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The Food Moderation Mystery Revealed

August 12, 2019 By kimkb49 Leave a Comment

Finding Your Sweet Spot

Today’s topic is going to be a little let’s say triggering. The topic is all about moderation, and it is finding your sweet spot. And I know for a lot of people that’s the goal, the hope. They want to get to that golden zone; they want to get to that magical place where unicorns are flying around and there’s glitter and so forth. But for some people, they’re like, “Moderation is not for everyone. I’ve tried to get to moderation and somehow I find a way to fuck it up and then I’m back to that binge-restrict cycle, I’m back to my rules, and I got to keep my rules because my rules keep me safe.”

I live here in Boston; I have a really good friend who is a marathon coach. He coaches several teams to run the marathon from “you just decided you want to run a marathon” to “you’ve been running a marathon for as long as you can run a marathon”. I asked him – at the time I worked at the last mile of the marathon – I said, “John, how is it that these elite runners who have just run 25 miles and they’re sprinting, they are running like they’ve just started down the street?” I said, “How do they do it?” And he said, “It takes a bit, but they find their sweet spot, they find that pace that they can just do, it’s just, “I can run at this pace all day long.” And then when they get to roughly six miles out, which kind of makes me gag, six miles out someone is going to look at each other and they’re going to say, “We’re going to sprint this last X number of miles.” The idea of me sprinting, that’s what I do when I see the meter maid at my car, that’s my idea of sprinting.

Rub The Lamp

If we think about our health and our fitness as a marathon, it’s a long journey, it’s not a sprint. And how do you get to that sweet spot? How do you get to that golden zone? How do you become your own magical unicorn? Because I believe that everyone has a little magic in them, and it just takes a little bit of time to find it. I’m going to call this a fable, but correct me if I’m wrong, Aladdin, in that story a guy finds this old tarnished lamp, it looks like crap, people are picking over it and he’s like, “I think this is beautiful.” He rubs it, a genie comes out and all is changed in his world. That’s where I want you to think about. I want you to think about you’re that lamp. You’ve overlooked yourself for all these years. You’ve put yourself on the back burner. Now, here’s where we are going to start to rub that lamp, make it get pretty, make it get beautiful.

Put those eye-rolls on the shelf and let me tell you my story.

I struggled with this whole moderation thing. I was like, “Girl, that is just not for me, that’s for other people. But thank you for sharing that’s possible.” And I know that a few of you are like that. I felt that if I wasn’t following a plan or following a program to the T, I couldn’t live. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t trust myself not to look at, “What should I do today? What’s on the good food list? What’s on the bad food list?” I couldn’t trust myself, and the plan made me trust myself, the plan kept me safe. The plan kept me from running around like a sailor on shore leave.

The Yin And Yang of Moderation

I want you to think that it’s about finding that yin and that yang. If you think about the old school scales where you put something on one side and the other side goes up, and then you have to kind of fool around with how many marbles you take off and put back on so that it comes into balance. I know some of you will be like, “There’s no such thing as balance.”

I do believe there is balance, but balance looks different for every single person. There are some days that you are going to be running around like a chicken with your head cut off and there are going to be other days you’re going to be Netflix and chilling. You know that rhythm, and that’s what moderation is, it’s finding your rhythm, it’s finding your balance so that you’re not brought down to your knees because of a holiday and you lose your stuff and you can’t find a way to get back on track. Balance and moderation is not having these hard-fast rules that you can’t live up to day in and day out, and when you do open the lid it’s like champagne flowing out. I want you to think about that, how do you get a little bit of that self-trust back in?

One of the ways I started to find my moderation and kind of keep my A++ personality in check is I start with a weekly plan and it’s me sitting down every single Sunday and saying, “What does my week look like?” And us ladies of a certain age, most times stuff doesn’t just pop up, we know what we’re doing. There might be a vague something, but it’s penciled in, you kind of know what’s going to happen. It’s rare that someone is going to call you on a Tuesday and be like, “Let’s go out for drinks at [5:00]”, because for most us, once you get home and your bra comes off you’re not going back out, let’s just be honest about that. I want you to think about creating that weekly plan, and you’re sitting down and you’re looking at your calendar and you’re saying, “This is when I’m going to work out” realistically. I’m not asking anyone to work out seven days a week, that’s not what I’m asking. I’m saying my commitment to myself is I am going to work out at least three times, and I know I can do that. Usually I work out four/five times, but I know I can minimally hit three and definitely hit four, and five is my stretch goal. I want you to think about that. When I put down my week, it’s my good, better, my best, and so I want you to put down something that you know you can nail, because as you’re starting to get in the moderation groove you want to have these small wins, and small wins keep you wanting to do stuff, don’t they?

Reverse engineering your success

Or if you have a schedule that isn’t as stable as mine you can definitely start with a 24-hour plan. You sit down and you say, “It’s Tuesday, what does tomorrow look like? Can I fit in a work out? What does my food look like?” And just map it out. Maybe it starts with, “This is when I’m going to bed” and then you map it backwards. Or you put in the commitments that you have that day and then you fit your food and your work out around those particular commitments. And as I’ve said, I’ve come up with these non-negotiables, and that way I honor myself. Because if you think about it, we as women honor everybody else before ourselves. We’ll run kids to XYZ activity, birthday party, try out, whatever, we will contort ourselves to get them there on time. We’ll contort ourselves for our spouses, we’ll contort ourselves for our family, but when it comes to us, “I’m being selfish” or “Tomorrow” or “Next week”, and we always find a way to put ourselves in the backseat. So, this helps me to put myself in the driver’s seat, and I’m come up with three non-negotiables, and it helps me to say it’s okay for me to have Kim-time, and so this is me giving you permission you have you-time.

The Law of 3

It’s three simple things that I know I can commit to week in and week out.

I work out at least three times a week. When I say work out that’s not me going to the gym and banging out for multiple hours, that’s me having 30 minutes. It could be anything, it could be going for a walk, it could be doing something in my home gym, it could be actually taking a class. But it’s three times for at least 30 minutes I have to move my body in a week.
I have a big ass salad with some protein item, and that way I can get a ton of veggies in. I know that I’m getting my veggies, I’m getting my fiber, and I like salads, and I know that I can go anywhere on the planet and get a salad.
My sleep because I know that when I don’t sleep, I am hungry and a bit of a bitch. That’s a simple way to test – I want you to track your sleep for a week, and when you track your sleep and you get less than seven hours of sleep I want to know at what point do you start getting those sugar, caffeine cravings to give you that extra bump to get you through the day. Because I know when I get less than six hours of sleep, me and my coffee makers are BFFs. I’m like, “Bring on the coffee.” And at [4:00] I’m like, “Hmm, what sugary treat could I have?” And let me tell you, it’s not me reaching for the cotton candy grapes. That’s why I know I prioritize my sleep. So, I want you to think about does that same scenario play through for you?

This was me changing three habits, just three. And I know everyone wants to change… “But I have “this many” habits that I need to change, and I need to change them right now.” Here is where you change that thinking, I want you to think about your bare minimum, it starts a good habit. Once you have good habits then you can build a routine. Once you have a great routine, you can build consistency, and it’s the consistency that gives you results. A lot of times I talk to my clients, they’re like, “Ugh, I ‘m not getting any results.” And they’re complaining and ask the question because WHY. It’s because “You don’t have consistency.” And they’re like, “But…” and they give me the litany of excuses, and I was like, “Let’s go back to habits, give me three habits that you would love to either create or break.”

Because it’s the habit that drives the routine, and it’s our routines that we work on autopilot. Think about it. Think about your routine of washing your face and brushing your teeth. What do you do first? Do you brush your teeth first, or do you wash your face? That’s a habit, that’s a routine, you just do it over and over again. When you have coffee in the morning, do you put in the cream before the sugar, or do you put the sugar in before the cream? It’s what you do. So, I want you to really think about where can we create some great habits that can turn into some amazing routines that can turn into that consistency that can turn into results?

Patience breeds success

Results and consistency take time. It’s slow, I know. It’s slow. But I want you to think about the Grand Canyon. That giant ravine, I don’t know how many miles long it is, Google that, but that didn’t happen overnight. That was years and years of the river carving through rocks. That is how change happens; it happens over time. I know we all want change to be some type of action movie where I walk through a door and boom, bang, everything happens. No, my queens, not at all. It is a slow thing. And so, when I break things down into small bite-size chunks, you know how I am, I really like to check things off the box. So, the more I can give myself these mini goals, the more checkboxes I can have and the happier I am because it looks like I’m on my way somewhere. But when I’m always looking that I have to lose a thousand pounds, I have to lose 40 dress sizes, that’s a long freaking way.

Pace yourself

I started this show about marathons, and one of the things the marathon coach told me is that they take it a mile at a time. They’re like, “How do I do that mile? How do I do that mile?” And they’re checking their watches to see, “What was my pace?” They’re checking in, “What’s my hydration?” They’re always checking in. And that’s what I want you to do, as you start going through your goal, what are the milestones? Because that’s how you get to moderation, is that you’re checking in with yourself, seeing how things are going, and if things are going well, you’re like, “Yes, things are going good. I can continue down this path” and start to feel the groove, start to feel like this is what it feels like and feel amazing. Because so many of us, we’ve been dieting for so long we don’t know what it’s like just to be. And when you let the reigns off… I know that many of you feel like, “Aw snap. If I let the reigns off there’s no getting this horse back in that barn, because once I get a taste of something, I am free, I’m free.” But what if that wasn’t the case, what if that was just a story you told yourself? What if someone did leave the barn door open and you just went out and you just graze and you felt okay, and when you were tired of grazing you went back in the barn and you went to sleep? That’s possible.

Why do we have to have in our mind the worst possible case? “If I do not have it planned, if I don’t have any rules, I should just pull up to the old country buffet with some maternity pants on and just let it go down.” But what if instead you’re like, “You know what, I’m just going to eat till I’m full”, even if that means leaving some things on your plate. And I know that when I was a kid we didn’t need to clean our plates. I’m grateful to my mother for this. When she was a kid, she was raised you had to clean your plate. She would say she wasn’t hungry. She was raised in that family that took your plate and put it in the refrigerator and you ate it until you finished, and that was before the microwave, so it was cold. She decided that is not how I will raise my kids. So, I’ve never been someone who has been a member of the clean plate club. As soon as I’m done, I stop eating, as soon as I was full, I stop eating. I didn’t want to push food into my mouth. Some people say to me, “I don’t know when I’m full. If it’s in front of me I’m eating it till it’s done.” Here is where you need to start taking breaks when you are eating so that you can check in with yourself and ask are you hungry are you full?

Split Your Meal With Yourself

What I encourage my clients to do is eat half their meal, whatever you’re eating, eat half of it. And take a pause for two three minutes and just tune in and check in because the travel time up your nervous system between your tummy and your head, there is a little delay. Have you ever been on a Skype call or a Facebook call and you’re talking and then they just freeze and then you wait and then they catch up? That’s how your brain is to your stomach. So, just take two/three minutes, check in, ask your question, “Am I full?” “Am I not full?” And it’s not wasteful – if you’re at a restaurant, doggy bag; if you’re at home, have it later, split up your meal in two. Maybe you had a bigger portion than you were hungry for that particular day. I hope that you’re picking up what I’m putting down here, because one of the ways I was able to break free of this whole perfectionism or the fact that my meal plan called to eat X number of carbs and X number of fats. I just had to break away and I had to start asking myself better questions. And one of the questions I asked myself was, “Was my quest for perfection costing me? What was it costing me, this ‘I had to follow the plan to the T’? What was it costing me?” And then was it pushing me further from my goal, because when I got frustrated, I would sabotage? And was I using diet and exercise to control my life because I had things in my life that weren’t controllable?

Again, I told you I was type A++, and at the time, at the height of my diet mania I had a really hectic job and I had things that I couldn’t control. I had a hectic and chaotic boss, and so I couldn’t control that, but I could control food. And I see it play out sometimes with my clients. One of my clients, she is a new mom, she runs a business, trying to be a good wife, trying to be a good mom, rock her business, and she is literally picking her body apart because that’s the only thing she feels like she has control over. She hasn’t found her rhythm yet in this whole mommy hood. And one of the things I told her is that, “You have to take this giant step back and figure out what is your new life with your little nugget. How does your nugget play into everything else that you’re trying to do? Because you might need to stop doing some things just because you have to take care of your kid. You might have to delegate some things because you have a kid now, and so maybe that free time that you had is now you’re being a mommy and then being okay and comfortable with that’s what has to happen.” So, that part of moderation comes with you doing an internal look to see are you trying to take on too much to prove to yourself “I can do it. I am woman, hear me roar”? Because if you’re burning yourself out, who’s going to hear you roar? Or they’re going to hear you scream when you pass out on the floor.

Do You Have Realistic Restrictions

I want you to really focus in on, “With the restrictions that I’m setting up for myself, is that creating a life that I can live in the long-term?” And if you can’t live that life long-term or you always find yourself cheating on said “plan” This client she’s always like, “This is what I’m doing this week.” I’m like, “Great, let’s do it.” And then the following week I’m like, “Hey, how did we do?” And she’s like, “Well, it was a really rough week, so the wine and the chocolate came out.” And that right there, I tell her, “The wine and the chocolate is your response to stress. And so, every time that wine and chocolate comes out, you have to look at what’s causing the wine and chocolate to come out.” If that sounds like you, it’s time for you to really evaluate what you’re doing in your life that needs to change, because if you want to see a change in your body and you keep reaching for wine and chocolate, moderation is going to be like pfft, it’s pretty much like traveling to Mars for you. And I don’t want that, I want moderation to be maybe for some of you driving across the country, some of you, traveling across town. Maybe some of you are already there or you are on the town line and you just need to make a few tweaks and you can stay in that magical golden zone. In order for me to get through to moderation I had to break up those rules. I had to break up those rules and start really listening to my body. I had to stop saying, “I needed to have X number of meals a day” and really just trust and eat how I felt. Now, I know that that takes time, and again, remember I said this is a marathon, not a sprint.

