How effective is your exercise time?

Do you workout enthusiastically, feeling the burn with a smile, pushing yourself to the limit?

Or would you describe your exercise time more like an even trot? Coasting along, breaking a respectable sweat, doing the same old thing.

Since you take the time to exercise and desire to have your body change into a slimmer, more toned version of yourself, then use the following tips to get more out of your exercise time.

• Focus your mental energy. It sounds simple, but often isn’t. If you’re lifting weights, focus on that specific muscle group. Researchers saw a significant increase in muscle activity when people focused on what they were doing, compared to thinking about unrelated topics.
• Pump up the volume. Listen to upbeat music while you exercise. Researchers found that personal music motivated weightlifters to complete two more repetitions on average than those who were not listening to music.
• Keep things fresh. Alter your routine often. This will help you to avoid plateaus and will continue to challenge your body. Try new exercises, new intensities and new environments.
• Stay nourished and hydrated. Pay attention to your food and your hydration levels. You’d be amazed how much being dehydrated can affect your performance even away from the gym.
• Find your magic time. Work out when your body is at its best. If you’re not a morning person, do not force the issue on your body.
• Wear clothes that you love. Not only will you be happy to put them on and show them off, but you will be able to focus completely on the task at hand, rather than stressing that your pants will split whenever you squat.
• Make sure the shoe fits. Can you imagine a tap dancer performing without tap shoes? Your shoes are just as important! With correctly fitted shoes for your workout or sport, you’ll keep your feet, ankles, knees, and back protected and healthy.
• Use a professional. If you don’t already, have me design your workouts. This will ensure that you’re being challenged and seeing results.

Can you image how you would look?

Every parent wants good things for their children: a positive outlook on life, a healthy respect for authority, a strong sense of self, a disease-free body…a healthy body weight.

Despite our best intentions, a recent report suggests that for the first time in two centuries, the current generation of children may have a shorter life expectancy than their parents.

With all the advances in medicine, how could this possibly be true? The blame falls squarely on today’s toxic food environment.

In short, your kids are eating too much junk.

And who can blame them? Junk food tastes great.

The good news is that healthy food also tastes great. Take these simple tips and transform your child’s diet into one that is packed with good health.

1) Add Colour

Adding bright and colourful fruits and veggies to your child’s plate will get their diet on the fast track to health. Fresh fruits and veggies are filled with fibre, vitamins and minerals that are essential to good health.

If your kids are resistant then make it fun. Serve veggies with salad dressing as a dip. Cut fresh fruit in the colours of the rainbow and place them on a skewer. Serve a colour themed meal – all green, all red or all orange. Use your imagination and you’ll come up with an endless number of ways to make fruits and veggies fun to eat.

2) Think Whole Foods

Processed foods are the biggest problem with our modern diet. Packaged and refined food products are devitalised and filled with empty calories that quickly lead to weight gain. Unfortunately, processed foods make up a large portion of the diet of many children.

Train your kids to opt for whole foods, rather than packaged ones. Whole foods are foods that are in their natural state. An apple. A piece of sprouted grain bread spread with natural peanut butter. A piece of hormone-free chicken. A bowl of beans. You get the idea.

3) Use Wholesome Sweeteners

Refined sugar and corn syrup are packed into many of the foods that your kids love. But wait, there are more wholesome sweeteners available – sweeteners that add vitamins and minerals rather than empty calories. Use the following rather than white sugar or corn syrup:

• Sucanat: This pure, dried sugar can juice retains its molasses content. Use it to replace white sugar in baking.
• Pure Maple Syrup: Forget the “fake” syrups containing corn syrup. Pure maple syrup contains potassium, calcium and some amino acids.
• Brown Rice Syrup: Use this dark syrupy sweetener instead of corn syrup. It takes longer to digest and won’t spike your blood sugar like refined sugar.
• Dates: Throw a few seeded dates into your blender to sweeten your smoothie rather than adding white sugar.

4) Make Smart Substitutions

Kids love pizza and pasta and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and that’s not going to change any time soon. Rather than fight your kids on their favourites, try making smart substitutions to make their favourites more nutritious.

• Pizza: Up the nutritional content of your pizza by opting for wheat crust over white, adding veggies to the toppings and sticking with lean meat toppings.
• Pasta: Use sprouted grain or whole grain pasta rather than traditional white pasta. Add veggies to your pasta sauce. Stick with red sauce, since white sauce is so high in fat.
• PB&J: A PB&J, made with white bread using sugar-filled peanut butter and corn syrup-filled jelly, is fairly void of any real nutritional value. Make it healthier by using sprouted grain bread, natural peanut butter and fruit-only jam or sliced berries.

5) Ban Sugary Drinks

One of the best things that you can do for your child’s good health is to instill in them a love for water rather than sugary drinks. Soda pop and juices are filled with empty calories that encourage weight gain.

The easiest way to do this is to stock your house with lots of pure, filtered water. Don’t have fruit drinks or soda pop readily available so that they grow accustom to drinking only water.

While I presented these tips as improvements to be made to your child’s diets, these tips will also do wonders for your diet. Try these 5 tips out for 30 days and I guarantee you’ll look and feel better.

