Happy New Year! 19 in 2019

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Happy New Year everybody! Now that 2019 is upon us, we are putting together our run list for the year and looking for your recommendations. What races have you done? What were your favourites? Or what races are you looking forward to doing or have already signed up for?

We RUN Tings is encouraging our run community (that includes you) to do 19 different runs in 2019. To some, that sounds like a lot of fun. To others, it sounds like a lot of work. And to others, it sounds like a lot of money! That’s why we welcome your suggestions. We want to give a good list of different kinds of runs, different distances, different environments, and different prices (including those that are cheap and hopefully even FREE!).

You can give your feedback in the comments, message us on Facebook, or email us directly at weruntingsworld (at) gmail (dot) com. We’ll be back in a week or so with our list of suggestions. Disclaimer: The list is likely to be a LOT of Toronto and Detroit (currently our two main running regions) but suggestions from others will help to even things out (just a little).

Happy Running!

#WRT19in2019

 

Try new TINGS: Saying no to sugar

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w4s-wrt

Happy New Year! If you think you enjoyed the holiday goodies a little too much last month, join We RUN Tings January 17-26 for our first ever Weakness for Sweetness 10-Day Sugar Detox. No matter where you are, we are in this together!

This event is an interactive, group approach to cutting back on sugar. We’ll post quizzes and recipes on our Facebook page, we’ll track and share our experiences, and we’ll have LIVE check-ins throughout the 10 days. Come check it out!

We also have a lot of other great activities planned for the upcoming months so stay connected:

  • March: Get Juicy – A Spring Ting
  • April: Toronto – Drum and Dance weekend with COBA (Collective of Black Artists)
  • May: Ottawa Race Weekend
  • June: Get Juicy for Jump-Up
  • July: Detroit – SocaSweat Weekend
  • August 4-6: Toronto – We Wuk Up and Wine Tings Weekend
  • September: Toronto – VgnWknd
  • September 18-22: Get Juicy – Fall Classic
  • October: Niagara Falls Race Weekend
  • November 28-30: Get Juicy for the Jollydays

Remember to follow us onFacebook, Twitter, or Instagram.

Events, Motivation, Nutrition, Self-Care

Get ready, get set…get JUICY!

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WUWT - Juicy for Jump Up

Whether you’re chipping down the road at Carnival, or walking and running down the road on the regular, this collective health experience might be for you! Join We RUN Tings to Get Juicy for Jump-Up!

It has been said that a short juice detox has a whole lot of benefits — boosting energy, healing the body, releasing toxins, losing weight, and flooding our body with nutrients! That’s all good but it can be hard to go it alone. So We RUN Tings invites you to join us for our first group juice detox. For a full five days, wherever you are, we’re in this together.

The Plan? Fresh raw (fruit and vegetable) juice three times a day, supplemented by lots of water and clear tea with no sweeteners. NO SOLID FOOD. It sounds scary but trust us, it can be done! We’ll need commitment. We’ll need willpower. And most importantly, we’ll need eachother. Tell a friend!

We’ll post great recipes and lots of tips to support the process. We encourage you to ask questions, tell us about your progress, and share your ideas with the rest of the group. If you’ve done this before, bring your wisdom! We’ll need it.

If it’s convenient and cost-effective, you can buy juices from a juice boutique. We also encourage you to make your own juices at home. Bust out that blender and get jamming with your juicer! Let all that juicy creativity shine through.

“This is not about getting skinny. This is about getting started.” — Kija Gray

NOTE: Before starting a juice detox, please check with your healthcare provider if you are pregnant, underweight, diabetic, or if you have have heart disease, low blood pressure, or any life-threatening health challenge.

Creating habits that last

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Start Early in the Day

Your willpower tends to be highest at the beginning of the day, so harness that energy and use it to your advantage. A great example is crockpot cooking. Your desire be healthy can help you to toss ingredients into a crockpot in the morning. That way, you’re not dealing with cooking when you’re tired after a long day at work. My mom was true believer in the “art” of crockpot cooking. Fortunately I took her cue and I use it to make my life easier.

Make Habits Convenient

If something’s difficult or complicated to do, it’s even less enjoyable when you’re doing it over and over. Make sure that whatever habits you’re trying to establish are simple and relatively easy. If there’s any complexity (like needing a packed gym bag), schedule it into your routine so it’s easy to get it done.

Have Fun!

If you’re doing something you hate, you’re not going to magically fall in love with it because you’re doing it over and over. Some people say you should “change what you think is fun” but I don’t think that’s realistic. Instead, find things that you actually enjoy doing, and establish those as your habits!

Use Action Triggers

Portrait of a crazy african businessman shouting and closing ear by his hands on white background

“I should take a quick walk now!”

Triggers are things that automatically lead to something else happening. A trigger you might have now would be something like “finish eating dinner, rinse plate in the sink and put in dishwasher”. So the rinsing of the plate was triggered by finishing a meal. Similarly, see how you can tie new habits to other actions. For example: every lunchtime, take a 10 minute stroll when you’ve finished eating. After a while, every time you eat lunch, you’ll think to yourself: “I should take a quick walk now!”

