Read Online Ballet Beautiful: Transform Your Body and Gain the Strength, Grace and Focus of a Ballet Dancer by Mary Helen Bowers - Free Book Online
Authors: Mary Helen Bowers
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forgiving enough to not push yourself in counterproductive ways.
Balance also means staying in touch with how you feel. If you find yourself swinging from a lot of energy to a little, or waking up one morning feeling great and the next feeling glum, then you might be doing something else to trigger these mood shifts. Balance begins with the physical, but it’s equal parts emotional and mental—you cannot have one without the other.
Your Body in Balance
To keep your body in balance, you must:
•Learn to listen
•Avoid deprivation
•Know when to move on if you have overindulged
•Always consider your body’s needs
As we’ve talked about throughout the book, depriving your body leads to one thing: overeating and imbalance. Deprivation is never good for the body. Our bodies work best when they are receiving energy and nutrients from healthy, whole foods. This could mean eating several small meals and snacks throughout the day or eating a healthy, balanced three meals a day. One good rule of thumb is to eat something healthy every four hours and try to avoid getting ravenous. (See the chapters in Part III for healthy snack and small meal suggestions!)
By eating regularly, you help your body maintain blood sugar, which wards off cravings that can get uncontrollable (for sugar and starchy carbs especially!) and keeps you feeling balanced. Going long stretches without eating will make your blood sugar drop and might leave you feeling light-headed, grouchy, and out of sorts. Often you will then eat too much once you do eat!
I think of deprivation as a dieting disaster, ruining your metabolism and setting you up for a nasty cycle of restricting and overeating. By now you should see these responses as red flags—extremes that threaten your balance, health, and success. In Chapter 8 , I will share the specifics of planning and putting an eating plan into place, but for now I want you to focus on identifying and avoiding the triggers that lead to overeating—defined as emotional or thoughtless eating of extra calories that your mind never processes and your body doesn’t need. This could be food you consume while driving, talking on the phone, standing in front of the fridge, or sitting in front of the TV. The best way to combat overeating is to take note that it’s happening! You can’t enjoy your food and find satisfaction if you don’t even realize that you are consuming it.
Are You Undereating, Overeating, or Eating Just Enough?
O ne of the best ways to make changes in the margins and avoid extremes is to stay flexible in your mind. As you will see in the coming chapters, flexibility enables you to forgive yourself when you’ve had a bad day, stay focused on your simple steps to goal achievement, and figure out how to eat just enough.
Overeating and undereating are often a nasty cycle of imbalance, frustration, and emotional pain. In my own experience, I discovered a terrible causal relationship between the two: undereating often causes overeating, and vice versa. Ballet Beautiful is about celebrating your body and nurturing it to be its best, its strongest and most flexible; there is no room for that behavior here. Undereating is a punishment for your body when what it craves is the reward of proper nutrition. Undereating is also guaranteed to create wild cravings and throw your entire body and metabolism out of balance, potentially making you unhappy and overweight in the end.
Stay Active
Working out regularly is another important way to get into balance and stay there. Learning to listen to your body could mean noting whether you feel better workingout in the mornings or the evenings—and then setting a program that works for you, satisfies you, and helps you achieve and maintain your goals. If you hate to work out in the morning, I am not going to tell you that is the best plan. Maybe for you it’s best to work out in the evenings, when you can really let go of the stress of your day, focus on
Balance also means staying in touch with how you feel. If you find yourself swinging from a lot of energy to a little, or waking up one morning feeling great and the next feeling glum, then you might be doing something else to trigger these mood shifts. Balance begins with the physical, but it’s equal parts emotional and mental—you cannot have one without the other.
Your Body in Balance
To keep your body in balance, you must:
•Learn to listen
•Avoid deprivation
•Know when to move on if you have overindulged
•Always consider your body’s needs
As we’ve talked about throughout the book, depriving your body leads to one thing: overeating and imbalance. Deprivation is never good for the body. Our bodies work best when they are receiving energy and nutrients from healthy, whole foods. This could mean eating several small meals and snacks throughout the day or eating a healthy, balanced three meals a day. One good rule of thumb is to eat something healthy every four hours and try to avoid getting ravenous. (See the chapters in Part III for healthy snack and small meal suggestions!)
By eating regularly, you help your body maintain blood sugar, which wards off cravings that can get uncontrollable (for sugar and starchy carbs especially!) and keeps you feeling balanced. Going long stretches without eating will make your blood sugar drop and might leave you feeling light-headed, grouchy, and out of sorts. Often you will then eat too much once you do eat!
I think of deprivation as a dieting disaster, ruining your metabolism and setting you up for a nasty cycle of restricting and overeating. By now you should see these responses as red flags—extremes that threaten your balance, health, and success. In Chapter 8 , I will share the specifics of planning and putting an eating plan into place, but for now I want you to focus on identifying and avoiding the triggers that lead to overeating—defined as emotional or thoughtless eating of extra calories that your mind never processes and your body doesn’t need. This could be food you consume while driving, talking on the phone, standing in front of the fridge, or sitting in front of the TV. The best way to combat overeating is to take note that it’s happening! You can’t enjoy your food and find satisfaction if you don’t even realize that you are consuming it.
Are You Undereating, Overeating, or Eating Just Enough?
O ne of the best ways to make changes in the margins and avoid extremes is to stay flexible in your mind. As you will see in the coming chapters, flexibility enables you to forgive yourself when you’ve had a bad day, stay focused on your simple steps to goal achievement, and figure out how to eat just enough.
Overeating and undereating are often a nasty cycle of imbalance, frustration, and emotional pain. In my own experience, I discovered a terrible causal relationship between the two: undereating often causes overeating, and vice versa. Ballet Beautiful is about celebrating your body and nurturing it to be its best, its strongest and most flexible; there is no room for that behavior here. Undereating is a punishment for your body when what it craves is the reward of proper nutrition. Undereating is also guaranteed to create wild cravings and throw your entire body and metabolism out of balance, potentially making you unhappy and overweight in the end.
Stay Active
Working out regularly is another important way to get into balance and stay there. Learning to listen to your body could mean noting whether you feel better workingout in the mornings or the evenings—and then setting a program that works for you, satisfies you, and helps you achieve and maintain your goals. If you hate to work out in the morning, I am not going to tell you that is the best plan. Maybe for you it’s best to work out in the evenings, when you can really let go of the stress of your day, focus on
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