Tag: health benefits

Are you holding extra water weight?

Leave a comment

Sometimes you don’t even realize how much your lack of water intake can be affecting your body. Water weight is just one side effect out of many that can happen for people that are dehydrated. When you think about it, the majority of our body is actually made of water, so it makes sense that we would need to drink a lot of water to keep it running smoothly. This way we are always clearing out the toxins, and bringing in fresh, clean water into our system.

1468640_1432750523605826_1291946794_n995889_1427181120829433_1162941028_n

I never used to be a water person. I lived on root beer, juice, and chocolate milk! Now I actually like drinking water, and I carry a water bottle with me everywhere I go. It was not an easy transition, but you just have to start out by easing your way into it. What I did was use Poweraid Zero (0 cals) to my water for a while to make it taste better, or I would add lemon slices or fruit to it. There are plenty of things that you can do to make it taste more appealing. Once you’ve gotten into that, you just slowly ease out of the flavoring – or not – a little flavor never killed anyone!

1393508_1442033639344181_161447203_n 1622820_1458875400993338_392496457_n

With all of those benefits, why not give it a try?! Lemons and other citrus fruits can add a lot of flavor to your water, and as you can see, they help with a lot of other factors as well.

water bomb drink water

If you’re the kind of person that really struggles to get your water intake in, you can start by doing something like this! I did this for a while, and it really does help to be able to see exactly how much water you’ve drank throughout the day. This way, if you haven’t met your daily goal amount, you can easily finish it off at the end of the day. That is something that you probably wouldn’t do if you didn’t have the proof right in front of you that you haven’t drank the right amount yet.

I hope you’ve found this useful!

Click Here if you would like to have me as your free health and fitness coach!

May Step Challenge!

3 Comments

So for the past few months I’ve done a Bikini Bootcamp, and for May I would like to do something a little different. Starting May 4th, one week from today, I am thinking of running a step competition. The warmer weather is starting to come around, so it will be easier for everyone to go on walks!

You’ll need to purchase a step counter to wear for the month to participate in this challenge. Every day, I will post a status in my FREE Health and Fitness group asking about your steps for the day. It will be your responsibility to make sure that you take a photo of your step counter at the end of the day and submit it on the thread to be counted toward your total.

I am going to leave this up to the participants, but someone in my April Bootcamp made a suggestion that I am considering for this challenge. Normally all of my challenges are free, and again, this is totally up to you guys – but depending on the amount of signups we have, we could do a small participation fee. Please know that I would NOT be keeping this money! The money would be tucked away, and then at the end of the month, the person with the highest total number of steps for the month would win a fitness program. This would provide a bit of extra incentive for everyone to do well. Like I said before, this all depends on the amount of signups that we get and the fee that we agree upon. Once we have the list of participants set and I’ve collected all of the money, I would then be able to come up with a list of all of the fitness programs that would be covered by the fee total. Ideally I would like to have enough of you participating that we’d only have to have a small fee like 5 or 10 dollars, and still come up with enough money to pay for any fitness program available – maybe even a challenge pack!

I highly recommend that you find a partner to do this with you. It can be a friend, family member, significant other, whatever the case may be. You could even partner up with someone else in the group! It just helps to have someone else to hold you accountable. If you find someone to do it with and they aren’t in the group, have them send me a message and I can get them added into the group to participate! If you currently aren’t a member of my group and would like to participate, click here to request to join.

Let me know what you guys think! I am fine with doing it either way, I just thought the prize might help motivate you all to do well. For those of you that have signed up, I encourage you to get your step counters as soon as possible so that you aren’t caught last minute without one. I also encourage you to start thinking about who may enjoy doing this with you, and to reach out to them and try to find a partner.

If you haven’t signed up yet – what are you waiting for?! This is going to be a lot of fun, and you may have a chance to win an awesome prize. Get in on the action while you can!

How to Stay Motivated!

1 Comment

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.

