Making time for what is important

http://zenhabits.net/how-to-make-the-time-for-your-personal-goals/

As any constant (or used to be constant) reader has noticed, this blog has been dormant for quite a while. Work has not allowed me to accomplish many of the things that I find truly important both on the personal and family fronts. In light of my upcoming career change, I want to supply a great blog post that I recently read about how to make things that are important a priority. I feel that these general principle are too often set by the wayside, whether it is a task or a longterm promise. A goal is anything that you hope to accomplish, and remember, often goals are those things that benefit others more than us.

It is good to be back, and you can expect to see weekly posts from me once again (hopefully more often). To my wife, thank you for supporting me. To my readers, thank you for enjoying my thoughts and sharing in my passion for personal health and betterment.

Remember, we can improve every day with simply a conscious decision.

Travis Lewis

Middle School Science Teacher

Hulu – CNBC Originals: One Nation, Overweight – Watch the full episode now.

Hulu – CNBC Originals: One Nation, Overweight – Watch the full episode now..

This is a truly enlightening CNBC Original. This episode looks at obesity in America. How our society has fostered it, what solutions are offered, and how society and businesses are addressing this epidemic.

Obesity programs are analyzed, active health management and benefit initiatives are looked into, and the plight of those affected is spotlighted.

Proactive healthcare is a subject that is very close to my heart and an area in which I am currently actively involved. Employers can play a positive role to both their employees and their own bottom lines by introducing fitness initiatives to their workforce. They can create a happier, healthier, and less heavy workforce.

Enjoy and Live well!

Travis

Americas Obesity Problem | Mens Health

Americas Obesity Problem | Mens Health.

This is a very poignant article by Richard Conniff that looks at our societal eating habits, how they have been formed, and how the food industry and others work to facilitate and sustain these deadly habits. A great point is that physical labor jobs are down to 10% of the work force, meaning that 90% of jobs do not support large calorie intake. We no longer ‘work for our meals with the sweat of our brow’ as he so aptly states. Our consumption has not fallen in line with our sedentary lifestyles, in fact it has moved in stark contrast, increasing as our activity has decreased.

Conniff works to highlight how the food industry and retail in general work very hard to sustain our habits of excess. He points to very clear examples of our terrible habits and and the entities that wish we would do more of these things. It is up to us as adults to make the right decisions, but also to realize that those we feel offer comforts that we deserve, are often times peddling to our demise. Choose wisely, stay informed, and realize that the cake that beckons you can be denied.

The author also works to show examples of what can be done to get around those that work to help us continue dangerous lifestyles. A town in Massachusetts is working to improve their health as a community.This type of supportive proactive group think is necessary to introduce change at a level needed to make an impact on our behaviors.

In review, this is a great article that will hopefully open your eyes regarding our habits and the societal influences that sustain them.

Live Well!

Starting and Understanding your Personal Health Record

myPHR.

This is a very digestible website by the AHIMA foundation that provides information on the benefits of establishing and updating a personal health record and easy to follow steps on how to get started. For those that are not familiar with personal health records and electronic medical records, they are simply an aggregation of various aspects of your health ‘picture’. This is very helpful resource for both the PHR holder (you) and for various care sources (physicians and other parties). As a consumer, a PHR works to provide a very digestible format to view your wholistic health and to keep up with your various health initiatives. The current push is provide a way to view your progress along various goals and programs.

From a care standpoint, the value of a PHR is in the ability to have quick access to a living record of your health. This is an aggregation point of your health along several continuum, so that everyone is viewing the most up to date and complete information. This is very important at the point of care, where decisions are based on the amount of information that is available to the physician as well as the patient. This equal opportunity access to knowledge is essential in improving care and creating positive outcomes.

At the very least, PHR’s work to create informed and proactive patients. I hate that word, but I just use it to categorize the population who is receiving care. People can assess their own health and establish and follow their own health initiatives. When we create this intrinsic investment in your own health, we work towards creating a healthier population. That is the ultimate goal.

The power of a breath

Body, Breath & Being.

I have long been a believer in the effect of proper breathing on health, stress levels, performance, and relaxation. It is the key to meditation as well as a central tenant in optimum performance. Essentially it runs the spectrum of influence on our state of being. Dr. Lyon has a very helpful website that attempts to tap into the power of breathing. He offers exercises, insight, strategies, and benefits for breathing. His website is tailored to a wide variety of users, from trainers, to speakers, to people suffering from stress related illness. While a bit hokey at times, I think that Dr. Lyon’s website is very helpful at getting information out there about an aspect of our lives that we have complete control over, and that offers amazing benefits for proper control and focus.

