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Just Start

Hello and Happy New Year! I hope you have had a fabulous Holiday season and feel refreshed, recharged, and ready to dig into your new year. I’ll be honest. I’ve been struggling a bit to feel ready and “all pulled together.” I feel like I’m already behind and we just started!!!

Do you happen to feel this way too?

Sometimes, I feel like I need to have everything in place. A perfect plan. All of the steps need to be laid out and scheduled on my planner. All the little questions filled out with deep, profound personal goals.

Want to know a secret?

You don’t have to have it all together.

Seriously. While it is good and helpful to have a plan, there is no deadline saying you’re too late or oh well, you’re seven days in and haven’t changed anything…. might as well not make any goals. The year’s a bust.

Ha! 

That drag and uncertainty has weight. It’s called resistance, but it can’t stop you from starting anything. In fact, sometimes just starting will be the very thing that pushes that resistance back and allows you the freedom to figure out exactly what you are supposed to be pursuing.

So, let’s quickly brainstorm what you can start today.

Does your body feel tired, run, down, or heavy?
If the answer is yes, commit to our new support group. We’ll help you create a plan to work towards more energy, better, sleep, better nutrition, and a body that functions the way it was designed.

Do you feel depressed, overwhelmed, or confused about your feelings or purpose?
If yes, commit to seeking a counselor, Bible study group, or life coach.

Do you want to learn more about something?
If yes, commit to researching it, joining a class, or asking someone to be your tutor or mentor.

Making the decision to actually start and then applying action to that decision is often the most difficult part of the process of changing anything. Can I encourage you to just choose something and make the commitment? There are so many different opportunities out there waiting for you.

All you need to do is start.

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Can You Hear It?

Waking up this morning I was surrounded by the soft sound of rain falling heavily around my room. The sound changes as I sit in my morning quiet time space. The roof here is flat and the sound has a slight metallic ping to the raindrops plunking down.

Quiet is hard for me, but it is something that I have been intentionally cultivating this year during my morning routine. During this morning’s reading the rain fluctuated from plinking to downright deluge, the roar of it overpowering the piano hymns playing on my phone (a tactic I use to keep me from playing on my phone). The quiet is disrupted by the external downpour.

But after the short outburst of rain, the soft plinking returned, the yard looked fresh and clean. My thoughts turn back toward the ideas of what I want or need 2019 to become. It’s still a bit jumbled and not exactly planned out. Rich and I are going to be doing that together over the next few days.

What I do know that I heard during that quiet moment is this…

The rain washes away the grime of 2018, the failures, the coulda, woulda, shouldas and leaves a clean canvas for the new possibilities that 2019 holds.

The sound that is left after the deluge is full of opportunity, promise, and most of all… hope.

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How Do We Remember?

Hello! I hope you are having a great morning and that your weekend was restful and fun! We only have two more weeks of 2018 and I have been casually reflecting on the past year. I’ll be honest, I’m really not ready to let it go just yet. See, 2019 brings along my son’s 18th birthday and graduation from high school. All the things are going to change this upcoming year.

2019 is going to be a ginormous year of change for us, how about you? One of the things I want to make sure that we do is to be intentional about the things we can and to live in every opportunity and moment we have been given. Life moves so quickly. I remember people telling me it would feel like blinking and then my kids would be adults. You know what? They were right! And while some days felt super long and painful, the years have flown by with supersonic speed boosters!

While we can’t do anything about life whizzing by, we can do a few things to make sure that we really enjoy, celebrate, and learn from our experiences. Here are a few of my favorite ways…

Create a “Good Things” Jar
This marks the second full year we did this. All you need is a container of sorts (we use a large glass mason jar), slips of paper and a writing utensil. Put it out on the counter and encourage  family members to write down anything they feel that is “good.” On New Year’s Eve take out all the slips and read them together as a family. This created a fabulous time of “reflecting” on all the good things we had experienced throughout the course of the year. It is by far, my favorite tradition we’ve done!

Journal
I want to be a good “journal-er” I really do, but my journals are sporadic and not daily. Fear not! This is okay 🙂 Journal the things that you have to process, that you want to figure out how to do better, or just the things that you want to remember. Did you know that keeping a journal has no rules or “right way” to be done? You have complete freedom to use your journal in any way that helps you reflect on your life and heart, just be sure to go back and read your entries every now and then. It may surprise you how far you’ve come!

Create a Time Capsule
I wish I would have thought about this one last year, but alas I did not. Choose a container and add items throughout the year to commemorate your year and let others know what you experienced. There are all sorts of ways to do this, but here is a tutorialif you need a place to start!

There are so many ways to help us remember the good and yes, the struggles in order that we may remember to be grateful, learn from our mistakes and create better goals and lives in the future. We just need to be intentional about reflecting, remembering, and learning.

