Happy New Year!!!
Well, here we are. The first full week of 2019 is in the books.
I for one am grateful God created time, and gave us a structured pattern of days, weeks, months and years by which we can plan our lives. I am especially thankful for the new year, because every 365 days it’s like we get a fresh start.
If you’re anything like me, it’s a time to look back over the past year and reflect. A time to celebrate things we did well, and a time to re-evaluate areas that didn’t quite improve as much as we’d hoped.
It’s also a time to set new goals and plan ahead to ensure the next year is better than the last. For many that means losing weight, exercising more or just choosing healthier habits overall.
In fact, of those Americans who make New Year’s resolutions each year, those three goals top the list every time. Unfortunately, studies find that up to about 80 percent of Americans have failed in their resolutions by February.
I too, start each new year monitoring my fitness journey along with my spiritual journey.
Usually by this time, my wardrobe has made it painfully aware that I have indulged in one two many sugary treats over the holidays, and I know it’s time to dial in my eating. However, this year, thanks to a great new exercise program I started in the fall, I will be happy to simply maintain my present fitness level.
Regardless, I’m sure a lot of you are probably hoping to either maintain a healthy lifestyle or improve some unhealthy habits you have in the coming year. Maybe you don’t need to lose weight, but you do want to exercise more or eat healthier.
Whatever the case, in order to help you meet those goals, I thought I’d give you three steps for success.
As I said in my earlier post about fitness, I am no expert, but by God’s grace, I have had a lot of success both setting and achieving my fitness goals.
While there is a ton of good advice to be found about improving our health through fitness, I think it’s best to keep it simple. There are a few basic components that are foundational for any long-term success. Just three main ingredients required to achieve and maintain your goals.
While there are only three, they are not to be taken lightly. In fact, they are guaranteed to work, but only if you give them the utmost importance.
That said, let’s begin.
Hard work
Let me just lay this out there from the beginning. Getting healthy – especially if you have acquired more than a few bad habits over the years and most certainly if it includes losing and keeping off some pounds – is not easy. If it were there’d be no need for Weight Watchers or diet pills or personal trainers.
That’s why, from the very beginning of the process, you need to prepare yourself mentally as well as physically. You need to accept the fact that change is hard. Changing any kind of habit you have formed over a lifetime is not an easy task, whether it’s eating or exercising.
You also have to embrace the fact that you can do it. Just because something is hard, doesn’t mean it’s impossible. In fact, anything worth having in this life, usually takes a little effort to achieve.
Think of your education. Was that easy? For most of us, it included at least 12 long years of work, study, memorization, etc. It was difficult, but the benefits at the end were enormous. That’s the way you have to think of your fitness goals. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.
The hardest work you will do physically, of course, when it comes to attaining a healthy lifestyle is exercise.
People seem to have a love or hate relationship with exercise, at least any type of regular exercise program, and most that I come in contact with hate it.
Fortunately, I have never had that problem. Like I mentioned in my earlier post, ever since I first started back in 1986, I have loved exercising regularly. It just makes me feel alive, and I find most people who say they hate exercise have just never found the right one for them.
If you are one of those who hates it, I can understand your resistance. Trust me, I have my days when the last thing I feel like doing is hitting play and pushing through a workout. Then there are the days when I feel pushed for time, and can’t possibly see how I could fit my workout in.
Like it or not, it is a necessary evil. I don’t think I need to explain the benefits or the necessity of adding a regular exercise plan to a healthy lifestyle.
You would have had to live under a rock your whole life not to have read at least one article or heard at least one news report about all the health benefits gained from exercise. And that’s not just for the overweight. Thin people need exercise every bit as much as not so thin ones. Skinny doesn’t automatically equal healthy.
But rather than tell you things you already know, I’d really like to tell you some things that you don’t know and that may actually help motivate you to get up off the couch and give this exercise thing a try.
It really does help to find something you enjoy to make it through those tough spots.
First, it may help to figure out if you prefer working out in a gym, or at home. I have done both. I have succeeded at both. I have enjoyed both, but I much prefer working out at home.
When i first started dating my husband, we worked out at the gym together. I enjoyed that a great deal.
After my first baby, that gym membership helped me take off my baby weight in about four months.
I liked that I had access to all kinds of equipment at the gym and could mix up both my cardio and resistance workouts.
I didn’t like that I had to share that equipment with dozens of other sweaty, germ-infested people.
I also didn’t like having to leave my new baby with my husband or my parents so I could have time to workout, even though they were more than wiling to do it.
