live your life with purpose
The sticky note was on my computer for about two weeks. Two 3×3 yellow sheets of square shaped paper with the written words. Sitting there. Waiting to be written. Forming the words in my head and my heart. Thinking how to write it. Thinking about …
I wish I would have written down the day or the date or even the time. I do that sometimes. When I am writing I forgot to write that down. Then when I go back and fine tune and add or subtract, otherwise known as …
Is it special enough?
Only you know the answer to that.
Let’s say you have your set macros, or even if you are counting calories, you have your set number of calories. That is your budget for the day. That is what you get to spend on food today, on eating today. But then someone invites you over for lunch or supper, or if you call it dinner, call it dinner. This person is making an over-the-top meal. It’s a meal you really love. Now here’s the rub. Do you eat it? Is it a special occasion or just an occasion. Is it special enough?
See the thing here is, you are the one who decides if something is special enough. This is your transformation journey. This is your lifestyle journey. So what makes something special enough? Ask yourself.
Is it your birthday? A holiday? Sure, these days are special. Is it your grandma’s chocolate cake or is it iHop pancakes? You decide the specialness and you decide if you are going to go off plan for it. Most of the time you can work something in to your day.
Is your special really special enough though? That is where you have to do a little digging. Because honestly, we could say every weekend something we encounter is special. What happens then? What happens when you over eat every single weekend, because you deem something special?
I think it’s kind of a fine line. You could make the argument even every single day is special. But, you signed up for a lifestyle change. You signed up for a transformation. You signed up because something, probably specialness, got you where you are in the first place.
Let’s say that this over-the-top meal meets your specialness criteria, do you just go all out and eat as much as your can? No, you don’t. You eat within reason. This is what you have learned from your journey. You don’t eat all the food. You eat some of the food. You keep yourself in check. You don’t eat like an asshole.
To me, I don’t consider very many days special enough. This year Thanksgiving was. I didn’t track, but I by no means went overboard. My birthday, I worked in angel food cake. I stay pretty balanced for all days. Once you get that mindset going of realizing you can eat anything, just not as much of it as you used to, it makes things way, way easier. Then, once you start seeing results it is so motivating, you just want to keep going.
I encourage you to keep going. Decide what is special for you, just don’t make it every weekend. Don’t use it as an excuse to overeat. Sometimes we do things like that. When you find yourself in the specialness situation, ask yourself if it’s special enough.
Should you have number goal? When you are on your journey of transformation, which can be quite rocky and up and down and sideways, of losing weight, should you have a number. Should you have a number goal or a goal weight you are trying …
It was a day like any other summer day. It was June 3rd. The year was 2000 It was early morning. We were just lying in bed. Talking to each other like we always did. We could her the birds chirping and the waves against …
Why did I start? I told you what the straw was, or what it wasn’t. I had to start. I needed that edge so I could be pushed. It was there, the edge. I had to do something. The pain and emotion of feeling fake and non-committal were real. I was ashamed of how much I let my body go, of how much I let my life go. So I did something.
I started eating macro style. Macros are what our foods are made up of – protein, carbs and fats. So what that means is that everything I ate was put into a tracking app and my job was to eat according to what my assigned macros were. It was my accountability. It was my purpose, it was my goal. I wasn’t going to fail. That was my option. I wasn’t going to give myself permission to do that. Have you ever done that? Given yourself permission to fuck up. Given yourself permission to fail? I bet you have. We all have. It comes down to how bad you really want something? Is what you are doing worth it?
If you are doing something, making a choice to do something, that is not in line with what you told yourself you were going to do, you are making that choice. You just gave yourself permission. So, I told myself I wasn’t going to do the same thing I had always done. That would be to stick to something for a week or so and then make the choice — because that is exactly what it is — to fail or to fuck up or to whatever the shiny adjective is this month. However you want to describe it. Quit and go back to the usual suspect. The usual permission. I wanted new permission.
Lifestyle changes and forming new habits can be hard, really hard. We are so used to being bombarded with the next best thing or the newest trend or try this, or try that, that we become so overwhelmed we don’t even know what the hell to do or even where to start. Ever felt that way? Me too.
Tracking your food is a good first step. It makes you aware of all the choices you have been making that continue to drive you down the road to the nearest hospital or worse yet, cemetery. If you feel like you are getting more and more unhealthy every day, you need to show up. Show up for yourself. You need to take a good, hard, and honest look in the mirror and tell that reflection it’s time. It’s time to make a change before it’s too late.
You can find macro calculators all over the internet. Pretty much plug and play. Find one. Set up your app and start tracking. I think you will be pretty surprised about what is going on. Most people are overeating fat and carbs because honestly, they taste fucking great. It’s okay sometimes, but the portion sizes are what gets most of us in trouble. Also, make sure your protein is on point. if you want to maintain muscle mass and not be a hangry bitch all the time, protein is key.
