Category Archives: Healthy Priorites
Work Like a DOG Because You are Eat Like a PIG?
ADDICTED
We’ve all met people who seem addicted to fitness. They live at the gym and workout really hard, but maybe they aren’t so much addicted to exercise as much as something else altogether.
ARE YOU A WORKAHOLIC
Think of it like a workaholic. Some people are literally slaves to work, but it’s not because they love working so much. It’s because they are slaves to their debtors. So, they get as much overtime as they can, take odd jobs, and work like crazy to balance overspending.
Many people aren’t afraid of work, they are afraid of missing out. They don’t want to part with the luxuries in life – cars, clothes, dining out, going out on the town, etc. So they work hard to maintain those things, even if they are bad for us.
QUIT WORKING OVERTIME
Maybe you need to stop eating like a pig so you don’t have to work like a dog. Yes, it’s harsh, but it’s honest. We can’t continue to rely on exercise to keep getting us out of trouble. It’s time you truly address the real problem: eating. It’s time to cut back, because what you are missing out on is much more valuable than your favorite food.
Are You Addicted?
Even if the true addiction is to food, it can result in exercise addiction too.
Rate yourself as honestly as you can below with the following checklist from Active.com:
- I have missed important social obligations and family events in order to exercise.
- I have given up other interests, including time with friends, in order to make more time to work out.
- Missing a workout makes me irritable and depressed
- I only feel content when I am exercising or within the hour after exercising.
- I like exercise better than sex, good food, or a movie — in fact there’s almost nothing I’d rather do.
- I work out even if I’m sick, injured, or exhausted. I’ll feel better when I get moving anyway.
- In addition to my regular schedule, I’ll exercise more if I find extra time.
- Family and friends have told me I’m too involved in exercise.
- I have a history (or a family history) of anxiety or depression.
Although some of these feelings are natural, and even healthy. Feeling good because of exercise is a good thing, but feeling good at the expense of harming relationships or your body, maybe a warning sign you are off balance.
If you can get a better grip on your food, you may not feel so obligated to workout as much. You won’t feel so guilty if you skip a workout, and you will feel more confident and healthy because you’re eating healthy – not just erasing your bad food.
Look deep within and find the real root of the problem, and take your fitness to a whole new healthy level.
Photo Credits:
Sweaty guy: metronews.ca
Cartoon: Illustration by Aaron Taylor, Site: UtahValleyBusinessq.com
Girl in the fridge: 40 years of faulty wiring
Balancing Act: metafitsolutions.com
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Something SMALL Can Throw Your Fitness Off BIG
This weekend I will be going out to by new headphones and a new iphone arm band, after losing mine a couple of weeks ago.
As I was brainstorming on where I could have possibly left them, it dawned on me – I haven’t had a good workout since I’ve been without them. I haven’t run one day since. Even after writing my post, MUSIC: A Legal Drug for Athletes, I STILL wasn’t using my own music to boost my workouts! That’s just how easy it is for something small to throw you off BIG-time! 
What’s holding you back?
Have YOU lost momentum? Have you lost drive, intensity or consistency? Maybe it’s time you get to the root of it all. For me, it was something as simple as headphones and an arm band. Suddenly, I didn’t want to run at all if I couldn’t listen to music or my Joyce Meyer and Calvary Chapel Vero Beach podcasts.
So it’s time for YOU to dig in and find out what has gotten in the way of your success – or find out what could be interfering with you taking your fitness to a whole new level. It happens to the best of us, but it’s March and bikini season is going to be here before you know it so it’s time to get back in action!!
Here are a few solutions to common problems.
1. You need to grocery shop
2. Get some new music
3. Refresh your gym supplies
4. Get more supplements and protein bars
5. Invest in a new pair of shoes
6. Schedule a Dr. Appt for that nagging pain
7. Renew your membership
8. Join a new gym
9. Quit drinking
10. Stop working so much
11. Wake up earlier
12. Go to sleep earlier
13. Plan your day better
14. Pack your gym bag
15. Buy a new gym bag
16. Your friend stopped, so you did too. Call your friend today.
17. You got sick so you got out of the groove. Start back today.
18. Get off work on time – the work will still be there tomorrow.
19. Quit making excuses.
20. You say you’ll “start Monday” every Monday, but you don’t Start everyday like it’s a Monday.
What have you found to put a damper on your workouts? How have you fixed it?
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Fat Kills: Don’t underestimate it’s power!
I rarely am motivated to workout. It’s just something I have to keep doing, like brushing my teeth, to maintain the body God gave me best I can. Fat on your body is like fuzz on your teeth – when is OK to just leave it there? It deteriorates your body, and even makes you less attractive. It’s just not plain healthy – and it feels awful too.
