if I had a miracle cure that would guarantee you and your family living to a ripe old age whilst feeling vigorous, fit and fabulous. Would you be interested? Well I do, it's called healthy living. Hello and welcome to fit and fabulous with me. Dr Alina carrick. Healthy living for families made easy, Yeah. Hello and welcome to fit and fabulous with me. Dr Alina Carrick, hope that you are feeling fit and fabulous today. I want to talk about when you're busy and it feels like there is no time to lead a healthy life. So I have been talking to people recently and they say help, I have no time to do any exercise and what happens is I think oh I ought to do some exercise and then I don't do any exercise. I sit down in the evening feeling guilty about not doing any exercise and then what do I do? I have a glass of wine and I feel guilty about it. Well you know what, you can drink wine as part of a healthy lifestyle, but I advise you not to feel guilty about it.

Now that doesn't give you free rein to go and say, hey let's just drink wine and not do any exercise. The idea is to do some exercise and drink wine in moderation but actually enjoy it rather than feel guilty about it. So what else have I heard people say recently, I don't have time to prepare healthy foods and another thing I spoke to somebody about recently was she said you know what I want to choose healthy habits now, I know that people are feeling busy but I think the really important thing is to think about how we think about things. It all starts with how we think about things. So thinking about this lady who said I want to choose healthy habits if you are at the place where you are choosing a healthy habit, that means that it isn't actually a habit. So a habit is something that is so concrete id in your lifestyle in the way that you do things that you do it without thinking about it. It just becomes second nature.

You don't have to think about it. So I know what she meant when she said I want to choose healthy habits. But what that makes me think is that you haven't established those habits. If you're still choosing healthy habits, then that means that actually really and truly it's not quite a habit. It's okay. I'm trying to make this a habit. I'm still in the programming stage, but I haven't quite got there yet. So my husband is a computer programmer. He writes software or you know, I don't know what he does really to be honest. But it's the same thing you have a program that you run and part of you has to make a decision and go, okay, this is the program that I'm going to run, I am going to run healthy. Amazing. Fabulous Me as opposed to nearly healthy. Amazing. Fabulous me. Who's not quite doing the things and you know what, it is easy and it is fun. So I want to tell you a little bit about me and my running because I am super excited. I am not a natural runner.

I remember when I was at school And once a year we had to do a cross country run and oh my goodness, I hated it so much. I basically walked the whole way around. It was one of those things, you know that you had to make a bit of a stand, I was not as 40 person, so I basically walked around and didn't put any effort into my running. So I want to tell you about how I have recently broken my new record and I did 5.9 km on Saturday, which I was super excited about. I wanted to do six, but I ran to the sea, the sea front And I ran along the Seawall and I got to the end of the sea wall and I didn't have any further to go. So I had to turn around and come back. It was only 5.92, I was only 18 m away, but never mind now Before I tell you about my running, I want to just tell you how we're doing with our cycling. So if you listened to, I think it was a couple of weeks ago, I was telling you about how my Children and myself are cycling to school and back and it's absolutely amazing recycled through the woods. It was raining a bit last week, so we couldn't go every single day and we have to go twice a day because here in spain Children do morning school and afternoon school And my son who is eight Sebastian, he's sort of the weakest link in the team, shall we say, and he's very much the least confident.

But I can see him taking leaps and bounds as we just go on and on. Now we go through the wood and then we get to the bottom of the town, our town is on a slope and their school is at the top of the slope. So the last 10 minutes are essentially getting up this hill and last week I have to confess we were walking and there was some other people who were also walking up the hill, a lot of people walk to school and the other people who were walking, made it up the hill more quickly than us on our bikes. We will, I think cycling. But the problem was, my son kept stopping and starting and stopping and starting. I did say to him, do you know what? I think we should be able to go a little bit more quickly than those people who are walking up the hill. Now, why am I telling you this firstly, I'm telling you? Because It really demonstrates how just doing things over and over again, you get a little bit better, you get a little bit better. I think our first time we did it, it took us 37 minutes last week. We manage to do it in 28 minutes. And a lot of the difference in those minutes is how many times we actually have to stop this morning, It had been raining last week and there seems to be a little stream where there wasn't a little stream and so we all got soaking wet and had to stop a little bit there.

