Fab Fit Squad

Over the past 3 years I have shared a nutrition, workout and motivational tips, but this past week I was speaking with some of the readers of my blog and they asked for me to share more about me.

So.. here it is. I’m not perfect I too struggle with this time of the year! Last week I attended a conference that was serving lunch. I started out the day with my oatmeal, egg whites and berries for breakfast I packed 2 snacks (AM and PM). They were serving lunch so I didn’t bring my lunch. Well.. let’s say that was a mistake while it was an EXCELLENT chopped salad, it lacked PROTEIN! 20 minutes after I ate I was STARVING!!!! We were in a part of the convention center where they didn’t have store to purchase water and my 1/2 gallon water bottle only made it to lunch.  Let’s say by the time I got home that night I was ready to eat my leg off!!! Because I didn’t eat enough all day I came home and started GRAZING until I finished preparing dinner. Lesson learned — bring more protein and carry more water. The next day I went back to the event and was much more prepared and didn’t come home to eat 1/2 of my kitchen cupboards.

As for workouts — the past few weeks I have been flat out finishing up some projects before the end of the year. Typically I like to workout 4-5 days/week. Let’s just say it’s been difficult! Just this past Monday I had a plan to hit the gym at 5:30am — I like to workout in the AM because I less likely to get interrupted or have the day get away from me. Unfortunately my body had a different plan. I woke up at 1:30 AM and didn’t fall back to sleep until 4am, let’s say when the alarm went off at 5:15am I wasn’t feeling it. I gave myself the out. That doesn’t make the whole week is ruined it means I missed ONE workout and I need to brainstorm to see if there were other ways to make it up. Before I got out of bed I went through my mental calendar and decided that I could make up this workout on Thursday because that is typically my rest day.

How do I stay motivated? I started competing in 2004 because I needed a goal! I lost 30 pounds and I was like now what! Competing gives me a goal to strive for. When I first started competing I did about 5 shows/year now I do 1. That’s really hard for me to stay on track and last year I went 14 months without competing! I packed on the weight for me. I had put on 12 pounds during that time. Why do you ask, because I didn’t have a motivating goal and for the most part sleepwalked through my workouts. NOT THIS YEAR!!! I vowed that would not happen taking off those 12 pounds SUCKED OUT LOUD. My next show is May 2012 and will stay within 5-7 pounds of my show weight.

What’s a good goal? I’m always asked what is a good goal. My response is typically what will motivate you  to get out of bed on a 3 degree snowy morning. That’s a motivating goal. Goals are very personal. Your goal could be something really simple such as fitting into your pants or training for a marathon. Finding your motivation is truly personal and if you want to do some brainstorming, shoot me an email.

I hope this gives you a little insight to me. I will be offering 15 min goal setting appointments the week between Christmas and New Year’s. Please send me an email with some days and times that will work for me.

So many people say the WANT to _______, you fill in the blank. Lose weight, build muscle, fit into their skinny jeans or the little black dress. And then you hit the wall of LACK! You know what I’m talking about, you can’t hit your goals, because you lack this, that and any other excuse you can drum. Below you will find 5 Lacks that you can turn around to make your weight loss/fitness goals a reality.

1. Motivation — you have a goal, but it doesn’t inspire you. It doesn’t cause you to take action.  Turn it around. What will inspire you to take action — is it telling someone? Is posting your goals all around the house? Is it taking your jeans up on your wall so you can see them each and every day? Whatever it is, needs to motivate you to take ACTION!!!
2. Accountability — you’ve set the goal, but you haven’t told anybody what it is, so if you don’t do it guess what it doesn’t matter because no one knows. Turn it around — TELL SOMEONE! You have no one to tell. Tell me — shoot me an email and I’ll hold you accountable. This accountability person is the person who holds your feet to fire and encourages when you get down or gives you the swift kick in the tush when you need it as well.
3. “Life” (you get busy) — these days are all “busy” running a million miles away, here is how you turn it around! Planning, planning and more planning.   Here’s how it works. Every week sit down and decide what you are going to do this week and put it in your calendar. I mean EVERYTHING — when will you prep your meals for the week, when will you workout.
4. Support — everyone around isn’t living a healthy lifestyle or will test your willpower. You can have just one can’t you? Well don’t let those crabs get you down. Turn it around by spending time with like minded folk. I know its hard to pull away from people, but its all about toward something versus remaining stagnat. To be successful at living a healthy life you need the support.
5. Results – you’ve gone down this path before and your results didn’t come as quickly as you would have hoped for. So.. you gave up, it wasn’t going to work any way, right. Wrong — most people give up right before they reach the tipping point the point at which change is about reach its boiling point.  I also want you to remember that change takes MASSIVE ACTION for MASSIVE RESULTS to be acheived. Are you ready to turn it around and take that MASSIVE ACTION.

