5 Tips to Starting Your Fitness Journey

Every race has two places - a finish line and a starting line.  So I wanted to share my 5 quick tips to starting your fitness journey right.

1. Pick a plan -- 
Just like in any other area of your life, you are by far more successful when you have a plan.  Here are couple ideas: join a class, using a walking/running app with a plan or use a home based program like one from Beachbody.

The struggle for some many who join a gym for those starting out is the lack of knowledge on the exercises needed to achieve their goals.  So if you join a gym, meet with a trainer to set up a program to help you accomplish your goals.

2. Never Alone --
The journey is going to get tough, tougher is you do it by yourself.  Don't do it alone.  Find a partner or group to join you in your journey.  Support is the one three keys to success in reaching your health and fitness goals.

3. Use Visual Reminders -- 
Keep your goals in front of you.  Right it on the mirror in lipstick.  Make a vision board.  Pull out those skinny jeans and keep them in visible sight.  These visual reminders will serve as constant reminder to be consistent.

4. Set a Workout Alarm --
Seriously, set an alarm or reminder on your phone. Schedule your workouts in your calendar.  These become set in stone (well, digital stone) times for you to get off your backside and get going.

5. Have Fun! --
If your workouts are not fun, you will not keep doing them.  Find a workout plan or program that you will fall in love with.  If you don't like doing it odds are increasing less likely that you will continue doing it.  Have fun, have fun, have fun!!!


 No matter what you do, START!  You will never regret getting started on your journey of health and fitness.  You will never regret improving your life.  Just START!

If you are looking to start and don't know where to begin, leave me a comment.  Or if you have a great recommendation on where to start leave a comment too.

Focus T25 Review

Beachbody, the world leader in home fitness, took it to a whole new level!  As a Insanity grad, I was anxious to try Shaun T's new program Focus T25.  While I loved, loved Insanity, that second month of workouts lasting up to an hour were physically demanding and tough to always squeeze into life.

So what excited me most about Focus T25 is that workouts were just 25 minutes, 5 days a week.  Fridays on the calendar are double workout days.  You can, if desired, move the second workout to Saturday and take just one rest day, instead of 2.  Included and to be used on the rest days is a 25 minute stretch video which will improve flexibility and stretching.

Now admittedly, I was a skeptic that just 25 minutes would deliver the results, but I know Beachbody does everything with excellence and would not put out a product that did not deliver the results.  And Focus T25 DID JUST THAT!

Here are my 10 week before and after photos.  I lost around 6 pounds but the proof is in the pudding, my body was totally transformed. I finally saw some abs show up.  My arms no longer looked like spaghetti and my overall shape was better than when I was 16 years old. In full disclosure, I was running on Sundays as well.  The weather was just too nice not to run.  

Why do I love it?  25 minutes, 5 days a week and results like this!  What's not to love?

The first 5 weeks is the ALPHA phase.  This is a building phase.  Workouts build on themselves, no equipment required and the bonus is the modifier.  A modifier is a person demonstrating a lower impact way to do the exercise and still get great results.  I saw a lot of fat loss during this first 5 weeks. 

The second phase is BETA.  BETA builds on ALPHA.  Some of the same exercises are carried over, now with increased intensity. Additionally, this phase will require some equipment either the resistance band included or dumbbells.  What I saw in this phase was increase muscle building, especially in the upper body.  

Here are the workouts included:

Your FOCUS T25 program includes:

ALPHA Cycle 25-Minute Workouts:

• Cardio. 25 minutes of calorie-burning, sweat-drenching cardio.
• Speed 1.0. Ignite your quickness. Burn the fat. Fast-paced for fast results.
• Total Body Circuit. Focus on strength and resistance—without lifting a single weight.
• Ab Intervals. Cardio and ab intervals that shred the fat from your midsection.
• Lower Focus. Focus on your lower-body muscles—the key to burning fat and kicking up your metabolism.

