty basic—corn, butter, yogurt, and a corn muffin mix packet.  I saw a post this week on the ingredients in the corn muffin mix that was quite horrifying, along with a link to a healthier option you could use.  The price difference?  Twelve dollars!  Now, I'm all for healthier options (especially the gluten-free varieties), and quite honestly, I don't recommend eating corn muffins—even the twelve dollar ones—at all, but if you're only eating them once a year, why break the bank and stress over it? I will be making the cheaper versi...

Ever have one of those days where everything you had planned flew out the window and you became a slave to everyone else’s agenda? Who am I kidding? I have a hunch you all have, and if you have kids, I KNOW you have. This morning I had plans to go on a long, soul-soothing, solo hike. However, when I woke up, my aching hip had other plans. No problem, I thought, I’ll walk to the coffee shop with my husband and get some quality time in with him, while loosening up the hip at the same time. That I did, and then worked on meal planning for the week, baking a birthday cake, and doing some PT for my hip. All well and good, until the shizzle hit the proverbial fan. Suddenly I found myself putting out fires right and left, hunting down a rotten smell from the fridge, calling the dentist for the third time this week to reschedule (yet again), and rushing to the store for last minute groceries, all while trying to plan a birthday get-together. Oh, and did I mention that my hormones are a...

I just got back from vacation.   The trip of a lifetime, actually.  The trip with our girls we had planned for Fall Break 2020 that didn't happen.   It was fabulous,  We took our girls to New York City and did all the New York things: the World Trade Center, Times Square, the Statue of Liberty, and the Empire State Building. We saw artwork at the Met and MOMA that made our eyes dance with happiness in our heads.  (Yes, I said that out loud in front of Van Gogh's Starry Night . Any opportunity to embarrass my teens!)  We also saw Wicked on Broadway, and waved at Joda Kotb and Al Roker outside the Today Show window (they even waved back!) Vacations like this are amazing because they take you to places you haven't seen before, they give you a chance to show your kids life outside their little bubble , and they teach you so much about history, art, and architecture in the process.  Not to mention the mental break they provide from work and the ...

Ummm...what?  Seriously, what messages are your things sending you on a daily basis?  Is it "Clean me, you lazy bum!" or "You have such good taste--I'm here to make you happy!" or "I know you don't like me much, but I belonged to your great aunt Alice so you're stuck with me for life!" And when you walk into your closet, do you hear "Put me on, daahling, and you'll look faaabulous!" or "Don't even think about--I can't believe how much weight you've put on, you pathetic pandemic porker!"  (I know, pretty harsh, but admit it, sometimes we're not very nice to ourselves.) Our homes should be places of refuge and serenity for us --a calm, peaceful place where we can relax, especially when we are working from home and staying at home more than ever now.  If the things in your house are adding to your stress because you have to take care of them, or making you feel bad about yourself because they point out your ...

If we want to build new habits around our health, it is often helpful to figure out what our anchor habits are first, and build from there.  B.J. Fogg likes to refer to anchor habits as those things that we already do every day without thinking about them--brushing our teeth, making our coffee, eating our breakfast.  If you want to build a new habit, tie it around one of those things.  For example, "While I brush my teeth I will do 20 squats," or "While my coffee is brewing I will do  some stretches in the kitchen."  That's a great ways to implement something new, but I look at anchor habits in a way that's a little closer to The One Thing philosophy touted by Gary Keller. He asks the question, "What's the One Thing I can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?"  I've always had a hard time wrapping my head around this concept and narrowing it down to just one thing. I tend to have "One Things"...

  The term " self-care " gets thrown around a lot these days, but how many of us really know what that means, and even more importantly, how many of us actually do that?  With all the stress in our lives it's so important that we give ourselves a break from time to time to stop and recharge our systems.   Even the things we don't normally see as stressful are enough to raise our cortisol and adrenaline levels, adding to a baseline level of stress that our bodies and minds are not meant to handle.   Watching the news?  Scrolling through Facebook?  Sitting in traffic?  Staring at a computer screen all day?  Feeling a lack of purpose in our lives?  The pandemic has not helped things with the underlying anxiety we are feeling on a regular basis.  It all adds up and affects our mood, our sleep, our hormones, and our overall health.  We need to build daily self-care routines into our days, and every once in a while we need to ta...

I read something this week about the feeling of living from vacation to vacation and I could totally relate. I used to spend a large portion of my year planning for the next trip--picking out a wardrobe, learning a few phrases in another language, booking interesting places to stay. In this time of COVID one of the things I mourn the most is that many of our vacation plans have been canceled. I try to be grateful for what I have--we are so lucky that our kids are doing well online, we're all healthy, and we're financially stable when so many around us are struggling. It doesn't mean I'm not sad about missing out on my trip to Greece, though.  We hear a lot about how important gratitude is in making us happier. In her latest book, Didn't See  That Coming , Rachel Hollis addresses that topic, but goes one step further—figure out what gives you joy and schedule it into your day. My cup of coffee before anyone else is awake, my morning run, my evening walk with my husb...