Your Ideal Form

Helping you on your journey to your best self!

Eat Better, Look Better, Feel Better

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I’ve been taking horseback riding lessons for a while now. A few years back, my usual instructor was out sick, so we had a substitute. The sub had us take our horses over some poles that were laying on the ground at the trot. The point is to get the horses to pick their feet up a bit more instead of dragging them along. It was an exercise I’d done with no problems previously. The only issue was that the horse I normally rode, Murphy, was half blind, and because of this, we normally would go over the poles at a walk first so she could see them and know what was coming. We trotted around the arena, made the turn to go over the poles, got to the poles… and Murphy spooked at the poles and bolted right. I, however, continued to go straight. With a horse no longer under me, I had an abrupt meeting with the ground.

The point of the tale is this: inertia is a bitch.

However, we can get inertia to work FOR us. While objects at rest (including ourselves) tend to stay at rest, objects in motion tend to stay in motion. Momentum can absolutely work in our favor. It is HARD to get up and go to the gym in the morning. But that feeling of accomplishment you get from doing more before breakfast than some people do all day sticks with you. You’ll find yourself feeling better. I personally have a much easier time choosing healthier options on days I go to the gym before work, because I don’t want to undo all that hard work I just did.

It can be tough to overcome any initial inaction, but once you get over that hump, you can get momentum to work for you rather than against you, so start today!

Some people dream of success while others wake up and work hard at it.

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As much as you might wish it, you can’t reach your goal weight without some effort. You will need to work for it. Whether that means getting up early to hit the gym, or making time on the weekends for grocery shopping and meal prep. Sitting in the same place won’t get you there. No amount of dreaming about it will get you there. No amount of pinning to motivational boards (guilty!) will get you there. Reaching your destination takes some work, but it’s worth it, so take action today!

Achieve Your Body Goals by Focusing on the Process, not the Results

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Goals are a fantastic thing to have. And I’m sure you’ve heard about SMART goals, but just in case, here’s a refresher. Goals should be:

Specific – Not just “I wanna be healthy”, but “I want to be healthier by losing weight”.

Measurable – Not just “I want to lose weight”, but “I want to lose 20 lbs”. Or “I want to drop my cholesterol by 3 points”.

Attainable – Is your goal even possible? Have you achieved it in the past? Do you know others who have gotten there?

Realistic – Even if a goal is possible (running a marathon in under 3 hours, say), it might not be realistic for you.

Timely – There needs to be a time limit. A goal is a dream with a deadline. Without that time aspect, you can find yourself pushing out your goal forever.

So do you have your SMART goal now? Great! Now, we want to focus on the PROCESS that will get us to that goal. HOW will you reach your goal? You might say something like “I will lose 20 lbs in 4 months by eating no more than 1500 calories per day and exercising for 30 minutes 3 times a week.” Your goal is losing weight. The process you have is your diet and exercise plan. The idea here is that if you completely ignored your goal, but still stuck to your process, you would get to your destination regardless.

Many small wins

Focusing solely on your goal means that nothing but that matters. It makes the journey to get there a slog and no fun. This increases the likelihood that you get burned out. By focusing on our process instead, we give ourselves the chance to get many small wins. Every trip to the gym is a victory. Every day you hit your eating goals is a triumph.  Every healthier choice is a success!

Lifestyle thinking

I’m sure you’ve also seen plenty of motivational images about how healthy living is a lifestyle. And it is! If you go on a diet merely to reach a goal, and once there, you stop and go back to your old habits, you’ll end up right back where you started. Goals are fantastic, but we must be cautious of having them be this huge end all be all for us. I trained for and ran a marathon once. After the race, I had no other running goals, and decided to take a short break from running to “reward” myself and recover. I meant for it to be a month. I didn’t run again for over a year! Fall in love with the process instead, and you’ll find it so much easier to keep up your habits well beyond once you’ve reached your goals.

In order to have permanent change, the changes we make must be permanent. This is why it is so important to find a process that works for YOU. In that vein, I’ve created a 13-diet comparison guide that goes through the pros and cons of some of today’s most popular eating plans and give my recommendations on each so you can determine which might work best for you for the long haul. It’s free, so check it out!

How Bad Do You Want It?

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How badly do you want to feel comfortable in your own skin again? How badly do you want to lose the weight? How badly do you want to look in the mirror and truly love what you see? Do you want it more than sleeping in? Do you want it more than watching another episode of that show? Do you want it more than a handful of chips or chocolate?

You absolutely can do this. Reaching your goals is 100% possible and within your control. You just have to want it. Bad.

A Different Kind of Meal Prep

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Meal prepping is one of the best things you can do to help you achieve your weight loss goals.  But what about when you’re not at home? Unfortunately, it is far too easy to go way over your limits with even just one dish at some dining establishments. Today I want to look at a few ways we can prep before going out to eat, so we don’t end the night feeling like one meal has completely derailed all our progress.

Plan ahead

The key here, as is often repeated, is to plan ahead. Either plan to eat foods that fit into your allowance for the day, or if you can plan way ahead, you can eat less during the day/week leading up to it, so you can eat what you want without worry. So if you know your birthday dinner is this coming weekend, and you absolutely must have the tiramisu at your favorite Italian joint, keep the rest of your meals for the week on the lighter side to “make room” for that decadent dessert. If a dinner out is more of a spur of the moment decision, then plan to pick something off the menu that fits into your diet plan for the day. So, how can we make sure we’re sticking to our plan?

Pre-peruse the menu

These days, every chain restaurant has the nutrition information of their menus posted on their website. Before heading out, take a look at the online menu and decide ahead of time what you are going to order. Now, while this is an easy tip, it’s really hard to stick to. It’s easy to look at the menu and say “oh, I’ll order the grilled salmon!” but then once you get there and smell all those wonderful smells, it becomes very difficult to not order the smokehouse burger and cheese fries instead. This is where it helps to go back up to planning ahead. If you’re not going out for a few days, you have time to build in some wiggle room so you can order what you really want to eat, rather than having to settle for something yummy, but that doesn’t quite “hit the spot”. If you are going to a more “mom and pop” local joint, you can still look up a similar chain online to get a decent estimate of menu items.

Promise to go halfsies

Another option when going out to eat is to promise yourself ahead of time you’ll only eat half of your meal. Many restaurants these days give you huge portions that are more befitting of two meals than just one. You can ask for a box up front to box up half of the food right away so that it’s not even on your plate anymore. This lets you basically cut the calorie/macro count of the dish in half right off the bat. Just be sure to also plan ahead for what you will do with the leftovers. Alternatively, you can offer to split the dish with a dining partner so there aren’t any leftovers.

These are just a few tricks you can use next time you dine out so that you can eat what you really want, but still continue making progress toward your goals!

For more ideas on how to handle eating out with coworkers, check out my Ultimate Guide to Meal Prep.

The gym is one of the very few relationships you will ever have where you get exactly what you give. Don’t pass that up.

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Your kids aren’t always going to appreciate you. Your husband is going to inevitably forget an anniversary or birthday. Your dog will love you more than you will ever deserve (because dogs are amazing like that).

But the gym? Gym understands. Gym will only ever give you back exactly what you put into it. If you half-ass things, you’ll get half-ass results. If you bust your ass, you can bet that it will look amazing in no time.

Be sure to make some time for the gym (or whatever your preferred method of exercise is) today!