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Optimum health: Get your Zzzs for maximum wellness

shannon — Wed, 27 Aug 2014 13:45:05 +0000

Fitness expert Richelle Melde
(Photo courtesy of Hollye Schumacher Photography)

BY RICHELLE MELDE
Lesbian.com

Sleep is a powerful healing mechanism for our bodies and a very necessary one. If you do not get enough sleep on a regular basis, you will not be able to handle stress because you are not repairing your damaged body at night. To get good sleep, you fall asleep easily and stay asleep for at least seven hours. If you get up to pee, but fall back asleep right after, you’re OK, but I would prefer that you stay asleep for seven hours straight without waking up at all.

Why is sleep important? At around 6pm, your cortisol levels reduce and melatonin levels rise. Between 12 and 3am, you physically repair you body and between 3 and 6am, you go through psychological repair.

If you are constantly stressed, you have elevated stress hormones (cortisol), which can break down muscles tissue. Sleep is vital to your recovery.

• Give yourself enough time to fall asleep.
• Turn off all screens at least 30-60 minutes before you go to bed (reading a book is OK, but not from a screen).
• Create complete blackout in your bedroom. No alarm clock light, no cell phone, no moonlight or streetlight. (You can purchase blackout curtains to completely block the light from coming in from outside.)
• No noises, meaning snoring animals and/or partners

WAKING UP DURING THE NIGHT?
• If you find that you wake up frequently to urinate, reduce your fluid intake before bed.
• Reduce your alcohol intake.
• Make sure you’re eating well. Don’t skip meals, maintain good portion size, reduce sugar intake, eat balanced meals.
• Menopause can cause women to wake up between 2 and 4am when estradiol levels are out of balance.
• Excessive emotional stress. It might be time to try therapy or yoga.

• If you can’t settle down, decrease your caffeine intake and make sure you are not drinking caffeinated beverages in the afternoon or anything containing kava kava or valerian root.
• Settle down and relax 60 minutes before bedtime.
• Exercise can stimulate you so adjust your workouts accordingly.
• Sugar is a stimulant, so no desserts or alcohol before bed.
• Try to avoid power naps, if they disrupt your ability to fall asleep at night.
• Practice stress management and reduction techniques.
• Use high-grade, organic 100 percent pure lavender oil. Place a few drops on a cloth and breathe deeply through your nose. Other herbs you can use are chamomile or passionflower.

NEW BABY KEEPING YOU AWAKE?
You’re only screwed for a little while.

Try to share the nighttime responsibilities with your partner and nap, if you get a chance to catch up on lost sleep. Work on getting your baby to sleep through the night so you can resume a normal schedule as soon as possible.

Richelle Melde is the Fitness Expert for News Channel 12 EVB Live show (Phoenix, Ariz.) and has been seen on Fox, CBS, NBC and ABC, as well as in the AZ Republic and Business Journal. She has a B.S. in Psychology, Sociology and Women’s Studies and is a CHEK Practitioner and Holistic Life Coach.

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AIDS LifeCycle: The ride that saved my life

shannon — Wed, 16 Jul 2014 13:03:29 +0000

BY DANA BRENKLIN
Lesbian.com

I was 37, maybe 36, not sure, and I sat down to watch a movie on Netflix. The movie seemed like it was telling my life story at the time. I was the host of an online radio show, so I looked into the star of the movie, mentioned it to the followers on my Facebook page and I was just coming down from the high of a very successful interview with another actress and my followers told me to get this lady for my next interview.

I researched this actress, got in touch with her and I finally talked her into coming on my show, but she convinced me to save my life. You’re probably thinking, what? Well, let me explain. She and a few others convinced me to take on the challenge of riding my bike from San Francisco to Los Angeles with a bunch of other crazy, beautiful, awesome people and if you know the state, you know that is a very long ride, almost the length of the state (545 miles).

