Category: Fitness

3 key ingredients to a successful weight loss journey

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I recently discovered the magic of podcasts (lol, yes, I am a total newb when it comes to that stuff), and I listened to an episode featuring the amazing fitness trainer, Tony Horton. I absolutely loved him in P90X, which was the program that I got started with initially when I was introduced to Beachbody. He has also put out a number of other programs including Power 90, P90X2, and P90. The point here is: HE KNOWS WHAT HE’S TALKING ABOUT!

One of the biggest takeaways from this podcast was the three key factors that he listed as being necessary for most people to be successful on their health and fitness journey. Coming from personal experience, this is definitely true (at least for me).

VARIETY

First of all, the primary reasons that people tend to give up on their health and fitness journeys often involve boredom, injuries, and hitting plateaus. I have been through all three of these at different times throughout my own journey. Luckily, I have been able to bounce back from that and not throw in the towel completely. However, many people don’t have the willpower to jump back on the horse when they fall off.

How did I keep myself on track? Through VARIETY. After two rounds of P90X, I got bored. Instead of letting that be the end of my fitness journey, I started a completely different program: Turbo Fire. It was so drastically different from P90X, and it was super fun and upbeat, so I stopped feeling bored with my workouts. I felt a similar boredom when I was doing LES Mills Pump, because in the final month it just seemed like I was doing the exact same thing over and over. What did I do to rectify the issue? I started ChaLEAN Extreme! Problem = SOLVED.

If you are just running on the treadmill or using the elliptical, or doing the same old exercises day in and day out at the gym, there is a much higher likelihood that you are going to get bored. Most people don’t enjoy doing the same basic things over and over again, and it can lead to feeling of dread when you think about going to work out. You need your workouts to be fresh and fun to keep you interested and coming back. The thing that I love most about Beachbody programs is that most of them switch things up every month, so you are always doing something new and different. In addition, your muscles NEED change from time to time to improve. If you are constantly doing the same thing, your muscles will grow accustomed to what you are doing and you won’t make as much progress.

CONSISTENCY

You need to be consistent with your workouts and with clean eating. If you just do a couple workouts here and there and you are spotty with your nutrition, you’re not going to see the kind of progress that you may be hoping for. If you are serious about wanting to lose weight and get fit, you should be doing AT LEAST 4 workouts a week. You should always be working out more days than you do not work out. Personally, I always aim to do 6. Your body needs a rest period to recover from the intense workouts, so I usually pick my busiest day to use as a rest day. With respect to diet, you should aim to be on track with your nutrition 90% of the time.

“We are what we repeatedly do” – Aristotle

If you eat clean consistently over an extended period of time, you are going to become healthier and you are going to lose some weight. If you work out consistently over an extended period of time, you are going to become fit and healthy, and you are going to experience weight loss. In contrast, if you are eating junk consistently and you consistently skip out on your workouts over an extended period of time, at the very least you’ll stay where you are, but in many cases you just end up packing on more and more weight.

INTENSITY

You need to PUSH YOURSELF. You have to go as hard as you possibly can, without making yourself hate the workout. You don’t have to go totally crazy with this and make it so intense that you almost pass out or you throw up or something along those lines. It can be as simple as just going a little deeper in your lunges and squats, jumping a little higher, going up one pound in weight, adding one or two extra reps, etc. You just can’t keep doing the exact same thing over and over without making it harder, or else you won’t see much improvement.

If you’re lifting weights, you need to be constantly trying to push yourself by going up in weight and/or adding more reps. You need to really feel the burn in the last few reps, but as soon as your form goes south – you’re done. If you’re doing cardio, push yourself by jumping higher, moving faster, kicking/punching harder, etc.

If you keep increasing the intensity of your workouts gradually over an extended period of time, you are bound to see some pretty incredible results! Our Beachbody programs provide you with the tools you need to check off Variety and Intensity from this list, but the Consistency is totally up to you! Our programs are full of variety to keep you interested in your workouts, and the trainers will constantly encourage you to push harder and do your best. If you take this seriously and follow through consistently, there is no telling what kind of results you could achieve!

