One more thing about Vision Boards

My last post on vision boards has been nagging me; I don't feel like I've really explained what to do with your vision board once it's done. So now I'll wrap it up!


The whole purpose of a vision is to clarify your goals and plans, and make them something that you can visualize so distinctly that you can hardly see the line between possible and impossible.  Your vision becomes so absolutely certain that it is ludicrous to imagine it not happening, and your vision board just becomes a tool to use in remembering that vision.


But of course, you need to do more than remember it to make it happen. Visions require action, and vision boards serve as a daily affirmation of where you are focusing your actions.  And that all comes down to the power of positive.


Think about it this way: positive outcomes come from positive energy, right?  Where does positive energy come from? Positive interactions, reflections, and most importantly, expectations. When we surround ourselves with positive people, positive thoughts, and positive expectations, guess what happens?  We have a greater awareness of and appreciation for the positive things going on around us. All of that positive energy leads to....the top of this paragraph. Positive outcomes.


Did I just lose you? :)  Think about it in the sense of the opposite: when you have to spend the whole day with a really grumpy person, do you start finding yourself being grumpy too?  Well, the reverse is true as well.  Surround yourself with positive, and you will find yourself being positive.


Positive community, self-talk, and expectations are three of the best things you can do to bring about positive change in your health, fitness, and wellness. High-powered executives know it, professional athletes know it, and now you know it.

So. I'm not sure if that cleared anything up, but that's the point of it: creating a tool that helps transport you from simple "I wish," thinking to, "I'm on my way," thinking. I hope you're working on your board and that soon, I am part of your positive community. Have fun!


And as always, get out there and get healthy!

The Crooked Path to Wellness

In an ideal world, we would all proceed happily down a path to wellness unencumbered by temptation, fatigue, budget restraints, travel food, and feeders. We'd arrive at our new and improved destination lighter, stronger, and healthier with a smile and in record time!  But, we all know that isn't exactly the case. In the course of any given week we face meals in restaurants, social events with tempting food, and the late-night munchies.  Losing weight is hard, yo.

That's why some people choose to have a "cheat day" built into their nutrition plan. I hate this idea. In fact, when a cheat day is included, I might as well go back to calling it a diet because that's what it is.  I'm known for preaching that a cheat day only cheats you, and I stand by that.  Here's why: if you're eating well, getting rest, exercising vigorously, and living a positive and healthy life, you shouldn't need (and likely won't want) to cheat. 

But that's not to say that every day is a nutritional fairy tale.  Yep, I'm going to ask you to change your perspective again. :)

Cheat, just like the word diet, is a negative word that implies that we are in such a desperate state that we have no alternative but to hide in secret and sabotage our efforts. When people cheat, it is because they don't have the confidence that they can succeed otherwise.  When we cheat, we are saying, "I can't do this on my own."  Why would we say such mean things to ourselves when we're in the process of doing something so amazing?

Remember, we're not on a diet anymore, we're changing our nutrition. And yes, on that nutrition path are some diversions. There are times when we wander off the path and explore a diversion, some of which are well worth it (your absolute favorite dessert, for example) and some of which are not (eating something sugary just because it's there).  Here's the difference between and cheat and a diversion:

A cheat is a negative message that tells us we can't handle our weight and wellness on our own.

A diversion is a positive message sent in the confidence that we have the skill set to keep the portion manageable and return to our regularly scheduled programming.

The difference to your brain is enormous.

I'll agree, sometimes there is nothing better than that rebellious feeling you have when you throw caution to the wind and say, to hell with it, make mine a double-scoop!  It feels great!  But trust me, it feels even better to know that the choice to do so can be a positive one.

You can manage your weight and wellness with confidence.  You don't need to cheat on yourself. You deserve better than that.

Positive self-talk is more powerful than we know. Just saying one positive message to yourself activates your brain to be happier and more optimistic. Try it today. Stop cheating, start winning, and get out there and get healthy!

Watch Yo' Mouth! Why I hate the word "diet."

Diet is a four-letter word.

In order to spell, "diet" you have to start with, "die".

The diet starts Monday!

What else do we say to show our dismay with being on a diet?  It might be one of the most loathed words in our language, and for good reason. It conjures up images of deprivation, sacrifice, punishment, and happy people all around us gleefully eating things we're not allowed to eat because we're on a &*^%$ing DIET. >:/

I used to get called out for using the word diet.  "You're not fat," people would accuse. I'd try to explain that my "diet" was just my nutritional plan, not necessarily a scheme to lose weight.  We all have a diet - it's the menu of food we have planned for the day. But that word carries so much negativity with it that eventually I just stopped using it.  Now, I refer to my "nutrition."