When it comes to food, one of my biggest breakthroughs when it comes to the moderation for food is that I had to balance satisfying versus satiating. Satisfying is up here – my brain sees something on my plate and it’s like, “Yeah, get in my belly.” And when I eat it, if I’m full, I feel fullness, that’s satiation. That’s all the blood vessels in the center of my stomach saying, “Alright girl, we’re full.” But I also have to have it up here, because if my brain looks at something on the plate and is like, “I’m not feeling this”, I’m going to be a bottomless pit. And so, I want you to think about how many foods are you eating that gives you that visual, that brain candy if you will? And how many foods are you eating because it’s on the good food list? And so that’s where I want you to really kind of tune into your body that says eating chicken, broccoli and brown rice, is it satisfying in your brain, or is it satisfying in your gut? What’s happening? Pay attention to that, because that’s when you really start to honor yourself and you start to eat differently and eat better foods that will keep you fuller longer. And the goal is to stay fuller longer so that I’m not constantly in seek mode, because usually when I get into that seek mode, I’m seeking foods that I really know that aren’t good for me. I’m going for the quick fixes of the junk food so that it’s, “How quickly can I get another dopamine hit up here in my brain for something that is satisfying versus satiating?”

Work Your Workouts

And then workouts – “I want to work out for at least 30 minutes.” Yes, 30 minutes! I know that it’s kind of scary to step away from those two-hour workouts, because trust me, I was that girl. I remember going to the gym with my husband and we would always walk in together, we would say, “How much time do you need?” For me, a good workout was 90 minutes.
If I couldn’t get a 90 minute-ish workout, and if he had to leave early, I remember I would be so mad, like how can we not work out for 90 minutes, seriously? And I was just like, “Okay”, and meanwhile on the inside I’m like, “I’m mad. This workout should be 90 minutes or why do it.” If I had less than 60 minutes my mindset was, “I have no time to come back to the gym to finish my workout.” Fast forward to today, like, “Oh, sweet Jesus, how much time did I spend at the gym?” Now I’ve become way more efficient with my workouts that in literally 30 to 45 minutes I can kick my own booty and feel sore. So, I want you to really look at what you’re doing for your workout, and is it more of a mental thing than a physical thing? Because, trust me, there are some crazy kick your booty workouts that can be done in 30 minutes. And so, for those of you guys who one of the reasons why you’re not able to find moderation, you’re not able to find the consistency,

especially when it comes to workout is because you think a workout has to be this marathon session at the gym, holla at your girl, because I can help you out.

On my Instagram I do every Friday a fat burning Friday (#fatburningfridday) and it’s probably no more than five exercises that are done either for time, done for rounds, and its body weight exercises or requires very little to no equipment. And it’s things you can do at home, so if you’re someone who is like, “I don’t have a gym membership or want to have a gym membership”, or maybe you have kids, you want to work out at home, it’s really simple.

I have a good friend, Kerri, she has a two-year-old, and she sits him over in the corner and he’s playing with blocks or coloring and she pulls out a10-15-minute workout. And sometimes it’s a couple minutes during the day or sometimes it’s just 15 minutes, wherever her son’s tolerance is at that particular day. So, I really want you to start thinking about rounding out what does that type of moderation look like to you. But the big take away that I want you to take from this session is one, be flexible. Be flexible but be committed and finding time. Commit to yourself just like you commit to other people.

Discover the Secrets of Meal Prep

August 5, 2019 By kimkb49 Leave a Comment

Here we are, we’re heading into the summer, and summer for a lot of us is busy. Well, life is busy, but mainly I feel the summer gets even busier because kids are out of school, the days are longer, and we’re trying to squeeze, at least I am, trying to squeeze as much outdoor activity as I possibly can in the 5 minutes of summer we get here in Boston. And one of the biggest ways that I’m able to save time is meal prepping.

What’s stopping you?

I asked this question on my Facebook page the litany of reasons why people do it and the reasons why people don’t, there were a lot of commonalities and a lot of different reasons why people don’t do it. For me, when I first started losing weight, I didn’t know anything about meal prepping, and when I started, the trainer I was working with at the time was like, “You should prep at least your lunch.” I was like, “What are you talking about?”

I remember as a kid my mom would cook meals in the beginning of the week and she would freeze them or use a crock-pot because she was a working mom, the last thing she wanted to do is come home and cook dinner after a long day. I always thought it was a time saver, but I wasn’t cooking for a family, most times I’m cooking for myself. And of course, you always throw together sometimes crappy meals, sometimes not the healthiest meals, or find any place that is willing to deliver it to you in 30 minutes or less, that’s what you’re eating.

I know that so many of you agonize over meal prep, and some of the things I heard was, “I can cook it on Saturday, the thought of eating four-day-old chicken – yuck! Or, “I cook it, and by the time I get to whatever day I’m supposed to have it, I just don’t feel like having that anymore.” Honestly, I know that meal prep takes less time than you think. Most of us spend more time planning a vacation than we do what we’re going to eat, and then we spend more time regretting the choices that we made. Anyone ever make a meal and you just regret it? Last night I was like, “Hm.” It was an okay dinner, but I traveled all weekend, I kind of quickly went to the grocery store, and I’m going to say I wouldn’t even give myself a C, it was like a D for dinner. Luckily my husband ate it, he didn’t complain about it so two snaps up and a tic-tac to you honey.

Plan it out

The first thing when it comes to meal prepping is you have to make a menu. So that means you have to go to the grocery store. And trust me, I hate the grocery store. I’m not one of those people, you know you see those couples in the grocery store and I’m like, “How did you wrangle your man to come to the grocery store?” One person is pushing the cart and one is putting stuff into the cart, and I’m like, “Oh my god.” Me and my husband would be having one of those like knock-down drag-out fights because whenever we do go to the grocery store together, he’s like, “Why don’t we buy this? Why don’t we buy that?” He’s a five-year-old, 🙄 At least I can yell at him at the store and people not call DSS on me 😉. So, grocery shopping for me, I have to be organized to go to the grocery store because I’m not those people who go up one aisle and down the other aisle.” I’m like Mario Andretti, I’m like, “How fast can I get in and out of this place?” And ideally, I want to be in and out of that store in 30 minutes, and so I’ve gotten to the point where I know when my store isn’t that crowded, like Sunday afternoon around [3:00], boom, slide in there. Go during Patriots season, go during the first quarter of the game, boom, in and out. I’m all about. “How can I quickly and easily get in and out?” But in order to do that you have to have a list.

Eat first. Then shop.

Always Have Your Must Haves

When I go, I make sure that I eat before I go so, I’m not shopping hungry, and I have my list. I create a list throughout the week. When I do run out of the staple foods that I always have in the house I just put it on the list, so Half and Half, life is not good without Half and Half in my house, so it’s like my base level staples. And we all have those base level staples of things that you just enjoy to always have in your house. For myself it’s always having Half and Half, always having cottage cheese, always having one or two fruits in my house, always having one or two vegetables in my house, always having one or two good fats that aren’t peanut butter in my house, always having some type of brown rice, quinoa, barley, cans of beans, something so that if I’m in one of those times where I went away for the weekend and I didn’t get a chance to go to the grocery store I can quickly and easily throw together a meal but it’s not perishable. That’s the first step, you’ve got to hit the grocery store.

Build your staple stash

And then when I prep, it takes away the stress of, “What am I going to eat?” The stress of that is gone, it takes less of that mental energy. Today I was grocery store, I didn’t go with a list and I didn’t go with an idea, so I spent probably 10 more minutes trying to figure out, “What the heck am I going to eat tonight for dinner?” And then I just stumbled across taco shells on the end cap, and I was like, “Tacos.” I went to grab some ground turkey and grab some shredded cabbage off of the salad bar, and we’re having tacos tonight for dinner. I want you to start thinking about when you have a list versus when you don’t have a list, you get in that, “Wait. Uh, what do I do?” kind of situation. And it makes shopping faster, easier and you spend less money because you go in with a plan versus these hits or miss things. When you go hit or miss, how many times have you bought something that, one, you’ve never used it, or you bought it and it’s a perishable and five days later you’re tossing it in the trash? So, I want you to think about what are your basics and your staples that you always just want to have in the house.

Build around family favorites

And then decide your meals. One of the best things that I do is we all have those staple meals that your family likes. I’m laughing because we’re having tacos and it is Tuesday; Taco Tuesday. You have those staple meals that your family like, so build on what your family likes. If your family likes chili, if your family likes tacos, if you’re family likes Italian, just figure out those meals that your family likes and start to incorporate that regularly into your diet. I remember as a kid Friday was pizza night, so maybe you still stick with that Friday is pizza night. Maybe now that the weather is nicer out, you’re grilling outside more often. Figure out what do you have in your house as I’m planning so that way as I’m writing out my list I’m not duplicating and I’m not running out to store multiple times a week. I go to the grocery store one time a week, and if I didn’t get it in that week, guess what? I’m not getting it. It takes a pretty big thing to get me to go the grocery store more than one time a week. I don’t like the grocery store so much.

Let someone else do it

And for those people who are like, “I don’t like the grocery store” nowadays in most major cities you can either easily get a home delivery from several sources. I know here in the Boston area there are three places, Peapod, Instacart and then actual individual grocery stores will deliver within a certain mile radius of the store. There are several grocery stores, at least here in the Boston area, that you can order online but pick it up there, so at least all you’re doing is throwing the packages into your car. For those people who you have young kids and there are the five-year-old who are like, “How come we can’t have sugar pops, and how come we can’t have ice cream?” you can do that, grocery shopping that way, and that way you’re not worried about unbuckling and strapping in and all of that good stuff. It keeps the kids strapped in the car, throw the groceries in the trunk and off to the races you go. Or don’t even bother with getting them in the car and they all just arrive magically with elves at your front door.

Look to the week ahead.

First of all, you have to go to the grocery store, you have to decide what are the meals that you’re going to have. And then create a calendar. I take a look at my week. Every Saturday I sit down, I take a look at my calendar and I’m like, “Does my husband have a business meeting? Do I have a business meeting? Is there travel?” So, I know how many meals I am actually going to make for that particular week. Then I also will decide, “What am I going to have?”

My main thing I prep is lunch, so I look at it and I say, “What do I want to have for lunch?” And primarily I rotate through either I’m having a big-ass salad, which is all the veggies and I grill some protein, or I’ll be having leftovers. So, I’ll grill breast of chicken and then I know that I’ll have a couple of things left over that I’ll be able to eat and have a salad on the side. I know that a lot of people say to me, “Oh, I don’t know what I want to eat.” Or, “If I cook it on Sunday, I don’t want to eat X number of day-old chicken.” And I get you, I hear you. So, if you like it quasi fresh, I’m a big proponent of you double cooking, so I would cook my dinner and I would have it for my lunch. Or you could cook two dinners in one and that way the next day you’re coming home and all you’re doing is heating up the leftovers so that you’re only cooking a handful of times a week versus cooking every single day.

Variety is the spice of life (and meal prepping)

There are little tricks and hacks that you can do to alleviate your time in the kitchen. I’m not that person who is lining up the Tupperware things and putting all the same meals in it, I don’t do that because I’m with you, I like variety and so for me my variety comes in I double cook. I have dinner and I make it into my lunch for the next day. The other thing I like to do is I’ll make two different proteins, I’ll make two different starches, I’ll make two different vegetables and I’ll just mix and match that way, and that way for me it gives me enough of that variety that I need so that I don’t feel like I’m eating the same thing day after day after day. Now, I know that plenty of you will be like, “What’s wrong with you eating the same thing? I could do it all the time.” I hear you; I get it. That’s you. When I eat the same thing over and over again, I feel like I’m in a prison. I feel like I am a prisoner of war of my own making, and so I need as much variety as I possibly can.

Prepping hacks to reduce time

There are also several themes. Pinterest is my bestie, and a lot of people say, “I don’t know how to cook,” or “I don’t like to cook.” I’m no Martha Stewart. I have no aspirations to go out back and pull a sprig of thyme off of my home-cooked herb garden and go out to my chicken coop and grab freshly hatched eggs. I have no desire to do that. All of that happens for me at the grocery store, it’s magic, magic gets to the grocery store. I know there are farmers, I know all that stuff, but it’s like sausage, do you want to know what’s inside? I don’t. You just go. I enjoy the smell.

If you go on Pinterest type in “easy chicken” and a plethora of recipes will pop up. And for me I’m not one of those people who spend hours in the kitchen. I’m like, “If it has more than five ingredients, it’s not for me, it’s just not for me.” If it takes more than an hour, it’s not for me. I’m like, “How can I be in and out?” As it is now, I struggle, I struggle. I work from home and I struggle to get food on the table by [8:00]. I got no excuses, but I’m all about, “How quickly can I get my food done?” And if you have all the time in the world, rock on with your bad-self sister girl, but I don’t. I don’t want to spend all that time in the kitchen. And when I used to have my old house, I didn’t have air conditioning, so I needed to be in and out of that kitchen as fast as possible because it was hot as (insert your favorite hot vocabulary word). 🥵

Theme cooking

When I was doing my research for the show, I said let me just toss out some themes because I’m not a theme person, I just will punch in the protein that I want to cook for that week. Sometimes I haven’t had fish in a while, so I’ll go on a fish run or I’ll go on a shrimp run. They have Meatless Mondays so you can type in “Meatless Monday” and come up with a number of plant-based meals. What I find is my husband is definitely a carnivore and he’s like, “You go meatless, but where is the protein in this?” He’s that shy about asking about that. He’s like, “It’s good, but I’m still looking for the protein.” So, you can go Meatless Mondays, Taco Tuesday, we’re doing that tonight. You could do Wellness Wednesdays where it’s like if you’re trying to get your family to start to eat healthy maybe you can incorporate some salads on Wednesdays. Also, it’s summertime, so I know I eat a ton of salad. I was in Miami this past weekend and I had three salads that had the most common ingredients, but I never thought to put them together. It was quinoa, corn, tomatoes, and shrimp, and some mixed greens; heavenly. I got to recreate that at home. It was heavenly, and I was like, “Why don’t I have quinoa more often?” It was heavenly. But I digress.

You could do stir fries, you could have a day that you just have sandwiches, you could have stew night. My crock-pot is my best friend. I know everyone is into this Instapot. I haven’t tried it, but same dip, crock-pot, throw all your stuff in in the morning. Nowadays they’re fancy. You can set a timer and then it’ll just put itself on warm until you get home. Instapot, I think it cooks things in like 3.3 seconds; it’s like the microwave of crock pots if you will.

Themes also keep you on task. So, for those people who are like, “Oh, I don’t know if I’m going to like what I decide”, if I haven’t pre cooked it and I just have the ingredients it gives me that flexibility to be like, “I feel like Italian tonight.” And you can make whatever it is for Italian, so you get that flexibility, you get that spontaneity. But again, you also can say, “I’m just going to double the recipe so I’ll either have dinner for the next night or I’ve lunch.” And that way, again, the flexibility, the spontaneity is still in there.

As you are going down this path start to collect recipes that your family and likes. I have a whole drawer full of recipes that have been the two thumbs up. So, when I’m getting organized on Saturday I kind of go through my recipes and I’m like, “This was good.” I do have cookbooks; I have a gazillion cookbooks. But now with Pinterest I just go through my pins of healthy recipes and I have notes of what were hits, what were misses, and go through there and just cook that way.

