Make This Your Year to Get in Shape!

Figure Foodie

This time of year, many people make a vow to lose weight and eat better. These vows are genuine, made in earnest and often out of desperation, so why do so many never get there?

Getting in shape takes time and effort. It has to be a change you integrate into your lifestyle. Once you are really ready to take real action to change your life, the first thing you need to do is to accept that there are no magic pills or exercise equipment that will whip you into shape while you go about your normal life. We all know this, but keep holding out hope that someone has discovered something new. Some of these new supplements and gadgets might actually work for a time, but none give lasting results.

As long as you are living, you may as well feel good, look great, and wring every bit of joy out of life. You can only do that if you are physically fit. And there is only one real way to get there: old school Diet and Exercise. Period.

Making a change in either area alone can get you moving down the right path. But for a lifestyle change, the equation needs to include changing habits around both eating and exercise.

30 Days to Better Habits – Day 1: Get Started!

Set a goal to follow these guidelines for 30 days. As motivational speaker Les Brown said, “Goals help you channel your energy into action.”

At the start of your 30 days, take a “before” picture and put it in a prominent place where you will see it, like taped to your computer screen or bathroom mirror.

Plan to reward yourself for meeting your 30 day goal with something out of the ordinary. Go to a movie with someone special or plan a weekend away. Plan on rewarding yourself with something for just for you!

Changing Your Eating Habits

Throw out your old ideas. First, open your mind up about your perceptions about food. As a society we have come to associate healthy food with food that tastes bad. But since the beginning of recorded time, our ancestors ate real food and made it taste good.

Purchase real food. Shop the outer aisles of the store – pick up your fruits and vegetables from produce, lean meats and fish from the meat aisle, and stray into the inner aisles for unprocessed, whole grains such as oats and brown rice (try short grain brown or wild rice if you don’t like regular brown rice.)

Eat smaller meals often. This revs up your metabolism and helps keep those “horrible hungries” away. If you enter the horrible hungry zone, you are setting yourself up for trouble. To avoid them, eat every two to three hours. Don’t skip meals and make the time to get a good breakfast! For more on how, when and what to eat, see: http://www.figurefoodie.com/?cat=109.

Stay hydrated. It helps flush out your system and keeps your energy up. We often mistake thirst for hunger and even slight dehydration can make your energy level drop like a rock.

Learn to Cook. So many have grown up on processed foods and never really learned how to cook real food. Invest the time to learn how to prepare real food to bring out the natural flavors and textures so you can like what you eat. It doesn’t have to take a lot of time to prepare your food, but it does take effort. Plan it out, get prepared, and be creative.

Making Exercise a Habit You Don’t Want to Break

Did you know that the government established physical activity guidelines for the first time in 2008 because two-thirds of adults in this country are overweight or obese?

Establish Exercise as a Habit. The first step to getting back into shape is to establish exercise as a habit. In the beginning, set aside an hour two times a week to build muscle through resistance training with weights. Imagine muscle as a way to turn up your metabolism and burn more calories. Muscle burns calories just to exist.

Women, don’t be afraid of working with weights because you might get bulky. We just don’t have enough testosterone to get big and bulky. Muscle adds curves and are very feminine; for proof just look at the women on the covers of fitness magazines.

Be Active and Have Fun! On the days that you aren’t scheduled to go to the gym, get in some activity. Get outside and have some fun: go for a brisk walk, play with your kids, or chase your dog. If it is raining, find your favorite music and dance around the house or have a bowling tournament on the Wii. Carve some fun time for you out of your busy day. Don’t feel selfish about this time; it’s a stress buster and you are more likely to make activity part of your life if you have some fun.

Find a Gym. Working out in a gym gets you out of your environment. Just being in a different physical location can help you break old patterns. Also, being a member of a gym connects you to others. Enlist a gym buddy or personal trainer to hold you accountable for showing up.

Make sure to find a gym where the members are focused on meeting their fitness goals. If your gym is more into “exer-tainment” or you are too embarrassed to go, find another gym.

Schedule It in Ink. Schedule your gym time like you would an important appointment because that’s what it is! Once you’ve met each appointment, mark it off on the calendar with a big checkmark. Half the battle to getting back to the gym is just getting back to the gym! You have to show up.

Put in the Work. Once you are in the gym, commit to being there uninterrupted for one hour. Put on some fast-paced music and get to work. If possible, enlist a personal trainer. Personal trainers motivate you and push you past limits you didn’t even know you had. A good personal trainer is worth the expense. If you can’t afford one, be your own trainer: have a specific plan for what you want to do before you get to the gym.

Day 30 – How Did You Do?

After the 30 days are up, take some time to evaluate how you did. Sit down and make a list of the positive things that you accomplished and how you felt about it. Did you show up for your gym appointments? Did your diet improve? Did you carve out some fun active time?

List all of your positives first. Then, write down what was hard about meeting your goal – what obstacles did you face? Examine what went wrong and how you might overcome it next time – but don’t beat yourself up!

You may not have a perfect track record, but if you made an honest effort for the whole 30 days go ahead and reward yourself.

Set Another Goal and Keep Reaching

Set another goal and keep working towards it. Set your goals to a point where they’re attainable, but far enough away that you have to really go get them.

Take another picture of yourself smiling. Remember this is not an “after” picture but a work in progress! Even mountains are climbed one step at a time.

Once you establish exercise and a healthy diet as a habit, it becomes part of your life. As part of your life they become habits that you won’t want to break.

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