Lifestyle

Strengthening Your Drive Muscles

May 28, 2019

Build your “drive muscles” to strengthen your drive (motivation).

Strengthen Your Drive Muscles

Healthy lifestyle habits have been crucial to successfully manage my rheumatoid arthritis (RA). I know this because when I slip up, say I eat too much sugar, my joints soon ache and I feel like I have the flu. Pain and flu-like symptoms are classic signs of inflammation going on in the body. Feeling well, having a reasonable amount of energy and lack of pain (or most pain) in my joints is my drive to live a healthy lifestyle so I can better enjoy and engage in my day-to-day life.

With my drive established, living this healthy lifestyle should be a snap, right? Well, it isn’t that easy and doesn’t come naturally. I have a serious sweet tooth and portion size is a challenge. Then there is the fact that after feeling well for a few days I forget just how much I hate feeling lousy. I succumb to temptation and complacency.

This dilemma is why I’ve decided I need to strengthen my drive. Like this cute little guy showing off his muscles, I need to build my “drive muscles”.

I’ve learned about healthy lifestyle choices, in fact I coined an acronym to help keep me on track and assess what I’m doing. The acronym is FRESH and it has been immensely valuable to me. When I eat whole foods, limiting processed foods and added salt and sugar, I feel better and my joints don’t scream at me. Stress management, exercise, sleep and hydration round out my healthy strategy.

My FRESH strategy is great when I consistently practice it, but what can I do about my sweet tooth cravings and tendency for complacency? That is where building my “drive muscles” comes in.

Like I shared in the post entitled “What Drives Your Thrive?”, our reasons to develop healthy habits in order to thrive and live our best life are very personal. One person may be driven to live a healthy lifestyle so they can keep up with their grandchildren while someone else is driven by the desire to keep up with their golf buddies.

Tapping into our drive, or motivation, to make healthy choices is fundamental to changing unhealthy behaviors. Then strengthening the “drive muscles” will help prevent bad default choices when faced with cravings or complacency. When our convictions are deeper we are better able to resist and change harmful behaviors.

After failing time after time to stay on a healthy track, I put some thought into how I could do a deeper dive into why I need to make lifestyle changes. Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is funky. I can feel well and my joints can be feeling well one minute then the next minute my joints can all out flare. That is my new normal. I need to do all I can to help my body fight this disease.

I decided in order to strengthen my “drive muscles” I needed to review Immunology 101 from pharmacy school to understand on a deeper level why changes are necessary. I focused on how my biologic works to interrupt the inflammatory reaction in my body. My next step is to learn more about how the microbiome interacts with the immune system. I try to visualize what is going on in me and that helps to take a pass when confronted with a craving.

We are all unique and learning to live with an autoimmune disease is a process. There are commonalities between us, but we all need to determine what works for us. I’m sharing my journey.

What are your tips to strengthen your “drive muscles”? We would love to hear them!

And that is using Arthritis Wisdom.

XXOO Cathy

Photo credit: Ben White from Unsplash

What Drives Your Thrive?

April 22, 2019

What drives your desire to thrive?

What Drives Your Thrive?

Just what drives your thrive? We are talking motivation here. What makes you chose one thing over another? I’ve spent a lot of time trying to determine why I make choices I know are not the best for me instead of choices that are good for me. It has been time well spent. Let me explain.

You may know I am in the middle of a 12-week class to help me develop healthy lifestyle habits. I shared in the previous post my observation of the class participants that the concept of a healthy lifestyle is easy, but implementation is very difficult. It has been unanimous that we all struggle to put into practice what we are learning. It is clear to me changing my lifestyle to a healthier one is going to take even more effort than I’ve given it.

I do not need to be convinced that a healthy lifestyle is necessary to best manage my rheumatoid arthritis (RA). I made basic lifestyle changes in 5 areas and coined the acronym FRESH as a quick reference when my joints hurt to keep the inflammation in check. I believe lifestyle changes are as important as the medications I take to fight my RA. What I need is to firmly establish my motivation for adhering to positive lifestyle choices so I can make those good choices. It is like righting a huge ship!

