Listen to Your Body…It’s Pretty Smart

I live for my alarm clock to go off  (yes, even at 4:15am) because that means a new day is beginning and I get to start it off with an amazing exercise routine.  But not last Thursday, I looked at the clock and rolled over and felt weak and horrible.  When my husband took my temperature and it read 100 degrees, I thought…no this can’t be happening.  I’m healthy, I workout,  I eat right…how the heck could I be sick?

And then I really thought about it.  I knew this was coming, I knew I was wearing myself  out, but I was in denial and didn’t listen to my body.  I’ve been working two jobs full-time since July.  My real job is in the middle of busy season.  My Beachbody job is exploding.  I just didn’t want to stop…I was on a roll, how could I stop!  Apparently my body did not agree with that logic and instead forced me to stop by keeping me in bed and keeping me from working out for a week!

Not to worry, I’m feeling better and will be back at working out tomorrow(I see a long walk in my future:))!   Sometimes you need a kick in the butt to get you going in the right direction and that’s what I’m taking this little rest as.

Most of us want progress to come quicker than it does, but we have to realize that if the progress isn’t coming as quick as we want, we need to step back and think about why it’s not happening.  Does it mean what we are doing isn’t working?  Do we have high expectations? Do we need to change what we are currently doing?  Push ourselves a little more or slow down?

Listen to your body, it will tell you but you need to really step back and take a look at the bigger picture to see it clearer.  If you need a rest day, take it because not taking one will do more harm than good.  It can cause over training or injury.  If you need to change up your workout, then do it to break out of the plateau you have been in.  If you need to change your eating, change it but do it slowly because if you do it fast, it won’t work and you’ll be back to where you started.

You need to make doable changes in order to succeed. I was listening to an audio CD the other day, and the person speaking said there are 3 things in life that are constant, death, taxes and change.   When you make change, you will continue to need to make more changes to succeed because eventually the first change you make won’t work anymore….you’ll plateau.  So, what is your body telling you?

A New Month means a Fresh Start for Your Goals

It’s the first of the month, the perfect time to refocus on your goals or set new ones!  Setting goals is not just for New Years, in fact New Years Resolutions don’t typically work for most people and then when it doesn’t work people just stop.  DON’T stop, just refocus!

Goal setting has become a part of my life and I have to say things started happening when I started creating my goals on paper.  I make them on New Years, every month and every week.  New Years are my long-term goals with the deadline of 12/31 so they are HUGE goals that need to be broken down.  So, I break them down monthly and weekly.

My monthly goals break my year goals down to a smaller goal with the deadline being the end of the month.  Then I break my monthly goals down to weekly goals…it’s all about baby steps.  These steps help me stay on track or refocus if I lose sight of my goal.  So, every Sunday morning after I prep my food for the week, I write down my weekly goals.  They don’t change too much as getting to my long-term goal takes consistency and doing the small goals over and over.

I’m all about accountability, so I figured I’d write my March goals here for you to take a look:

1. Become Diamond Coach by 3/31, which means I need 4 more coaches to help me end the trend of obesity (if you know anyone who might be interested…send them my way!:) thanks!)
2. Lose 4 pounds by 3/31.  This equals to a pound a week.  My ultimate goal is to lose 10 pounds but this is the last of the weight to loss and it’s super stubborn, which means I have to be super stubborn with my clean eating and workouts.  So, no cheats (okay, maybe on my birthday) and dripping sweat at every workout!
3. Wake up daily knowing that day will be amazing because I have control over what happen

What are your monthly goals?  How can I help you reach them?  Email me at getfitwithstacy@hotmail.com.  I would love to help you in any way I can!

What is your Motivation?

Motivation for working out…how do you get it?  Many of you have asked me this and it’s tough to answer because it comes down to your why for working out.  There are a ton of reasons:  lose weight, look good, get healthy, or  train for a physical event like a marathon, etc.

How do you get the motivation?  You need to want it so bad that you wake up every morning and you know you are going to workout and eat as clean as you can.   It’s not easy when you have been used to a sedentary lifestyle or to eating junk, but if you want it bad enough you’ll do it.  Because successful people do what unsuccessful people don’t want to do!

