Tom Rath, who authored Gallup's Strengthsfinder 2.0 has this month launched a wellness book designed to get us sleeping, moving and eating right.
Eat Move Sleep: How Small Choices Lead to Big Changes contains plenty of research showing the importance of diet, activity and sleep.
Did you know, for example, that 95% of us need 7 to 9 hours of snoozing a night? And that most of us need 7 just to be "in the game" and 8 "for enough energy to win?"
Or that only 1 percent of us read beyond the calorie count if we read nutritional labels at all? And that nutritional labels are what can save us from whopping carbohydrate and sugar counts, even in low-cal foods?
But more important than the research, Rath makes small, practical recommendations for change.
For example...
Read the nutritional labels and try to choose foods that have 1 gram of protein for every gram of carbs. Avoid those that have more than 5 grams of carbs for every gram of protein.
Find one way you can work without sitting and try it.
Gradually add 15-minute increments of sleep to your bedtime routine until you feel fully rested.
Rath also encourages readers to create their own 30-day Eat Move Sleep Plan and provides a tool for doing this both in the book and free on the book's website. Based on your own habits, you can try specific small changes for 30 days and even receive e-mail reminders to keep at it.
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Keeping Zzzzs Top of Mind
 With the best of intentions, it's really easy to keep doing "one more thing" at bedtime, and soon bedtime is after midnight. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) is a great resource for keeping better sleep habits on our radar screens. If you're on Facebook (hopefully not at bedtime), you can "like" AASM's page and receive links to helpful articles on getting more sleep. Here's a recent link to practical tips on sleeping better. The Academy also makes scholarly sleep research available on the web, such as t his article on how extroverts may have trouble sleeping after intense social interaction during the day. (Interestingly, AASM also posted on Facebook an article on new ways to sweeten your coffee - but in their defense, it referenced "morning coffee.") |
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Habits In A Hurry
Many of our less than helpful routines related to sleep, diet and exercise are the product of habit.
If you haven't had a chance to read about cracking bad habits in Charles Duhigg's book The Power of Habit, now you can get the gist in under five minutes.
Watch here as Duhigg explains how he analyzed his cookie-eating habit and figured out how to change it.
 | | How to break habits (from The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg) |
Copyright 2013 Pat Snyder
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