Get A Life by Loretta LaRoche

We live in a society that has somehow come to feel that sleep is a waste of time. It’s not uncommon to hear people brag about how little sleep they need in order to function. Is this really something to be proud of, though?

I wonder why we’re so invested in convincing ourselves that surfing the internet, returning test messages, or watching our big-screen TVs is more important than resting?

Sleep deprivation creates a stress response that induces the release of cortisol, which has been found to increase abdominal fat. It also compromises memory (so now you’ve got a lot done, but you can’t remember what you did). Too much cortisol is not a good thing!

In ancient times, it was the body’s trigger to store fat in response to the famine that might follow an attack by a behemoth or saber-toothed tiger.

Scientists have also found that a lack of adequate sleep (even after as little as two nights increases the levels of the hunger hormone ghrelin by 28 percent, which seems to fuel our desire for carbohydrate-rich foods, such as cake, candy, ice-cream, pasta, and bread. In addition, insufficient sleep reduces our production of leptin—a protein hormone that suppresses appetite. So that’s a double whammy!

Surveys estimate that 63% of American adults don’t get the recommended eight hours of sleep each night. Many of us just don’t have a good sense of how much sleep we really need, but Eve Van Cauter a University of Chicago sleep researcher recommends that most adults need an average of seven to nine hours of sleep.

I wish people would heed this advice—-not only for their own well-being, but for mine and everyone else! I’m sick and tired of being around people who are always complaining about how tired they are. It seems to have become somewhat of a contest now too. The more tired you are the more validation you get, because the perception is that you are so busy, so you have no time to rest.

However, the bottom line is that productivity, health and happiness are predicated on feeling rested. So take a nap, go to bed early, but take time to sleep, and guess what, you might not be so tired.

Loretta LaRoche writes the Get A Life Column for the Patriot Ledger.

Get A Life by Loretta LaRoche

In all the reams of literature written on stress, there is nothing that addresses clothing or personal grooming aids as being stressful. Yet I’m sure many of you have fallen victim to buying fashions, products, or gadgets to enhance your looks that ended up being an incredibly frustrating experience.

I now have a list of items that I consider to border on cruelty: Jeans that are supposed to be for a petite woman that are made for toddlers. A petite mature woman has hips, an ample waist and a butt that has seen some time on this planet. Yes I’m short, but I’m not petite! I don’t want to stuff myself into a piece of clothing that looks and feels like a denim wet suit.

How about panty hose? Oh yes, there are much cooler versions then there were when I was growing up. But still, you have to really medicate yourself before you pull them on. The size chart was developed by pathological liars. If I got the size they recommended for my height and weight I might not get them above my knees. I once got a pair stuck around my upper thighs and had to cut them off.  If you buy a larger size so that your body won’t be squeezed to death, they bag around the knees making you look like an old elephant.

How about hair gels that get so stiff you need a chisel to remove them, lipstick that sticks on everything except your lips, mascara that won’t come off unless you detach your eyelashes, and zippers that love to eat the material surrounding them.

Also on my list are bras that make your breasts look like bananas or have under wires that leave track marks, underpants that stop circulation, manufacturers that make clothing labels  with  manipulative sizing that says 1, 2, 3 or 3.5. Give me a break! When did we start thinking we had to fool people into believing they were thin?

I know that I’m not the only one that has issues with all of the above, yet somehow many of us become mesmerized into thinking we should ignore how we feel in lieu of how we think we should look. I might have bought into that when I was younger, but age has brought me the wisdom to know that comfort is much more satisfying then wearing the “Emperors’ New Clothes”.

Loretta LaRoche writes the Get A Life Column for the Patriot Ledger.

Get A Life by Loretta LaRoche

When I was younger I was such a perfectionist!

Everything had to be done by me personally; everything I cooked was done from scratch. I used to clean everything, sew, knit, paint walls, dress my kids perfectly and try to look like a fashion plate every day.

People would come to my house and say, “Oh, I love your drapes!” and I’d say, “ I made them myself!” “I smell bread! “baked it myself!” “Are those your children?” Yeah, I made ‘em myself!”

I think of the silly things I said back then such as “You could eat off my floors.”

Now, isn’t that special? Imagine having people over and having them eat off your floors?

I was also a slave to rules. I did things and didn’t even know why I was doing them. One day, I was cooking roast beef, and I cut the ends off and threw them away, as I always did. It occurred to me to wonder why, so I called my mother. “Why do we cut the ends off?”

“I don’t know why you’re doing it,” she said “I did it because it didn’t fit in the pan.”

After thirty or more years of mopping, scouring, dusting and checking to see that everything is right, I’m seriously considering ( if you’ll excuse the expression) of throwing in the towel.