After I had my second baby and became a stay at home mom, I had no time for trips to the gym, but I still wanted to get my baby weight off. My sweet husband bought me an elliptical machine that Christmas for our home.
It had been one of my favorite machines at the gym. It wasn’t a lot of money and worked just as well as the one I had used at the gym.
I used it almost exclusively to work off my baby weight and then alternated it with my workout videos after that.
Ever since I got my first job I have purchased workout videos to do at home. From Billy Blanks and his Taebo craze to the girls of The Firm, I have squatted, lunged and kickboxed my way through dozens of home workouts.
I have always gotten great results from them, and I adore the flexibility of working out at home – especially when I had napping babies.
The thing I didn’t like was that, even though each program usually came with a number of different workouts, when I tired of them, I didn’t have a whole lot to fall back on. Even worse, sometimes my body would get bored with them before I did, it would adapt and before you know it the dreaded exercise plateau would set in.
Once I got my elliptical, and started alternating the two, it greatly helped with the plateaus.
Then, just a few years ago, a company that I bought one of my very first sets of workout videos from transformed the at-home workout world.
Beachbody, which had created several of the videos I owned, and several others I wanted to own, began streaming their service online.
This meant that for a yearly fee, less than I had paid for my gym membership, I could get access to ALL of their exercise programs. The fee included not just the programs themselves, but the workout calendars and meal plans that came with them.
Wow!!!
If you are serious about starting an exercise program, and, like me, love the convenience of working out from home, I would highly recommend Beachbody on Demand.
No, I don’t work for them or get paid by them in any way. I just think they’re an amazing company who has figured out how to help people get in shape.
There is truly something for everybody. Whether you are a beginner and need to take it slow, or you are on an intermediate or advanced fitness level looking for a challenge, you can find what you need at Beachbody.
They have everything from yoga, to dance to strength training – all at a beginner level. Even their popular more advanced programs like Insanity and P90x have modified moves you can follow for each workout.
Also, if you need some extra motivation and work better in a group, you can sign up for a Beachbody coach. It is no extra cost and can be of great benefit. I have a friend who is a coach and does an amazing job of keeping her team challenged and encouraged.
She runs challenge groups all the time in which those interested join in and go through one of the entire Beachbody programs. They have either an app or a facebook page or something in which they will enter their workout each day, recipe suggestions, struggles they’re having, etc.
I have always been more of a self-motivator but for those who aren’t I can see how those challenge groups would be of immense benefit.
No matter what exercise you choose, or whether you prefer working out at home or in a gym, the most important thing is that you do it – consistently.
There’s just no good reason not to.
Discipline
Another tough word.
Most people grimace at the mere thought of the word discipline.
For some reason it seems to have taken on a negative connotation in our world today, when its application is anything but negative.
There are several different forms of the word, but the definition we are talking about as regards getting healthy has to do with – self control. And it is essential to any healthy lifestyle.
If you are going to commit to regular exercise, you are going to need discipline.
If you are going to change your eating habits, you are going to need discipline.
Every step of the process requires it.
When someone brings doughnuts in to work, and you’ve committed to cutting out high sugar treats.
When your muscles are already sore from working out, and you just feel like taking the day off.
When you think you’ve been nailing this fitness thing for weeks, and the scale still refuses to move.
Anytime temptations lure you to lose all abandon and give in – that’s when you need to be able to control your own self.
That’s when you need the will power to just say, “NO!”
This is an area in which I have been greatly blessed by God, and I’m sure the key reason for my success in achieving and maintaining a healthy lifestyle for so long.
Sure, we may naturally be given certain attributes of our personality that make it easier or harder to instill in our lives, but everyone can make whatever they’ve been given better.
This article from Forbes.com lists at least five ways you can work on your own amount of self control.
Along with that, don’t forget our most important source for increasing our self discipline – the Holy Spirit. While I don’t list it here because I’m mostly discussing the nonspiritual things that can help, obviously prayer is our number one weapon in the battle of the bulge, or the battle to get healthy or whatever.
I mention it specifically here because, lest we forget, self control is one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit. So don’t tell me you have no self discipline. If you are saved, you have the Holy Spirit living inside of you and if you are growing and blossoming like you should, self control should be one of the byproducts of that growth.
Work on it. Pray about it. He will help you! It’s important to him too!
While staying on track with exercise is pretty easy for me, keeping on track with my diet is not.
That’s where I need the most self discipline.
I LOVE food!!! All kinds of food – good for me or not.
And I have tried all kinds of eating plans to help me find the right balance.
I have done low carb, low sugar, no sugar, – you name it, I’ve probably tried it.
