Your Ideal Form

Helping you on your journey to your best self!

Audrey D

Losing Weight for an Event

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Losing Weight for an Event

I have some events coming up in the next few months. A vacation in Hawaii, Thanksgiving in Florida, Christmas in Ohio and Michigan, and then our wedding and honeymoon next May. Each of these events brings with it its own motivations for looking and feeling my best.

The Swimsuit

For the trip to Hawaii, I don’t want to feel self conscious in a swimsuit. Vacations are meant to be fun and relaxing, not spent worrying over “thunder thighs” or “belly pooch”. And while I’m not going to obsess over how I look, if taking some time beforehand to work on what I can means I can enjoy my vacation comfortably and without worry, then it’s time well spent.

The Family

Thanksgiving will be spent with my very large extended family. Dozens of aunts, uncles and cousins who have no reservations telling me that my butt is huge, or that I shouldn’t eat that pie because I’ll get fat. It’s just the way my family is. I don’t want to give them any fodder for comments if I can avoid it.

The Vanity

Christmas brings more family time, but this time, it is my fiancés fam. They are awesome people, and non-judgmental compared to my own family, but still. One always wishes to look her best before the future in-laws!

The Wedding

This is the Big One. No bride wants to merely look “good” at her wedding. She wants to be stunning, radiant, magnificent, a downright angelic goddess. I want my fiancé to take one look at me coming down that aisle and nearly faint at the vision he beholds. I want to look back at the photos and not have any regrets about how I looked in any of them.

The Plan

I’ll be leaving for Hawaii in a little over a week (eek!). That’s really not much time to get my body into what I personally consider “bikini ready” for myself. So I started a long time ago. I got my nutrition dialed in, and was able to lose weight at a slow but steady pace of one pound per week until I got to my goal, and then I just had to maintain. I started in mid-April, and reached my goal by the end of June. So it took some time.

The Pitfalls

If you have an event coming up that you would like to lose some weight for such as a vacation or reunion, here are some roadblocks to watch out for in your journey.

Unrealistic expectations. Despite what “this one weird trick that doctors hate” might tell you, you’re not going to lose 20 pounds in two weeks. If you are incredibly disciplined, you may be able to lose 2 pounds per week, but you’re likely to be hangry the whole time, so it isn’t sustainable for long.

Not planning far enough ahead. If your event is next week, there is not much you can do at this point. Check your calendar now to see what’s coming down the pipeline later on that you can be ready for. Be realistic about what you can achieve in that time. Aim for losing one pound per week, and be sure to drink plenty of water. And don’t wait to start! Start early to give yourself a buffer if you have a bad week.

Going back to old habits. Having a short term goal like looking your best for a vacation or party is great. But making it part of a longer term goal and a permanent lifestyle change is even better. After the event is over, don’t throw away all your hard work by going back to your old habits. Stick with it, and when the next event rolls around, you won’t have to lose those pounds all over again.

 

What events do you have down the road that you want to look your best for?

Good nutrition is key. Without it you will get nothing.

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Good Nutrition Is Key

Back in 2010, I was a workout machine. I was doing CrossFit five times a week. I was training for a marathon, running three times a week with one of those being a long run of up to 20 miles. I also had a horseback riding lesson once a week (controlling a 1500lb animal with just your legs and four fingers is a HUGE workout, and don’t let anyone ever tell you otherwise). With all that working out, I figured I didn’t need to worry about what I was eating, I was surely losing weight. Well, it turns out I wasn’t. Despite all that working out, or perhaps because of it (expending that much energy makes you hungry), I was still eating too much. No matter how much you workout, if you eat too much you won’t lose weight.

Even if you aren’t eating too much, here are some reasons why it is still important to try and eat well/healthy:

  • Certain vitamins (A, D, E and K) are fat soluble, so you need to consume *some* fat to get the benefits of that multi-vitamin. A diet that is *too* low in fat will prevent absorption of those nutrients. So if you’re counting on a multi-vitamin to get your RDA of nutrients, make sure you have a bit of fat in your diet.
  • Dietary fat also triggers the hormone leptin to signal to your brain that you are no longer hungry. When the brain detects leptin in the blood stream, it triggers that “I’m satisfied” feeling and can help keep you from overeating.
  • Sufficient protein in your diet is required to help build muscles. If you’re trying to add some muscle to your frame to look more toned or just trying to get stronger, having protein is a MUST!
  • Carbohydrates can help give us a quick boost of energy. Simple starches like fruits can be broken down into energy very easily by our bodies. More complex whole grains “burn” more slowly, giving you fuel for a longer time. Be careful, however, as too many carbs can lead to a crash and feeling groggy.

Which leads us to what can happen when we fuel ourselves with bad nutrition:

  • Eating crap will also make you feel like crap.
  • If you constantly forego fruits, veggies and whole grains, that lack of fiber will leave you feeling bloated and possibly constipated.
  • Missing nutrients can make you feel tired, sluggish and cranky. While a multi-vitamin can help, remember that certain vitamins don’t work without a partner. I mentioned the fat soluble vitamins earlier. Calcium cannot be absorbed without Vitamin D. It’s always best if you can get your nutrients from whole foods, since nature designed them as the best nutrition delivery vehicle.

So if you find yourself feeling out of sorts, take a look at what might be missing from your diet!