So, to answer this question, I’ll tell you what motivates me.  There are a few reasons:  1.  I love the feeling I get after doing an amazing workout, 2.  to be healthy, and 3.  to look good of course!  I work out 6 days a week, 5 of those days I wake up at 4:30am to get the workout in(I know you think I’m crazy!).  It’s become a habit and it’s like my cup of coffee in the morning.  Some days it’s tough to get out of bed but I say to myself, “You’ll feel better once you get the workout in.”  And sure enough after the first 5 or 10 mins of my workout, I feel great!

So, if you find that you just don’t want to go to the gym or do a video, go for 10 mins and most likely you’ll keep going.  If it’s not working for you after 10 mins then stop and take that as a rest day but get there tomorrow.   And if you don’t get the workout in as much as you want in a week, that is 100% okay, just get back out there next week.  Too often people just stop because they messed up one week.  So what, that was last week, this week is new!  (FYI…I have messed up and slacked off or eaten things I definitely shouldn’t for a whole week.  But I just make it better the next week).

Working out for me is easy…I love it!  It’s the clean eating that continues to get to me.  I love going out to eat and food in general.  Ice cream and candy are my weakness for sure but I know if I eat them everyday, I’m going to feel gross, look gross and it’s going to slow me down.  So, I have incorporated a clean eating lifestyle.  Is it perfect?  NO….I’m still working on it daily but by the end of this year my goal (another one) is to eat clean so that I get to the point where that is all my body craves.  Why?  Because I love living healthy and I want to live a very long time!

Here’s what helps me with clean eating.  I try not to eat anything with more than 10 grams of sugar if I can help it.  I have 1 cheat meal a week.  If I want something not clean, I drink a glass of water or green tea to stop the craving and if that doesn’t work, I eat it (only a small piece of whatever it is) and I workout harder the next day.  Balance is key (and a work in progress)!

So, what is your motivation?

Ruby Status…onward and upward

As you’ll get to know me, you know I have goals all the time and 2011 is the biggest goal year yet for me.  One of my goals this year is to advance in ranks with Beachbody Coaching.  I had a goal of reaching Diamond status by yesterday and it didn’t happen.  But I did advance to Ruby, which is a huge accomplishment and now I’m so much closer to Diamond.  So, because I didn’t reach this goal, did I fail?  NO WAY!

This week has been amazing!  I recruited 2 new coaches on my team who I know are going to be amazing.  I also got asked to be a health & fitness contributor for a website being launched shortly (I will let you know when it’s up and running) to write weekly articles!  Never in a million years did I think my passion for health and fitness and helping others would lead me to be a journalist.  How did this happen?  It happened because I never gave up, I never lost sight of my ultimate goal, and I believed in myself. (BTW…I am just getting started.)

One of the books I recently read is Go for No.  It’s a short book that has a valuable lesson in the story.  The lesson is you have to get through the nos to get to the yeses!  You can’t just stop because someone or something stands in your way…you have to keep going.

A couple of weeks ago on the Biggest Loser, one of the contestants wrote on his arm his goal weight for that week.  He put it there to remind him of why he was working out so hard, eating healthy, etc.  So, when he got on that scale he wanted to see that number, but he didn’t…he missed it by one pound!  He didn’t get upset or say he was disappointed, instead he was truly happy!  He was happy because he accomplished his goal even though it was short the one pound.  He showed himself he can do anything as long as he puts his mind to it and he knows he’ll lose that pound next week.

I know it’s hard to look back and embrace all you’ve accomplished when you haven’t met a goal.  But you have to!  Because all those little goals get you to your big goal…without them you can’t get there.  So, what if you didn’t lose any weight this week…you now know what to do for the next week.  So, what you ate a piece of cake…go to the gym and workout for an extra 30 minutes and eat super clean the rest of the week.  The key is to get back out there and not stop because you got a NO!

So Diamond get ready because here I come!