Never feel bad for making yourself a priority!

If you have family and friends that aren’t into health and fitness, but you are, you will probably understand this struggle.

People just don’t seem to grasp this reality, but putting yourself first sometimes and deciding to make your health a top priority is NOT selfish. Nor does it mean that you have your priorities all wrong! It simply means that your priorities differ from theirs, and in their opinion, that is wrong. Everyone is entitled to their opinions and their points of views, and it is never okay for people to try to bully you into their way of thinking.

People shouldn’t expect you to give up something that you love and that makes you happy. Instead, they should respect your choice to lead a healthier life, and work with you to accommodate your new lifestyle. It is totally unfair for people to try and force you to change your routine to fit their life, and you should not have to feel guilty for standing your ground!!

Don’t allow others to wear you down. You DESERVE to be happy and healthy. Exercise makes me a much more happy and positive person, which allows me to be in a better mood throughout the day. It allows me to have more energy to get through my day, and it builds my confidence and self-esteem, because I know that with each workout, I am getting leaner and stronger. It truly sets the mood for your day!

You deserve to have that too.

Never let anyone tell you otherwise.

Banana Split Shake – AKA – buh-bye ice cream craving!

Summer is officially here, and one of my biggest downfalls – especially during the summer – happens to be ice cream. I love ice cream, and I practically lived off of gelato when I was in Europe last summer lol. I suffer from ice cream cravings pretty frequently during the summer months when it is hot. Sound familiar?

This is your solution! I normally make the same shake every day because I just love it, but I had recommended a banana split shake to someone the other day, and it stuck in my mind until I finally decided to make it today. This is super easy to make, and it seriously tastes AMAZING. If you have a craving for ice cream on a hot summer day, this will totally do the trick to get rid of that craving. PLUS – it will likely be the healthiest meal that you will have all day long.

What you’ll need:

  • Unsweetened Vanilla Almond Milk
  • 1 scoop Chocolate Shakeology
  • 1 scoop Chocolate Whey Protein Powder
  • 1/2 cup Frozen Strawberries
  • 1/2 of a Banana
  • 3 or 4 ice cubes

How to make it:

  1. Start by putting in 1 cup of your almond milk, and I usually add a little bit of water so that the shake doesn’t wind up being too thick.
  2. Add your powders.
  3. Add your fruit, and I recommend cutting the banana half in smaller pieces for easier blending.
  4. Add ice
  5. Blend until smooth
  6. ENJOY!!

All of this takes less than 5 minutes to prepare, and it is seriously awesome. You might not want to share this with your kids or significant other, because they just might try and steal it from you! Click Here to learn all about the benefits of Shakeology, or to purchase your risk-free bag now.

I have a limited amount of Shakeology samples!! If you’re local and you’d like to try this out, shoot me a message and I can arrange for you to get a sample.

Stop waiting & just start doing!

People tend to wait for events or after holidays or New years’ to make positive life changes. Stop waiting and JUST DO IT! If you wait, there is a much higher probability that you will either start and quit, or you won’t start at all.

Start as soon as you make the choice, because waiting only makes you lose the excitement and motivation that you had when you decided to do it in the first place. I’ve seen this happen time and time again with people I know, and I’ve also experienced it myself. The struggle is real ladies and gentlemen!

We tell ourselves “oh I’ll start Monday” or “I’ll start after the holidays”, and then that time comes and we don’t change our behaviour. All we end up doing is going on what I like to call “the pre-diet binge”, put on a few extra pounds, and end up giving up before we even begin. Sound familiar?

BREAK THE TREND. If you get motivated and encouraged somehow to switch to a healthier lifestyle, act on it NOW. Don’t wait, just DO. Honestly that is the best way to ensure that you actually follow through! Once you get going, it will be easier to stay going. Getting started can be the toughest part, at least in my opinion. Once you make it through the first three weeks, things get easier as long as you keep yourself on track and don’t stray too far from your nutrition or skimp out on workouts.

If you haven’t started your journey yet, but you’d like to, visit us in my FREE Health and Fitness group to join a group of people learning how to lead a healthier lifestyle and incorporate activity into their lives. We’re voting now for the July Challenge, so you definitely want to get in the group ASAP!

Is it worth it?

If you allow yourself to cheat on your nutrition, you’re cheating yourself out of your results. Don’t sabotage yourself before you achieve your goals! I know that it is possible to still live your life, and enjoy the occasional cheat from time to time, but not in the beginning of your journey.

Trust me, I have been there, so I know what that feels like. One little cheat can easily turn into two, which again tends to snowball until you’re fully off the wagon. Avoid putting yourself through that! Allow yourself to become accustomed to your new and healthy lifestyle before you start adding in the occasional treat.

Once you have made clean eating and exercise a daily routine, then you can try to incorporate treats from time to time. Try not to think about it as a chore, or as though you “have” to avoid junk food. If you tell yourself that you CAN’T have something, of course you’re going to want it more. Instead, tell yourself that you won’t have it until you have reached a point in your journey where you know that it is not going to destroy everything you’ve been working towards.

If you would like to be a part of a group where you can learn more about healthy eating and nutrition overall, you are more than welcome to join us in my FREE Health and Fitness group. We’re also voting right now for the July Challenge, so you definitely want to get in the group ASAP!

Be proud of small steps forward

Don’t allow yourself to get discouraged and fall off the wagon simply because things aren’t progressing as quickly as you had hoped. Results will come over time and effort. Even if you don’t see the changes as drastically in the beginning, they are happening within you regardless. Over time, you will start to really notice those changes, but you won’t if you allow yourself to give up before you reach that point in your journey.

If you set a goal to reach a certain point in 3 months, and you don’t quite hit that by the end of the three months, should you give up? Absolutely not, because if you stayed on track for three months then you would have made progress to varying degrees. That progress is something to be proud of, regardless of whether or not you hit your intended goal.

If you wait until you hit your long term goal to be proud of yourself, you are less likely to be successful. You should be proud of yourself every time you do something you previously couldn’t do, or up your weight in exercises, or even just for forcing yourself to do a workout on a day when you really didn’t feel like doing it! Being proud of yourself and what you have accomplished helps you stay motivated to keep going. Always remember to be proud of the small steps forward, because even though they are small, they are still steps moving forward.

If you haven’t started your journey yet, but you’d like to, visit us in my FREE Health and Fitness group to join a group of people learning how to lead a healthier lifestyle and incorporate activity into their lives. We’re voting now for the July Challenge, so you definitely want to get in the group ASAP!

P90X on TV!

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

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!

July Health & Fitness Challenge!!

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!

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

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.