Again, I’m bringing up the fact we treat fat differently than any other thing in our life – and body. Our health should be equal. If we have a sore spot, we treat it. We take care of our teeth, hair, nails, and even a minor sore throat. Tet, we may carry around a load of body fat and an unhealthy lifestyle that is going to kill us if we don’t do anything about it – and we totally ignore it or play it down.
Sure, I’m not overweight – however, I too often abuse my body. Whether it’s putting my workouts last, or eating something I know is bad for me, somehow it’s easy to justify our unhealthy lifestyle or decisions.
Even “fit” people, who supposedly are into exercise, are abusing their bodies with extreme diets and unbalanced exercise routines. Whether a person is running all the time and never doing anything to preserve muscle, flexibility, balance and core strength, or they are pumping iron all day long without ever exercising their heart and lungs – it’s like treating a heart condition and ignoring the big tumor on the side of you head.
Whole health is not some yoga pose and “Om” chant. Whole health is taking care of your body in it’s entirety. It’s getting check ups when you are supposed to, it’s exercising your heart and lungs as well as your muscles. It’s losing excess body fat that puts you at risk for an early death and poorer quality of health – and I’m not even talking about HUGE amount of weight. I’m talking about just 10-20lbs. If you don’t think your weight is killing you, think again.
Look at these statistics via US Department of Health & Human Services:
- Even moderate weight excess (10 to 20 pounds) increases the risk of death, particularly among adults aged 30 to 64 years.
- Individuals who are obese (BMI > 30)* have a 50 to 100% increased risk of premature death from all causes, compared to individuals with a healthy weight. Car accidents, trip and falls, illness – you name it.
- A weight gain of only 11 to 18 pounds doubles your chance of developing type 2 diabetes
- Over 80% of people with diabetes are overweight or obese.
- Women gaining more than 20 pounds from age 18 to midlife double their risk of postmenopausal breast cancer, compared to women whose weight remains stable.
- For every 2-pound increase in weight, the risk of developing arthritis is increased by 9 to 13%.
- Obesity during pregnancy increases risk for both the baby and the mother by 10 times.
- Obesity during pregnancy is associated with an increased risk of birth defects, particularly neural tube defects, such as spina bifida.
- Overweight adolescents have a 70% chance of becoming overweight or obese adults.
We tend to play down our body fat. We can always point out someone in worse condition and often treat the need to lose 10lbs as a vanity thing. If you are holding excess body fat, it’s not just about how you look and feel in your jeans – it’s staying alive so you can even wear a pair of jeans to begin with. This is about your health and quality of life. Don’t under-estimate the impact body fat makes on your life – or death. If you have it, it’s time to get rid of it.
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BODY: Be Mine
17 years ago today, Steve asked me to “Be Mine” and I said yes. It was such an easy decision, I barely blinked an eye. There is a lot of love in the air around this time of year, but no matter how much love there is to go around, we often struggle to extend that same love to our own self. I have to admit, if my body said “Be Mine” I’d have to think twice. I mean, I can’t help but think there HAS to be a better body out there for me. If only I had the choice to pick it like we get to pick our mate.
“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”
Poor Vision
If we could just see ourselves through our lover’s eyes. We would be so much easier on ourselves. We wouldn’t even notice the zit on our face or our love handles poking out of our jeans. We wouldn’t be staring at everything that is wrong, but we would be looking at all that was right. It would almost be like we were looking at a different person.
If only we could see ourselves like we see others. We extend our loved ones so much grace, yet we have none left for ourself. We harshly judge our body, so much so, we end up imprisoning ourselves with negative and irrational thoughts.
Blindness
Even Heidi Klum can rip apart her own smile, yet all we see is beauty. How many times has someone said they wish they had something you had. They wish they had your hair, they wish they had your skin, or they wish they had your eyes. If you’re like me, these comments are hard to accept.
They are hard to accept because we honestly don’t see what they see. Not because it’s not there – but because we aren’t looking at it. We are so focused on all the crappy stuff, we literally aren’t even looking at the good stuff. However, the good stuff is still there, whether we recognize it or not, and it’s normally what everyone else sees first.
The problem with people who are actively working on the “flaws” in our life, is that they become focused on them. It’s difficult to work on something without focusing on it so much you actually become obsessed with it.
Losing Focus
Think of marriage and relationships. You can’t just ignore each other’s flaws – there is a certain amount of work that is required to improve flaws so you can improve your marriage. However, you can easily become so focused on those flaws you begin to take everything else for granted. Before you know it, you can’t even see all the good stuff that made you fall in love to begin with.
This is exactly what happens to people who are working to improve their health and their body. The fat you once were accustomed to, and didn’t bother you as much as it does now, and although you probably even have less of it now, it’s all you see.
