Are you really ready to make a change?

I've been posting about goals and promises and resolutions, but I didn't touch on one key component.  Are you really ready to make a change?

Here are a few things you need to consider and do to make your transformation possible.

1.  Do you believe in yourself?  In order to be successful, you have to believe in yourself, the process and your ability to succeed.  You need to believe in yourself not just physically, but more importantly mentally.  You need to get your mind out of your body's way.

2.  Stay positive.  You will have ups and downs.  Celebrate the ups, acknowledge the downs and move on.  Do not dwell on hiccups along the way--we all have them.  Instead learn from them; find ways to change your behavior so that they don't happen again.

Stay positive in the way you view yourself as well.  Instead of dwelling on the negative, turn things around.  Calling yourself names like "fat" and "ugly" aren't going to help you reach your goals.  Make the promise right here and now to change your negative attitude about yourself into a positive one.

Write down some positive things...answer these questions:  What is going on your life right now that is good? Why does it have that affect on you?  What makes you happy?  Why?  What are your hobbies?  What are you passionate about?  Look at your answers and see all the good in your life!

3.  Give yourself permission to mess up.  Yes, I want you to make promises that you will keep, but life gets messy sometimes.  If you mess up, look at the situation.  Why did you mess up?  Try making some adjustments to your goal/promise if the original one isn't as easy to keep as you thought.

4.  Surround yourself with positive and supportive people.  Finding someone to share the process with or better yet to go through the process with will increase your chances for success.  They will keep you honest, they will hold you accountable--especially if they are a workout buddy, plus it's just more fun to do this kind of thing with people who will rally around you.  Find people you trust, can confide in and feel totally comfortable with.

Stay away from those who do not have your best interests at heart.  Don't let anyone sabotage what you want to do for yourself.  Sometimes they don't even realize they are doing it.  If that happens, have a conversation with that person to try to rectify the situation.  If it continues, avoid them.  Sometimes people think they are helping by making statements like "You don't look that bad," or "Skipping one workout isn't going to hurt that much."   Explain to them how important this is to you.  Others might feel threatened by what you are doing.  They may wonder where they fit in your journey.  They may think that they will have to lose weight too.  They may feel that they are losing you as a friend because you'd rather work out than go out for pizza.  Try to include them, if they want to join you or find something else to do rather than eat great, if not, you will need to avoid them as well.

Bottom line, it's your life and your journey, you've got to believe in yourself and surround yourself with others that do too.  Do this, and you will be successful.  YOU are the change!

Keeping Your New Year's Fitness/Body Promises

How are you doing with the small promises you made 2 weeks ago?  Did you keep them?  Are you ready to move on to new ones?

Five years ago, Rick and I spent our 25th Wedding Anniversary in Hawaii.  This is Diamond Head Mountain in Honolulu.  We decided we wanted to climb it.

This was the view as we were climbing up to the top.  It was actually much further than this.  After getting to the top here, there were 282 stairs (I know because I have a t-shirt that states it!)  to climb, another narrow spiral staircase and then a metal  ladder that went up through a hole in the rock (only one person could go up or down at a time)--it was much more than I expected!  Some people would and did say, "No way, I can't do that!"

Well, we did, and here's what we saw once we made it to the top:

Totally worth it, wouldn't you say?

This is how we should look at the promises that we've made to ourselves to get healthier, to exercise more, eat cleaner and be more positive even when it seems impossible, because once you reach that goal--it's awesome!

So, today I'm going to share some tips to help you achieve your body/fitness promises and goals.

As I wrote in the last post, you need to make both long and short term goals or promises that are only for you and they need to be SMART--Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time bound.  I also mentioned that I prefer using size/measurement goals as opposed to weight goals.  I'm going to explain why.

How quickly you see weight loss on the scale will depend on several things:  how much weight you have to lose, the type of and how much exercise you are doing, and your eating plan.

First off, the more weight you have to lose, the quicker it will initially come off.  If this is the case, this can be a very encouraging tool.  However, a good deal of the time the initial weight loss is excess water, not fat.  Not a bad thing, excess water isn't healthy either.

If you don't have a lot of weight to lose (less than 20 pounds), it can seem like that scale just won't budge no matter how little you eat or how much exercising you do.  This can be very discouraging.  Plus, what you eat even the day before can affect what shows up on the scale as well as how much muscle you are adding to your body.

Today I'm going to talk strictly about exercise and how it can affect the scale.  Exercise burns calories.  When you create a deficit between calories taken in and calories burned, you lose weight.  A pound of weight equals 3500 calories.  So, here's the thing--most of us overestimate how many calories we are burning during a workout (as well as how many calories we take in--that will be discussed in another post).  There are several factors here that determine how many calories you are burning during and after a workout.

