Tag: Yoga

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Weight Loss Exercise

Recap of the first six days


This is our first recap day. I am planning a few of these days as I know that some of the changes that you are making are tough and there is still more tough stuff coming to get you felling better and most of all getting healthier.

Whenever you make any kind of life changes there are a lot of tough times. There are days when everything seems to go right as well as days when nothing seems to click. The reason that this happens is that your attitude starting the day either tells you that YES you are moving ahead and the changes are great or NO everything was find before and the pain of the changes are not worth it. Hopefully to this point you are having more yes days than no days.

Our first day was just a subtle commitment to make changes without really know the impact that it would have in our everyday life except for the excitement that comes with changing for the better.

Our second day was adding more water to our diet and this I thought was a fairly easy start with a high impact result over the fairly short term.

Our third day was getting started doing cardio everyday. We did not go into any details on the cardio because the first most important exercise trait that you want yourself to get used to is some kind of movement. Just as long as you walk, dance, do yoga, run or bike you are doing great.

Day four was taking care of our meal sizes, far to often people eat to few meals and often to large to really give anyone the nutrition they need and giving anyone a great way to gain fat. Many meals are a great way to keep up energy and be more aware of the food you eat.

The fifth day was a day to learn how to stretch. After all that movement and cardio your muscles will be getting sore by this day and stretching is a great way to get the blood flowing to the fibers of your muscles to get rid of a day or two of extra muscle pain as well as giving you extra flexibility.

Day six is the first good nutrient day. Learning about carbohydrates is a great way to see how we eat when we are not conscious of what is an important kind of food. North Americans are really bad for eating a lot of sugars and then eating far to many carbs as well in each meal.

The next few days may be a little more difficult but I will try to keep a few easy days in as these changes are going to still be challenging. I am sure by this point that your new attitude and feelings are great. These 30 days are designed to give you not only a better feeling body but also a fantastic new outlook on life.

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General Weight Loss Tips

The List

I’ve missed my blog, I really have. I am getting ready to do yoga. Last week was insane and I thought I do a quick catch-up in a list format.

1) I’ve decided to start saying “no” to projects that won’t get my closer to my goals. I’m giving up on my annoying habit and desire to be swamped with others work. Basically, I’m simplifying and narrowing down what really matters. Simple things make me happy. Cooking delicious food, writing, creating, learning- that’s all I need. I’m okay with not being an impressive person. I’m enough. I’m doing enough. I’m headed in the right direction.

2) I’ve also decided to start working on keeping the crazy out of my life. I have a tendency to let the stress and worry of others stress me out. It’s insane, it’s not positive, it’s not proactive. Worry is pointless. I’m doing the best I can, if someone is worried about me (or my husband) that is on them. Not me. Amen.

3) Growing a thicker skin/standing up for myself. If you know me well- you know one thing: I am a very sensitive person. I worry about people, I worry about the things they say. I think about why people do the things they do. And a lot of the time I get hurt easily. I want to stop allowing people to hurt me so easily.

4) Like number one: I want to do what’s important to me. My health is my number one priority. My happiness is important. My creativity is important. My husband, family and friends are important. When I pile on too much work, all of these things suffer, I am out of balance. My health is more important than being busy.

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General Weight Loss Tips

Food Focus

Today marks the beginning of week ten of the Insanity Workout. Ten. Weeks. On top of six weeks of yoga (which we’ve completed) and a weekly session of strength training.

Here is (another) list of thoughts from the 10 week mark…

1. The time passed. Seriously, ten weeks passed in a blink of an eye. I didn’t have to exercise, but I’m so glad I did. Some days the 45 minutes to an hour seemed like torture, even before I started. Which brings me to…

2. The only thing stopping me from doing most anything in my life is me. Forcing myself to exercise daily for ten weeks allowed me to see thought patterns and push past them. I was negative to myself, and sometimes down right mean. I think this would have stopped me before. It’s all mental, you know that quote: if you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right? So true.

3. Weight loss isn’t everything. This one is hard to even type out, because often I’ve thought: what’s the point in exercise if I don’t lose this weight quickly? What has changed is this: I exercise because it’s healthy and it feels good. This doesn’t mean I don’t weigh myself or get excited to see that I’ve lost 12 pounds (because I’m thrilled) but because there is a part of me that always thought…it’s ONLY 12 pounds, what’s the point? My perspective has shifted from exercise to lose weight, to exercise for life because it’s a good thing to do. I would have (and have many times) given up in the past. Just thrown in the towel because I was only doing it to lose weight. I’m okay with exercising everyday for the rest of my life if I never lose a single pound.

4. This has nothing to do with exercise (well, a little) but never (ever ever) weigh yourself during PMS. Just don’t do that to yourself. I can gain and lose eight lbs. in a weeks time from water weight alone.

5. My clothes fit better. I feel better.

6. Perfection is not a sustainable goal. I’ve had to really challenge myself to “do it anyway”. To exercise when I didn’t have a good week, to get back on track if I missed a couple of days. The truth is, a “poor week” of exercise now (3-4 days instead of six) is what I good week used to look like. I always aim for 6, but a couple of the ten past weeks weren’t perfect. I had to get over it. There were weeks when I ate wayy too much, more than exercise could work off. I had to get over it and keep moving. There were weeks when the scale went up and down and settled and moved around. I really had to stop aiming for a “perfect week” or a “perfect situation”, forgive myself and move on. This is hard.

Thoughts about food:

1. I have destructive food patterns that I’ve been able to pinpoint in the past weeks:

– If I’m overwhelmed, stressed, don’t know where to begin or procrastinating: I overeat.

– I still have the “all or nothing” , “last meal” mentality

– Keeping busy, staying focused and organized = better eating

2. Keeping a food journal, regardless if I count calories or not, truly helps me

3. Writing thoughts and emotions in this journal is also helpful

4. Being on the right path, having a plan for the day and staying on track with tasks makes it easier for me to go about my day without thoughts of food. Everything is related. I’ve noticed that the more productive I am, the more happy I am and the more productive and happy I am the less intense I feel about food.

5. The next ten weeks will be about eating real, clean food. My goal is this: to keep a daily food journal no matter what (good, bad or ugly) and to eat as much real food (close to nature, unprocessed, five ingredients or less) as possible. I want to really push myself to look for the clean food on restaurants and menu’s when dining out.

Clean eating is my new goal!

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