9/23 Whole Life Wednesday

Coach Noah, a double Black Belt in Jujitsu and Brown Belt in Judo, demonstrates his preferred method of breaking down walls. 
Over 30 of us from the gym started our 8 week 2015 Fall Whole Life Challenge on Saturday. For the next 56 days we are eating well, drinking 1/3 of our body weight in ounces of water, exercising and stretching daily, taking fish oil or other appropriate supplements, writing a daily reflection and practicing a different healthy lifestyle practice every week. This week's lifestyle practice is to meditate 10 minutes every day. Coach Noah, a Certified Health Coach, has penned a guest blog for today on the importance of meditation and mindfulness. 
"I don’t feel the need to directly discuss meditation today.  We all know the routine:  sit and focus on your breathe and posture.  Instead, I would like to talk about how to apply what you learn in meditation to the rest of your life, especially food.
The Whole Life Challenge offers a wonderful vehicle for practicing mindfulness the rest of your day your are not sitting on your meditation cushion.  Essentially, mindfulness is the awareness of your thoughts and actions, and the consequences of both.  By posting every day about your nutrition, exercise, and other habits, WLC forces you to pay attention, to bring greater awareness to your day.  Diet is often one of the most difficult areas for people to change because we do not just eat to replenish energy.  We eat in celebration, boredom, sadness, and as a stress response.  In addition, people tend to eat more when they do not get enough sleep as an attempt to artificially boost energy levels.  For us to address our food intake, both quality and quantity, we must address the emotional element that we bring to the table (pun intended).
The first and most important step in altering our emotional eating is to be aware of it.  I believe that a daily practice of meditation will help everyone with this step.  There are also some more specific activities and tools that I use in health coaching to help people work on food issues.  These include a three day food journal that includes both what and when you eat but also how you are feeling.  Once you have the ability to recognize your eating habits, you can start training yourself, using the patience and focus you are developing in your meditation practice, to choose health-promoting foods and to only eat when you are actually hungry.  So next time you reach for a snack, ask yourself if it is your body or your mind that is hungry.
If you are brand new to meditation or behavior change, I would be happy to talk with you about simple meditation practices, and some easy-to-find tools to help you. Namaste - Coach Noah"
Today's Workout
Double Under Sammy
For time:
30 Double Unders
then immediately compete five rounds of:
5 Wall climbs
10 Kettlebell Swings 1.5/1pood
15 Box jumps 24/20
finish with 30 double unders
Who programmed this? Post guess to comments.