This week, I had an opportunity to see Suzy Welch speak. She opened her speech by saying that she can’t do it all. I repeat she said she can’t do it all and she doesn’t even try. Instead she picks what’s important and moves on. What a freeing way to live.  So, if you can’t get to it, you don’t dwell on what you didn’t do? AMAZING. That statement felt like the glowing box in Pulp Fiction.  Since that day I’ve been really thinking about what she said and then yesterday I read a great post from Lululemon about what are you going to stop doing.  It stopped me in my tracks, because as women we are always trying to figure our how we can do more!! You know we have 24 hours in 1 day and how I am ongoing to do a million and one things to make everyone happy as well as achieving my own goals.

So now I thinking, I don’t have to it all, so what am I going to stop doing!!!

1. Stop being afraid. Yes, I know I me, afraid, but I am! I have been procrastinating on taking this test because I am afraid I will fail. Guess what if I fail I can take it again. So stop talking take ACTION!
2. Stop spending more than 30 minutes on Twitter and Facebook. I love you all, but I need to get focused on taking my test and growing my business
3. Stop purchasing things and not using them. Now this is going to be tough! I have purchased so many things that still have the tags on them or books that I haven’t even cracked the spine.
4. Stop wanting everything to be perfect. If I doing something just okay. That ’s fine. At least I’m taking steps.
5. Stop feeling like I always have to do something. Say what…It’s a rare day that I can just sit and relax, so take more time to sit and relax. I think about my grandmother, she is 88 years old and I don’t think I’ve seen her sit down for more than 10 minutes at a time. So I don’t want to look back in 48 years and say that I haven’t sat down!
6. Stop multitasking!! That’s right I’m a professional multitasker, if I’m not doing 5 things with my hair on fire I feel like I’m standing still. Moving forward I will set an old fashion kitchen timer and work on 1 thing at for 30 minutes before I move on to the next activity.

So tell me what are you going to stop doing?

Throughout this year, I have been periodically posting about training for the Trifitness competition. Well — I DID IT!!! I just got home off the red eye and had to tell you all about it. 1st let’s recap what the event is all about.

1. Grace and Physique — you are judged on your body conditioning and grace walking in 5 in heels
2. Obstacle Course-- only 24 women can do this course in less than 1 minute. My 1st time through, I did it in 88 seconds. The back half of the course is pure SPRINTING, OMG I thought I was going to die. But was so proud of myself of fighting through!!! Can you say mental stamina. Let me paint the picture. It was 106 in Nevada!!! You are hydrating like crazy, so that you don’t have a heat stroke or cramp up due to dehydration.
   • 10 foot Wall
   • Running Grid
   • Incline/Decline Monkey Bars
   • Balance Beam
   • 15 foot Cargo Net
   • Shuttle Run
   • 3 Low Hurdles
   • Steeple chase jump
   • Under and Over Bar

(more…)

Source: About.com

I am in the process of completing my wellness coach certification and during this process you are to create your own wellness vision so that you can better understand what its like to create one and how to guide your clients in the process.

So you may be asking what is a wellness coach?  Wellness Coaches not only support your fitness efforts, they help you understand and take steps to embrace and maintain a healthy lifestyle.

The crux of understanding how to embrace and maintain a healthy lifestyle is painting a picture of what your life would look like and how would you feel when you achieved your healthy lifestyle.  While painting this picture you will also look at what is YOUR motivation, not someone’s for achieving this lifestyle and what steps are you willing to take to make this picture become a reality. The vision helps you think about how you are going to motivate yourself to achieve your wellness vision.

Here is my 3 month wellness vision.

• To fix my muscle imbalances so that I may stay active for a long time
  • What is motivating to achieve this goal. I’m (like it or lump) getting older and still want to be as active as possible
  • My main obstacle is finding the time to take care of myself– yes you read that correctly. I struggle with that life balance, taking care of myself versus the needs of my clients, business and family. Just like you I will and can find plenty excuses to do other things, like train my clients or work or things around the house. Yes, as much as I love working out I too struggle with this.
  • My strategy around this is to put my workouts in my calendar and make an appointment with myself, this isn’t an option.

The key to achieving my wellness vision is to break my vision into small digestible goals. I will break them in what I want to achieve in 3 months and the steps I will take weekly towards achieving my goals. If you notice my goals are SMART goals. Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely.