Using these types of techniques to establish habits can be the difference between success and failure.

Note: As you look to establish even more Healthy Habits, take a look at my Kick Sugar For Good program that I am offering to help you do just that. KICK that toxic sugar out of your life!

Written By Callie Bradford MS, Speaker, Holistic Health and Wellness Coach. Author of Apples, Carrots and Kale, Oh My: A Beginners Guide to Juicing.

Adapted by We RUN Tings.

The Real Skinny on The Juice Cleanse

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It’s almost Summer! And everyone wants to shed their winter coats – also known as the extra 10 to 15 pounds they put on between Halloween and New Year’s. Well, juice cleanses or detoxes are all the rage. Those who are true to the juicing game are all about detoxes because we know they work.

raw-juicePersonally, I have been a believer for over 10 years. Before the juice cleanse was popular, I learned about holistic healing from juicing gurus like Joel Furman and old school Jack Lalane. They swore by the benefits of living a healthy lifestyle and incorporated natural, raw juice into their diets. Myself, I used juicing to heal my body from hormonal imbalance and fibroids. Then I experienced the added bonus of (yes!) weight loss.

We all want to look good and feel great in our jeans, our Carnival costumes, or our own skin. The quickest way to get there is to start a juice cleanse. A detox of 3 to 7 days or more will reboot your metabolism and get you those results in the waistline.

What are the other benefits? There are many! For example, improvement in:

  • chronic fatigue
  • loss of concentration
  • poor memory
  • weight gain
  • leaky gut
  • poor digestion
  • gas and bloating
  • skin problems
  • chronic pain

So, even if you think detox or cleansing your body with juicing is just an unnecessary fad, give it a try! You can join a group cleanse with We RUN Tings and GO Press Juice. We’ll be posting juice recipes and great tips. Let’s get healthy and get ready for summer fun together!

Written By Callie Bradford MS, Speaker, Holistic Health and Wellness Coach. Author of Apples, Carrots and Kale, Oh My: A Beginners Guide to Juicing.

First published in Natural Awakenings magazine. Adapted by We RUN Tings

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Introducing: Callie B.

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We RUN Tings would like to welcome our newest Nutrition and Wellness correspondent, Callie Bradford. Callie will be working with us to provide you with great tips for your health in the weeks leading up to our Wuk Up and Wine Tings Weekend — to get you ready to dance in the streets, cross the finish line at your next race, or just look in the mirror, feel good, and smile.

Callie Bradford is a holistic health coach, wellness consultant, certified trainer, and presenter.

She calls herself a recovering addict – food, shopping, and toxic relationships were her drugs of choice. Her health took a major hit. But instead of pills and surgery, she changed her lifestyle and attitude to build physical, emotional, and even financial wellness.

Callie’s focus is food as medicine. She removed harmful foods from her diet, started juicing, and eventually became a vegan. Today Callie is the founder of Transform for Wellness, educating families about nutrition and preventative health. She’s also a co-owner of GO! Smoothies and the author of Apples, Carrots and Kale, Oh My: A Beginners Guide to Juicing.

Join We RUN Tings! and Callie to get Ready for the Road: Mind, Body, and Soul!

You can look forward to Callie’s blog posts starting Monday 06 June 2016.

Click here to find out more about We Wuk Up and Wine Tings weekend.

Click here for more information or to buy Callie’s book, Apples, Carrots and Kale, Oh My: A Beginners Guide to Juicing.

Callie B - WUWT

The Wagon

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I have fallen off the wagon before. It’s not a new thing.

I have fallen off the wagon before. It’s not a new thing.

I have fallen off the wagon before. It’s not a new thing. Most times, I’ve picked myself up. Trusted that I could. Knew that I would hear the voices of those in my world tell me to “dust off and get back on the ride”. But last June, the death of my mother changed everything for me. Finding my mother…gone… was perhaps the single most traumatizing thing that I can remember happening in my life.

The wagon was there, the cheerleaders were yelling “Dust yourself off, get back on!” But their voices got further and further away…and the wagon left without me this time.

Race for the Cure Detroit, May 2012

Race for the Cure Detroit, May 2012

Now trust me, when it comes to excuses, I wrote the book. Not the entire book, but let’s just say I’ve been a regular contributor. Making excuses actually meant I cared, but this time I’d even forgotten how to do that. No excuses. No explanations. I had gone into full blown mourning. Grief had taken hold of my body, my mind, my soul. Every Facebook memory from the year before had reminded me of all the time and energy I had spent in building the “me” I wanted to be.

Today marks the anniversary of the first 5K I ever ran. In May 2012, I ran the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure in Detroit with my sister running alongside me, yelling “Water is for weaklings! Peeing? Really?” I ran that whole race, non stop. I encouraged others to run or walk it too. I was surprised at my own strength. From there I went on to run over 24 races and even completed a duathlon.

Which brings me to now. The phone rang this morning. It was a dear friend of mine who did the race with me the first time She called to ask me where she could meet me on the route today. She just knew I’d be there. Me? On the route? Today? Nope, I am at home. My race days seem a world away.