My motivation has to be a deep desire. A desire greater than my sugar addiction. Yes, addiction. I crave the stuff. This is where I’ve worked on my thinking in many ways. I’ve discovered my drive to thrive. What drives me to thrive revolves around doing those things that are anti-inflammatory in order to live the best I can. Inflammation could shorten my life and make it less fulfilling.

There is so much good information put out by researchers and clinicians that we now know what we eat and how we treat our body does absolutely determine how well we live. As a pharmacist, I am very interested in the immune system and what I can do to prevent infections and “feed” the beneficial microbes that make up the microbiome. I also want to exercise muscles to help support my joints to prevent disability. I want to have good sleep hygiene so my body can recuperate from the days work. I want to learn ways to deal with stress so my body doesn’t have to be in the potentially damaging stress mode. I want to do keep properly hydrated so my body can flush toxins, my joints can be bathed and buffered, and my body systems can function best.

What drives your thrive may be very different than mine. It may be to be able to play with your children or grandchildren. It is very personal. We can’t fool ourselves for long. We have to believe in and own our personal, unique drive or motivation to thrive.

My drive to make lifestyle changes was a piece missing from developing a sustainable, successful, positive trajectory for a life well lived, even with RA, fibromyalgia, Raynaud’s, Rosacea …

I would love to hear what drives your thrive! Inspire me!

And that is using Arthritis Wisdom!

XXOO Cathy

Photo credit: Daniela Cuevas at Unsplash

Healthy Lifestyle: Easy Concept, Hard to Implement

April 11, 2019

The elements of a Healthy Lifestyle are easy to understand, but putting them into practice is not so easy.

Healthy Lifestyle: Easy Concept, Hard to Implement

We are bombarded with images, slogans and the perception of what a healthy lifestyle is. The thought of living a healthy lifestyle is very appealing. So, why is it so difficult to actually live the healthy lifestyle? It gets even more perplexing when you adopt healthy habits that make you feel better, then fall back into doing the unhealthy things that make you feel lousy.

It took experiencing the symptoms of my autoimmune disease, rheumatoid arthritis (RA), to turn me onto researching and making lifestyle changes attempting to get back to feeling “normal”, whatever that is. I knew I didn’t want to live in pain, fatigued and with brain-fog any longer.

I’ve been working on the healthy lifestyle for seven years now. I definitely have tasted success, or I wouldn’t continue, but I’m amazed at how easily I fall back into my unhealthy behaviors.

I consequently developed an acronym, *FRESH* , to organize the 5 areas of changes made as an easy-to-refer-back-to-list allowing a quick reference when I felt joint pain or other symptom I thought was associated with my inflammatory disease.

To help advance my healthy lifestyle pursuit, I signed up for a healthy lifestyle class offered by the clinic I go to. It is a 12 week course aiming to develop healthy lifestyle habits and to explore the roadblocks along the way. We meet weekly, we have additional small group sessions, and are given written materials.

We were all asked to share with the class why we wanted to take the course. The reasons given were either a medical diagnosis, tired of feeling poorly, or not wanting to be a statistic. I immediately felt a part of this relatable group of “students”.

After the second session, I asked myself what the take-away was at that point. It was not what I expected. I thought about what the common sentiment was, how simple the elements of a healthy lifestyle are, but how difficult they are to live by. I was surprised by how emotional the class was. I don’t have an answer or explanation for the two observations, but they are real and I took note of them.

We were also asked to determine if a healthy lifestyle was an interest or a passion. An interest is something you want to learn about, but a passion is something you want to take action on. Adopting a healthy lifestyle will require taking action on.

In order to make the healthy lifestyle goal doable and not overwhelming, even after working on it for seven years, I decided on 3 ground rules in order to allow my desire for a healthy lifestyle to reach a new level. Here they are:

It is a process – It will not be instant pudding. It will take practice to develop these new habits
Start small– Make a single doable change you can build confidence with
Be kind and forgiving to yourself– if you mess up, you can start over. Improvement, not perfection

I know how I live, my habits and my choices, are as important managing my autoimmune disease as the biologic I inject weekly. It is well worth learning about and making the changes. It does take a lot of effort. I will continue to share my discoveries, tips and information to improve the autoimmune lifestyle. I would love to hear your tips, as well! Leave then in the comments for all to see!

And that is using Arthritis Wisdom!

XXOO Cathy

Photo credit: Christopher Campbell of Unsplash