Opening The Hood on 2018

So, here we, are we’re knocking on the door 2019. I just can’t believe it, like where did the year go’ I wanted to create a lifestyle audit, this is the time of year where we look back and ahead. Let’s check in to see if you’re looking at the right things. It’s time to do an audit, no one ever wants to be audited by the IRS, but the audit basically is the IRS’ way of saying, “You’re telling us you make a dollar, yet you’re living in a mansion, those things don’t line up. So, clearly there’s more going on, so we need to open up the hood and see what’s up.”

The first place to start when you conduct an audit is do you want, that’s the biggest step. I remember years ago when I was working with a coach and I was trying to create my business and be this awesome person, and her first question to me was, “What do you want'” And I was like, “What'” That question stopped me in the tracks. She quickly followed up with another gut punching question “How do you define success'”  “Wow, those are two really powerful questions.” 

Define Your Own Success

I find that most people don’t ask themselves those questions. They think about all the things that they want but not to this level that it says, “This is what I really want.” Some people think of, “This is what I should want.” We should want to grow up, get married, buy a house, 2.2 kids, a cat, a dog and a squirrel. But what if that’s not what you really want’ I remember when I was younger, I never really wanted to have children, it just never was like a thought for me. And I remember I would tell people this, and they would look at me like I said I worshiped the devil. It just wasn’t what I wanted.  How many people sleep walk through their life, going towards things they don’t want’ It doesn’t have to necessarily be kids, but it could be your dad told you to be a doctor, so you’re a doctor and you freaking hate it, or someone told you to be whatever and you hate it. I want you to take the time and say, “What it is that I want'” 

This is probably not be an overnight thing. Give it some serious thought.  You may have never took the time to sit down and think is this is what I want out of my life.” Because guess what’ We only get one turn around the planet before we’re done. Now, some of you might be like, “Oh, I got past lives.” That’s great, wonderful, rock out with your bad self. What are you doing with your current life now’

What are you doing with this life’ I’ve recently started following a guy named, Jesse Itzler. His claim to fame he owns the Atlanta Hawks now. He was talking on a podcast and he just turned 50. He told the interviewer , “I only have X amount of time left on this earth, and I want to make it count.” Now, some people might think about that as being morbid, or some people might look at that and go like, “It’s time to get to work, start to get some stuff done.” 

So that’s why you should take this lifestyle audit. I want you to like think to yourself, “The past is the past, the future is now, and it’s time for me to start taking some inventory so that I can live my best life versus just sleepwalking, trudging through my life.”

What’s Working’

First question, “What’s working'” What’s working in your life’ What’s working in your health’ What’s working in your work life’ What’s working with your relationships’ What’s working in your spirituality’ What’s working with your money’ Think about the big buckets in your life and just say, “What’s working'”

My husband and I were talking about the five love languages, (here is the link https://amzn.to/2S7oSpq) and I kind of straddle two love languages and one of mine is tokens of appreciation. If that man unloads the dishwasher, giddy as a schoolgirl. And so, I want you to think, even if it’s stuff like that, the little things, I want you to think of every little thing in those buckets that is going well. My husband knows that it makes me happy when he unloads the dishwasher, so he does it. And if I get him to go to the grocery store, he would be like a picture in the dictionary of good marriage, but I digress. So, what’s going right’ 

Of all the things that are going right, is there anything that can be modified’ Is there something that you could add a little tweak to’ Think of it like this – if you’re already eating really well, take a quick review and ask yourself  “could probably eat a little bit more protein.” So, that’s what I’m talking about for modification. Or if you’re going to the gym you might be like, “You know what needs to be modified’ Could you add in a 15-minute stretch at the end of your workouts.” Do you see what where I’m going with this’ So, the modifications aren’t these huge, big sweeping things, they’re just a little turns of the dial, little tweaks of what’s currently working well in your life.

It’s An Inside Job

Now you have your lists of things that need to be tweaked. The next step is “Why do I want it'” And I’ve talked about this several times, why’ Because when you know why, that’s your motivation. Because so many people say to me, “Oh, I’m waiting to be motivated, I’m waiting to be motivated.” Well, you have a better shot of the number one bus driving by than the motivation bus. That motivation bus and the willpower bus, they’re on the same track, they ain’t coming or at least not on a frequent schedule. So, I find that when you define what your why is, that’s your motivation, that’s what’s going to get you up and over any obstacle, any hurdle when you’re not feeling motivated. 

Dream Big

So, I want you to think about why do you want it and what needs to happen in order for you to make this change. This is it where I’d say don’t beat yourself, no telling yourself, “Oh I got to be a better person.” “Oh, I got to stop stuffing my face.” “Oh, I got to stop doing this.” No. This is where you do a brainstorm. If you’ve ever been in a corporate environment and you try to come up with new products or new ideas, it’s silly idea time and you just starting throwing out random things out, nothing is off-limits. It could be like, “Hey, I need a personal chef.” “Hey, I need a personal trainer to come to my house every day.” It could be all of that, silly idea time, just throw it out there, don’t worry about the feasibility of it just yet, we’re just trying to get our mind just empty of what’s possible to make this happen. Do you need a gym membership’ Do you need a peloton bike’ What do you need in order to make this happen’ Do you need a new planner’ Do you need to learn to cook’ Do you need to sleep more’ What are the things you need’

And once you exhaust your brain of all the things you need, then I want you to kind of break it down into A, B and C, where A, “This is totally possible, this is totally doable.” B, “This could be a stretch, but possible.” C, “It’s far-fetched. I need a unicorn to show up on my doorstep, and I’m going to ride that unicorn to the gym.” That’s C. But still put it down there because what I find is that sometimes even the craziest things get your brain thinking about ways to make it possible. I don’t know about the unicorn, but hey, if you see one take a picture, holla at your girl. 

Get Specific

And then now that we’ve kind of put it in a basket of, “This is what we want, this is what’s possible”, then ask yourself what do you want to achieve in the next 12 months’ What is it’ Take the time to be as specific as possible so that – I’m going to get a little woo-woo right here – the universe likes specificity, the universe wants you to slap it upside the head and say, “I want it to be a purple unicorn coming down the street.” It wants you to be specific so that way you start to visualize, you start to see it happening and unfolding in your mind and so that you’re bringing and drawing these options into your world. Now, I know for some people you’re like, “Girl.” Trust me, three years ago if you would have said the same thing to me, I would have said, “So you have a medical marijuana card, don’t you'” I totally get it.

Universal Experiments

I’m going to give you an example of how my mind went in a complete 360 and I started really believing in this. My mindset was in the crapper three/four years ago. I was working with a coach and she was helping me to adjust my mindset. And so, she had me read this book, called E-Cubed, (here is the link to the book https://amzn.to/2EzTQn4) In the book it gives you little examples of how to test that what you think about you can bring it to your existence. 

So, it’s February and I’m reading the book and it says, “Over the next several days I want you to focus on seeing cars the color of the sun, and purple feathers and butterflies.” As I’m reading it I’m rolling my eyes.  Cars the color of the sun, I got that.” But I’m like, “Butterflies’ It’s February in Boston; good luck with that.” So, I’m like, “All right, I’m going to put it out there.” I’m looking for butterflies, I’m looking for cars the color of the sun and I’m looking for purple feathers.” I’m going on with my days and not giving much thought to this mindset test. About four days later I’m watching TV, and what floats across the screen in a movie that I’m watching’ BUTTERFLIES. I was speechless, and to get me to be speechless, that’s a lot.   

I let go of the how. I was expecting to see a physical butterfly fly in front of my face, but what I did see was a butterfly on TV. So, I was specific, I needed to see a butterfly, so it happened. I tell you this story because I want you to be open to that type of possibility.