As you work and work to improve your flaws, it’s important you don’t become obsessed with them. Because you will never naturally think of all your positive attributes, you have to be purposeful when it comes to building yourself up. Our flaws will always try to steal the show so it’s up to us to close the curtain on them and put the spotlight on the real stars – all your awesome traits everyone else loves and you’ve forgotten.
Happy Valentine’s Day!
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Guilty Until Proven Active
We often think of guilty as a verdict, not a feeling or state of being. The dictionary uses words to describe guilty like “responsible, deserving and ashamed” – however, most of us don’t need a judge and jury to convince us of our guilt, especially when it comes to our health.
Someone posted this question on our club’s facebook page: “Why is it we always have more guilt about missing a workout than a workday?”
The answer is easy. We can run from our boss, but we can run from ourself. We face ourself in the mirror every day, knowing in our heart what we should and shouldn’t be doing. Just as someone can possibly fool a jury, they still walk away knowing who really is truly guilty – and whether they admit it or not, it will haunt them forever.
The Fight
An overweight woman came into our club yesterday with a friend. The thinner one was clearly insecure and nervous about being there, yet the heavier woman was definitely more comfortable in her skin and smiled the entire time. I don’t know either woman but, if I had to guess, I’d guess the uncomfortable woman didn’t want to be there and was battling some guilt – to the point it was making her miserable.
Not everyone is convicted to go to the gym and take care of their bodies – yet. However, when they are, as Mr. T says, “I pitty the fool” if they don’t – because at that point they are responsible to act on that conviction.
It’s not much different than anything else in life. We’ve all been there. We were convicted to apologize but we didn’t. We were convicted to pay for someone’s food, but we didn’t. The problem is, unlike many isolated opportunities, we have the opportunity to act on our health it at any given time. We can make up excuses, but we know in our heart they are few valid ones.
Guilt is an ugly thing.
Guilt causes depression, angry, resentment, frustration and countless other negative feelings. Yet pride in making an effort stems confidence, strength, hope, optimism, dreams, happiness, growth, motivation, inspiration and results. Amazingly enough, very little effort can change how we feel. Doing something is always better than doing nothing.
Unhappiness often comes from not doing what is right – and, even worse, settling for what is wrong.
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Get Fit Now: Why Procrastination Stinks
“We all have garbage to deal with. You can chose to handle it now or later – the choice is yours.”
Desperate paparazzi catches poor Jessica Biel in her robe taking out the trash. Wow. Are we really shocked that stars have garbage too? We seem just as surprised when they have other life problems as well. Ironically, garbage and our physical, as well as mental, problems have a lot in common.
My dad once gave me some great advice about life, and not handling the “garbage” we carry. He said, “It’s like trash. You can just let it pile up and packing stuff on top of it, but eventually it’s gonna start to stink and you’ll have to deal with it.”
Life is truly like that – especially with our health. We can ignore the trash in our lives – our weight, health, weakness, tight muscles, poor diet and inactivity. No matter how we cover it up with nice clothes, fancy cars, money, pretty make-up and a fake smile, eventually you won’t be able to hide it, and life will start to really stink.
It is so easy to procrastinate. It’s so easy to push it back and let something else take priority. But, our bodies talk, and believe me, it will start screaming at you eventually. We can fool ourselves into thinking our back pain will go away, our weight will come off, and “we’ll kick this”, but what exactly are you really doing about it today? Are you just covering up the stench or are you really dealing with it? So often we do things to mask the problem, or to help us live with the problem, but we aren’t handling the problem.
4 Steps to Dealing with the Garbage Affecting Our Health:
1. What stinks? As you read this, what things come to mind that you know you need to get a grip on? Make a list. Is it your weight? Is it pain? Is it confidence? Is it your overall health? Is it a lack of discipline to maintain a consistent fitness regimen? You can’t fix it until you know what needs to be fixed.
2. How do you handle it? Some trash isn’t stinky, but it sill has to be taken out. On the other hand, some trash stinks so bad, you need to get it as far away from your house as possible. How bad is the “garbage” you have to deal with? Can you deal with it yourself or do you need a hazmat team to contain the situation? Some things can be handled on your own, but other issues require a pro. Beware of trying to handle heavy stuff alone.
3. How long will you commit to maintaining it? We all know that taking the garbage out once is not enough. We get NEW garbage that will have to be delt with too. It’s really unrealistic to think this will be a simple fix and not require maintenance. As you work on one problem, don’t be surprised if another problem pops up. Just add it to the list and work on it too, knowing in the end result will be a clean bill of health.