Life is not just a daily list of “to do”s. It also needs a serious sprinkling of “ta Dah’s”.

So here are some suggestions for those of you who feel compelled to work yourself into a dither about everything and have to have everything and everyone around you perfect:

1. Make a “not to do” list. Write down everything you’ve done already or what you have enough of. For example, “Have plenty of toilet paper, soap, and remembered my mother’s birthday”!

2. Make your bed but leave one side undone. As you leave the room remind yourself that the “bed checkers” are not coming.

3. Tell one person one thing that you don’t do well. Maybe the underwear and socks in your drawers are not lined up perfectly.

4. Go outside when it’s raining and get all wet. Try it sometime when you have something “good” on.

5. Let someone borrow your good pencil or pen when you’re at work, and let the family use the good towels. After all they are your loved ones.

But most of all don’t forget to enjoy your life. That the greatest TADAH of all!

Loretta LaRoche writes the Get A Life Column for the Patriot Ledger.

Get A Life by Loretta LaRoche

Over the years I have written several books each containing many anecdotes about my family and in particular my grandmother Francesca and my grandfather Lorenzo.

Both immigrated from Sicily bringing their five children with them. They settled in Brooklyn, New York in a predominately Italian neighborhood surrounded by a plethora of other ethnic families. However, my early years were spent living as if I was growing up in a small Italian village. My mother and father worked and so my grandparents became the foundation with which I have built my values and attitudes. Before I attended school, I spoke only Italian, in particular, Sicilian.

One of the most prevalent themes of my upbringing was food. Not a day went by without hours of conversation about what we were going to eat and how it was going to be prepared. All of this reminiscing is due in part to a book my oldest son gave me for Christmas by Elena Kostioukovitch, called ”Why Italians Love to Talk About Food”.

I never pondered why my family of origin and everyone they surrounded themselves with was so preoccupied with food because it just was a fact of life. I have been questioned by acquaintances’ why I begin to plan another meal while I’m eating and I never had an answer that was satisfactory.

Now, by reading Kostioukovitchs’ book I have finally been able to understand that “Italy is food and food is Italy, literally emotionally, historically, and symbolically”.

By American standards preoccupation with food is considered to be a problem. Yet we struggle with our weight and week after week put some food source on the most wanted list. When the low-carb phase was popular, people who ate bread were at risk to do hard time in an abandoned spaghetti factory.

Perhaps the real secret to staying trim and healthy is to not only adopt the Mediterranean diet but its attitudes, which include savoring, enjoying and relishing in the experience of food and those with whom we break bread.

I now feel vindicated and will feel more empowered to share the delights that experimenting, creating, cooking and having glorious odors waft through the house.

And keep in mind what Ms. Piggy said “Never eat anything bigger than your head”.

Loretta LaRoche writes the Get A Life Column for the Patriot Ledger.

Get A Life by Loretta LaRoche

For most of my life I have been on a quest to find a hair product that would give my hair more volume. The women in my family have fine hair, but a lot of it.

Well, unfortunately, its’ never been fine with me!

Over the years I have bought and applied products that stated that their particular magic formula  would make my hair lustrous, thick and bouncy.  After all I didn’t want to be left out of the legions of women who saunter down city streets swinging their locks and have every man they pass give them the once over.

My fantasies of tresses that could rival those of a Swiss Milk Maid soon passed as menopause  turned my fine hair frizzy and curly. Those of you who have gone through the process know that your body parts and hair can turn on you with a vengeance. One day I had fine straight hair, the next it looked like it had been put through the microwave.

As time has passed it also seems that places I had hair are hairless and other areas that were hairless now have hair. As a child I used to ask my grandmother why some of the older women she knew had chin hairs and slight mustaches. She would reply with “you’ll see”.

Well that’s the last thing I wanted to see.

As I got older I always prided myself with the fact that I was not part of the bearded ladies club. Well so much for that, the other day I was looking in my magnifying mirror with my reading glasses on so that I could pluck my eyebrows. As I plucked I looked at my lip and there they were, small little black hairs, but luckily none on my chin. I don’t think they were that visible because my daughter who has the observational skills of a hawk seeking its prey would have told me. So I began to wildly pluck the little hairs until I looked like a little kid who couldn’t stop licking their lips.

I know I can have them removed permanently with lasers, so I have to now add that to my new crusade to find a product that will remove frizz, add moisture and of course volume.

I can hear my mothers’ voice throughout all of this, “If you think this is bad, you haven’t seen anything yet”. I know she’s right and I’m sure I’ll wake up some morning with hairy knuckles.

If that happens I’m just going to audition for the next Wolfman movie.