Break It Down

One big take away from that book is what you think about you can bring about. Yes, at times it can feel daunting, so can runing a marathon you’re like, “Oh my god, 26.2 miles, 26.2 miles is so far, that’s so far. Instead of thinking about the full marathon, break it down mile by mile by mile. If I want to run a marathon in six months, I’m going to take my mileage and I’m going to back it up, and so each month I’m going to increase my mileage till I’m at the point where I’m going to be running 26 miles.” So, let’s just say the first month I want to get to a point where I’m running five miles, and then I’m running 10 miles. So, the first month I’m running a total of five miles, that five miles will be my longest run. Then the following month I’m working up to running 10 miles, then the following month I’m working up to running 15 miles. And then following month I’m working up to running 20 miles. So, you see, I’m doing incremental work, but I’ve broken down my goal into six phases of running. And so, then from there I’m like if it’s five miles, then I take that five miles and say, “What do I need to do each week'” And I just focus on the week, and then just say, “This is my goal for the week.”

Approaching your goals like this gives you small wins. Small wins make me feel so motivated. Here is the motivation that we just talked about. You’re waiting for this big bucket of motivation to fall on you like the ice bucket challenge. Motivation, I want you to think of it as an annoying leak that just keeps drip, drip, drip, drip, drip. You don’t know where it’s coming from, you just hear it all the time, that’s what I want motivation to be, because I want you to think about motivation as a layer, it just layers and it just keeps building, keeps building, keeps building upon itself. And then the more you win, the more you’ll want to try new things, so that you get in the game and stay in the game. 

Specific Is Key

You want your goals to be very specific. What I said is a marathon, we know a marathon is 26.2 miles. A lot of times I find clients, they’ll set these wishy-washy goals, and they’ll say, “I want to be toned.” Well, I don’t know what toned is, toned is soap from the 80’s, that’s all I know of toned. I don’t know what toned looks like. When you set a goal, I want it to be so specific that any random person walking down the street says, “Oh, that’s exactly what you want to do’ I know what that is.” I want you think of it as if I was driving somewhere, I wouldn’t say, “Oh I’m heading to Boston.” Boston is a big flipping city. I want to drop a pin on Boylston Street in front of the Apple store on Boylston Street, that’s where I’m going. That’s what I want you to think about, that’s where I’m going. How do you know how far you are going’ And how do you know how far you’ve come’ I want you to look back sometimes at how far you’ve come as a way to say to yourself, “Holy, moly, I’m doing this, I’m getting some stuff done up in here.” And I also want you to have that pin to know how far you have to go as a way determine if you may need to adjust your goal, but sometimes you might have to look at yourself and say, “Do I got a little bit more gas in the tank'” And then you can either stomp on the gas or reassess where you are.

Don’t Quit

I’m okay with making adjustments. Adjustments are necessary, but what I don’t like is this imaginary measuring stick of feeling that you’re behind. I don’t know how many times I hear people say, “I’m behind.” And I’m like, “Behind what’ Who are you racing'” If you’re in a marathon maybe you’re racing somebody, maybe you’re racing yourself, I don’t know. But in life who are you racing’ Who are you racing in life that makes you say you’re behind’

I go to spin class at Flywheel. I’ve been taking the class for five years, and for five years I go, and they have what they call the torque board. Basically, everyone in the class, if you choose to participate, you go up on this board and it shows how you’re doing compared to everyone else in the class. And I don’t use that board as comparison, I use that board as my personal benchmarks. Over the last five years I haven’t made it on the board very much. Riding a bike is just not my thing. I go because my husband enjoys it and it’s one of our things we do together, it’s like one of our dates, so we spin. We ride next to each other, we don’t talk to each other, that’s a date. So, last week I go, and I don’t know, perhaps you should have tested my pee, I don’t know, but I was like lights out on that day. I was top eight in the overall class of 30 bikes including men and women, and I won six out of the seven races, like who am I’

Five years ago, if I would have said to myself, “I suck at spinning, I’m never coming to class” and I put out my crazy imaginary measuring stick, I would have totally taken myself out of the game. But I just kept trying, I kept going. Eventually I saw that even though I’m not on the board regularly, I’ve seen how my consistency in showing up has helped to improve  my spinning.

It reminds me that had I put up that imaginary measuring stick that says, “Oh my god,  I don’t get 500 points every class, so I shouldn’t even go.” Or, “Hey, I’m going to go but I’m not even going to go on the board.” 

Most people will take themselves out of the game before they even get a shot at the play. 

And I think it’s Michael Jordan that says, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” So, if you don’t know anything about sports, I know you know who Michael Jordan is. He’s one of the greatest; he’s going to go down as probably in the top five of basketball players of all time. He claims the reason why he was so successful, he just took the shot his mindset was I can’t score unless I shoot the ball.

Please break free of that imaginary measuring stick that you’re behind. You’re only behind if you don’t go, you’re only behind if you don’t try, you’re only behind if you stop. So, keep going my loves, keep going.

Routine Matters

What does your routine look like’ So, we’ve come through, we’ve got all these goals, we’ve got everything that we want. What does the routine look like’ And the big thing is – and I will say this until I’m blue in the face – routines create habits, habits create consistency, consistency creates results. Now, I’m going to say that again: routines create habits, habits create consistency, consistency creates results. Now, through that equation, did you see anything about perfection’ No. It was routine. So, I want you when you’re going through, what can (you I’m going to make this word up) routinize’ What can you turn into a routine’

For me, getting up in the morning, I need to work out in the morning, that’s just what I need to do, it needs to happen in the morning before I get derailed with my day. But in order for me to work out in the morning, I have to lay out my clothes the night before.  When I was a kid my mom used to make me lay out my clothes every night before I went to bed, and I HATED IT. Now, that’s what I do so I can get up and out.

If you’re getting up at 5:00am the last thing on your mind is wanting to pick out what you’re going to wear to go to the gym. I pick out my clothes, down to my underwear so, that all I need to do in the morning is just focus on brushing my teeth, washing my face and putting those clothes on. I’ve heard of some folks actually sleeping in their clothes in order to get to the gym on time, it’s totally up to you, I’m going to leave that in your hands.

Acknowledge The Obstacles

I’m going to leave you with, “What is your biggest obstacle'”

Routines’

What’s some thing that could jam you up, trip you up’ Because here is where I want you to start to think about your plan B’s, maybe even your plan C’s. So, how are you going to go over, under or push right through those obstacles’

Shit is going to happen, so I’d rather be forearmed for that.  So, think about the Boy Scouts, always be prepared. And then who is going to support you’ 

I help women to have the courage to break free of the rules that keep them from living the life of infinite possibilities.  These are the types of strategies I share in my Facebook Group.

At this time of year everywhere you turn you see lose weight by doing this, and burn more fat by doing this and do forget you need to up your cardio with this new gadget that can be yours for three easy payments.  I’ve been listening to a lot of different podcasts and reading a lot of different things and getting all kinds of fired up!

Bogus Fear Factor

We’ve just finished the weekend of Black Friday into Cyber Monday. A lot of folks are selling you diets and weight loss and these all have this fear factor. And it just made me think of that TV show Fear Factor except for you don’t win any money.

Are you someone who hopes and pray that something different will happen in your body overnight. You look at other people on Instagram, Facebook, all the socials and you’re like, “How come so and so can do this but I can’t'” You internalize it and it makes you feel like a loser. And I don’t say this to junk punch you; I say this because as soon as you recognize that, you can change it. 

And I know for me how long could I feel frustrated before I make a change. I say this because five years ago I felt like I was getting fatter and despite how clean I ate, despite how hard I worked out nothing changed. I go to my doctor and she’s like, “Well girl, you can’t have the body of a 25 year old.” That almost made me want to throttle her, but I didn’t want to be on the news, because I know that my husband would not bail me out.

