Tag: exercise

Can’t do tough exercises?

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This goes for fitness too! You’re going to find exercises that you can’t do, that is just a given. It is going to happen, and it happens to EVERYONE when they start something new. You can choose to be frustrated by that, and give up saying that it’s too hard;

OR

You can choose to keep working at it every single day until you can do it! You just have to learn to modify and make the moves a bit simpler until you work up the strength to accomplish the real thing. I master new things that I originally couldn’t do all the time, and you can do that too!

One thing that I love about our Beachbody fitness programs is that they always feature at least one person that is demonstrating modified versions of all of the moves. This makes it easier for beginners, or for people who struggle in certain areas of fitness, to get their bearings and work up to the full workout.

Choosing the modifier does not mean you are taking the easy way out… unless of course you’ve built up the strength to do it the right way, and you’re choose the modifier to be lazy :P That’s not good either haha! Just use the modifier as long as you need to, and every so often try the hard way. You’ll be able to see small improvements over time, and then one day, you’ll do it for real – and it is truly an awesome feeling to accomplish something for which you’ve been working so hard.

I hope you found this useful! Click here if you would like to make me your FREE Team Beachbody Coach. If you could benefit from a safe place to learn about health and fitness, and engage in regular fitness challenges – you are invited to join my FREE Health and Fitness group. I hope to see you there!

How to Stay Motivated!

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I know how hard it can be to stay on track with a health and fitness journey, and I have fallen off the wagon many times myself. It is HARD. If it were easy, everyone would be doing. It isn’t impossible though, and you just have to decide that you’re going to do this so that you can create a better life for yourself and those around you. You DESERVE to be healthy, happy, and confident! I found this photo online, and I thought that it was a great little tip for anyone trying to keep themselves on track with a health and fitness journey. It is also a great place to start if you’re thinking about making these positive life changes, because it allows you to prepare in advance to engage in positive self-motivating behaviours.

The first point says to take it one day at a time, which is great advice with respect to your nutrition and workouts. Tracking is crucial. Each day, you should track what you did. For your nutrition, you should track everything that you put into your mouth. I personally like to create a template of what I’m going to eat the next day a night in advance. It is MUCH easier to rearrange things to hit your macro ratios when you do this in advance, because once you’ve already eaten something, you can’t take it off your journal. Tracking is made SUPER simple with myfitnesspal, which even has handy apps for smartphones and tablets. Click here to learn more about tracking and macro ratios. In addition to tracking food, it is important to track what you do with your workouts. Once you complete a workout and have the number of reps you did on each exercise and what weight you used, you will then know what to do the next time you do that workout. It also helps to show you when you should move up in weight, and allows you to track your progress over time. Click here to learn about my tracking challenge.

Surrounding yourself with positivity is a big one. It is important that you spend time with people who lift you up instead of bring you down. Try to surround yourself with positive people who support your positive life choices. If you hang out with people that constantly bring you down, it is going to hamper your progress. Sometimes people close to you can even be unsupportive of your new shift to a healthier lifestyle and try to bring you down to their level. In many cases, they aren’t doing this to hurt you, but they see themselves reflected in your positive choices and don’t like what they see. They’ll realize that they should be making these changes too, but they don’t want to, so their subconscious tries to sabotage you and get things back to normal. This can be especially hard if it happens to be a spouse, living partner, or loved one. Click here to read more on this topic and what you can do if you find yourself in this situation.

One thing that you can do to help keep you focused is create a vision board. I actually put out a challenge to my health and fitness group a while back where I asked them to do this, so I won’t get into too much detail on this subject here. Essentially what this means is that you think in depth about where you are currently, and where you would like to end up. Then you create a board of all of the things you want to do when you achieve your goals, what you will look like when you achieve your goals, what is important to you and your family, things like that. If you’d like to take on this challenge, click here to read about it.

SMART with respect to goal setting is actually an acronym. The acronym stands for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely. I won’t get into too much detail here, because I actually have a blog post dedicated to this topic already. Click here if you would like to learn more about SMART and how it applies to your health and fitness goals.

One thing that helps many people stay on track is to reward themselves for achieving their goals. Some people find it helpful to reward themselves with a cheat meal at the end of each successful month. A healthier way to do this is to treat yourself to a new outfit. You could even just keep a jar in your workout area where you deposit a dollar for each workout that you do, and then when you hit your goal you can spend that money on something important to you. Maybe a spa day, who knows, that’s totally up to you! Be proud of all the small steps toward your larger goal, and allow yourself to be excited over those smaller successes.