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Batch Method Meal Prep

There are many different ways to prepare food for your family, so it may take a little time to find what works for you. I personally use something called the “Batch Method”  (which I didn’t know had a name until I researched other meal prep tips).

What is the Batch Method?
This is a type of meal prep strategy that includes creating large batches of food to be used over different meals. Stews, soups, or large batches of a versatile protein or veggies work best here.

What tools work best?
I prefer to use my large crock pot, but for those of you with insta-pots those would be a wonderful choice as well. You could also do a large roasting dish inside the oven.

Planning

  • Choose how many days are in your meal plan. Mine is typically five days in rotation.
  • Pick different “batches” or meal components for your days. I do three for the five day rotation.
  • Choose recipes that can be doubled or tripled in your chosen method of cooking. (Bonus for picking ingredients on sale or in season!)

Prep

  • Clean and cut up the raw ingredients needed for each batch
  • Write cooking directions on the outside of a zip bag 
  • Add all raw ingredients in zip bag (if you need to add broth, keep that aside in another container unless it works as a marinade)
  • Add seasonings
  • Put in fridge or freezer as recipe calls
  • Defrost the necessary time, per recipe, before cooking
  • Cook according to directions
  • Enjoy!

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Reboot: Have you tried turning it off and on again?

Last week we talked about looking over our “why” and determining the deep set reason that we are working towards a particular goal. It really is crucial to find the inner motivation for the goal or we tend to jump ship easily.

But you might be saying, I already know my why and I’m still struggling to stay with the plan. This reminds me of the IT Guys skit about restarting the computer. The first question they always ask is, “have you tried turning it off and on again?” But in reality it takes just a little more examination. Could I suggest that it could be a couple of simple things keeping you from fully investing in that journey?

Your WHY isn’t strong enough.
Many times the reason we choose to pursue a goal doesn’t have a strong enough inner conviction. Choosing to lose weight to fit into certain size rarely holds enough “weight” to keep us on track. It just simply isn’t important enough to us. But, choosing to lose weight to avoid a major surgery or heart attack obviously would create a stronger sense of conviction. How strong is your why?

The plan is too dramatic of a change.
I can’t tell you how many people, including myself, want to change all the things at the same time. We completely overhaul our schedule, throw out all the junk, and then try to subsist on carrots and celery all week. My friend, we are just not wired to change everything overnight. 

Start by just addressing a couple of the areas first. Add a twenty minute walk to your day instead of choosing to do a three hour lifting session. I know that sounds like it may be less effective, but if you jump off the wagon the first couple of days because it was too overwhelming you won’t experience any results outside of feeling like a failure… again.

You are afraid.
Ugh, this one hits me hard. I spend a lot of time second guessing myself, telling myself I can’t do it, or actually being afraid of success (what the heck is that about?!). But many of us really struggle with the confidence of actually following our plan. We think the plan is flawed, we are flawed, and there is no way this is ever going to work.

My friend, this is Evil speaking into you and me. That fear is a liar. Let me say it again. Fear is a LIAR. It wants you to fail and stay miserable, but the truth is that you have everything you need to succeed available to you. And so do I. We just need to learn how to speak truth into ourselves and when we can’t, we need to have someone that can. That can be a friend, a coach, a trainer, a Bible study leader, but the best one is Jesus. He speaks truth about us all over the place. We can find that Truth written through scripture and it is life altering. Truth is the best way to battle that fear and walk boldly toward our goals!

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Perspective: Friend or Foe?

I was thinking about new beginnings, contemplating what makes us stop things we’ve started? Was it because it was hard? We got busy? Life does actually get in the way at times, but by and large the biggest reason we quit is because we’ve lost perspective on why we were doing it in the first place.

I was struggling this weekend with motivation. The get up and go to do some of the things I am responsible for, had got up and gone… I mentally struggled with what I wanted to do versus what I needed to do. Well, actually I didn’t want to do anything.My husband looked at me and said…

“You need to remember your why.”

My WHY. I haven’t revisited it in a good long while. Why am I a coach?Why do I exercise? Why do we homeschool? All of these are valid questions and important priorities in my life. It is important for me to remind myself of the reasons why they are important.

Why is the driving force. It is the purpose and desire behind the activities we do. When we know WHY we do something there is more passion, more drive, more commitment to the activity. It is especially important when we have a certain goal we are working toward yet we feel so far away from attaining it or the motivation to work of it.

When we know WHY we want or need something the motivation is natural and organic. We won’t have to create it out of thin air and we will feel more purpose in the journey. More purpose will produce more satisfaction and therefore more motivation. How we think can work us toward or against our goals. Our perspective can help us or hurt us. How is yours treating you?