So, I get you, I know what it’s like to look in the mirror and think, “I’m at my wit’s end, I have no idea what else to do.” And it’s even more frustrating for me because I’m a fitness professional and I’m pulling “all the levers I pull with my clients and they’re getting freaking amazing results, and here’s me, with nothing so show for me efforts so how do I have any credibility’”

How do you look at me and be like, “How is she going to help me'”

Magic Numbers

The other challenge that I see with clients is that they want to hit this magical goal weight. When they hit – insert your magical goal weight – I don’t know, dogs are going to fly from the sky, monkeys are going to fly. It is just going to be like manna from heaven, life is just going to just open up for you! When you walk by ATMs they’re just going to spit out hundreds. Well, I got to tell you, so many people fist fight to get to this particular weight that they just made up in their head.

I have a client who for years (years!) She’s like, “Hey girl, 138, I’ve got to hit 138.” Or, “I just need to hit 138.” And I always ask, “Why’ What’s at 138′” And she’s like, “Well, I just want to feel my best.” And I asked, “When was the last time you were at 138′” And she’s like, “Well, college.”

She’s 40 now, I’m sorry, college was a long time ago, college was 20 years ago, why are you chasing a 20-year-old goal’ It’s like if I were an Olympian, would I be chasing a 20-year-old record, or would I be chasing the most current record’

I’m going to chase the most current record! 

To give you a little background she was a client on and off for several years. Each time she didn’t hit that 138 goal in a few months, she’d get frustrated and quit and then come back saying this time she was ready to commit. Does this sound like you’

Back in the day…

I challenge you to break up with the “back in college” or “before my last kid” (and your kids now in college), “I weighed X”, because the scale only measures your relationship to gravity — that’s it! There are so many other factors that go into the scale weight and weight loss. It’s not about the calories in and calories out. Take the step back and say, “I have to honor where I am, then I can move forward.”

Trust me, I have the patience of a gnat; I want what I want. And I want it right FUCKING now! But I’ve had to temper it, and really get methodical about my approach because the haphazard approach doesn’t work. I see it all the time:  January first, millions of people flock to the gyms.
I also see all the hundreds of people who flock to my class before – insert the vacation, insert the long weekend.

And then they’re like a bad penny, nothing changes, it’s like a revolving door.

“Hey girl, I got to get fit in the next four weeks.”  Good luck with that!

“Hey girl, I got to get fit for this upcoming weekend.” Good luck with that!

I don’t say this to be rude. I say this because your body isn’t like a cake, like, “Hey, there’s a birthday, I’m going to make a quick cake.” That’s not how your body works. Your body is like… have you ever seen those giant container ships filled with all the containers with a variety of goods heading to market’ And in order to make that ship turn I just can’t whip the wheel, I have to slowly, slowly turn the wheel so that I don’t have all those containers fall off. I don’t get to top-heavy and have the whole ship capsized. There has to be in a methodical approach. And the same thing comes to when you’re going from fat to fit, it is a methodical approach. Because how many times are you going to go down this road’

Disney is just a dream

Going from fat to fit isn’t like going to Disney where you have people who go every year. I don’t know about you, but I only want to travel down that road once. You have to suck it up and realize that there are going to be some good days, there are going to be some bad days, and there are going to be some days that you’re just kicking the wall screaming profanities. And that’s okay, because it’s a learning process. The more you learn, the more you’re able to make it a lifestyle. The more you’re able to make it a lifestyle, the more you’re breaking up with the whole idea of being a dieter. If we were just using pure vocabulary, “Diet is what I eat” — the end.

It’s not your worth.

It’s not about your weight.

It’s not about how much your partner loves or doesn’t love you and not how much your kids love you.

It’s not about if you’re good at your job. It has nothing to do with that.

A diet is what you eat.

Here is where we start. I help my clients break it down to the simple things, take all the emotions out of it, take all the feelings out of it, and focus on where you where you want to go.

Get out of the zone

A good coach helps you to take the emotion out of your goals. Because trust me, I’m emotional about me. I think I am the bee’s knees. You think you’re the bee’s knees. And when it comes to making changes and getting out of my comfort zone and doing things differently, I’m going to protect my comfort zone like a pit bull protects its master. I don’t want to make those changes. But I also have to look down the road and say, “If I don’t change, nothing changes.”

That’s the mantra that I keep saying, because you can’t feel like a prisoner in your own body anymore, you’ve got to work between your ears harder than you work your body, because it is the stuff between your ears that’s going to drive what you do with your body and how you eat. Because we don’t eat with our body, we eat with our brain.

Right now I’m sitting in a café that is right across the street from McDonald’s. McDonald’s — their French fries! Tell me, do they not smell like, “OMG, I need to go in there and I need to get them supersized. I remember the taste of the French fries, the salt, the right salt-to-fat ratio, and, “Oh my god! Do I want ketchup, or do I want sweet and sour sauce'” So, all of a sudden I’m romanticizing French fries.

But I know that those French fries go right to my ass, so I need to like pull up. My logical brain is a little slow on the go and starts talking saying “Hey girl, you know you’re trying to get yourself to Hawaii in April and that’s not really going to get you there.” Sometimes people just mute that voice of reason and run right in and grab those fries and maybe a milk shake.

Make Shift Happen

How do you start to make this mindset shift. Let me be very clear, it’s not overnight thing, it will take work. I wish it was like a light switch that I could be like, “You’re going to read this blog post, and you’re going to ride off into the sunset and everything is going to be like the end of a fairy tale.” I would be lying to you if I told you that.

As I read through these tips and tricks and hacks I want you to pick one that feels easy, I want you to be a winner. I don’t want you to pick something that’s going to make you feel hard and sets up you up to fail.  

The biggest thing is the food rules. Every single time I start working with someone or I see them on Facebook or somewhere it’s like nails on a chalkboard to me. “What’s the good food list'”

Well, you all know what the good foods are. You know it. So why do I have to give you a list’ You know that those McDonald’s French fries are not going to be on that list. You know ice cream is not going to be on that list. You know those sugary coffee drinks are not going to be on that list.

So why do you need a list’ 

Instead, come up with what your non-negotiables are going to be. I don’t think anyone should feel deprived. So what are the one to three things that you want to have. For me it’s my coffee!! Even if it goes on the bad food list I’m still going to have coffee. And I always say to my clients, It’s my non-negotiable. I’m not going to give up coffee. I drink coffee every day with cream and sugar. I don’t drink it all day, I have my two cups of coffee everyday guilt free.

I’ve learned that when you make those food rules too tight you want to cheat on them. And trust me, I lived in this box for a really long time, and when I opened up the box it was like freaking Pandora’s box, I went nutso. And so, now that I’ve put some structured flexibility around my food, I don’t lose my shit around cake, I don’t lose my shit around sugary things. It’s like I’ll have a couple bites and I’m okay. But when I put certain foods on the “naughty” list, I lost my shit.  So, you have to know where your head is at. Are you one of those people who could have a few and be okay’ Are you those people who like you restrict and then you open the lid, you boil over and you go cuckoo’ 

Pareto’s (Food) Principle

My ultimate goal for everyone women is to have them making eating healthy a lifestyle, and if you’ve been following me for a while, I’m a big 80/20 proponent, like that’s my jam. 80% of everything I eat is clean, it’s unprocessed; 20% are fun foods.

And let’s be honest, at my age no one is going to call me right now at 10pm and be like, “Hey girl, do you want to go out'” Because if you call me after 6:00 pm on most days my bra is off and I’m in my PJ’s, so you better be bleeding from the eye to get me out of my house after 6:00pm. So, for the most part I know when my fun is going to happen, and I can make a plan for it. 

Today is my husband’s birthday, we’re going to have cake. Saturday we’re actually going out to celebrate his birthday, that’s another time I’m going to have a treat meal, everything else is going to be a normal week.

Plan for success

Each week I go into it with a plan. It’s really funny because most people think of me as a planner, in fact there are many parts of my life where I am a straight up winger.

I don’t even know if that’s a word. Is that a word’ I don’t know, we’re using it. I was a winger for my food, and I just let it happen. And when you let food happen that’s when you run across the street and get those French fries, that’s when you run across the street and you get that muffin and then a few hours later you’re like, “Why am I so hungry'” and you start eating more and more crap.

