Okay, so maybe only Australians will get the reference in the title of this post.
The title alone should serve as a warning that this post is a bit all over the place – kind of like I have been recently! I feel like my time management skills have been lacking (and that’s being kind). Time management with what, you may ask?
Well, now that I’ve started marathon training in earnest, a lot of my in-between-clients time that I used to spend strength training and writing, has instead become dedicated running time. This means I have to make up the writing time somewhere, and that somewhere has been evenings and some of my Saturday afternoon. Which would be okay…except I’ve discovered I have a bit of a distraction problem.
Example: A couple of nights ago I was solo-parenting, and Roman actually was ready to go down about 20 minutes earlier than usual. Once he was asleep, my plan was to tidy the living room, eat dinner, reply to emails, and write a couple of blog posts.
Here’s what actually transpired: Start tidying. Get distracted by the fact that a blanket thrown by a chair looks just like a bear because of the way it’s crumpled. Take photos of it. Start to tweet about it, but discover 140 characters just don’t cut it when one is trying to elucidate why the bear blanket has captured one’s imagination. Decide to incorporate bear blanket photo into a blog post instead.
Write up & schedule Fit Mama Friday post for this week. Realize I am starving. Eat a yogurt, a banana, and some lentil soup. Think to myself that this is a pretty sad meal. And it’s already late. And that blanket is still over there by the chair, looking like a bear.
So maybe I need a little time management help. It’s funny, because I just read this post by Melissa at Freeing Imperfections about making a schedule to get yourself organized, in any facet of your life. It’s something I should do, I know!
It also made me think about social media (hello, number one distractor of all time) and how looking at someone’s feed (whether it’s Instagram, Facebook, Twitter or whatever) can make you think that person has it all together. Caitlin at Cait plus Ate wrote a great piece on this, about how she wonders if her Instagram feed gives her readers the wrong impression – or maybe more accurately, only half the story. I mean, if you look at my last few Instagram photos before this post, I have a running picture, me rolling out my poor legs with a Tiger Tail (I am in love with it), a delicious, delicious Caprese salad (I can’t stop making them), and a cute black and pink Mini Cooper.
So, I guess you would assume from my Instagram that I’m a runner, eating delicious fresh food, and admiring excellent design. 😉 All true! But, there’s no photo of my messy living room. There’s no yogurt eaten standing up photo. There’s no photo of the fact that at 11:30pm I was not done with what I wanted to accomplish and I NEEDED to go to bed about an hour ago so I would be rested for the next day.
Anyway, before I got ‘busy’ being distracted, I’d planned to write about this supplement reference pdf guide that the guys at Examine.com have put together. It’s kind of amazing. If you follow me on Facebook, you might remember the guest post on the blog Go Kaleo I shared a while back, written to rebut the asinine article titled Why Women Should Not Run which was floating around the internet a year ago. That guest post was written by Sol Orwell from Examine.com and I read his post with interest, not just because he was tearing the author of the anti-running diatribe to shreds, but also because he was using peer-reviewed sources and scientific references to back up every one of his rebuttals. I like that in a fitness professional! 🙂 In any event, we had a little back and forth by email after I tweeted his article, and he just contacted me again to share Examine’s pdf guide on health issues and supplementation.
Now, I know what you’re thinking, because it was my initial reaction, too – “This is going to be stuff promising ‘gains’ and ‘fast results’ and ‘cut abs’.” I think I just have a knee-jerk reaction when I read or hear the word ‘supplement’. I forget when I was pregnant, I took a prenatal vitamin and fish oil every day. Those are supplements, too.
Anyway, I was very impressed with this reference guide. Basically, it’s structured so you look up either your health goal or a supplement. And here’s where it gets awesome – it also links to all the peer-reviewed medical studies that relate to the claims of each supplement, and importantly, they only include human studies – so no animal studies are included in their analysis. For example, if you look up asthma, it lists all the supplements related to asthma and explains which ones work and which ones don’t, based on those peer-reviewed human studies – meaning you can make your own decision based on the research Examine has done for you.
If you’re interested, you can purchase the Examine.com supplement reference guide here for $29. <- This is NOT an affiliate link! Just so you know, I am not being compensated for this recommendation in any way – I only had access to view the guide online for a few days to see what I thought. It’s simply something I thought was worth sharing (and am planning on purchasing).
I TOLD you this post was all over the place! Sorry!
To finish up, tomorrow on Fit Mama Friday, I’m featuring Maria, the blogger at Real Fit Mama, who has written a guest post for the series! Yet another amazing Fit Mama who has improved her life and her family’s life by her healthy lifestyle choices. Come back tomorrow to check out her story!
Do you take any supplements? Did you do any research to see if they worked?
Am I alone in my terrible procrastination?
I have never taken supplements. Now that I’m getting older, I might look into it? I don’t know!
And, the procrastination?! Yep!!! And I get distracted all the time – I start one thing, get side-tracked, can’t remember what I originally meant to do…..It’s a cycle!!
What I like about this guide is that they are not affiliated with any supplement or pharmaceutical company, AND they don’t sell supplements either. They actually debunk a lot of widely accepted ‘claims’ about supplements and athletic goals. The fact that they take such a scientific approach I think is awesome.
That said, I don’t take any kind of supplement, either – if I thought something might help me for a health issue, though, I’d definitely use this as a reference.