Loretta LaRoche writes the Get A Life Column for the Patriot Ledger.

Get A Life by Loretta LaRoche

I recently read an article in the New York Times on “How to Train the Aging Brain”. I am fascinated with these types of articles because my brain is definitely aging and I want to do everything I can to deter it from becoming older than it needs to be.

Jack Mezirow, a professor emeritus at Columbia Teachers College, has proposed that adults learn best if presented with what he calls a “disorienting dilemma” or something that “helps you critically reflect on the assumptions you’ve acquired.”

Easier said than done. How often do we dig our heels in and defend our positions about what we think about.

I have found over the years when I am teaching a workshop on stress management that most people find it incredibly difficult to change their assumptions. Most of us like the comfort of our perspectives. Staying wrapped in a cocoon of thoughts that feel familiar helps us stay stuck in the status quo.

How many times have you heard someone say, “Don’t rock the boat”, “Don’t make waves”, “Leave it alone”? Certainly all those phrases have merit when the occasion calls for it.

But more often than not we need to stop and listen to how we really feel about a situation rather than accepting it at face value. A friend of mine always takes me to task for reviewing how I handled certain situations. Her modus operandi is more devoted to standing in the wings and waiting for someone else to make the decision for her. She would never question her thinking process because she might have to do things differently.

Once we go down that path a whole tsunami of issues might crop up. Individuals around you might start to think that you have a mind of your own and then they might have to question how they relate to you.

I spent a great deal of my younger years staying on the safe side. If I never questioned my assumptions then I would never have to mature and grow. My career choice threw me into models of thinking that have consistently challenged my thinking patterns.

Stop and listen occasionally to how and what you’re thinking about. Become the witness to your thoughts, you may be surprised and delighted or you may be horrified.

Either way you may just discover that you have much more control over your mind then you ever imagined.

Loretta LaRoche writes the Get A Life Column for the Patriot Ledger.

Get A Life by Loretta LaRoche

On Sunday, January 3rd a new reality show premiered called “Worst Cooks in America”, where the best of the Worst Win.

It fascinates me that there is no end to how media moguls choose to entertain the public with shows that feature individuals who are essentially losers.

I know I’m going to sound like a broken record but when I was growing up you hid the parts of you that were considered to be less then valuable. No one sat around the dinner table and vocalized about how stupid they were, how inept they might be in the sack, or how pathetic their parenting skills might be.

Not until the era of disclosure where nothing is held back no matter how personal or vile.

My grandmother could have been the head of the CIA. She never disclosed anything that might tarnish her reputation or that of her family. I can’t even imagine her spending time with her relatives or friends discussing her ineptitudes in any area of her life, especially cooking. She considered herself to be the Grand Pubah of chefs. Watching a program based on individuals who become famous for their inability to cook would be akin to having to use canned tomatoes for her spaghetti sauce.

This type of programming has become par for the course. Let’s find individuals who are subpar and showcase them on a reality show for all to witness so we can mock them and find them amusing. There seems to be no end to what TV honchos come up with. If it’s disgusting, derogatory or immoral they will find a way to showcase it.

Believe me I am no prude, but what has happened to entertainment and when and how did we get to this place?

I find most television today to be inane and insipid. I have 900 stations to choose from and often find it difficult to find something valuable to watch.

Even the Animal Planet has resorted to segments that leave you bug eyed and delirious. Do I really want to watch a show that focuses on an individual that lived through an avalanche in a cave for a month gnawing on an old piece of rope for sustenance?

I would much rather watch Fido dial 911 when his masters in trouble and end up with his own reality show. Now that’s not only entertaining but it really makes me feel that the world is a friendly place.

Loretta LaRoche writes the Get A Life Column for the Patriot Ledger.

Get A Life by Loretta LaRoche

I imagine many men who might be reading this article have often wondered why women spend so much time in the bathroom.

MIT went so far as to do some research in the area. They discovered that women on average spend 90 minutes in public bathrooms vs. men who only spend thirty.

Some of this is quite obvious.

Women have more to take off and are much more interested in seeing if they look good before they leave, and we love to chat with other women and compare notes about just about anything.

More importantly, however, is the toilet training that has been handed down through the generations which takes time and effort. I remember going shopping with my mother and having to go to the bathroom. My mother took my hand and led the way.

We then went into the stall and the lesson began. She demonstrated the proper way to take the toilet paper and layer it on the seat so that I would not have direct contact with it. Then I was to gently sit on it, so that the paper did not bunch up and fall into the middle of the bowl.

Now she was exceedingly adept at this. When I attempted it on my own I found that my configurations only ended up bunching together leaving me with a bare seat.

