You and all your friends are invited to a FREE Healthy Habits 7-Day Challenge starting Monday, August 11, 2014! The object of this healthy challenge is to implement healthy habits, get in a little exercise and have fun doing it! Anyone and everyone is invited. We'll meet in a private group here on Facebook. The challenge will be filled with supportive people who want to be healthy, vibrant people.
The foundation of my nutrition coaching program is to work with people one-on-one to develop healthy habits that will last a lifetime. My belief is that, for some people, it can be very overwhelming to try to fix everything at once. For those folks, I highly recommend working with me one-on-one. However, for some people it can be good to take a bit more of a running start. For those people I have developed this Healthy Habits 7-Day Challenge. But, anyone is welcome - those who like to start at a crawl or those who like to hit the ground running (or anyone in between). If you're considering nutrition coaching this FREE challenge will give you an overview of my program.
Each day I will introduce the Healthy Habit of the Day that you'll be working on. Also, we will have an exercise challenge (it won't be too hard, I promise!). And there will be encouraging words throughout the day. I’ll be there to support you all the way – as will your fellow challengers!
Click the link below to join the group!
https://www.facebook.com/groups/aug2014healthyhabits/
Can't wait to have you part of the group!! It's going to be FUN!
This week we have been discussing the importance of consistency and the impact it has on meeting our weight loss goals (or any life goal). Yesterday, we discussed input/output influences and how what we allow our brains to absorb can greatly impact the choices we make. Today, we’re going to talk about what might be a tough one….who we spend our time with.
In the “The Compound Effect,” by Darren Hardy, which was the springboard for this discussion, he asks the question, “Who’s Influencing You?” His mentor, Jim Rohn, a successful “business philosopher”, teaches that we are “the combined average of the five people we hang around most.” So ask yourself a few questions: Do the people I hang out with the most embody the type of person I want to be?; Do they take care of themselves the way I should take care of myself? Do they eat the way I should be eating? Do they care about their health?
If you have truly decided to lose weight and be a healthier person and you answered no to more than one of those questions…perhaps it’s time to re-evaluate who you spend the most of your time with. I’m not suggesting you dump your friends. But I am suggesting that if you truly want to be successful with your health goals it might be necessary to choose to spend less time with them. It’s like this – if you’ve decided to drink less how easy is that going to be if you’re going out with your “party friends” every weekend (and maybe even during the week)? Or maybe you’re trying to quit smoking? Are you going to be successful if you hang out with smokers? Probably not. Their influence is going to drag you down. You’ll end up deciding to have just that one drink or that you will just not smoke and next thing you know you’ve had three. It’s the same way with any other unhealthy habits. Unhealthy people don’t influence you to be healthy – they influence you to be unhealthy.
To wrap it up – if you want to be healthy and lose weight you have to hang out people who support you and live out the healthy lifestyle that you need to be successful.
Tomorrow we’ll discuss one more influence that can either help or hinder us: environment.
Have a great day!
As I wrote yesterday, I’ve been reading a great book by Darren Hardy titled, “The Compound Effect.” Consistency is imperative to our success in becoming the healthier, more vibrant people we wish to be. We cannot go infits and spurts and find the success we want. Today, I am going to begin a discussion on the influences/choices we make that work against our meeting the goals we have laid out for ourselves.
Input/output has a huge influence on us in so many ways. I’m betting that your first reaction to reading that is “She’s going to talk about what I eat.” Believe it or not, I’m not going to discuss food in this article at all. I’m going to discuss what you put in your mind. Our mind is one of the most powerful tools we have to either reaching our goals or falling short. Not just when it comes to weight loss but with ANY goal. How we spend our time feeding our minds can have a huge impact and we need to spend our time wisely.
Celebrity magazines can be one of the worst influencers out there. Yes, they can be fun, mindless reading. The bodies in those magazines are unrealistic, photo shopped, often times unhealthy bodies. When we spend time looking at them our brain adopts a warped pattern of thinking that they are normal, average people. The message isn’t in there at a conscious level – it’s completely unconscious. Our unconscious mind is as big an enemy as our conscious minds. Spend time reading magazines that benefit you in a positive way.
Every year the average American spends over 4 hours watching television. How many of you sit and mindlessly eat in front of the television? Now think about how many commercials you watch that are food or restaurant commercials? Don’t you think they influence your choice to get up and grab some food? Even if you don’t like whatever has been peddled to you during the commercial the “food center” of your brain is flicked on. Solve this by only watching television shows that have been recorded and then blaze through those commercials not allowing them to influence your mind and cause you to mindlessly eat. Bonus tip: if you still find yourself heading for the fridge, try doing a simple exercise like plank or squats during the commercial. Keep your body busy and out of the kitchen.
What we feed our brains is so important. Don’t spend time feeding your brain in ways that just harm your efforts to a healthier life. Tomorrow I will discuss what can be one of the biggest influencer towards meeting or not meeting our goals in life – who we spend our time with. Until then, put down the magazines and limit the television commercials that negatively influence you and derail you from meeting your goals.
What if I told you the ONLY way you could change your physique, lose weight, and be healthy was to completely overhaul your life by giving up every bad habit, start exercising daily and generally do everything "right" towards your health RIGHT NOW. No ramping up, no easing in - you just have to do it now. What would you say to this? You'd probably tell me I was crazy, right? No way, no how, you couldn't do it.
But isn't this the way most of us approach our health? We turn over a new leaf? We make a New Year's Resolution? We start that new diet program which restricts us from everything we love? And we try this for about 5 days (if we're lucky) and then we give up because it's just too dang hard. If anyone else in our world tried to overhaul every habit overnight we would think THEY were crazy. But, we will try to do it overnight.
So why do we do this to ourselves? I think it’s because we've been frustrated with our weight or lack of energy for years now and we're just tired of it. We just want results and we want them NOW. We want to feel better and we want to be skinnier and we want it all yesterday.
But we all know life doesn't work this way. Results take time. But, getting them really doesn't have to be as painful and arduous as an overnight, dump every bad habit process. You can change your life one step at a time.
When I work with clients, in either improving their fitness level or overall health, I take them one step, one habit at a time. Together we find one thing they can work on (something small but with a lot of payback) and focus on just one habit. Every day the only thing they try to change is one behavior. Sometimes it's a bad habit we replace with a good habit and sometimes it's simply starting a brand new one. Whatever it is, it's a small, sustainable change that will reap them big rewards in the long run (or even the short run). The next week, if they have been successful, and they usually have, they work on another habit. Remember it was a small change. Over time my clients change many habits and find themselves dramatically healthier, fitter and thinner.
So next time you’re thinking about working on your fitness, health, weight loss or any other aspect of your life try just choosing one habit you want to change and focus on just that one habit until you have it down. You’ll find that it’s much easier to find success in one habit rather than trying to do it all at once.
Need helping finding those habits? Give me a call. (925) 876-5891. I work with nutrition clients anywhere in the country. I’d love to be a part of your journey towards a healthier, happier, more vibrant life.