Make S.M.A.R.T. Goals

1 Comment

There are five factors to smart goal setting that will make you much more likely to achieve success with your goals. The word SMART is actually an acronym, and it stands for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant/realistic, and timely.

First of all, your goals should be specific. Anyone can say “I want to lose weight”, but not follow through. If you say “I want to lose 30 pounds in the next 3 months by eating clean and workout out at least 5 days a week” you have a MUCH better chance of achieving your goal. To get specific, you should refer to your vision board and think about where you are versus where you want to be. You should start thinking about how you’re going to achieve your goal and come up with a specific plan to follow, and then think about the five w’s (where, what, when, why, and who – as in with whom will you be working with on this journey) It helps to have someone do this with you, so I highly recommend finding a partner.

Next your goals should be measurable. This means keeping track of things. I discussed above tracking nutrition and exercise, but you should also keep track of weight and measurements. Do your weight and measurements in the morning after you’ve been to the bathroom and before you’ve eaten food. This is the best time to get an accurate answer, while if you wait until later in the day your food and water intake may have bloated you out a bit and added a bit of extra weight to the scale that shouldn’t be there. Also keep track of your clothing size, because it will feel great to know where you started and where you ended up. Lastly, and arguably most importantly, TAKE PICTURES!! Weight and measurements can sometimes be super discouraging because your progress doesn’t always reflect in the numbers. This can happen as you put on muscle, which is denser than fat. This causes your body to shrink while your weight may seem to stay the same or only lower slightly. Pictures are my favorite way of tracking progress.

Sometimes people aim a bit too high, and that is why it is important that your goals are attainable. Have you ever made a New Year’s Resolution to lose weight, spent a couple of weeks working out almost every day and following through on your nutrition, and then phased out? A lot of people have, myself included. Where did we go wrong? We expected to see awesome results in a very short amount of time doing something that is not necessarily sustainable. Going from no exercise and diet to exercise daily and all diet is a huge transition. When you embark on a health and fitness journey, you need to realize that the weight wasn’t put on overnight, and it certainly is not going to come off overnight. It will take time and effort to achieve your goals, so you need to pick a workout plan and a nutrition plan that is going to be sustainable over time.

Next is to ensure that your goal is relevant/realistic, and this is where you really need to evaluate your goal to find out if this is something that is really important to you. If you determine that it is, you need to think about the reason behind it – because that will come in handy later if you start to feel yourself slipping and losing motivation. You need to figure out the root of the reason you want this if you’re going to stick with it, otherwise you won’t mentally associate it as being a priority. Once you realize that this is important to you and you figure out the primary reason that is driving you to do this in the first place, your next step is to assess that specific goal plan that you created to determine if it can help get you to where you want to be with respect to health and fitness. Your goal also has to be realistic. You can’t set a goal to lose 100 pounds in one month, because that would be setting yourself up for failure. Choose a goal that is realistic and attainable, and it will give you motivation to keep pushing. Too many people set goals they can’t achieve, and then they give up because they get frustrated. You can avoid that from the beginning simply by setting realistic goals.

Lastly, your goal should be timely. Deadlines are great for getting people to move their butts into action, and you should definitely use that to your advantage. If your goal is to lose 30 pounds in 3 months, you can break that up into smaller increments and set a goal to lose 10 pounds each month. You could even break it up further and set a goal to lose 5 pounds every 2 weeks. This helps you to focus on small goals little by little. Each time you hit one of your smaller goals, you’ll be excited to be inching closer to your larger goal, and it will give you motivation to keep moving forward.

I hope you found this article on goal setting to be useful, 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.

Snacking Tip

Leave a comment

It is SUPER easy to overeat if you let yourself just eat directly from a bag or whatever it is you’re having. Instead, try getting some snack sized zip lock baggies, and portioning out bags of 100 calories each!

This tactic makes it super easy to track what you’re consuming, and it is great when you’re on the go. I would even recommend keeping a bag or two of some kind of nut or single serving bag of some other healthy snack in your purse or in your vehicle for when you are out and about. This will keep you from buying something unhealthy on impulse when you are hungry and away from your healthy food at home.