Having belief in yourself is HUGE. It is really important that you believe that you can do it, because if you allow yourself to start thinking that you can’t do it, your thoughts will become a self-fulfilling prophecy and you will quit before you achieve your goals. If you’re struggling with something, tell yourself in your head that you can do it, even if you aren’t sure. Positive mental talk repeated over time will go a long way to helping you achieve your goals. Even if you can’t do something right away, there are all kinds of ways to modify moves. You just have to do what you can until you gain strength to do more.

Continuing from the last point, it is also super important that you don’t focus in on what you can’t do or the things you don’t like about yourself. Instead, focus on everything that you can do, the progress you’ve made, and the things that you do like about yourself. If you focus on the negative, you’ll never get anywhere. In order to be successful on your health and fitness journey, you have got to make an effort to shift into a more positive mental mindset. If you’re working out regularly and you’ve seeing results, this should happen naturally if you follow the advice in this article.

With this next point, the tracking I discussed above will really come in handy when it comes time to recognize your progress. It really helps to have a record of where you started versus where you are now, and seeing that progress firsthand can be really motivating. This can be in the form of a food journal, exercise charts showing progress over time with reps and weight increases, progress pictures, weight, measurements, etc. Any and all of these things will help you to recognize the progress that you’ve made along your health and fitness journey, and you should focus on that success. It doesn’t matter if you are still a long way off from your larger goal, and you shouldn’t let that discourage you from continuing. As I said before, focus on the positive!

One thing that helps a lot of people when it comes to staying motivated is to visualize themselves achieving their goals. So in this instance, you would sit down and relax while thinking about what you’ll look like when you achieve your goal. Think about what you will do when you achieve your goal and how it will impact your life and the lives of those closest to you. It may help for you to refer back to your vision board for ideas before you do this, and you can even update your vision board over time as you think of new ideas.

Another really important factor to staying motivated is to be kind to yourself. This may sound silly, but it really is crucial. If you are always down on yourself, pointing out all of your flaws, mentally criticizing yourself, et cetera you should focus on shifting to a more positive mental mindset. If you’re unable to do that on your own, you should find someone that you trust to talk to, or consider seeking professional help. If you are suffering from depression, you may find that cardio helps. I have never personally been diagnosed as clinically depressed, but I was going through a really tough time in the years leading up to making the shift to a healthier lifestyle. I was engaging in a lot of self-bashing, and I criticized my every flaw in the mirror. This behaviour wasn’t healthy. When I started doing Turbo Fire, a high intensity interval training program that focuses on cardio, I found a significant improvement in my mental mindset. I’m by no means a doctor or an expert, so I cannot say that this will work for everyone. However, based on my own experience, I think it is a great place to start.

Lastly, DO NOT compare yourself to others. Especially those who have been exercising and eating clean for a long period of time. I struggle with this a bit myself sometimes because I have a lot of friends that do fitness competitions. You have to remember that those people worked hard for a long time to get to where they are, while you may be somewhere in the beginning stages of your journey. Everyone is different, and we all go through different things. The weight loss process is not the same from everybody, and comparing yourself to someone else is only going to hurt you in the long run.

I hope you found this article on how to stay motivated to be helpful, but if you have any questions, feel free to send them my way! If you have been considering making some positive changes with respect to health and fitness and you just aren’t sure where to start, you are invited to join my FREE Health and Fitness group.

“You got hot!”

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Believe it or not, the changes in your physical appearance only represent a small percentage of the positive effects that you experience from regular exercise and clean eating. More important than appearance is the improvement in your health, self-confidence, self-worth, self-esteem, and a shift to a more positive mindset in general.

However, it does feel REALLY good to run into someone that you knew before you lost the weight and hear them say how great you look. Getting that positive feedback from someone who actually knew you when you were heavier really reinforces all of the hard work that you put in to lose the weight in the first place. You will then be motivated to continue on with whatever it was that you were doing to lose weight!

Click Here if you’re ready to maximize your weight loss potential and commit to a program!

Are you a yo-yo dieter?