But it was fun. Now, the other reason I'm telling you this is because as we were cycling slowly up this hill last week, one of the moms who was walking up was just chatting to me and saying, oh, are you still living on the house on the hill? And I said, no, no, we're living in color by the beach now. And she said, oh, papa aceto, poor thing, referring to my son who was cycling up the hill. And what she was basically saying was, oh, poor thing! He has to cycle so far every single day. Oh my goodness. And I thought, and while I replied and said, no, it's wonderful, we cycle through the wood, we love it. It's great fun. And I think that is the difference that thinking is the difference. So she's walking up and what she thinks is, oh my goodness, cycling, it's such hard work, it's difficult, your poor Children and what I'm thinking is, wow, this is an amazing opportunity for my Children. They're going to spend the year cycling backwards and forwards to school by the end of the year, my son who isn't confident in swimming, I'm sorry cycling is going to be as confident as anybody else, it's just going to come naturally to him.

It will be a habit that will be ingrained in him and he enjoys it. This morning, he was washing down the hills going, wow, I'm washing down the hills and we gave him lots of applause because he was the only person who made it across the stream without stopping in the middle of the stream and getting soaking wet although his jacket got soaking wet. And also it will help him be fit Children and younger people have what I call strength of youth. So, you know when you're in your teens and your twenties and your thirties, you are naturally strong and naturally fit because your body is basically new and by the time you hit about 40, you need to really be putting in a little bit of effort to make sure you maintain your muscle mass And continue to stay fit. So it is important. It's more important for people over 40 to continue to do some exercise, but that doesn't mean that people under the age of 40, including Children, show a difference in their exercise tolerance if they are exercising, remember I had a friend who came to see us a few years ago and she had really young Children, she lived in London and her Children went to what she called Forest School and they would walk around the whole time, they would do a couple of kilometers every single day walking through the woods somewhere in the north, I think south of London, I don't know where she lives.

Somewhere in London. My Children at the time were a little bit older and we walked about two minutes to school, we would literally fall out of the door onto the school gate and my Children found it really difficult to walk, they just complain it wasn't natural to them and the difference was what they were used to doing. So her younger Children would happily walk a couple of kilometers, whereas my Children had to be coerced and of course they could do it, but they just didn't want to because it felt a bit like a struggle. So by doing regular exercise with your Children, you are giving them that gift of that habit of exercise. So as I say, it all starts with how you think about it. So taking you back to my running, So I think it was about six months ago, it was the middle of the summer and in the summer I increased my swimming habits. So last summer I would go swimming two or three times a year a week and this summer because I had some new friends, new swing friends who were keen and wanted to go every single day and my Children weren't having to go to summer school, I decided to go swimming more frequently and essentially went monday friday as many times as I could and at that time because we were still in lockdown, I could see that my two oldest Children were really becoming not sedentary but they weren't doing as much exercise as they normally would do walking around and doing you know sports and things like that.

So I said to them, okay come on, I think we need to do Couch to 5K. I want to do some running. I personally would really like to run as well essentially think if you can walk you can run and there's no reason why you can't build up a running practice but to begin with it sure is tough and we started off going running and the app which is, I don't know about €3 or dollars or whatever currency is an amazing app and you start off by doing one minute walking and then a few minutes running and you know you gradually built up, build up the amount of running that you do as I say, if you can walk, you can pretty much run now I know that doesn't apply to everybody but if you are somebody who has good mobility, there isn't any reason why you can't build up a running practice. So in the summer we were starting and we started going three times a week now I found it very difficult to fit in because it gets really hot here. So you have to wait for the heat of the day to go and I didn't want to go after dinner. My Children seem to find it fine to go after dinner. Now ideally I would go in the morning.

The problem was I was swimming every single morning, so I got to the stage where we were going three times a week and I went by myself, it was ridiculously hot and my knees really hurt and also I suffer with a weak pelvic floor having had four Children. And so that means that when I'm running I have a little bit of incontinence and that's horrible. I really just dislike it. Now, if you've listened to my podcast on stress incontinence, you will know that I also have a little program that people can do, which is all about a hyper oppressive exercise which really, really helped me in terms of Every single day living, but not in terms of doing 20 minutes of solid running. By this time I had built up to doing solid running and by about eight minutes of pounding, I just found that I couldn't do it anymore. So at that stage I stopped and thought, okay, I'm just going to concentrate on my swimming and my cycling and that's enough, and when the weather gets colder I will come back to running and I did, and when I was running back in the summer I had this idea that well what I was doing was watching the clock, so I would run for a minute or three minutes or five minutes or however long it was, and I would quite often be looking at my watch, thinking oh my goodness, how much further I got to go before I can walk again.