You could also focus on what is in season. Here in Boston we have several farmers markets, but it’s on Friday, so every Friday I go down to the farmers market and I’m like, “Okay, what’s here?” And I buy some fresh vegetables, and then I go to my Pinterest and say, “What the heck do I do with this now?” But I don’t over-buy, I only buy a couple of things so that way I’m not wasting it because it’s fresh, fresh stuff, so the shelf life ain’t all that long, so I just want to make sure that I’m using it within a couple days.

Don’t Wing It!

My calendar is my saving grace. I want that to be the theme. I know right now you’re like, “It just seems like too much work.” But I’ll tell you, how much energy do you spend asking yourself, “What the heck am I going to eat?” And then how much energy do you spend when you beat yourself up because you went out and you ordered not so healthy takeout. So, if I just sit down for maybe 30 minutes and say, “Okay, what does this week look like? What do I want to eat? How many meals do we need?” Boom! Go through my cabinets, what do we have in the house? What do I need to get? And once you start to get into the rhythm of it, it becomes a habit, and then you have a nice routine of this is how we create our meals for the week. Now it’s a routine. And it’s the habits that create the routines that create the consistency that creates the results.

The number one reason why so many people say to me they fall off the wagon is because they wing it. And trust me, I’m really good at winging a lot of stuff, but I found that I can’t wing health. I need to make a decision that if I want to be healthy, I have to do these things so that I can fit into my pants, that’s my goal, I just want to fit into my pants. So, if that’s one of your goals, you want to fit into your pants, you want to look in the mirror and be like, “How you doing?” You want to be able to go on vacation and not freak out that you have to lose 400 pounds in order to go on vacation, and oh my gosh, you’re pulling and prodding all over your different body parts. This is the way, spending 30 minutes to plan out your week of food is going to go a long way with take taking off the unwanted pounds and keeping you feeling healthy and happy at the end of the day.

Like I said, more people spend more time on where we’re going to go on vacation than what am I going to eat. I don’t know if you’ve seen the TV show, it’s called Camping with Jennifer Garner. It’s her and a bunch of friends on camping, and she was like the quintessential organizer, she had a binder for a binder for a binder. I’m not asking for that level of detail. I’m literally like a pad of paper and just write out what you are going to do, that’s all I’m asking for. And these are just quick hacks, figure out what day of the week you’re going to go to the grocery store, decide what the heck it is that you’re going to eat, plan in there for any potential snacks. I buy everything pre-chopped, sliced, diced – I don’t chop a vegetable at all – and cook double.

Love to hear some of your best meal prep tips.

To Women Who Want to Live Their Best Lives But Don’t Know How

July 10, 2019 By kimkb49 Leave a Comment

I always think to myself, “What do my readers need to hear? What are the things that I’m hearing from you?” And I think at the end of the day we all just want to live a really good life; we all want to live a fabulous life. You know I want to live the Flip Flop life, and hopefully you want to live the Flip Flop Life too. I created a manifesto of what does that really mean. So, if you ever want to get a copy of my Flip flop Life manifesto, do me a favor, hit me up on the socials or you can email me at squadleader at fabfitsquad.com, and just put “Flip flop Life manifesto” in the subject line and send it to me and I will happily send you a copy of the manifesto.

I was thinking about who am I to come up with a manifesto? I came up with a manifesto because I was like, “How do I want to live my life?” And that’s where I want you to think about yourself. If you were starting a business you’d be like, “What kind of business do I want to start?” And then you would say, The business is going to sell magic beans and the beans are going to come in these wonderful containers, and then the wall colors are going to be this color, and then when people come in this door we’re going to greet them in such a way.” You plan a kid’s birthday party, you plan anyone’s party, you figure out all the minute details and you take it from soup to nuts. Yet you don’t do the same thing with your life and you kind of bump along, for lack of a better term. And then you wake up and you’re just like, “Hell, how did X number of years pass by and I told myself when I was a little kid that I was going to be_________”

Were you going to run away and join the circus?
Were you going to be a French clown? I don’t know. Whatever it was that you told yourself you’re going to be your kind of like, “DAMN life has just passed me by.”

I’d Thought I’d Be More Successful By Now

This came up to me because I’m in the process of running this five-day masterclass and it’s all about those people who fall on and off the fitness wagon. And some of the themes have come up from these women, and I wanted to really kind of explore it a little bit more here with you.

It came to me as one of my private clients, told me that she feel as though she would be so much more successful.” My response, “What is success to you? How do you define success? And then how are you measuring it?”

How Do You Define Success?

Because the best thing I ever heard about when it comes to success is that when I aim at nothing, I always hit it. That was like a coconut to the head. And when I asked her this question, she kind of gave me this blank stare. The question I pose back to you is “Are you comparing yourself to somebody else? What do YOU want to be successful at? What do YOU want to be known for? What is that legacy you want to live?” Because before I start looking out the window and saying, “So and so has this, and so and so has that” and try to keep up with the Joneses, I got to know what I want. You know how I feel, and I’m going to get a little woo woo up in here. But if you don’t clearly declare what you want, there’s no way the universe can conspire to bring it to you. If one day you want an orange and one day you want an apple and one day you want a banana, there’s no way the universe is going to be like, “Girl, I’m just going to sit over here in the corner, I’m going to wait for you to get your shit together. And when you get your shit together then I’m going to kind of see if you really want it or you’re going to change your mind and lead your own little wild goose chase.”

So, I want you to really say if you tell yourself, “I have not been successful”, what is success? Define it, just like a word. If I were to say, “iPhone.” “Oh, I know exactly what an iPhone is.” And then you would take it to the next level. “What model iPhone do you have?” That’s the same thing that happens with goals and success. You can’t say, “Successful to me is really getting back to working out.” How many days a week are you working out? What are you doing for those workouts? It’s taking that one idea and then flushing it out. It’s like, “I’m going to build a house.” What kind of house? Ranch? Split ranch? (I know nothing about architecture, but are you picking up what I’m putting down?)

You define what you’re going for, because if you’re not clear on what you’re going for, how do you know you got there? How do you know that you’re not successful?

I’m all about having big audacious goals, I’m totally for that. But you have to clearly articulate what the goal is, and you have to give it a deadline, because it’s really easy to let things slide.

Think of it like a house project – have you ever remodeled your kitchen? And it starts with, “I’m just going to do the cabinets.” And then they take the cabinet’s off the wall and then they discover you have mold, or they discover that the wall wasn’t set up the right way, or they have to do something different to the cabinet. And all of a sudden what was one price slowly starts to creep up. And that’s what people do with their goals when they don’t put a concrete end date, they’re like, “Well, (say we’re going for weight) I was two pounds less, so I totally failed.” No, you didn’t fail. So, then I’m going to extend the date, and then I’m going to make it harder, I’m going to restrict, I’m going to work out 2x/day and I’m going to make sure that I don’t have any more than x number of calories and NO cheats. Uggh…I’m sorry that shit never works, try this instead.

I challenge you to write down 10 things that make you feel successful. And it doesn’t have to be these big things. I’m going to share with you what I wrote down. Keeps things simple, I like simple because life is already complicated enough without me complicating my own life or me complicating someone else’s life. And also keeps you from chasing rabbits because it helps you to figure out if what you’re doing is in alignment with what you want most. For me, I said what success is for me is

✅ I don’t want to set an alarm clock, I just want to get up when I get up, and that’s every day.

✅ I want every day to feel like a Saturday, that’s what I want.

✅ Success for me is when my clients email me back, text me back, communicate back to me that I’ve inspired them to take action, that I’ve done something that has changed their life. No matter how small or insignificant that it is, I want to know that I had an influence over someone’s life.

✅ I also love it when my own mindset shifts, that something that I was once struggling with I now am like, “Huh.” X number of months ago, years ago I would have been shut down, now I have the tools to handle that.

✅ I’d like to be able to travel every three months, just pick up and go somewhere every three months.

✅ My thyroid and hormones have finally come back into balance

That is on my list of what success looks like for me. So, you take the time, write down 10 things, just what makes you feel successful, what makes you feel happy. It could be I want to get a dog, whatever, I want to get a cat, goldfish. Go for it.

Give Yourself Grace

I see so many people beating the tar out of themselves over just past shit that just doesn’t even matter anymore. It doesn’t matter to anyone but you, but you keep playing that song over and over again. Do you know those movies that you’ve seen five zillion times? You know what is in the middle of the movie, you know what’s at the end of the movie, you know what’s at the beginning of the movie, yet you still park your ass down and you’ll watch, you say the words along with it, especially if it’s one of those sad movies like The Notebook, you know exactly what’s going to happen, but you watch. Or I just re-watched Message In a Bottle, sorry spoiler alert – the ending is not going to change, it’s still going to be a tear-jerking moment and you still watch it.

My husband is like, “Why do you do that?” I’m like, “I don’t know.” But I still do it. So, I want you to start to give yourself some grace. Stop being so hard on yourself. Yes, who doesn’t make a mistake? If you can point out someone who has not made a mistake, they’re not alive. And especially when it comes to health and fitness, there are no fatal mistakes. If you didn’t die, you’re good, you just learned a way that doesn’t work. Having a brownie is not going to kill you, having an extra glass of wine is not going to kill you.

The Kindness Of A Kid

Give yourself the same kindness that you would give your kid. Your kid paints on your living room wall. Of course, initially you’re pissed off, but you say “Oh Charlie, let’s clean this up together.” The initial ugh and anger turns into, “I’m not going to just go full crazy town on my kid.” I want you to have that same kindness that you would express to a kid that you would express to yourself, because think about it, when you beat the shit out of yourself, is that motivation? Does that make you want to try even more?

It’s Okay To Be A Beginner

No, you’re like, “fuck it”, and you move on, and you’re just like, “It’s time to go two feet in on just crazy behavior.” The big thing is to accept where you are and make a plan. Now, I know everyone wants to jump in and be the expert, but we all can’t come in at the expert level. We all can’t come in and be the know-it-all. I know that we want to be the know-it-all, but that’s not the case.

The other day I was listening to a podcast, and this woman is a consultant to really rich parents trying to get their kids into preschool, and she helps them craft the essays and all this good stuff to get some kids that are between three and five years old into preschool. And some of the parents come in, and what mother or father doesn’t think little Johnny isn’t a genius? Little Johnny can be the next president, little Johnny could be the next whatever, and they’ve included those kinds of things in their essay. The woman who is the consultant, she just tells it like it is, she doesn’t hold a punch. And she goes, “If you tell me your 18-month-old is a genius, your 18-month-old is fluent in any language, I’m ripping it up and throwing it in your face.”

I want you to think about that. These parents at 18 months are putting so much pressure on their kids so that they can get into PRESCHOOL. I want you to think to yourself that if you’re 18 months old, would you be an expert at anything? You might be an expert colorer, 🤷🏽‍♀️ you might be an expert at shoving a grilled cheese into the VCR, but what else can you be an expert at?
I want you to let yourself off the hook and say, “Some things I know, and some things I don’t know, and it’s okay for me to not know it all.” And that’s why people hire a coach, that’s why people write books to tell you how to do something a little bit faster. Because how many times can you spin your wheels before you take that next leap?

Transformation Is The Way

We love transformation shows; why do we watch The Biggest Loser? You like to see these people go from unfit to fit, and we watch the transformation. And during the show, the transformation seams, seamless? Is it like one minute they’re overweight and then one minute they’re down 100 pounds? No. There are trials, there are tribulations, and we tune in to that because we want to see the journey. And that’s where I want you to get back to it being in that journey because that’s where the grit is built, that’s where you learn who you are, that’s where you also learn what works and what doesn’t for you. Because so many people are out there looking for the magic plan; sorry, my queens there is no magic plan.

Seriously, I want there to be a magic plan too, that would make my life so much easier like, “Here’s the magic you’ve been looking for, rock on.” But there is no magic. So, what I want you to think about is through my transformation is my learning, through my transformation that is where the magic is. Your transformation is your own magic, and you pick the spells you make my own personal magic.

Think about this – it’s not a linear process. Biggest Loser, they have their ups and their downs, they all kind of cross their fingers when it comes to the weigh-in; same process. I want you to think about how many frogs’ princes and princesses kissed in fairy tales before they got to the prince. It’s the same thing. It’s not about I’m on this diet so I’m going to get all these amazing results. It might be I’m going to take a little piece of this, a little piece of Keto, a little piece of Whole30, a little piece of Weight Watchers, a little piece of Atkins and then make it the Kim Diet. And when I beat myself up, I’m probably not sleeping, I’m probably stressed like nobody’s business, I’m probably drinking a little bit more than I should, and I probably have a little bit more anxiety. So, when I start to peel away and just let myself off the hook, I might start sleeping better, I might stop drinking as much, I might reduce my stress. So, do you see that there is this nice cause and effect when I start to really kind of let myself go?

Set Boundaries

And the best way to let yourself go is to set these boundaries. If you are a people pleaser, raise your hand, where are my people pleasers? I see it all the time, especially with my clients who are people pleasers because to sneak away from work they’re like, “I’m sneaking away from work and that means that so and so might have to pick up the slack.” Or, “My kids don’t like the daycare, so I really don’t want to put them in daycare at the gym.” Or, “I’m already at work all day, I really can’t spend another hour at the gym.” It’s those kinds of things where I need you to figure out what do you want, and can you find a way to bring yourself into shorter periods? If you want to workout, can you find a way to workout at home? Can you find peace in an extra 30 minutes in the day so that you’re not doing it at the end of the day to take time away from your kids?

I want you to start to get creative with how you can make taking some time for yourself. I will tell you that the best way to practice boundaries is self-care. And it is for your own well-being, because when you feel good you project that out to the people that you care about, and when you feel like crap you project that out to the people you care about as well. And boundaries are healthy, boundaries also help, again, reduce that stress, because one of the biggest things, and I talk to my clients about this is if you can’t go workout, the two things I always say are the not the simplest, but the two things that are the easiest thing that doesn’t require a gym membership is to minimize your stress and get some sleep.

When I set my boundaries those are two things that immediately go up because one of my boundaries is, I set work hours and I stick to them. I set a bedtime and I stick to it. And so, when I start to create boundaries just for myself personally, and I honor myself, then I proved to myself I’m worthy of me. So, if I’m worthy of me, that gives me more confidence to start making those boundaries to other people.

