Month: March 2014

Spring is on its way. The weather in Texas has been bipolar- hot one day, freezing and sleet the next- so it’s definitely a sign of spring right around the corner. I’ve felt the effects of the change in season myself, feeling low energy and restless at the same time for a few days. I know I need to do something to feel like my happiest, healthiest self again. It’s a good time to clear your space, doing spring cleaning both in your home, your office, your car and your body. Throw out the junk food in your house. Donate canned goods of processed foods. If you have kids or a roommate or partner that you can’t remove all of the processed food from the house, designate an area for the “junk” food.

For me, this is a good time of year to do a cleansing detox program for a few days. I don’t personally do fasting cleanses, but I do think that eating a vegetable and fruit based diet, while increasing your water intake and drinking tea can help to cleanse the body, give yourself a boost toward weight loss, and increase energy levels.

Drink more water, get quality sleep. Focus on clean eating and nutrition. Exercise is a proven way to help your body detoxify. Sweat. Increase your fiber intake. Eat brown rice, quinoa, beans, and green vegetables. I also like to drink green tea and dandelion root tea. I recommend adding apple cider vinegar to your food as well, or drinking a Tablespoon of it in hot water, a few times a day.
Certain yoga poses can help your body as well. Practicing yoga helps to reduce your stress level. Twists stimulate digestion and elimination, and legs up a wall, downward dog and other inversions aid your lymphatic system and promote blood flow.
Ways to help your body detoxify:
• Yoga: Yoga not only helps the body relax and reduce the cortisol levels in your body, many yoga asanas (poses) help the body detoxify. Twisting poses help the digestive system and many poses, especially inversions, stimulate the lymphatic system.
• Epsom salt baths: Mixing Epsom salt with a natural oil such as coconut oil or olive oil makes a great, natural body scrub. Epsom salt in hot water helps to draw out toxins, help the body to relax. (Epsom salt can also be used as a gentle laxative when ingested)
• Massage therapy: Massage also helps you to relax, releases endorphins into your body, stimulates and drains the lymphatic system and releases lactic acid built up in your muscles.
• Dry brushing your skin and hair: Dry brushing your skin and hair also helps stimulate the lymphatic system as well as removing toxins and waste from the surface of the body. This also stimulates natural healing. Natural bristle brushes are best and always brush toward your heart.
• Apple cider vinegar: helps with digestion and is said to flush fat from the body.
• Water, water, water!: Drinking enough water each day is probably the best way to help your body remove toxins, stay hydrated and refresh the entire body.
• Barley powder: barley powder is a great addition to your diet when doing a cleanse. It is one of the most nutritionally dense substances out there including nine amino acids. It is known to help with skin ailments as well from the inside out. Its high fiber content helps the body to eliminate waste.
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Liz Jones is the Wellness Coordinator for the City of Mesquite and a wellness professional in Rockwall, Mesquite, Wylie and surrounding areas. She is a writer, certified yoga instructor, personal trainer and wellness coach. She holds a Master’s Degree in Organizational Leadership and Strategic Management, with a graduate certificate in Ethics and Leadership. Her undergraduate studies included communication, business, writing, art, fitness, and dance. Liz Jones can be reached at: [email protected].

My son Jordan turns 24-years-old this week. Many of you who have regularly read my columns know that he is a miracle child and overcame great adversity when he survived a terrible motorcycle accident that put him in a coma, leaving him with a Traumatic Brain Injury when he was 14-years-old. He is a true survivor and has overcome great odds in life. I’m happy to say he is healthy and living back up in Wisconsin, getting ready to return to college this August to work on a degree. I am incredibly proud of him and yet still always incredibly worried about him. But that’s my job, I’m a mother.
When I think about overcoming odds, I often think how ironic it is that I do the work that I do, helping other people to make positive changes in their lives. Actually, it’s not ironic as much as it’s exactly the path that was put before me. I think most people who end up in any leadership role, or in any helping profession, have had to overcome some adversity in their lives, it’s what builds us as leaders. It’s what gives us experience and wisdom to help others and to encourage people along the way. I had a shaky home-life as a child, as people used to call it, a “broken home,” but these days, coming from a family of divorce or dysfunction seems to be more of the norm, and having parents that are married and stay married (and are actually happily married), is the more unusual situation.
As I grew up, I lived in foster homes as a teenager, on and off, and moved out when I was sixteen years old. I worked evenings and went to high school during the day. I was a year ahead in my class and was the youngest senior at the age of sixteen. I worked nights at a truck stop and drove to school in the mornings in my ratty old Chevette that had holes in the floor that would splash up on my passengers if it rained the day before. Eventually I dropped out of high school because I was too tired to stay awake in algebra class and was often falling asleep on my desk. I moved to Montana and became pregnant at the age of seventeen. I decided at that time to move back to Wisconsin, where I was from, to have my son. I finished my High School diploma, taking tests while I was pregnant and finishing with him by my side in his baby carrier.
When Jordan was two, we were very poor, but I was able to get accepted into college and began going to the university during the day and working at UPS loading trucks in the evenings and cocktail waitressing on the weekends. Later I was able to go to college full-time on the weekends and work a better day job during the week. I built a house on my own at the age of 29 and raised Jordan there until he was through with high school and into college.
I finished both an undergraduate and master’s degree in the weekend program at the College of St. Catherine and I attended law school, working toward a dual degree until Jordan had his accident. At that time I took a year off from school during his recovery, but went back to complete my graduate program. I taught yoga and fitness as a part-time job around my full-time work and I raised Jordan. Over the years we have both been through many trying times, many big changes.