And what I really thought was, I would really like to be able to just run without having to look at my watch, so I can just run a kilometer or two km and just enjoy the sensation of running rather than thinking, oh my goodness, how much further do I have to go? So I built up doing that before we moved house, I did four kilometers and then five kilometers, and during that four and five kilometers, I think the first time I did four kilometers, I had a little bit of a break, so I did a couple of kilometres and then I walked a few minutes and then I carried on running, but I did four and then 4.5 and then five, I found a little route which was quite good that I could do in a circuit and there were three variations, so I did that and that was fine and then we moved house, now I just go running once a week because in the mornings monday friday, I don't have time to do it on sunday I go to market first thing in the morning and now I like to go first thing in the morning because I like to exercise first thing um I like sort of tumble out of bed and find it really productive to do something energizing.

Also I find in regards to running that my, it's easier in terms of incontinence because I think my tummy gets full during the day when I've been eating and drinking and if I just jump out of bed and do it, it's much much easier from that point of view. So now we're living, well it's a four minute run to the beach and I have been running down to the beach running along the coastal path which I have to say is very, very hilly, it's lots of steps so up and down which adds an extra element of well complication from the stress incontinence point of view, but also just from enjoying it and it being hard work and so on saturday, I did my longest run ever, which I say I'm super proud of 5.9 kilometers and also I found that I could run up and down some of the steps, not all of them, some of them I had to walk up, they were quite close together, it was relatively dark so I walked up, I didn't want to lose my footing, but some of them were the right distance such that I could sort of bound down them and oh my goodness, I felt like my daughter, not quite like my daughter, my daughter is eight and she jumps around all over the place and she will suddenly go mommy look at me, I'm doing the splits, but that amount of mobility and freedom that she has in movement, which I look at sometimes and think I'm so jealous of her being able to do these things, I don't do that, I don't have that freedom of movement anymore, even though I really enjoyed being able to do all the things that I can do with my body and so just running up and down these steps just made me feel oh my goodness, I don't quite feel like an eight year old, but I remember being a child and jumping around and doing things like that, so I hope that was helpful.

I just want to show you how once you start on a habit, once you start creating a habit it is much easier to continue with that habit. So you know, I stopped for a bit over the summer, but then I came back and it was much easier the second time to come back, it wasn't like I went oh my goodness, I have to start right from the beginning again, I started not from where I had left off, but I started 3/4 of the way from where I had left off and I rapidly got back into the rhythm of doing it. So it is all about habit and it is all about where, how you think about things. And so one of the things I think is I love exercising, it gives me the energy to enjoy my life and to really lead the life that I want and it helps me with movement, it helps me feel strong in my mind, it helps me really just feel like I have time for myself. So it just really, really helps me and as I say, habit, it's all about habit. So I hope that was helpful for you. I really hope that you can use this podcast to make you think about your life and how you can create another habit, whether that is in healthy eating or exercise or in the way you think, and if you need help, if you think oh my goodness, this sounds amazing, I'd love to chat to you a little bit more.

I want to make 2021 the year that I feel amazing and really get back to healthy living and really enjoying it so that I can lead a healthy life and teach my Children all these amazing habits. Then, by all means drop me a line at Alina at dr Alina dot coms that's O R L E N A at dr Alina dot com and we can set up a time to chat. Have a lovely week and I will chat you again next week. Bye bye. Thank you so much for listening to this podcast episode. Remember you can sign up for dr Alina's simple system to healthy living. For families at Dr Alina, D R O R L E N A dot com slash simple dash system. If you have enjoyed this podcast, I ask that you share it with somebody else who would also benefit so that I can reach more people and help more people live healthily. And lastly, if you are interested in working with a coach, then just email me at Alina at Dr Alina dot com and we can set up a time to chat.

Absolutely no obligation. I love chatting. So come and chat with me. But by