I know that it’s tough when you’re a people pleaser. I have a client who she has a sick aunt and her aunt is like a mom to her, and she’s like, “How could I take the time off to go to the gym when she’s sick?” My response, “Well, what are you going to do, stare at her?” If you are away from her for one hour, what’s going to happen? It’s one hour. And you’re going to come back more refreshed and more recharged to really help her and serve her, and she’ll feel better that you’re doing something for yourself versus always waiting on her hand and foot.

Just start to think of those things as simple things to get away. And don’t be afraid to ask for what you need. So, many people can come to you and say, “Hey I need you to do this, and I need you to do that.” Here is your permission slip, it’s okay for you 1) to say no and 2) to ask for what you need.

What Happens When You Have No Discipline?

Lastly, so many of you come to me saying, “I don’t have the discipline. I really need the discipline.” And it’s not discipline that you need, it’s habit, because habits are how we achieve great things. Habits turn into discipline, so that’s your vocabulary lesson for the evening. Habits are decisions, habits are decisions that you make on a daily basis. I want you to think about from the moment you wake up in the morning. For me, I’ll tell you my habits. My habit is I set my alarm 15 minutes before I want to get up.

I snooze three times, that’s my thing, 🤷🏽‍♀️ it makes my husband nuts, but that’s what I do. Then I get up, I brush my teeth, I wash my face, put on my gym clothes, then I go downstairs, I make some coffee, I make my pre-workout drink, I foam roll and then I head out the door. That’s my habit, that’s my routine. It took a bit to get to that routine, but I want you to think about that. That’s what I do. Before I go to bed, I set my clothes up the night before so that I’m just ready to go. What does your morning look like?

Habits can hold you back, habits can be good or bad. “I’m always going to start again on Monday”, that’s a habit, it’s a routine, it’s ingrained in you now that, “I messed up, so I just get a fresh start on Monday. Do fresh starts only happen on Monday.” Why? Is that a rule? Show me, please show me that book that says that’s the rule.

Habits can put you into this holding pattern. Habits take practice so that they eventually become a routine, and then once you start getting that routine that’s where you get the consistency. And once you have that consistency, that’s where you get the results. People will say, “I want that fit girl magic, I want to live in that golden zone.” Well, that’s the formula right there, it’s establishing great habits that build on to great routines that establish consistency that give you the results.

The Power Of One Simple Habit

I always challenge people, what’s one simple habit that you can start? And then I get this whole list. Pump your breaks girlfriend, I’m looking for one simple habit. I’ll tell you my one simple habit. Drink more water – it’s already ingrained in me to drink coffee in the morning. If you try to take away my morning coffee I will fistfight you. So, instead what I do is I have my first cup of coffee then I have a glass of water, and then I have my second cup of coffee. And I can’t have that second cup of coffee unless I have that glass of water. That’s how I drink more water. Makes sense, right?

Then I teach group fitness classes, so I have to before I finish teaching class, I have to drink the entire bottle of water that I bring with me to class. If I don’t drink it all during class, I have to drink it on the way home, but in that time I’m away from my home I’ve got to drink that bottle of water.

Lastly, usually around seven-ish while I’m cooking dinner, I have another bottle of water that I have to finish that. Typically, I’m drinking throughout the day, but I’ve established these three kinds of way-points throughout the day, but I’ve linked it to something else that I’m already doing so that it’s my trigger. So, I get the trigger of I’ve had my morning cup of coffee, I get the trigger that I’m teaching a class, I get the trigger that I’m making dinner. So, now I have three guaranteed times during the day that I’m drinking water. Does that make sense? What would your one habit be?

I want you to think about, “What’s my one habit, and what is a trigger or several triggers that might get me to remember this is time to do this, this is time to do that?”

Discover The Secret: To A New Year’s Resolution Reboot

July 3, 2019 By kimkb49 Leave a Comment

I want to talk about rebirth. Here in New England we’ve had a pretty tough spring and it’s been raining, and you know that old saying that April showers bring May flowers, well we’ve had some April and May rain and now the flowers are blooming and it’s taking that time to kind of rebirth the summer. I know that most of us on January first, we think that’s the rebirth. Starting kind of at the end of December we’re all like, “Hey, the next year, it’s going to be my year, I’m going to be the biggest, the best, the awesomest”, the whatever-est person on the planet. And then March comes around, then April comes around, and then, “Should I try? Should I even bother? Is it worth it?” Here is where I say we all get a chance to press the reboot button, and probably the last several years I’ve started this whole thing of July is the new January, because if you think about it we’re six months into the year, so there’s still plenty of time to get stuff done. There’s still plenty of time for you to look back at what you said on January first when you had all that vim and vigor to say, “I got this, I can do it.”

Pack Your Patience

I want to talk about how do you press the reboot button and not feel like this big old failure, how do you press the reboot button and NOT bite off more than you can chew. One of the biggest things I see all the time is that we all underestimate how long something is going to take. In your head you’re like, “I’m going to lose 30 pounds, it’s really going to take me like 30 days because I’m going to lose a little pound a day, yeah that’s what’s going to happen.” And logically we know that ain’t the case, but emotionally we’re like, “I want these 30 pounds gone, and I want them gone right freaking now.”

I’m the same way. I have the patience of a gnat, and I always tell my clients, “Hey, I’m telling you this right now that you’re going to have to pack your patience.” And I know that is hard, that’s harder than climbing Everest and I know what that feeling is like because I have zero patience. You decide what you want, and you want it tomorrow. 🤷🏽‍♀️ You might wait till the end of the week but come on.

No Two-Day Shipping

I’m sure you’ve heard me say this before, our bodies and fitness aren’t like Amazon Prime.
I love me some Amazon Prime, but it has spoiled us because we think that if I order something on Monday, by Friday it’s going to be on my doorstep. And that’s not the case, and it’s really challenging for you to just put out the faith, put out belief that you’ve decided that “I want to get healthier, I want to get fitter, and I have to decide that I’m willing to wait for it.”

The best way I can describe it is we all want certainty, that’s one of the most basic human emotions, certainty. If I were to stand up, I am certain that gravity is going to keep me from flying off the face of the earth. And when it comes to getting healthy and fit, unfortunately there is no certainty. I know that if you eat less food, if you move your body, if you sleep right you have less stress, you are going to be well down the road to being healthy and fit,
I know that. Now, what I don’t know is that exact date. I can’t tell you on June 10th how much you’re going to weigh. I can’t tell you on June 10th you’re going to be a size whatever.
I can’t tell you on June 10th that you’re going to have six pack abs. That’s the certainty that I don’t know. But the certainty I do know is that there are certain steps if you take them you will be on the path to getting the results that you want, and that’s what I know.

Everything is a choice

And so, during that rebirth, that reboot, one of the biggest things I always challenge my clients is that it has to start with your mindset, and that mindset starts with your choices. And everything is a choice – you’re either going towards your goals or you’re going against your goals.

I’m not that coach who hands you a list of, your good foods list, and here are your bad foods list. I want this to be a lifestyle because there are going to be times when – this is how I roll, and then there are times that you’re going to go to a certain place and they make a certain thing that you’re like, “You know what? This is the best whatever, and I’m having it.”

Wegmans! I don’t go to Wegman’s every week. I maybe go every four or five months, but they make the most amazing snickerdoodles; I got to have me one. A snickerdoodle is never going to be on the good foods list, but it’s something I enjoy, it’s something I could have more than three bites of and I could be like, “Yum, yum, give me some MORE.” And it’s a choice, it’s a choice I make. I only go to Wegman’s a handful times a year, I’m going go and I’m going to have a snickerdoodle, and guess what? I’m having two snickerdoodles, and that’s what it is, it’s my choice.

Resist Restrictions

Now, some people feel the choice has to be restriction, and that restriction just keeps them so bound up, it keeps them always chasing fitness and health. Do you know when someone tells you, you can’t do something? Doesn’t it make you want to do it more? Is that just me?

In the past the more I restricted, the more I put myself into this box, the more I want to escape, and when I did escape, I went buck wild. I was a single sailor on shore leave. I am just going to be running wild because I’ve told myself for however long I’ve been able to use my willpower, that I can’t have whatever it is that I want. So, I want you to say, “I own my choices.” And then I also want you to say that you own your habits and you own your patterns.

When it comes to this reboot, there’s three things that we’re going to work on working on owning our choices without guilt. When I have that cookie my first thought isn’t “Because
I had that cookie or those two cookies that means I’ve lost it and I might as well just start again on Monday.” No. It’s me saying, “I had these two cookies, and the next meal I will go right back to my plan. I don’t let that one choice define the rest of my day or the rest of my week, or heck, the rest of my month. It was that choice in the moment, I owned it, and then
I moved on.

And that’s where a lot of people get wrapped around the axle, my brain immediately shouts!, “Oh my God, I had those two cookies, so that means I might as well go to McDonald’s and then that means I might as well skip my spin class, and that means I might as well as my client Jessica says release the food hounds!

If you make one off step, one misstep, it doesn’t mean that the rest of day, week or month etc has to be a misstep. Think about if you were walking down the street and you tripped, would you be like, “I tripped” and lay there on the ground wallowing around and say, “Call 911”? No. You would get up because you’re embarrassed, you would look around and you would start walking. And that’s exactly what happens when you have those two cookies, or you have that ice cream, or you have whatever it is that you have, that’s what you do, you dust yourself off and you get up and you move on. And so, the same thing comes with your habits and patterns.

Is it worth it?

I have a client who just started with me and she’s like, “I’ve always had cookies before I go to bed”, and I was like, “Okay. Do you think those cookies are helping you towards the goals that you told me?” And she’s like, “No, but it’s a habit.” “Smoking is a habit and you know smoking causes cancer. So, you can decide that you want to continue to smoke and risk it, and maybe you’re one of the few who don’t get cancer. Or you want to continue to have cookies and when you keep asking me, “Hey, I’m not seeing any results”, I’m going to say, “Well, how attached are you to these cookies?”

Now, I’m not ever saying that you can’t have something, but I’m asking you to make educated choices, I’m asking you to take a look at your habits, and are your habits holding you back? Now, am I going to ever say you can’t have cookies? No. But I know that if you have cookies every day, your goal is going to leave you in the dust. It’s like a bucket with a hole in it; the water is just going to keep leaking out and you’re just going to be like, “Why can’t it ever fill my bucket?”, because you keep having darn cookies.

The question I had for her, “Is this a habit?” and she said yes. I said, “Now the key is we need to figure out how to replace this habit, how to break this habit so that you can get out of your own damn way, how to change the pattern of before you go to bed you need a sweet treat.” So, we’re exploring and brainstorming different options for her. I was like,
“Do you like tea?” Because there plenty of teas that can give you that sweet sensation.
I was like, “Do you like fruit?” Different healthier options to satisfy that habit until that habit passes. So, I want you to think about those habits and patterns that you might have that aren’t serving you.

Bottom line, if you want to lose weight, if you want to get healthier, you have to eat healthier and you have to exercise, bottom line. And I know there are so many people out there that tell you, “If you do this particular diet, you’ll never have to exercise”, or “If you do this particular exercise, you’ll never have to diet.” Well, let me just tell you, when you combine exercise and fitness together, you’ll get to your goal a lot faster than if you try to do one without the other.

If the queen isn’t happy…

Jack LaLanne, he’s the king of modern fitness, his motto and it’s true: fitness is king, nutrition is queen. Now, we all know the saying, “If the queen is not happy, the house isn’t happy.” So, if your nutrition isn’t happy, your body is not happy. And you know firsthand when you eat something that your body doesn’t like it feel like crap, and you sleep like crap and you just know when your body is just not getting what it needs, you’re dragging around like a fricking tire. Your health is like an albatross around your neck and you’re just like you’ve got to get out of this death spiral.

It’s all starts with the way you think. If you think that you have to give stuff up, then guess what, it’s always going to be a slog, and I don’t want it to be a slog. And that’s the first thing is that we always think, “I’m going on a diet, so here is the list of don’ts.” What if you flipped it around and you said, “What are the list of dos’?”

The first thing I do when you work with me is that I look at your nutrition, and I’ll tell you the two things I see always missing from people. If you started with these two things versus all the things you want to cut, imagine you might feel a little happier. You might feel a little more accomplished because I want you to feel accomplished.

I’m a geek, and I am one of those geeks that I write down my to-do list every single day, and I love it when I get to check boxes, boom, boom, boom, and the more boxes I check the more I’m like 🙌🏽 it’s awesome, I’m ecstatic.

That’s what I want you to do with fitness. For me, I work out in the morning, and that’s one box that I can check off in the morning and by 8:00am I’m like, “You know what, the day can do whatever it wants to do to me today, I’ve done one thing for myself, check the box, I win.” That’s the feeling I want for you, and it’s those little box checks that add up and make your day and makes you motivated, makes you excited to want to do it again so you get more box checks.

Don’t break the chain

And I’ve told you the story and I’m going to continue to tell you the story because it is so motivating. So many people tell me, “I don’t have motivation.” I say bullshit. Jerry Seinfeld, he’s a comedian, and so when he first started out as a comedian, he knew that in order to go to all these different open mic nights he had to have a whole catalog of jokes. He challenged himself that every single day he’d write a joke, every day. Back then there was no iPhone, so he bought a calendar and a big red marker, and every day he wrote a joke he put a giant X, every day. He made this mantra to himself, “Don’t break the chain.” And every day he put that big X, and the days that he didn’t write a joke he saw that glaring hole of where he didn’t write a joke. And it was a couple days he had that string, but then he also started to get momentum, the more he did it, the more it felt comfortable, the easier it became and the more the jokes flowed out. And then next thing you know, he had this whole catalog of joke so that no matter where he went, he could go out and have enough jokes. I don’t know how long a comedy set is, but he’d have enough jokes. And he also had enough jokes to move things around so that if a joke didn’t work the way he wanted it to work he could put it in the hopper to rewrite.

Consistency is key

Back in January, I took that principle for myself and I started logging my food. And every day I would log my food, and I use this app called The Today app. Everyday I tracked my food you see a green mark, and every time that I didn’t track my food you see a white mark. For me this is super motivating. I had a good streak going a couple weeks ago, and then I kind of fell on my sword, but it shows me the power of consistency. I talk to a lot of people they always are like, “How do I get results? How do I get results?” Lean in, here is the secret, it’s consistency. And this app on my phone is really helpful for that consistency because when I see those holes in it, “I’m like you know what, I could’ve done better that day”, and it’s not in a ‘beat the shit out of myself’ kind of way, it’s more in a what was it about that day that I couldn’t track, that for two days in a row I couldn’t track, what was it that happened? And then I can play CSI, and ask where could I have made better choices. I encourage all of my clients to create a weekly plan or at a minimum of a 24 hour plan, this way you go into the day with a sense of control.

