Wellness Tip:

Everyone has experienced the dreaded afternoon energy slump.  You’re sitting at your office, working away and all of the sudden you have lost your energy and feel like a nap.  Here are a few suggestions to consider that may re-energize you: 

• Look at what you ate for lunch, if it was high in simple carbohydrates and low in protein your blood sugar may have risen sharply and then plummeted (causing the energy slump!). 
• If it has been 3-4 hours since lunch your body may be telling you it needs some re-fueling; go for a healthy snack of fresh or dried fruit and nuts.
• Keep a water bottle on your desk and drink it!  Many of us are dehydrated and don’t even know it.  Mild dehydration will cause fatigue.
• Get up and walk around every hour or so.  Walking will increase the blood flow throughout the body and increase mental and physical alertness
• Get into some bright light, studies have shown that bright lights (or better yet sunlight) will increase mental alertness

Wellness Tip:

By now, everyone knows that eating at a fast food restaurant for lunch is not very healthy.  The majority of the food offered is very high in calories, fat, and salt - all the bad stuff!  Interestingly, even though we are aware of these facts, we still choose to grab our work lunches from these establishments. 

Here are some of the best and worst choices to help you out:

• The hamburger that tops the list for ‘worst choice’ is the Hardees Monster burger weighing in with a mammoth 1420 calories and 108 grams of fat.
• On the other end of the spectrum is the Burger King Whopper Junior with 370 calories and 21 grams of fat. 
• The best choice by far seems to be at Subway.  The Subway roast beef 6” has only 290 calories and 5 grams of fat.
• If you lean more towards chicken, then steer clear of the Dairy Queen 6 piece chicken basket. It has 1270 calories and 67 grams of fat. 
• A better choice is the Wendy’s 5 piece chicken nuggets with 230 calories and 15 grams of fat. 
• But the best choice is the Subway oven roasted chicken breast sandwich with a measly 310 calories and 5 grams of fat.

Sometimes a little knowledge and forethought can help both your waistline and your overall health.  Bon Appétit!

Wellness Tip:  Stressed Out??

If your feeling stressed out, you’re not alone.  We live in a fast paced world and the news swirling all around us can be very stressful; gas prices, politics, global warming.  Need I say more?  Research has proven that stress affects our immune system, thereby decreasing our body’s ability to fight off infection and disease.  It has also been linked to an increased risk of heart disease, high blood pressure and chest pains.

There are a lot of things we don’t have control over, however, how we manage our stress is not one of them.  The key is to find positive ways to handle it.  Dealing with stress is very individualistic, what works for one person may not work for the next.

• Here are a few ideas to try:
• Call a friend and laugh
• Take your dog for a walk
• Take a bubble bath
• Focus on your breathing, slow it down and just think about your breath, nothing else
• Go to a park and just enjoy it’s beauty
• Play your favorite music and light some candles
• Ride your bike
• Play with your kids
• Don’t turn on the TV

The bottom line is we cannot eliminate the stress from our lives, we can however decide to manage it better.  So the next time you’re feeling stressed; first recognize the feeling and then determine how you are going to address it.  You will be amazed how good if feels when you are in control of the stress versus the stress being in control of you.