How Weekends Can Hold Us Back From Reaching Fitness Goals

We all look forward to the weekend or free days off. Enjoying a break from work and personal R&R can't come soon enough sometimes, right? The weekend actually allows us more time to work on our fitness programs, but many of us don't look at it that way.

The weekend typically includes three days (counting Friday night) of social drinking, parties, and indulgence in unhealthy foods. Many of us completely abandon our fitness goals. We somehow think what we do on the weekend doesn't impact our efforts and healthy lifestyle. This is far from the truth. Every choice made affects our fitness in a positive or negative way. Weekends seem to lean more toward the negative.

I admit to letting my hair down a bit on the weekend. However, I don't agree with living an unhealthy lifestyle for three days. How could I exemplify what living healthy means to my clients, you, myself and family? Actions speak louder than words and living the life is what maintains my fitness goals.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for having a cheat meal or even day. If not done correctly and in moderation is when fitness goals can fail. Moderation is knowing how to moderate. A treat day doesn't need to turn into a cheat weekend nor should it. Those partaking in this yo-yo behavior often feel guilty for eating off track all weekend and mad at themselves for gaining a few pounds.

Enjoying a few indulgences in life is realistic, balanced and considered healthy. When done right and in moderation, a cheat meal actually helps our body burn fat more effectively and maintain our hard earned muscle. Living a healthy lifestyle includes knowing how to moderate cheat meals, not feel guilty, and getting back on track after the indulgence.

Studies show mixing up the nutrition and throwing in an occasional splurge meal benefits the body similar to how muscle confusion works performing a different exercise program. Long-term caloric restriction can deplete our body of essential nutrients and muscle glycogen. Enjoying a cheat meal or day can benefit both physiologically and psychologically. Supplying our body with additional energy from extra treat calories is shown to boost our metabolism, hydrate our muscles, and create a better physical working environment.

Regardless of where you are in your fitness program, learning how to moderate splurges will make or break the success of reaching goals. How we think about food intake and what we eat will be the primary reason we're fit or fat. Eating healthy should be a lifestyle and not looked upon as a punishment or burden. If we see eating healthy as unenjoyable, this can drive us to those unhealthy rebel weekends of mindless eating.

The weekend isn't a free pass to make unhealthy choices over a three day period. If we're truly eating well and performing regular exercise, we would feel strange not to continue over the weekend. Our fitness brain should always be on directing us to choose nutritious food, not empty calories. If you're struggling with eating right and getting off track over the weekend, it could mean taking a look at how you're preparing food. Does your healthy food taste good?

Healthy foods not only taste good but are great for you. Enjoy the texture and flavor of vegetables, fruits, and raw nuts. Indulge in lean proteins on the grill like salmon and chicken breast. Learn how to cook with herbs, spices, and marinades. Eating right doesn't mean eating bland.

Eating right along with the occasional splurge meal is what will enable you to reach and maintain those fitness goals.

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Be well and Stay Healthy

     

Good Intentions Require Action to Achieve Our Goals

I was reading my daily devotion today on the subject of intentions. I was immediately drawn to the title and felt it was speaking to me personally. Can you relate?

We all have good intentions, dream about fulfilling them, but somehow they get pushed aside and forgotten. Well, not really forgotten, because they continue to dance across the pages of our thoughts. At least this is the case for me.

Are you guilty of not following through on good intentions to make something happen? Starting that fitness program or promise to eat healthier? As I read further, I understood the importance of  writing down the intentions, to begin a plan and follow through with action.

Moving from intention to action takes a plan. This applies in most everything in life from painting the house, spending more time with family, to adopting a healthy lifestyle. It's really staying true to taking care of the important things in life.

What has helped me is setting up challenge systems where I complete three goals of intention for that day. Today I plan to get in a morning workout, help my ailing father to the doctor, and meet up with family later this evening for example.

Another goal was writing this blog and I was stumped at what to share with you at first, but enlightened after reading my devotional. It's amazing how things happen like that.

Having good intentions are great but remain thoughts until you put them into action. Goals to improve your health and fitness won't happen without effort. Follow-through is what will create better health, a fit body, and overall improved quality of life.