So, I began training, which was excruciating. I saw this woman on training rides, she would even help me out on a ride or two. She inspired me in spin classes and not by doing much, just simply leading by example. I would eventually remember things like the way she said she ate, and more so, what she didn’t eat, when I realized I couldn’t keep up on training rides. I would hold on to something she said once about yoga when I needed to stretch more and like I said, she never barked at you or told you what to do, not even a suggestion, I just watched the woman who would become our AIDS/LifeCycle Team Goodisness captain, actress, badass and philanthropist Traci Dinwiddie and grabbed whatever I thought I needed to survive.

What I ended up grabbing was the deletion of meat from my diet, as it was weighing me down, mostly getting rid of sweets, bread and French fries, which I love. All of these things were gone, even before our departure to the Bay.

Everything went wrong before I headed to San Francisco to start the ride. My car completely broke down, I was laid off, one thing after another, after another, but I had to make this trip. I said I was going to do it and I never break my word, but it seemed to be more than that this time. It was like some entity was pushing me all the way and would not let up

Once in the Bay, I slowly realized what I had gotten myself into. All of a sudden I knew that I would not return to Los Angeles the same person I was when I left a few days before.

During training I had been the slowest person on every ride and people said the momentum will carry you your first day and you’ll be fine and so on and so on and of course, I did not believe them. We rode 83 miles the first day of the ride, which I finished every mile. I didn’t get off my bike to walk any of the mileage that day and that surprised me because there were some awful hills, even on the first day, but I peddled and peddled to the end and I swear if I could I would give you blow by blow, every day and every step of the journey, I would, but in the interest of time, let’s cut to the chase.

I have never felt so loved by so many people. I have never felt so in unison with so many beautiful people in my life. I was raised in the church and I have never seen so much love and genuine concern for one another. I rode every day, I didn’t finish each day, however I completed more days than not, but what’s important is that I not only learned about HIV/AIDS, but because of all of those wonderful people and all of my Team Goodisness sisters, I learned about me, my strength, myself and my life has changed because of this ride.

What I picked up didn’t wear off when I returned. I have made a radical change since returning to my hometown. I took a look at myself and realized I had been on autopilot my whole adult life and decided I didn’t want to live like that anymore.

I have since gotten on the path to make a career change, my diet and exercise have remained the same and I stopped consuming alcohol as well and the only thing I can credit is God, for weaving everything that led up to AIDS/LifeCycle 2014.

This ride has changed me from the “quote spewing, pick your spirits up and ignore mine girl” to the newly, “wanting to learn more, lover of you and I, authentic woman.”

This ride was what I needed to do, this was ride was my destiny and it smacked me in the face with love for others and myself. There was no way this train was leaving without me and I am poised to do it all over again next year.

I have 78 new sisters and one brother and they span over 14 countries and God knows how many states and I believe the bulk of us will remain friends for the rest of our lives. Join us: A group of sisters, with the exception of our one brother, from all over the globe and it is truly a family affair. When they tell you that you will never be the same, they are right. This experience will definitely change your life if you allow it. See you on the road.

Learn more about Team Goodiness or contribute to Dana’s ride.

Dana Brenklin is a Los Angeles based radio personality, award-winning poet and musician. Her radio show, “The Dana Brenklin Radio Show,” airs Thursdays at 9am pacific on kclaFM.com. Find out more at DanaBrenklin.com or listen To Dana’s shows on demand.

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Optimum health: What is your food eating?

shannon — Thu, 05 Jun 2014 13:45:02 +0000

Fitness expert Richelle Melde
(Photo courtesy of Hollye Schumacher Photography)

BY RICHELLE MELDE
Lesbian.com

With all this information, it might feel hard to tell what you should eat. Here are some guidelines to help you chow down.

PROTEIN
Depending on how much exercise you participate in, you want to consume about 0.3 – 0.5 grams per pound of body weight. This means that you will eat about a third to a half of your body weight in grams of protein, so if you weigh 150 pounds, you will try to consume a range of 45-75 grams of protein.

FOOD TOXICITY
Refined sugar, alcohol, tobacco, caffeine, prescription drugs, non-prescription drugs and artificial sweeteners are things we put in our bodies often without considering their side effects. Typically, we think of toxics as something with a skull and cross bones label — things you wouldn’t put in your body, yet we consume toxic chemicals every day to relieve some symptom such as it be fatigue, pain or addiction.