You can do this with fruits and veggies as well, and just keep a container full of 100 calorie bags at eye level. It has been proven that you tend to go for whatever is at eye level when you open the fridge, so keep the fresh fruits and vegetables front and center!

For more helpful tips, you are invited to join my FREE Health and Fitness group!

Hump Day Humor

Leave a comment

Lol here is some hump day humor for my followers!

I think it is important to note that this can be very serious too though. If you eat a lot of junk food you may find yourself suffering from diabetes in the future. A majority of my older family members are all suffering from diabetes, and they are forced to use insulin and/or check their sugars on a daily basis.

You don’t have to choose that path! If you start changing your habits little by little, you will be amazed by the changes in your body and your health a year from now.

I challenge you to do something today that will create a brighter future for yourself and your family. 

Feel free to email me at hfmxj@stu.ca with the subject line “Transform my body” if you would like to make some changes, and you just aren’t sure where to start. I would love to work out a long term plan with you that can help you achieve your health and fitness goals.

You are also invited to join my FREE Health and Fitness group! 

Couch to 5K

Leave a comment

I don’t know about anyone else, but I always thought that I just didn’t have it in me to be a runner. It didn’t happen often, but once in a while I’d be having a good day and I’d be full of energy, so I’d decide to go for a run. One time I was so hopped up on energy after a kickboxing workout that I ran almost all the way to the bottom of my street (and my street is actually pretty long lol), only to turn around and realize that the only reason I made it all the way to the bottom without stopping was because it was all downhill. Let’s just say the trek back up took twice as long, and most of it was NOT spent running lol.

I also have this issue where sometimes cardio would cause me so much trouble with my breathing that my throat would get this burning sensation and it would feel as though my throat was closing off. Because of bad experiences like the one above, and the breathing difficulties, I decided that I just sucked at running and I focused my efforts on other forms of exercise. After working out for a while with my Beachbody programs, I decided to give running another shot. What I discovered was that I actually CAN run, it was just that I was out of shape before. I am guessing that this is the case for the vast majority of people out there that say they could never run!

I have decided to start the Couch to 5K program because I would really love to improve upon my running skills. Today marked the start of my 7 week program, and I would love to invite all of you out there reading this to join me. Even if you think “well, I’d like to… but, I don’t think I could do it”, I want you to give it a shot. You only have to commit to three workouts a week, and for the first few weeks it is just 20 minute workouts! It is not all running either! To condition your body for running, you actually would be doing walking and jogging intervals to build yourself up for longer runs. Over time the runs will get longer, and the walking intervals will get shorter.

aaaaa

Click Here if you are interested in joining me on this journey, and request to join my FREE Health and Fitness group. This is where we will be discussing all things related to the challenge, plus it is where you’ll find access to a wide range of health and fitness information. I hope to see you in the group!

Please don’t pass up on this out of fear – because I truly believe that you can do it.

222222222222222

Why should you buy through a Team Beachbody Coach?

Leave a comment

Right now we are facing a huge issue when it comes to people being overweight or obese in North America. This is a problem that needs to be addressed now to prevent further generations from falling into the same food trap.

We are surrounded by fast food, and we are constantly faced with advertising for junk food. It doesn’t help matters that the product marketers are evolving with the times and catching on to the health-conscious shift. They realize that a significant amount of people are trying to make healthier choices, and are now finding new ways to dupe customers into believing that their JUNK products are actually healthy. This leads to confusion and frustration among many people new to health and fitness. They try to buy what they believe to be healthy foods and avoid the obvious junk foods, but they still are unable to achieve the results that they were hoping for.

One of the primary reasons that it is important for people buying Beachbody fitness programs and/or products to purchase through a coach is that you receive their guidance. Team Beachbody coaches are FREE to customers. You do not pay for the support of your Team Beachbody coach. When you order through a coach, it means that you will gain access to their knowledge about Beachbody programs and products, as well as health and fitness in general. You always have someone at your disposal to contact if you are struggling with something, or if you have any questions.