Click Here if you are ready to get started on your health and fitness journey!

Health and Fitness Challenge

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Hey guys, I have an extra little challenge for all of you this week. You opened this blog article for a reason, whether you have a lot of weight to lose, a little weight to lose, or even if you just need to tone up with muscle definition. No matter what your current level may be, or what your goals may be, I have a challenge that I think can help each of you achieve your goals.

As Darren Hardy wrote, “the first step toward change is awareness. If you want to get from where you are to where you want to be, you have to start by becoming aware of the choices that lead you away from your desired destination. Become very conscious of every choice you make today so you can begin to make smarter choices moving forward.”

To accomplish this, I want you to picture where you are RIGHT NOW. Next, I want you to picture where you want to be. Then I want you all to start keeping a record of your daily activity, water intake, and the foods you eat. If you are SERIOUS about your goals, you WILL do this. My coach got me to do it when I was starting out, and now I want you guys to do it because it seriously helps. There is something about seeing that DQ blizzard listed on your daily food journal as it destroys your healthy goal for the day that suddenly makes you think “maybe I don’t need this after all”. When you track your physical activity on a chart, you’ll see empty spaces on days you didn’t work out and will start to want to fill them in – even if you just do a 10 minute workout.

I want you to write it all down, every single day, for a week. If you don’t find that it is helping you be more motivated, or helping you to stay on track, then you can cut out at the end of the week. No excuses! If you make this commitment for 7 days, I really think you’ll start to see improvements. I highly recommend that you try getting a friend to do it with you so that you can both keep each other on track and for accountability. If you start slacking off, that way you’ll have a friend to help pull you back in – and vice versa.

“The magic is not in the complexity of the task; the magic is in the doing of simple things repeatedly and long enough to ignite the miracle of the compound effect.” – Darren Hardy. What this is getting at is that even though the task that I have set before you might seem insignificant and simple, it can be the determining factor in whether or not you are successful in achieving your goals. It may seem like a waste of time at first glance, but as I’ve learned through this book, it is the smaller things repeated over time that make the biggest impact.

If you want to learn more about this for yourself, I highly recommend The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy. I have the E-book, and it is a truly great read. It isn’t even about health, fitness, or weight loss – it is just about how you can improve and create success for yourself in any aspect of your life by employing simple methods.

Create motivation through determination

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I hear all the time “I don’t have the motivation to work out“, and I cringe. I know the feeling, I was in the same place a few years ago. I did not want to work out at all, and I had so many other things to do.. Including watching a bunch of television, Netflix, and surfing the internet. If I had just been willing to give up some of my TV and internet time, I could have easily found the time to do my workouts. IT WAS AN EXCUSE. I simply hadn’t made it a priority.

In the beginning of the journey, it is not about having the motivation to do it. Instead, it is about making a CHOICE to make it a priority to start eating healthier and working out. Make this choice to create a better body and a better life for yourself and the people that you care about. Once you start seeing results from that choice, and it starts positively impacting your mood and other areas of your life, that is when motivation kicks in and pushes you to continue. Don’t use a lack of motivation as another excuse to stay inactive, get moving and create your own motivation through determination!

Click Here if you’re ready to get started!

Do it for YOU

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One thing that absolutely drives me insane is when people ask me why I work out, and frame it like “well who are you trying to look good for/impress”. This is absolutely ridiculous, because it implies that the only reason to exercise or eat healthy is to look good or impress people. Do those things help make you look better, lose weight, add muscle, etc? Sure they do. However, they also do a number of other things for your health and personal well-being that are much more important than simply the way you look.

I chose to get into fitness for myself, not to impress anyone else. I got into health and fitness to feel better about myself and improve my own quality of life. I was sick of being depressed and hating my own body, and I knew that I needed to make these changes if I ever wanted to get back to myself. I put on some makeup before I go and do a workout. Nobody sees me working out because I have a home gym, but once again, I don’t do it for anyone else – I DO IT FOR ME! It makes me feel better, more confident, and I find that I can hit my workout harder.