Anybody can do it. The coach part is what I help you with. That is where the finesse comes in. That is where the tough love comes in. But, don’t be afraid to experiment on your own. What’s it going to hurt? What’s going to happen? You might just get healthy in the process.
If you have been following my blog posts you have seen my transformation from the chubby fitness/nutrition coach to where I am now, having lost over 40 pounds in the past 8 months. I feel amazing. I feel healthy. I feel like I am doing …
June 1 – 2019 Diary of a former chubby trainer/nutrition coach. I tell my clients all the time…the time is going to pass regardless. Why not work on yourself? Get your values and your priorities aligned with your goals. Once you get rolling you cannot …
It’s everywhere. It’s inviting. It’s enticing. It pulls you in. It’s accepted, encouraged even. Do you know what I’m talking about? Have you figured it out yet? It’s alcohol. Surprised? I bet you aren’t.
It is amazing to me how society normalizes drinking. The ads are everywhere. The signs are everywhere. Parents normalize it and then wonder why their kids are drinking at a younger and younger age. The alcohol culture is a real thing. According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism a study found that, “Now by 8th grade more females than males are dinking.” Another study found that the gap between men and women with drinking problems is shrinking. Female alcohol use disorder in the US has more than doubled from 2002-2013. It has increased by 83.7%. I would call that significant. And, that was 6 years ago.
Fitness magazines normalize it. Society normalizes it. Ever heard of “mommy juice” or “wine o’clock?” It seems like wine is an accessory for every occasion. Eating a meal – wine. Hanging out with friends – wine. Had a bad day – wine. Kids driving you crazy – wine. I’m so stressed out – wine. OMG my hair didn’t turn our right – wine (just kidding). Kind of.
The advertising is crazy over the top. Five pages into a very successful Fitness Magazine and there is an ad for Henry’s Hard Sparkling Water. I mean it has zero sugar and it’s basically water, so it must be good for you, right? After all, this is a fitness magazine. Another article in the same magazine talked about creating custom cocktails and then on the very next page there was an ad for Ketel One Botanical vodkas. Because that sounds way sexier than just plain old vodka. And let’s face it, alcohol tastes like crap. They have to sexy it up for us now to make it more appealing. It’s like this makes it okay for us to just keep drinking more and more. In the same magazine, towards the back there is an article about Chinese food and yet another plug for drinking. A chinese-inspired cocktail that is an ideal balance of sweet, sour and savory. So just in one magazine, there were that many references to drinking. I’m sure there were many more, I didn’t read the articles, I got it for the pictures. LOL
The normalization of drinking is huge. Nobody bats an eye. I have no problem with people who drink. I don’t want to come across as some holier than thou person who judges people for drinking. I really am okay with it. Many of my friends drink. I don’t care. What I do care about is the way it is normalized. It’s no wonder so many women are becoming alcoholics. Most of us want to fit in or go along with the crowd. Some of us think we can’t say no to drinking if we are in social situations or we just don’t know how. Some of us are learning how to middle finger that mentality; me being one of those somebodies. It used to be people drank on the weekends. Now people drink every single night. That is concerning.
I stopped drinking over 220 days ago. Why? Because I prioritized my health. I weighed my priorities and values against my actions. They didn’t match. I wanted them to match, so I stopped drinking. Will I stop drinking forever? I don’t know the answer to that. Right now I feel really amazing and I know right now, alcohol is not a part of my lifestyle.
I saw a quote today from one of the blogs I am recommending below. “The goal isn’t to be sober. The goal is to love yourself so much that you don’t need to drink.” This quote hits like the Throat Punch Thursday it is. Think about it.
There is usually an underlying cause of why people drink. We are masking feelings or emotions or who knows what. We are numbing them. We are afraid to take a good hard look in the mirror. We are afraid to call ourselves out on our own shit. Specifically, we are afraid. But of what? Well, that is for you to figure out for yourself. Ask yourself if you really want to change. Ask yourself if you want to stay stuck. Get over the relationship you have with fear and get unstuck. It’s sad because not only do we numb the pain of whatever we are afraid of when we drink, we also numb all the really good things too. That is a very big wake up call.
If you want to say not to alcohol and mean it, but just can’t, if you want to get past cravings and triggers, but just can’t, here are a few blogs I found that I think can be really helpful.
http://www.drunkydrunkgirl.wordpress.com
https://www.veronicavalli.com/blog
She always seemed so old, as I saw her through my kid eyes. She didn’t come to visit very often. It seemed like we visited at her house more than she visited here. Her name was Hulda. Her husband was Hans. My great grandparents on …