I like it much better! Not only does "nutrition" have a happier sound, it equates to balance in my mind.  "Diet" means the scales are being tipped out of my favor.  "Nutrition" puts the power to choose back into my hands, where I like it. 

Think about this:

What happens as soon as we go on a diet?  We want whatever isn't on the diet!  But what happens when we simply change our nutrition?  Instead of being shackled by the rules of our diet, we're making choices.  What a huge difference!

What happens as soon as we got off of a diet?  We gain the weight back.  What happens when we go off of nutrition?  We die. Honestly, do we ever go off of nutrition?  No! We do nutrition all day, every day. It's just what we choose to be part of it that makes us feel like we need that bad four-letter word.

Try this today - instead of vowing to go on another diet, promise yourself to just change your nutrition.  Walk around in that for a while and see which one you like better.  And if you need help changing your nutrition, let me know.  I'm all over that stuff.

Change your words, change your mind, change your life.  And get out there and get healthy!

Create your own media, create your own influences

Yesterday I vented a little about the negative role that media can play in how we shape our images of ourselves and create self-worth. Today, it's the flip side: how we can create our own positive influences using the media and other things around us.

More and more research is showing the power of positive thinking, and you can see a pattern of it in the stories of successful people across the globe.  It really is incredible how you can change your life just by changing your perspective, but that's a whole other blog entirely!

Here's what I've done to create my own positive media and change the way I let the world influence my decisions:

1. Mantras.  I love mantras, and I create them all the time.  One that I shared the other day with a friend who was struggling with something that used to plague me is, "turn jealousy into joy."  I left jealousy in 2010 because it was holding me back.  But, that doesn't mean it doesn't try to creep back into my life.  When I start sensing that I am wallowing in envy-induced self-pity, I remind myself to turn jealousy into joy and am instantly overwhelmed with happiness for whomever it is I have been admiring.  It's amazing how amazing I feel when I use mantras.

2. Surround yourself with positive. Following other athletes on Twitter inspires me to challenge myself and push the limits of my workouts.  Participating in the weekend races of my local track club reminds me of the great wellness community that I live in. My vision board includes images of positive experiences I want to have in my life and I see it every day. Seek out people, places, and events that support your wellness goals and the influence will be very positive.

3.   Ignore and shun the negative. Sometimes living in the positive means taking deliberate action against the negative.  This can be hard because at times it means ending relationships that are antithetical to your goals, which can be painful.  But, every time I have made the difficult decision to remove a negative influence from my life, it has been replaced with so much wonderful that I've been rewarded beyond my wildest dreams.  Sometimes it just takes the will to be positive no matter what.

Your fitness and wellness goals are yours, but it takes more than just you alone to accomplish them.  It also requires a positive environment and influences.  Luckily, you can create them quickly and put them to work right away!  This week, look around and put some mental sticky notes on what is positive and what is negative in your life, and take some steps towards the positive.

I'll see you there!

Good day!

Guess what? You're not as fat as you think you are.

Women: have you told yourself how fat you are this week? Have you told someone else?  Chances are, there have been half a dozen instances of negative self-talk in your life this week.  I'm guilty, too! 

Now be honest again... are you actually fat?  I mean clinically, are you fat?  Is your body fat percentage over 30%?  Is your waist more than 35 inches around?  Is your BMI over 30?  If not, shut it.

It's a major pet peeve of mine: women who look perfectly fine going on and on about how fat they are when they aren't.  I used to do it all the time, and sometimes I still catch myself asking my husband if I look fat or complaining that I "feel fat".  But I am not actually fat. Intellectually I know this, but after years of being a woman in America who is conditioned to believe that the only path to beauty is through unattainable physical perfection, its hard to believe.

About a year ago I stopped reading fashion and gossip magazines. They just made me feel bad about myself.  I also made a promise to start being nicer to myself and stop expecting to be perfect all the time.  The more I practiced positive self-talk, the better I felt, and the better I started to look to myself.  Over time, I started noticing more and more how many women are still in automatic put-down mode. 

So if you're one of those women who is not actually fat but can't stop telling yourself you are, here's what helped me stop:

1. Focus on your body's strength, not it's size.  In the past two years I have completed the Ultimate Fitness Challenge, ran two half-marathons, and completed a triathlon.  An unfit person would not have been able to do those things.  Once I realized that, it became easier to focus on what my body could do, not what it could fit into. 