An example is the ‘Breathing Break’ that he mentions and offers tips on implementing into your daily routine. It is simply nothing more than taking five minutes out of your day to focus on your breathing and your body’s state of being, but the results are non-deniable. Research is growing around the benefits of simple, short meditation sessions in which the person focuses on their state. It works to relax, it works to awaken, and it works to focus.

http://www.bodybreathbeing.com/takebreak.html

In todays world, life moves so fast that it can seem hard to even remember to take a breath, let alone focus on it. Dr. Lyon offers insight to the importance of your breathing and the doors that it can unlock. At the very least he reminds to take just a few minutes for ourselves each day…and just breath.

Live well!

Total Health Interactive by Polar-A window for managing your health

http://www.totalhealthinteractive.com/home

I am very excited to share this website with you and will most likely be offering follow up posts regarding functionality that is available from this website. As a designer who is currently working on a holistic health monitoring website, I am in awe of the vision and experience offered from polar in their public domain offering.

Polar’s Total Health Interactive (THI) website offers a simple website that allows the user to actively address all aspects of their health. Users can:

• point accrual (FIT points) that are redeemable for products, functions, etc.
• keep a food journal
• an exercise journal
• feed information from any polar devise
• keep track of goals
• participate in challenges
• built a community of like minded individuals
• monitor trending of measurement
• goal tracking
• find various interactive resources
• build a training regiment using interactive and visual guidance
• and also update their personal health record (PHR) with all these different health measures.

I have  barely begun to scratch the surface on what this website seems to offer. It manages to offer all of this functionality in a streamline user friendly interface. The user can usually complete any action in under a few minutes. The site is also very good about taking information and applying dashboard level views of progress.

At almost any point I can monitor my daily caloric intake and expenditure, exercise, goal attainment, and various other high level viewpoints. This is the value that many companies are shooting for, the ability to offer lots of functionality but also the vision to reduce this information into meaningful visuals for the user so that they can digest this information quickly and make conscious health decisions. The next level is to be able to do the inference for the user, and cross analyze various measures to offer more valuable insight into health outcomes. For instance, if I have high blood pressure and my diet has been high in saturated fats for the last week, and my exercise is below the norm, having a system be smart enough to site the trends and push a message to the user or inform them of this trending relationship is where the true weight of interactive health lies.

Polar has done an excellent job in reaching for this lofty goal. Memberships range in price, with various levels of functionality available at different pricing structures. Polar also offers a free 15 day trial. Annual memberships start at $30, which is reasonable for the amount of use the user seems to be able to get out of the system. Members also get seemingly significant discounts on a range of polar products ranging from pedometers to fully interactive polar watches and devices.

One of the most important aspect that the website has worked for is to be useful to all fitness levels and types of people. There are elements in the website and levels of interaction that seem to meet all levels of users. This is possibly the most important question when designing these interactive health sites. How do you attract the athlete, the sick, the healthy, the young, the busy, and the non-technical all in one site and help all of them reach their health goals or even work to have them take an interest in their health. This is truly a mountain of a task (I speak from experience of wrangling with this very question for months) and Polar has done a solid job of looking beyond their own athletic user base to reach out to all users.

A wonderful website that I will offer many updates on in the future on uses and critiques.

Live Well!

Calorie Counter – Making Habits Easy

Calorie Counter – Free Online Diet Journal.

Calorie Counter is a great website available in easy to an easy to use phone app as well. This website offers a supremely simple and intuitive food journal where the user can keep close track of their diet, their daily caloric goal/limit, and their exercise. Overall, the site is a wonderful place to track nutrition, exercise, weight, trends, information, and just about anything else. Calorie Counter has many layers of functionality, from a daily pre-planned meal guide, to a daily input food journal. The ties to multiple resources through the Everyday Health platform is where the real value lies. Users can find information on just about any health related topic in a few clicks.

The other increasingly popular element of the site is community building. Users can build a support network of friends, family, and organizations/groups. This is one of the first motivational/informational social networks that seems to truly meet that goal. Everyone on this sight most likely has the same goal or at least the same level of drive towards developing healthy habits, and the best way to do that is build a network that helps you stay accountable.

Overall, I give this sight a great B+. The UI is beautiful, slick, and very intuitive. Colors, size, and placement/spacing are all very well thought out, although some main screen do seem to get a little cramped. This sites performs a lot of functions for the user, and I think it does an admirable job of stepping forward as one of the first one stop holistic health websites available to those who want to become proactive in their health.

Actions in the site are quick and easy as well. Most functions of the website can very easily be completed in a session of just a couple minutes, which I feel is a component that differs from normal website design. The goal is not to keep the user here, but to provide an easy to use resource that allows them to teach themselves but also allows them to get back to their world quickly.

I suggest everyone sign up and give it a whirl if only for the simple and easy to use food journal. As the food database expands, this website will become more and more accurate.

Live healthy!