When Jordan was 21, he had been in college for a while and I decided to put my house up for sale, pack up a 20 foot U-haul and my 100 pound dog, and I headed to Texas, ready for a change in my life with nothing more than a wing and a prayer. There’s a lot more to my path to becoming a wellness professional, but I am grateful every day to get to do the work that I do and even for the experiences that I have gone through that were difficult at the time because I hope that I can be an example to others that they can achieve their goals and can overcome the odds that may seem to be stacked against them.

Liz Jones is the Wellness Coordinator for the City of Mesquite and a wellness professional in Rockwall, Mesquite, Wylie and surrounding areas. She is a writer, certified yoga instructor, personal trainer and wellness coach. She holds a Master’s Degree in Organizational Leadership and Strategic Management, with a graduate certificate in Ethics and Leadership. Her undergraduate studies included communication, business, writing, art, fitness, and dance. Liz Jones can be reached at: [email protected].

March is National Nutrition Month. Any good trainer will tell you that 80% of your fitness results come from what you eat, 10% from your fitness program and 10% genetics. Even if you are religiously sticking to a workout plan, but you make poor choices with your diet, you are not going to see the results that you are looking for or the health benefits that are so important. Eat clean, train mean, get lean.
One good way to become more aware of what you are consuming is to log your meals. I’ve always been an advocate of writing down what you eat and drink when starting a program. It helps to be accountable to yourself and more mindful of what you are putting in your mouth. I’ve always been a pen and paper writer and hold off on most technology until it has become necessary (I am a late bloomer with getting an IPhone and still have never downloaded a song in my life and don’t own an IPod- which some may find very strange for someone who teaches any fitness or yoga class), but recently I decided to try MyFitnessPal.com, which is a free app that you can use on your phone, computer, or other device to log your food and exercise. I found this incredibly useful, not because I want to count my calories, but to be able to see the nutritional breakdown of my meals. It has been very interesting and also has helped me to shed a few extra winter pounds as I emerge into my spring training program. It also helped me to realize that I wasn’t getting enough potassium in my diet, which is surprisingly hard to get enough! High blood pressure runs in my family, so it’s extra important for me to make sure I’m getting enough potassium.
I am not an advocate of getting “demerit” points for eating because I think that it attaches a psychologically negative association to eating. What we need to do is learn how to eat for nutrition and nourishment, while still keeping food enjoyable. I do think having treats like desert or margaritas (or your favorite) can be good to have in moderation and on occasion, but that it shouldn’t be used as a reward or punishment. Finding balance and a positive association with food is probably the best ultimate goal, even more important than reaching a certain weight or pant size.
Trying new foods is also important to help your family get the nutrition that they need. Things like kale, quinoa, or flax seed can add great benefits to your meals. Or trying avocado based chocolate mousse, using unsweetened applesauce in place of fat, agave nectar in place of sugar, or creating smoothies with power foods can be a surprising way to have treats that are much healthier and still delicious. If you’d like some tips on food that are high in potassium or some new foods to try, follow me on Facebook in March for “Try This” tips https://www.facebook.com/liz.jones.1441810.

Liz Jones is the Wellness Coordinator for the City of Mesquite and a wellness professional in Rockwall, Mesquite, Wylie and surrounding areas. She is a writer, certified yoga instructor, personal trainer and wellness coach. She holds a Master’s Degree in Organizational Leadership and Strategic Management, with a graduate certificate in Ethics and Leadership. Her undergraduate studies included communication, business, writing, art, fitness, and dance. Liz Jones can be reached at: [email protected].

I’ve had a couple of discussions lately with people who are “regular” runners, about whether running burns off muscle. As with most things, it really depends what your goals are in order to determine how much cardio and weight training you should do (see my previous article on lifting heavy or light). My personal belief is that everyone needs to do cardio, weight training, stretching and relaxation in order to achieve wellness and to help them meet their personal goals.
Many of my friends in the Rockwall Running Club are strictly runners, they can get up in the morning and run ten miles right out of the shoot, but they don’t do any weight training or yoga, so they may want to add a weight training program to increase their leg strength, shape their body, or for bone health reasons. Many runners I know also suffer from shin splints, hairline fractures, plantar fasciitis and other ailments). Yoga or a stretching program is also important for runner to help maintain flexibility and decrease soreness, cramping, etc.
On the other foot are my body builder and power lifting friends. Many of the people I know who compete, especially the power lifters, focus more on their weight training and do not include much cardio in their training plan. You can weight train intensely enough to raise your heart rate to achieve health benefits, but that takes careful planning. Most body builders also need to do enough cardio to achieve heart health and fat burning benefits. The same philosophy applies to body builders doing yoga and stretching, it helps them to feel better as well as excel in their sport.
One fear body builders/fitness/figure/power lifters have is that doing too much cardio will burn away hard-earned muscle. In some cases that is true and when working to add muscle while getting lean, it is a balancing act to be able to increase lean muscle mass, while being lean enough to see muscular definition. How much cardio you need also depends on your diet, what types of foods you are consuming and the volume of food and beverages you ingest.
I don’t mean to generalize any category of fitness folk, but these are some known trends in various sports. I encourage you to have a well-balanced fitness program along with a mostly clean diet, no matter what your passion.

Liz Jones is a wellness professional in Rockwall, Mesquite, Wylie and surrounding areas. She is a writer, certified yoga instructor, personal trainer and wellness coach. She holds a Master’s Degree in Organizational Leadership and Strategic Management, with a graduate certificate in Ethics and Leadership. Her undergraduate studies included communication, business, writing, art, fitness, and dance. Liz Jones can be reached at: [email protected].