Excuses or Goals?

For those of you who know me probably know that one of my favorite quotes is "Losers make excuses, winners make goals." When it comes to working out this quote is spot on. It is so easy to make excuses, I am guilty of doing it, but avoiding those excuses and reaching goals feels so much better. I think the question we all need to ask ourselves is what drives you? As February comes to an end so do a lot of peoples new years resolutions. People become very motivated at the start of a new year, they have goals that they want to reach and lifestyle changes they want to keep, however, for many people it lasts pretty close to about a month or two. Why? Let me ask again, what drives you?

Working at gyms it was always interesting to see at the beginning of a new year the gym was packed full. As weeks went on it would slowly get less and less busy and I would say by the end of February it was back to what it was before the new year began. I believe a lot of it has to do with goals. As I would work with clients I would ask them what their goal was, some would tell me they wanted to lose 30 lbs, some said they wanted to "look good naked", some said they wanted to run a 5k or a 10k, and my response would be the same, what is your plan to get to that end goal? A lot of them wouldn't have an answer. We make the mistake of making goals without making a plan to reach that goal. The best way to reach an end goal is to make smaller goals that you can accomplish on your way. I gain confidence the most when I accomplish something I set out to do. Accomplishing something hard is what drives me.

My goal when I started college was to be able to run 6 miles. As I have posted in previous posts is that I used to hate running, with a passion. When I made the goal to run 6 miles I new I had to make smaller goals before I could reach my end goal. My first goal was to be able to be on the treadmill for 20 min and running for 15 of the 20 min. Once I reached that I pushed myself to run the entire 20 min. Each week as I would reach my goal I would make another one for the next week. I remember the day I reached my 6 mile goal, I remember where I was, the treadmill I was on and most importantly I remember how I felt. I accomplished something hard. The confidence in myself and in what my body was capable of doing began to grow. I felt so good and so proud of what I was able to do I wanted to keep pushing myself because I knew with hard work anything is possible.

I ran into an article in Women's Health that was talking about the effects of working out on the brain and one of them talks about goals. I thought this was pretty interesting.

"It helps you stick to your goals: In the same University of Iowa study, researchers concluded that, since cardio requires such long and consistent effort, doing a lot of it may help you develop an ability to follow through with tasks. That, in turn, can help you stick to other (non-exercise-related) goals that require long-term effort."

For those of you who made new years resolutions, whether it was in the category of health or not, don't give up. Start making smaller goals to reach that end goal. For those of you who are intimidated by working out and eating right, or are nervous to start, I promise from personal experience it is life changing. Stop with the excuses and start with the goals.  

At Home Workout

Life as a mom can be pretty busy and sometimes there are days where I don't have energy to go to the gym, so I made a workout that I could do in my living room while Asher was taking his nap. All I have to say is I couldn't walk for a few days afterwards. Typically I would do this workout with a deck of normal playing cards, however, I couldn't find ours so I went for five crowns (which jokes on me, has 5 suits and has 2 of each card. About twice as many cards as a normal deck of cards) Luckily I didn't really think of that until I was laying out the second half of the cards half way through the workout. The nice thing about this workout is the only thing you really need is a jump rope, and if you don't have one of those you can still do it, and a deck of cards. I used my coffee table to do triceps dips.

Here is how it works, for each color (or suit) you have a different workout.

Suited Card: 100 jump ropes
Blue: Squat
Black: Push Up
Yellow: Lunge
Green: Triceps Dips
Red: Sit ups
Joker: Rest

Like I said I used 5 crowns cards, if you use a normal deck of cards you can do a workout according to suit. The number on the card is how many reps you do for that workout. All of the suited cards I did jump roping, I laid the cards out on a table in a random order and began. The workout takes about 50 minutes. The nice thing with this type of workout is that it adds variety and it can be tailored to fit anyone!

Diet?

What do you think of when you hear the word diet? Growing up when I heard the word diet I thought of a crazy eating habit where you only eat meat, or you only only eat vegetables or something outrageous like that. Let me go back a few years to when I started college...

Before

I began my first semester of college fall of 2009 and I was going into Exercise Physiology. I had heard from many people about the dreaded "Freshman Fifteen", that is one thing I didn't want. At that point I had been doing pretty well on exercising and I knew that being on my own it would be easy to just eat ramen and macaroni and fast easy food, however, I decided to try a different route. I didn't want to go on a diet because I knew I wouldn't stick to it, so instead I just substituted foods. For example, instead of eating white bread, rice, pasta etc. I changed it to all whole grains. I started drinking skim milk, I wouldn't drink soda. I ate more fruits and vegetables. I made a goal not to eat ramen noodles (which seems small but that is what I ate almost everyday for lunch in high school). I decided I was going to be more aware of what I was putting in my body. It was amazing the results I saw. I ate a well balanced diet, I didn't just focus on one food group, I ate all of the food groups but kept to the right servings in each one. Instead of gaining the "Freshman Fifteen" I lost about 15 lbs that first semester. It was amazing to see the results by just substituting for healthier foods.

