Category: Lifestyle Medicine
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What is lifestyle medicine?
Today I received confirmation that my fellowship to the Australasian Society of Lifestyle Medicine has been approved: I’m officially a fellow. While it’s a big deal to me, I know it means next to nothing to most people, because most people have never heard of lifestyle medicine! Let’s change that. Lifestyle medicine is a branch…
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Laughter is no joke
It was weekly ritual. The giant bucket of popcorn was balanced precariously between the cinema seats. Even with my brother’s monster appetite there was no way we’d make more than a small dent in it, but that wasn’t the point. It was time to relax. Sweat beads slipped down the shiny glass beer bottles in…
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Go to sleep
A while back, I conducted a little experiment on myself. For three nights I went to sleep at the same time as my preschooler – 7.30pm. I wanted to see how I would feel if I slept more, so I just closed my eyes and drifted off a couple hours earlier than I usually would…
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In defence of milk
“Milk please,” my preschooler directed politely. “In my red cup, with a straw,” he added with a smile. I shook the bottle of organic, non-homogenized milk, so the cream would disperse from it’s lump at the top of the bottle, then I poured it into the specified red cup. He slurped it up happily, delighting…
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Cover me in sunshine
After lunch yesterday, my 3-year-old lay down on the floor quietly. “What are you doing, cutey?” I asked. “I just want to lie in the sunshine,” he stated matter-of-factly. I lay down next to him and for the next 15 minutes that’s all we did. My god it felt good. I am a sun-seeker. Right…
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Lockdown getting you down? Get cooking!
I smoothed the homemade berry pie filling over the top of the New York cheesecake I had made. My chef’s knife slid carefully through the berries, dragging streaks of purple and read over the creamy lemony middle, and then crunched through the biscuit crust. I gently tugged the slice free from its cake prison, tipped…
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There’s vegan and there’s vegan
Many years ago, I visited a friend of mine for a few days while she was staying at her parent’s place over summer. Her mother had recently gone back to Weight Watchers, and her father was enthusiastically supporting his wife. They were the most welcoming, delightful family, but I was devastatingly hungry the entire time…
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Fresh air
It rained this weekend. As all parents, school teachers and early childhood educators know, rain is not conducive to calm when there are children involved. Cooped up indoors and already fighting through the mind fog of another growth spurt, my own three-year-old burst into tears over things like “I wish I had green eyes like…
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Gym culture has changed for the better… and the worse
I started going to the gym in 2010 and, at the risk of sounding like an old lady, things were different back then. The gym I attended was split into two floors – weights room down the bottom, cardio equipment like treadmills and exercycles up the top. In practice that meant that guys went downstairs…
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Improve heart health, decrease stress, boost happiness: take off your headphones
My gumboots squelch on the muddy grass as I lug an awkwardly-sized laundry basket of cold, wet washing outside. My thoughts are on the morning rush: I need to hang this washing out, make my lunch, get the 3-year-old ready, brush my teeth, make the beds and do my makeup in, eek, 15 minutes. My…