Tag: beachbody challenge

5 Ways to Avoid Junk Food in the Workplace

Leave a comment

5 Ways to Avoid Junk Food

Does your place of employment make it difficult for you to stay on your healthy eating path with regular treats and ways to cheat? Mine does!

So for now I say, “Yay for small victories!” Here’s why.

With my current place of employment, there are breakfast treats from a bakery provided every Friday. I am usually fine with that as long as I don’t go in the lunch room. Yesterday junkfood.workwas a little different though because our manager brought timbits (Canadian bite sized donuts lol… tasty little devils) and coffee. I was OK all morning until I went to refill my water bottle and saw the box. I figured the chocolate ones were gone anyway so I could just take a peek. Chocolate ones were in there. I stopped and stared like a doofus for a good 30 seconds with the devil on my shoulder telling me to take one.

I didn’t cave! I’m only two and a half weeks fully back on track with my fitness and nutrition, so I didn’t want to risk messing with my progress. Now to survive next week at work with a treat trolley, lunches being provided, suppers occasionally if you stay late etc. I think I’m in deep trouble lol.

I realized that if I am finding this to be a struggle, there must be others like me working in similar environments that are struggling with the exact same issue. I wanted to share a bit about how you can help make this process of avoidance a little easier.

Here we go!

Don’t say “I can’t have that”

Seriously! Instead of saying to yourself or to others than you can’t have something because you’re on a diet, start telling yourself and others that you “don’t want that”. If you allow yourself to think that you are restricting yourself from something that you want, it becomes a lot harder to resist. Think about how bad the treat can be for you, and how it can ruin your progress and set you off course, and think “I can have this if I want to, but do I really want to eat it?” If you think positively about the situation and say that you don’t want that because you owe it to yourself to eat clean and create a healthier life for yourself, you WILL feel better about the decision to avoid whatever tasty treat was put in front of you.

10351161_10154467155430227_706547662100180182_n

Bring your own snacks and meals

This is a big one. Prepare your healthy meals and snacks before you go to work. If you get hungry, go eat one of the snacks or meals that you brought for yourself. If you don’t have a fridge handy and your meal needs to be kept cool (as most healthy meals would), then you can invest a small amount of money in one of the many cooler bags out there designed for health and fitness individuals. I have one, and I used it every single shift when I was working in an environment that had no fridge. Having snacks and meals readily available makes you far less likely to indulge on whatever treat your office is providing this time. If you don’t have these healthy choices available and you happen to be hungry at the time of the junk food option, you are way more likely to give in.

Avoid the area that holds the treats

For me I know to avoid the lunch room on Fridays because of the breakfast treats. If there are coffee and timbits provided, I know to avoid the table on which they are kept. If cupcakes are brought in to our daily morning meeting (which happens whenever someone in the office has a birthday), I know to leave right after the meeting to avoid seeing all of the other people munching down on the cupcakes. Don’t torture yourself by putting yourself around the foods that you crave, and instead try to avoid those areas if you can.

Celebrate the times you avoid the treats

Be really happy and proud of yourself for avoiding these office temptations! Pat yourself of the back. Join health and fitness groups and networks, and share your small little victory with others. See what I did here, I did exactly what I am telling you to do in this very blog post! When you learn to celebrate these small victories, it becomes easier and easier for you to stay strong each time an opportunity presents itself to cheat.

Get your office involved in your journey

Share what you are doing! Tell other people about your goals and what you are trying to accomplish, and ask them to please be respectful of your goals by not shoving things under your nose that can hamper your progress. Sharing your goals with others will help to keep you accountable, and it could also help you find a person to go through the journey with you. Having a partner go on the journey with you is definitely a huge advantage, because you will both help to keep one another accountable. If you’re REALLY motivated to keep on track, you could even try to get the whole office involved by doing a friendly competition. Have a little “biggest loser” competition, or have a “step counting competition”. Get the office doing something that will keep them active and guide them to a healthier lifestyle, because if you get them on board your life in the workplace will get a whole lot easier!