Work the middle

This keeps my mindset from saying “I stink”, now I ask myself, “How can I be better? How can I improve?” And that’s where I want you guys to start putting your mind, I want you to start thinking, “How do I improve? How do I get better? How do I take myself to the next level?” I’m not asking you to be perfect, I’m not asking to be four levels up in one week; I’m asking you to say if you’re here, how do you take it to the next step? And then once you’ve mastered that step, how to take it to the next step, because what I see is a lot of you miss the middle.

The middle is mushy, the middle is gross, the middle is sloggy, the middle can feel like quicksand. But it’s the middle that gives you fortitude, it’s the middle that shows you what you’re made of, it’s the middle that tests the heck out of your patience, it tests the heck out of your desire, and it tests the heck out of your gumption, your gript, whatever you want to call it. That’s the good stuff right there, the middle.

When you’re just kind of going through the forest without any light, that is where you know what you’re made of. I want you to ask what motivates you, because it’s taking those actions, and for me, I found today app makes me take those actions because I want to get that check-mark, and no one else sees that check-mark but me.

The Motivation Switch

I hear all the time I’m not motivated; I’ll be very honest with you part of your motivation needs to come from inside. You need to find the internal switch that’s what’s really going to keep you going. That’s why people hire coaches. I am someone who is very externally accountable. If I know I have to show my work to somebody, I am more likely to do it, and some people, they can do that on their own, but if I know that at the end of the day I got to show you it, I want to make sure that I do it because I want to honor my commitments, that’s one of my core values. And maybe that’s one of your core values, and that’s why you hire a coach. A coach isn’t about “do this” kind of thing; a coach is more about giving you that checks and balances piece that you might not have on your own. And without any type of change there is no success.

A lot of times when I’m feeling like I’m in my comfort zone, I always say to myself, “If there is no change, there is no change.” What that means is if I want to make a change in my life, I have to make some other type of change. I can’t sit back in my comfort zone, I can’t continue to do the same thing over and over again and expect to get a different result. I can’t expect to keep walking into that wall and expect that wall to magically dissolve into a door. And that’s what a lot of people will do. One of the things when I kind of feel like I’m stuck is I say to myself, “I have to make a change if I want to see a change.” What change would you have to make?

Now, this change doesn’t have to be huge. I’m not asking you to leap a tall building in a single bound. I’m saying, what is the change? And remember I told you there are two things I always see when I look at food: protein and the vegetables. Those are the two things I always see. Can you increase your protein intake? Can you increase your vegetable intake? They both don’t have to be done at the same time but pick your battles.

The second piece this movement. Now, I’m not saying go and join a bootcamp class and go out and do CrossFit. No, I’m not saying that at all. I’m saying movement, so do you have a Fitbit? Do you have something in your phone? Can you get in at least 10,000 steps a day?

Can you sleep? Can you make it a priority to set a bedtime? Those are the things I’m talking about. Can you make it a priority to not be a stress ball? Those are all contributing factors to losing weight. And at any point did I say, “This is what you can eat, and this is what you can eat”? No. I want you to kind of change that mindset and say, “What are some of the subtle changes I can make that will have long-term impact on my life?”

And the big thing is finding someone who will support you. It can be a coach, it could be a really good friend, it could be a spouse, it could be a partner, it could be your mom, it could be anybody, but find someone who’s in your corner. Find someone who is going to support you, find someone who is going to help hold your feet to the fire when you have one of those days. Today is a rainy day and you could be like, “I don’t feel like it.” Have that person that is going to be like, “Well, how many days are you going to not feel like that girl?” Because you want that person to be that friend. I have that friend, we text each other, I’ve talked about it, every Monday we text each other, “This is what I’m doing this week” and every Wednesday we’re like, “What’s up?” I want you to have that person in your life, and if you don’t have that person in your life, hit me up, I have no problem being that person in your life.

Environmental Motivators

Look at the environment that you’re in. Are you in an environment where you might be on social media and you’re following all these people who don’t make you feel good about yourself? Unfollow, delete, gone. What about TV, are you always watching shows that don’t make you feel good about yourself or that aren’t aspirational, that make you just feel like, “My life stinks”?

I want you to find things that fill you up emotionally, spiritually, make you laugh. I don’t want you to look at things that make you feel like crap because you’ve got enough of that in your life. And that’s all part of changing that mindset, that’s all part of letting go of that control and just letting more flow, honoring where you are, because that’s where the change begins. If I honor where I am, if I say to myself, “I’m a beginner, it is what it is, and in order to get to advance (because again, we talked about that messy middle) it’s okay to be a beginner.”

Everyone has to begin somewhere, and I want you to find someone who you aspire to be, but do not let where they are influence where you are. I can’t remember who said this (but it wasn’t me) but it says success leaves clues. For my clients my goal is to be inspirational, not aspirational. I want them to say, “Kim takes these steps, out of the 10 steps she takes, right now I can only do these three steps, and I’m going to be comfortable and confident in these three steps. And once I’m good at these three steps, then I can think about taking more steps.” Like I said, I want to go back, and I want to check off those boxes, I want to feel awesome about myself. And I want you to know that yes, there are going to be struggles, there are going to be setbacks, but at the end of the day if I keep chipping away these little small marks, I will eventually hit my goals. And it’s completely possible, it’s completely possible for you to do that.

Stay tuned I have a new podcast coming out and I can’t wait to share with you even more goodies, get on the waitlist here

Flexible Dieting: How To Quickly And Easily Create One

June 16, 2019 By kimkb49 Leave a Comment

This is a topic that’s been coming up for a lot of you so I really wanted to do a little bit of a deeper dive. What I’m going to explore today is all about flexible dieting.

What do I mean by flexible dieting? Typically, we’ve been programmed that in order to lose weight, get fit, get healthy, we have to follow some particular program be it Keto, Weight Watchers, Whole30, Paleo. There’s some formalized blueprint program that I’ve got to follow if I want to have any results.

Recently my sister posted on Facebook that she lost 50 pounds and all the comments were, “Girl, what did you do?” And everyone wanted to know what the Holy Grail was, and basically she was like, “Well, my Holy Grail was I stopped drinking wine every night and I started moving my body.” What diet is that? Is that the Kendra? That’s basics for me, as a fitness professional that is fitness 101 – stop eating crap and move your body. Oh my god, I could write a whole book and make millions on that, it’s not rocket science.

Break Up With The Plan

My concept of flexible dieting is that you get to break up with “the plan”. You’ve been marketed to for years, decades about “the plan”. I was recently listening to a podcast All About Fat, and the woman spent five years researching fat, and what I mean by fat is I’m talking about body fat, fat in foods, anything that has to do with fat she spent five years studying it and breaking it down.

If you have looked at any history, if you go back in colonial times if someone was fat, they were wealthy. Fat was something to be aspired to. If we also look back into the 50s and 60s it was very aspirational to be curvy. And then at some point someone said, “You need to be a size two, weigh three pounds and eat grapes all day.” And we all got obsessed with dieting. Which leds us to where we are today obsessed with what “diet” program and what plan are you following.

This is what I know – you can follow a plan until the plan doesn’t work, and the plan doesn’t work for a myriad of reasons. This is where flexible dieting comes in. Let me just back up, let’s first do vocabulary.

When I talk about diet, I don’t mean a plan, that’s not what I mean. When I say diet, I’m talking about what you physically put into your mouth, what you are eating; that’s what I’m calling a diet. And so, we need to look at what we’re currently eating before we can make an assessment. It’s like if I were to go to the doctor and say, “These are my symptoms”, that’s exactly what your diet is. Your diet shows me what you are currently eating, because for the most part most of the women I work with eat pretty good. What I mean is you’re eating probably about 70%, and all it takes is a few minor tweaks and you’re going to start to see some of the results.
Pulp Fiction Diet

And we all know the foods that we should be eating a little less of, and we know the foods we should be eating a little more of; that’s not the problem. The problem is we feel like we need to follow this particular train track and this train track is going to lead us to the glory land, the diet mecca.

Have you ever see the movie, Pulp Fiction? If you haven’t seen the movie, two guys are looking for this suitcase, and you don’t really know what’s in the suitcase but every time you see the suitcase open it has this glow. And that’s what people are searching for. They’re searching for their diet Pulp Fiction. They’re looking for that glow, that feeling that’s just going to be like, “I made it.” And then guess what?

When you’ve made it, you’ve got to sustain it? That’s where people fall down and that’s where flexible dieting comes in, because flexible dieting is sustainable, flexible dieting is about you. I got some questions for you to answer when you look at a plan or a program. Don’t go for what’s popular. Right now, everyone’s on Keto for days. But for some people eating that much fat is too much; eating that little carb may make you feel like someone ran over you and then backed up three times.

Question Yourself

How do you eat?
What are the foods that you like to eat?
What’s your lifestyle?

Because if it’s something that requires you to cook and you’re just like, “That’s not about me”, what’s your budget? Are you having to buy all these magical elixirs, are you going to have to buy high-end things? What does it look like? And how long can you see yourself doing this?

About two years ago I had to go vegan and it was mainly just to clean up my hormones.

I knew it was short-term, but for me

I knew that lifestyle wasn’t sustainable.

I knew I could do it for six months.

I knew that I could totally gut this out for six months. But could I do this for the next 60 years? Oh, hell no! Because for me it was a lot of cooking, and I cook, but I don’t want to have to cook every single meal. And I don’t like tofu, so to go out, it was always like you’re vegan; tofu. No. There’s more to life than tofu for vegans. 🤯

So, I need you to answer those questions and be honest with yourself. I want you to look at things as, “Could I do this for the next year? Could I do this for the next five years? Could I do this for the next 10 years?” And if you say no, then that’s not the plan for you.

The All or Nothing Approach

You have to decide what your approach is. When I say, “Hey, what’s your approach?” many people will tell me, “I’m just all or nothing. I’m either on it, or I’m off it.” And I’m like, “How has that served you?” When you are so gung-ho like, “I got to be on this train track to the diet destination, or I’m just sitting on the couch with a straw and a bottle of wine, pass the Ho-Hos and the Goldfish, how has that lifestyle served you where you’re like hardcore, no core, hardcore, no core?

Wouldn’t you want it to be different?

Because I see it, I see it in your faces, I hear it in your voices when you’re just like, “I can’t anymore. I want to be able to go on vacation, I want to be able to walk into my closet, and not stress that those pair pants from last spring are going to fit over my ass.” I want you to have that confidence like, “I’m going to my closet and anything in here is going to fit my ass.”

Think about the potential, how hard is it going be? How much weight are you trying to lose? Will you have to give up foods that you love? What will you need to sustain this? And what are the thoughts that you have as you are reading through the do’s and the don’ts, what are your thoughts? Because at the end of the day a lot of people are knowledge brokers, they can take in all the knowledge, they can listen to information, they can listen to podcasts, they can watch all the YouTube videos and take all the notes, analyze till next Thursday, but still not take the action.

The action is where the rubber meets the road, and until I actually take that big step back and I analyze what I am doing and then decide where I want to go, I can’t take action. And I find that a lot of people, and I’ve talked about this, you’ve got to set goals, and you have to be not afraid to set goals because I get it, you may have disappointed yourself in the past.

Have I hit every goal I’ve ever set? Heck no, not at all. But I know the pain of me being in the same place again and again and again and running into the same wall over and over again, bugs the fuck out of me. And I don’t want to be in that position, so whenever I do miss my goal, I ask myself why, and I don’t beat myself up, I give myself the grace and I say, “Did I bite off more than I could chew? Was there something else going on in my life that I couldn’t give it the focus? And I try to give myself that grace, give myself that space to focus.

Work the Plan

Back in the day I will admit I’d be like, “You suck, you’re stupid, you can’t ever do it.” And where did that get me? Nowhere. So, I took a step back. If you can’t take that step back, that’s why you work with a coach or an accountability partner because they could be that third party to be like, “Okay girl, here’s where you give yourself that grace. Here’s where you give yourself that space, that time so that you can do a CSI.”

You’ve watched the show – they come in, dead body on the floor, and they piece together, “Okay, the broken lamp, so she must have fallen here, someone must have walked in there.” We all know, and that’s what you do. Before you get into action you kind of say, “This is where I’ve been, this is where I want to go, and we’re going to piece together the plan in order for you to get there.” But I don’t want you to just plan the plan, I want you to plan to say, “I got to move my tushy.”

On a Scale of 1 to 10…

Here is where I like to keep it simple; I like to make my action plan really simple. So, for me to assess where you are, for me to assess where I am, is what I’m currently eating, my diet, am I hungry? On a scale of one to ten where ten means I’m going to eat my arm to zero being I’m stuffed to the gills, where am I? The second thing is how is my energy? Do I feel like woo-hoo all day long, or do I feel like I’m crashing and burning? Do I feel like I’m always wanting to take a nap? Am I living off of coffee? Where am I? And the same thing, zero meaning I’m bouncing off the walls; ten meaning I’m almost at a coma. Where are you when it comes to your energy? And then cravings, are you in the place that you’re craving? Zero being like every craving is knocking on the door and you’re white-knuckling it; ten, what cravings? I don’t know what those are, I don’t have any.

Those are the first three questions that I ask, then I go into non-food questions. Sleep, are you sleeping? And are you getting quality sleep? Some people will tell me, “Yeah, I sleep six hours.” But then they’ll tell me, “Well, I go to the bathroom and then I’m up for an hour after I go to the bathroom, or I toss and turn so I’m not really getting a good night’s sleep.” Are you moving? I’ve talked about this before. I wear a Fitbit because I really want to make sure that I’m getting in my 10,000 steps, so are you? Some people work out and then they sit at the desk all day long and that’s it, their only movement is to get up and go to the bathroom. Are you moving? And then what’s your stress level? Are you like again on that zero to ten, zero meaning people are like, “Girl, are you alive?” to like, “You’re running around with your hair on fire.” Where are you? Because all of these factors will weigh heavily into what you’re taking in for your diet.

And if you noticed, most of my questions weren’t about are you eating this superfood? Are you eating that vegetable? It wasn’t about that. It’s like in this moment in time, is what you’re eating serving you based on this base level of criteria? And I’ve seen it all over the interwebs, and you see it too, the questions like, “What’s the best fat burning food? What’s the best sugar-free food? How do you feel about protein ice cream? How do I feel about [insert the question]?”

Do those questions inspire you to take action? Or do they ask you to ask more questions and not take the action? That’s the question I have for you. If my questions do not inspire, then I need to ask better questions. My boyfriend, Tony Robbins, always says ask better questions and you’ll get better answers.