I know that this is a total mind shift. You need to get your head moving from a place of what you lack into a place of what you don’t lack and how you can use those tools to push you toward your goals. One of the biggest ways I’ve been able to reach my goal is through the support of people, both online and offline. If you would like to brainstorm ways to turn aournd your fitness goals, shoot me an email. I’d love to hear from you.

PS — please join me for a pre-thanksgiving fast. I will be starting my 9 day cleanse on Tuesday, November 15 and breaking my fast on Thursday, November 24th Thanksgiving day. If you’d like to join me, please shoot me an email. My goal is to release 5 pounds from my body.

From some of my clients I hear, I want to make changes to my body or eating, do you have any suggestions that will help get me motivated? Well yes I do ….
What’s YOUR motivation? What is YOUR reason for even attempting the goal? Do you have a burning desire to reach your goals?

What’s your vision for yourself? Do you have a clear picture of what you want? Is it so clear that you feel like you can reach out a touch it? What I mean by burning desire is that if its’ 2 degrees outside and you need to shovel out your car, will you still go to the gym?

You will reach your goals if it’s your true desire. So I ask you to sit and down and get really clear about what YOU want. No one else can tell you what your motivation is, only you get find your motivation. Trust me, there are times that I wish that a burning bush would appear on my front lawn. It’s not going to happen, that burning burn is internal! You need to tap into what is going to motivate you on the inside — it’s your internal voice cheering you on and your internal kick in the pants all wrapped in one.

Yes — external motivation can help bolster your internal motivation, but external motivation can’t be your only source. Your internal burning bush must be ignited if you are going to reach your goals.

Care to share your internal burning bush — what’s your motivation?

What I mean by that is, are you one of those people who sit around and say “Someday I will __________.” “I’ll meet my fitness goals if________________.” If I only had__________, I’d be able to_______.”

Does that sound like you? Are you waiting for someday? I have a question for you, how long have you been waiting for someday to come? Do you think it will ever come? Guess what if you don’t TAKE ACTION!! Your someday will never come in.  You won’t achieve your goals or dreams by wishing and hoping. You’ll achieve them by setting goals.

The best goals are WRITTEN. You can’t just think them or say them. You need to write down your goals and put them someplace visible. A place that you see them EACH AND EVERYDAY.

I have dry erase boards that I stick to my office door. Every morning I walk in my office and I look at my board and review my goals.  I have 4 of these dry erase boards on my door. Here is how I’ve broken down my goals.

1. My goals for 2011
2. My goals for the next 3 months
3. My goals for the next 30 days
4. My weekly goals

Every day I look at them and decide what am I going to do today and is that going to push me toward one of my goals.  My challenge to you is take 30 minutes and sit down and write out what is it that you want to achieve by the end of 2011. You have 120 days, what can you achieve so that you have more to celebrate than the end of the year and the start of the new?

If you are looking for a challenge, I encourage you to try my skinny jeans challenge.

Leave me some comments below to let me know what you plan to achieve in your 120 days.

Obstacles don’t have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don’t turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it.
Michael Jordan

Michael Jordan is arguably the one of the best basketball players in the world.  So you may ask yourself, what kind of problems could this guy have! Deciding who the pass the ball to, or just drive the ball to the basket himself.

If Michael Jordan had a challenge and stared them down, what are you doing about challenges.  Do you find a way around them, or do you just throw your hands up and decide that it wasn’t meant to be?

When of my favorite expressions I like to say whenever someone tells me they have a fitness challenge I say “It’s not like you’re climbing Mt. Everest in a bikini.” Most people laugh and really think their fitness challenge isn’t that huge.

Whenever I’m faced with a fitness challenge, here are a few things I do to help turn the mountain into a mole hill.