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I was one of those people who started and stopped repeatedly before something finally clicked in my head and I actually stuck with it . There comes a time when you realize that you just have to suck it up and work your butt off for what you want! For me, that time came when I was finishing my third year of university. I realized that I was about to enter into another graduating year. and I was quite a bit heavier than I had been in high school. I was miserable the year I graduated high school, and I spent much of the year by myself because I was too self-conscious about my weight to actually go to any of the events. I did not want to go through that again, so I decided to put my foot down and make a change.

Changing your habits isn’t easy, and I am not going to lie to you and tell you that it is. It is hard work physically, it is hard work in the kitchen, and it is hard work mentally and emotionally. You need to exercise regularly, eat clean 90% of the time, and deal with the mental battles you will face when it comes to temptation. You will also need to deal with the emotional ups and downs that comes along with a fitness journey. You are going to give in to temptation at some point, and you’ll feel guilty. You’re going to see progress and feel great. You’re also likely going to hit a plateau at some point or maybe even gain a few pounds back, and you’ll have to deal with the negative emotions that come along with that.

The important thing is not how many times you slip up or make a mistake, but in how many times to get back up and keep fighting. One bad day is not going to destroy your progress, but one good day is not going to help you achieve your goals. You just need to keep fighting the mental and emotional battles, keep on track with your nutrition 90% of the time, and keep working out regularly.

Slow progress is progress, so don’t give up! Each time you give up, you will just put the weight that you lost right back on. Then when you decide to get started again, you’ll have even more weight to lose. You need to remember that the time is going to pass regardless, so you may as well keep pushing toward your goals.

If you are ready to make the commitment to yourself and a healthier future, we should talk. Send me an email to hfmxj@stu.ca with the subject line “I’m ready to transform” to discuss the opportunity to be a part of a challenge group of individuals going through the same process!

Do your relationships hamper your progress?

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Don’t let other people tear you down. There are going to be people out there that are going to try to discourage you from making positive life changes and/or tell you that you can’t do it. This may even come from someone close to you, like a friend or family member. This hurts, but you can’t let them beat you down to their level.

If you’ve watched Extreme Weight Loss with Chris Powell over the years like I have, you’ll have learned that sometimes the people closest to us will try to prevent us from being successful on our journey simply because they aren’t ready to make those changes themselves. Sometimes they do it without even realizing it, and though they would never intentionally do something to hurt you, their subconscious wins the battle and they say or do things that can set you back.

Making the shift from junk food to healthy food and from inactivity to activity on a regular basis is not easy. It takes hard work and dedication. This process is made much more difficult if you don’t have a support system to lean on. For example, if you live with a spouse or significant other that doesn’t want to make healthier choices, or if your friends constantly invite you out to places where you’ll be tempted to eat poorly.

What I would recommend that you do moving forward is to start analyzing the people in your life. Think about the people that mean the most to you, and the people you spend the most time with. Once you’ve figured that out, you should then have an open and honest conversation with each of those people. Say, “listen, I have decided to start eating better and working out because it is very important to me that I get healthy and/or lose weight. As my family member/friend, I was really hoping that you would support me on this journey.”

If they are the type of person that says or does things that bring you down and work against your health and fitness goals, you can add something like “You are very important to me, and I don’t want to damage our relationship. However, I feel like you sometimes say and/or do things that make it more difficult for me to stick with my positive life choices. I would love for you to join me on this journey, but if you aren’t ready, I at least need that discouraging behaviour to stop. Otherwise I might have to take some time away from you for a while until these new life choices have had the chance to become habits”

This isn’t always an easy conversation to have, but it is important if you want to be successful. If you’re open and honest with them about what you want and how you are feeling, they will likely be open and honest with you in return. It may be just the push they need to agree to these changes themselves, and it could really strengthen your relationship. However, if they refuse to join you and they continue the negative behaviour, you really should consider taking some time away from that person to work on yourself. You need to surround yourself with positive people that support you and your health and fitness goals, otherwise your chances of being successful tend to dwindle.

As for household relationships, like children and/or spouses, think about who does the grocery shopping. Is it you? If so, just gradually start reducing the amount of junk food you have in the house! Your family might not like it at first, but if you replace the junk foods that they enjoy with some healthier options, they will get used to it over time.

You need to be a positive role model for your friends and family. SHOW them that it is possible to make these life choices and what kind of results can come from making those choices. Invite them to join you on your workouts. Talk to them about how you are feeling now that you have started this awesome journey, and make them want to join in.