When you plan your meals, I’m not saying you have to be Martha Stewart. I’m not saying you have to be this anal-retentive freak. I sit down on every Saturday before I go to the grocery store and flip through Pinterest, and I make things simple. I’m a big crock-pot girl, it can be an instapot, whatever, but I just like to set it and forget it. And at least a couple times a week I throw in something in it, and what I like to do is take half of it and we eat it, and the other half I throw in the freezer so that a week that I don’t have the time to cook, there’s something waiting for me and my husband.

This month I’m traveling a lot. I won’t have as much flexibility as I normally do, so I’m going to crock a lot of things in the next few days and half of it is going to go in the freezer so that all I have to do is take that bag out and thaw it, throw it in the microwave and we have dinner.

I want to make things as quick and simple and easy as possible, because I know what it’s like to come home after working and eight-plus hour job, plus the commute and having to come home, open the fridge and be like, “What, are we going to eat'” And then being so hungry that anything that’s not nailed down you’re eating while you cook dinner. When I have a plan, I know what food I’m going to come home to, what’s going to go in the oven, this is what’s going to go on the stove and presto, change-o 30/45 minutes later I have dinner on the table.

Prep for Success

I’m a big proponent of those home meal prep kits, even if you do it a couple times a week. If you hate going to the grocery store it’s right there, they’ve pre-measured, they’ve pre-done everything for you. Depending on your level of cooking you could find ones that you don’t even have to chop stuff. You just open up the bag, throw it in the oven or throw it in a pot, or whatever.

So, I challenge you to at least come up with a menu. I’m not saying that you have to meal prep, I’m not saying any of that. I’m saying baby steps. The first thing is figure out what it is that you’re going to eat, because food is the easiest thing for you to manage. If you’ve noticed, I haven’t talked about going to the gym. I haven’t talked about what to eat. I haven’t talked about anything. I’m talking about how you set yourself up for success.

Quality over quantity

And the biggest thing I’ve also found is that this whole calorie counting or macro counting. I did the macro thing, it made me bonkers. I’m surprised I’m not in the fetal position; I hated it. And I also saw, how obsessive those numbers have made some people get.

I remember I had a client when I used to give macros to my clients, and she had it balanced to the penny. She would have like 1/16 of a piece of asparagus in order to get her carbs to hit the number. I was like, “That’s just too much, it’s just too much.”

It’s the same thing with calories. Now, I’m not saying calories don’t have a place, that’s not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is it makes me crazy when you go to your medical doctor and you tell them that you want to lose weight and they give you a piece of paper and say, “Hey Suzy, you need to follow a X thousand calorie plan.” Our body isn’t a math equation, it’s not like X plus Y gives you Z. It is like a solving an Einstein-type equation.

Yes, calories matter, but it’s what’s in the calorie, because 100 calories of cookies is not the same as 100 calories of chicken. So that’s where I struggle with the calorie thing. Focusing on counting calories breaks it down, making it seem like every calorie you take in is being processed by your body in the same fashion. So, I always tell people to look at the quality of the food first then look at the calories.

If you’re eating quality food… no one ever got fat eating thousands of calories of broccoli. I challenge you to eat thousands of calories of broccoli, you’ll probably explode from all the fiber, but I’ve never heard anyone overeat kale, broccoli, or green beans. You could overeat cookies way easier than you could overeat any of those things.

I challenge you to expand beyond calories and look at what are making up those calories and break free of trying to do a math equation, because especially for us ladies there’s so many other processes that go into us gaining or losing the weight.

“Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.” Jean-Jacques Rousseau

And the last thing I really want to stress as you kind of start to make this turn in your mindset is instant success, instant results. I always like to use this example – have you ever saved for a home or vacation’ Or you saved money for a while and every week a little here, a little there and eventually you enough for what you were saving for. It took time.

But we expect to lose 20 pounds in at least 30 days. I challenge that thinking because how long did it take you to put on the 20 pounds’ It didn’t happen overnight, it was a gradual process. And what comes off gradually, stays off; what comes off quickly comes back and they bring some friends with them. 

It’s time for a break up!

So, how do you break up with this quick fix’ I want you to give yourself a longer range, because the longer range I give you or you give yourself, the more likely you are to have success. And so, I challenge you to say yourself, “Do I want success’ Do I want long-term success'” And I’m sick and tired of being this revolving door of weight-loss that you have multiple sizes of clothes in your closet because depending on the time of year what you can fit into. Wouldn’t you rather be size stable and only have one set of clothes, you don’t have fat clothes, you don’t have skinny clothes, you don’t have in-between clothes, you have clothes in your closet. And that way you know you could open up that closet and be like, “I can go to any section of my closet and not just focus on the fat section, just focus on the skinny section.” Come on, please tell me some of you have those same sections in your closet.

And if you do have that skinny section, I want you to be honest with yourself. Are you ever going to be back down to a size two’ Now, I say this not to say that it’s not possible, I say this because if you were a size two back in college and you’re 50, it might not happen for you. I recommend just getting rid of that, because that is another mental mind game that’s just going to make you cuckoo. I’d rather you focus on something that’s attainable.

If you’re a size 12 right now, let’s focus on getting down to a size eight. If you can hit a size eight and live there and be comfortable without deprivation, then we can start to move down the food chain. But just always going in the closet looking at your size 12’s and looking at your size two, that just punches you in the face, and why do you want to just punch yourself in the face’ 

To wrap up, the biggest thing I want you to leave here with is, what’s going to give you

consistency’ And I did a whole show on consistency, but I think its time to dust that off and bring it back.

Long-term change takes time; it is what it is. But what I know is that you have to make it a priority. You can’t put yourself on a shelf for the holidays because it’s a busy time. You can’t put yourself on the shelf then expect to pick up right where you left off, because your body doesn’t work that way.

What I do know is that it takes great routines. Routines build habits, habits build consistency, and consistency builds results; that’s what I know. And I know that it starts with having a great resolve, so what I challenge you to do is to look at your routines.

If you’re sick of looking in the mirror and not liking what you see, I challenge you to look at the routines. I challenge you to pick one to three routines that you don’t need to change, or you can add between now and the end of the year, so that when 2019 rolls around you have already started to hit the ground running, you’re not taking the next four-ish weeks off and just saying, “2019, it’s magical, I’m just going to start all over again.” I call BS, because you’re not just going to magically wake up on January 1st and your life is going to be different; you need to start that ball rolling right now. 

So, if you’re over 40 and you need a little kick start or a guide, go to bit.ly/over40guide, and I give you some great tips and hacks.

Stop the pressure on yourself

Right now everyone is talking holidays, everyone is talking about how to survive. This is what I want to know. Why do we put so much pressure on ourselves during this time of year’ What happens to the other periods of time where there is always a holiday, there is food and so forth’

So, I wanted to give you 40 tips that can go across the entire year, 40 tips that you could do a tip a week and get you through the year. And as always, when I share tips with you it’s not for you to say, “Oh my god, I gotta do it all, and I can’t.”

Watch the replay right here. 

It’s time to get started

And I want you to think about this – as I go through the tips say to yourself, “That sounds like something I can do right now.” And as you go through it and you get a few of them, and I’m hoping that out of the 40, you get several that you’re like, “Yes, I can do that.” Once you have that “I can do that” list, I want you to say, “What can I do starting now'”

Most people are, “I’m going to wait till Monday.” Well, stop that, why don’t we wait till then’ With the 40 tips I’m giving you there is something that you can start doing TODAY. The beauty of all of these tips are that, a lot of the things that I’m giving you are not rocket science. I also come at it a couple of different ways for you to make it kind of simpler and easier.

Stop Eating the Same Foods

The first thing is rethink your nutrition. And I know that can be a challenge for some people because we are creatures of comfort; we like what we like. Some of the things we have been eating for so many years we don’t know how not to eat it. And to make that shift would just be a lot for us. And I get it.

