Obesity related diseases are on the rise, as are the number of People who are just plain unhappy with how their bodies look and feel. Cooking at home seems to be the first step in our road to healthier bodies.

Here are the top 5 reasons that you should starting cooking and eating at home…

Reason #1: Your Health

Hyperprocessed foods are harmful to our health, and that’s exactly where you’ve been getting the bulk of your calories. Even restaurant food that contains fresh produce, chances are high that the produce is not organic, or local or non-GMO. Most of us are eating less than half of the recommended amount of fiber, fruit and vegetables, which eating at home could quickly change.

Simple meals made at home with fresh produce and organic meats or eggs are nutritionally superior to over-flavored, over-processed restaurant food. Not to mention the high calorie beverages and starters that so often accompany a restaurant meal. When you eat at home you take in more nutrient-dense calories that are higher in fiber.

Reason #2: It’s Easy

Eating out so often has conditioned our concept of a meal to be one with complicated flavors and accompaniments. This misconception has made us fear the kitchen. But I urge you to reconsider.

Meals made at home need not mirror those ordered in restaurants. On the contrary, simple is better when it comes to home cooking. Plan your entire meal around a couple of pieces of fresh produce and a wholesome, lean protein. No need for complicated sauces or sides – these are where the harmful calories hide anyway.

Reason #3: It’s Cheap

Fresh, simple ingredients do not cost much. Especially when compared to the cost of prepared meals. Bittman’s advice on ingredient shopping is to, “Buy what you can afford, and cook it yourself. Rice, beans, bacon, salad, bread –few things are cheaper than that.”

Shopping the perimeter of the store is always a good plan. Here you’ll find fresh produce, meats, dairy and seafood. Venture into the aisles for oils and spices to compliment the fresh ingredients.

Reason #4: It’s Proactive

In the US the annual health care expenses related to obesity is $150 billion, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Worldwide this number is over $1 trillion annually. These numbers are staggering, and sobering when you think of all the individual lives that are being negatively impacted by obesity.

Rather than waiting for you and your family members to experience the health risks related to obesity, start your own mission to cook simple meals at home and redirect your future. Remember the words of Benjamin Franklin, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

Reason #5: It’s Slimming

Eating at home is also one of the best ways to reduce your body fat. Bittman states that meals eaten at home contain an average of 200 calories less than meals eaten out. Let me tell you, a reduction in 200+ calories per meal will quickly translate to pounds lost!

Start today, and don’t be afraid to start small.

Pick one meal that you’ll make at home either today or tomorrow, and write down your simple menu and grocery list.

And let’s not forget the place that a challenging, consistent exercise program has in your quest for good health and a fit physique. My programs are specially designed to blast fat and to build muscle in all the right places.

There are two distinctly different approaches to losing the fat and getting into amazing shape. One of these approaches works. (Every. Single. Time.) And the other approach fails. (Every. Single. Time.)

I call these the Fitness Short Game and the Fitness Long Game. Let’s find out which game you’re playing…

Fitness Short Game: Those who choose to play short are looking for the quick fix. They are looking for the program that will give them dramatic fat loss results in the shortest amount of time. They want results, they want it NOW, and they don’t play to stick with it. This is the instant gratification crowd.

Fitness Long Game: Those who choose to play long are focusing on making lifestyle changes to sustain for the long haul. They are working on steadily adapting healthier habits and putting in the time and effort to maintain these improvements. They are patient and focused on their end goal, knowing full well that gratification will be delayed, and results will be permanent.

Which of these two strategies to you think leads to pounds lost and muscles sculpted? There’s no question that playing the fitness long game is the only way to successfully transform your health and your body.

Let’s take a closer look at what it means to play the Fitness Long Game…

1) Create a Long Term Vision

A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step…and also with a selected destination. The first step in playing the fitness long game is to have a clear picture in your mind of what the success you are striving for looks like.

What will you look like when you’ve hit your fitness stride? How often will you exercise each week to maintain your fab new body? What foods will you eat to support your muscles and aid your fat loss? How many hours each night will you sleep? Who will you spend your time with?

The clearer your vision, the steadier your path, and the more likely your chance to succeed.

2) Learn to Delay Gratification

As you read above, no one attains a hot body through quick, miracle fixes. This means that as you strive towards your goal you will need to practice the art of delayed gratification.

This is not to say that there won’t be victories along the way, to fuel your fire and give you a boost of motivation. Pay attention to every little victory, such as every single pound lost, each size down, and compliments from friends and family. Learn to derive gratification from each inch of progress towards your goal.

Imagine how sweetly gratifying it will be to achieve your long term vision and lean into this feeling when the going gets tough.

3) Fall in Love with the Process

Why is it that you aren’t in tiptop shape right now? Because you’ve fallen in love with the process of being out-of-shape. You’ve fallen in love with the hours on your couch, the comfort food, the late night desserts and the extra hours of sleep in the morning.

Playing the fitness long game means falling in love with the process of getting fit. You must fall in love with the early morning wake up, the muscle pain, the sweaty clothes and the clean foods. Remember, this process is part of your long term vision for your fit life, and so accepting the new habits now, rather than later, will get you to your goals faster.

Won’t getting and staying in shape be that much easier if you LOVED the habits and actions necessary for your success?

4) Take Notice of All Progress

On week 2 of a 12-week challenge you will not wake up looking like a fitness competitor. You’ll wake up sore, tired, and probably hungry. The scale will tell you that you’ve lost a modest number of pounds, and you’ll mentally calculate the percentage left to lose. You’ve barely scratched the surface.

I’ll bet if you tried you could find half a dozen signs of your early progress. Sure, these may be undetectable to everyone else, but it’s your body so you can feel the change before anyone else can see it. Take the time to stop and congratulate yourself on every inch of progress in your journey.

