Browsing the Health category...

Kevin and I started Kathy Smith Project You, Type 2 workout program a couple of weeks ago.  In fact, today we will be doing Day 2 of Week 3 and we have not missed a day.  Needless to say, I am very proud of us.  This is the longest I have stuck consistently to a program since I first joined Beachbody.  Also, when I left on vacation last month, I bought a food journal and began recording everything I eat daily.  Happy to say, since vacation down over 10 pounds and am at 28.1 unhealthy pounds of fat released total.   We have been cooking at home most nights and shopping only  a few days in advance to keep everything fresh.

This morning I was off to visit Team Women NCI Chapter and was looking for something to wear and grabbed a pair of black pants and put them on.  It took me a few seconds of wondering why I never had worn them before.  Because until today they would not zip.  WOO HOO.  And I had bought two pairs just alike so I have two new pairs of pants.  I was so excited I could not wait to start telling everyone.  I went and found Kevin in the kitchen making our Shakeology’s (great husband) and showed him.  Next was The Healthy Breakfast Club Call which started at 7 am and I am sure I announced it there at least twice if not three times.

And off the meeting with my Shakeology in hand.  I felt so good walking in the door I even wore red lipstick.  I felt great.  Now, what is important about this is I am 15% of the way toward achieving my weight goal, so it is a long way off still.  As I mentioned to someone else, these were definitely  not skinny pants I was getting back into.  I have a great deal of weight left to lose.  What is important was I felt successful about the progress I am making and focused on that instead of how far I have to go.

Are you giving your self the recognition and praise you deserve for all of the great decisions you make daily?  Success matters.  We talked on The Healthy Breakfast Club the other day about putting a yellow smiley face sticky on our day planner for every good choice we made.  Drank 8 ounces of water = sticker, passed on the cookies=sticker, parked farther out in the parking lot= sticker.  You get the picture!  You are taking care of your self in many ways you are not acknowledging.  Start noticing and patting your self on the back.   Starting now!

I invite you to join us at the kick off on Facebook of The Weight Room, an interactive weekly sharing about creating health in our lives!  This will be September 14th at noon pacific and all you need to join us is your computer and a Facebook profile.   And I would be honored if you joined our Fan Page!

Healthfully Yours,

Judi

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In my last post, I had just returned from my Ali Brown, Millionaire Protege Retreat, where I had gone   looking for ways to grow my business.  And I came home with the realization I needed to focus on my health first and foremost or it wouldn’t matter what I did with my business, because I would be dead.   I set a plan to focus first on my health every day and I began in earnest and then like so many other good intentions, I started letting it slip away.  I was focusing on my health, just not making the time necessary to improve it.

In April, I also attended the four day Direct Selling Women’s Alliance event in Los Angeles and met so many great entrepreneurs.  One of the panelists, Suzan, shared that she had a morning call every Monday through Friday with the top people on her team to get everyone motivated for the day.  For some reason, this really resonated with me and I committed to her I would implement a similar program within one week.  I did not know what or who the group would involve; I just really liked the idea.  And within a few days, The Healthy Breakfast Club was born!

Now, less than one month later, we have over 60 members which are committed to achieving and/or maintaining a healthy body weight.  And the method we have chosen is to eat healthy well balanced meals and work out regularly.  No magic pills or machines, no fad diets,  no short term solutions.  The HBC is about making permanent life style changes to improve the quality of our lives and the quantity of years we have to live it.

Every weekday morning Monday through Friday, we convene our meeting on the phone from 7-7:30 AM PDT for thirty-ish minutes.  The focus on the call is always positive and celebrating each successful step we take.  Club members call in from all over the country to support, encourage, and motivate each other and miracles are happening.   With support, the members are achieving wonderful results.  Becky ran her first 5K yesterday, Suzzane has stopped eating after 7:30, Carra is working out every day, and this is my 10th day straight without any diet soda.  And for me that is a personal miracle.  I know my addiction to diet soda (and lots of it daily) was the MOST unhealthy habit in my life.  And it has been for 25 years.  At my worst, I would consume two 64 ounce Super Big Gulps of diet coke in one day.   An average was at least one 42 ounce diet coke from McDonalds and and I love when they put them on sale.

I am a smart girl and I know the chemicals and the artificial sweeteners were horrible for me and there was not a shred of nutritional value and yet I kept drinking.  Sometimes I would wake up in the morning and have leftover coke on my nightstand, warm and flat, and it would be the first thing I would drink.  My twins, Patrick and Dylan have asked me for years to please stop drinking diet soda and even for them I could not do it.  Dylan and I made an agreement that he would not eat meat if I would not drink diet soda and that lasted for about two days.  Most mortifying of all was then I found my self sneak drinking diet soda so he would not find out.  How addicted is that?

A week ago Friday, the goal I set for the weekend to my club members was to be aware of and track how much diet soda I consumed over the weekend.  No where did I even allude to the fact that I intended to not drink any - only to track and be aware.  This was on a Friday morning and I worked at home all day until Kevin got home.  And then we set off to Monterey to visit our son Patrick, who the week before had graduated Navy Boot Camp and was now at the Defense Language Institute for the next two years perfecting his Chinese!  On the way up, we stopped at Whole Foods in Thousand Oaks for dinner.  If you have ever been to one, you know they do not even sell diet soft drinks.  For the first time in my life (I swear) I BOUGHT a bottle of water to drink with dinner.  And off we went.