There are a lot of my clients that when we hit a certain age your body just starts to reject, or maybe your body has been rejecting it for a really long time and you just didn’t know that your body was rejecting it. You just thought that everyone gets bloated after they have dairy, or everyone gets bloated after they have Nightshade.

So, I always challenge my clients, “Let’s do some experimentation, let’s get some variety into your food.” Because then you will be able to know when you have some food sensitivities without having to spend globs of money on those tests. So, the first thing I want you to think about is rethink your nutrition.

This time of the year I know it’s a little bit more challenging because not as many fruits and vegetables are coming in season. We’re kind of at the tail end of the harvest, but I challenge you to go in and try something new. And there are a lot of great new squashes that you maybe have not had. Go in there, try a new squash, try a new vegetable, try a new fruit, try something. Because if you go to the grocery store and all you eat are blueberries, or all you eat are apples you are not getting any biodiversity (a big word to say variety) in your food. So, I challenge you to go in and try one new thing every single week when you go to the grocery store.

It Is Easy Being Green

The second big thing is green vegetables. The beautiful thing about green vegetables, especially for us ladies, is that it helps us the balance our hormones. They help us to excrete the excess estrogen. And for most of us, that excess estrogen is what causes us to get that kind of 40-belly, that puffiness, that extra fluff that a lot of us feel that we have on us. And so, I challenge you to fill half your plate, at least 2/3 of meals with green vegetables.

It could be spinach, broccoli, Swiss chard, kale. Kale is not the end-all-be-all, and if you are like, “I hate me some kale”, it doesn’t have to be kale – Swiss chard, a myriad of lettuces, collard greens, turnip greens, beet greens, they’re out there, and just dive head-first into them.

Don’t Ditch (All) The Fats

The other thing is good fats. For those women of 40, back in the late ’80s, early ’90s you ran from fat like it was the Devil. Now we have realized that it’s not all fats, it is just a handful of fats that cause artery-clogging issues. And it’s not just peanut butter, it’s not just olive oil, it’s not just almonds. So just like number one, I challenge you to add variety to your good fat oils.

I want you to go into any quality grocery store and go into the oil aisle and there are just rows and rows and rows of oil. And I want you to pick any oil, with the exception of corn, soy, vegetable, canola. Those are the four that I don’t want you to try. Every other oil I want you to grab it, and I want you to try to bathe in that thing. (I’m kidding about the bathing.) 

The thing about good fats

As we age, we start to lose the collagen production in our skin and our skin becomes dryer, especially this time of year if you live in a northern climate. The moisture is just sucked right out of the air. So, for us ladies of a certain age, the more moisture we have in our skin we look ageless, we have great skin complexion, makeup goes on nice and smoothly, our hands don’t look like old ladies’ hands, we have nice smooth, supple skin. And when you have nice, smooth, supple skin, you don’t look old.

And who wants to look like an old lady’ No one does!

Be selective about your treats

I love treats. I love wine. But I need to be selective. And I have a 3-bite rule – after three bites if it doesn’t blow my hair back, it’s not for me. Especially at this time of year because, if you work in a corporate environment, I feel like every vendor on the planet says, “Hey, I’m going to send every office on the planet a tub of whatever fattening food.” And then it stays out on someone’s desk and as you go by you grab a handful, you grab a handful, you grab a handful, and then you don’t even realize whether you’ve had 40 handfuls or if you had four handfuls.

So, I want you to just be selective. I want you to be mindful of what you’re eating for your treats and schedule them out. Let’s be honest, most of us already know what our weeks look like. Most of us know primarily what our months look like. So, I want you to say, “Thanksgiving is coming so that’s going to be a cheat day. Not a gluttonous day, but I’m going to have some treats and it’s going to be okay and we are going to wake up the next day and it’s not going to be about “burning it off.”

It’s just going to be about ‘Hey, I enjoyed some great conversations with my family’ or ‘Hey, my family didn’t make me so crazy, they didn’t make me so nutzo.'” So, I want you to think about those kinds of things, focus on the event versus making the food the main event.

Move your body at least 30 minutes

Now, so many people get caught up with exercise thinking that every workout has to be kick ass workout, “If I can’t lift my arms to wash my hair the next day then I failed. And I need to get to CrossFit 40 times a week, and I got to do this, this and this.” And we make this laundry list of must dos in order to consider myself healthy and fit.

For a lot of my clients I challenge them just to get up and walk out their front door for 30 minutes, because sometimes that’s all you’ve got. And if you’re not feeling that walk, or if it’s cold out or if it’s raining outside, throw on a YouTube video. There are dozens of them on demand, a million ways that you can work out at home. And trust me, I used to be one of those people that thought I had to go to the gym in order to get a good workout, and if my workout wasn’t two hours then why workout’ Yes, I had that craziness going on.

Four years ago, we had a really bad winter and it snowed pretty much every other day. In order for me to go to the gym I was literally shoveling out my car to go to the gym, shoveling out my car when I was at a gym, shoveling out my car to go to work, and that was just way too much shoveling. So, I started working out at home and I found that I really enjoyed it. It was a way for me to just roll out of bed, put on some workout clothes and not care how I looked, walk down in my basement and I could get in a 30-minute quick, fast workout without much muss or fuss.

Where there’s a will, there’s a way

So, I challenge you to find something that you like. If you like going to the gym and you need that motivation, go to the gym. But if there are days that you just can’t do it, there are plenty of things that you can do at home without much equipment and just get stuff done. I always encourage my clients if you can go to Marshalls or Target or one of those stores and buy just two dumbbells and a kettlebell and a jump rope, my goodness, you can just have yourself a good sweaty old mess of a time. So, just think about what are ways that you like to move your body’ Is it yoga’ What is it’

Know your triggers

Be aware of trigger foods. I like treats and we’ve talked about that, but sometimes we pick treats that make us lose our stuff. If I buy ice cream for home, I know that I’m not going to be like, “I’m just going to have two bites and I’m good.” I’m going to have the whole whatever it is, gallon, pint. Whatever size I buy, the more I buy, the more I’m going to eat. And I’m going to be like a goldfish, I’m going to eat until I explode. And so, what I found is any of those foods, peanuts or any nut, if I have it in my house it’s like I can’t stop eating it.

So, I challenge you if you have those food that you can’t stop eating, sister girl, there is not enough willpower on the planet, so stop relying on willpower because willpower will slap you upside the head and leave you on the side of the road. I challenge you to say, “You know what, I don’t even want to tap into my willpower, I’m just going to leave that on the shelf.” And if there are foods that are brought into your house, they must go. When people come to my house for say Thanksgiving or Christmas, I send people home with food, I’m just like, “Hey, it just can’t be here. I don’t need this in our house, here you go, rock on with your bad self.” And I just get it out of my house, and that way there’s no temptation, there’s no me trying to have willpower, there’s no me having guilt. I have too much going on up in my head to think about guilt and the would-haves, the could-haves, and the should-haves.

Watch and learn

And I know this next one is tough for a lot of people, it’s tough for me too, but food log. If you keep a food log it keeps you honest.  and also if you’re working with a coach it also is a way for the coach to be able to say… If you find yourself hungry or craving, it’s a way for us (a coach) to play detective so that I can go through your food log and I can see particular foods that might not be satisfying that. Or maybe you’re eating a little too much of something that is triggering your cravings, and so I could easily be able to I like where you should change things up.

The other thing is that it makes you own your stuff. It makes you look back at the ugly truth or the pretty truth and own up and fess up like, “I had too much of those handful of popcorn walking past the receptionist desk, too much of that peppermint bark.” That food log keeps you honest, it shows you what’s going on.

I don’t want people to look at the food log as a way to beat themselves up, that food log is a way for you to just own your shit, a way for you to look back and say, “Every day at 4:00pm, I find myself at that dang vending machine, and every day I punch in A4, and I don’t know, how those peanut M&Ms just happen to jump out into my hand.” Then we can trace back and say maybe you’re not eating enough food so that at 4:00pm the Hungry Henrietta comes out. Or maybe at 4:00pm you have a meeting with someone you don’t like, so this is your way of coping.