After

The other day I found myself caught up in a documentary called "Hungry for Change", it was so interesting and it brought back a lot of what I had been studying in college. A lot of people will get on these diets and lose a bunch of weight, but chances are very very high that they will gain the weight back plus some. Why is that? It is because when you decide to go cold turkey and shock your body by doing these outrageous diets you binge eat and eventually just can't handle it any more. That is when you gain the weight back. Something very interesting that I saw in the documentary was that your body needs nutrients and if it doesn't get the nutrients it will starve until it is fed those nutrients. Have you ever eaten a huge breakfast of waffles and you feel so full that you tell yourself you don't want to eat the rest of the day, but you find yourself in the kitchen an hour later? it is because your body is still starved of the nutrients it needs so it will tell your body it is hungry until it gets those nutrients. Obesity is such a big problem and this is one of the reasons. People are eating these non nutrient foods because they are quick and easy but they don't satisfy your bodies needs so you keep eating and eating. Certain msg's or artificial flavors excite your body leaving you wanting more and craving certain things, especially food high in carbs.

My last year in college I was training a client and I needed to put her on healthy meal plan, but before I was going to have her do that I decided I should try the meal plan so I knew what she would be dealing with. I calculated my RMR (resting metabolic rate) which is basically what keeps your body alive, keeping your heart beating, lungs breathing etc. I then calculated my Activities of Daily living, which is basically walking throughout the day, climbing stairs, normal daily activities. After calculating those numbers I was able to figure out for my body weight and height the amount of calories I should be consuming. I made a meal plan and stuck to it, I wrote everything I ate down with the amount of calories I was consuming. I would write down my workouts with the amount of calories I was burning, that way I could calculate how much weight I should lose by the end of the week. I would eat from every food group. I didn't leave a food group out or focus on one food group. I had a very well balanced diet, that wasn't necessarily a diet, it was just healthy eating and staying away from processed foods. At the end of the week I was down 6 lbs. It was hard at first writing everything down that I was consuming but by writing it down I knew exactly what was going into my body.

I guess what I want to get across in this post is you don't need to starve yourself, or go on a ridiculous diet. I actually don't recommend it, what I recommend is eating a well balanced diet with all food groups, just make sure it is the correct servings from the food groups. I challenge you to write everything down you consume for a day, just one day, I think it will surprise you how many extra calories you are eating without even realizing it.

My Pregnancy Experience... Workout and Diets during and after pregnancy to come!

Well now that it has been about 2 years since my last post I figured I better get back into writing and updating this blog. I will be better at it now that I have more time at home being a stay at home mom. I decided to post a little bit about staying healthy during and after pregnancy since I just recently went through. To start off, in my opinion, being pregnant is one of the most amazing things, yeah there are days/weeks/months that you don't feel good, you're tired, you're body aches, and sleeping is almost impossible towards the end. But the fact that you are able to grow a living human being is unbelievable and makes it all worth it. I had an amazing experience being pregnant and I owe a lot of it to choosing to stay healthy.

Before getting pregnant I had been a healthy person, running, working out, eating right has been a love of mine. I was always nervous to get pregnant because I had heard stories of women who were pregnant who gained a lot of weight and were never able to lose it or women who were able to run miles and miles and then got pregnant and lost that. I had worked so hard to get where I was at with running and it scared me to lose all that hard work. I found out I was pregnant in August and as soon as I found out I made it my goal that I would be as healthy as I could. I continued working out as much as I could, and then the morning sickness hit and hit hard. I felt sick all the time and it was hard for me to even get up and go to work let alone go work out. I decided that I would go workout only if I felt up to it and felt good enough to go. Although I wasn't working out as much as I hoped I still ate healthy. For my birthday and anniversary Kent surprised me with a trip to Houston to run in a quarter marathon with him, my sister and brother in law. I told myself I would go run it and it was ok if I had to walk a little bit, as long as I got out and did it. Race day came and I finished, it was a little slower then I would have liked but I was able to run and finish the race.

