You don’t have to suffer for weight loss and fitness results, but you do—at some point—have to pay the piper and buckle down. Nothing in life is free, and nothing good in life comes without some sacrifice.

Live your life as your own champion by making a commitment and sticking to it. It’s worth a little sacrifice to be able to face yourself.

~Onward

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We all say, “Someday.”

Someday we will lose weight. Someday we will take control of our lives. Someday we will get healthier, stop smoking, exercise, eat more veggies, play with our kids, go to the beach, ride our bikes.

“Someday” will never come unless you make it.

Will you make today your “someday?” Or will you wait?

~Onward

What are you willing to give up to lose weight? Think about it for a second.

Are you willing to give up that second serving of food, the chocolate chip cookie, the extra glass of wine, the 15 minutes of sleep, or the 1 hour of television?

What is being fit and healthy worth to you?

There is no magic in weight loss. You can’t have your cake and be thin, too. You have to pick and choose – what you want and what you are willing to give up to get it. You don’t have to give up everything “fun,” but you’ll need to set priorities and decide what’s important. Otherwise, we go nowhere.

Onward.

~Helen

The secret to weight loss is summed up by this one quote above: You’ve got to want it badly enough. Period.

This Holiday season is the perfect time to see how badly you really want it. Instead of eating with abandoned at every Holiday function, ask yourself one simple little question before you reach for that extra serving: “How badly do I want it?” If you take more cookies than you should, then you’ve learned a valuable truth: You don’t want it badly enough. And there’s nothing wrong with that. When you are ready, when you really want it more than anything else, you will succeed. That’s what happened to me – and how I lost 80 pounds. I wanted to be healthy and fit…more than anything else.

Do you?

Onward.

~Helen

Weight loss success is all about “being ready.” How many times have you tried – and failed – to lose weight? The only reason you have not succeeded is that you didn’t want it bad enough. In other words, you weren’t ready to make the sacrifices it takes to do it. Don’t beat yourself up over it, though. We are often not ready to make necessary changes in our lives. Think about it for a moment: You didn’t change jobs, get married, get divorced, went back to college, started a new hobby…until you were ready. Some day you will be ready – really ready – to lose weight. And then you will succeed.

Onward.

~Helen

“It’s gettin’ it’s gettin’ it’s gettin’ kinda heavy. I’ve got the power.” ~Snap

You find yourself sitting there, a box of cookies in your lap, an empty bag of chips at your feet, a gallon of ice cream half gone. And you wonder, “What happened to my desire to lose weight? What happened to me?”

You might ask yourself where you went wrong, how you cracked, or how you ended up on this eating binge. “Why didn’t I say no?” you question. “Why couldn’t I just walk away? Why wasn’t I stronger?”

The reason, simply and honestly, is that you didn’t want to be strong…because perhaps you no longer believe in your own strength.

Sometimes we let life beat us down. Our day-to-day activities take away much of what is intrinsically “us” at the core. It is our core that is vibrant, strong, healthy, full of life, love and passion. Sometimes our core beings get buried, though, and we forget who we are, and mostly – how strong we are.

So take a moment to look back at your life. Think of all the things you DID do. Maybe you’ve survived a serious childhood illness, lost a beloved pet, overcome your first heartbreak, aced a test you thought you’d fail, or finished college while working full-time. Maybe you’ve experienced a firing or a layoff, carried and borne children, gone through an ugly divorce, lost a parent or a spouse, received an unexpected promotion, walked away from a car accident, or found your soul mate. Possibly you’ve excelled at a sport, learned a new hobby, survived a surgery, or cried with happiness at your child’s graduation.

Grab that little moment and reflect on your loves and losses. Maybe even make a list of what you’ve overcome and what you’ve accomplished. Then look at the cookies – directly into their beady, evil (yummy) chocolate chip eyes – and ask yourself, “I did all of that and I can’t do this? I can’t say ‘no, not right now?’ I can’t lose weight? Really???”

Answer that question to yourself. If you can remember the feelings of empowerment or the relief after surviving something traumatic you will realize that you can say no…that you really are as strong and capable now as you were then.

And you’ve got the power again, baby. Game on.

Onward and forward.

~Helen

There are times, a day or so after a really hard workout, when I really do feel like saying, “Help, I’m alive!” Because a) I need help to get out of bed or even just sit and b) I feel alive. Sometimes, though, after a killer session with – say – kettlebells, I wish I weren’t alive to feel the muscle soreness. That’s when simply lifting my arms or closing my legs becomes a challenge and my body laughs at me.