A food log helps a myriad of things, it’s just more telling, it helps to create the story. I love CSI, and if you think about it, they would walk into the crime scene and they would figure out who killed Colonel Mustard with the knife, and that’s what a food log does, it helps you to kind of go back and kind of dissect what’s happening in and around your world.

Stress-free, guilt-free

The other thing is to reduce the stress in your life. Whenever I hear people say, “That’s just how my life is; my life is just stress”, I just say, “Girl, I feel for you, that’s sad if you think that your life is meant to be a stress ball.” And I challenge my clients to find ways to reduce their stress.

One of the first ways I challenge my clients to reduce their stress is to say no. Especially at this time of the year it’s really easy to overcome it, it’s really easy to be the Yes Man, it’s really easy to try to be that Perfect Pam who can do it all – you’re breastfeeding your kid, making dinner while balancing your budget and being a rock star at work. I know that’s how we were raised, that we could do it all and be it all, but sometimes you just got to say no. Sometimes you’ve got to say. “You know what, I’ve got too many balls up in the air, I can’t” and not feel guilty about it. 

Delegate your stressors

One of my mentors says no is a complete sentence. And when she said that it was so freeing because I was that person who tried to do 500 things and if I couldn’t do 500 things in a day I was like, “So many other people can do it, how come I can’t do it'” And that “no” really helped me to just reign in what was in my wheelhouse, what was my strength, and what wasn’t my strength, what I should delegate.

It can be something as simple as if you are supposed to bake cookies for the bake sale. Nobody said you’ve got to make them from scratch, you can go pick them up at the bakery. That saves you, I don’t know, an hour. And I want you to think about those little things – grocery shopping, do you physically have to go to the grocery store’ Or can you make it simple, can you use some type of online delivery service’ And I know the online delivery service that I use here in Boston is awesome. I can just schedule it for when I want them to show up, and they show up at my house, bring it up the stairs into my kitchen, the only thing they don’t do is put away the groceries. And if they did that, I would probably have them move in and see if they would cook for me.

Take a hike (or just go for a stroll)

Add walks into your life. And not power walking, these are just nice long, leisurely walks. Nice, long leisurely walks help to bring our sympathetic nervous system online, it helps to tell our body that it’s okay to chill out. And despite as much evolution as we have, certain systems in our body – especially that fight or flight response – still think that we are living in the caves. And the stress of getting an unexpected car bill or the stress of your boss dumping work on you, our body goes into that fight or flight. And when you go into walks of nature it tells your body that “Hey, we can chill out, we don’t need to be waiting for that saber tooth tiger, we’re not going to be sprinting to save our lives, and let’s just deep breath, let it in, let it out.”

Increase your fiber

If you’ve heard all the commercials, we need to increase our fiber. One, we should regularly go to the bathroom and this is probably something that people don’t openly talk about, but we’re going there. You should regularly go to the bathroom, and when I say go to the bathroom, I’m talking poop, you should at least once a day. And if you’re not, then I want you to check two things,

1) the amount of water that you’re drinking, because if you’re dehydrated, you’re 90% likely to be constipated, and when you’re constipated it’s like cement, it’s not coming out.

2) increase the amount of fiber that you have.

So, I challenge you that if you’re constipated to increase your water and fiber. Those off-the-shelf products have a place and a time, but I challenge you not to use them on a regular basis in order to make you go. If you’re not going on a regular basis there is some type of digestive issue that’s happening, and I challenge you to start to get to the root cause of that digestive issue. The reason why I talk about the root cause being digestive issues is that so many of our hormones, our immune system, are all made in our guts, and when we don’t explore our gut health it’s just like a domino. Kind of like that song – “the shin bone is connected to the knee bone, the knee bone is connected to the hip.” It’s totally that.

So, if we don’t have a good gut health and we’re not expelling the waste, that’s how we get rid of a lot of the excess hormones in our body, that’s how we get rid of our excess dead cells, so we have a lot of waste products floating around. And when we have a lot of excess waste products floating around, we get inflammation, and that inflammation makes us look puffy, and we all know that puffiness is not a good thing.

I’ve got one more for you, and again, I’ve put the rest of the tips on my website just to make it easier for you guys. You can go to bit.ly/40tipsover40.

One of my favorite over the counter Fiber products.

HIIT it!

The last one is HIIT exercise. We were raised in the aerobics age where you just like went as hard as you could for 60+ minutes, or you went out for a run, or you hopped on the elliptical for 40 minutes.

I challenge you to do shorter intense duration of exercise, so that you’re pushing hard for maybe one to two minutes and catching your breath, pushing hard one to two minutes, catching your breath, pushing hard one to two minutes, catching your breath.

That has been found to be the most effective exercise for us ladies. That can be done on any piece of cardio equipment, with kettlebells, or battle ropes. You can do a variety a great metabolic HIIT exercises without a lot of equipment.

I know that a lot of you hear that when you hit a certain age and your body just basically gives you the finger, that you’re supposed to settle. Well, I’m not a girl who settles, and I had that very same thing happened to me.

My doctor told me that that’s just how it is, and I should eat less carbs. Well, that’s a piece of the puzzle, but there is more to it when you hit 40. There are some tweaks, there are some changes that need to be made, but they don’t need to be drastic changes.

It requires you to be a little bit more mindful in your food choices, a little bit more mindful in your workouts.

The first two big things I challenge everyone is sleep and stress. I have four other principals in my Reality Diet Method that I work my clients through, and it is a flip on how to get the best results and make it a lifestyle. I am not one of those people who are like, “Don’t eat that, don’t eat this” kind of person. I spent a lot of years doing that, and that’s painful.

Do you find that you spend so much of your time worrying and scrambling’ You spend your time trying to figure out what you need to eat to get the results that you want, how to fit in the gym in between shuttling your kids to practice while working . Let’s not get start on the thoughts about paying your mortgage, or what they’ll need to do to be able to go on vacation. Is your mindset so focus on what you’re not versus what you are’

People who are successful don’t need to scramble when they want or need something, not just because they have money, but because they’re in the right mindset and have planned accordingly.

You shouldn’t have to develop a whole new plan every time you want to do something or an emergency arises, because that can cause major setbacks in your path to success.

When you are always feeling like you are scrambling to pull plans together you’re making yourself unnecessarily stressed out, but you’re also setting yourself up for failure.

Raise your hand if everytime you scrambled it worked AWESOME!

Are you picking up what I’m putting done. Nothing good gets done at the last minute, and those plans will usually fall apart early due to hasty decisions.

I challenge you to start working on creating a long-term outlook. I get it, it can be a bit challenging, but you will be ahead of the curve because 80% of people in this world fly by the seat of their pants. Have ever not prepped your meals saying that you know what to eat and then life happens and you’re pulling up to a drive through ordering a burger and fries because you are just too hungry to think.

Successful people stay away from this kind of behavior because it typically slow down your results.

Instead of each week sit down and create a menu so you know what you are going to eat. Hit the grocery store to stock up and then do some form of meal prep. I’m not saying you need to spend hours in the kitchen, but know your downfalls and what makes sense to prep.

Typically, when I would come home form work the time to dinner was endless. I could easily mindlessly pick on stuff OR I could know that’s my downfall and make sure I have something prepared, so I can just come home and heat it up OR I could chop up piece of fruit and eat that while I cooked.

Another thing that successful people tend to do is have back up plans. They sit down and determine when they are going to workout in a given week. Then have a contingency plan in place in case life throws them a curveball.  Maybe they work out in the morning and that’s not possible they will shift to later in the day or weekend. They have a contingency for food, they may have shakes or bars that they keep in their cars, gym bags or desk so they don’t skip a meal do to take.

Don’t let things like this set you back in life. Start thinking to yourself what are some “plan bs”  you can come up with to help you hit your health and fitness goals.

