Category Archives: Health & Fitness Blog

Best Effort

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I was reading about what the famous basketball coach John Wooden said to his players. He told them that he didn’t consider winning the most important thing. As a matter of fact, he never mentioned winning to his players. He stressed “best effort” for everybody, and felt that a player should feel badly only if he didn’t give it his all.

That really hit me recently as I was running along side my running buddy. We are side by side as long as we’re running at a steady pace, but when it’s time to sprint, she bolts out way ahead of me. Knowing I was giving it MY best effort put all my feelings of failure of not being able to keep up with her away. I felt great knowing that I had given it my all and I could feel proud of my workout. I don’t dread her sprinting ahead anymore. She is 30 years younger than I am, so I shouldn’t be feeling that bad anyway! I want to know that I’ve done my best and that is success. I’m glad that I came to that conclusion before her 20 year old friend joined us too!

Seven Ingredients to a Healthy & Fit Lifestyle #7

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Ingredient #7 is, you guessed it! EXERCISE! All I can say about this one is find something you love to do and do it. And learn to love some form of resistance training. Use weights or your body weight to build and strengthen your muscles. Increased muscle mass increases your metabolism. Your body will burn more calories and burn them efficiently when you lift weights. You can actually reshape your body by weight training. No need to worry about bulking up. Most women won’t. You can tone your muscles and have a remarkable outcome by resistence training. Start out slowly and with light weights. The more you build up your muscles, the stronger you will get. The stronger you get, the more your metabolism will crank up and turn into a calorie burning machine. Muscles burn more calories than fat does. And if we don’t use them, we’ll eventually lose them.

Do some form of exercise 3 to 4 days a week minimum. Find something you enjoy. Do something you’ll keep doing, not something you dread. Good options are walking, running, biking, hiking, swimming, zumba and dancing. Anything that gets your body moving.

Now here’s some really NEAT tricks for burning more fat. It’s called Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT). NEAT includes all of your physical activity throughout the day, excluding your “formal” workouts such as casual walking, shopping, yard work, housework, standing, pacing and even little things like talking, chewing, changing posture and fidgeting. You can implement more NEAT activity into your life by taking the stairs, stand or pace more, get up more often throughout the day and walk around and stretch, do your own yard work, walk instead of driving short distances.

Earl Loomis said: “We deny our talents and abilities because to acknowledge or confess them would commit us to use them. Don’t deny them please. If you do deny them, you deny your family, yourself, your church, your friends and your community the benefits of the talents that are inside of you.”

There are sees of greatness in each and every one of you.

St. Augustine said: “Man travels hundreds of miles to gaze at the broad expanse of the ocean. He looks in awe at the heavens above and stares in wonderment at the mountains, fields and streams, then passes himself by without a thought. God’s most amazing creation. That is you.”

 

Seven Ingredients to a Healthy & Fit Lifestyle #6

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Ingredient # 6 – Nutrition! Finally we’re going to talk about food!! An ancient Egyptian doctor once said, “Man eats too much. Thus he lives on only a quarter of what he consumes. The doctors however, live on the remaining three quarters! So true. Our doctors are living on our western diet obesity epidemic. Over 1/3 of the U.S. adults are considered obese. That doesn’t even take into account the ones in the overweight category.

Our bodies need to be nurished. When you give your body nutrient dense foods they will fuel your cells. Eating foods as close to the way God made them as possible such as whole fruits, vegetables and grains will give you energy and leave you with a feeling of satisfaction. When you eat processed, empty calorie foods, you’ll be left hungry and craving more because you’re not nurishing it.. Your body wants to be fed, but not only just to fill up your stomach, it wants to be nourished with whole, natural, live foods. When you put these types of foods in, your brain’s hunger mechanism automatically turns off. It KNOWS when your body has received what it needs and says “ENOUGH FOOD! YOU CAN STOP EATING NOW!”

If you need to lose weight, keep track of the calories your taking in. You need to eat at a deficit. When you eat less than your total daily energy expenditure, you will lose weight. If you don’t keep track, you’ll have a tendency to forget those few nuts, the cafe’ latte or that bite of cake you just didn’t want to go to waste…but ends up going to your “waist”.  Do you want to double your efforts? Add exercise.

There are many tools on-line that will help you track your calories. MyFitnessPal.com and Livestrong.com/Dailyplate are free and easy to use. Keep track for a few weeks to get an idea of how many calories you’re actually eating. You might be surprised and it may be just the information you need to start you on a plan to lose those extra pounds. It sure works for me.