Stop worrying about what other people think, because there will always be people out there that want to discourage you from what you are doing. Chances are, if they are trying to discourage you, it is simply because they were too afraid to do it themselves and they want to get you to give up so that it validates their decision not to follow your lead. Instead of giving them the satisfaction of being right, PROVE THEM WRONG. Keep working for your goals, and be a positive role model for those around you. Maybe once your friends start to see that it is really working wonders for your life as a whole, they will finally decide to join you and start their own health and fitness journey.

Click Here if you are ready to start working on yourself, because you DESERVE to be happy and healthy!

Sometimes all it takes is for you to make up your mind

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One quote that has been resonating with me ever since I became a coach is that you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. This could not be more true, and I’ve seen it time and time again. I can give you a million reasons why you should work out and eat healthy, but until you DECIDE that you need to change, it is not going to happen.

I can not physically force you to exercise, and I can’t force feed you healthy food or follow you around and slap your hand every time you reach for junk food. You are in control, and it is ultimately up to you to make the choice to create a healthier future for yourself!

You honestly just have to reach a point in your life where you know that you need to change for the better, no matter what the reason may be. For me it was because I was sick of isolating myself and being lonely and depressed. I wanted to regain my confidence so that I could start living my life again. Once you reach that point in your life where you just know that things HAVE to change, I sincerely hope that something will click in your mind and you will gain a sense of determination. That is what happened to me. I just knew I needed to make a change so that I could have a better life, so I decided to push through workouts that nearly killed me and to eat healthy because I was determined to reach my goals.

Click Here if you’re at that point in your life now, and you’re ready to make a change.

Don’t let failures hold you back

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This is something that everyone should live by, and it holds great meaning for those into health and fitness as well. You are bound to slip up a few times, or even a bunch of time, and make some mistakes along your journey. That is perfectly normal, and it would actually be kind of weird if you DIDN’T make any mistakes or slip ups! Everyone has bad days sometimes where they just don’t have it in them to resist temptation. The holidays can be tough, because you’re surrounded with yummy treats. Vacations can be a menace because it is easier to grab a snack on the fly than to make a healthy meal. You don’t have to be good 100% of the time, and it is okay to splurge a little bit occasionally.

The problem with these “slip up’s” is not that you had them, it is often the way in which you think about them. For example, you have a big meal over the holidays with dessert. That is okay, it is a special occasion and everyone deserves to have what they want over the holidays. However, if you start worrying about that meal and thinking that you totally destroyed your progress, you are going to run into trouble. That is where people go wrong and start thinking “well, I already screwed myself so I might as well have more treats”, or “…so I might as well skip my workouts”. Once you get into that line of thinking, it can be hard to bounce back.

You need to stop thinking of those slip-ups as failures, and start thinking of it as a reward for all of the hard work you’ve put in thus far. It is only a failure if you choose to quit because of those slip ups, instead of using them as motivation to do better!

Click Here if you’re ready to embark on a health and fitness journey of your own!

Do you make excuses?

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I am in no position to judge others for making excuses, because before I got into Beachbody I came up with just about every excuse in the book not to work out and eat healthy. It is so easy to make excuses because we all have lives, and we all get tired after a long day at work. Some people I’ve spoken to are stay at home moms, some people work a lot, some people are strapped for money, some people lack energy, some people lack motivation, and the list goes on and on. These are all excuses that I’ve heard people use time and time again as reasons for why they can’t get into a fitness program.

Honestly though, no matter how true each of those things are, they ARE excuses. Before I get into any of those examples and cause an uproar with anyone who falls into any of those categories, let me give you my own example and show you what I mean. I used to say things like “I don’t have time to work out because I’m busy with school and work”, and it was true to an extent, but it was still an excuse. I WAS busy with school and work, but I also wasted A LOT of time surfing the internet, playing games, watching Netflix, etc.