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Why Tracking is Essential to Reaching Your Goals

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Why Tracking is Essential to Reaching Your Goals
Have you ever watched a movie where the character is lost in a forest or maze and they make marks to let themselves know where they’ve been? Often, as a plot device, they end up going around in a circle, and finding one of the marks they had made, and then they get a bit disheartened. But what if they hadn’t made any marks? What if they had no idea that this was familiar ground? They could go around in circles forever and never realize it.

 

Or how about when there is an arrow pointing the way to safety, and it gets spun around or knocked over? Now our character doesn’t know which way to turn. (And thus gets eaten by a Dilophosaurus)
Knocked over sign
Now which way do I go?
To keep this from happening, today we are going to earn our tracking merit badges. It is so important to track what you are doing, whether it’s tracking your food, your exercise, your mood, or your sleep. If something isn’t working, you have a way to see where you’ve been and what you’ve done, and make a course adjustment into a new direction, rather than constantly going in circles. It’s also essential that you are accurate in how you track, so you know which way to turn when choosing your new bearing. Perhaps you’ve tried running before, but going back to your notes, you find that in the past, you’ve found it boring. Now you know to try something different this time: perhaps spinning or weight lifting. Similarly, if no matter how hard you try to eat Atkins or Paleo, you just cannot manage to give up rice for more than a couple weeks, then perhaps you should try an eating regimen that doesn’t restrict what you can eat.

 

How you choose to track is up to you. The best system is one that you will use regularly, whether that’s a spreadsheet so you can create your own graphs of the data, one of the many apps that are available for phone or web, or even just a journal and your favorite pen. The important part is to start. Having this roadmap of where you’ve been will keep you from going around in circles and help you reach your destination sooner.

 

What is your preferred method to track various aspects of your health?

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You Can’t Out-Exercise a Bad Diet

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You can't out-exercise a bad diet

Imagine this scenario: you head to the gym, hop on a treadmill in the cardio cinema and run for half an hour at a steady 10-minute pace all while watching an episode of your favorite sitcom. Your workout is done, and you’ve covered three miles. Great job! To reward yourself for your hard work, you pick up a mango smoothie. Smoothies are healthy, right? Well I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but guess what? That 300 calorie smoothie nullifies the 300 calories you just burned during your run. In five minutes, you’ve undone half an hour’s worth of hard work.

This is why you see so often that diet is 70% or even 80% of the weight loss journey. It’s so easy to undo even hours of hard work in mere minutes. That large fry you just had? It’ll take over five miles of running to burn it off.

The flip side to this equation is that you can get some of the benefits of long, arduous workout sessions simply by changing up how much you consume.  Do you drink lots of soda each day? Just cutting out one each day is the calorie equivalent to running one and a half (a can) to two and a half (20 oz bottle) miles every day.

What can you cut back on to help you lose weight AND save you some time? Let me know in the comments!

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How Selfies Can Help You Lose Weight

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How Selfies can help you lose weight

Have you ever had one of those weeks where you were really “good” all week, did all your workouts, ate really healthy, you’re feeling really good, and then you step on the scale at the end of the week and… nothing? It can be really demoralizing, so I want to share a tip to help you get through those inevitable plateaus.

Taking pictures of yourself can offer a great alternative to the scale for measuring your progress. This is especially useful if you don’t have your own scale at home. Or, if you do have a scale, sometimes the numbers might not be going down, but your body composition is changing. Your pants are looser, you feel better, and even if the scale doesn’t reflect the changes, the photos will. Even after a significant weight loss, many people still report feeling “fat”. Since the weight loss is gradual, they see themselves as looking the same as they always have. Comparing how you look now to a picture you took months ago can show you just how far you’ve come.

Taking a before picture can be very uncomfortable, especially one where you strip down to your underwear and take a full body shot. It forces you to confront how you truly look right now. Don’t let that deter you. Summon up a few seconds of courage to snap some front and side shots. On various internet forums, I’ve seen many people say they regret not having taken a before picture once they reach their goal weight, so learn from their mistake and take a few selfies.

Set a reminder to periodically go back and look at that before picture. It will remind you of just how far you’ve come in your journey. Be proud of the progress you’ve made! Let the picture serve as a reminder to make a permanent lifestyle change so you don’t end up back at your starting point. You can also use the pictures as motivation to keep moving forward.

Don’t forget to periodically take “during” pictures, as well! A good rule of thumb is to take pictures once a month.

I do want to caution you about comparing your pictures to others. Sometimes people will post amazing transformations of themselves online, but fail to mention how long it took to get from “before” to “after”. Let their pictures motivate you by showing you what is possible, but don’t let it discourage you if you aren’t quite there yet.

If you are concerned about others seeing your pictures, take them with a regular camera instead of your phone. This significantly reduces the chance that the pictures will accidentally end up online if your toddler gets a hold of your phone!

Challenge: Take some pictures of yourself. Really LOOK at them. How do the pictures make you feel? What are you willing to do about it?

Slow is OK. Stopped is not.

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Don't fear moving slowly forwardThe weight loss journey can be frustratingly slow at times. Far too often, this causes people to become discouraged and give up. Don’t be one of those people! Keep in mind the big picture, the long game, your end goal. Losing only half a pound a week may seem worthless, but over the course of a year, that’s about 25 pounds which is a significant feat!

The same is true for exercise. It can be really hard being a beginner. Maybe you can only run for 15 seconds at a time, or only lift the five pound dumbbells, or have to do the easy modifications of yoga poses because you’re just not there yet. THAT’S OKAY!

With patience and perseverance, you’ll soon be able to run a little longer and farther, lift a little ore, and stretch a bit further. Likewise, the weight will start dropping off, little by little. Don’t give up on yourself!

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