First, the heavier you are, the more calories you will burn.  Why?  Because you are moving more weight through space--using more energy than someone who is lighter.  The type of exercise you are doing, the intensity you are working at and its duration are all factors as well, and lastly, it also depends on your body's muscle to fat ratio (this has more to do with the calories burned after the workout).

Most people believe that in order to lose weight, they must do tons of cardiovascular or aerobic exercise because this burns the most calories. While it's true that this type of exercise does burn calories, how many calories burned during and after depends on the type of exercise you are doing.  So cardio alone is not your best option.  Now, I'm not saying to stop your aerobic exercise, what I am saying is don't make it your only form of exercise, and here's why:

Aerobic exercise does burns calories, but where are those calories coming from?  You want the calories to come from your fat stores, not from your muscles.  So, if there is no strength or muscle training going on as well or all you are doing is a steady state type of aerobic exercise that doesn't get your heart rate up enough, those calories could potentially come from your muscle.  We want to maintain our muscles, we want the calories to come from stored fat.  Did you ever see someone who lost weight and their skin just kind of sagged on them or they still looked jiggly even though they lost weight?  That's because they didn't build the muscle while they were losing the weight and the body used it for fuel.  

So what does this mean?  It means for maximal calorie burn and muscle retention, it is best to do a combination of higher intensity aerobic conditioning (even if the short bursts of higher intensity work are only 30 seconds long) and strength training to get the most bang for your buck.  Muscle is active tissue, it needs calories to maintain itself, therefore, the more muscle you have on your body, the more calories you will burn--even while you sleep!  For every pound of muscle that you add to your body, you will burn 50 more calories a day.  That means an increase in your metabolism.  Plus there is an added bonus.  Muscle is also more compact than fat.  It's like comparing a pound of bricks to a pound of feathers.  They both still weight a pound, but the feathers take up a lot more space--it's the same way in your body!  Plus, in the long run, aerobic exercise that is done at a higher intensity for short bursts will actually help you burn more calories afterward because that is when you will be in the "fat burning" zone.  Here's a great video that explains it--some of which I've already stated.

This is the major problem I have with the weight loss competition shows.  They are very heavy into the cardio because it's all about the scale.  These people are working out 5-6 hours a day--it's not reality at all!  More importantly, you can see the people shrinking before your eyes--they are getting much smaller, but a lot of the time the muscle definition is not there--that's why they start wearing compression shirts during the weigh-ins. If they only lose a couple of pounds they get very upset.  They do mention that it's harder to lose weight the smaller they get, but they never mention the importance of strength training. Why?  Because it doesn't necessarily show up on the scale, and it's a weight loss competition--that is the only thing they gauge.  UGH!!!

That's why I find a size goal to be a better one.  You could drop a size or more and lose little to no weight because you are replacing the fluffy space hog that fat is with the compact, denser muscle.  Understand? 

You can either measure yourself, or just use your clothes to gauge your progress.  Remember, it is not going to happen overnight.  If you are measuring yourself, don't do it again for at least 3 weeks and don't do it if you are feeling bloated from yesterday's take-out food,  Do it on a day that you ate healthy the day before.  The other thing I want you to consider is how you feel physically.  Do you feel stronger, more energetic, more focused?  These are positive things that regular exercise does for you as well.

If you really can't let go of the scale, here's what I want you to do.  Either weigh yourself at the same time everyday taking into consideration what you ate the day and night before.  This will allow you to see the fluctuations that can occur from day to day, or weigh yourself only once a week, same day/time again taking into consideration what you ate in the last 24 hours.  Why?  because if you ate something high in sodium, you can carry an extra 3-4 pounds in water weight. Women also have to take their menstrual cycle into consideration.

So, keep doing that cardio, but add some weight training to your schedule as well or start doing interval training, and put it on the calendar!  If you don't have any weights, start with some bodyweight exercises like squats, push ups, tricep dips, lunges and planks. You can either do these on alternating days from your cardio or mix them in.  For example, do 5 minutes of cardio followed by one minute of squats, 5 min. cardio, one minute of push ups, etc.  I will give you more ideas as we go along.  

Finally, find a way to track your progress--a heart rate monitor, a tracking device like fitbit, a pedometer to track your steps, or simply keep track of what you are doing--is it getting easier? can you do more reps? lift more weight?  All of these things are accomplishments as well!

Remember, short term SMART goals/promises!  You CAN do this!

Happy New Year!!!

Yes, one of my New Year's resolutions is to start writing in this blog again.  I can't believe that my last post was back in July!!!  When I started writing this blog I jumped in with both feet and everything I had.  I was posting everyday!!!  It's hard to believe that I kept up that pace as long as I had.  It was really pretty stressful.

That's why I decided to make my comeback post on New Year's day.  The way I went into writing this blog is exactly the same way many of us go into our New Year's resolutions. We think BIG!!!

