Bodies in Motion: Fitness Tips for the Holidays & Beyond from Local Fitness Trainers

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Matthew Wheat, founder of Superior Performance Training, Doctoral Student of Physical Therapy & Certified Strength & Fitness Specialist

The World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) current physical activity guidelines are 150-300 minutes of light to moderate exercise or 75 minutes of vigorous activity weekly, as well as participating in strength training twice/week, including exercises that stress all major muscle groups. Adherence to these guidelines can improve and preserve quality of life, reduce healthcare costs, and reduce the risk of all-cause mortality.

Learning a new sport or activity can be an exciting way to get exercise this winter. Examples include snowshoeing, cross-country skiing, or even getting together with friends to join a group exercise class.

When exercise does not feel like a chore, it makes adherence to a lifetime of physical activity much easier. Celebrate the holidays this year by implementing or maintaining the WHO’s physical activity guidelines. It can increase the number of holidays you get to spend with your loved ones.

Melodie Alexander, Owner of TM Fitness, Certified Personal Trainer & Certified Wellness Coach

Winters can be tough on our mind, body, and soul. But after many years of utilizing fitness and nutrition to fuel my health, I now feel the best I have overall in the winter months!

In addition to starting my day by setting myself up for success, noting what I’m thankful for (i.e. “a house full of kids and laughter”), what I will remember for tomorrow (i.e. “I am in control of my success and health”), and one word of the day (i.e. “FORWARD”), I also plan when I’ll do my workout and set out key points for my nutrition.

Moving and sweating takes care of a lot of those stress hormones naturally. Making good food choices continues to aid both my positive mindset and physical health.

Through the holidays, I always suggest if you enjoy certain sweets and meals, have a portion and be done with it so you don’t overindulge.

One of my core mantras is “If it doesn’t challenge you, it doesn’t change you.” Working with someone to keep you accountable and having long and short-term goals also helps set you up for success.

Kari Getschow, Licensed Athletic Trainer & Certified Personal Trainer at Synergy Fitness

With the holidays approaching, our routines can become cluttered with family commitments, holiday parties, and school performances. Though we may have good intentions to exercise, it can be difficult to make time. A proactive strategy is to write down your normal daily schedule. Be specific. For example, in the morning you get out of bed, brush your teeth, make your coffee, walk the dog, and check your email. The list continues until you go to bed. Circle or underline the healthy habits you can continue throughout the holiday season. Add new habits or specificity before the schedules get busy. For example, in the morning, after you brush your teeth and drink a cup of coffee, you go for a 30-minute walk/exercise, and then make breakfast.

Everyone’s schedule is different. Maintain an exercise habit that fits in your schedule. You can honor commitments to yourself by inviting family and friends to walk with you, or block exercise into your schedule as you would a standing appointment. Make a small and attainable fitness habit to maintain your health through the holiday season. Most people miss a day of exercise but focus on the next day to quickly return to their routine.

Connor Ryan, founder of Unity Human Performance and Unity Yoga Co-op & Certified Physical Preparation Specialist

It’s time to set the tone for winter. A simple daily discipline to help you open to the calmness of being in the present moment (in addition to incorporating moments of silence and gratitude first thing in the morning and before going to sleep), is breaking up the middle of your day both mentally and physically with movement.

With changing weather conditions, determination is required to persist in the variable elements. No matter your method, indoors or outdoors, consider and commit to moving your body daily for at least twenty to thirty minutes.

Some exercises I recommend to help keep fit are the squat, hinge, lunge, step up, horizontal push, horizontal pull, vertical push, vertical pull, and plank variation. If you don’t know these movements, it’s best to learn them from a professional. If you do know them, you can incorporate them into a daily routine that takes anywhere from twenty minutes to two hours.

Newton’s First Law: An object at rest will stay at rest, and an object in motion will stay in motion. Find a way. Keep moving forward to stay moving forward.

U.P. KIDS, Health & Happiness U.P. Magazine Annual Donation Recipient: Caring for Children, Building Brighter Futures

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Families at Play at U.P. KIDS Fall Pumpkin Patch Event

U.P. KIDS is an organization supporting children and families in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. It began in the Copper Country in 1899 as Good Will Farm, providing a home and school to children from the UP. In 2012, its name changed to U.P. KIDS, but its mission has remained the same: Caring for children and building brighter futures. Its foster care, adoption, and in-home service programs provide caring temporary and permanent homes where children are protected and nurtured.