BETA Cycle 25-Minute Workouts:

• Core Cardio. Get your sweat on! This progressive cardio-core workout is about you getting shredded fast.
• Speed 2.0. Rev it up with Shaun's calorie-scorching, core-focused speed drills.
• Rip't Circuit. Cardio … upper body … legs … abs ... repeat! This is how you get ripped in 25 minutes.
• Dynamic Core. You'll go from vertical to horizontal and back again in this dynamic, crazy core routine.
• Upper Focus. Shaun will help you develop the upper body of your dreams. All you have to do is FOCUS.

Plus T25 Nutrition guide:

Meals are quick and easy to fix with just 5 ingredients in most meals!

Beachbody has an upgrade third phase called GAMMA.  GAMMA steps up the game one more level for increased results! 

This is perfect workout for everyone, even those just starting out on their health and fitness journey.  When put together with Shakeology you will get the results you desire!  

Are you ready to focus?

Letupicitis the dream killer

It is a common disease that strikes many quickly and suddenly.

It has destroyed the strongest of men and the bravest of women.

It is a silent, decimating killer.

It's Letupicitis!  Commonly known as quitting, letting up, slowing down, pulling back and backing down.

It is the moment you taste the start of success in your goals and instead of hitting the gas you "let up".  It the day you step on the scale to see you have dropped 3 pounds and reward yourself with a Big Mac and a day off, instead of pushing play.  It is the moment after you have posted your third blog of the week and decide to cool the keys and wait on inspiration.

Letupicitis is rooted in the bacteria of disbelief.  It is contracted on the microbe of a poor self perception and spreads on the virus of a poor self perception.

It is known as the dream killer disease.  It slowly infects the dreamer and keeps him/her from pushing past barriers to new levels.  At one point or another we will all contract this silent killer of imagination, passion and conviction.  If you let it, it will infect your heart and keep your from achieving the dream you set out to.

Know the symptoms, recognize the signs, and push past letupicitis!  

Hustlers

I wish I had some huge success story about my Team Beachbody business taking off and making me a millionaire.  I don't, at least not yet.

So I enrolled myself in a little adventure with writer, blogger and fashionably smart Jon Acuff for a 30 day hustle marathon.  Clustered together are over 3000 individuals who are taking aim at a specific goal. Jon Acuff, New York Times Best Selling author and encourager of people wisely leaving behind their jobs for their passions, serves as the Skipper of a ship full of Gilligans.  Or at least this Gilligan.  My hope was simply to gain something that would help my business grow.

Admittedly, I have probably taken too much time to read through the posts rather than focus on my own hustle, what I have seen is that there is an abundance of people "hustling" to lose weight, get in shape and change their health.

While numbers are reported of the rising trend of obesity, that reality becomes a little more real when you start putting names and faces with it.  Attached to those names are personal, heartfelt and emotional stories of struggle.  Of weight lost and regained.  Of deep disappointment, coupled with new found hope that this time it will be different.

Each story tugs digs a little deeper as I realize that I am not in a business about  business.  I am in a business about people.  The greater value is not the sale of one more P90X or Insanity
program, but helping someone author the new chapter in their story.  A chapter entitled "Losing It For Good".  I have been rocked again and again by the Zig Ziglar famous words that "if you help enough people get where they are going, they will help you get where you are going."

I logged into this escapade with the hopes of gaining something about how to run a business, set goals and move from the dreaded day job to a dream job.  What I am sure that knowledge will be gained, what I am unexpectedly acquiring is a deeper sense that people just need someone to walk beside them and say "you can do this."  My hope is that I have the opportunity to be the voice in their life saying just that!

Everyday we're hustlin'!

New Years 2014!

Happy New Year!

As you awake this morning, it is a morning like any other, but then again it's not.  Today is New Years Day.  A day of fresh starts, clean slates and declaring what you will accomplish in the next 365 days.  So here are my 3 resolutions for 2014:

1) Be an encourager of others dreams.  
- Zig Ziglar says if you help enough people get where they are going, they will help you get where you're going.

