Tag: nutrition

5 Ways to Avoid Junk Food in the Workplace

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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.

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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!

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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

September Goal: Lose 10 pounds

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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!

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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

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

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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.

Is it worth it?

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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

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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!

How to be a winner

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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.

“Obesity runs in my family”

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I used to be the one to make that statement pretty frequently, but I now know that it is just another excuse for letting yourself go and not switching to a healthier lifestyle.

Yes, some families (like my own) are born with health issues or a less active metabolism, which can cause them to be more susceptible to weight gain. However, being in such a family I also know that the habits of the family could also be a huge factor. Junk food is a daily thing, overeating happens with almost every meal, and exercise is minimal to nonexistent. If those behaviours could change, I have no doubt in my mind that they could lose weight. The “obesity runs in my family” line is taking the easy way out, and I say this from personal experience.

And yes, some people are blessed with the genes to stay slim despite eating nothing but junk food, while others gain a lot of weight. Honestly though, you need to understand that being skinny does not necessarily equate to being healthy. What happens to a lot of people that are skinny throughout their youth, and take advantage of their fast metabolism by eating nothing but junk food just because they can? In many cases, that behaviour catches up to them. Over time their metabolism tends to be less and less active, so as they get older they will start putting on weight. By that point their behaviour is ingrained in them, and it will be much harder for them to make the switch to a healthier lifestyle.

Either way of life is unhealthy. You can be skinny and unhealthy, or you can be overweight to obese and unhealthy. They both come with risks, one more so than the other, but neither are good for you. You can choose to stay that way or you can work your butt off and make a change.

I would love to help you along your journey, so if you would like to get started on making some changes you are  more than welcome to join my FREE Health and Fitness group. If you are ready to make some BIG changes and really get serious about your health and fitness journey, you can should consider viewing our Team Beachbody June Specials as well as our Summer Blowout Sale!

Winner of May Step Challenge!

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Whoohoo! Big shout out to Kassie again for winning the May Step Challenge. I am super excited to say that her prize has arrived, and she will soon have a full fitness and nutrition program to continue with her weight loss journey on a more intense level.

Kassie has been a total rockstar in my FREE Health and Fitness group. She participated in both my March and April Bikini Bootcamps, and she also participated in my May Step Challenge. Kassie exceeded the goal of 10,000 steps a day pretty much every single day, and most days she would double it! She won that challenge by a total landslide, and she definitely earned this reward.

I am super proud to say that Kassie has lost 40 pounds, and she has been continuing with me for my June Biggest Loser Challenge. Although I suspect once she gets this, the Beachbody On Demand platform might get put to the back burner haha! Kassie has worked her butt off (figuratively and literally lol) with me for over 3 months now, and I could not be happier that she is the winner of this awesome program.

Enjoy your program Kassie, and I look forward to seeing how far you can go with this program!

Note: If you would like to learn more about this program or its original counterpart, please head over and view my page on our June Promotions. 

Biggest Loser Challenge

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If you follow my blog, you may already be aware of this. If you are new to my blog – Welcome! For those of you that don’t already know, I have been hosting special challenges for the people in my free health and fitness group every month for the past 3 months.

One of my Bikini Bootcamp ladies lost 29 POUNDS while she was participating in my March and April challenges. I’ve also had a lot of people tell me how much that they have been enjoying the May Step Challenge. Everyone enjoys different things, so I want to shake things up a bit again and do something a little different.

My challenges are always FREE to be a part of – however, I do expect a time and effort commitment. If I am going to invest my time and energy into coaching you, I want you to put the time and effort into yourself through your workouts and nutrition. This is for people who are SERIOUS about making a positive change in their life, and who want to take CONTROL of the direction that their life is headed.

Instead of having people do workouts that I put together, which is what I did in the bootcamps, I will be having everyone access the 30 Day Free Trial of our Beachbody On Demand platform. I am actually using this myself right now, and I am loving it. This way nobody is stuck doing any particular type of workout – you can pick and choose from hundreds of different workouts and design your own plan. If you like structure and having a set schedule to follow, you can choose to follow a particular program schedule; or you can try what we coaches like to call a “hybrid”, which is a schedule consisting of two or more different programs. That is something that we can work out together before the start date.

If this sounds like something that you would be interested in, please notify me via email at hfmxj@stu.ca with the subject line “Biggest Loser”. We will begin this challenge on June 1st, so get your name in ASAP!

I am super excited to see this through, and I can’t wait to coach you along your journey :)

Are you holding extra water weight?

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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!