22222222222

Lastly, I just want to say that if you do find yourself in a position where you have “cheated” on your nutrition and your meal plan if you have one, DO NOT get mad at yourself and allow that to get in the way of your progress. So many people give in once, and then they use that as an excuse to binge for the rest of the day. “Well I already messed up once so I may as well make this a cheat day”. Don’t do it. Just don’t, please! That is a verrrrryyy slippery slope to be on you guys, and trust me, this is coming from experience because I’ve done it myself a thousand times before. A cheat meal can turn into a cheat day, and a cheat day very easily turns into a cheat weekend, which then can turn into a cheat week, and then all of a sudden before you know it… a month has gone by and you’ve barely worked out or eaten healthy, and you find yourself right back where you started having gained back some weight. If you make a slip up once, be like “that’s okay, one mistake is not going to hurt me and I can be really good for the rest of the week.” Stop yourself from being down and discouraged one one tiny mistake, and definitely don’t let that cause you to give up on your goals.

xoxo

Jess

Fall Into Fitness Challenge Group!

Leave a comment

It has been a great summer with lots of nice weather, and I am sure that we have all enjoyed our fair share of BBQ’s, cold drinks, ice cream, junk food, etc. Now that summer is over, it is time to get yourself back on track with your nutrition and your exercise routine. After all, summer bodies are built in the winter months!

Let’s get ahead of the holiday weight-gain and get some awesome results to show off to your friends and family during Christmas and New Year’s visits. Most people wait until New Year’s to start, and statistically speaking, very few actually are still on track a few months – let alone a year later. Establish those habits prior to the holidays, and not only will you be less likely to gain a bunch of weight during the holiday season, but you’ll also be more likely to stick it out beyond January 1st.

I actually have a few girls starting CIZE in a couple of weeks, so I am currently looking for a few extra people looking to lose 10-15+ pounds. You will be drinking shakeology daily, working out, and interacting daily in a private challenge group with others doing the program as well! Not only will you receive the full fitness program, but you will also receive the nutrition plan and a month supply of Shakeology (which replaces one meal a day – I prefer breakfast). PLUS you also receive a month free of Beachbody On Demand where you can access over $2000 worth of fitness programs by amazing trainers, meal plans, and healthy meal recipes to try out. This is in addition to having a personal coach (me) to help and support you along this journey, and a small team of people doing this with you for support and accountability.

This is a fun way to learn about health and fitness in a secure environment with like-minded people to support and encourage you along the way. Let me know if this sounds like something that you could benefit from! In the meantime, feel free to join my Health and Fitness group.

Comment below with “I’m In!” if you are ready to take this next step toward a healthier life!

xoxo

Jessica

September Goal: Lose 10 pounds

Leave a comment

Those who follow my blog will know that I recently pledge to get back on track with my nutrition and my exercise. This week was my first week back on the wagon, and though I had a bit of a rocky start, things are definitely getting better. I am sore all over my body (in the good way), which always happens to me when I start a new program, so it is pretty normal. I am happy to report that the headache and dizziness symptoms seem to be subsiding, which means that my body is getting accustomed to my new diet sans junk food.

I started this week with the goal of losing AT LEAST 10 pounds this month. I stepped on the scale this morning out of curiosity and was pleasantly surprised to find that I’ve already shed 5 pounds! That is pretty exciting stuff, however, you have to remember that a lot of that was likely just bloat from all of the junk that I had been putting into my body last month. For those of you wondering what I am doing, I thought I would fill you in!

