healthy and beautiful

Starting to adopt a healthy lifestyle and achieve personal fitness goals can feel exciting and even easy in the beginning.  We plug into our fitness pals, fit bits, get motivated eating healthy foods, excited about the new workouts and with smiles on our faces dive head first into what is absolutely fitness euphoria.   It feels good to eat healthy , exercise and talk about it with our family and friends. Self motivation is at it's peak running on a full tank of gas and determination full throttle.  We are on top of the world and nothing will stop us from reaching our goals, right? The struggle is usually not in the starting but in the maintaining.  We all need to start the process of getting healthy and we also need to continue creating healthy habits that eventually morph into a lifestyle.  Week three of the start may not feel as good anymore or as exciting but going out with friends downing a few drinks and sopping up some bread sounds more appealing.  ...

Life does not promise easy, fair, fun, happiness, or even health.  In fact, life is hard and guess what, work is required and never an option.  It is up to each one of us to create the lifestyle that we live and this is not going to be found in a jar, pill, powder, or shake.  If popping a “fit pill” was the answer to all things magical and provided the body of our dreams inside and out, then I definitely would not need to write this blog.  The facts are in and they have been for decades that the way to obtain a fit physique is through consistent healthy food intake, regular exercise, plenty of rest, water, and balance of life.  The “want it now” society tries every side-step method to achieve what can only be done through sweat producing work.  There is not a pill or shake that is going to teach a person how to shop and select healthy foods for life and they will surely not sprout legs and exercise so that we consume the activity benefits.  What usuall...

How many of us stand in the truth of our life or live in denial and non-acceptance of the actions that clearly rebel against a healthy lifestyle?  I wish I could see a show of hands and have a world-wide workshop to discuss this issue.  Standing in our truth has everything to do with being able to become a healthy person, and can be applied to all areas of our life: relationships, careers, fitness, and overall health which represent a moderate list that encompasses our existence as a human being. Being honest with our self is the first step to being able to change those things that are weighing us down physically and emotionally.  If we are unable to be honest with ourselves, then being honest with others will not happen.  When lying to ourselves is at the forefront of or life, behaviors are usually exhibited through bitterness, anger, blame of others, argumentative reasoning, defensiveness, unhappiness, and a clear nonacceptance of responsibility. On the other side ...

The truth about health and fitness is that we either want it or we don’t.  Let’s face it, we can all come up with reasons not to exercise today or pack our coolers with healthy food to have on hand.  All the reasons in the world are excuses that will eventually catch up to us in the form of illness or injury.  That also is the truth.  What we need to understand is that our lifestyle is our medicine, and that includes what we eat and how we move and rest our bodies.   We can’t continue to walk around in a state of un-health and believe that this is an acceptable existence.  Looking and feeling our best is what we all want, dream about, and talk about, but the action to make it happen never seems to occur.  Look at what is flooding our magazines, commercials, and television shows when it comes to getting healthy.  We need to be living the reality shows of achieving our best body not sitting in front of the tube with our chips watching other peo...

No one starts at the top and sometimes you can get to the top of your fitness game, and injuries or other issues occur that send you right back to the beginning step.  I speak from experience when it comes to being knocked down from an injury and although the setback was difficult, I never gave up.  When it comes to our exercise programs, we can put so much pressure on ourselves to do too much too soon, and with that come discouragement and frustration.  When we approach our fitness and nutrition programs with a progressive attitude, it is a more realistic way of adopting a healthy lifestyle.  Progressive simply means starting where you are, accepting where you are, doing what you can, mastering what you are able to do, and then moving forward to the next level of whatever type of exercise program you have enlisted yourself.  It also means forgetting any comparisons to others because they are not you, and your program is your program.  The comparison game c...

Fitness involves more than how much weight is lost or reps in a set that can be accomplished.  Being a fit person involves discipline for each day, creates awareness, and instills conscious living. Fitness is a lifestyle and goes way beyond the physical.   Having the desire to obtain a quality life and following through on that goal really defines being healthy and fit, and when the focus remains in that direction, we set ourselves up for feeling and looking our best for life.  We put so much pressure on ourselves to squeeze into the tiniest jeans or boast the largest biceps, that we tend to forget how being fit is supposed to feel.  A fit and healthy body should be free or minimized of pain and many people do not realize just how good we are supposed to feel, and instead accept and accommodate pain on a daily basis.  A fit lifestyle includes physical exercise but not of the nature that will injure our bodies and create chronic setbacks, and eating healthy ...

DON'T SWEAT THE SMALL STUFF Believe me this has been a lifetime learning journey and it feels really good to be in this place…peaceful existence, balance with life and self, and overall feeling of AWWW…Life is BETTER than Great! I can remember being caught up in the stuff that really does not matter in the BIG scheme of life…the house looking just right, what people thought, oh my…my body is not quite there…is that fat on my butt…really???   How many times am I going to give myself the outer thigh pinch test for crying out loud.   Oh…I burned this, and that food presentation does not look perfect, oh…am I saying that just right,   am I doing this right, and, oh no…my diet was not clean today and I have just ruined everything…REALLY?   Enough of that crap already…whew…like I shared earlier…I am so glad to NOT be there anymore.   We really can be our own worst enemy if we let ourselves.   Thoughts of “not good enough” swirling around in my head years ago are...