No step is too small to celebrate.

5) Focus Less on What You Want and More on Who You Want to Become

What you want is to look a certain way, to feel a certain way, and to have others look at you in a certain way. It’s easy to imagine what you want. However, it’s who you become that dictates what you get.

Spend time focusing on the kind of person who achieves the things that you want to achieve. What are their daily habits? What do they do differently than you do? What can you learn from them? By focusing on the kind of person that you need to become, you will automatically achieve the success that you want.

Transform your daily habits to those of the person who has achieved the things you wish to achieve.

Are you ready to transform your body once and for all by playing the fitness long game? Call or email me now to get started!

There’s something that the fitness industry doesn’t want you to know…

In fact, I believe that this is the biggest secret to attaining that perfectly fit body that you’ve wanted for so many years.

It’s not that you aren’t trying to workout and eat right, it’s just that you haven’t been able to find that one thing to take you all the way to success.

Now, finally, I’m going to share that one thing.

It’s quite simple, and yet stands as the truest and most important fitness advice you’ll ever receive…

The big secret is that…Your daily habits create your body.

What do I mean by daily habits? The things that you consistently do on a daily basis determine your body’s shape, strength and stamina.

That’s it.

Nothing else matters as much as those daily habits.

No fitness gadget, or outfit, or pills, or powders will get you results if your daily habits are working against you.

The problem is that most people have bursts of fitness motivation, when you eat clean and workout hard for a short time…but then the motivation wears off and you go back to your daily habits.

That familiar routine that gives you comfort and security.

Your only focus, when it comes to shaping up your body, should be to make and keep a handful of healthy, daily habits. When these healthy habits become your comfortable routine, then you’ve hit fitness gold.

This is great news for two reasons:

1. First, when you do something habitually it no longer requires a lot of brain power or motivation to get it done. It pretty much happens automatically. So once you’ve settled into your daily habits you’ll easily maintain them.

2. Second, once your daily habits have been around long enough to transform your body, you get to give up the struggle of trying to lose weight. That quest, which has taken up so much of your time and mental energy, will be put to rest, leaving you time to go out and enjoy your life.

Once you’ve achieved that body of your dreams the fun really begins. Your life will take on a whole new dimension of energy, excitement, confidence and adventure.

So let’s take a few moments to determine which healthy, daily habits you will begin to include in your daily life, and continue to prompt yourself to do these until it becomes automatic and comfortable.

While you have unique situations and abilities, here is a list of ideas of healthy daily habits to get you started…

• Daily resistance training workout – same time each day.
• Daily cardio bonus workout (walk, jog, bike etc) – same time each day.
• Daily protein shake to replace breakfast or lunch.
• Daily meal prepped portions of protein, carbs and veggies.
• Daily water drinking – bring your water bottle with you.
• Daily green drink.
• Daily salad.
• Daily bonus push-ups at home.

Go on, get working on your own personal list of daily fitness habits. Make these realistic actions that you could fit into your daily life, and watch as your body effortlessly transforms over the next several weeks.

Quick note for you overachievers: resist the urge to commit to difficult or extreme daily habits.

This isn’t one of your fitness bursts that fizzle out shortly – these habits are meant for the long run. So instead of saying that you’ll run 6 miles each day, only commit to 2 miles. Do those 2 miles every day for a few months and you’ll see the value and truly life-changing powers of a daily habit.

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When it comes to excuses for not exercising, I’ve heard them all.

Sometimes the excuse is self-inflicted: I don’t have the time.

Other times the excuse is pure procrastination: I’m going to start as soon as tax season ends.

And then there are excuses that are downright funny: I don’t like to sweat.

As delicately as possible, I point out to these well meaning excuse-makers that, even though they don’t want to do it, exercise is an important part of cultivating a strong, healthy and attractive body.

I tell them that if they would just exercise 2 to 4 times each week they would feel a dramatic improvement in their daily life, starting with renewed energy and strength.

Then I bring up the health benefits and explain how many of their health problems would improve or even disappear. I talk about how great they will feel, and look, dropping those extra pounds and rediscovering a slender figure.

Even with all this experience in excuse squashing, there used to be an excuse that would leave me stumped.

The sneaky excuse of ‘I’m active’: Oh, I don’t need to exercise with a personal trainer—I’m very active. I play golf and tennis and Wii.

Well, that is a good excuse, right? Golf, tennis and Wii are all active sports that burn calories. Maybe you can be fit without doing any other exercise…

And then I started noticing a trend.

The ‘golf’ people couldn’t touch their toes in a simple flexibility test. The ‘tennis players’ couldn’t jump rope for 60 seconds. The ‘Wii players’ needed a week to recover from a one mile jog. The so-called ‘active’ people encountered injury after injury.

And then it hit me.

You can’t become fit simply by being active.

Only by being fit can you become more active.

To be lean and to maintain a level of fitness there is no substitute for a consistent, challenging exercise program. It’s the only way, folks.

To truly be fit is when your body is able to do whatever you ask of it. This comes from a combination of flexibility, strength and endurance.

So, do you exercise?

Or are you fooling yourself with the idea of ‘being active’?

How do you feel about your current level of fitness? Are you able to do each and everything you want? Or do you end up opting out of activities that you know would be too challenging?

If you’ve used the excuse of ‘being active’ in the past, take a minute to reconsider your position. Don’t bank on your ‘active’ lifestyle with the hope of true results.

Call or email me today to get started on an exercise program that will make you truly fit.

And if you’re furthest from active but simply want to lose those extra inches and pounds, make the decision to contact me today.

As they say…there’s no trial run in the game of life.