Specific = My goal is phrased in a way that answers these questions — Who, What, How, When, Which, Why and Where

Source: Beginner TriAthlete.com

Measurable = This is how you are going to measure progress and action towards your goals
Attainable = This is where I look to you want to challenge yourself, but if there set your goals too high you may lose interest in attaining them
Realistic = The goal needs to be realistic for where you are, as stated above it should challenge and motivate you to keep moving forward, but should not kill you to achieve your goal.
Timely = You need to set a timeline, a goal without a timeline is just a dream.

3 month goal

1. To compete in the Women’s TriFitness Competition on July 10th
   
   • I will focus on the areas of the competition that I am weakness
   • I will bench press 3x/week
   • I will do the box jump 3x/week
2. I will be able to complete 10 squats with weight in good form
   • I will begin doing corrective exercises 3/week
   • I will take a yoga class 2x week to increase my flexibility and stability
3. I will rid myself of sciatica pain
   • I will make an appointment for the week of July 12th to meet with Aaron Brooks, posture specialist
   • I will stretch for 30 minutes a day
4. In the off-season, I will not exceed 10 pounds above my contest weight.
   • I will stick to the 7 day sugar shutdown program devised by my coach. This will help me with my sugar cravings, yes I do CRAVE sugar
   • I will workout 5 day/week by doing a combination 30 minutes of cardio and 30 minutes of weight training

Weekly Goals:

• I will update my Falmouth Road Race training schedule
• I will review my Tri Fitness training and see how to improve
• I will read 1 chapter in my wellness coach manual
• I will make an appt with my training buddy to practice coaching
• I will update the Fab Fit Squad blog 3x/week
• I will take 1 yoga class/week

Each week, I will keep you up to date on how I progress on my wellness vision. Need help crafting yours. Let me know.

We all have two choices…We can make a living or we can design a life. ~Jim Rohn

5 ways to avoid weight loss procrastination

Motivation Monday

You’ll never regret it.

There is nothing like a dream to create the future. — Victor Hugo,  Les Miserables

Here are 5 ways to give you the kick in the butt to jump start your weight loss procrastination. The unofficial start to summer,  Memorial Day is just 4 short days away!

1. Understand your motivation: If you are planning to lose weight for someone other than yourself, it will never work. Get real around why you want to lose the weight! Do you have a summer event coming up and want to fit into that little black dress or have you signed up for a summer road race and need some motivation to get training. Step back and look yourself in the eye and ask WHY DO I WANT TO DO THIS!
2. Use your motivation to your advantage. Do you beat yourself up, each day that you don’t take steps to our goal. Use your goals as the push you need to keep going. I find that by hanging posters or motivational quotes really help give me the push in the right direction that I need.
3. Change your internal language! Instead of saying I HAVE TO or THERE IS NO WAY. Change your dialog. I want to lose 25 pounds so that I will be _____________ (insert what happens when you achieve your goals or how will you feel when you achieve goals.
4. Set goals fueled by your passion. You can’t go anyway without a road map, okay now a days GPS.  Here is where you take those goals and break them up. Your goal for this week is to lose 1 pound and develop a plan on how you are going to do that. Want to run a 10K, go to this site Need help more, shoot me an email.
5. Still not fired up to get moving on your goals, try this. Write a letter to your future self. Imagine that you have achieved your goals. What would you say to yourself, how would you feel, how would you look, what would you do. Now write a letter to yourself as if you didn’t meet your goals. Both letters will help you drive you forward.

Still need a kick in the pants, shoot me an email. Have any additional comments, just post them below.

When you view your health as nonnegotiable, your priorities naturally shift.

I have a number clients whom I work with who each and every session tell me that they are tried, or stressed out, skipping meals and basically paying attention to everyone but themselves.

You have to make yourself a priority.  If you don’t take care of yourself who is.  I know that this practice is easier said then done, but we must take baby steps to taking care of ourselves.

Here are 3 basic tips.

1. Establish a bed time – this is non-negotiable. You need 8 hours, so if you need to be up for 7am, then lights out 11pm.  This means you winding down by 10pm, I suggest being in bed or doing something relaxing such as reading, meditation, writing in your journal or spending quality time with your partner. Did you notice, there was nothing about TV, emails or web surfing?  This your shut down and unwind time.
2. Bring your lunch — when you bring your own lunch there is no excuse for saying you didn’t have time to run out, plus you are less likely to be tempted to ravage the vending machine or worse go without.
3. Exercise — I would love to see you work out 3 times/week, but I understand that may be a little difficult, but I recommend that you put it in your calendar, get up a little earlier and workout in the morning, schedule yourself a meeting and sneak out at lunch.