• Workout — this is my favorite, I come up with some of my best ideas this way.
• Talk it out with a friend — sometimes when you say it out loud your challenge(s) doesn’t seem that the bad.
• Break problems into smaller chunks — when you look at the problem as a whole it may seem like Mt. Everest, (sorry I have a thing about Everest) but then you sit down and break it down it, again it doesn’t seem that bad.

Tell me your fitness challenge. I’d love to help you solve it.

Today I was really struggling to come up with a great post, while I was procrastinating I went on Facebook and stumbled across this post from a good friend of mine.

Today your actions will help lay the groundwork for something that will get you noticed by the folks you admire most, act thoughtfully and take the high road. There’s a real change coming in your life, one that you’ve been hoping for, for a long time. It may be something you’ve been avoiding even speaking about because you fear it may never happen. Get ready, because you’re about to get what you wished for.

So I ask you what is it that you have secretly wished for?  If you stumbled across a magic lamp that said rub me and I’ll grant you one wish, what would it be?
Now imagine today is that lamp. What actions can you take TODAY that will lay the groundwork.

I know you’ve heard this before, but I have to say I truly believe and I’ve seen it time and time again when I write down my goals and get really clear about what I want, I ACHIEVE them. No, my goals don’t happen overnight, but the writing them down serves to purposes 1. It makes me get really clear about what I want 2. It makes me look at them and say what am I doing to achieve them. Call the 2nd one a nice swift kick in the tush!

What groundwork will you laydown today? How will you begin to march toward your goals?

For me — I’m starting a new fitness tips ebook — that is my new goal. I will start by writing down as many tips I can in 1 month

I’m really fortunate that the people who read my site have two things in common:

• a passion to lead a healthy lifestyle
• goal(s) that they are striving to achieve

One of things I hope that I can provide to my readers as well as my clients is prescriptive guidance to help them achieve their goals. One of their main question is cardio?

I live in Boston right next to the Charles River as soon as the snow melts the runners, joggers and walkers come out in droves.  Do you know why they run — I mean at least 85% of them, come on you the answer, think about it!! That’s right its to LOSE WEIGHT!

Running is cardio right, running is hard for me so it must be good for me, running will help me lose weight, right.  Well…. Long distance running is the worst thing for weight loss.

SAY WHAT!!!

Most of you run because you’ve seen pictures of elite runners who are lean and mean and want to get the physique or you have a friend who has the physique that you want and you ask hey what are you doing and then they say or I just run x number of miles a day. You think to yourself — running that’s easy I’ll lace up and get moving.

I’m here to tell you unless you competing in an endurance event, running will not give you that lean toned physique. I’m sorry to report that continuous long slow steady state cardio just doesn’t get the metabolism fired up the way a strength training session coupled with interval training does.  Did know that interval training is 9xs more effective than steady state cardio? Getting your metabolism fired up is EXACTLY what is needed to get that lean and toned physique. Intervals keep your body guessing and stops it from going on autopilot.

Long slow steady state cardio does just that, it puts the body on autopilot. Your body knows exactly what to expect, how much effort to give you and therefore only gives you what you need. I’m not saying these workouts won’t be hard, but your body doesn’t have to give you as much. What’s even worse as you build up your mileage you begin to burn more fat, but guess what your body adapts to help you become more efficient at running so it begins to “store more fat”!  Yup — you heard that right.  Don’t believe me take a look at any finish line of any race; you’ll see far more average Joe physiques than you’ll see Kara Goucher physiques. They’ll be a few Kara Goucher’s, but I’ll let you in on little secret they looked like that before they started running.

You can’t run to get fit; you need to be fit to run.” – Diane Lee, Canadian Physical Therapist

When you are training for a long distance endurance race your body is recruiting different muscles to make sure that you are efficient at running.  When you are training to change your body composition you are looking to make your body’s efficient at strength training. Training for both throws your body into tug of war.  As you get more efficient at running you may experience that your fat stores tend overtake your muscle stores. Most people experience loss of muscularity in their quads and then in their tushies. Now depending on where you hold your weight, you may also experience fat gains around your mid-section.

I don’t say this to discourage your fitness goals. I tell you this so that you can make informed choices.