Those things we think about all the time must come to the forefront of our actions. Has a family member or friend been on your mind to call?  Pick up the phone. Has date night with your spouse been put off for months? Time to bring on the romance. Are the intentions to exercise four times a week not happening? Get your calendar, schedule your workouts and don't cancel. Do you want to eat better at home and reduce dining out? Write a healthy food list and head to the store.

Every active step we make is a step closer to fulfilling our goals and taking our intentions further than our minds. It's important not to get stuck in the 'thinking about it' process without any action. Good intentions only go so far and although they may sound good, living it out through our actions is what really counts.

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How We Use The Scale Can Derail Our Health and Fitness

The scale game starts as innocent accountability for weight loss and turns into a game of just how much we can get away with cheating on our program. Who is guilty? The scenario typically looks like this...

The fitness program is going great and the weight is coming off at a healthy rate. Suddenly, we begin validating food rewards for a job well done well above what's considered moderation. 

We challenge the scale to see how far we can push those numbers because we think there's leeway. Besides, we're doing such a great job and deserve a weekend of pizza, beer, and pastries, right? Wrong. This is a risky gamble and not a definition of living a healthy lifestyle. 

The purpose of obtaining a healthy weight is not to yo-yo back and forth. It means taking our health seriously and maintaining the lifestyle. If the scale gets in the way of that, it's time to toss it, especially when the 'scale game' derails our health and fitness goals. Relying on the mirror and how our clothes fit would be a better accountability tool at this point. 

We're not hurting anyone but ourselves when we play games with our fitness efforts. There is no half-way living a healthy life. Not giving our best to achieve our fitness goals is evident in more ways than a scale measurement. Do you like what you see in the mirror? How do you feel overall? These are also great ways to know if you're being true to your fitness program. 

The scale game robs us of being able to achieve our best health and body. When the purpose of the scale is to justify eating off track or exercising less, it removes the positive benefit of keeping track of our weight. Weighing one time per week for accountability can be a healthy thing, but when it turns into an ugly game of number manipulation for a food frenzy this is the opposite of being healthy. 

Success will never come from games or lack of commitment to your goals. The results will come from consistent healthy food choices coupled with regular exercise. The scale has nothing to do with our choices and is simply a helpful tool to let us know how we're doing with our weight loss program. When it is misused, it really can be detrimental to our goals. 

If the 'scale game' is an active part of a health program then it really isn't a health program. This may be a good time to dump the scale and start applying healthy accountability methods that align with our fitness efforts. 

Remember, it's all fun and games until your jeans don't fit anymore. 

  

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Why Looking Like Myself is an Important Part of Fitness

What do I mean by looking like myself?  Well, I have certain genetics and a lifestyle contributing to what I look like. I'm not supposed to look like anyone else including other fitness women in magazines.

Back in my competitive days, I do admit to more than admiring fitness competitors and felt I needed to look like them to win. I struggled with my body not responding the same way as another competitor. It was an unrealistic way of thinking. The girls in the magazines don't even look like the girls in the magazine. Straight up the fitness truth.

I'm so happy to have learned through that insecure journey. I have come full circle with knowledge, age, and wisdom. I embrace who I am and what I look like. I strive to be my best me and not anyone else. It would be such a stressful life to constantly compare myself to all the beautiful women out there. Life is too short to think unrealistic thoughts or goals.

Did you know all images in magazines are photoshopped? The pictures are smoothed, cropped and colored for marketing appeal. The purpose is to create unreal images of women and men representing something they're not. Many of these models may be in great shape with a normal healthy body. What's missing is their natural lines, bumps, blemishes, rolls, bootie, and hips revised with a few strokes of a computer. Anyone can get a photoshopped 6-pack now and this isn't a joke. I'm not anti-photoshop, but if I need to go to the image credits just to recognize the person, that is simply not right. 

Some of my older modeling pictures are slightly photoshopped. I have to say it's an art of knowing just how much to shop an image and loved when some softness was needed. Overall, I prefer my untouched edgy images showing the real me.