2) Become a goal getter, not just a goal setter.  
- I am setting goals, dates, and putting together plans.

3) Become healthy on the inside, not just the outside.
- What is inside of us will spill out to the outside.  No amount of diet and exercise will heal hurts and help souls.

These are my resolutions for the New Year, what are yours?

Here's to a amazing and blessed 2014!

A YUGO of a Ferrari

I dogged it this morning...

Not proud of that, but it's the truth.  Here's why:

I believe that we have the capabilities to find the physical fitness of a Ferrari.  A Ferrari is a high powered, sleekly curved, sexy machine.

Truth be told, I have treat myself a little more like a YUGO with all it's economical, boxy shaped, 3 cylinder, top speed of 40mph styling.  There are drive-through bags on my floor board.  It is way past having any kind of maintenance done.  And I feed it whatever I can find.

And this morning I felt it.  

At the starting line of my daily workout when I stepped on the gas to push through,  I got what I put into my body, a sluggish, slow result.  

In order to operate physically as a Ferrari, instead of YUGO, you have got to fuel your body like a Ferrari.  This means fueling up on whole foods, plenty of H2 and the O.  This means knowing the difference between treating yourself and going full on buffet on holiday dinner.

Lesson learned...

Do you feel the difference in your workouts when you eat clean?

Reminder Pants - The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

In my closet are lots of pairs of pants, but more specifically two specific pairs of pants.  I call them my "reminder pants".  

The Good - 
These are a pair of black suit pants.  They are a size 38.  To be honest, my chubby buns and dunlap belly I am sure stretched it past the 38 inch waist line.  There were Sundays when I would pour myself into those pants and uncomfortably suffer through the service. 

Now I am a true 34 inch waist!  Woot!

Those pants serve as a reminder of where I have come and how much progress I have made.  These are just a simple reminder of the good!  They remind me of the wins in my health and fitness.  The wins in my weight loss journey!

It's amazing reminder!

The Bad -
The skinny pants that I wear to work.  Like all of you I have moments of slipping back into poor habits.  There are days I skip workouts and feed my face fattening foods.  As I slide into those pants and pull that waist line across my belly I am reminded that I need to get back on track.  

Just the feel of those pants snuggling up under that little pooch belly that rares it's head when I make excuses for my health and fitness.  It reminds me "Jeff you need to refocus".

The Ugly -
Simply get rid of these.  Just a reminder that sometimes you make terrible clothing choices.

Enough said!

A Moving WHY

As many of you already know if you have read any of my previous blogs, my main reason I started on this journey of health and fitness (other than running out of clothes that fit) was my three kids.  While that reason remains true, what I have found is that my WHY has become somewhat fluid.

My weight loss journey started as a runner and about a year and half ago progressed into being a Team Beachbody Coach.   Since then I have tackled programs like P90X, Insanity, Les Mills Combat, Focus T25 and two very uncoordinated weeks of Turbofire!  I became a coach for two reasons. One to help me stay accountable to my own health and fitness.  Two, in order to create some secondary income for my family.  While neither of those reasons have changed, I had my eyes opened wide this week.

My beautiful 6 year old daughter has tumbled into loving gymnastics and she's good!  In just 8 weeks she has progress from Division 1 to Division 3, which is an amazing accomplishment!  I have already done the math, we are on track for the 2024 Olympic Summer Games!

Here where my eyes were opened!  In a conversation, with another parent of an older gymnast, I found just what the price tag is on competitive team gymnastics.  Let's just say I could drive a very nice car for what the monthly fee is. I mean VERY NICE!

Nothing is more a driving force toward success than the needs and desires of your children.  While I wanted to be successful in my business for multiple reasons, that WHY expanded greatly knowing what lies ahead of our family if our little tumbler stays on beam toward becoming a world class gymnast.