FOOD QUALITY
Another source of metabolic compromise can come from how the food you consume is produced, packaged and stored. This is why we recommend organic, grass-fed, free-range foods.

GM-NO!
As a general rule, avoid genetically modified foods (GMOs).

Genetically modified foods (GM foods or biotech foods) are foods produced from genetically modified organisms, specifically, genetically modified crops. GMOs have had specific changes introduced into their DNA by genetic engineering techniques.

Let’s take for example sweet corn. GMO sweet corn has been genetically altered so that it is paired with the pesticide Roundup. Yep, the same stuff that has a poison warning label on it not to ingest that you might spray on your weeds. I’m pretty sure that you wouldn’t want to drink Roundup, so why eat it?

Make the right choice when purchasing produce. Because we cannot seem to pass federal legislation to label genetically altered food, we have to rely on the PLU code.

HOW TO IDENTIFY GMOs

GMO foods have an effect on our hormone function, causing dysfunction and imbalance. These toxins are also stored in fat and not just our fat. Think about the meat that you eat that is not free-range or grass-fed. They are fed corn and soy, both of which are not natural diets to any animal, which causes them to get sick and can affect their growth rate. So industrial ranchers pump these animals with hormones and antibiotics, among other things, to ensure they grow fast with little illness so they can make the most money. These toxins are stored in the animal’s fat. When we eat that fat, we too ingest those toxins. Just another reason to consume a clean source of animal protein.

OTHER TOXINS
Your skin is your largest organ and can absorb material that it touches. Something we probably don’t think about all of the chemicals that our skin drinks through our clothes, lotions and perfumes as well as when we bathe, swim and clean. To look up your cosmetic products to see if they are safe, click here.

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Optimum health: Low fat kills metabolism

shannon — Tue, 03 Jun 2014 13:45:47 +0000

Fitness expert Richelle Melde
(Photo courtesy of Hollye Schumacher Photography)

BY RICHELLE MELDE
Lesbian.com

First of all, when fat is pulled out of food, it tastes terrible. So, what do you think gets added in to make it taste better? EXACTLY! SUGAR! Eating low-fat, reduced-fat, no-fat, fat-free or skim products actually increases your triglycerides levels and stores more fat because of the sugar load.

You have to remember that your liver stores about 1,200 calories or a 12-hour supply of glycogen, which is energy that can be readily used. When you reduce your caloric load, your body will release this stored energy to be used because blood-sugar levels are not balanced for your brain to function. Your muscles also store glycogen for just-in-case-moments. They release gylcogen in order to keep you moving.

Now, you might tell me that you’ve lost weight when you’ve reduced your calories. This is probably true, but unfortunately, it’s just water weight that you’re losing. Glycogen is stored with water, so when you release those stores, you release that water, which is heavy, thus creating a quick weight loss that will not last.

Once the liver is depleted of sugar stores, it will use proteins to make sugar for brain function, thus reducing your muscle mass. Because you aren’t consuming enough dietary fat, your body has to steal necessary building components from your bones and muscles to keep up. This is like building a house without having enough material to complete the house, so you build one room and then have to use the materials from that room to build the next one. Doesn’t make sense, right?

Now, it is true that your body will burn some fat during this time of undernourishment; however, the fat loss you will experience is not worth the damage you are doing by leaching nutrients from your bones and muscles. In reality, you are losing more weight from using your muscles and bones than you are from fat loss.

Your body cannot continue to eat itself and keep you functional, so your systems will begin to slow down. The first to slow is the metabolic process.

We have been so scared into not eating fat that this is a big nutrition myth to overcome. When I explore the eating habits of a new client during the initial consultation, there is always fat-free this and low-fat that, egg whites only, no butter and they dare not eat red meat!

So what exactly does cholesterol do in our bodies?