The foods I’d highly recommend that you start decreasing are sugar, sodas, white flour, cakes, cookies, processed foods, fried foods and ice cream. Add in green leafy vegetables, high protein grains such as quinoa, beans, lentils and fresh fruits.

Eat smaller meals three hours apart. You’ll keep those hunger pangs away if you make sure you’re eating nutrient dense foods every three hours. And did I mention that my energy is through the roof eating this way? It’s true. Try it and see for yourself.

Compliance is what’s important. We’re not expected to be perfect 100% of the time. There will be those occasions to have a treat. But if you are compliant 85 to 90% of the time, then you can enjoy your treats with out any guilt. Who needs extra guilt these days? Go a ahead and have that treat. Only make sure you enjoy it on special occasions only!.

 

Seven Ingredients to a Healthy & Fit Lifestyle #5

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Ingredient #5 is Accountability.

Accountability is huge and it’s a key component to your success. Find someone that you can trust and that you will be accountable to. Show them your goal cards and check in with them regularly. If you want to be successful in your fitness and nutrition goals, get an accountability partner. They can help you stay on track with your fitness goals. Sharing your goals with each other increases your odds of success. Commit to meet often and work together. You will discover a greater level of enthusiasm and energy and achieve more in less time. Other benefits include having a cheerleader or coach to help you when you feel like giving up. – It encourages loyalty, friendship and trustworthiness. – Knowing someone is counting on you keeps you motivated. When I know my running buddy is waiting for me then I know I can’t just blow off my workouts. I also have someone to celebrate my successes with! It’s a great added benefit!

Reaching goals is a lot more fun when it’s done together!

Seven Ingredients to a Healthy & Fit Lifestyle #4

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Ingredient #4: Discipline. Happiness and health is the result of what you do, here and now. As Christine Caine from Hillsong Church says, “Daily disciplines may not seem glamorous, but they provide the foundation to do what we need to do in the future.”

Joyce Meyer says, “We need to meditate on the word of God and here’s the problem. We have bad habits that have to be broken. We are undisciplined in these areas. We are going to have to work with the Holy Spirit diligently and consistently over a period of time so don’t expect that just because you hear this message on discipline you’ll never have a battle again. You’re going to have to fight! It’s much better to fight for your life and fight for victory than it is to try to fight the devil all the time while he’s trying to defeat you.”

She goes on to say that our flesh is a gambler. It thinks it can get away with every little thing it wants. But our spirit is an investor. We might not see rewards right away, but down the road we will have success if we keep doing what we know we need to be doing.  Ephesians 4:23 and Romans 12:2 says that our mind and attitudes must be renewed and Proverbs 23:7 says as a man thinks so is he. Set your mind and keep it set on victory. Make your mind up that you’re not going to remain unhealthy, out of shape and tired all the time.

When I made my mind up things changed. Make up your mind to leave a healthy legacy for your family. Making your mind up and resolving to be healthy and get in shape will bring joy and vision and will increase your energy. Shake off lukewarm, lazy, passive, apathetic, poor me attitudes and say, “I’ve made my mind up! I’m going to be healthy. I’m going to lose the weight I need to lose. I’m going to be an excellent person.” Joyce still speaking here!

Discipline your mouth and watch what comes out of it as well as what goes into it. Every day make your mind up to eat the right foods and get some exercise. Discipline yourself to have a positive attitude and to be obedient to God. This will cost you. You won’t get your way all of the time. It doesn’t FEEL good all of the time. But you will become someone God can use and be proud of.

I was getting ready to go running with my 21 year old running buddy one morning recently and as I was putting on my hat I looked in the mirror, and the thought crossed my mind, “Who do you think you are? Who are you trying to kid, going out running with a 21 year old?” I had to immediately take that thought captive and turn it around to, “Why not me? I’m in pretty dang good shape and I can do this!”

We’re going to have to constanly take our thoughts captive as it says in Second Corinthians 10:5. Negative thoughts will continue to bombard us. Picture the devil as a little “insignificant guy” with a huge mouth that sits on your shoulder and whispers lies into your ear. All we need to do is flick him off!

Start saying out loud: “I am healthy, fit and strong.” “I have more energy than I know what to do with.” “I am living to my full potential in Christ.” “I am giving today my best effort.”

Speak these out loud to yourself until you believe them. When you believe them you will become that person.