Author George Barna wrote, "Realize the future is not something that just happens; it is a reality that is created by those strong enough to exert control over their environment."  That is the challenge that lies ahead.  Taking control of my environment to create a future where Avery has every opportunity to succeed.  This goes beyond her gymnastic future and spills into every opportunity for all three of my kids.  As a parent, your heart always bends toward wanting to give them everything.  While I may never be able to give them everything, the provision for the future will not just happen.  It requires a vision and a plan driven by one really BIG WHY that I want it to accomplish.  And today that why is the dreams of this little girl...

I was made for this!

Some people call it revelation.  Some call it an epiphany.  Some call it the light bulb coming on.  Whatever you call it, there is a moment when it happens.  A moment when the stars all align, the tide is just right and the man in the moon is talking in his sleep.  It is the moment you say "I was made for this."

I believe we all have a "calling" and a "purpose" in life.  There is a specific thing that we are gifted to do that if it goes undone it won't get done, at least not in the way it meant for you to accomplish.  There is no prescription on how to discover this.  Most of it comes via trial and error, and at that mostly error.

Thomas Edison attempted to create the incandescent light bulb over 10,000 times.  When asked about it, Edison said "I have not failed.  I have just found 10,000 ways that won't work."  Your life is no different.  It is not a waste to try something and fail.  You have just found something that was not your purpose.  The failure comes when we quit searching and trying.

Once peculiar piece to this mystery of discovery is that some things come full circle.  What is incredible is that something that looks like a failed experiment at self discovery often comes back to be a piece to the puzzle of your purpose.  Experience is the grand teacher.  It teaches us often what we are not, it also teaches us what are meant to be.  Experience also bookmarks moments in life that we build on.  These moments of seeming failed trials and grand errors can lead us down the path of purpose.  That moment when you say "I was made for this."

#livewithhope

Chachachanges...3 questions to ask

Let's face it NO ONE likes change.

At best we tolerate it as a part of life, just like paying taxes, traffic and another Law and Order spinoff.  But change does happens.

As a matter of fact change happens all around us.  If you are a parent you watch it take place daily in your house.  That infant you held snuggly in your arms becomes a pre-pubescent boy with a smart mouth (experience talking).  Change is all around you - the light changes (at least we hope), seasons change, styles change.  Thank God!  I could only wear a mullet for so long!

So at some level we need to quit fighting change and embrace it.  Is it scary?  Yeah, like Nightmare on Elm Street scary, the first one.  Is it hard? Of course.  Is it worth it?  That is the million dollar question.  Most likely if we never see value in making a change, we will never change unless forced to.  We will never quit smoking, start eating healthier, exercise, or move out of your momma's basement without facing change.

Here are a couple questions to ask yourself if the change is worth it:

    1) Is it going to make my life better in the long term?

Is the change that I intend on making going to better my life in the long term?  Weight loss can extend your life, quitting smoking can keep you from cancer and improve the smell of your wardrobe, eliminating negative influences can help you create an atmosphere for long term success - "attitude determine altitude."  What we have to negotiate is whether the short term sacrifice or discomfort of the change is worth the long term result that comes from changing!

    2) Will my choice of change positively or negatively affect my relationship with others?

The answer: likely both.  What you will find is that there are those who are going to celebrate and support your choice.  You will also likely find that there are those that will question your reasoning, criticize your attempts and even try to pull you back into a poor habit.

Yet, what you are more likely to find is that making a positive change will help you create connections with like minded people.  People set on achieving similar life goals.  Your choice to change may actually open up the potential for new relationships.  Who knows Mister or Miss Right might be right at the corner of Choice and Change!

    3) Am I worth it?

This is a question of self value.  So often we stay in poor habits due to our belief that we are undeserving of anything better.  That is just not true!  YOU ARE WORTH IT!  YOU ARE VALUABLE!  Quite possibly the greatest change that has to be made is how you see the image of the person staring back at you in the mirror.  Oftentimes the choice to change is one of belief in yourself.  That is where it has to start!

The greatest change you can make is one of going from unbelief to belief!  You are worth it!

Change is hard, yet so often change is exactly what your life needs!  What changes do you need to embrace?