Essential for brain function

Forms membranes inside cells

Helps form cellular structure

Keeps cells permeable

Keeps mood level by stabilizing neurotransmitters

Maintains healthy immune function

Makes important hormones. It is the precursor to forming pregnenolone, which produces DHEA, cortisol, testosterone and estradiol.

When you deprive yourself of cholesterol by avoiding butter, meat, eggs and shellfish, you compromise the production of necessary hormones for reproductive health (infertility issues), the ability for your body to repair damaged cell membranes (increase in cancer risk) and the stabilization of neurotransmitters (mood disorders).

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Optimum health: Feeling bloated? It could be food sensitivity

shannon — Fri, 30 May 2014 13:45:45 +0000

Fitness expert Richelle Melde
(Photo courtesy of Hollye Schumacher Photography)

BY RICHELLE MELDE
Lesbian.com

Many of us live each day thinking that it is “normal” to feel bloated, lethargic, achy, gassy — The list goes on. This is very far from the truth.

In fact, all of these symptoms are an indication that you are eating something that doesn’t agree with you, otherwise known as food intolerance or food sensitivity. This type of intolerance is not an allergy to a food like the kind that needs to be treated immediately, such as a bee sting, but rather food intolerances are more delayed having reaction times from one hour all the way up to three days post consumption!

The four most common foods that can cause these reactions are corn, soy, dairy and gluten. Corn and soy are ingredients in almost every processed food, so unless you eat real food, it is impossible to avoid.

Gluten is the protein found in wheat, barley and rye. It changes the texture and taste of grains, so it is added to make food more palatable. And unless it’s raw dairy, it is highly processed and pumped full of chemicals, causing insidious reactions in your body and being stored in fat tissue.

Your gut controls 80-85 percent of your immune system, which is another reason to maintain digestive health. If you find that you are often sick, you might consider cleaning up your eating (and reducing stress) to help preserve your immune function.

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Optimum health: Stress, it’s not all bad

shannon — Thu, 29 May 2014 13:45:19 +0000

Fitness expert Richelle Melde
(Photo courtesy of Hollye Schumacher Photography)

BY RICHELLE MELDE
Lesbian.com

Stress is not always a negative thing. For instance, in order to see muscle growth, we need to stress the muscle fibers. However, stress today is chronic and seemingly never-ending which leads to disease. This is not good.

The first step to reducing stress is recognizing the multiple forms of stress that bombard us every day. Obviously, we aren’t going to be able to eliminate all stress from our lives, but we need to learn to manage and/or minimize as much as possible.

What happens when we’re stressed? You know the fight or flight response, right? This is an incredible survival mechanism that allows our body to instantly ready for an emergency situation. Today, because we are under constant stress, our body is constantly in this stress state. This can cause us to retain body fat, get sick more often, become depressed and, ultimately, leads to disease.

When you become stressed, whether from emotional, chemical or physical stressors, your body reacts the same. Cortisol levels rise, which suppresses your immune system, aldosterone is released to regulate your blood pressure and adrenaline to increase breath rate and circulation.

Why is this bad? First of all, your body must focus on producing cortisol, so you significantly reduce your DHEA production, which in turn reduces your sex hormone production (testosterone and estrogens). Cortisol is catabolic, meaning it will tear down muscle tissue. Most of us eat poorly, don’t get enough sleep, drink alcohol, etc., so our body has an imbalance of cortisol and DHEA (your repair hormone). Any exercise you do will result in muscle mass loss as opposed to body fat loss. With elevated levels of cortisol, your body does not mobilize fat stores for energy because it needs to easiest, fastest source, which is sugar. It’s a nasty cycle.

This kind of stress load over a lifetime will lead to adrenal fatigue, which we will discuss later in our series.

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Optimum health: The myth of calories in, calories out

shannon — Wed, 28 May 2014 13:45:19 +0000

Fitness expert Richelle Melde
(Photo courtesy of Hollye Schumacher Photography)

BY RICHELLE MELDE
Lesbian.com

As our optimum health series continues, we talk about setting your metabolism.