Families become foster families for a multitude of reasons–they may want to help children in need, they may be struggling with infertility and see foster care and adoption as a way to have the family they’ve always dreamt of, or they may be caring for relatives who are children. Foster families are needed throughout the entire Upper Peninsula, particularly homes willing to take sibling groups and adolescents.

The primary goal of foster care is reunification.

Foster families work with the child’s case worker and their biological family to ensure the concerns which originally brought the child into care are rectified. Foster families provide a safe, loving, temporary home during the reunification process.

Sometimes reunification is not possible. U.P. Kids then turns to foster families to provide permanence (adoption) for the children in their care. There are over ten thousand children in foster care in Michigan, and currently there are 246 children available for adoption without an identified adoptive home.

There is no charge to become a foster family, and licensing workers are happy to work with your family throughout the foster care licensing process. There is no charge to adopt a foster child in Michigan, and many children are waiting for their forever home. Most families receive a financial subsidy for adoptive children, along with health insurance and other supportive benefits.

Adoptive families are offered supportive services through U.P. Kids’ Post-Adoptive Resource Center (PARC). Adoption comes with its own obstacles, and Post-Adoption Specialists are there to help families thrive together. Post-Adoption Specialists partner with adoptive families to connect them to resources, and offer training, support, and advocacy. PARC is available for all adoptive families throughout the adoptee’s childhood, whether they adopted through foster care or a privatel adoption, and is free for families to utilize.

Families UPWARD is an innovative new program at U.P. KIDS.

The program takes a look at problems families may be experiencing and helps break the generational cycle of trauma. Caseworkers collaborate with families to strengthen them using evidence-based models and professional training, as well as family input to come up with a plan to best serve it. Each family is unique. Families UPWARD focuses on and helps build upon each family’s strengths while helping the family to overcome its challenges.

U.P. KIDS’ Big Brothers Big Sisters programs inspire children to realize their full potential and build brighter futures by providing strong and enduring, professionally supported, one-to-one mentoring relationships. This opens up new perspectives for children by offering friendship, guidance, and opportunities for enriching activities with caring volunteers.

While your family may not require U.P. Kids’ services, any family can work to become stronger a stronger unit.

Here are four tips for parenting from U.P. Kids:

1) Boost your child’s self-esteem throughout their childhood. Set a goal to praise your child for being (i.e. “You are so wonderful!”) and praise for doing (i.e. “Thank you so much for doing that!”). While it may seem a little strange at first, praising your child can be a step in the right direction for developing good self-esteem. Low self-esteem, low self-worth, and negative self-talk is developed during childhood and can lead to many negative consequences as your child grows. Children thrive when caregivers focus on the positive things they do and not just the things we are trying to correct.

2) Ensure quality time with your children. In today’s busy world, it is more important than ever to provide your child your undivided attention. Set time each day to be fully present for your child(ren). Some fun ways to engage can be asking questions to get a conversation going–“Can you share the best part of your day? What do you think your life will be like in the future? Would you rather eat pickles and peanut butter, or pickles and chocolate?” Opening the door to conversations and showing interest in your child(ren) will keep communication open throughout their lives.

3) Be flexible with discipline techniques and allow yourself grace. No child comes with a manual on how to parent them. Each child has their own love language, personality, and their own uniqueness. There is no parenting style that is going to work for all children just like we adults are not the same. (And how boring a world it would be if we were!)

There is no shame in tweaking your parenting as you learn and as your child grows. Nothing in life works rigidly; we need to learn to roll with the punches gracefully. And no parent is perfect. What makes a good parent is the willingness to learn and grow. Apologize when you mess up—this is a great moment for modeling that we are all human and capable of making mistakes.

4) Practice being empathetic and teach your child(ren) empathy. Being able to put yourself in someone else’s shoes does not come automatically. It’s a skill that needs to be constantly practiced and modeled. Looking at things from a child’s perspective will help you be empathetic.