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Celebrate!

It is an amazing thing, this life we live. We have so many opportunities to enjoy life, but we often get caught up in the chaos and frustrations that come our way that we miss the good stuff. We can lose sight of the blessings that we have because we are focused on the struggles we experience. I feel like this is not only true in work and relationships, but also in our health and fitness journeys.

Many of us start new programs and meal plans only to become frustrated with not being able to perform the moves perfectly or that the meal plan is “too hard,” “too strict,” or that we are just “no good at this healthy thing.” I often hear people talk about doing a workout for two or three days only to be “so sore” that they couldn’t keep going or when they miss a day they just stop and say they will start again on “Monday.”
WARNING: Tough Love Moment!
These phrases are just not true. They are simply excuses to quit something that is hard for us. Yes, they are legitimate things that need to be addressed, but they are not reasons to throw in the towel.

Our mindset is what moves us forward. it is not our physical abilities or that we are simply “good at” whatever the program requires. It is what and how we think, fueled by our inner dialogue.

So, let’s talk about what we can do to create a mindset that moves us forward in our journeys.

Pursue Progress
When we focus on perfection we lose sight of the small steps of progress that we are making. Every day we can choose to see the small steps that we have made that move us in the right direction. In our workouts, we can modify a move and then watch the progression towards doing the move without modification. We can make small choices daily that move us closer to eating in a healthy way. These things all take practice because they are skills not natural talents. The good news is that skills are learnable and we can get better at them because we can practice.

Surround yourself with Positivity
Ever heard the phrase “you become the sum of the five people you are with the most?” This might be an exaggeration but I do believe that the people you spend time with the most do contribute to your mindset, to whether or not you see possibilities or problems. Positive people have hope and tend to be able to inspire hope in others. Now, I’m talking about people who have hope and the ability to see solutions, and are willing to encourage others in their pursuits, even if they don’t entirely agree with you. If you don’t know anybody like this, start reading personal development books and creating the positive mindset inside yourself!

Give yourself grace
All of us are going to fail and make mistakes. None of us are perfect. We are going to choose poorly, miss a workout, or eat something (aghast!) not on plan. When we do this we often berate ourselves or even give up. This is more detrimental than the small mistake or choice we made initially! Choose to give yourself grace to fail. Choose that when you fail or make a “mistake,” because you will, you will choose to just pick yourself back up and make the next choice a better one. Don’t give up when you fail, use it to try to become better.

Celebrate!
This is my favorite one. Celebrate your victories! Celebrate small progressions in your physical fitness. Celebrate lifting one more rep or jumping one more time. Celebrate your ability to meal prep for one more day. Celebrate eating healthy for five days in a row. Build on those small steps, don’t just wait to celebrate when you “arrive” at your goals. Healthy is a lifestyle not an endpoint or destination. Celebration builds happy hormones and will help keep you motivated to keep going.

You CAN live a healthy lifestyle with grace and hope. I completely believe in you!

 

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You Are Free to Eat

Have you ever seen the movie, Kung Fu Panda? The story follows a large panda named Po pursue his dream of becoming a Kung Fu hero. Po, unfortunately is not adept at learning Kung Fu early in his endeavors. He spends his time failing daily, his “mentor” abhors him and doubts his calling, and his peers believe him to be hopeless.

In an effort to comfort himself, Po eats. A lot. In fact, he is amazingly clever and adept at finding any and all food to appease his desire. Shifu, his mentor catches him climbing cabinets in the corner of the kitchen in the middle of the night. Can any of you relate with Po here? Hiding? Eating to ease the pain of failure and feeling left out or in the wrong place?

Shifu, being the clever and inventive mentor, now knows that he can use food as a motivator in Po’s training regimen. If Po performs well, he gets a delicious reward, if not, he cannot eat. The training montage continues, rewards of dumplings fill Po’s motivation and belly as he perfects Kung Fu. It culminates in what really is my favorite scene…
Po finds Shifu sitting at a table with a bowl of dumplings and says…

You are free to eat.

Po, is surprised, looking for the catch and then sits to eat. Every time he tries to take a bite Shifu snatches the dumpling out from under him, every time uttering…

You are free to eat.

Po responds with “Am I?”
to which Shifu says…

“Are you?”

The battle for the dumpling is epic! Flips and kicks and chopsticks. Oh my! Finally, Po is victorious and goes to eat the dumpling. But in a surprising turn of events he plops the dumpling down in front of Shifu and says…

“I’m not hungry.”

