A Look Back to Look Forward

Well, I did it! I managed to wait until the last day of the year to write a final post for 2021. I can procrastinate with the best of them. I blame it on our recent snow. It was enchanting, mesmerizing and held me in an end of the year trance.

But what a year it has been. Our team at OWW has embraced the ongoing challenges of 2021, recognized opportunities, and made great progress.

We continued to use the online platform for our lifestyle groups with newly board-certified health coach extraordinaire Rachelle at the helm. With our growth in clientele, we needed an additional coach. Meghan Handy stepped up to the plate, is now leading some of our groups as well as building her own one on one coaching practice.

Rachelle and I started live streaming! We have a regular spot on Mondays at 12:30 on Facebook and are talking through Michael Pollan’s Food Rules chapter by chapter. It is light-hearted and fun but informative. We also have an occasional special guest which we always enjoy.

Many of you know, I had a scare in July with a post op complication requiring blood transfusions and a longer recovery time. Grateful for modern medicine, I was also impressed with how quickly my body lost muscle mass and strength. (No, this did not translate to weight loss; I gained fat!). No fair.

Practicing a little of my own medicine, I upped my protein and added strength training. Because I don’t push myself very hard, I hired a trainer to help me get back in the game. Having someone right there with me, not just showing me but telling me what to do, then adding constructive corrections, made all the difference.

While I was experiencing my own improvements, it became very clear that we needed a formal movement option for our program. I know we make SMART goals around activity and the coaches help implement them, but I wanted to do more.

Dr. Heidi organized an excellent zoom presentation about movement by a physical therapist to get us started. But with the ongoing and ever-increasing anxiety and stress from the seemingly never-ending pandemic, and understanding that learning new things is hard enough, let alone trying to incorporate new learning when chronically stressed out, first we needed to find a way to help reengage the parasympathetic nervous system, our rest and digest system.

Enter Melissa Hedstrom with her yoga program. Now before you decide that there is no way you would ever be flexible enough to put your leg behind your head, let me tell you that is not what yoga is. The movements in yoga help to build the foundation to access the healthy healing changes and behaviors we want to have and make. 

When strength, confidence, and balance come to the body through yoga, movement, alignment, breath, and relaxation, it directly influences the mental emotional health. Therefore, we are more likely to make those healthier choices and behaviors as the mind and body are more balance. Blood flow, lymph drainage, immune systems, vagal tone, brain waves all improve and increase likelihood of accessing change. It’s fascinating for sure and has been a great add to our wholistic approach to wellness.

We have seen our patients’ hard work pay off in improved health. Throughout the year, we celebrated so many wins and victories. Not only have they lost an average of fourteen percent of their starting weight (WHICH YOU MAY NOT REALIZE IS MORE THAN THE AVERAGE WEIGHT PROGRAM), more importantly, they have seen improvements in cardiovascular risk factors, decrease in fasting insulin levels, enjoyed more restorative sleep, decreased pain, increased mobility, better overall sense of wellbeing,  even stopped some prescription medications, including insulin.

Yes, it has been a great year. And we are not resting on laurels but have made big plans for 2022.

To start off we will be at the Salem Health and Wellness Expo on Saturday,  January 8^th . Come by our booth for a free body composition analysis, or sign up for a free 15 minute coaching session.

Meghan will continue our core group in January while Rachelle will add a lifestyle pillars group, focusing on group style coaching. I will contract with the trainer I mentioned adding this as an option to individualize our program to your needs. Meghan is creating a monthly newsletter to include regular updates, inspire and encourage. We really want to invest in our patients, strengthen the foundation of our services, and enhance the OWW experience.

And we have some BHAGs. For those of you not familiar with the term, that is Big Hairy Audacious goals. I hesitate to mention them for the same reasons you may hesitate to make goals: fear of failure, ridicule, pride. Let’s not let that stop us. We can work together to overcome those barriers and make 2022 the best year yet!