It was not until we went to lunch on Saturday that I realized I had not had any diet soda since at least Thursday.  Hmmmm and I was still alive and not thrashing about or biting any-one’s head off, so I made a decision to finish out the day without any and I did.  Here it is over a week later and I honestly feel I have ‘kicked the habit’.  In fact, I am already making plans to give up the next most unhealthy thing in my diet at the 30 day mark.

Was it easy?  No.  Was it as hard as I thought it would be.  No, which was kind of disappointing as I thought the more I suffered, the more I could pat myself on the back for succeeding.  Sheeshhh…talk about self punishment.  I began posting on Facebook my progress every single day and the members of The Healthy Breakfast Club rallied around in support and encouragement, as well as other friends on Facebook who are not members.  The support and cheer-leading was what inspired me every day to ‘just say no’ to diet soda.

Every step I take and you take brings us all one step closer to achieving our goals.  What step will you take today?

To learn more about The Healthy Breakfast Club or to join us go to http://www.thehealthybreakfastclub.com.  It is free, it is fun and it is about you and your health!

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1182879_woman_writing_in_the_agenda Ever had an ah-ha moment and knew this was the one which would “click” and making losing all that unhealthy weight easy-breezy?  Me too; hundreds and maybe thousands of them.  I know I finally reached the point where I gave up believing in myself that anything would stick. In fact, that is the place I have been for a while.  Thinking it almost seemed easier to just forget ever getting healthy and let the “chips” (no pun intended) fall where they may.  Almost there, but not quite.  I have a great husband, wonderful friends, businesses I love, places I want to see, and things I want to do.  The time has finally arrived to decide if staying alive is more important than giving up.

When you make this choice so many times and then let yourself down, you stop trusting in making yet one more  decision or commitment.  We become so afraid of letting ourselves down again that we are afraid to begin.

I came home last night from an intensive two day business workshop which was completely focused on creating tools and strategies to grow our business.  That is certainly why I went - to learn how to create more profit out of the 16 hours per day I regularly work.  Everyone there seemed to have a clear picture of where their business was going and the next step they needed to take.  I sat there feeling frustrated and confused and not knowing how to incorporate what I was learning into my businesses and how to focus in on the next step for me.  I was feeling like I did not fit in and wondering what was wrong with me.

Then I had the ah-ha, well maybe more of a duh than an ah-ha.  I realized I was focusing on the wrong area of my life completely.  Being successful in business has always come easy to me and I create successful businesses without a problem.  So it was comfortable and easy to focus all my attention in that area.

In fact, the only area in my life where I have felt like a complete failure is in losing weight and KEEPING it off.  I had lost all confidence in ever being successful in releasing the weight and not gaining it back, because this was an area in which I have never succeeded long term.  Being successful feels good - failing feels bad.  And it was much easier for me to concentrate on the areas in my life I felt good.

But it has long since past the point where my weight is about looking hot or wearing great outfits.  At this point, it is about making a choice to improve the quality of my life and to keep on living period.

I made the decision at this “business workshop” to put business in second place in life and make my health number one.  It even scared me to say it, because even when I said it, I was not sure I would even last the first day.  We walked out of the event last night with our next three most important steps to take in our lives and by when we would achieve them.  Here are mine:

I would get up this morning and before going to the computer and starting work I would do the following three things:

1.  Weigh and record my weight
2.  Exercise
3.  Eat a healthy breakfast.

Sounds pretty simple doesn’t it?  It was not and I did it anyway.  Being a perfectionist, it is easy to get sidetracked.  I answered the phone right before I was getting on the treadmill, thinking it was my husband and instead it was a business call.  The call lasted about 30 minutes or more and I kept thinking; I am supposed to be doing my three things before I do business and now I have already blown it.  Could not even get through the first day.  And then I said STOP IT!!!  Life is in session and you have to do the best you can do.  You are done with that call and now go do what you said you would do.  And I did and it felt good to make that choice.

Part of my plan is to record everything I eat and it took me awhile to find the program I use.  Part of my brain was saying this is taking too much time, you’ll remember just go check your email and then record it later.  I am so thankful I did not listen to that part of my brain.

As I was writing this, I had to keep fighting the urge to say “to be continued” and go work for a while.  And I didn’t.  So it is 9:53 on the first day of this plan and I have kept my commitment to myself.  Realizing if I were to drop dead of a heart attack, it would not matter how successful or unsuccessful my businesses are is an interesting concept.

I just am glad that as of this moment, I have followed my plan and made my health important to me today.

Going forward on the journey,

Judi

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1121962_meditation The physical dimension, one of the four dimensions of our nature, involves caring effectively for our  physical body, eating the right kinds of foods, getting sufficient rest and relaxation, and exercising on a regular basis.  Exercise can build your body in three areas: endurance, flexibility, and strength.  Endurance comes from aerobic exercise and cardio­vascular efficiency, flexibility comes through stretching, and strength from muscle resistance exercises.  Probably the greatest benefit you will experience from exercising will be the development of your Habit 1 muscles of proactivity.

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