2. Do some research.  Get online and start learning about the actual benchmarks for obesity.  Get your body composition measured and start using actual data as a tool for determining your fatness, not your mirror.

3. Every day, celebrate something you love about your body.  Yes, I mean every day.  There is something about your physical self that you can appreciate.  It can be the same thing two days in a row!  The point is to get into the habit of appreciating the beauty you already have.

4. Stop getting second opinions.  Who cares if someone else thinks you're fat.  The only opinion of you that matters is yours.

Besides, talking about how fat you are when you're not actually fat makes the actually fat people around you feel even worse. 

I've gone through a period lately of feeling fat and hearing myself slip into those old habits of being all down on myself because some physical limitations have kept me from my usual high-intensity workouts.  So, I'm calling myself out on it and inviting you to join me back on the positive path.  Take time today to be nice to yourself.

Good day!

The Power of Positive

I realized yesterday that I spent the first 18 years of my life playing by everyone else's rules and accomplished pretty mediocre things. The next 16 years I played by my own rules and did some really awesome things. I think I am going to stick with my rules.


Last week two awesome things happened thanks to my rules:


1. I was featured on FitJunction.com as their Profile of the Month, which tickled me to no end because not only was I flattered, I actually use the site to read up on fitness trends, nutrition, workout ideas, and other fitnessy stuff.  So I was super stoked to be interviewed and I hope you'll check it out.


2. I also finally, after years of procrastinating and making excuses and chickening out, I took and passed my ACE Certified Personal Trainer exam. Hundreds of people get certified as personal trainers every week, so it might not seem like that big of a deal to some. But its something I've been working on - albeit verrrry slowwwwly - for a long time.  I am official!  I can't tell you how happy I am to have that behind me!


As I thought yesterday about everyone else's rules versus mine, and I reflected on last week's relative awesomeness, it became pretty clear pretty quick what the difference was between the two:

positive thinking

My number one rule in fitness, health, goal setting, whatever is to visualize positive outcomes.   Visualize yourself acting consistently, recording your data, being accountable, and acting with intention and you will increase the chances of success exponentially. I've used visualization for everything from test taking to just completing a long run and I truly believe that if I can see it, I can do it. 


And if I can't see it, if my vision is cloudy, I tweak the circumstances until I can and go from there.  That's the great thing about fitness goals - you own them and you can change them!


Last week was a good week, and I could not have experienced it without a lot of consistency, data, accountability, and intention...and without the positive people and visualization in my life each day. Thanks for being part of that!


Tomorrow - lessons learned from one of my favorite positive thinkers, the late great Jack LaLanne.


Good day!

New Year Resolution Guide: Love it or leave it!

Pssst...come here! I have a secret!  I have a sure-fire way to ensure that your 2011 fitness goals become reality.  Are you ready?

QUIT THINKING ABOUT THEM AND DO THEM.

Ah, easier said than done, right?  I know, I know. But I do have one tip that really will make a huge difference in your odds: being positive.  One of the most powerful things you can do for your wellness is to surround yourself with positive influences, people, thinking, music...you get it!  It's no secret - positive thinking breeds positive actions. It's amazing how much just smiling when you're feeling down can change your entire attitude.

But here's the thing - what if everything isn't positive? What if everything sucks? What if your family doesn't support you or you have to work all the time at a job you hate or you feel like all of that positive mumbo-jumbo is just a mask over legitimate things that legitmately suck?

In my opinion, you have two choices: love it or leave it.  I've done both. I've changed what I can change, and I've left what I can't. That doesn't mean I always love everything or its always my way or the highway. It just means that I decide to love it (accept it / focus on the positive about it / choose my battles) or leave it (change it / ignore it / toss it). 

So what if your family doesn't support your fitness goals? What if they don't think you can do it? Does that mean you toss your family? Not completely, of course, but you might have to "toss" the specific interactions with family members that degrade your goals.  If your family doesn't encourage you to exercise or eat well, find a group of people who do and talk to your family about other things.  When they see you accomplishing your goals, they'll come around. Don't let their temporary negative attitude hamper your progress.

Not everything can be loved, and not everything can be changed. And, positive thinking is not an excuse for ignoring actual problems.  But in my experience, when I've ditched the negative energy, people, places, and actions and replaced them with positive influences, I've absolutely soared towards success.  As you go through your day, make a mental list of behavior influences were positive versus negative. Then, decide which ones you can change and which ones you're going to leave in 2010.

I'm POSITIVE you can do it! :)