clxcg

I am currently doing a Beachbody fitness program by Chalene Johnson (my favorite trainer of all time) called ChaLEAN Extreme. I love it because it provides a combination of the high intensity interval training (HIIT) that I love from her Turbo Fire program with the weight lifting aspect that I need to build muscle definition. That combination for me is perfect. Since there are two scheduled rest days with this program, I’ve also been adding in some extra cardio on one of those days and also on some of the shorter workout days. I just cherry pick from my catalog of programs or use Beachbody On Demand to do whatever workout I feel like doing that day!
In addition to the fitness aspect, I am also drinking Shakeology every single day for my breakfast meal. I prefer the chocolate Shakeology, and I mix it with a scoop of chocolate whey protein for an extra boost, almond milk, and frozen strawberries. It tastes like  milkshake, and it is totally delicious. My diet has been consisting of mostly natural foods. I have a fruit snack once a day an hour or two after my shakeology, I have veggies with lunch and supper, chicken, rice, greek yogurt, rice cakes with nutella, eggs, etc. I also just started using these soft chews from GNC called CLA 500mg in strawberry-banana. I have no idea if they work or not, but they are supposed to help with fat loss. The GNC folks must love to see me come through the door lol because they can take me into just about anything if the price is right!
There you have it guys! This is what I am doing, and you are welcome to take the pledge to lose 10 pounds this month with me. I have a free health and fitness group, and you are more than welcome to join if you need some extra motivation and accountability. Summer bodies are made in the winter everyone, so get to work now and get ahead of the holiday weight gain haha.
Thanks for reading, and feel free to message me with any questions you may have!
xoxo
Jessica

Month-long health & fitness hiatus – The good, the bad, and the ugly.

1 Comment

So you may have noticed that I wasn’t really posting a whole lot over the past month… and yes, there is a reason. I totally went off the deep end with my nutrition and my exercise. I am HUMAN. It happens. It began with my Younique convention because I didn’t have much of a choice but to eat pretty horrible 90% of the time because I didn’t have time to go get healthy food elsewhere, so I lived off of whatever I could get at the cafe or the fast food places in the hotel. Lack of time and total exhaustion also led to a lack of exercise, mind you we did get a lot of walking in while we were there! That was a HUGE convention center lol. I got lost more than once!

The Bad

Now you’re probably thinking… “Well, Jessica.. your convention trip only lasted 5 days. What happened to the rest of your month?” And I would love to be able to give you some legitimate reason as to why I couldn’t eat properly or exercise. However, the fact of the matter is, I got lazy, and I felt the brain fog and yuckiness from eating so much junk and lack of exercise. I wanted to sleep all the time. I had zero motivation to do anything. I pretty much just went to work, came home and got in my pajamas, and binge-watched Netflix day in and day out. I felt awful ALL OF THE TIME, but I had no energy or motivation to do anything about it. I kept ignoring all of the warning signs like my shorts not fitting as nicely, my pants being a little tighter, my muscle slowly disappearing under a layer of fat. Before I knew it, I had gained a little over 10 pounds.

Let’s fast forward to this morning, which was my first day back on the horse for fitness and nutrition. I had already planned my meals yesterday so that I would be fully committed and I wouldn’t be able to use some lame excuse that I had to eat something quick and easy because I wasn’t prepared. The only problem was.. I was too tired to get up at 4:45 am to do my workout before work. Instead, I slept in until 10 after 7 and then ran around like a chicken with its head cut off until 8am when I had to leave for work.

The Ugly

What would you do in that situation? Would you do your workout after work, or would you just say “Oh well, I’ll start tomorrow?” Well I developped a major headache and brain fog during the last 2 hours of my shift, and I arrived home at 530pm having had my pre-workout drink feeling awful and dreading my workout. I sucked it up, got my outfit on, and went down to do my workout. I made it through the warmup, barely made it through the first exercise, and I had to stop. I was a total mess. My body was shaking, I had no strength, and I felt like I was going to faint. Why? Because I had been eating so much junk and so many carbs as of late that my body was shocked by the sudden change in my diet, and it was telling me that it needed carbs. I ran upstairs and had a Quest bar, and went back down to finish my workout. It would have been FAR too easy for me to skip my workout because I wasn’t feeling well, but I went back down, and I crushed my workout. I felt much better after my snack, and I had the strength to power through the rest of the workout.

The Good

Now that I’ve completed my workout, I feel so much better. I can sense the brain fog having been lifted a bit, and I know from previous experience that that will only lift further as I progress with my journey. Honestly I don’t ever want to go back. I hate the feeling of being exhausted all the time, mentally drained, no energy, no motivation, less confidence, and tighter clothes. I am ready to get focused, and I am ready to get EXTREME with ChaLEAN Extreme. I can’t wait to watch my body change back into the size I was last summer before I slid backward.