4. What are things that need to be tossed out? A lot of us have extra garbage we deal with because we are not letting go of crap that clutters our lives. Not only will you need to work on stuff that stinks, but sometimes things need to go that are either getting in the way, are useless, or are hindering you. The first step is to “clean house” of food, people, bad habits, excuses, etc. that will interfere with your plan. Just like cleaning house, it’s constant. Success will require a continual cleaning and straightening of priorities.
Don’t Procrastinate:
Don’t wait for the perfect conditions, the perfect situation, more money, more time, less pain, more energy, more motivation, friends, kids to grow up, workload to get lighter, or anything else to start working on your health.
“Farmers who wait for perfect weather never plant.
If they watch every cloud, they never harvest.”
Ecclesiastes 11:4
Note on Pain: Many aches and pains are due to weak and tight muscles. Unfortunately, many people avoid exercise in fear of making it worse. Pain rarely goes away on its own, and often gets much worse. Even many skeletal issues are due to muscles pulling you out of whack. As you strengthen weak muscles and loosen tight muscles, your skeletal system won’t have all these tweaked muscles yanking on them. There are SO many pains that would go away just from stretching alone, but the combination of strengthening and stretching literally can be a miracle worker.
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FITNESS: Avoid the Wrong Track to Nowhere
People are constantly asking me what weight routine to do. They ask me to critique their routine, as if changing a couple of exercises is going to change everything. Honestly, most people are spending too much time on stuff that really doesn’t matter and not enough time on the stuff that matters most.
Listen, I’d guess that 80% of the population wants to lose weight and tone up – not sculpt their rear deltoids and show more muscle separation in their quads. Just because some girl in the gym (who looks very hot by the way) does a certain workout, doesn’t mean that workout is for you (YET). Plus, I guarantee she is doing a lot more than lifting dumbbells.
Before you waste a lot of time and energy copying programs, trying new weight exercises and analyzing every exercise you see in the gym – ask yourself a few questions.
Fitness Checklist for Success:
1. Are you doing enough cardio? Listen, you can sculpt your muscle all day but if you aren’t actively and purposely removing fat, you’ll never see all your hard work.
2. Do you know how many calories you are eating every day? When people ask me for diet advice, 90% of them have NO clue how much they are eating. They can list off all these healthy foods to me, but that means nothing. That’s like me telling my husband that I bought 5 shirts and 2 pair of jeans. What the heck can he do with that? He sure can’t balance the checkbook with that. I can even tell him I bought them from TJMaxx, and that STILL won’t give him a clue how much to deduct from the checking account. Read the rest of this entry
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Sunday To-Do List, 6 Things You Need to Get Fit Monday
How you spend your Sunday greatly affects how you will spend the rest of your week – and if you are one of those people who are determined to get fit in 2012, then Sundays will even matter more. Here are 6 ways to make sure you get the results you want this week.
1. Shop: You can’t eat healthy if you don’t shop healthy. Nothing sets you up for failure more than not having the food you need in your kitchen.
2. Organize: I don’t know about you, but if my laundry is all over the place, and I have no idea where my favorite workout clothes are, I won’t be as motivated to go to the gym in my wrinkly left overs. I may be there to workout and sweat, but I have to feel good about myself too. If I don’t, I’ll skip or flake out early just because Read the rest of this entry
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It’s a Balancing Act: 5 Tips to Sanity
Christmas is a crazy time of year. During this time of year, we all rush around like maniacs, behaving like wild animals or circus freaks. WE MUST STOP THIS NONSENSE! So, this year I decided to make some changes and I’ve almost got the whole balancing act down!
ACT #1 The Amazing Juggler: I Am Planning Ahead
Planning is EVERYTHING to me. If I don’t plan I definitely might as well plan to fail because the only way to survive this busy season is to map out my workouts, my meals, my meetings, my “me time”, my “Steve time” and my rest. If I am prepared I will rock each and every day without fail.
ACT #2 The Acrobat: I Workout More
I know this may seem impossible to many people lugging their children around to every Christmas party, recital, school event and church event – not to mention your adult parties and responsibilities, shopping, card writing…do I need to go on? BUUUT, you’d be surprised how Read the rest of this entry
A Head Start to a New You: 7 Steps to Get Fit & STAY Fit!
The New Year is just around the corner, so why not get started NOW!? (There is no good reason to wait so don’t even bother wasting your breath or typing fingers! Throw out the excuses now and get ready for action!)
The hardest step to getting fit is the first step.
We ponder, we search and we even dream of getting fit, but we often get hung up at the start line because we have no idea how to begin or where to go. And even if we know what to do we procrastinate, waiting for the stars to align and to get that magical motivation (which never happens by the way) – and when that fails, we wait on the New Year to get started as if that is the only time of year to start working out. I’m here to end your losing streak and give you a headstart for a brand new you in 2012! Read the rest of this entry