 By that point I was about 14 weeks and the morning sickness was starting to go away, I got back into running about 5-7 miles per run and felt great! Not only was I running but I was also doing some resistance training. I had heard that delivering a baby is hard work and that I needed to prepare myself physically for it. I kept this up until about 27 weeks when I started to bleed. Kent and I went into the hospital and it turned out everything was okay but it made me nervous. I asked the doctor if running was a bad idea for me this far along. He explained that as the baby is getting bigger the baby will bounce more and that constant bouncing could potentially be bad for the baby. He said that he knew some women who would run marathons up to delivery and their babies were fine and he knew some who would run and end up having their babies earlier and have more complications. So he told me it was up to me what I wanted to do. I decided that I would play it safe and stop running so much and so hard. If you can run throughout your whole pregnancy then that is great! I just made the decision I would take a break from running for the remainder of my pregnancy. I was a little nervous about making this decision but decided that it was best for me and my baby considering the bleeding. I made some changes to my work outs and turned more towards biking and incline speed walking. I continued this up until the day before I went in to deliver. I would walk anywhere from 3 miles to 6 miles 4-6 days a week depending on how my body was feeling. I continued eating healthy and avoided greasy foods, lots of sweets, and just made sure to eat a lot of fruits and vegetables. Throughout my pregnancy I gained 28 lbs and delivered right on my due date. I was able to bounce back and I not only owe that to being lucky to have such a good pregnancy but also to my decision to stay healthy and to eat right and stay active.

 23 weeks

 30 weeks

 35 weeks

39 weeks

Now I understand that I was so lucky to have a healthy pregnancy, I know there are a lot of cases where women aren't as lucky and have complications come up that don't allow them to be active or have to be on bed rest and so on, that is completely different. However, the choice to eat right no matter the circumstance will make the difference. I know some women believe that because they are pregnant they can eat whatever they want whenever they want and however much they want. All I have to say is what you are taking in, your baby is getting as well!! I look at it as pregnancy should be the time you want to eat the most healthy because those are the only nutrients your baby is getting while growing such vital organs and growing his/her body! A healthy weight to gain, depending on your starting weight, is about 25 to 35 lbs. Again this can change depending on whether you are underweight or overweight and the type of pregnancy that you have.

I think an important thing to remember is every body is different, you know your body the best and it is important to listen to it. When I was working out if I was tired or started to ache I would listen to my body and stop. Your body is the best judge, so listen to it! It isn't worth over doing it to avoid gaining weight, a fact that you have to accept during pregnancy is YOU WILL GAIN WEIGHT and that is totally fine! Pregnancy is a sacrifice and a very selfless act, you are allowing your body to go through changes in order to grow a human being. My body isn't perfect, there are flaws that I see, and I am not back to where I want to be post partum but I am healthy and that is what matters. I will always see flaws if I am looking for them, the best thing you can do is look for the good in you!  I am able to go on runs and to workout, I enjoy eating healthy and I feel good! That is what is most important. You may not bounce back as fast as you would like post partum but that is okay, just be positive and stay healthy.

If you are going to workout during pregnancy make sure to get your drs approval. Working out is not the only way to stay healthy during pregnancy. Controlling your eating is the biggest thing you can do to maintain a healthy pregnancy. I will go into more detail in both working out, and a healthy diet while pregnant in other posts.

A Quick Look Into Eating Healthy

I personally think that dieting is probably one of the most intimidating things for many people because it is hard. We have become such a fast paced society that for us to find something healthy really fast seems impossible. You hear so many people talk about dieting and talk about the new diets that are out that will help you lose weight if you just follow it for so long. These diets usually are pretty hard to follow and a lot of people gain all of their weight back when the diet is finished. My advice to you is to not really diet but just to eat healthy. You can get all of your nutrients you need by eating servings from every food group. The best diet is a well balanced diet. The biggest trick to lose weight when it comes to food is controlling your calories and your portion sizes. I know this won't sound fun but I recommend that for 1 or 2 days write down everything you eat. Just on a normal given day, I think you will be surprised what goes into your body. The first step is being aware of what you are eating. Many people believe that if they drink a diet soda or if they eat a fruit then they can eat something unhealthy to make up for it, it doesn't work that way. I promise you that as you put in healthy foods in your body you will feel like a completely different person. You will have more energy, you will be happier, you will be more confident. That is just how it works, don't take my word for it, try it out.






Here is a fun fact:
Diet only-69% of total weight loss from fat.
Diet + aerobic-78% of total weight loss from fat.
Diet + aerobic + resistance training- 97% of total weight loss from fat.




I know that this was a very broad post but I just wanted to scratch the surface on eating healthy. I want to focus on a different food group at a time so I can actually go into detail about each one which will allow you to see the benefits of why you should be eating this food group. All food groups are vital and play a different roll in giving your body different nutrients it needs.

If you would like to have me give you a better idea of a "diet" or an idea to how to eat healthier leave your email and I will get into contact with you to help you get a better idea. I am going to work with my brother Brian and my sister in law Heather to put them on a healthy eating plan and help them reach some of their goals. They will be commenting on updates that they are seeing as a result of them eating healthy.