Need more proof – here are a few studies.

• J Clin Endocrinol Metab. Jan 2
  Effect of calorie restriction with or without exercise on body composition and fat distribution.
  This is a six month study. Aerobic training group performed 50 minutes of aerobics 5 times a week for the entire duration. Results:  No additional effects of aerobic exercise on weight or body fat levels.
• Obesity 2007 June – 15:1496-1512.
  Exercise Effect on Weight and Body Fat in Men and Women.
• McTiernan et al
  For 1 year they had a test group do six hours of steady state cardio for 60 min, six days per week. In one year, the group lost 3 lbs.
• According to a British study, levels of Human Growth Hormone, which assists in building muscle and burning fat, skyrocketed 530% in subjects after just thirty seconds of sprinting as fast as they could on a stationary bike.

I would love to hear your thoughts leave me some comments below.

Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase. — Martin Luther King, Jr.

It happens to each and everyone of us, we set a goal and immediately focus on the end result. We then have 2 thoughts, YES we can do it or NO this will never happen. Focusing on the end result I admit can be a little overwhelming when you start thinking about ALL that needs to be done to achieve your goal. But here is how I want you to start thinking about your goal. It works for any fitness, weight loss or life goal. Think of your goal as a cross country road trip. Picture this, you want to drive from New York to Los Angeles. Would you even think of just getting in the car and driving without a plan and God forbid rest stops? No you’d pull out the map pull up an online map and plan your journey, you’d pick your rest stops, places of interest along the way and interject some fun and celebrations along the route.

Instead of focusing on the end, break your journey into 200 feet. Pull out your map:

• What will you need to do to get to the first 200 foot mark?
• What actions do you need to take?
• What resources will you need?
• Who’s support will need?

Sit down right now and get clear about what you really want and then figure out what you need to do, to get to the 1st 200 feet.

Leave me some comments below, I would love to hear your plans.

Enjoy the journey — need any assistance, please let me know I’m hear to help.

What are your thoughts around losing weight, getting into shape, staying healthy. Do you think that you can do it, have you tried in the past and it didn’t happen as quickly as you wanted it to and then you gave up? Were you successful and then went back to your old ways and put the weight back on?

Regardless of what happened to you there was a THOUGHT that you had and that THOUGHT made you be successful or told you to quit.

Now when you listened to the successful thought, did you visualize what you like when you reached that goal, could you smell taste, touch what success would feel like?  Or did you visualize failure and let those thoughts stop you dead in your tracks.

Give this  a try change the frequency and focus on the positive. See yourself as being successful, so clear you can touch it, you feel like you are dreaming and will need to pinch yourself.

Are you reading this and going what the heck is she talking about? What I’m talking about is visualization. You set a goal and really clearly define it and see  yourself as if you have reached that goal! Each day you’re taking baby towards reaching that goal and eventually your goal will be achieved.

This happens because we changed our thoughts around our goal.

Here is how I changed my thoughts — I am not a very good swimmer and my husband is always asking me to go kayaking with him, I typically say no or I’ll think about it and never do. This past weekend, he asked me and instead of  my typical response, I visualized that I could do, I saw through my fear of the water and did it. I visualized myself being successful versus being stranded and rescued by the Coast Guard.

How can you change your thoughts? I’d love to hear about that. Please leave me some comments below.

To get the future you want, you need to let go of the past. Review your baggage and see if those old beliefs you have been holding onto are holding you back.  Take time to reflect and then say those are old beliefs and I let them go.

1. Set a deadline – nothing springs you into action like a deadline.  I recommend picking 3 dates (short roughly 6 weeks, medium roughly 12 weeks and long roughly 24 weeks). This way you’ll have something to celebrate yet keep you motivated.
2. Review past behaviors – As I said earlier, look at your past, if what you were doing wasn’t getting you to where you want to be, then you need to stop doing them. What I mean is if you want to lose weight and you are not exercising and/or watching what you eat, guess what?  You are not going to see results.

Now is the time to take your dream and put it into action.  I am hosting a Shape Up For Summer teleconference call.  I will be discussing actions you can take to flatten your belly, tone your legs, tightened your tushy and what’s the best thing to eat on a hot summer night. To attend, just register here.

In the next 30 days what actions will you take to make your dreams come true?