Furthermore, purchasing through a coach solidifies your spot in a challenge group! What is a challenge group? Challenge groups are private Facebook groups for coaches and clients of coaches to interact on a daily basis. This was absolutely instrumental to my success when I first began this fitness journey, and it is a CRUCIAL element to any weight loss journey that is often overlooked. These groups provide you with a support system of individuals going through the same process as you and who understand the struggles that accompany this journey. You can post about your progress there and find encouragement and praise from others, or you can sit on the sidelines until you become more comfortable and simply use the others’ posts as motivation to keep on track with your own journey.

In addition, when you purchase directly through a Team Beachbody coach there will be a record of your purchase. This means that if, for any reason, you need a replacement DVD for a program or you have some kind of issue that needs solved by support, it will be far more easier to rectify with a valid record of the purchase. Beachbody is very good with doling out replacement disks when they get stolen or broken, but only when they are able to verify the purchase. Otherwise, people could take advantage of their generosity and simply pretend they purchased the program in an attempt to get a few free disks.

Can you get a number of Beachbody fitness programs online via Ebay or other similar websites? Sure. Can you get them from Wal Mart and other third party stores? Of course. Can you download them for free online via pirating websites? Absolutely!

This is why you SHOULDN’T:

  • You do not get the support of a Team Beachbody coach to answer any questions that you may have about the programs that you are about to do, any nutritional questions that may come up, any tips you may require to help you master the workouts, et cetera.
  • You do not get the support of a team Challenge Group and all of the motivation and accountability that they can provide. You also miss out on a wonderful sense of community with a group of like-minded individuals embarking on the same type of fitness journey as yourself.
  • You do not have the benefit of receiving replacement disks for any lost or damaged items.
  • You will not have a Team Beachbody Coach to consult in the future if you consider getting another program, which may end up costing you more money. As coaches part of what we do is directing our clients to the best value AND price to suit their individual goals and needs. Without the guidance of a coach that understands the company and current promotions, you may end up missing out on some savings by being uninformed about current specials.
  • You miss out on the FREE Bonus workout that typically comes with any fitness program purchased through a Team Beachbody coach!

It definitely makes a difference to have a coach, and I can say that from personal experience. I started with Team Beachbody as a customer almost two years ago now, but that was NOT my first attempt. I had tried P90X many times before, and I could never manage to make it past the first three weeks. By a stroke of pure luck, I came across a coach on Twitter in the beginning stages of this latest attempt. I connected with him, made the switch, and I immediately felt the difference.

what-is-beachbody-coaching-300x265

Fitness + Nutrition + Support = Success

When you buy Beachbody fitness programs you get the fitness and nutrition areas of that equation covered. You get the full fitness program on DVD’s or On Demand, plus a nutrition guide and meal plan equipped with recipes and all of the information that you need to make smart and informed decisions in the kitchen. The only missing element is the support, and that is exactly what you get with a Team Beachbody Coach.

111

I became a coach because these fitness programs and products have helped me to lose 60 pounds, and I would love to watch them do the same for you. Click Here to make me your Team Beachbody Coach, and I will work with you to find the perfect program to suit your individual goals and needs.

photo-3-40

I look forward to coaching you, and seeing your epic transformation!

Bikini Bootcamp!

2 Comments

Sometimes when I talk to people about my free Bikini Bootcamp they seem surprised. I’ve had people ask me “Why do you do it if you don’t make any money off of it”.

Well, pictures are worth a thousand words in this case. That photo right there is the reason that I do it without being paid. It is a truly amazing and humbling feeling to help people lose weight and feel better about themselves. I love my Bikini Bootcamp challengers, and I can’t wait to see their final results in two weeks!

I have another one starting April 6th, so fill out the form below if you would like more information. Spots are limited, and registration ends on March 27th. This is free – BUT – I do expect a full commitment to both the meal plan and the workout program for the entire month.

“You got hot!”

2 Comments

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!