Many of us believe that if we reduce our caloric intake and workout (burning more calories than we eat), then we lose weight. So, let say you want to lose one pound in one week. You would simply cut your calories by 3,500 that week and, bam, you lose a pound.

But, that’s not what happened. You didn’t lose one pound, instead you may have gained weight. And you’ve done this a million times, hoping that each time you will find success, but every time you just prove that this method is flawed.

There are two sides to metabolism: anabolic (building up) and catabolic (breaking down). When these two systems are in balance, you are healthy. But if you aren’t getting enough sleep and you are stressed and eating poorly, you have more breaking down than building up. You will not lose weight. However, when you eat clean and have restful sleep, your body becomes a building machine.

So what is the secret to optimizing your metabolism?

Food + stress + exercise + hormones + sleep + toxins

We’ll dig into each of these factors and more as our series continues.

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Optimum health: 12 expert weight control tips

shannon — Tue, 27 May 2014 13:45:53 +0000

Fitness expert Richelle Melde
(Photo courtesy of Hollye Schumacher Photography)

BY RICHELLE MELDE
Lesbian.com

The first installment of our optimum health series features 12 health and weight control tips you can start using today.

Fat doesn’t make you fat.
Eat no more than 25 grams of sugar per day.
Do not count calories: Eat more REAL food more often.
Do not skip meals. This puts your body into a stress/starvation mode, signaling to conserve energy and store fat.
Chew your food and eat sufficient portions.
Do not add refined sugar to any food or drink.
Chose organic, grass-fed, free-range everything.
Eat healthy fats.
Avoid dairy, soy, corn and gluten.
Drink at least half your body weight in ounces of water each day.
Practice stress reduction activities every day.
Keep a food journal.

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The fat-burning benefits Bulletproof® coffee

candy — Mon, 24 Mar 2014 15:30:44 +0000

Fitness expert Richelle Melde
(Photo courtesy of Hollye Schumacher Photography)

BY RICHELLE MELDE
Lesbian.com

I absolutely love coffee. It is my one addiction; I’m comfortable with that. However, I found that this addiction had gotten a bit out of control and that it wasn’t making me feel as good as it once did. I’m an only-cream-in-my-coffee kinda girl, but that little bit of cream was causing my belly to ache and my partner to banish me into the other room, not to mention the beating my adrenals were taking everyday from the caffeine. So I did some research on how to make coffee “better” for me, because as I just admitted, I wasn’t going to give it up.

Part I: Coffee as a stressor

Here’s how coffee works:
1. Coffee stimulates stress response
2. Cortisol is released
3. Sugar stores are mobilized
4. Blood Sugar rises which stimulates insulin
5. Excess sugar is stored as fat
6. Blood sugar dips, we crash
7. We crave more

What does this mean? Basically, starting your day off with just a cup of coffee, whether black or with cream and sugar (a worse offender), means that you are going to create adrenal fatigue and increase body fat. Two things that will eventually lead to disease and dysfunction.

Part 2: Solution

Add good, high-quality fat to your coffee. It improves performance, increases cognitive function and helps to decrease body fat. Sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it? It’s not. I swear by this recipe and have put hundreds of my clients on it with great results.

Part 3: Why does adding fat to my coffee make it better?

Fat doesn’t have a hormonal consequence, meaning when you consume high-quality fats, you will not spike insulin levels. By eating fat with coffee (or anything that stimulates a stress or insulin response), you can help mitigate some of the harmful effects.

1. Metabolically you control your insulin response, resulting in balanced blood sugar levels which will prevent excess sugars being stored as fat.
2. You feed your brain, which functions better on fat than sugar, improving your cognitive functions while getting your caffeine on.
3. Grass-fed butter contains some really good stuff: fat soluble vitamins, minerals, Conjugated Linoleic Acid (CLA) and Omega 3’s which will all nourish your body.

Part 4: Recipe for Bulletproof Coffee

• Start with 4-500 ml (2 mugs) of black coffee brewed with mold-free Upgraded Coffee beans. (Why this is important). You can purchase local beans by finding a local roaster that knows where their beans come from and how they are processed. You want a single bean source, not a blend, to make bulletproof coffee.