Just like my example, the stay at home mom thing is also an excuse. I understand that being a mom can be tiring, and I understand that when you’re watching your kids all day long you may have a hard time finding the time to do a workout. However, even if you don’t want to do a Beachbody program, there are still plenty of simple exercises that you can do from home at night as you watch TV or even spaced out throughout the day when you have a spare minute here and there. My sister is a stay at home mom of a 1 year old, and he is a mama’s boy and likes to be held. She uses this excuse, so I told her to start doing squats as she holds my nephew. There are also Beachbody programs designed for those with little time to work with! Plenty of Beachbody coaches within my team are parents, some are stay at home parents while others have jobs in addition to parenting, but the common factor is that they find the time to do their workouts. It CAN be done, you just have to decide for yourself that it is a priority.

It is the same thing with the work example. A lot of people have full time jobs and work overtime to pay the bills, but plenty of people that do that are still getting their workouts in at some point. I know people that will get up at 4 or 5am just to get their workout in before leaving to start their day, or who will do their workout at 11pm or even 12am at the very end of the day despite how exhausted they may be feeling. Some people even work overnight shifts and come home and do their workout before going to bed! These are people that know their workouts are important, and have decided to make it a priority and not to let their work be an excuse.

I definitely understand the money factor can be a true factor for many people. However, more often than not, the people making that claim are losing money unnecessarily somewhere. For example, they have a drinking habit, they like to go clubbing every weekend, they like to go to Tim Horton’s or Starbucks for coffee everyday, they have a smoking habit, they like having fast food on a regular basis, etc. All of those things are examples of that which could be given up to provide the money needed to buy a fitness program. Again, it is simply a matter of whether or not you are willing to make your health and fitness a priority by giving up something that is unhealthy to provide you with something to help you BECOME healthy.

The energy thing is actually kind of ironic, because though working out does seem to decrease your energy in the short-term, it actually INCREASES your energy level long-term. When you are exercising regularly, you will actually start to find that you just naturally have more energy. This probably sounds crazy to anyone that hasn’t experienced it for themselves, but it is true. It just takes a bit of time for you to start seeing the effects, and many people give up before they reach that point.

Lastly, the motivation excuse, which is something that I prefer to call the Motivation Myth. Essentially what this means is that motivation often isn’t a factor when it comes to health and fitness. What really matters is that you are mentally prepared for the changes you are about to make, and that you want to reach your goals bad enough that you JUST DO IT. It kind of reminds me of how my mom used to talk about the challenge of quitting smoking. She has been smoke-free for three years now I think, and she always says that the reason all of her previous attempts to quit failed because she simply wasn’t mentally prepared to quit. As in, she didn’t want it bad enough. As she watched my grandfather’s health deteriorate, she knew that she had to quit or else she could wind up with the same health issues not too far down the road. Does she still crave cigarettes? YES. Does she give up and have one? NO. Why is that? Because her desire to be healthy long-term is more of a priority to her than simply giving in to temptation and curbing her craving in the short-term.

If you want to be successful with fitness and nutrition, you need to start thinking of it as something that you need to do if you want to reach your goals. If you keep waiting for motivation to come along and put you in action, you’re most likely going to let life pass you by never achieving your goals.

Click Here if you’re ready to take that step, because I’d love to help you get there!

“I’m already skinny, I don’t need to work out”

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I have heard this phrase multiple times upon inviting people to try a Beachbody program. It actually drives me crazy, because it implies that fitness and nutrition is only for people that need to lose weight. I have a little secret for anyone out there that thinks they don’t need to work out or eat healthy simply because they are “already skinny”… YOU’RE WRONG!

Fitness is NOT just about getting “skinny”. Fitness is about gaining strength, being healthy, and staying active so that you have less health risks and can be around longer for your family.You can be skinny, and still not have muscle definition. You can be skinny to the point where your bones are showing like in that first half of the image, and still not be happy with your body. I know a lot of naturally “skinny” people, and most of them have issues with their appearance just like those with extra weight. In fact, many of them go to the gym to try to CREATE the curves that they are lacking by adding muscle to their body.