Moral of this story: Even the best fall down sometimes. I am by no means saying that I am the best, because I have a long way to go myself. However, I know a lot of people look up to me for having lost 60 pounds, and I know for certain that a lot of people out there look up to models, and even fitness enthusiasts or trainers. We are ALL human though, and we are all susceptible to falling off course. It is SUPER easy to fall off track, but is is 10x harder to get back on track.

Don’t get down on yourself for making a mistake, or sliding backwards a bit. Instead, focus on the now, and focus on the future. Do what you can each and every day to ensure that you are moving closer to your goal tomorrow. And most importantly…

NEVER GIVE UP

If you are ready to join me on a health and fitness journey of your own, please feel free to contact me at any time with questions. You are also more than welcome to join my free Health and Fitness group on Facebook!

P90X on TV!

Leave a comment

As I was watching an episode of House of Lies this afternoon, you can imagine my surprise when I hear Mr. Tony Horton shouting out moves and inspiration from P90X plyometrics! Having completed two full rounds of that program, and a bunch of extra workouts outside of that, I pretty much can recite that workout forwards and backwards lol. I knew what it was even before I saw it appear on the screen.

This is pretty freakin’ cool in my opinion. Lately we’ve been featured in magazines and on talk shows for some of our new fitness programs, and now even the TV industry is recognizing Beachbody as a valuable fitness industry! This is HUGE news for us, and I couldn’t be happier that our programs are getting such awesome exposure.

Beachbody fitness programs have changed millions of lives over the many years they’ve been in the industry, myself included. This is only the beginning!

Click Here to browse our catalog of awesome fitness programs and get started on your own health and fitness journey!

Best weight loss ingredients

Leave a comment

Watch this quick video to learn about the healthiest weight loss products on the market:

Would you rather pay up to almost 800 dollars for all of those ingredients, or 4$ a day each month for a bag of Shakeology that provides you with all of those ingredients? I know my answer, and I drink it daily! I actually enjoy drinking my Shakeology, and I’m betting you will too. If not, you have 30 days to submit a request to return your Shakeology for a full refund – even if the bag is totally empty!! That’s right, Beachbody is so confident in the quality of this product that they offer a Bottom of the bag guarantee on first-time Shakeology buyers.

Click here to learn more about Shakeology, and purchase the the healthiest meal of the day!

Thank you PiYo!

1 Comment

After being forced to take almost 2 full weeks off from exercising due to a back injury that I sustained during one of my workouts, I decided enough was enough. This has happened to me a couple of times before, and it is primarily because of a car accident that has me a bit more susceptible to injury.

My problem is this: I have a hard time taking time off from my workouts. I like my workouts, and I NEED my workouts. I just feel better, and I’m a much happier and positive person to be around when I get to do my workouts. When I get injured, I have a tendency to brush it off and get back on the horse too soon. This is bad, and I know it lol.

This time, I decided to be proactive. While I was laid up, I decided to submit an order for PiYo. This program uses your own body weight to strengthen your muscles, and it doesn’t involve high impact activity. I thought that this would be a great way for me to compromise, by allowing me to get my workouts in while still giving my body the time that it needs to strengthen and heal.

After just ONE WEEK of doing PiYo daily, I thought I would give myself a little test of flexibility and pull out one of the old P90X yoga moves that I struggled with for the longest time: plough. The first time I tried, I struggled a little bit. I practiced with straight legs up for a bit, and then tried again. Second time was a charm! I was able to get back into plough again after just one week of PiYo, mind you it probably wasn’t as pretty as Tony’s pose lol. The hand clamp is definitely a work in progress haha!

It is amazing how much strength and flexibility that I feel I have gained in only one week on this program, and I am really excited to see my progress at the end of the 2 month program. If you enjoy yoga and/or pilates, I would highly recommend taking a deeper look at this program and considering it for your exercise regime. It is also perfect for people that have injuries that prevent them from doing some of the more hardcore weight or cardio based programs, because it allows you to still get a great workout without doing damage to your joints.

