SMARTMessage 11/22/14

General

There are 175 Likes to the SMARTplace webpage, and 4 report cards that have been filled out at the www.betterme.us website. It will be important to familiarize yourself with the website as this is how we will track our progress over time. Also, for those that are not on Facebook, you can now use the blog at www.betterme.us to follow along.

Writing Convention: When posting use the tags PRINCIPLE when you are posting helpful knowledge, PRODUCT when you want to recommend a product, or PRACTICE when you want to recommend something that you do.

Prior Targets

Mental Fitness

PRINCIPLE posting: Simon Sinek on the biology of leadership. This explains four happiness hormones that drive our behavior. You can use this to your advantage to become addicted to a good life. http://youtu.be/ReRcHdeUG9Y?list=FLdl8EPyTsYYoaj-3hYwte2w We will likely have more conversation on this later.

Family Direction

No additional posts, but hopefully people have identified a SMARTgoal and crafted a family mission statement. With this it will become clearer if your are living genuinely and without dis-ease. Please go to this SMARTtarget and post your goal and vision. Sharing your goal can help to inspire others, and help to keep you on track as others check in with you concerning your goal.

Current Targets

Nutritional Fitness (going into holiday:)

PRINCIPLE (jblessman): blueberries and walnuts should be on the list, recommended by a neurobiologist that studies brain degeneration: http://m.psychologytoday.com/…/natures-bounty-the…

PRINCIPLE (jblessman): Forks Over knives, this is a documentary that discusses the advantages of a plant based whole foods diet (energy, end of HTN, end of diabetes). Many who follow these suggestions have rid themselves of high blood pressure, diabetes, and other chronic health conditions.

PRODUCT: Nurtribullet, helps you get in more fruits and vegetables.

PRACTICE: eating greens as salad and in smoothies, seems to be very helpful, which may be because of magnesium. Some nutritional pundits think that 80% of the population is behind on magnesium because there are many things that cause us to loose magnesium (sugar, phosphates in soda, stress), and there may be less in the food because of how it is harvested.

RAFFLE: We will be raffling off a NUTRIBULLET donated by Lexi. Look for the box labeled RAFFLE in the hallway. On the entry card write your name and list a nutritional fitness tip that makes your energized, and something that makes your tired (the itis). Place one recommendation on a card, so you can enter more than once (but each card must have a separate recommendation/observation. We will cycle through two Sundays before we have the drawing.

Political Fitness
List your representative, district and how many bill they sponsored?
Website link to some of your political representatives www.openstates.org. We would like for all members to write one of their political representatives. It is also suggested that you thank them for something that they have said or done that you appreciate. Don’t just make request (though this is a good thing also). Remember they are people just like you, and sometimes its good just to hear an encouraging word.

End of Quarter Thoughts
Not sure what the final two targets will be, though one will focus on physical fitness. We will be having a gathering either at the end or beginning of the new year to allow those interested to come together to share what they have learned or challenges that they have.

General

First my apologies this weekend for posting a group messages. I was looking for a way to communicate with the group, but group messaging is not the way as if you respond, that message also goes to everyone. Some people really did not like this. Finally Tony Williams put us all out of our misery by getting rid of the discussion chain. We will find another way : )

In terms of activity were were up to 175 like and 4 report cards that had been filled out on line. Not sure if participants are having problems filling out the report card on line, but this will be the best way to track our progress as a group.
Up to 175 likes, and 4 report cards that have been filled out on line.

Past Targets: FAMILY DIRECTION
You should have at least one SMARTgoal identified, the one thing that would have the greatest impact on your quality of life if you were to accomplish this over the next 6-12 months. In addition, you should have a draft of a Family Mission statement. Don’t worry if you don’t think this is perfect, you may modify it over time, but you need to start somewhere. If you struggle with were to begin with identifying a purpose, check out the video by Adam Leipzig at http://youtu.be/vVsXO9brK7M. This video has had nearly 2 million views.

Past Targets: MENTAL FITNESS
While there are several posts that have been listed, the one thing that likely helps the most is breath awareness. One technique is called 4-7-8 Breathing. However mindful meditation for as little as 10 minutes a day will likely have a great impact on you life. Stillness.

Current Target: NUTRITIONAL FITNESS
There does seem to be a pattern to the few entries that have been posted: the more greens in the meal, the more energy one seems to have, the more sugar the less energy we seem to have. One helpful product to get those greens in is the Nutribullet.

One nutrient that may be accounting for this “energy” is magnesium. Many nutritional pundits suggest that 70-80% of the population may have less than optimal levels of magnesium which is hard to detect, because it is not really identified by the current laboratory test for magnesium which mainly measures magnesium in the blood, which is not were most of the magnesium in our bodies is located (long sentence). Magnesium is important because it plays a role in the manufacturing of ATP which the cells use for energy. If the cells don’t have enough ATP they can’t function and hence the systems that they are a part of cannot function. So magnesium deficiency can be a great masquerader (depression, heart disease, skin disease, immune disease, etc).

Going forward we would still like to hear about your practices and how they make you feel good or bad. It is helpful to think about “fitness” because it is more than just what you eat that is important. If you think about music, you can play the right note at the wrong time (so when are the best times to eat and not eat). You can also pair notes together and they clash with one other (which foods go together or clash). Finally, you also need to pay attention to spacing and the rest, if its too crowded things get messy. Sometimes less is more. We can eat at the wrong time, have the wrong food combinations, eat too many varieties at once (no other species does this), or the nutritional value could be altered by our methods of food preparation. As you pay attention to this, let us know what is going on when you feel good, and when you feel bad. Don’t worry about grammar, of feel that you cant write, just get it out there, it can be fixed later. We are just looking for patterns and the more people that share their testimony, the clearer the relationships will be.

As a final announcement, Lexi had donated a slightly used Nutribullet which we will raffle off in two weeks. The way to make an entry it to fill out a post card with your name on it and write down what