I prefer taking self-portraits not selfies without filters and in the middle of working out. I display those daily along with food intake on my Instagram. I represent the real me, over 50, no makeup and unscripted. This is a true fitness lifestyle exemplified as it should be. I'm a 'messy hair don't care' trainer where sweat and a smile are my best accessories. 

It's important for me to want to look like myself and not someone else. This tells me that I accept, embrace, and honor who I am completely as a woman, wife, mother, trainer, writer, daughter, sister, and friend. How could I even walk the talk of helping people get healthy if I didn't live this philosophy?

Our goal should not be to look like someone else but working towards becoming the best version of yourself. As long as we do our best regardless of age, fitness level, or circumstance to reach our fitness goals is all that matters. Achieving good health is a journey and never a destination and age is not a definition of our fitness.

I embrace my fine lines earned from laughs, smiles, and a few frowns along the way. I believe aging is a privilege and an honor. Although there is no such thing as the fountain of youth, I feel fitness is darn close. It is possible to keep our body and mind young living a healthy life.

Consistent exercise, healthy foods, plenty of rest, and balance of work and play are essential components of a healthy lifestyle. This enables us to feel youthful and reduces our risk of disease and illness.

I want to do my best to live a good long life. When it comes down to me and the mirror, there is acceptance. How about you?

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Achieving Fitness Success Happens When We Put Our Thoughts Into Action

Most of us have the goal of wanting a fit and healthy body. Sadly, not all of us follow through with the action to make it happen. All too often something gets in the way of doing what needs to be done to make the wish a reality.

It doesn't matter how much web surfing, article reading, or fit people watching is happening. If what you're doing isn't motivating you to take action, it's nothing but wasted time. In fact, all that time surfing the web could be time used to complete a workout or meal prep.

I even have to limit myself and implement a certain amount of time for social media work. My life requires excellent time management to run my personal training business, writing obligations and maintain a healthy lifestyle. That means shutting down my computer and making the choice to exercise and prepare healthy meals for the week. 

It's fun to dream about reaching our fitness goals. I am the first to applaud and be motivated by a fit body because I know the effort it takes and the lifestyle required. Wishing and wanting can turn ugly when the doing is not taking place. Somehow feelings of resentment and bitterness can appear toward self and others even when no action to fix anything is occurring.

We are adults responsible for our daily choices. We decide our day to day happiness, outward behaviors toward self and others, and ultimately taking care of our bodies. If the choice is not to do what it takes to get healthy, then all the wishing and wanting are merely thoughts.

Putting our thoughts into action is how you will achieve a fit and healthy body. What we do determines the lifestyle we maintain. Limited time isn't a reason not to exercise for example. If twenty minutes is all you have, give it all you got with no excuses. Every step toward improving our health regardless of the time is positive progress. 

We really need to move past the wishing and wanting, and into the doing. Taking action is what makes results happen. When we become proactive, we feel accomplished, more confident, and overall in much better health.

Achieving the fit body we want and think about all the time takes responsibility, time, and effort on a consistent basis. This is true for all things in life: our jobs, education, relationships, and spiritual life for example. Sitting around thinking that things are just going to fall into our laps without effort is unrealistic. Some people really do believe that life works this way, are unmotivated, and feel they are owed a free ride. The truth is there are no free rides to fitness.

Life has never promised easy, and often we make fitness much more complicated than it needs to be. This is no reason to fall into a wish and wants pity party when the action has never been attempted. Time to wake-up and smell the coffee and honestly ask ourselves why we're not doing what it takes to get healthy. Daily choices and action is the only way to fitness success and to create a healthy lifestyle.

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Why Peanut Butter is a Big Part of My Sports Nutrition

I absolutely love organic peanut butter and eat it almost daily. I'm even guilty of eating a tablespoon straight from the jar. Peanut butter just so happens to be one of the best sports nutrition superfoods. It's a rich source of healthy fat and quality plant protein. Did I mention it tastes amazing!

I can be very creative with peanut butter adding it to oatmeal or mixing with protein powder. Eating healthy fats like peanut butter is one of the ways I obtain essential nutrients that maintain my fitness.