Toronto Caribbean Carnival, August 2014

Toronto Caribbean Carnival, August 2014

I am just now starting to feel myself again. My toes, my desire to move my body again. To dance. To eat well. To love me again. To honor this body again. I gotta do it. Next weekend, I am registered for a half marathon I paid for before my Mom died. I may not be able to run it, like I had in the past. I might have to walk. Or perhaps, the wagon will circle back and I’ll climb back on. #wegotogether

– K.G.

ACT – Adventures in Cross-Training: Free up!

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Those who know, know that We RUN Tings is about more than running. It’s also about our Adventures in Cross-Training, the different things that we do for healthy fun when we’re not running. And our most popular ACT event is on the horizon: We Wuk Up and Wine Tings Weekend at Toronto Carnival.

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This year promises to be another spectacular year. Carnival culture brings with it so many benefits. It’s about loving our bodies just as they are, dressing those bodies up in celebration, and dancing in the streets with friends and strangers alike. It’s exercise seemingly without effort — last year one of our members reportedly clocked over 20KM while “chipping down de road,” singing, laughing, and socializing for hours. It’s about “freeing up” — letting go of stress and just having a great time, which is very healthy. It’s self-love and stress-relief in the sunshine to a soca soundtrack.

As the weeks go by leading up to the Carnival, we hope you’ll check our website for valuable information for how you can get involved, whether it’s playing mas with our crew, watching and waving on the sidelines, or getting healthy wherever you are so that you can have the stamina for your own adventures.

If you are interested in signing up to be in the Carnival parade on July 30, or you just want to ask some questions about it, please email weruntingsworld@gmail.com or call 647.772.6244.

So you want to have an awesome body?

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It’s January. And you might notice that this time of year is totally overwhelming with all kinds of information on how to lose weight, look good, eat right, live right, do more, be more, and basically Make All Your Dreams Come True. Blah blah blah.

Me, I don’t have a problem with it…within reason of course. I’m all for suggestions and well-meaning advice but it has to be rational, doable, inexpensive, and convenient. I don’t want to spend too much. I don’t want to drive too far. I don’t want to study for it or think too much about it. I don’t want complicated instructions or extra equipment or special-order materials. That’s just me in a nutshell.

With that in mind, I’m here to share my own rational, doable, inexpensive, and convenient technique for people who want to have an awesome body.

Instructions:

  1. Get up every day (Every. Single. Day) and look at your body in the mirror (nakedness is optional but recommended).
  2. Tell your body that it is awesome.
  3. Treat your body accordingly.

It’s that simple. And it works.

At first your body may not believe you, especially if YOU do not believe you. That’s OK. Keep going. Every. Single. Day.

Treat your body as though it is some new love interest, that guy or girl that you really really like and you really want to get down with. Compliment your body. Tell your body amazing things about itself. Spend time with your body. Think of new fun things that you can do together. Take your body to nice places. Feed it with the best food, like you’re trying to impress it. Don’t give your body anything that would make it sick or sad. Pleasure your body, unapologetically. Pamper your body. Buy or make nice gifts for you and your body to share. Play music to your body. Sing to it. Yes, I said it. Serenade your body and sing LOUDLY.

Do the things for your body that you know are really good for your body. Take your body for a walk. Take your body out dancing. Take your body to the gym but do the classes that you and your body really enjoy. If it’s not fun, if your body is not having a good time, be flexible and invite your body to do something else instead.

Take your body out on the town on the regular. Don’t hide your body…the world deserves to see that awesomeness that is truly you. When you believe it, others will believe it. And if they don’t, well they just don’t know very much. That’s their problem. You and your awesome body are very happy together, thank you very much.

Awesomeness will not happen overnight. It takes time to build a solid relationship with your body. But I think you’ll find that your body is worth it and will show its appreciation. There is no feeling quite like waking up every day with someone who truly loves and appreciates you. It makes you glow and look forward to every new experience. Treat your awesome body like it deserves to be treated and your body will respond accordingly.

Now this approach will not work for everybody. Unfortunately I speak from personal experience when I say that sometimes the hardest thing you could ever do is to say nice things to yourself about your body. We have not exactly been trained to do that, whether because we don’t want to be vain or we just don’t see our own awesomeness. Whatever. Drastic times call for drastic measures. And if having an awesome body means that you have to throw caution to the wind and actually say good things about yourself, well, that’s a sacrifice you’ll just have to make. And no criticism. Nobody likes to be picked on all the time, constantly told what is wrong with them and what they must do to fix it. Your body is no exception.

So get up every day (Every. Single. Day) and talk nicely to your body. Marvel in the amazing things that it can do. Admire the miracle of how all the pieces fit together. Tell your body that you love it more than ever before. Smile at your body. Make kissy noises at it. Get silly with it. Throw yourself completely into the awesomeness that is you. The rest will follow.

It may take months. It may take a year. It make take years! But treating your body right and feeling good about your body relationship is habit-forming. Once you are fully addicted to having that awesome body, there’s just no turning back.

Let me know how it goes.

— Nicole OzJam