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.

“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.

“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.

So what do, some days I push through and then other days, I give myself a pass and then say come hell or high water, you must dust yourself off and get in the ring again.

Another tool, I use to get motivated to workout is itrain, it’s a program that provides me my own virtual trainer, talking me through interval training, spinning, strength training and stretching.  My favorite is the itread program I owe all of them.  It really motivates me to get on the treadmill on a cold snowy day and trust me here in Boston we have had a number of them.

I also keep this quote on my desk.

“People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily.” — Zig Zigler

Tell me how do you dust yourself off and start again?

New Year Resolution making is just around the corner.  Let me ask, how’d you do last year? Do you achieve all that you set out to resolve?  Well how me make 2009 the year that you make all your new year’s resolutions?

Here are few steps to help you make them.

1. Define your goals and write down your goals so that they are visible
   • a flab stomach is a wish
   • losing 5 pounds of fat is a goal
2. Create a  tracking system
   • without a tracking system how will you know how you are doing against your goal
3. Grab a partner or board of directors
   • someone or a group of folks who you tell your goal and will how you accountable.  I talking touch love, not someone who will say “that’s OK, you’ll do it next year”
4. Evaluate
   • take a look at your tracking system and see how you are doing are you making process, if not why what do you need to change to hit your goals, if you are hitting your goals, how can you keep going.

Quick advice:

Don’t set more than 2 resolutions this year.  If you find that you are accomplishing what you want to do, then set 2 more.  Most folks want to change the world after their hangover where off, so put the cape back in the closet and pick 2 things you REALLY want to accomplish this year and work your fanny off to get it.

So, tell what are you thinking about this year?  Do you want someone hold you accountable?  I can help you need me to give you a hug while I kick you the A%#$^&.

Stay tuned, I have some goals I am working on and will share them with you next Monday!

A new client of mine approached me with a big challenge.  She as a number of goals that she wants to achieve over the next year, she wants to:

1. lose over 100 pounds
2. pass the bar
3. graduate with her MBA
4. start interviewing for a job
5. start dating again
6. potential attendance to the inauguration of Barack Obama

Do you have goals like this?  Have you ever set goals like this?  Now honestly tell me how successful have you been?

Many people have these goals and if they don’t achieve them within a few weeks, they get disappointed and go back to their old habits and behaviors. My advice to her was slow and steady wins the race.

Instead of focusing on the top of Mt. Everest, let’s set up a number of steps along the way, and celebrate each step.  This will help keep you motivated to keep going. I also encourage all of you to tell as many people as you know what you are doing say that way, they can help hold you accountable and provide a little encouragement along the way.

These next 2 will be the hardest of all

1. STAY OFF THE SCALE!!
2. STAY POSITIVE!! You can do this and You will do this!

I was watching Sunday Morning on CBS today and they suggesting that the ups and downs of the stock market can be compared to a herd mentality.  A herd mentality is a way to describe how people’s behaviors can influenced by their peers.

So what does this have to do with fitness? Well, how is your fitness influenced by what others are doing?  Has a friend ever called/emailed/text-ed you and asked what you were doing and when you said you were going to workout they mentioned that a group of people (the herd) where doing something else and asked you to come along?  What do you say? Do you stick to your plan or do you go along with the herd?

We may have evolved, but we still like to feel part of a group and fear of not belonging sometimes over takes our need to be our own person. Trust me I know how you feel!

I am a fitness competitor and typically compete in 5 shows/year. The season starts in April runs through June and then I start back up again in the Fall. So trust me there are plenty of times when I get the phone call, have to go to a party, wedding or other social event and I want to follow the herd and play hooky, but this is when you reach inside and is this playing hooky today going to help me reach the goals I have set?  Then ask yourself, how committed are you to reaching your goals?

Let me know do you follow the herd or do you stick to your goals?