How do you view yourself? What image do you see?  If it’s negative or not right, change the way you view yourself. It takes discipline.

Seven Ingredients to a Healthy & Fit Lifestyle #3

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Ingredient #3 and a very important ingredient is MENTAL TRAINING: Mindsets and Attitudes or bottom line, CHOICES! I’ve learned when you put good stuff in your brain, good stuff comes out and the opposite is true as well. Garbage in-garbage out.

I’ve been involved in fat loss challenges since 2009. I followed the plan, did the nutrition part, the workouts and even the mental training part like they say athletes do. You know, visualize the body you want, see it as if you’ve already achieved it. Golfers do this. They visualize every shot before they take it, as well as basketball players before they shoot a hoop. It’s done all the time in sports.

But what I failed to do was “believe” that I could actually achieve what I wanted my body to look like. Now some people have unrealistic expectations of what they’d like to look like. For me, I wasn’t visualizing myself with a 20 something’s body. I knew what I had to work with. I chose a picture of a 45 year old silver medalist in the Olympics a few years back. I wanted a lean, strong and fit looking body like she has.

What I’ve struggled with most is the lower part of my anatomy. Off goes the chest long before the hips budge. I was complaining about this to a coach I was working with on-line and this is the advice I was given. “Whatever body issues you think you have start in your head. Change the way you think about yourself as of now. Create some positive affirmations to take the place of the negatives and keep repeating them until you believe them. Telling yourself that you are not genetically gifted and talking about problem areas and working for every ounce of muscle etc. is extremely counter-productive to your program and will really slow you down. You are who you are and have as much opportunity for change as anyone else. Believe that. You lose from the top down. It is a given with both men and women, not just you specifically. Be diligent, work hard, eat clean and please, please change the words you use to describe yourself. The more you talk the way you do, the more your subconscious obliges.

Now when I heard those words a light bulb went on. I finally understood that I needed to start being thankful for how far I have come and stop belittling myself. I was doing myself more harm than good in thinking and speaking negative things about myself. I needed to thank God for who He created me to be and give Him the credit for the ability and drive to do whatever He has called me to do.

The most powerful and life changing thing you can do is start saying the right things out loud to yourself. Say things like, “I am a child of God. I am chosen and loved. I am God’s workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works. I am called. I am the bride of Christ and He adores me. I am the one He came to die for. I belong to Him. He rescued me out of the domain of darkness and transferred me into the Kingdom of His beloved Son. I am His. I am an honest, intelligent, organized, punctual, goal directed person. I am teachable, loyal and clearly understand God’s word. I am a self starter who is a disciplined, focused, dependable, persistent, positive thinker with great self-control, and am energetic and a diligent hard worker who appreciates the opportunities that God brings my way. I am thrifty with my resources and apply common sense to my daily tasks. I take honest pride in my competence and appearance, and am motivated to be and do my best so that my healthy self-image will remain on solid ground. These are the qualities which enable me to manage myself, help me be the wife, mother, grandmother and friend I need to be. I suggest you make your own “self-talk” cards and repeat them out loud in front of a mirror every day until you start believing them. If you don’t have these qualities yet, or think you’d be the biggest liar if you started saying these things about yourself, just look up Joel chapter 3 verse 10. “Let the weak say I am strong.”  Believe me, when you say these things to yourself every day, you will change. You will start seeing yourself in a new, true light.

How do you look at life? Do you lack vision? When you catch a glimpse of your potential, and I believe this process will allow you to do that, that’s when passion is born. Passionate people get things done. God can work with passionate people. Just look at Saul before he became Paul. He was one passionate man. God just needed to direct him down the right road.

Dr. Joyce Brothers said, “You cannot consistently perform in a manner which is inconsistent with the way you see yourself.” She went on to say, “Success is a state of mind. If you want success, start thinking of yourself as a success.”

Mental Training works and is a key ingredient to your success.

 

Seven Ingredients to a Healthy & Fit Lifestyle #2

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Ingredient number 2 is: HAVE A GOAL!

Zig Ziglar says: “A goal properly set is halfway reached.” and he also says, “If you want to reach a goal, you must ‘see the reaching’ in your own mind before you actually arrive at your goal.”

