What's Holding You Prisoner? Lighten up! IT'S OK!

Life is crazy. Yes, it is. And how long can we sustain that as an excuse to let go? Sorry, but that IS an excuse. It’s been mine several times because I was exhausted and feeling sorry for myself. Uuhhh yeah because I happen to be human, I happen to get tired, angry, frustrated at times, because things just happen and we have to deal with them.

Are you too busy to make things happen for yourself?

Here is the scenario of my busiest day: Wake up at 4am, start working at 5:30. Leave at 2:30 to pick my daughter up from school. Help her with homework, feed her, supervise her shower, take mine to get ready to go back, answer e-mails, make a couple of phone calls, go back to work at 5pm, work until 9:30pm. I’m POOPED!

Last year, that use to be my schedule Monday through Thursday and I'd work Saturdays until the afternoon. I’m no hero. This brought me down to my knees. My stress level was brutal and it took me almost 1 year to adjust my schedule.

Interestingly enough, the busiest time last year was when I was the most compliant with my fat loss lifestyle, seeing huge results. Had problems not getting enough sleep, but I was doing great! Surely enough, my poor stress management caught up with me, and I couldn’t keep up. I crashed.

Not getting into the details I already mentioned on a previous blog, my struggle was huge, gaining fat back, having health issues. I asked for help and am doing what I was told to do: to take care of myself. I'm following not only my diet but also my health plan. Hey! By he way, how is your health?

In what I DO NOT call a coincidence, I’m finally back to MY fat loss lifestyle, feeling right about what, when and how I’m eating. I’m indulging when I can, resuming my plan when I’m supposed to and slowly feeling the changes, even though I don’t see them as much as of yet. I made peace with the idea that this is going to be a bit long of a process, but feeling well makes it doable for me. Are you ok with taking time to heal? 

What makes it doable for you to sustain the lifestyle you wish to have?? Or simply what makes you want to get back to it.?

I felt I had hit the switch not too long ago, but couldn’t sustain it. It was terrible because I was all excited at first, but my body was so out of whack that I had to dig deeper. I’m currently following a plan to find the right balance for my body with the help of the amazing Naturopath Dr Jade Teta, also founder of the Metabolic Effect concept.

Do you need help? Are you ASKING for help? Instead of expecting people to understand how you feel or act, TELL THEM, ASK THEM.  Not talking about support only. Talking here about expertise too!!

How are your workouts? If you know what to do in terms of your workouts, do you have the motivation you need to get out there?

So, just brainstorming here on my favorite options.

Hire a trainer is my suggestion number 1. Why? Because you can have individualized attention, discuss your goals, setbacks, and get a good butt kicking. Basically your trainer will certainly help you push more than you would just by yourself if motivation is an issue right now. I personally think that having a trainer makes it soooooo much more fun and keeps you accountable. 

If you can get your butt out the door and just need somebody telling you what to do, you can take advantage of video/workouts such as the ones you find on FitnessByTY.com .

Take some group exercise classes! My suggestion is that you look for the short duration, high intensity ones. Flat out. If you are in the MD/VA/DC area, come take my Metabolic Effect class at Rio Sport&Health. If you need a guest pass to try it, let me know.

Stick to short cardio workouts too. Why are you going to spend 3 hours at the gym when you can barely convince yourself to get your foot out the door? So, pretty basic, do this quickie: hop on the elliptical, warm up at medium intensity for 5 minutes, then PLAY with the resistance! Go 1 minute super hard at higher resistance, than bring it back to low resistance and chill, just moving slowly for 1 minute, repeat and repeat until you get to 20 minutes, then do a cool down for 5 minutes on the elliptical, or walk around for 5 minutes. I like listening to Pandora, by the way. J

I’m not rediscovering gunpowder here. You’ve read or heard all this before, right? So, what’s the deal?

I heard from somebody the other day: “I don’t want to live in a prison”.

Fat loss is not a prison! It’s a choice. You can choose anytime. And yes, you can go off and on all the time. Just beware of what’s going to happen to your body, and specially to how you feel about yourself. Take responsibility too. Are you ready for the rebound? Is it worth it to throw everything up in the air and say “I’m done with this, give me chocolate and beer every night!” ?

Now, to me, THAT’S the prison. A fat loss diet can be hard because it does take will power and time to understand my body, but nothing can be worse to me than looking at myself and seeing that sometimes by choice, I’m letting myself go without looking back. When I reached that point, my own body felt like a prison.

I’m not talking about falling out the wagon here and there. That’s part of the process, bumps in the journey and it doesn’t have to be such a big deal to make you give up and say it won’t work for you. That’s too easy to say, but it will be much harder to deal with it.

If you are using your tools to control your cravings, hunger and energy level, guess what’s left?? Your compliance. And that’s key. That’s YOUR choice. But you will hop in, hop out, do it again, then slip, then every time you will learn something new, you can always take something good out of it.

You don’t have to convince me. Convince yourself. Wait! Do you really need to “convince” yourself? Find your purpose. Stop self-battling. Try the little things first if big changes are so hard for you. IT IS OK. Sometimes, that one, simple, little thing will open a big window to a beautiful new fat loss day. Be good to yourself.  J