Rest for Health, Weight Loss, Fitness and Peace

I often try and tackle the entire week’s problems and difficulties in one day, often pitting myself against the opponent (but friend) of time. I feel so accomplished when my list is checked off and even better if I can add a few things I did just to check them off too! Sure I go to bed at night but my mind is still running. It often finds rest to be foreign and I pay with a rest-less night and another full day!

I’m amazed at how little time I have to eat right and get the fitness activity I need but as soon as our fire tones are dropped, Jim and I put life on hold to help someone else, tend to the car wreck, put out the house fire… whatever it takes. Often we are up all night on a house fire, skipping the rest to help others.

So I’m plotting my schedule to bank a little premium every day on my health and what a difference it makes! Healthy heart, healthy attitude, happy marriage, smooth work relations…starting with rest!

Rest is one of the most basic health principles and healers known to man. Ironically, when we are well and don’t rest, it is that lack of adequate rest that causes our health to fail. It is necessary to maintain the alkalinity of the blood as this is the time when most waste products are eliminated from it.

Rest does not always mean sleep but a change of pace. Taking a break in the middle of an activity to clear your mind and rest your overtaxed muscles. Interval training incorporates rest into it’s basic philosophy… push hard for an amount of time, then rest for an amount.

Western civilization almost abhors the word rest and depending on your heritage and roots, the driven-ness that we are and observe is the very threat that takes our health. There is no such thing as catching up on rest or sleep. Of course, this is what it seems like but pushing hard day in and day out is killing us long before our golden years.

An author once said, “We shall never have any more time. We have, and we have always had, all the time there is.” There is no more time. Once ours is up, it’s gone forever, often with our health as it’s trophy.

No time to rest or relax? Here are some great pointers that started me in a direction that I can’t turn back from now!

Time alone with God in the morning.

Going out of my way to help others give true rest to my heart.

Time with your children every morning and reading to them about God.

Exercise (my preference is interval training) daily as this will demand rest.

Sleep on an empty stomach and out doors in the summer time.

It is said that one hour of rest before midnight is worth 2 hours after midnight!

Rest is about a time or two every day to come away, to sit, sip, cuddle, read, relax.

Live for a purpose! My purpose, to serve God and others!

Read a good book, Sit out in nature, go outside - remember that true recreation is truely re-creative. This means that it will refresh us, strengthen us and draw us closer to God. Amusement that consists primarily of foolishness is not restful at all.

It may seem impossible but remember that most if not all prescription sleep aids and most over the counter sleep aids suppress the all important REM sleep. REM sleep is so vital to health, fitness, and weight loss. People who are addicted to sleeping aids often suffer from “REM withdrawal sleep” which perpetuates the cycle of needing the sleep aids and feeling worse because you are cheated out of the REM sleep, thus needing more sleep aids. There is a better way! Learn more tomorrow!

Press On,

Marcia Oliver MSPT