How often do we make our life about food?
Celebrations of every kind. Rewards for grades, chores completed, goals attained. We obsess about tacos, peanut butter, chocolate, the list goes on and on. We go to it when we feel sad, angry, or left out. We fill our bellies to soothe our hearts. Or we punish ourselves by withholding food because we don’t look like what we would like or because we splurged and ate something off the diet. We use it as a motivator and a deterrent, and a punishment/reward system, just like Po and Shifu.

Are you held captive by food?
Sometimes, without noticing we start going to food first. We allow our emotions, circumstances, beliefs, happiness and fulfillment to be affected by food and our manipulation of it. When we go to food first to feel better we have created a false god out of something God created to sustain us and for us to enjoy. Yes! He wants us to enjoy food! Why do you think he gave us taste buds anyway?

Alisa Keeton says in her book, The Wellness Revelation…
“Remember, it is never about the food. The food is not the enemy. It is something deeper. Our relationship with food is broken because something deep within us is broken. God wants to heal us in those deep places!”

In Isaiah 61:1 it says that He has come to bring freedom to the captives, that’s us! When we learn to seek God first for our emotional, physical, and mental needs we learn to put God in His rightful place in our hearts and restore balance to where food is placed. It will take time to retrain our brains and hormone systems that food is indeed enjoyable fuel but not god. The journey to freedom comes through worshipping the One true God and not our bellies or our bodies.

Yes, we must learn to care for our bodies in self and God honoring ways. Learning to fuel our bodies well and enjoy food is sometimes a battle but one that is so definitely worth it and rewarding in the freedom we can find and the ability to say that we’re not hungry when what we really need is Jesus.

You are FREE to eat.

 

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Your Best Weapon

“You are fat.”
“You are ugly”
“You will never amount to anything”
“See that lady, she has it all together. Look at how she looks down on you.”
“Why can’t you get it together?”
“You’ll never get the weight off.”
“You’ll never fit in, never have friends, never be enough”
“Nobody could ever love you”
“They love you because they haveto.”
“Your own… father, mother, kids, spouse... doesn’t love you, why would anybody else?”
“Sure, you’ve got the weight off, but you are still nothing.”

How do you feel reading these words? Are they familiar to you? Do they sound true? Do they hit that secret doubting space within your heart and soul?

Maybe these words don’t mean anything to you, but I can be honest when I say that every single one of these statements come from my own thought life at some point or another. Where do these thoughts come from? Some may have actually been spoken over us literally others have been whispered into our hearts, but one thing is certain…

They are LIES

Every single one of them. Who would want us to believe these things about ourselves? Only one that is out to destroy. The Bible says that lies come from the Father of Lies who was a murderer from the beginning.

But how do we combat these lies? How do we convince ourselves that we matter? That we are important, loved, and not only valuable but valued? Even when we do not feel it, hear it, or think it. The best way to defeat lies is with the Truth.

“And you will know the Truth and the Truth shall set you FREE”
John 8:32

Fighting with Truth

1. Recognize the statement as false
2. Rephrase the statement with truth. For example “you are so stupid!” rephrased as “You are created in the image of God.”
3. Memorize scripture that identifies who you are in God’s eyes.
Some great examples….

“The Lord your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.” Zephania 3:17

” For I know the plans I have for you. Plans to prosper, for a future and a hope.” Jeremiah 29:11

“The King is enthralled by your beauty.” Psalm 45:11

Friend, you are loved immensely.I pray that you learn to fight against the lies with Truth and that it provides a freedom to help you become the best version of you possible!

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Top 10 Holiday Survival Tips

 

  1. Drink plenty of water.

It is recommended that you drink half your body weight in water daily. Make sure to get it in, we often confuse thirst for hunger.

  1. Control temptation.

Don’t purchase your stocking stuffers or treats too early where they sit and stare at you. If you bake, make sure to share with others!

  1. Cheat a little.

Stay on plan at least 80% of the time. Choose one event/meal to cheat at per week. This makes you focus on what you really want to use as a treat and keeps you from the week long binge. <gasp!>

  1. Move your body more.

Dance while you’re at that party! If you work out daily, add an extra walk before dinner or your event. If you don’t work out daily, WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?

  1. NEVER go to a party hungry.

Eat a healthy small meal before you go to that event. This will help keep you on track. My favorite go to is a peanut butter chocolate Shakeology.

  1. Substitute healthier versions of calorie heavy holiday foods.
  2. Partner up! Get an accountability buddy or into a challenge group to help you stay on track.
  3. Keep a food journal.

I don’t know what it is about writing it down, but if I have to log what I eat, I make better choices.

  1. Eat more fruit and veggies

If you are at a party, take a small plate and fill it with fruit and veggie options. Eat them slowly as you make your way around the room and talk with people.

  1. Celebrate without food

Okay, this one is hard for me. Play games, go outside, or go cruise for Christmas lights.