Your experiences are shaped by your thinking. Yes, even the obstacles you face have value. You can develop thoughts that will help you to feel happier and achieve more, regardless of the situation.

Here are some beliefs that you can start using today to help transform your thinking.

1. I have unlimited potential. Whatever I put my mind to I achieve.

2. I count my blessings no matter how small. Remember to include the smaller items, like warm socks or great tasting food.

3. I learn from mistakes. I treat them as lessons for what is NOT working.

4. Challenges provide me with greater wisdom. Look back at the obstacles you’ve already overcome, and reassure yourself that you can handle anything that comes your way.

5. I focus on the present moment. This helps to keep you grounded and looking for the poop on the carpet.

6. I dream big. I don’t let limiting beliefs keep me from going for what I really want.

7. I regularly forgive myself. I give myself grace for not being able to do it all.

8. I take 100% responsibility. You are in charge of your life. Hold yourself accountable for the outcomes you create. Celebrate the fact that you have the power to determine your own future.

9. I do the work. Define what success looks like for you, so you know what is working. Give yourself credit when you’re making progress rather than comparing yourself to others.

10. I listen to feedback. I know that I go do it on my own, or I can speed up my results but asking for feedback. Feedback helps you grow faster when you gather solid input and take action on it.

11. I connect with others. While you may feel like you are the only person going through this you are not. Surround yourself with a loving and encouraging tribe.

12. I try new things. Be open to experimentation. If the why you are currently doing things are not getting you what you want then, it’s time to trying something new.

An upbeat attitude increases your happiness and productivity. As we head into 2019 I challenge you to question your old assumptions so you can replace them with a new sense of certainty about yourself and your future. Adopt empowering beliefs that build up your confidence and prepare you for greater success. Start today. You’ll be glad you did!

PS> you looking to focus more on having fun this holiday than counting calories’ Give me 12 days and I’ll help you cruise through the holidays.

Imagine instead of say OMG I need to find my old pregnancy pants or pants with the most stretch for Thanksgiving Dinner, you said to yourself,
this is the year I’m going to have a healthy Thanksgiving!

Don’t press the freakout button!!! I hear you Thanksgiving is not the same without sweet potatoes with gooey marshmallows, pumpkin pie and
all the other goodies that are brought out on that day’  Let’s be honest with each Thanksgiving is all the food that feeds the stomach and soothes the soul. It is the culinary equivalent of being tucked into a warm bed on a cold night.

How do you honor your healthy lifestyle while wanting to dive head first into those sugar filled treats of the day washed down with a little
Sauvignon Blanc’ Plus your guests may not be expecting brown rice, steamed broccoli, and boiled turkey breasts.

Your hungry guests who are expecting — nay, demanding — all the Thanksgiving classics’

Ready to dig deep

Set the Mood

Let’s face it eating is emotional. Raise your hand if you’ve ever eaten when you’re stressed. Seriously when things are going well, we never think about eating.

Wanna eat less”” Dim the lights and play some soft music, you’ll eat 175 fewer calories and still feel satisfied.

I have two go to’s for stress management is one is Ionix Supreme it’s a blend of plant-based adaptogens and helps protect me against the negative effects of stress. The other is sleep spray, this helps me get to sleep and stay asleep without a food coma.

Create Food-Free Zones

I know I’m so guilty of this, if there is food in front of me I’ll eat it. Do yourself and your guests a favor and create a food-free zone where the socializing can happen without food being within sight. If everyone will be eating at the dining room table, set up a buffet line in the kitchen,
away from where people will be eating.

Ideally your guests are having so much fun socializing that they  forget about going back for seconds, or at the very least, think twice about it because you’ve created a physical distance between them and the food.

Manipulate Supply and Demand

Serve higher calorie foods like pasta salad, stuffing, or mashed potatoes in smaller bowls, while serving healthier foods like vegetables in larger ones. It’s subtle, but what you’re doing is creating less demand for the unhealthier food and more demand for the good stuff.

Use Smaller Plates

I know you’ve heard this before, but research suggests that when we use smaller plates, we overestimate the amount of food we’re consuming
and end up eating less, while using larger plates causes us to underestimate our consumption and eat more.

So go ahead and swap out those plates — even if it means using paper plates (if someone wants to get all judgy about having to eat on paper
plates, you can kindly offer to let them do the dishes!).

Don’t Let Leftovers Hijack Your Health Kick

Here’s the thing — Thanksgiving is just ONE day. We certainly don’t want you to miss out on all the seasonal favorites, and it’s absolutely all right
to enjoy yourself for one day. But, with the usual abundance of leftovers, it can be astonishingly easy to let one day turn into one week.

When you come to my house EVERYONE gets a doggie bag!!! I want no more than 48 hours of food in my house!!

What are some of your healthy holiday tips”’ Leave me a comment below.  I’m always looking for things to add to my bag of tricks.

If you are over 40 and looking to live a healthy life, be sure to grab my FREE guide!!!

In this episode, Coach Kim Barnes Jefferson is teaching you how to have a successful, healthy lifestyle by creating a flexible structure.

What Do You Learn From This Episode
1. The quickest way to get other people to support you
2. How to take the first step out of your comfort zone
3. Why you don't need to try to hit a homerun every time
4. Why you need to focus on quick wins to be successful
5. Why lack of willpower isn’t your problem
6. How my clients handle life successfully
7. How to give up the spray-and-pray method .
8. The five step success process that will bring you real results

Links mentioned in this episode

Watch Replay here

More shows are here. 

Social Media

Facebook
Instagram

I have a deep passion for guiding others towards fulfillment and success with an emphasis in fitness. I teach busy professional women to stop the extreme dieting/training
merry-go-round and start giving themselves permission to live a healthy live without deprivation and guilt.

I can be found most days hanging out in my Facebook Group The Reality Diet a place for women who are done whining and are ready to get shit done and stop
struggling with where they “should” be or what the they “should” be doing to live a healthy lifestyle. This is a place where you will learn how to take consistent action while feeling
confident in what to eat and when.

If you are looking to unleash your feel power and not be ruled by your food choices and want to love what you see in the mirror. You’ve found your tribe.
Will you join us’

Have you ever sat down and created this “amazing” time management plan and still failed to reach your goals.  Yeah me too!! I’ve found the reason why both you and I do this is because we’re too flexible and easy on ourselves and others when it comes to the schedule. As much as I wish, time is not limitless. You can’t swing by Target get more. You can’t work harder to get more of it; it’s a finite resource that cannot be increased or replaced.

When you realize that time is finite and that there really might not be some future distant tomorrow, you might start being more ruthless with the time you’ve got. Follow these tips to make time management so much easier.

🔶 Just Say No The biggest factor in being ruthless with your time is learning to say no. No is a complete sentence is the best lesson I’ve ever learned. It freed me from doing so much shit I hated! If you really do not want to do something, you must say no. There is no sin in saying no. The only reason you feel guilty about the word is that your mother taught you saying no was wrong. It’s time to realize that you are a grown ass women and you can now say no.

🔶Get Up on Time  This is a hard one for many but it doesn’t have to be hard as you think. Trust me I have an elaborate snooze squeeze and always need to factor in getting in at least one cup of coffee.

I work from home most days and it’s really easy to roll over cause my boss (me isn’t going to dock me for being late). Set a time that will you will get up each and every day. I work out most mornings so I’m up and out most days by [5:30]. No.. I don’t do this on weekend. I’m lucky if I can sleep until 8am on weekends.

🔶Try to Be Early  This one is such a challenge for me. In my professional life, I can be on time, but in my personal life I’m always trying to push the envelope.

When I push the envelope and there is traffic I stress out. I’m been really work to change this in my life. I’m always looking for ways to eliminate unnecessary urgency from my life, which in turn causes stress and can cause problems with time management. This way if something does happen out of the ordinary, I will still have time to meet a deadline and be on time.