Get Into Action

When I’m in that action phase I’m all about what is it going to take for me to move my feet? What is it going to take for me to go from what I know I want to where I want to go? And then I’ve got to say, “What are the results? Is my current diet yielding my results?” If my goal is to lose my belly, boost my booty, have more energy, dump my cravings, is what I’m eating doing that? For me, I was eating clean for years. If you looked at my nutrition you’d be like, “Oh my gosh, you eat great.” And I was eating great, but for some reason I hit a plateau, I hit a wall and I couldn’t do more.

We all go on vacation and you want to take off those last few pounds before you go on vacation, and that was me, I just wanted to get a little tighter, and for some reason I’m like, “I can’t do it.” And I had someone look over my shoulder, I was like, “What am I doing wrong?” Because for yourself you can’t be the voice of reason because you’re like, “I’m awesome, I’m doing amazing.” Or you’re like, “I suck, I’m doing horrible.” You can’t have that middle ground like, “Well girl, this is what you need to do.” Most of us can’t do that with ourselves.

So, I had a third party look over my shoulder, and for the most part I was eating great, but I was eating too much for what I was doing, so I needed to tweak some of my choices. And that’s what I find with a lot of clients is that they need to tweak some of their choices, so maybe it’s not having two chia waffles, there’s nothing wrong with chia waffles, they’re great, but maybe instead of having two in a meal you bring it down to one and you add in some cottage cheese. It’s those kinds of yin and yang, that give and take of that.

If you noticed, I didn’t follow a plan, I had to step back and had to be flexible in my approach. So, it was like focus on making sure that my choices weren’t over the top. And when you break up with the right and the wrong and you see what foods feel right for you.

What’s Good For the Goose…

I believe I’ve talked about this before, but just in case – I’ve had a client who’s like, “I’m just starting to feel bloated and just horrible after I eat.” And I said, “That could be anything, so what I need for you to do is keep a log, and every time you feel bloated, I’d love for you to write down when. Every time you eat a meal, I just want you to just ask the question, “Do I feel bloated?” Over the course of a few weeks she was logging, and she found out that it was coconut oil. You read all over the interwebs, coconut oil is thebomb.com and three times on Sunday. But for her coconut oil wasn’t thebomb.com. For some reason there was something in coconut oil and her that no bueno.

So think about if I break up with the good food/bad food list and just focus on how I feel. For me, I can’t eat eggs. Scrambled egg whites, if I were to eat scrambled egg whites, I’m like, “So, what’s next?” 20 minutes later I’m like, “And what’s next?” It’s the ultimate protein, super healthy, there’s nothing wrong with egg whites; they just don’t do anything for me. Other people they’re like, “Oh my god, egg whites, I love them. I can make out with them.” But for me I’m like, “Yeah, I’m good, I’ll pass.” And I want to like them, but my body just metabolizes them too fast then my next meal needs to be like almost immediate.

Track Your Progress

If you aren’t tracking your food, start tracking. I know it’s a pain in the rump shaker, but the beauty of nowadays is that there are apps on your phone, hand write it, just keep it simple. And if you need a third party to look over your shoulder and see what’s going on, hit me up. You can always find me her and shoot me an email.

The reason why many of us follow a plan versus kind of taking the approach I talked about, seeing what our diet is and figuring out where the extras are, because most of us have extras that we can start to curtail back, we also can look and see if there are things that we should add in.

Most people probably aren’t eating as many vegetables as they should be, or aren’t eating as many good fats, or probably aren’t getting in as much protein as they should. But what happens is we all want certainty, we want to know that if I do what you say it’s going to work like a charm, it’s going to work as advertised, and unfortunately with nutrition we’re all bio individuals, what’s going to work for me isn’t going to work for the guy that just walked by on the street, that isn’t going to work for the woman who is walking next to me. We all have different needs and different tweaks that need to be made in order to satisfy our own individual metabolism.

So, the certainty I give you is that if you take the time to figure out how your body works, you’ll never diet a day in your life; I know that for certain. So, what you need to do is explore the alternatives to dieting, because certainty, as I’ve said before, comes from asking better questions, and the better questions aren’t the good food/bad food list, or “Can I have this?” list.

We are all grown ass women. And I want you to think about whatever program you’re looking at, can you afford it for a long period of time, not just for 30 days, not just for 10 days, can you afford it for a year? Does this limit you? Do you have negotiability in it? I know for me I have one non-negotiable, actually two non-negotiables in my nutrition. My one non-negotiable is I will fist fight you over coffee. I’m just not going to give that up. I’m going to have coffee, and if my results slow because I’m having coffee, so be it. The second thing is I want to at least be able to once a week go out to dinner and not eat like a jerk, but go out and not be like, “Does it have this in it?”, not interrogate the chef and pretty much go in the kitchen and make my own meal, because been there, done that, and I don’t want that t-shirt anymore. Those are my two non-negotiables.

Unconventional Switch Up

When I first started this whole flexible dieting, I was like that’s what I’m going to build my nutrition around. And then I said those are my fun things that’s going to make my life sane. Then I said, “What is nutritionally going to help me long-term?” And one of the things nutritionally I put in there was that I wanted to make sure I got in all my vegetables, and so in order to get all my vegetables, every single day I have a giant salad right. And that salad always varies depending on the season. So, I change the salad green that I use.

I change up if it’s carrots or if it’s cabbage or it’s red cabbage. Sometimes I have broccoli slaw. I always make sure that there’s something new in the mix every single week to give myself that variety I need, but I’m also getting a ton of vegetables in there.

I want you to think about as you kind of try to wrap your head around this whole flexible dieting, what are the things that aren’t on everyone’s diet list? So, maybe you need to have two squares of chocolate every day. Maybe once a week you need to have a mocha from your favorite coffee shop. I don’t know what it is, but we all need to have those one or two things that keep us sane.

Then, we need to have that balance, that moderation. We need to have that one or two things that you know are healthy and sustainable. My salad – I can have a salad anywhere on this planet, maybe Antarctica might be a stretch, but most places on this planet I can go in and order a salad with some type of protein on it and be happy as a clam. So, I want you to think about that.

And also, as you’re looking at nutrition, are you somebody that’s going to meal prep? Or do you have to meal prep, or can you pull together pieces to create that meal prep program? And does it require a certain amount of workouts? There is this new workout, I can’t remember the name of it, and someone was asking about it where it requires you to work out two times a day for 45 minutes each round, so for 90 minutes. Well, back in the day I used to work out two hours, that was my bare minimum, and if I didn’t work out two hours, why work out? But now I’m like, “45 minutes two times a day, oh kill me.” That’s just not in my wheelhouse. I can give you 45 minutes, no problem, but 45 minutes two times a day, oh heck no, that ain’t happening.

So, I need you to be honest with yourself, and I’m not talking like 30 days. Who can’t do anything for 30 days? I’m saying give me a year. Look at it on a long horizon and look for a year, and if you’re ready for an alternative to diet, ready to really look at this flexibility, I’ve created a report, The Four Alternatives to Dieting, you can find that on my website it’s .

Do You Ever Feel Like You Can Be Two Entirely Different Women?

June 6, 2019 By kimkb49 Leave a Comment

Sometimes you live in the “golden zone,” you know ‘exactly’ what to eat and you do it perfectly 100% for a few weeks… and then, there are the times where you fall off the wagon, and spend loads of time trying to find your way back on it.

That was me, for years I struggled with the on the wagon off the http://www.fabfitsquad.com/ontrackwagon mentality.

How about you?

And better yet… Would you like to burn that wagon to the ground?

It’s possible!

What if you could learn the tips, tricks and strategies of those women who not only lived but THRIVED in the “golden zone”?

No more pressing the reboot button.

Finally learn how to break this cycle when you attend this FREE 5 day Master Class Series.

You’ve been on that slippery slope for far to long and it’s time you’ve learned what it’s like to give yourself grace and get back on track without missing a beat.

During the week of June 10th, I invite you to join me for the 5 Days To Get Back On Track (and never fall off again) live Master Class.

During that entire week myself and five other fitness pro will be dumping some serious knowledge bombs so that by the end of the week you have an anti wagon toolbox leaving you feeling empowered as you head into summer solidly no longer worrying about “the wagon.”

WHY ATTEND?

5 Days To Get Back On Track (and never fall off again) you’ll walk away:

✔️Changing your inner dialog so you are no longer yelling at yourself to “stop being a fat ass”

✔️ Build a bulletproof mindset that helps you to keep going when you feel like your failing

✔️ Learn to make decisions that are sustainable supporting your long-term goals and daily life.

And more!

Enough is enough!

Let’s put some light on this dirty little secret.

Will you join me?

A Good Morning Routine Can Set the Tone for a Calm Day

May 22, 2019 By kimkb49 Leave a Comment

A few years ago, I started hearing about morning routines and I didn’t really get. Let’s be honest with each other Mornings can be a hectic and rushed time. You may be trying to get yourself, kids, dog ready for the day and out the door on time with some sanity.

Starting your day out feeling frazzled, cranky, and overwhelmed isn’t good for anyone. A simple solution to make things a whole lot less stressful is to create a morning ritual for yourself that you perform each and every day. Let me explain to you what I mean by this and how a good morning routine can set the tone for a calm day.

What is a Morning Routine?

A morning routine is a series of actions you take every morning to help set the tone for your day. The thing about a morning routine is that it doesn’t have to take much time. It’s a form of daily self-care that helps you to begin each day feeling energized, relaxed, and purposeful. Morning routines are personal and unique. You decide what that can be for you. It could be writing in a journal, meditating, exercising, or sitting in complete silence drinking a great cup of coffee. Whatever a morning routine consists of, the purpose is to help you feel prepared for – and in charge of – you day.

Benefits of a Morning Routine

They don’t need to take much time, get up 15 minutes earlier. Ladies, great things can be gained from this practice. I know for me it’s been LIFE CHANGING. My morning journaling is like my morning workouts. ANYTHING can happen that day because I know that I’ve done something for myself! I go into the day with a sense of calm and knowing that I can handle any obstacle that pops up during the day.

My mornings now leave me feeling proactive and allows me to take time for myself on a regular basis.

Morning Routine Suggestions

Keep it simple, the first most of us want to do is make it complicated Your morning routine should be tailored to activities that you choose and from which you will get the most benefit. What nourishes your soul and provide meaning to you. I do have some suggestions to get you started.

First thing is “morning pages.” Sit down and write for 5 – 15 minutes of your thoughts and feelings can be quite cathartic and healing. Workout or if you have time go for a mind clearing leisurely stroll. The extent of the workout doesn’t matter. It’s moving your body that creates energy.

Taking your movement outside can add calm and perspective. Your morning routine can start the night before, by writing down a tentative to-do list and schedule for the following day. This might seem a bit over-the-top, but it truly can help to release the tension of uncertainty by providing you with a framework for the day ahead. The best way to start is say what is the outcome you want for your day.

These are a few ideas. Do whatever makes you feel will kick start your day. Start with 15 minutes and build up to a half hour, depending on your lifestyle. The key to reaping the benefits of a morning routine is to make it a regular practice. Soon you’ll begin to see your life transform.

I’d love to hear what you are planning to do for your morning routine.

Ready To Find Some Calm

May 18, 2019 By kimkb49 Leave a Comment

Do you ever feel like you take in WAY to information that you can’t shut

down your brain? That was me I was in overload mode big time! I really couldn’t sleep because I couldn’t turn my brain off. Since I wasn’t sleeping well, I was eating like shit (sugar and carbs) to give me the energy to me get through the damn day. Are you picking up what I’m putting down? Maybe you’re the type who heads to the couch with a bottle of wine and a straw.

Guilty as charged!

I was a live nerve about to explode! Don’t get me started on my headaches!! If I got through the day without one praise Jesus!!

I was so out of balance and in overload mode and really had no way to handle it.  I used to be a big old stress ball. If I didn’t have Tums, Advil or Pepto Bismol on me it wasn’t a good day. I was an overworked and overthinking Marketing Manager (insert your profession) – know how that feels like.

I went to my doctor to help me manage the headaches, I wanted prescription, but she handed a prescription, not for some miracle drug but to get the book don’t sweat the small stuff and to take yoga. 😫

Yup… insert my eye-roll!!! 👀

Basically she was telling me that I need to find ways to calm my mind. I had to focus on learning ways to manage the overload coming my way. This was several years ago and now we are so “connected” it’s a challenge to deal with the chaos in the proactive ways so that you don’t find yourself feeling depleted.

While I rolled my eyes at the book the doctor had given me when I look back it was a bit of an awakening of sorts for me. Yes, I want all my problems solved with a magic pill, come on that is really easy. I had to learn how to de-stress and unwind or I was not heading for a happy ending!.
What I’m about to share with you, helped me to take the steps to calm my mind. They may not all work for you, but I’m confident you’ll find at least one or two that will fit your lifestyle.

Meditation
This was a challenge for me being quiet and being in the moment. Good grief!!! My good friend Leeanne she as a meditator and I asked her for help. She had my meditate for 30 minutes – OMG that was a lot!! My mind was like a horse running around a track – I couldn’t turn it off.

I do not recommend starting with that much time. I reduced it to 5 minutes and found some great music on Youtube. There are other meditation apps that you can use.

I will say that eventually I moved up to 15 minutes and that where I hang it feels good for me It doesn’t feel like it but eventually you will learn to clear away all of the thoughts that are swirling around in your head and competing for your attention.

This is something you’ll need to incorporate into your life multiple times per week. It doesn’t have to be difficult or overwhelming, though. Just a few minutes each day are actually enough to obtain the calming benefits.

Yoga
The other advice the doctor gave me was yoga. Now this was is still a tough one for me. I’ve told myself that I’m going to make a more concerted effort to bring my yoga into my life.

Journaling
When this was first suggested to me, I was dead set against doing it.
I wanted nothing to do with journaling. I was not a ‘dear diary’ kinda girl.
I started with just 5 minutes of writing why the hell am I doing this and slowly I started to realize that journaling allowed me to take all the thoughts that are swirling around in my mind and put them on paper (or on a computer screen, depending on your preference). There are a lot of benefits to this activity that can lead to greater peace of mind and tranquillity. I find that at times I’m writing them that I didn’t even realize I ever knew I thought about.

The key to making this work, though, is to do it on a regular basis. Making a habit of writing helps you to prevent the overwhelming thoughts from overcoming you, and keeps some stress at bay. I make it a point to journal every morning before I start my day. It’s what kick starts my day beside coffee. I do it even when I’m on vacation. It also lets you see these thoughts in front of you. It lets you scream and someone without actually screaming at them. Getting them out of brain and bringing them to the forefront, you can help you gain better perspective and begin to see patterns from which you can make inferences.