If you have children, this is more important than ever, because children will model after you when it comes to food choice in most cases. If you constantly eat junk food and allow them to eat junk food, they are going to learn that junk food is good. If you don’t eat junk food regularly and you don’t keep junk food in the house or allow your kids to eat it regularly, they will learn that junk food is not good for you and that they can only have it as a treat once in a while. The problem is that many people are eating junk food ALL DAY every day. For example kids get sent to school with chips, cookies, fruit roll ups, lunchables, gummies, etc. Instead, send your kids to school with healthier snacks like fruit and veggies.

If you teach your children healthy habits early in their lives, they are less likely to become overweight or obese going into adulthood. I wish that I had been forced to learn healthy habits when I was a child, because I could have avoided all of the years that I spent depressed and in self-imposed isolation because of my weight.

Send me an email to hfmxj@stu.ca with the subject line “I’m ready to transform” if you would like to make me your free Beachbody Coach. I look forward to speaking with you, and I can’t wait to watch your mind and body transform over the course of your health and fitness journey.

Discontinuation Blow-out!

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Hey everyone! I just wanted to bring these two awesome programs to your attention. I am very sad to say that these two programs will no longer be produced by Beachbody. Unfortunately, this includes Beachbody On Demand. These programs will only be available as long as product already made are in stock, but once we sell out, both of these programs are gone for good. Take advantage of the discontinuation pricing and get these while you can!

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LES Mills Combat is honestly an amazing program. This is one of my go-to workouts if I am upset or angry about something. Maybe it is all the kicking and punching, but for some reason, I always feel so much better by the time I finish one of these workouts! One of the things that I love most about this program is that it is 100% gender-neutral. I find that some programs do tend to be more targeted toward one gender than the other, but this program has a perfect balance that I feel would be a great fit for both men and women. Click Here if you would like to watch a video preview.

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The results don’t lie! This program is awesome, and it really does get results. Combat is not for everyone though! There is a lot of jumping around, balancing, and core work in that fitness program. If you have any injuries or joint issues that keep you from doing that kind of high impact activity, LES Mills Pump could be more your style.

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This program includes the barbell and weights that you need to complete the program. Honestly when I first watched the preview for this program, I thought that there was no possible way that I could ever do that! After being involved with Beachbody for over 6 months, I decided to give it a try based on high rep/low weight fat burning method. I found that it is actually very doable, and the instructors show you how to modify every move so that you can gradually work up to doing it the way it was intended to be done. My mom struggles with knee and back pain, so she absolutely loved this program. It allowed her to get a great full body workout in without doing damage to her injuries from high impact activity. Click Here to watch a preview of this program.

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Ready to take advantage of the awesome sale pricing and start working on your health and fitness journey? Click Here to create your free Team Beachbody account, and send me an email to hfmxj@stu.ca with the subject line “LES Mills” for information on how to access the sale in either US or Canada.

I look forward to coaching you along this journey, and watching you transform!

Are you addicted to junk food?

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I saw a post from one of my challengers in my free Health and Fitness group yesterday, and I decided to make this blog post about it because I feel as though it is important. Anyone who has ever struggled with food addiction will understand this, and anyone who hasn’t, probably won’t. Some people may even find this notion completely ridiculous, but if you haven’t been through it, it would be hard to grasp. So, what is addiction anyway?

“A physical or psychological need for a habit-forming substance, such as a drug or alcohol” Dictionary.com

The idea here is that food can be an addiction much like alcohol, drugs, tobacco, gambling, etc. If you struggle with food addiction, chances are you have formed a habit of eating snacks as you watch television or movies. It can be so drilled into your mind that it is actually hard for you to sit through an entire show or movie without getting a snack of some sort. I struggled with this bigtime when I started my fitness journey, and I had to ease my way into eating healthy by still snacking at night with healthier options. It is not easy to change these habits, but just like any other addiction that is damaging to your health, you have to work at it to break these habits.

Maybe this kind of addiction isn’t as obvious or extreme as some of the others out there, but it is still detrimental to your health in the long run. From what I’ve read, it seems there are differing opinions on this topic from health professionals. However, having been through it, I strongly believe that eating can be a psychological addiction.