The best and most healthy eating plan I’ve discovered, though, is a proper combination of all the food groups monitored by one simple word – moderation, moderation, moderation!
Totally cutting out certain food groups may work for some, but it does not work for me – not long term anyway. I also don’t see how that can be healthy.
Pushing yourself away from the table when you really want a second helping takes discipline.
Decreasing your intake of certain foods you love, but know aren’t good for you in large quantities, takes even more.
I love bread!!! I love homemade rolls with vegetable beef soup and garlic bread with lasagna.
I love a loaf of fresh Italian bread with spaghetti. Yum! Yum.
But I know that too much white flour not only is not good for me, it also puts the pounds on my hips faster than just about anything.
That’s why I have greatly reduced the amount of white flour I eat. If I feel like a sandwich, I might put it on a lettuce wrap or have a chef salad instead.
That way, when we have something special, like homemade rolls, I can enjoy them and not feel guilty or worried that my pants won’t fit right the next day!
I have found that portion control and monitoring how much of each food group I am eating, has given me much more success than counting calories.
Beachbody has a lot of different meal plans included with their workouts and the one I like best tells you how much of each food group you need a day, then gives you a list of all these different foods you could eat from each food group.
For example, according to my weight I need four servings of protein a day. They provide a huge list of foods high in protein. It starts with the healthiest most nutrient-dense foods, and goes down from there.
It is like that for each food group.
It makes it super easy to follow and gives you a lot of different options.
It also gave you a built-in cheat day to use once a week.
Obviously, they cautioned you not to consume your week’s worth of calories in that one day, but to give yourself a special treat for one meal or dessert during that day.
I always seem to work harder and persevere better if I have something to look forward to in the end.
I can consume my proper portion of veggies and water all week if I know come Friday I get a big cheesy piece of pepperoni pizza and a Mountain Dew.
The key is, to go right back to your healthy eating the next day and not let it derail your progress – again it takes discipline.
The point in telling you all of this is not that I think you should do everything I do. It’s to let you know that if you have a little bit of discipline, it’s possible to eat right and still enjoy life.
If I, the girl who used to eat Oreos and Mountain Dew for breakfast, can make a healthy life change, live to tell the tale, and actually feel better for doing so, you can too!
It just takes a little – say it with me – discipline!
Perseverance
The final ingredient for achieving your fitness goal is perseverance.
Without it, even an abundance of the first two ingredients won’t amount to much.
I don’t care how hard you work, or how disciplined you are, there will be days when you want to throw in the towel.
When the going gets tough, the tough use perseverance.
If you look at the dictionary definition its like it was tailor-made for explaining getting healthy – “steadfastness in doing something despite difficulty or delay in achieving success.”
Difficulty – The baby had you up all night, you’re supposed to be classroom helper for your oldest all morning and today is your dreaded cardio day.
Delay – You started an eight-week exercise program and set a modest goal to lose 10 pounds. At five weeks in, you are three pounds down, but the scale has stopped moving and you are tired and hungry.
In times like these, perseverance is the only thing that will pull you through.
It doesn’t mean you have to do everything perfectly or at the exact time you’d like. It simply means you don’t quit.
Maybe you have to modify a few moves some days. Maybe you modify them every day, at least you’re moving.
Maybe you have to do a different workout than the one you had planned, but you determine to at least do something.
When that scale won’t budge, mix it up. Add something new to your routine, or change it up all together. Perhaps you could ask a friend or a coach for advice.
Perseverance is key because when plans come unraveled and circumstances discourage, it’s perseverance that keeps us going.
And let’s face it, the best laid plans have a way of coming unraveled.
Life happens to all of us, and when it does, it’s those with perseverance who are able to see it as an obstacle to step around rather than a barrier that stops you completely.
In this aspect, above the others, I lean on the one who is perfectly steadfast – my Savior.
Don’t ever think that your weight loss or fitness journey is not important to him.
If He cares enough to number the hairs on our head, He cares about our entire bodies and our struggles to keep them healthy!
Knowing that He created this body and He wants to help me take care of it and make it the best it can be has helped me stay the course more than one time throughout the years.
Believing that Philippians 3:14 is more than just words on a plaque on my wall, has helped me lean on God’s strength to get me through.
We really can do ALL things – even very hard things – through His strength.
My prayer is that you will be able to use His power to strengthen these three areas of your life and achieve your goals for good health in 2019.
I will be cheering you on, and if you feel you need a little extra help, hit me up on facebook or shoot me an email and I’ll introduce you to my friend, Katie – the Beachbody coach.
Also, if you have any tips or encouragement for helping others keep on track in their fitness journey, feel free to let me know in the comments.