Your Ideal Form

Helping you on your journey to your best self!

Motivational Monday

If you want to get fit, you have to give away only one thing. Your excuses.

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If you want to get fit, you have to give away only one thing. Your excuses.

On our journey toward our best selves, excuses are like roadblocks. They completely stop us, and in order to keep moving forward, we need to find some way around them. If we don’t, we’ll just stay stuck and never reach our goals.

One way to get around an excuse is to re-frame how we think of things. Don’t think of healthy eating has having to “give up” your favorite foods, but rather as you get to eat healthy and feel good. Don’t think of working out as having to miss out on sleeping in, but rather as you doing something to become more badass.

Another exercise that can help bust your excuses is to flip the script. Pretend that you were to invite a friend to do your favorite activity, and they gave you the excuse that you just gave yourself. What would you say to that friend to convince them to join you? How would you suggest that they join you despite their objections? What creative ways can you come up with to overcome these self-imposed barriers?

Which excuse do you struggle with the most? Let me know in the comments, and I’ll help you bust them!

You have the potential to be your own greatest fitspiration. Keep going.

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You have the potential to be your own greatest fitspiration. Keep going.

I love Pinterest. I probably spend way too much time browsing and pinning on that site. It’s fantastic for finding motivation and fitness inspiration, or “fitspo” as the kids are calling it these days. I especially like pictures of people doing crazy flexible poses because that’s something I’m currently working on for myself.

Despite how many pins I have on my fitness motivation board, however, that’s not what keeps me going. Seeing progress each week is. Seeing numbers on the scale go down, the weight of my lifts going up, or the distance I can run stretch a bit further has become my motivation. That feeling I get when I make progress, even if it’s tiny, makes me feel so awesome. Looking in the mirror and liking what I see. That feeling is my fitspo.

What one thing can will you do today to make yourself feel proud?

Healthy Starts with the Shopping Cart

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Healthy Starts Here

Whether it’s a trip around the world, a road trip to the next state over, or a trip to the grocery store, having a successful trip is all in the planning. As much as we tend to do it, we really cannot rely on our future selves. Future Self tends to let us down, even if, to Present Self, Future Self is perfect and full of promise. Let’s make things easier for Future Self.

Plan out your meals for the week, write down what you need, and then head to the grocery store with that list. Don’t believe that Future Self won’t make impulse purchases without a list to follow. Stick to the list. Don’t count on Future Self not eating that entire bag of Doritos in one sitting. Just don’t buy them in the first place. Help your Future Self live up to being the best they can be by making the healthy decisions for them in the present.

 

What other decisions can you make now to make it easier for your Future Self to choose the healthier road?

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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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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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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