Did you know good fats help boost your metabolism to more effectively burn body fat? Unfortunately eating fat has received lots of bad press and blamed for making us fat. Not true. There's a difference between fats that help keep us healthy and fats contributing to being unhealthy. Compare a donut to a handful of raw nuts for example.

Healthy fats like peanut butter and other nut butter are shown to promote good health. Another thing to keep in mind when enjoying peanut butter is portion size. I don't sit around with a spoon in my jar until it's gone, although tempting. We can enjoy our good fats but just like with all macro nutrients, eating the right amount to maintain our fitness is essential.

Good fats have numerous health benefits and studies show can help reduce the risk of heart disease, stroke, hypertension, joint pain, and boost our immunities. The nutrients contained in peanut butter provide our body with protection from many illnesses including certain cancers and neurological disease. It's also shown to reduce our total cholesterol, specifically LDL cholesterol (the bad stuff) and triglycerides.

My love affair with peanut butter began with 'PB and Js' and still remains to this day. Mom wasn't far off with the importance of eating this healthy fat. It has helped me maintain my physical fitness over decades. I use peanut butter toast prior to and even following my workouts. I also enjoy a tablespoon when craving something before bed. If I want to create my own peanut butter cup, I toss a few dark chocolate chips on the spoon for an awesome treat.

I realize some have peanut sensitivity and allergies and therefore can't consume peanut butter. However, there are a wide variety of other kinds of nut butter just as nutritious and satisfying. Peanut butter works for me and my healthy lifestyle and probably the easiest healthy snack I eat daily. 

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Food Journals Can Help Us Get Back On Track Sooner Than Later

Keeping a food journal can be your best friend and accountability partner when learning how to implement a healthy nutrition program. It can also feel like a burden depending on your commitment level. 

I have heard it all when it comes to food journals and the love/hate relationship caused when keeping track of every morsel. The problem is really not the food journal, but the issue of not wanting to be honest with ourselves. When life is going great and our program is on track, we gladly write down every healthy bite and proudly share eating habits producing positive results.  

On the other side of the spectrum is feeling guilty eating off track and not wanting to write it down. We even convince ourselves somehow not writing it down means it didn't really happen. We tend to have moments of forgetfulness when we stop being mindful of our eating behavior. 

The truth is regardless of what we want to include in our food journal, our body keeps an accurate record. You can run but your body will not hide the consequences of unhealthy choices. 

Our food journal wants to know all the hidden secrets causing us to get off track. Are there food triggers? What's going emotionally and how is it affecting your day? These are important facts that could help figure out why we're eating unhealthy. Using the food journal as an emotional outlet helps resolve potential behaviors that may occur, and allows us to get back on track sooner than later.

Giving our food journal the stink eye for poor food choices is not where the blame should be placed. We are responsible for living a healthy or unhealthy life. If our fitness program is off track, we should be grown up enough to own it, plus the consequences of those choices. Keeping secrets from our food journal does nothing to help in a positive way. In fact, being dishonest with ourselves will prevent us from reaching our health and fitness goals. 

We can come up with all kinds of reasons not to journal: too hard, waste of time, it’s not working, controls me too much, refuse to feel micromanaged, and the list goes on. Keeping a journal is truly a personal choice but can't be blamed when poor decisions are made. When it doesn't work, it's about the dishonesty occurring when we cheat on our journal. 

Studies have shown increased health and fitness improvement when food and fitness journals are maintained. This is great news but they won't work if we're unwilling to use them correctly. Cheating on our food journal takes away it's ability to be used as a learning tool to help us correct unhealthy eating patterns. 

We have the choice to view the food journal as friend or foe. If we view the food journal as a friend, our chances for improved health and fitness would significantly increase. Good friends help keep us accountable even when it's difficult to hear the truth. It may be hard to see our poor eating habits on paper but it's necessary to stand in our truth so we can make healthy changes. Friends should be able to offer constructive criticism and have it be accepted in a positive way without defensiveness. 

The food journal is there to do that very thing: show you what has gone wrong, where you can improve, and ultimately help you make better choices for living a healthy lifestyle. 

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