I'm going to lose _____ (usually a big number) by February!!!

I'm going to work out for an hour EVERY DAY!!!

I'm NEVER going to eat sugar again!!!

I'm going to post in this blog EVERY DAY!!!   

WRONG!!!

That is so not the way to go about it.  I'm going to give you some tips to make those resolutions become a reality.

First of all, instead of the word resolution--use the word promise.  Changes things a bit doesn't it?  You wouldn't want to break your promise would you?  The promises you make to yourself need to be SMART--Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timebound.

A non-specific promise or goal is one like this:  "I'm going to lose weight" or "I'm going to work out more."  These goals just aren't specific enough.  It does need to be more like "I'm going to lose ____ pounds", or "I'm going to work out ______ days per week".

The goals also need to be measurable--pounds, inches, minutes, hours, days....they need to be measurable.

I think the next three points are the most important to follow when making these promises or setting any type of goal.  First, it's okay to think big, but you need to make these promises attainable and realistic, and you need to give yourself the right amount of time to achieve them.  They need to be broken down.  For example, instead of setting the goal to lose all that weight by February (unattainable and unrealistic) give yourself a realistic time frame (timebound).  This will depend on how much weight you need/want to lose.  Break it down into smaller goals--I'm going to lose ___ pounds per month until I reach my goal of ____ total.  Even this may need to be tweaked as you lose weight.  As you get smaller, the weight won't come off as easily.

My real preference to a weight loss goal is a size goal.  I will explain why I prefer this in a future blog post.  "I want to be a size ____ (specific and measurable) by ___________ (a realistic time frame).  Again, here is where you add in your shorter term goals that are truly attainable and realistic.  For example, if you need to lose 5 inches off your waist to get into your ideal size, then you can break it down something like this:  "I will lose 1 inch off my waist by _____ (reasonable and realistic time)," and continue on from there.  If you have a good deal of inches to lose, the pounds will come off as well.

Now along with a goal like this, you need a game plan.  How are you going to achieve this goal?   What obstacles might get in your way?  Again, short term goals are the key here.  "I'm going to exercise ______ minutes per day, or days per week" (whatever is attainable and realistic for you), or "I'm going to eat ______ calories" (realistic/attainable), or "I will only eat one helping" (only if that is something that you can truly do).  Do not set yourself up for failure, set yourself up for success.  I'll say that again:

DO NOT SET YOURSELF UP FOR FAILURE, SET YOURSELF UP FOR SUCCESS!!!

Don't say that you are going to do something that you know you won't.  Make all your promises in a positive way.  Instead of I won't do.....state I will do....  Make sure none of your promises use the words  NEVER or ALWAYS.  Use words like instead, at least, mostly, less and more.

Start small.  Here's what I want you to do:

I want you to make 9 small promises this week and I want them to be promises that you can absolutely keep.  The first three promises need to pertain to your eating habits.  It has to be something that you are not already doing.  Here's a few examples:  " I will eat a healthy breakfast at least ____ times a week," or "I will drink water instead of pop _____ times a week," or "I will eat one or more servings of green vegetables (preferably more than one) per day.  Again, make sure these are SMART promises that you can keep.

The second three promises need to pertain to your body/exercise.  Again, something that you aren't already doing.  A few examples of these would be:  "I will park farther from the entrance wherever I go," or "I will put my workouts on the calendar and keep those appointments," or "I will exercise during the commercials."

The last three promises need to pertain to your mind/spirit.  Some examples of these are:  "I will look at myself in the mirror everyday and say that I'm worth it," or  promise to say "I will" instead of "I won't" or "I can" instead of "I can't," or "I will stop eating out of boredom."

Now I want you write down these promises 3 times and put them in places that you will see throughout your day.  Next, tell someone what you are doing and ask that person for their support-- you can even post them in the comments here or on my facebook page or email them to me--you will definitely have my support.  By writing them down and telling someone about them, you are more likely to keep them.  Then, identify the ways you can keep these promises, being aware of anything that might get in your way.  Find ways to measure your progress and finally, write down your daily progress.

At the end of a week, look back at your promises.  Did you keep them?  If you did, then reward yourself in some small way--with something other than food.  If you didn't fulfill a promise, don't be hard on yourself, just keep working on it until you achieve it.  Once you fulfill a promise, make another one in that category and just keep going!  All those little promises will add up to achieving your bigger, long term goals.

In the weeks ahead, I will post more strategies and ideas for new promises that will help to make your long-term goals and promises a reality.

My promise? To post in this blog at least every other week.  It may be more often than that at times, but I'm not going to put that demand on myself.  If I slip up, I expect you to call me out.

Follow me on facebook--there's a link at the top of this page.  I will share things there as well.