🔶Turn Off Technology Anyone else feel me. I’ve made my mission to try off my phone at 9:30pm. I’ve found myself endless scrolling and then boom it’s 11pm.  Trust me I know how important your phone is, my phone is my businesses’ life blood. But seriously,the one very thing that is supposed to make our time more productive can have the opposite effect too. Schedule your tech time. Turn them off. You’ll gain so much more time. That includes your Netflixing and chillin’, too.

🔶 Understand Your Internal Clock We all have our own internal time clock. it’s important not to fight against that and be aware of what it is. Some people are early risers and some people are night owls and others are in between. It’s important for you to determine for yourself what your own internal clock is and then work with it.

🔶 Make Shorter To Lists I was the queen of the long to do list. Each and everyday I felt like I wasn’t accomplishing a damn thing. Then a mentor of mine shared with me that I should narrow my to do list down to 3 things. Once I get those 3 things done I could decide if I wanted to do more or be done for the day.

🔶 Calendar Each week I set my schedule for workouts, hours I will work on a particular project and when I will have down time. By doing this it keeps me from blowing myself off.  It also helps me stay on task and makes it much easier to say no to things that don’t fit into the proper bucket

Finally, don’t be too hard on yourself in terms of the hours you schedule yourself to work. Yes, be ruthless about the schedule, but also schedule in fun time. We aren’t designed to work 20 hours a day. Go ahead, schedule 8 to 10 hours a day of work. But, in between, schedule in breaks. Time with friends, family and spouses during any given work day is important too. Also, remember to schedule in breaks like weekends and vacations. If you do that, it’ll be so much easier to be ruthless with time and stick to your schedule normally.

Which one these tips do you think you can start to use immediately’

In this episode, I guiding you to a steady belief in yourself. I offer tips on how to get out of your comfort zone and focus on your
route to success.

What Do You Learn From This Episode
1. The quickest way to get other people to support you
2. How to take the first step out of your comfort zone
3. Why you don’t need to try to hit a homerun every time
4. Why you need to focus on quick wins to be successful
5. What you should focus on instead of speed when it comes to your health
6. Why gratitude is the key to staying on track with your fitness goals
7. How to giving yourself the grace and space to wobble when you start your journey
8. The two step success process to end your day
9. How to stay on track by connecting to your why
10. The difference between hanging out with Jay-Z & Beyonce people vs. Eeyore
people
11. How to get a personal GPS for your fitness journey

Watch replay

Links mentioned in this episode
Social Media — Facebook
Instagram
Kim’s Email — squadleader[at]fabfitsquad[dot]com

My name is Kim Barnes Jefferson; I have a deep passion for guiding others towards fulfillment and success with an emphasis in fitness.
I teach busy professional women to stop the extreme dieting/training merry-go-round and start giving themselves permission to live a
healthy live without deprivation and guilt.

I can be found most days hanging out in my Facebook Group Women Who Thrive. It’s a place for women who are done whining and are
ready to get shit done and stop struggling with where they “should” be or what the they “should” be doing to live a healthy lifestyle. This is a
place where you will learn how to take consistent action while feeling confident in what to eat and when.

If you are looking to unleash your feel power and not be ruled by your food choices and want to love what you see in the mirror. You’ve found your tribe.
Will you join us’

Have you ever dreamed of living life on your own terms, because you want the freedom to do whatever you want. However, they don’t really know what it means to live life on your own terms.

Living life on your own terms means that you aren’t afraid of confrontation, and you’ll always put your own best interests first. If it doesn’t benefit you, you’re not going to like it, and you’ll do whatever you can to avoid it.

The key is to find out what it is that you enjoy, and you will have success. If there’s something you don’t like doing, don’t go near it.

If you want to find personal satisfaction in life, you’re going to have to live life on your own terms. If you don’t, you’ll find yourself being used as a doormat instead of being happy.

By living on your own terms, you not only discover what’s most important to you in life, but you also maintain a constant feeling of satisfaction and happiness. You’ll also figure out who’s working against you in your life and what’s not working.

By choosing to live your life as you see fit, you’ll discover that you maybe much happier than you ever thought possible. Many people find themselves helping others more than they help themselves.

One of the easiest ways I know to live on my terms to learn to say no. The best advice I ever heard is that no is a a complete sentence. You’ll have to get used to saying no to things you don’t want to do, where in the past, you’d simply put up with it.

These changes are not an overnight thing, but you’ll find that it’s well worth it when you’re finally used to it. By picking and choosing how you live each day, you open up many more paths for personal satisfaction and happiness.

You block out most negativity in your life, and only live for the things you truly enjoy and love. By blocking out negativity, there will be very little left in your way to your goals, and the stuff that’s still blocking you will be easily overcome with the right attitude.

You may find yourself in a better situation financially, by moving on to a career you’re happy with rather than staying stuck in one you’re not pleased about. You’ll also be happier after weeding out the people in your life that are working against you, leaving you with only your true friends and loyal loved ones.

What’s one thing that will make your life happier’

Creating routines and habits are a great thing. They allow you to do what you need to do to hit your goals without having to spend a lot of energy and time thinking about it. Seriously, how much more time do can you spend on thinking about losing weight, what to eat and/or what’s the best exercise routine. It can also be a dangerous thing when your focusing on the wrong things and are in the habit of doing things that don’t help you reach your goals.

When we get into a routine, it can be hard to stop and ask ourselves if it’s working as well as it could be. Even more importantly, with a routine and a set of habits firmly established, it’s easy to keep going even when the circumstances changes. That’s why it’s important to take some time every now and again to review our routine and habits, to see if they are helping you to achieve your goals.

As you accomplish your goals, set aside time to review your routine(s). Put it on the calendar and make sure you do it. It won’t take long and it will be a very valuable exercise in the long run. Our lives and circumstances change. Our routines should change with it. Just because something has served us well over the past few weeks and months, doesn’t mean it will continue to do so. Which brings up a good point…

When you sit down to review your routine(s), ask yourself this:

Is it working’ Is it working really well’

If it is, simply carry on. If it isn’t, it may be time to make some changes and tweak it until you find something that works well for you at that particular point in time.

Another way to look at it is to find what you love and what you hate about your routines. Change it accordingly until you get as close as possible to loving everything about it and still getting the results you want.

Remember, routines will change and evolve over time as you, your circumstances, and the people in your life change and evolve. Embrace the changes and look at them as an indication that you’re making progress.

What I love about routines is that are easier to track your changes than it is to physically results at times.

I challenge you to keep tweaking and improving your routine. Don’t be afraid to mix up things up. Maybe you started out by making exercise a priority first thing in the day. As time goes by and you become more fit and make time for it later in the day, your focus may shift to meditation, or learning a new language. Keep evolving, keep changing, and keep using those precious first few hours of each day to establish some positive change in yourself and those around you.

If it’s time for you to start to learn some new habits I’d love for you to join me in my 5 day FREE challenge. You and I will work together to create a routine that you will love and will help you hit your goals. Join the challenge right here.

Today I am joined by Jen Lee to talk about all things bullet journaling. Often thought of as stark and rigid, Kim and Jen give a more fun take on them in this episode of FabFitTV.

What Do You Learn From This Episode

1. How to make a bullet journal work for you
2. The beauty of a bullet journal
3. Why it’s a good idea to break down your daily, monthly, and yearly goals
4. What is a future log and how it can help you reach your goals
5. How to work marco- and microcycles to
6. Why reflection is an important part of journaling
7. What is habit stacking and how you can add it to your routine
8. How an open checkbox and trigger you into decision-making and action
9. How journaling can make your more deliberate with your eating habits.
10. How planning in advance can help you see repeated patterns
11. Using the chain method to create habits

Links mentioned in this episode

Fab Fit Squad — http://kimbarnesjefferson.com

Social Media — Facebook 

Instagram –

Kim’s Email — squadleader[at]fabfitsquad[dot]com

Jenn Lee

Linked In