• Add 2 Tbs. (or more, up to 80 grams, about 2/3 of a standard stick of butter) of Kerry Gold or other unsalted grass-fed, organic butter. (Might want to leave this out on the counter so it’s soft. Do not soften with microwave). You must use grass-fed butter.

• Add 30 grams of Upgraded MCT oil for max energy, weight loss and brain function (this is six times stronger than coconut oil, your next best choice) or 2 Tbs. of organic coconut oil

• Blend with a pre-heated hand blender, shake really hard in a flask, or (best method) counter top blender until there is a creamy head of foam. (It doesn’t work well if you mix it with a spoon.)

You might want to start off with only 1 Tbs. of grass-fed butter and 1 Tbs. of coconut oil to start. If your body isn’t adjusted to dealing with this amount of good quality fat, it can cause some GI discomfort. Taking digestive enzymes can help with this, as well.

Remember, no cream or sugar — just butter and oil. If you need your coffee to taste sweet, try adding a small amount of vanilla extract or stevia or xylitol.

For more information about Bulletproof Coffee, check out my blog.

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Enterprising women: Lori Shannon, See Jane Run

shannon — Thu, 06 Mar 2014 12:30:03 +0000

BY LESBIAN.COM

Once upon a time, there was a 28-year-old lesbian computer programmer who ran a marathon. It changed her life. She wanted to spread that joy to women across the land, particularly women like her who were not the industry standard for athletic.

That’s why Lori Shannon’s See Jane Run celebrates “the broad-shouldered, the knock-kneed, pigeon-toed, the small-breasted, the wide-hipped” and all shapes and sizes in between. More than celebrating those women, Shannon sells running gear that fits them.

Meet Lori Shannon, owner of See Jane Run.

What do you do and why?
I sell inspiration by way of running shoes, apparel and races. When I was 28, I ran my first marathon and it changed my life. I never believed I could do something like that. I decided I wanted all women, no matter their shape, size or age, to know that same feeling, so I started See Jane Run as a women’s running store that also inspires and trains women to run races. We have three stores, an online store and four races each year.

What did you do before you started your company?
I am a computer scientist so I was working for EDS, a very large IT consulting firm. It was a world of old white men from Texas in the 90s. I didn’t exactly fit in very well.

What’s the single most important piece of advice you received when first starting your company? What would you tell a young entrepreneur in turn?
Plan. Your inspiration is great, but you need to know the numbers and have a good plan that works on paper. If the numbers don’t work on paper, they never will in real life.

What aspect of business ownership came as the biggest surprise to you?
The loneliness. When you have a job, you have friends who are your peers. When you own a business, your employees cannot be your friends. Add that to an around-the-clock work schedule, it can be very isolating.

What do you find most rewarding about owning your own business?
That I can look back at what was created and say, I did that. I made that from nothing. It feels good.

What resources would you recommend to someone who is contemplating starting her own business?
Write a business plan. Don’t even consider starting a business without one. There are entrepreneur centers that can help. In the San Francisco Bay Area, the Renaissance Entrepreneur center is amazing.

What would you say is the single most important key to sustaining a business long term?
Flexibility. The world moves a lot faster now, you need to keep up. You will have to adjust constantly to stay competitive.

What obstacles did you face in establishing your company and how did you overcome them?
Fear. I learned very early on that I was going to spend a lot of time outside of my comfort zone. Becoming an entrepreneur is not for the faint of heart. The day I signed my first lease, I didn’t sleep the night before and couldn’t stop shaking. I learned then I would have to find a way to push aside fear and uncertainty or nothing would happen. I learned to take that sinking feeling in my gut, push it aside and let logic dictate my moves instead of my feelings. Fear was, and is, a constant obstacle.

Find See Jane Run on Facebook and Twitter.

Do you know an enterprising woman who you would like to see featured on Lesbian.com? Just drop us a line at info@lesbian.com with the name of the business, the entrepreneur and her email address and we’ll get to work on it.

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