When a child is having a meltdown, being mindful of how difficult it can be when feeling many emotions is important. Instead of getting flustered, try to empathize. Children and adolescents are not hard-wired with the skills to emotionally regulate themselves, nor to be aware of how others perceive them. When they feel big emotions, those emotions are huge for them even when their reasons may seem absurd to us adults due to our much bigger foundation of experiences, for example, not getting their way, wanting to have a toy at the store, getting hurt, etc.

If you’re willing and able to make room in your heart and your life to help more children in the UP, here are some ways you can do so:

Become a foster or adoptive family. To find out more about becoming a licensed foster or a pre-approved adoptive family, please contact Dolores Kilpela at dolores@upkids.com.
Support UP foster families by providing respite care, donating to your local foster closet, or lending a hand to a foster family with a new child placement.
Become a Big Brother or a Big Sister and mentor a child who needs a positive role model. If you’re interested in applying for Big Brother Big Sister of the Western Upper Peninsula, please contact Maggie Munch at bbs@upkids.com.

*See the businesses that supported Health & Happiness’s 2022 donation to U.P. Kids in our upcoming post.

Article by Alysa Cherubini-Sutinen, PARC Supervisor & Families UPWARD, Dolores Kilpela, Foster Care, Adoption, & Licensing Supervisor, Sarah Codere, Executive Director

The Co-op Corner: Recipe For Success Program Receives Funding to Continue Food Education Across U.P., Marquette Food Co-op

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MFC Outreach Director Sarah Monte (right) and Education Coordinator Amanda Latvala (left) at a Feeding America distribution site this summer.

Feeding America West Michigan (FAWM) sends monthly trucks to locations all around the Upper Peninsula to distribute food to people in need. FAWM recently performed a detailed assessment of their mobile pantry distribution program and learned that attendees wanted to learn more about how to prepare healthy meals with the ingredients they were receiving. FAWM, the Marquette Food Co-op (MFC), and the Northern Michigan University Center for Regional Health (NMUCRH) teamed up to create a food education program that would specifically serve attendees of the mobile pantry distribution.

Funding from the Superior Health Foundation has enabled the team to create this multi-faceted project with a virtual and in-person food education component that links food educators across the Upper Peninsula. Seven mobile pantry locations whose attendees indicated strong interest in food education were selected for live food demos or sampling. These locations include Marquette, Ishpeming, Newberry, Sault Ste. Marie, Manistique, Norway, and Ontonagon.

Comprehensive kitchen equipment kits were put together so that our partners had the tools necessary to prepare and serve the food.

At mobile pantry distributions throughout the summer and fall, our partners prepared food in certified kitchens and brought it to the pantry distribution so attendees could taste the prepared recipes. Depending on the location, our team of food educators would demonstrate recipe preparation, or move from car to car serving the featured recipe and chatting about how they prepared it.

This is a particularly fun and challenging partnership, as what food will arrive on the truck often isn’t known until twenty-four hours before the event. FAWM notifies the food educators of the products, and the team gets to work finding the right recipe that features food participants will be taking home that day. Recipients get a copy of the recipe so they can recreate the meal at home.

The MFC and Food for Life Nutrition services developed a suite of recipes tailored to the items most often delivered via the mobile pantry, so the demo team has resources ready to go. These recipes are housed on the NMUCRH website. NMUCRH also worked with the MFC to put together video demonstrations to accompany the recipes. These demonstrations and recipes are available to anyone and can be found at nmu.edu/ruralhealth/recipes.

The MFC provided staff for the demos at the Marquette and Ishpeming locations.

We used our experience with food demonstrations offsite to create equipment kits for each team of food educators at each location. NMUCRH, as an organization that serves the entire Upper Peninsula, travels frequently and was instrumental in dropping off the kits to our partners.

Preliminary evaluations indicate that the recipes are a big hit. For example, out of the 128 evaluations at the Marquette location, 115 people indicated they would make the recipe at home, with another 11 saying maybe they would make the dish at home. 119 people stated they would share the food and/or recipe with other people. It’s not just the participants enjoying the event. As one food educator said, “I loved getting to interact with so many people, cracking jokes and chatting with them. This filled my cup.”

We are thrilled to announce renewed funding for the Recipe for Success Program and are looking forward to another year of bringing food education to sites across the Upper Peninsula. Be sure to visit the NMUCRH site above to learn more about our partners and to try out some of the recipes in your own home!

*Article sponsored by the Marquette Food Co-op