I hope that you are able to implement some of these tips.  I just want you to know that I can so relate to and let you that these are the steps that I took to reclaim my life.

I use to fly 100,000/year, the thought of leaving the office before 7pm didn’t occur to me, lunch consisted of M&Ms and Coke and dinner was all take out.  The people at Mary Chung’s really LOVED me and my husband. I used to have perpetual heartburn, migraines, acne and was in a constant state of tiredness.  I went to my doctor seeking a quick fix,  a prescription. Well, my doctor gave me a prescription, in the form of a book called “Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff” Well I read and it really opened my eyes, I was only 25 and stress to the hilt and said I didn’t want to live my life like this.  Now I didn’t start implementing everything, I took baby steps and over time I had all 3 suggestions implemented.

Good luck to you, please let me know how you’ve implemented these tips or if you have any other suggestions.

“I never regret it when I do it, but I always regret it when I don’t.”
– Devin McDonald Vinson, 37, Portland, OR (Women’s Health Magazine)

I felt this today. I am 4 months away from the greatest fitness challenge of my life. Today was the day I started to train.  I needed to sit and develop a plan for myself to get into the shape of my life.

I’ll admit it I wasn’t looking forward to my workout, but it felt amazing!! Can’t wait to hit it again tomorrow.

Tell me how you feel about your workouts.

After all, computers crash, people die, relationships fall apart. The best we can do is breath and reboot. — Sarah Jessica Parker (Carrie, Sex and The City)
I live in the Northeast and we just another dumping of snow and I got to tell you its been a long hard snowy winter and I am ready for relief.  It’s time for me to reboot.
Spring is just weeks away and I need to focus and get my head into the game here are 5 things that I am doing to reboot. 

1. To relax — I am listening to FUN non-work related audiobooks, and as someone who takes public transportation it makes it so much more fun. Right now I am listening to the Shopaholic Series and boy is it entertaining.
2. New workout music — I just download a ton of new music to keep me moving during my workouts. Oh yeah, I hit the 1000 song mark on my nano!  Seriously, when I bought the thing I was like 1000 songs, that SO many song, I’ll never fill it. Oh well.  Never say never as my Mother says.
3. Food log — when I am training I track everything I eat. Now that I don’t have a show tracking my food has gone by the way side.  I will start to track my food.  The online food diary is fitday.  It tracks, your macro-nutrients, calories and exercise
4. Put it in your calendar.  I am putting all my workout in my calendar so that I will keep on track and not say that I will do it later.
5. Get organized — I am a clutter bug and I am making strides to de-clutter my home.

Here’s a bonus, I have 12 months to complete my well coaches certification and I am going to not take the full 12 months, I will take the written test in 6 months, and complete the second and third step with 3 months.
image source: http://www.bytemark.co.uk/media_file/image/40/base/reboot-type.png?1206018409

“A woman too busy to take care of his health is like a mechanic too busy to take care of his/her tools.” – A Spanish Proverb

I hear it all the time from my client S.  Every workout she has some new health issue, when I ask her what is she doing about it she says I’m too busy.  Seriously, you are too busy to take care of your own health. If you don’t have your health you have nothing. To help her bring this to her attention, I mention that if she had a headache, she would take an aspirin and if she had a stuffy nose she would take a decongestant.  Now. Why when you have elevated blood pressure and your doctor tells you are at an increased risk for heart disease, why wouldn’t do whatever you go could to decrease your blood pressure and increase the longevity of your life not only for yourself, but your family. Honestly, if you don’t care of yourself how are you going to take care of others.

Now ask yourself, what things are you currently doing that you could find 1 hour to devote to your health and fitness?  Could you get up 1 hour earlier, sneak out of the office at lunch, maybe givewatching Lost or 24 and take that time to workout?

Talk to me give me some of your suggestions.

…focus on the journey, not the destination. Joy is found not in finishing an activity but in doing it.

– Greg Anderson

You know what I’m taking about, you wake and decision you are going to do something and then get overwhelm with how are you going to do it or are you going to be able to reach your goal.  STOP IT!!! Take your time and enjoy the journey, life is going to pass you by faster than you can imagine so take your time and savor your journey remember and journal every step of the way.  WHY, because you when you reach your destination wouldn’t be fun to look back at all the you experience along the way.

Tell me your experiences have you done this.