The biggest reason people fail to achieve their fitness goals is because they either didn’t set any to begin with or they made them too big. Set specific, realistic goals. Write them down on paper and read them daily. Take your goals seriously and write them out in the present tense. For example, instead of “I want to lose 10 pounds.” say, I weigh ___ pounds and am maintaining it with ease. Whatever your goal is, write it out like you’ve already attained it. Your mind will work toward that goal if you state it in the positive. And the more emotion you stir up, the more motivated you’ll be to go after it.

And don’t just concentrate on the obstacles or problems of reaching your goal. Negative statements and self-defeating questions or statements are: I can’t lose weight no matter what I do –  Why can’t I lose this last ten pounds? – I have a slow metabolism – I’ll try. – It’s so hard to lose weight. Change the way you phrase these into more positive statements: I weigh ____. I exercise ___ days a week and feel energetic all day long.  I am in the best shape of my life. My metabolism is getting faster and faster every day. I LOVE eating healthy, whole, living foods. I have more energy than I know what to do with.

As you repeat these goals, they will become a part of your life. Have a plan everyday. Write them out on 3X5 cards and repeat them morning and night. This not only works for losing weight and getting into shape, but scripture memory and accomplishing other daily tasks as well. Whatever you need or want to do that day, write it down.

Once you’ve achieved your goal, set a new one. Celebrate your accomplishments and take it to the next level. Keep setting goals. It’s an energizing exercise and will change your life.

Ingredient number 3 coming soon!

Seven Ingredients for a Healthy & Fit Lifestyle #1

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This is a condensed version of a talk I gave at a ladies breakfast at our church. Incorporating all these ingredients into your life will help increase your energy and put you on the road to a more healthy and fit lifestyle.

I love everything about food and nutrition and since it’s all about food with me, I named this, “Seven Ingredients to a Healthy & Fit Lifestyle”.

What I want to share are seven ingredients that have helped me have an abundance of energy and maintain, (key word here, MAINTAIN), a healthy & fit life.

We are tri-dimensional, physical, spiritual and mental, and deal with the complete person. This is the ONLY way to have complete success at a healthy balanced life. And we’re not all cut from the same mold, but we do have similarities. Take these basic ingredients and make your own recipe by tweaking things here and there until you find what works best for you as an individual. There is no ONE SIZE FITS ALL. God will give you direction and wisdom. He has a purpose in mind for your life and He will lead you into it. But you’ve got to start moving so take the first step.

Ingredient #1. You must totally surrender to God and fully depend on Him alone. God created us in such a way that we can experience His “flow” by the power of the Holy Spirit. As we walk in His plan for our lives, He gives us everything we need. Strength in weakness, power in our inability and confidence in our circumstances. We must give over total control and fully surrender every part of our being. All our hopes, dreams, thoughts, mindsets, beliefs, everything must be surrendered to Him.

A wonderful new book hot off the press called, “Free From The Power Of Sin” says, “It all boils down to this; our beliefs, our mind-sets, our choices, and our behaviour are all dictated by what is truly in the heart. And the power to make positive choices is wholly dependent on one essential qualification. Christ’s indwelling presence. Walking our our faith, then, in the reality of our new self comes about by making up our mind to do so, while relying totally upon what God has already provided through His overcoming power.”

We must come to the place of total surrender and dependence on God, relinquishing EVERYTHING over to Him. That is the number one starting place for success in any area of our life.

Ingredient number 2 to follow. Stay tuned!

What I’m learning so far

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This takes work. There’s no doubt about it. But is it worth it?  I’ve been putting together the talk for the ladies breakfast that I was asked to speak at about health and fitness and it’s taking a ton of work. Everything in life that is worth something usually does. It’s just a fact of life.

I was reading about what the famous basketball coach John Wooden said to his players. He told them that he didn’t consider winning the most important thing. As a matter of fact, he never mentioned winning to his players. He stressed “best effort” for everybody and felt that a player should feel badly only if he didn’t give it his all. That really hit me this morning as I was running alongside my 21 year old friend. We’re side by side as long as we’re running at a steady pace, but when it’s time to sprint, she bolts out way ahead of me. Knowing I was giving it MY best effort, put all feelings of failure of not being able to keep up with her away. I felt great that I had given it my my all and I could feel proud of my work out. I don’t dread her sprinting ahead anymore. She is 30 years younger than me, so I shouldn’t be feeling bad anyway. I guess that’s just my competitive nature.

I’m feeling stronger in my legs and lungs. I’m looking forward to, not dreading Hiit days. I’m lifting heavier and feeling leaner. Not bad for only 5 1/2 weeks work. Is it worth it? I’d say it is!