“A strong or harmful need to regularly have something (such as a drug) or do something (such as gamble)” Merriam Webster

In this case, the strong and harmful need factor would be applied to junk food, and the act would be considered eating. What a lot of people don’t seem to understand is that for many people struggling with weight issues, eating is more than fuel for our bodies. For some of us, eating is a form of comfort. We get sad, depressed, angry, frustrated, stressed out, et cetera, and we immediately head for the junk food. Sometimes this is completely subconscious behaviour, but we do it anyway. This ends up being a NEVER-ENDING cycle! You eat to make yourself feel better for negative emotions, and then you gain weight. The weight gain makes you feel even worse, so you go for the junk food again to feel better. You then gain more weight, eat more junk, and the cycle goes on and on and on until you put a stop to it.

“… most addictive behavior is not related to either physical tolerance or exposure to cues. People compulsively use drugs, gamble, or shop nearly always in reaction to being emotionally stressed, whether or not they have a physical addiction. Since these psychologically based addictions are not based on drug or brain effects, they can account for why people frequently switch addictive actions from one drug to a completely different kind of drug, or even to a non-drug behavior. The focus of the addiction isn’t what matters; it’s the need to take action under certain kinds of stress.” Psychology Today

What does this mean? Well, what this means to me is that it is possible for you to shift your “addiction” from food to fitness. It honestly worked for me, and I think it can work for everyone else too. Exercise releases endorphins into your brain, which ultimately makes you feel better overall! When I finish an intense workout, I usually feel refreshed. There have been many times when I’ve been upset or angry when I went down to do an intense cardio workout like Turbo Fire or Combat, and by the end of the workout, I felt a million times better than when I started.

If you start gradually decreasing your bad food habits and exercising on a regular basis, you WILL start to see results. You’ll start to feel better about yourself, you’ll sense the brain fog from all of the junk food start to lift, and you’ll start regaining your confidence as you lose weight from your positive life choices.

Are you ready to start working toward a happier and healthier life for yourself and your loved ones? If so, send me an email to hfmxj@stu.ca with the subject line “I’m ready to transform”.

I can’t wait to help you along your journey as your free coach, and I look forward to watching you transform!

10 Day Plank Challenge!

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Do you want to build a strong core and get abs? If so, you should try this challenge! Planking is actually really good for your core and abdominal muscles. It isn’t easy, which is why you increase the time incrementally throughout the ten day timeframe.

If you are new to fitness I would suggest probably starting out by using your forearms to hold yourself up. As you build strength, you should try holding yourself up with your hands. If your arms get too shaky, come back down onto your forearms. You want to push yourself to do better, but you don’t want to push yourself to injury!

I’ve posted this challenge in my free health and fitness group for all of my members, and you are invited to join us! Just comment on this thread and let me know if you would like to participate, and we will go from there :)

Why you should NOT weigh yourself daily

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Hey everyone, I want you all to take a look at this photo. That is a block of muscle versus the exact same amount of weight in fat. Even though they both weigh the same, you will see that the fat is twice as big (or more!) as the block of muscle. Honestly, you need to get the number on the scale out of your mind and not let that drive you crazy! I know from experience that doing that can be hard, but when it comes to fitness you need to know that muscle is denser than fat.

You can be shrinking in size as you put on muscle while your weight stays the same! Muscle burns through fat even after your workout, so you can be burning fat even as you sleep if you have been putting on muscle. What is important to know is that you could stay the same on the scale for a week or so, or just drop down by 1 pound, even though you are working out regularly. This can be super discouraging for people, because you expect to see changes fast! Changes ARE happening though, it just takes some time for you to notice. You need to lay the groundwork first by working out regularly and building up muscle. Once you’ve done that, you will gain momentum and your progress will start to really show!

This is why I usually tell my clients to focus on photos as a judge of progress instead of weight, because the photos don’t lie. Measurements can also be good to determine if you’re losing inches. It is good to weigh yourself once a week or every couple of weeks, but don’t fall into the trap of trying to weigh yourself every day. Our weight fluctuates throughout the day and from one day to the next, so if you get into the habit of weighing yourself every day you will likely get discouraged. Instead space it out some and do it once in a while so that you are more likely to have some positive results to note.

Click Here if you would like to start putting on some muscle definition and tone up to help your body burn more fat. I have a couple of programs that have been specifically designed for this purpose, and I am sure we could find one that would be perfect for your individual goals and needs. Once you’ve created your FREE account you can click the Contact Your Coach button and we can discuss options :)

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!