There are lots of ways you can journal. It all depends on your personality, creativity, and preference. You may wish to free-write and jot down whatever’s on your mind for five minutes at a time. Maybe you’ll want a prompt that guides your writing for the day on a particular subject. A brain dump is a great way to simply write down all the random thoughts that are in your head as a means of gaining some clarity. Whenever I get stuck, I ask myself the question what do I need to know? Sometime the answers that I write utterly shock me.

I started with this 5-minute journal and gradually moved to free writing. From time I will find a good prompt that gets my juices flowing.
Give these strategies a try to see which you prefer. They’re all great ways to gain clarity, feel calmer, and rid yourself of unnecessary stress.

Are You Ready To Break Some Bad Habits?

May 15, 2019 By kimkb49 Leave a Comment

I’ve been thinking about this a while. For me this year I’ve been focused on habits. I’m always thinking to myself what is it that keeps you stuck?

What are the questions that I keep getting over and over again?

What are the ways that I help clients?

And one of the things I see over and over again is that people don’t have good habits. What I mean by that is we always focus on things we aren’t –

I’m not a healthy eater,

I’m not a good sleeper,

I’m not someone who exercises, and you just focus on that, the not.

Or when you flip to say it’s time to get healthy it’s completely cutting out the things out of your diet wholesale, like no wheat, no dairy, no gluten, no this, no that, without really kind of looking at all of your habits, your good habits, your bad habits.

Programmed For Certainty

I want you to think about your current habits. Brushing your teeth, that’s a habit; how you take your coffee, it’s a habit; how you take your coffee, when and where you drink your coffee it’s a habit. If you think about it some of our earliest habits were started when we were babies.

You sucked your thumb or you didn’t .

You needed binky at a particular time and as a parent you kind of feed into that habit. Or maybe instead of having your kid suck their thumb you’re like, “Suck this binky instead.”

These are all habits. Habits can be considered good or bad habits.

One of the reasons we fail at habits, be it creating or stopping habits, is that they keep us safe. One of our primal instincts that we need is certainty – You need to know that gravity is holding you down. You need to know that when you take a step that you’re not going to fall off the end of the earth. You need to know that when close your eyes tomorrow, you’re going to wake up tomorrow. And that’s the kind of certainty that you know, you trust and we translate that into other areas of our life.

You want certainty if the person you’re in a relationship with loves you back. You want the certainty that if you start a new diet and it tells you that you are going to lose 400 pounds in four minutes, you better lose 400 pounds in four minutes.

I hear youm, you want the certainty that anything you want you’re going to get. And for a lot of people if they aren’t, I’d say 90-ish% sure they’re going to nail it, they’ll sit their butts right back on the sidelines. It’s a chosen few that even with that small percentage of not being certain they will accomplish or even achieve, however you want to describe it, will still go for it. What I want you to be able to do is if you’re that person who if you’re not 100% certain that it’s going to happen for you and you typically sit back on the bench, I’m talking to you.

I want to give you that extra boost, that extra kick in the pants if you will to go for it, because what I know is that sitting on the sidelines has that gotten you any closer to where you want to be?

And the other thing I know is that if you want something, you’ve got to move your feet. There are a lot of people out there that are like, “I’m going to manifest that.” Really? Well, let me just tell you, manifestation doesn’t work unless you do the work. And I know this is a little woo-woo and it’s going to be a slight tangent, but I’m totally going to bring the plane right back to habits. You have to have clarity about where you want to go and that’s where I’m going to.

You need to be so clear about where it is you want to go. And what I find with a lot of people is not only do they not have strong habits, they’re not clear. And because you’re not clear, you’re not creating the habits that are going to take you to the next level. Without this clarity the habits that you are trying to create aren’t going to be sustainable. The key to create habits that you are going to actually start and chip away at and see results.

Addicted?

If I’m going to start on the bad side of habits, one thing I think is that it starts with physical things. It could be too much exercise, too little exercise, too much food, too little food. It could be working too much, not working enough. Those are the kind of things where habits are formed.

It could be a mindset; it could be you’re that person who life is always happening to you.

It could be you’re always a negative thinker; it could be that you always see things on the bright side.

It could be that you’re a little too optimistic, a little too Pollyanna, a little too wearing rose-colored glasses all the darn time.

It could also be like a technology thing, you could be addicted to your cell phone, you could be addicted to Netflix and chilling, that’s your whole world; you could be addicted to social media.

Whatever track you’re moving down, if you’re moving down the bad habit track or moving down the good habit track, so many people are like, “If only I had more willpower. If I only had more willpower, you don’t even know how much I could accomplish.” And every time I hear that it’s just nails on the chalkboard for me, because willpower isn’t this superhero that’s going to swoop down and take the coffee out of your mouth, take the wine out of your mouth, push you to the gym? It’s not like that.

How Much Does Willpower Cost?

The best way I’ve heard willpower described – and it just like nails it – willpower is a battery and it’s a battery of choices, and the more choices I have to make that rely on my willpower, the quicker that battery gets drained. I want you to think about your cell phone. Here I am, it’s 8 p.m., and my battery is at 86%, and that could be I had a pretty easy day, I didn’t have to make any big willpower decisions. Now, I go home, I eat dinner, and after dinner happens, what if I want a sweet treat? So, now I have to start thinking to myself, “Ice cream, cookies, fruit, what do I go for?” That’s draining my battery because I spend a lot of cycles thinking about brownies, cookies or have the fruit. Then maybe I choose the brownies or the cookies, maybe I choose both, then I have a few rounds in my head beating the crap out of myself, and that will pop batteries down to like 50%. Now comes 9:00pm, I could watch a movie on Netflix, or I could go to bed. Then I decide I’m only going to watch 20 minutes and if nothing catches my attention I’ll go to bed. Oops here comes a binge-a-thon and I’m watching episode one, season one of (you insert the show) and next thing I know it’s 2:00 a.m. and episode 10 is rolling up and I’m dead on my feet. At this point my willpower is down to zero!

Now, if I didn’t hit my recharge button, do you think by the time I got up the next day I’ve already dead dog tired, am I going to make better choices tomorrow? Or am I too tired from the day before to make good choices?

There is NOT an infinite supply of willpower, the more you rely on it, the faster it will burn itself out. It comes back around to getting clear about what you truly want, what’s a true obstacle(s) for you. And so, what is going to be a willpower thing versus a skill power thing.

The Tortoise or the Hare?

If truly you want to live a healthy lifestyle you shouldn’t be white-knuckling it, you shouldn’t be pacing around like you’re waiting for your next fix. You want that ease; You want that flow for you that you’re not going to fall back into your old patterns.

Do you want certainty? Take the time and do the work. Is it an overnight thing? Nope. But if you, again, practice your skill power, you’ll rely less and less on willpower.

You’ve got to have a start date and I challenge you for it to not be on a Monday, because think about it, today is Tuesday, so everyone is going to be like, “I had a candy bar and some cookies today, screw it, I’m going to start on Monday.” What if you said, “You know what, I’m going to buck the trend and I’m going to start on Wednesday. And so, when I start on Wednesday, again, I’m breaking the habit of always starting on Monday, but I’m also giving myself this stake in the ground. And you decide what it is you’re no longer going to allow, or you decide what it is that you’re going to start taking on.

Keep it simple, I always ask my clients what’s one thing, that you can change. They’re like, “Well, if I have to say one thing it would really be to eat right and go to the gym.”

I’m no rocket scientist, but that’s two things. To get you guys to focus down into one thing is really hard for most of you, because you look at all the things that you need to change. You want to do all the things right freaking now!

I believe in The Tortoise and The Hare, that old fable. We all know the story, the hare is like, “I’m going to beat you.” And the tortoise is like, “Go for it.” And the hare runs himself ragged doing all these tricks, showing the turtle how fast he is, burns himself out, meanwhile the tortoise is one step at a time, one step at a time, and he ends up winning the race.

I want you to be that tortoise, I want you to be that so certain, you know where you’re going and you’re taking your sweet old time and you’re just making life happen.

Measured Success

So many of you struggle with setting goals. And one of the biggest things you struggle with setting is numeric goals. In order to achieve your goals they should be measurable.

This is a conversation I have with clients all the time.

Clients: “I want to start a new habit to eat healthier.”

Me: “So, how do you know if you’re eating healthier? How are you measuring that?”

Client: “”What do you mean?”

Me: “So, are you going to eat healthy on Monday, Wednesdays and Thursdays, are you going to eat healthy for breakfast, are you going to eat healthy X number meals a week? What is that quantifiable so that I can look back and say, ‘I did it. Look at me’”?

Winning Streak

We all want to do that victory lap. Define it – if you say, “I want to work out more”, is it for duration, is it for a number of days at the gym, what is it? Classify what it is because, again, the clearer you are, the more defined you are, the more likely it’s going to get done. There’s a saying, “what gets measured gets done.”

There’s an app on my phone called Today and it’s a habit tracker. Jerry Seinfeld, when he first started as a comedian, knew he had to have a library of jokes in order to be able to go to all the open mic nights. He wanted a library so he wasn’t reusing the same material over and over and over again. So, he challenged himself to write a joke every single day. He got an old-fashioned calendar, and every time he wrote a joke, he put a giant X through the day. And his motto was, “Don’t break the streak.” So, he wanted to wake up every day and see that X on the wall, the X on the wall, the X on the wall.

So, think about your habits like this. I want you to see that X on the wall. Can you keep a streak for seven days? Can you keep a streak for 14 days? How long can you keep this streak? And a lot of people will talk about cold turkey. If it’s giving up wine or if it’s going to the gym, they’ll just be like, “I’m going in two feet and I’m making this happen.” I go back and forth. I believe there is a percentage of the population that can do that.

About 15-plus years ago when my husband and I decided that we’re going to live a healthier life, and we met with our trainer, we came home and literally cleaned out our cupboards. We were just like, “All right, this goes.” And we just cleaned out our cupboards.

Now, other people would be like, “Oh hell no.”

There was a weight loss show I used to watch on TV, I can’t remember the name of it, and the whole family needed to go on a diet. The nutrition coach moved in with them, and the first thing the coach said was, “Look, we got to get rid of the stuff in your house that’s going to tempt you.” She’s going through their cupboards throwing stuff away, the family is literally crying. The family is crying, the dad is swearing like a sailor. It’s so funny the attachment that we have around food.

Savor The Journey

So, I want you to just think, can you go cold turkey? Do you need to go cold

turkey? Here is where I ask you to take an assessment of where you are based on what you want to do. A lot of my clients, they like their wine, and I’m like, “Let’s start with where are you.

Are you drinking every day? Are you drinking two glasses, three glasses a day?

Can we scale that back to one glass a day? Can we scale it back to two glasses a day? Can we scale it back to a really great glass on a Friday instead of a glass or two every night or wine out of the box, Monday through Friday, can you spring for a really good $30-plus bottle of wine and savor it?

So, it’s looking at that kind of stuff.

It all comes back to where do you want to go. Think GPS if you don’t punch in the right address you are going to spin your wheels, or you’re going to land miles from where you want to be.

I talk about this regularly, but I’m the queen of baby steps. Back in the day I was so hardcore, and I want to apologize for those of you guys who worked with me back then, but I was so hardcore; now I’m about baby steps. It goes back to where are you, assessing where you are, and then seeing what’s possible for you. Now a days, everyone wants to immediately go from beginner to expert, but I always say to people, “Beginnings are messy, but it’s in the mess where you find your mastery.” It’s in the mess where you find your footing and how it’s going to best work for. Yes, it stinks, yes, it’s awkward, yes, it’s uncomfortable, but at the end of the day I know what always works out, I truly know that it works out.

Success is boring as fuck, and I want you to get comfortable in it being boring. I want you to get comfortable that there’s not going to be shooting stars and unicorns flying across when you’re hitting your goals. But if that’s something that motivates you that you need, I want you to set little mini goals along your path and celebrate the heck out of them, because the wins are what keep you going; it’s not the deprivation, it’s not the denials, it’s looking in the mirror and saying, “Hey, these pants don’t feel as tight”, doing your measurements and saying, “I think I’m down five inches.” It’s those kinds of things. It’s like, “I’m sleeping better. Look, my skin looks so much better.” “It’s your husband getting a little handsy”. Those are the things I want you to think about.

Willpower will only take you but so far. When you start learning stronger skills, you’ll have a better shot of knocking it out of the park. And just like good habits are triggered, there’s a trigger mechanism; bad habits have the same trigger mechanism. So, I want you to think about what kicks off the habit you’re trying to change.

Do you come home and immediately the habit is take off your coat, grab a glass and pour a glass of wine?

Is the habit after you get the kids down you feel like you deserve a snack?

Is it the habit that you only go to the gym on days it’s not raining?

What is that habit, what is that trigger that you seem to fall into?

And is there any way, is it your environment, is it someone who’s around you, what is the way that you can change that trigger so that it helps you to create the next steps?

The last piece is accountability. I can’t stress accountability enough. Over the last few weeks I’ve been working with an accountability partner and it’s been very eye-opening because — let’s just be honest — we think we are the bee’s knees… okay, at least I think I’m the bee’s knees. And it’s very humbling to open the kimono and be vulnerable to someone, to be like, “I can’t do this on my own.” And I totally get that, especially for someone in my position, I should know all this. But what I do know is that you can’t be objective about yourself. I know that wholeheartedly you cannot be objective about yourself, you will always think you are doing awesome. One of the best things by hiring someone is that they’re your second set of eyes, they’re the person who can talk to you objectively because there’s no emotional attachment. Their only skin in the game is to help you be your best. How can you set yourself up for success?

I’m just going to wrap it up. I want you to beware of trolls. Trolls aren’t just those people on the internet you don’t know; trolls can be people you know who when you try to better yourself they don’t like it, they want you to be you, the way you are right now, no changes.

It’s your accountability partners, it’s your circle of like-minded folks when it comes to making this change, they’re going to be your biggest and your best supporters. So, at the end of the day, there are good and bad habit. Both can be broken and strengthened, and it’s just a matter of you getting really clear on what it is you’re trying to create, the life you’re trying to create.

Swimsuit Ready By Summer, Even If You Are Over 40

April 11, 2019 By kimkb49 Leave a Comment

It’s daylight savings time and I pretty much skipped here because it’s light out. This time of year, a lot of people are starting to think about summer. The nights are getting longer and we’re starting to get a little bit warmer. I don’t want to jinx it, I don’t want to talk too loudly because Mother Nature might be like, “Hey, you’re getting a snowstorm in two weeks.” So, I don’t want to jinx it, I just want to say that I didn’t feel the coldness that I normally feel when I’m outside.