When I reported this to my mother she said forget the paper, just hover over the seat. And so began a lifetime of hovering. This is fine if your quads are up to par, but if you haven’t been going to the gym you could be in big trouble.

In recent years toilet tissue has been confined to an apparatus that looks like a Ferris wheel with a cover. In the past if you had to hover you could easily access the tissue because it was in the open on a spindle. Now in addition to behaving like a helicopter you have to try to grab a few pieces of tissue which often get stuck or come out in shreds. In order to get more you have to insert your hand into the holder and pray it doesn’t take your hand hostage.

I have often had to ask the woman in the next stall for help, hoping that she had been able to get some extra tissue without being scarred for life. I believe that the inventor of this maniacal gadget must have come from a position of extreme frugality and figured that two pieces of tissue per person was the way to keep costs down.

Well there’s more than one way to skin a cat. I now carry my own tissue and a bacterial spray, and a small hatchet in case I forget to bring them.

Loretta LaRoche writes the Get A Life Column for the Patriot Ledger.

Get a Life by Loretta LaRoche

Over the past decade coaching of every kind has become a huge phenomenon. Years ago when we thought of a coach it was in relationship to a sports’ team, or if you’re a fashinista you thought of a pocket book company i.e Coach Bags.

In its beginnings, coaching was predicated on helping people in a more general way, but as it grew it began to target specific areas. It is not uncommon now to be able to find a coach for almost every facet of life; relationships, parenting, weight-loss and exercise, pets, pimples, clutter, hammertoes, sex and more.

In fact, if you see a niche that hasn’t been filled, you should definitely try to fill it.

It appears that many individuals have lost their ability to navigate their lives without someone else’s assistance. I don’t want to sound callous, but whatever happened to common sense?

Believe me I think getting help when you need it is very wise, but on some level we seem to moving towards being more and more helpless and ridiculous.

The other day when I was reading a national magazine I came across an advertisement for a sports bra that had a number you could call to speak to their “bra coach”. It stated that their coach could help you choose the right sports bra and save you time and money, since their research found that lots of people seem to make wrong decisions around this particular item.

I had everything I could do not to call and ask how they got their training and what it consisted of. Is there a Sports Bra Institute that gives out certificates to all those that get through the program so that they can measure breasts accurately and professionally?

They must also have to know which bra works with a particular sport. You wouldn’t want to wear a bra designed for a golfer if you’re into tobogganing. Standing up takes up less bra room then laying down. I hope that their training includes these kinds of calculations.

And how does this transfer to doing it over the phone?

There must be questions that need to be answered like how wide or narrow are your breasts? I would imagine length is important.

If your breasts are heading towards your knee caps you may need a wheelbarrow rather than a sports bra. If that’s the case do they recommend finding a hardware store that has a wheelbarrow coach.

I personally would love to find to find an underpants coach. Now that would really make my day!

Loretta LaRoche writes the Get A Life Column for the Patriot Ledger.

Get a Life by Loretta LaRoche

We are about to enter 2010 and, as usual, a plethora of articles have been published about New Year resolutions.

The resolutions often have to do with health, relationships, finances or success and derive from good intentions, but they often end up discarded.

I propose we all embark on a resolution necessary to maintain a civil society and one that has many mental and physical health benefits. It’s called gratitude.

During the last several years, myriad studies have showed that we are happier, more creative, more productive and easier to be around when we are grateful.

It may sound like a simple task. After all, most of us, unless we were brought up in the wilderness by wolves, know that saying thank you is part of being a respectful human being.

However, the gratitude that I propose takes a little more effort. To reap the rewards, people need to be more mindful of their surroundings and their meaning.

One of the best ways to embark on this activity is to begin a gratitude journal. It need not be written in every day. Believe it or not, people who wrote in their journals once a week were happier but those who wrote three times a week were not. Gratefulness should not feel like a forced march.

Jotting down a list, however, is not how it works. Focus and imagination are necessary to get the best outcome. As you write down an incident or interaction with someone, imagine how it felt. This experience increases the health benefits. It is fairly common to reflect on irritations, inconveniences and tragedies.

What we continually practice becomes a pathway that our brain learns to traverse. If given the opportunity, why not expend our energy on what feeds our hearts and souls rather than our demons?

A family gratitude journal might be a nice way to create a shared history of joy and blessings. Write a letter of gratitude to someone you feel thankful to and then read it to him or her face to face.

Meanwhile, I wish to share how incredibly grateful I am to all my faithful readers. You have enabled me to fulfill a childhood dream.

Thank you, and Happy New Year!

Loretta LaRoche writes the Get A Life Column for the Patriot Ledger.

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