Click Here to read a bit more on the PiYo program, and try out a PiYo based workout for free.

July Health & Fitness Challenge!!

3 Comments

In case you are unfamiliar with me and my coaching, I do a challenge every month in my FREE Health and Fitness group. The first three months went really well in terms of participation, and then this past month the challenge had a lot less participants. Instead of coming up with something myself, I thought that I would put it out to all of you!

What kinds of challenges would you find beneficial? It needs to be something that just about anyone could do. For example, the bootcamps I have done in the past had 4 workouts per week to complete MINIMUM and a simple meal plan to follow. The step challenge that we did simply required each participant to wear a fitbit and report back to me with all of their steps each week. Our biggest loser challenge required participants to access the Beachbody On Demand FREE Trial for the month. These are all things that pretty much anyone could do, without requiring a gym membership or expensive equipment.

The idea that I came up with for July is a YouTube Challenge. I am always pulling cool workout videos off of YouTube and sharing them in the group as a weekly challenge anyways, so I thought it might be fun to make it a theme for the month! If you vote on this challenge, I would put together a schedule of Beachbody based workouts found on YouTube to be completed throughout the month. Each week I would post the schedule for the upcoming week.

So far, the only other suggestion is to repeat the step challenge! If you have any other ideas, you need to go and request to join our group. Once approved for membership, you will be able to vote for your favorite idea, or submit a new idea for consideration!

Please let me know ASAP if you are interested in participating in this challenge.

My client Kassie and her amazing transformation!

Leave a comment

Normally I don’t do this, but I asked Kassie for her permission to share her results here on my blog. This woman has worked her butt off with me, figuratively AND literally, for the past three and a half months.

Much like myself when I started, Kassie had no pictures of herself at her largest size. The photo you see there on the left isn’t even a true reflection of how far she had come, because she didn’t have a recent photo to utilize. Kassie came to me after having given birth to two babies over a period of 15 months, and she really wanted to get serious about her
weight loss journey.

Kassie started with me for my March Bikini Bootcamp, stuck with me through my April 11427194_399142830271762_4385147215304082693_nBikini Bootcamp, and then went on to participate (and WIN) my May Step Challenge. She has also been participating in my June Biggest Loser challenge, and has continued to lose weight!! Since starting with me back in March, Kassie has lost a total of 48 pounds, and she shows no sign of stopping anytime soon!

As the winner of my May Step Challenge, Kassie took home the 21 Day Fix Extreme fitness and nutrition program. She is in her first week of that program, and I cannot wait to see how she makes out with this challenge. I could not be happier to have such a dedicated and positive person to work with, and I am really proud of Kassie for everything that she has accomplished.

If you could benefit from a support system and a place where you can be held accountable turn to for motivation, you are welcome to join my FREE Health and Fitness group! We do monthly challenges, and we are actually in the process of voting right now for the theme of July. Head over and request to join if you would like to kickstart your own health and fitness challenge!

How to be a winner

Leave a comment

So what if you’ve started and stopped you health and fitness journey many times over. Who cares if you’ve tried every diet out there, and failed to stick with it every time. Does it really matter that you’ve tried every weight loss remedy, pill, wrap, or drink on the market and still not gotten to where you want to be?

No. It does not matter what happened in the past, so long as you DO NOT allow it to impact your future in a negative way. Instead, LEARN from those errors. Use the mistakes that you’ve made in the past to fuel your fire and keep you moving forward in the present. Don’t allow your past failures to cloud your judgment and make you believe that you aren’t strong enough to do this, because you are.

You really just have to keep pushing yourself to dust yourself off and try again day in and day out. Keep trying to get through your workouts, and keep trying to stay on track with your nutrition. Each day you will get better, and it will get easier. As you build strength you’ll accomplish more, and it will build your confidence back up.

Only when you begin to believe in yourself, and to allow yourself to think positive thoughts of your success instead of negative thoughts of failure, will you be able to keep yourself on track.