Fit For Summer?

While yes you are looking forward to summer you are thinking to yourself, “Can I get fit in time for summer?” And today is exactly 100 days to summer. Now, I’m counting summer as being June 21st. I think it’s like the astronomical summer, I think that’s the technical name for it. Some people think of summer as Memorial Day; I’m thinking of summer as June 21st, because at least here in New England it doesn’t start to really get warm till around June.

This summer I want you to feel fit and confident and comfortable in your body and with a hundred days you’ve got time. You really do have time. And I’m talking about there’s no deprivation, I’m talking about that you’re not going to be like that poor girl who’s having carrots and water while everyone else is enjoying things. I want you to be able to glide into summer, enjoy your summer and come out on the other side of summer and not feel like, “Oh crap, I got to diet because I had too much barbecue.”

I want you to really learn what it takes to have sustainable weight loss. I want you to know what it takes to have a sustainable, healthy lifestyle without always feeling like you have these big highs and lows where you have to diet before your big vacation and then lose your stuff on vacation, then have to diet again to get ready for the next big thing, then lose your stuff again. If you are over that keep listening,

Keep It Simple

Right now some of you visualize summer and you’re just like, “Sweet Georgia Brown.” You are thinking ‘there’s no way my thighs with the cottage cheese on them are ready for prime time, there’s no way that’s ever going to happen, and thigh gap, I haven’t had that since I was 13’. And if you’re saying you’re not ready, keep reading because I’m going to help get you ready. It’s not going to be anything drastic or crazy like that. The biggest thing I always tell people is keep it simple, simple.

Women like to over-complicate stuff, ad nauseam, we like to take something simple and add 500 layers on top of it so that it’s so complicated that we’re like “Wah?” It’s worse than trying to put it together IKEA furniture, that’s how complicated we make stuff. So, I want you to keep it simple. I want you in your mind’s eye to think about what is going well today. What are you doing well, so that we can start to build upon it?

Are you going to the gym? Awesome! How many times do you go into the gym? What’s the duration of the time that you’re at the gym? What are you doing at the gym? And what tweaks can we make to what is already going well?

If you’re going to the gym and maybe you’re only going for 30 minutes and you’re walking on the treadmill, great. Could you take 15 minutes of that 30-minute time block and put in some strength training? Could you add an extra 15 minutes? Could that walk become a jog and a walk? Could that 30 minutes turn into maybe a HIIT workout? What can I take from that 30 minutes of time and how can I build upon it?

The same thing with your food – maybe you’re doing great with your food, awesome. When was the last time you changed something in your diet? And by change, I mean I know there are some people who actually eat the same thing over and over and over again. Maybe instead of reaching for the sweet potato when you go to the grocery store, you reach for the beets; maybe you reach for a butternut squash. Instead of reaching for the brown rice, maybe you’ve reached for the quinoa or some chickpeas. It’s those little subtle tweaks I’m looking for. Maybe instead of always having broccoli you’ve reached for another green vegetable. Little tweaks that you can build on but still keeping it really simple. Because the more complicated you make it, the less likely you are to continue, and I want you to continue.

I like simple things. I did a Facebook Live in my group, Reality Diet, a few days ago and we talked about meal prep. I’m a simple girl, any vegetable that comes in a bag that someone has chopped, shredded, zoodled, it’s for me, those are the vegetables I will always buy. Someone asks, “How do you cook beets?” Well, I don’t cook beets because there’s this place called Love Beets and they make them, and all I have to do is open up the package and slice them and then I’m done; no need to cook the beets. So, I want you to think about that, what’s already working. What are some tweaks you can make to what’s already working?

Movement challenge

And I also want you to focus on movement. Now, that’s not sexy, I know, but what is movement? Movement is acts of daily living. I’ve talked about this on previous shows. We don’t move a lot in our lives anymore, we’re very sedentary, like we go for a workout and then we sit all day working and not moving a whole heck of a lot.

So, I challenge you, if it’s not a Fitbit, use your Apple watch or whatever and get in at least 10,000 steps a day. Just focus on having those acts of daily living. Take the dog for an extra 10 minutes on the walk, grab your kids and go for a walk around the block after dinner now that it’s a little lighter outside and a little bit warmer outside. But keep those thoughts.

Be Consistent

Ask yourself, “Is this something that I can do for the next one to two months? Is it something I can do for the next one to two years?” Because if it is, guess what? That’s called consistency, and you know how I feel – I create good habits, I get good results, and my results lead to consistency, and that’s how you win. It’s not this magic meal plan, it’s not this magic super food, or this list of inflammatory foods, it’s literally, “What can we do on a consistent daily basis?”

Sustainable and healthy goal?

The second piece is what is your overall goal? And I ask that because I find that most people aren’t clear about what their goal is, and then the second piece is that they’re not realistic about what it takes to get there. So, six-pack abs — everyone is like, “Six-pack abs, I want to have six-pack abs.” Well, in order to get to six-pack abs, one, it has to be genetically possible for you. Not everyone is genetically predisposed to six-pack abs. You’re predisposed to have a flat stomach, but to get the six-pack abs I need to have a certain percent body fat. In order to get to that certain percent body fat, I don’t have a lot of wiggle room in my nutrition, I don’t have a lot of wiggle room in my workout, so if I want that six-pack abs, I’ve got to work my tushy off. I got to work my tushy off in order to get that. Take a listen to a FB Live I did on this subject.

Now, I want you to ask, “Is working my tushy off to get the six-pack abs sustainable?” Because I work with fitness and figure competitors and for a lot of those girls, abs are like an honored guest. They show up the day of the show and they’re the first to go because as soon as I start to put in some water back into my system, as soon as I start to put some sugar, as soon as I start to increase my carbs, increase my protein, my abs are like, “See ya, wouldn’t want to be ya!” So, I really want you as you’re doing this to be crystal clear about what you want, like punching it into a GPS, it’s 123 Main Street, not just punching in Main Street.

And then I want you say, “Is my goal realistic for what I’m willing to do? What am I willing to do to get this goal?” And when I say willing, I’m not talking 90 days, I’m talking 900 days. Could you do this for 900 days? And if you could do for 900 days, is it healthy? Because I know that some of out there is like, “Girl if it’s a six-pack abs, I can do anything for 900 days.” Then it’s like but would that turn into something detrimental to your long-term health? Because at the end of the day I want everyone who works with me to be healthy. I want everyone who works with me to say, “That was a great experience.” Not like, “Ugh. Girl, I worked with her and she killed me. I felt hungry. I felt angry. I just literally thought I could kill people because I just didn’t feel that I had enough substance in my body.” So, if you’re picking up when I’m putting down, that’s what I’m talking about. So, I want you to think about what could be achieved in this next hundred days.

Do sprints

And I like to take my hundred days and break them down into five 20-day sprints so that each time I can say, “This is my long-range goal, and then in order to get to my long-range goal here’s step one, two, three, four and five.” And that way I’m starting to feel successful, I’m starting to get some wins under my belt, I’m starting to get that motivation, I’m starting to be like, “Yeah, I got this, I can do this.” And the mini goals could be changing up your food, setting a bedtime and actually getting six-plus hours of good sleep a night.

Maybe you decide you want to work out in the morning, or maybe you just want to say, “I’m going to consistently get in three to four workouts no matter what.” And maybe throwing in a little meditation. Whatever it is you’re just like, “I’m making me a priority, and I’m setting me as a goal.”

Process It

The next phase is creating a process. If you ever go to any store there’s a process that if you return something here are the steps that the cashier has to take in order to return your merchandise. Or if you buy something, here are the steps, this is how they have to punch it into the computer in order to take your money.

I want you to think about that as you go through what you’re trying to do. How do you make this into a process so that you’re not jumping from one thing to the next thing to the next thing? I see it all the time. People start over here and they’re like, “Oh, I’m totally doing Keto.” And then they can’t stick with Keto because it’s too challenging, it’s too much for them. So, then they jump to, “Oh, I’m going to do Paleo.” Or, “Oh, I’m going to do this.” Or, “I’m going to do this.” And they jump around like a Mexican jumping bean and instead of saying, “My destination is 123 Main Street and the GPS coordinates says I have to stay on this road for a mile. I challenge you to stay on the road for a mile, and when you get to that mile then make a determination. Is there traffic on the road? Is there an obstacle on the road? Or are things flowing smoothly that I can take the next step? And that’s where those 20-day sprints come in so that way you stay firm on the goal but flexible to the approach, if that makes sense.

Then, I want you to keep on whatever goal you set, just keep chipping away at it so that you can look back and say, “This is what I did, I started tracking my food and that was really telling, so then I could see where I was doing amazing, or what kind of sent me off the rails and what was what was triggering me when I went on a bender, if I didn’t sleep.” That way I’m able to kind of start seeing what’s going on and I can start to create this process.

The other way to help create a process is when you work with someone that they can be a second set of eyes. We are very close to ourselves and sometimes we don’t see the trees for the forest, and so you need that person who kind of looks over your shoulder and can point out, “Oh, did you notice that when you sleep less than six hours, you drink 400 cups of coffee and you mainline M&Ms?” You might not see that correlation but someone else looking over your shoulder might be able to see that correlation for you. Maybe you are like me, you are eating clean foods, but you are

Set up boundaries

Review your obstacles. As you’re going down your roads there might be construction, there might be a giant pothole. (This time of year, we’ve got potholes for days around here.) There might be a pothole, there might be a person crossing the street, you might get a flat tire. Take a look at anything in the past that may have stopped you and do your best to foresee that so that you can say, “There are times that I might have to work late, there are times that I might not have childcare, there are times that I just might be dead dog tired. There are times that I might…” I don’t know, think of a reason excuse. But I want you to really think about every time that you’ve kind of zigged when you wanted to zag. What has been that obstacle? That way you can foresee it.

For me when I was working in corporate, my boss would literally come at 5:00pm and dump a pile of junk on my desk, and of course it had to be done by 10:00 a.m. the next morning. So, of course, being the good worker, I would stay doing all of my work and then forgo going to the gym or forego going to meet friends. And so, I had to set my boundaries. I finally had to create a boundary. I found a class that I absolutely loved and it was on a class pass – you buy a certain number of classes and you got a go or you lose your money. And so, I sat down with my boss I said, “Hey, I’m really going to start exercising, I just feel like crap and I know when I exercise, I feel much better, and on Tuesdays and Thursdays I have to leave at [5:00].” And I was scared, my knees were knocking, but it was what I needed for my mental sanity.

Maybe that’s something you need to do. Maybe you need to have a discussion with your partner or with your boss that I need this time for me. Since then I’ve shifted to working out in the morning and for me it just sets the tone for my day. Yes, getting up sucks, but I know that by 7:30am I’ve done Kim stuff and the rest of the day can happen and I don’t feel like I’m going to miss out on my workout, because when I do miss out on my workout, if my day sucks the life out of me.

Get Support

Then the last piece is support; we all need support. Some days you are just like, “I can do it all.” You’re standing on the top of the mountain; your cape is flying behind you. And then other days you just feel like crap, and you’re just like, “I ain’t got this.” And you just want to go to your bed and just put the covers up over your head. It happens, we all have those days.

Like this morning I wanted to put the cover up over my head because I was exhausted. I’m probably going to go to bed again at 9:30pm, like I’m five years old. Who’s in your corner? Who’s going to be that person who’s going to check in on you? When you said, “I’m going to the gym three or four days a week”, who’s going to be that person’s going to be like, “Hey girl, what did you do?” And it can’t be someone who’s going to let you off the hook, it has to be that person that’s going to be like, “Hey girl, what did you do? Why not? How come?” And call you on your shit, because sometimes we need to be called on our shit. And who are you going to tell your why? Because your why is what gets you out of bed when it’s dark outside, it’s snowing outside, it’s cold and you just want to crawl back in.

When I was competing, and I didn’t want to get out of bed I would think about people who had kids. I don’t have any children, and I would think about there’s some mom who is leaving her kids and she got up at 4:00am so she could be back to send her kids to school, and I got nothing. I don’t have anybody to send off to school, I just got me to get my tush to work and that’s it, and I would get myself out of bed.

Now, I just think about what my goal is. In less than a month I’m going to Hawaii on vacation, and I will want to look awesome. So, as I lay in bed, I’m like, “You know what, lying in bed ain’t going to get me looking awesome on the beach, so get your booty out of bed Kim.” And I get my booty out of bed.

I want you to think about what is that for you so that when you’re lying there saying, “I don’t want to”, what’s that thought process that you’re going to go through that’s going to just say, “Alright, I’m up and at ’em”?

And that just made me think about when I was a little kid, when my sister and I just did not want to get out of bed, my mom would open up the door and she would be like, “Up and at ’em” all the time, and that was her kind of second stage of if we don’t get out of the out of bed she was going to lose her stuff. So, think about it.

Be Accountable

Accountability is a big thing. I have a good friend and we’ve been doing this for years, every Sunday I text, “Here are the days I’m going to the gym.” And if she doesn’t hear from me by Wednesday about what I’ve done from Sunday to Wednesday she’s like, “What’s up?” And then I do the same thing for her, and it’s just us checking in on each other.

And it could be something as loose as that, or it can be something really formal as over the past several years I’ve had coaches for pretty much everything, for my business, for my body, and when I have had coaches for my body I’ve had to detail every single thing I’ve put in my mouth -6:00 a.m. I woke up and I had a cup of coffee. 7:00 a.m. I did this. And they’re looking over my shoulder to give me that guidance, to give me that feedback. So, I want you to think about who’s got that, who’s got that for you, and who can help you out with that. And if that’s something you want to talk about, please let me know.

We have a hundred days until summer, everything I gave you is doable, everything I gave you isn’t this hard thing. We make it hard. So, I challenge you to just figure out what it is that you want, what are the slight tweaks that you can make, how do you make that into a process. Don’t make this a complicated process, just make it really simple, like can I sit down on Sundays and map out my week? Can I sit down on Saturday, make a grocery list and get my booty to the grocery store or have Instacart come drop groceries off to me? Can I think about anything that’s going to pop up and get in my way?

And lastly, who’s going to be the person who… I make this master awesome plan, who’s going to be that person who’s going to be like, “Are you doing it?” And the main thing is what’s your why? So, if that all sounds awesome to you, let me know.

Grab Your Blueprint

I’ve created a Four Alternatives to Dieting, and basically what I’ve just said is summed up in a document.. Use this as a blueprint so that you can glide into summer and rock that swimsuit and feel comfortable confident as you walk down the beach this summer.

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