That level of muscle soreness (DOMS – or delayed onset muscle soreness) is rare if you’ve been working out for awhile, but when you first start an exercise program or change up your workout it’s a familiar feeling. Good pain, as we are prone to say.

Why is the pain good? Because of one simple thing: You know your muscles have been worked. Who cares about the science behind it or why we feel sore? Who cares if it really means anything? The true value of DOMS is how it makes us feel emotionally:  we have done something for us, our bodies, and our minds. This one day, our muscles screaming with every movement, is a day that we have broken free of past patterns, defied the odds, and moved our bodies in a way they aren’t used to.

With every wince we are reminding ourselves that we are strong, determined and alive.

THAT is good pain.

May the DOMS be with you.

Onward and forward.

–

There is one date that is magical for many people. It is filled with hope and idealistic dreams as new and unmarked as freshly fallen snow. The slate is wiped clean and empty as time starts anew, and anything feels possible. This special date? January 1, home of the New Year’s Resolution.

New Year’s resolutions are the conventional end to the Holiday season. Each year people all over the world party the old year out, with intentions of starting the new year with a bang of positive action. From quitting smoking and saving money to running a marathon, New Year’s Day marks a new beginning. But these new beginnings are often short-lived since four out of five people don’t keep their resolutions.

In fact, 30% don’t even make it to the end of January.

One of the hardest resolutions to keep is the resolution to lose weight and get in shape. Why? Because people often don’t have a plan, or an idea of what it takes to get there and how to stay motivated. They start drastically cutting their calories, over-exercising and trying to undo years of damage in an impossibly short amount of time. By the end of the first week they are hungry, tired and discouraged…and their resolution begins to wane.

Can you be the one that succeeds? Yes, absolutely, by using the most important weight loss tool in your arsenal: Your brain. Success or failure at anything is all in your head so to speak. Weight loss itself truly is easy. It’s simply burning more calories than you take in. So why is so difficult to accomplish? Because of our brains. You need to ‘outsmart your smarts’ and here are five ways to do it.

5. Find the reason. If your motivation to lose weight is to just “be better looking” you are setting yourself up for failure. Being “hotter” is not a real enough goal to keep you from that plate of warm, inviting nachos. Your main motivation should always be your health, not weight loss. Your focus needs to be on balancing your blood sugars, lowering your cholesterol, improving your muscle strength and bone density, and elevating your  mood. Every time you reach for something you think you shouldn’t be eating ask yourself, “How does this benefit my health?” If it doesn’t benefit you, don’t eat it (or don’t eat a lot of it – a little bit is fine). Think of your body as a car, and the foods you eat as the gas (fuel). An apple will fuel you better than a doughnut.

4. See the gray. Don’t look at food and exercise as black or white (“If I eat this cookie, I have blow in and I might as well continue to eat”, or “I don’t have time to go to the gym today so I might as well do nothing”). Black and white thinking gets us all it trouble. The gray areas, though hard to get used to, are where health and happiness meet. Did you drink two glasses of wine instead of one? So what? Just stop now, move on, and remember to pay attention next time. Don’t compound any damage by continuing to eat or drink. One incident really doesn’t matter. It’s your whole week that counts.

3. Find balance. You can be the thinnest and fittest in the land, but will you truly be happy? Probably not. The happiest people are in great shape and overall healthy, but they are not stick-thin and they do indulge once in awhile. After a night of hanging out with friends and eating less healthily, for example, these fit people are back at the gym, full of tales from the night before and no regrets. It’s not a big deal to them. They are both taking care of their physical and emotional needs by giving in once in awhile.

2. Take yourself seriously. We focus so much on everything and everyone around us (our jobs, kids, spouses, activities) that it’s easy to not take our own health seriously. Day after day we often put other people first, leaving our own needs in the dust. The solution? Realizing that every “bad” choice has a longer term consequence on our health than just what we do at the moment. Take your health seriously and make smaller, positive choices every day – for you.

1. Realizing you only have one shot. The life we have is the only life we get and there are no “do-overs.” If you are waiting for that perfect time or the perfect set of situations to start taking care of yourself and losing weight, it’s not going to happen. You have to make things happen. On your own. Now. Today. Before it’s too late.

Only you can change your life and your mind. By reconsidering the way you think about your life, food, and exercise will you be successful with weight loss. You will begin to see a larger picture, and not just the moment…and you will be happier, thinner and most of all, healthier.

~Helen

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