In addition, just because you are “skinny” does NOT mean that you are healthy. You can be skinny, and still be putting yourself at risk for health issues by being inactive and eating junk food consistently. Being naturally small does not give you a free pass to skip out on exercising and eating healthy, because not doing those things is likely going to catch up to you at some point in your life. For example, many people have this fast metabolism when they are young and treat it as a free pass to do whatever they want. Since they passed up on the opportunity to maximize that fast metabolism and keep it working for them, they eventually lose it and their bad habits bite them in the butt when they start packing on the pounds later in their life. Do you someone that has been through this? You probably do, even if they haven’t admitted it.

It is really unfortunate that so many people seem to think that nutrition and fitness is simply for weight loss. It is so much more than that. It enhances your mood, it puts you in a better frame of mind, it gives you confidence in yourself, and that is just the tip of the iceberg.

Click Here if you are ready to give up the misconceptions about fitness and nutrition, and start your own journey to a healthier life.

Sick and tired of being sick and tired?

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Are you feeling tired and sluggish all of the time? Are you getting a lot of sleep, but waking up and going through your day STILL feeling exhausted? If the answer to those questions is yes, I would like you to answer these questions honestly – even if you just admit it to yourself. Are you eating a lot of junk food or unhealthy foods? Are you exercising regularly? Are you sleeping more than 8 hours a night?

I know how it feels to be tired and sluggish day in and day out, because I’ve been there. What I have learned over my own health and fitness journey is that it comes primarily from your diet and lack of exercise.  I have found that eating a lot of junk food, failing to exercise, and sleeping more than 8 hours a night actually keeps your mind a bit foggy. It is a feeling that doesn’t really go away, kind of like trying to see through cobwebs. It doesn’t completely block your view (or in this case your mental capacity), but it does keep you tired and drowsy.

I honestly didn’t even realize how bad that fog was until I started eating better, working out, and not sleeping in until noon every day. It was only then that my mind got back to running normally, without those cobwebs keeping me from being my best. Exercise depletes your energy in the short-term, but what it actually does for you long-term is way worth it. When you work out, you are actually releasing endorphins into your body that I like to think of as mood enhancers! If I am mad or upset over something, all I have to do is throw in one of my high intensity interval training or kickboxing workouts and I feel so much better by the time I’m done.

I’m only human, so I have fallen off the wagon a couple of times and gone on binges where I ate a ton of junk food – usually on holidays or vacations. What happens when I do that though is the fog starts creeping back in. I’m not a scientist or a doctor, so I can’t say with any certainty that something in the junk food is causing this to happen, but I would bet money that it is!

Another instance where I feel this fog coming back is when I sleep too much. You need to get a decent amount of rest, especially if you are exercising because that is when your body heals itself from the strain and builds muscle. However, the longer you exceed 8 hours in sleep, the higher the chances are that you’re going to wake up feeling groggy. This happens to me sometimes because I work overnight shifts here and there that really mess up my sleep schedule. I will only get 4 or 5 hours of sleep for a few nights, and I’ll let myself sleep for like 10-12 hours on a day off to make up for it. On days that I have done that I just wake up feeling worse.

My point here is that if you want to get rid of this feeling, you need to start eating healthier, exercising regularly, and only sleeping as much as you have to. Once you start losing weight and you start feeling the positive effects of the exercise, chances are you’ll come to understand what I mean.

Click Here if you’re ready to make this commitment to change your life for the better.

Post-workout treat

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It never ceases to amaze me, but I know that a lot of people actually think this way! Some people will workout and then they think that it earns them a meal from McDonalds afterwards. They will then come to me wondering why they don’t see results. Well, the answer is simple. You NEED to eat clean, and you need to exercise.

If you work out for an hour and then you go to a fast food joint for supper immediately after, you are negating all of that work you just put in. You cannot expect to lose weight by treating yourself to junk food after a workout. The biggest part of weight loss is actually your nutrition, so if you want to be successful in losing the weight you have got to start eating healthier.

Click Here if you would like access to some recipes for healthy meals and snacks.