“When you’re trying to motivate yourself, appreciate the fact that you’re even thinking about making a change. And as you move forward, allow yourself to be good enough.” – Alice Domar.
Setting weight loss, weight gain, or strength building goals for yourself is not about obsessing over the way your body looks and the way you want it to look. If that were the case you would only be setting yourself up for failure because most of us envision the “perfect” shape, which we all know doesn’t really exist. There’s nothing wrong with embracing YOU! What we want you to do is to focus on the challenge that lies ahead. Imagine what YOU would look like, not anybody else, if you only ate better, had a better self-image, drank less, and exercised more frequently and with more variation. Picture becoming the best version of yourself!
Most of us have stowed away past images of ourselves or clothes that no longer fit. We want you to dig those out and have a look at them. The first challenge for you is to defeat what you KNOW to be possible. If you looked and felt better five years ago there’s no reason why you can’t get back to that. Age, schedules, child-bearing ect. are all just excuses that we make for ourselves out of habit. Truth is, you’re the only barrier between the then and now.
Or maybe you’ve never felt better than how you feel right now, but you want to become even BETTER. Your second challenge is to make a list of the things you could do better. We’re not just talking exercising five times a week, and eating more veggies. Ask yourself these questions.
Are you sleeping enough?
Are you taking time out for yourself each day?
Do you like what you see?
Do you drink more coffee or tea?
When’s the last time you had your vitamins? How about vitamin E?
Do you cook more often in the week than you dine out?
How many glasses of wine (or fill in the blank) do you have in one sitting? How about in a week?
Did you have breakfast everyday this week?
How often do you opt for water over soda?
When is the last time you stretched?
Have you done cardio off the machines this week?
Do you enjoy your meal or are you rushed?
When is the last time you meditated?
How many different colors do you have on your dinner plate?
Do you use more spices for seasoning and less salt?
Do you say grace before each meal?
Have you told everyone important to you in your life that you love them today?
These are the real, meaty questions you should be pondering over. Some of them may make you scratch your head which is ok because now we have you thinking. Alot of people think that your body shape is only affected by what you eat and how much you exercise when in fact all of the questions you just answered play a part. There are many more components that go into keeping fit and STAYING fit. It’s much easier to hit your goals and then fall off track again. It’s much more challenging to hit them and maintain them for a year, 5 years or what about for the rest of your life? That is what we want you to challenge yourself to!
Inspired by Bodyrock.tv we decided that we want our virtual followers many of whom we never have the chance to meet face to face to have a presence on our site. For those of you following us on twitter (@longlivefit) we mentioned recently that we are going to start keeping a more consistent log of workouts on our youtube channel for all of you to tap into.
One of the biggest drawbacks we see right now in the world of fitness and exercise is that there remains to be too much redundancy! Whenever we flip through what we believe to be the best magazines for fitness such as Fitness Magazine, Women’s Health, Men’s Health, and Shape we are astonished to find that each month the same or very similar workouts are featured. The same goes for exercise videos on the web. Although we do like where Bodyrock.tv has gone with raising the bar with online workout videos by also rallying up a strong network of followers who are contributing to their program each week, we are still seeing the same repetition we want to try to stay away from. We are all smart enough to know by now (or at least we hope so) that by doing the same activity day in and day out we are leading ourselves to a dead end. A challenge is only a challenge until we conquer it. This is why it’s important that we always have new exercises to add to our workouts so we can always be gaining new ground and challenging our bodies to heightened levels of potential. As with anything in life there is always room for improvement.
We are here to offer that continuous potential for growth to you! All you have to do is watch our workout videos that we post on our youtube channel. As you continue to see results/ changes happening on your own body we’d like you to share them with us! To do this all you have to do is write in to us at info@fitnessawayoflife.com sharing with us pictures of your before and after and what you’ve learned from our workouts! By sharing your experience you will motivate others to the same just as we hope we’ve inspired you to take action towards a better you.
I’m going to start by sharing with you my personal story. Three years ago I was a collegiate athlete at Temple University. Although I was training two times a day up to 7 days a week, my sleeping and eating habits were out of sorts. Not to mention my stress level was through the roof! As most of us, I had too much on my plate most of the time so I found myself experiencing many sleepless nights, training on little to no energy, and eating on the go! I often resorted to cafeteria food because it was convenient and quick. I had no censor so I found myself eating fast food at least once week on top of the fried foods, soda, sugary juices, sweets, Belgium waffles and of course the many other foods of these sorts that I’m leaving out. I was carb-overloading and to make matters worst I was binging on energy drinks, and Starbucks Frappuccinos to get me through late night study hours and last minute paper cramming. Here I was! I was active, but I wasn’t the most fit because I wasn’t taking into consideration all aspects of my health!
Since my move to NY three years ago (as of last month) I really became more conscious of my eating habits. I quickly learned that I could save alot and be more in control of what I was eating by preparing my own meals. I replaced Rice-A-Roni with quinoa (a protein based grain), which is much healthier than even brown rice. I switched from potatoes to sweet potatoes. I cut out soda all together. I started eating whole grain/whole wheat everything! I cut back on my sugar intake. But most importantly I focused on only eating when I was hungry and stopping BEFORE I felt full. This is where most people make their mistake. You don’t have to clear your plate to have a full meal. It’s ok to have leftovers and it saves you the hassle of preparing dinner every night.
I also sufficiently cut back on my alcohol consumption. Whereas before I was drinking up to 4 nights a week, now I’m lucky if I have more than two drinks every couple weeks. It’s easy to forget about the liquid calories you’re consuming. If you’re having a glass or two of wine every night with dinner that quickly adds up of the course of a week and a month. A good trick for those of you who are party animals is to drink a glass of water for each alcoholic beverage you consume in a night. Also, try walking away from the party scene for a couple weeks and you’ll be surprised how much your tolerance goes down. When your tolerance drops you end up consuming less drinks in one sitting to get that same buzz that you once would only get off of 4 drinks. Clear is always better! Avoid mixing alcohol with creamy liquors, fruit juices and soda. Stick to seltzer water as a mixer and vodka or light beer over whiskey or rum.
Sleep- the one thing we all tend to put on the back burner!!! Lack of sleep not only ages you, but it works at odds with your fitness and weight loss goals. Your body can only function properly when it’s well rested. If you find that you’re not a great sleeper try to set aside 10-20 minutes in your day for a power nap to reboot your body. It acts like a reset button. You will wake up feeling clearer and more productive. I found that before when I was only getting 4-5 hours of sleep a night I was often getting sick, which would drag on for days sometimes weeks before I was able to fully recover. Now that I’m sleeping at minimum 6 hours a night and in bed sometimes by 11pm I hardly ever find my immune system down.
Here is me now three years later!
Now it’s your turn! Take a picture of yourself right now and put it somewhere where you won’t see it everyday, but will remember where it is. We don’t want you obsessing over every inch of your body. This is just to give you a realistic image of yourself as it is now before working towards your goals. It’s a better measure of your results than a scale, which fluctuates daily. Over the course of the next few months we want you to follow along with our workout videos, which we will post on our youtube channel and again on our blog! We also want to hear from our clients so we invite you to take part in this challenge as well! As you start to see changes in how you look and feel make notes to yourself. This is how you want to feel ALL the time!
When you feel good and ready feel free to write us and we will be happy to share your story! =) Good luck to all of you!
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