Parents all want good things for their children. Now how about doing something good for yourself as well? You are your child’s biggest role model on how to live, for better or worse.

Treat yourself right by calling or emailing today to get started on an exercise programme that will change your life for the best.

Do you have a goal weight?

Or do you have a goal feeling?

IT’S NOT ABOUT REACHING A NUMBER. ,/

A number on the scale is just an idea. How do you get that idea to become reality?

The number that you’re hoping to magically be one day doesn’t matter one bit, and here’s why…

IT’S ABOUT LIVING IN THE MOMENTUM.

Can you remember how it felt the last time that you ate clean, exercised hard and got adequate sleep for a few consecutive days? A feeling of momentum came over you, didn’t it? There was a buzzing in your cells and a rhythm in your pace. You felt alive, you felt sexy, and you felt empowered. Never mind that you weren’t yet at your goal number, you were headed there!

Getting down to your goal weight, and fitting into your goal size, is the direct result of living in that state of momentum for an extended period of time. You see, the momentum can be felt immediately, once you start eating clean, exercising hard and taking care of your health, whereas that “goal number” simply can’t be felt until it is achieved, and so it’s not as powerful a motivator.

My challenge and advice to you is to find the joy of living in the momentum, and keep that momentum going until your goal number is achieved.

Focus only on the momentum, not on the number.

Fitness is a way of life. Being lean is a lifestyle. Neither of which can be had by going about it halfheartedly.

You have to become the momentum. Chase that feeling…and you’ll find the body of your dreams.

Call or email me today and we will get your momentum started on the exercise program that will reshape your body once and for all!

Have you ever acted against your better judgement? Ummmm, of course you have. We all have. Sometimes you do things that you later regret. And this keeps you from achieving that lean, sexy body that you want.

• You hit snooze rather than waking up early to exercise before work.
• You blow off your healthy eating plan to indulge in a hamburger and fries.
• You start an exercise programme only to drop out two weeks into it.

These regrettable actions prevent you from achieving your goals and keep you stuck.

Most of us are all too familiar with this frustrating paradox. It’s almost as if there are two sides inside of you, raging war on each other. Your sensible side versus your emotional side. What you want versus what you do.

A psychologist named Jonathan Haidt came up with a mental model that explains exactly why you do things that you wish you hadn’t – and how to take control to finally do the actions necessary to get what you really want.

“The image I came up with for myself, as I marvelled at my weakness [of willpower], was that I was a rider on the back of an elephant. I’m holding the reins in my hands, and by pulling one way or the other I can tell the elephant to turn, to stop, or to go. I can direct things, but only when the elephant doesn’t have desires of his own. When the elephant really wants to do something, I’m no match for him,” explained Haidt in his book, The Happiness Hypothesis.

Human decision making is like a tiny rider on a massive elephant. The rider may think he’s in charge, but the elephant’s will always wins. The Elephant, The Rider, and The Path are a great framework for understanding yourself and what drives you. All human change depends on it.

Here’s Haidt’s mental model for creating lasting change in greater detail…

The Rider: is your rational and analytical side. The Rider is a visionary that has the ability to think long-term, to plan, and that is willing to make short-term sacrifices for long-term payoffs. The Rider loves to contemplate and analyse, has limited reserves of strength, suffers from paralysis by analysis, and relentlessly focuses on problems rather than solutions. Most crucially, the Rider is so small compared to the six-ton Elephant that anytime they disagree about which direction to go, the Rider will lose.

The Elephant: is made up of your emotions and instincts. The Elephant prefers the comfort and security of a well-trodden path, even if a new path leads to a better outcome – this is why it’s so difficult to change your habits. The Elephant has enormous strengths: love and compassion and sympathy and loyalty. The Elephant is the one who gets things done.

The Path: is your surrounding environment, the context in which the Rider and the Elephant operate. A rocky Path makes change hard, if not impossible, even when the Rider and the Elephant work together.

There are three steps to lasting change:

• Direct the Rider
• Motivate the Elephant
• Shape the Path

1) Direct the Rider:

Change begins with a plan, and it’s the Rider who comes up with plans. Direct your Rider to analyse what’s right, on what works. When you’voe lost weight and made progress towards your fitness goals in the past what worked for you? Focus on these bright spots rather than on potential problems related to your desired change. Once you’voe come up with a plan, move on. It’s important to move quickly and to avoid getting bogged down with paralysis by analysis.

2) Motivate the Elephant:

In order for the plans of your Rider to succeed, your Elephant must feel emotionally invested in the outcome. Find an emotional connection that you feel deep down in relation to the goal. Don’t just think about why you want to achieve your goal – feel why you need to achieve your goal.

3) Shape the Path:

Make change easy. Reduce obstacles in your life, so that the new desired behaviour is frictionless. Move the barriers between you and the actions that you want to take. Lay out your workout clothes the night before. Spend time in the morning to prep all of your healthy daily meals. Get a trainer to hold you accountable to showing up to your workouts.

The key to effective change is getting the Elephant and the Rider moving together on a smooth path to success. Do this and you’ll stop doing things that you later regret.

If getting into the best shape of your life is a current goal that you wish you could achieve then call or email me today. I’m here to help you direct your Rider, motivate your Elephant and shape your Path…and I won’t rest until your goal has become a reality!