Rolling out 5-8

Let’s keep on keeping on…

Just a quick reminder, tips 1 to 4 were using the ME Method:

: Empower

So let’s continue with Nals’ helpful tips to a healthier life…

5) Reward yourself when you achieve your mini goals.

Nals talks about celebrating your accomplishments by focusing on the real treats of life.

So what does that mean? That means give yourself praise. Even for the small things. If you worked out, even though you really didn’t want to…celebrate that! If you lost 4 lbs this month, but your goal was to lose 10, you still did something right… so celebrate that! You get back on the wagon, and even after a fall… you’re back up… celebrate that!

How, you ask? I like to make sure I am using my employer benefits by getting those massages in. When I need an extra special treat, I will use the RMTs at the Spa. Why? Cuz I need to celebrate my goals I’m achieving!

Rewards don’t need to be time consuming. It could be a simple text to a friend, letting them know: Hey, guess what? I have been working really hard and I lost a few pounds and it makes me feel good about my goals. Your good friends and support team will be happy to cheer you on and celebrate with you.

Nals makes a good point when she mentions trying to stay away from food rewards. Cheat days don’t work (neither do crazy limiting diets), so try to reward yourself with something besides food.

6) Don’t beat yourself up if you didn’t achieve your goal that week.

As Nals says, this is a learning moment, not a failure.

⇒ Check your SMART goals. Is it that your goals need to be adjusted? This doesn’t mean that they do, but it is a good way to reflect on them.

⇒ Do you need to plan for bumps in the road? We can’t always be focused on our goals. Many things get in the way, like work, kids, family emergencies. But how do we look ahead and see how we fit these bumps into our goals?

Remember in the 1 to 4 tips when I said I was failing a lot and I needed to figure out what the heck was going on? First of all, I was totally beating myself up. And it got me nowhere except down. But I started to learn from it. (It took me way too long… but I finally got there!) I realized looking too far down the road freaked me out. Overwhelmed me.

So now, I focus on 1 day at a time. I still can’t think long term (months down the road), but I can now start to see a week at a time.

7) Know when to push yourself and when not to.

Hello body, did you say something? Are you listening to what your body is telling you? Nals and I have a good friend, who happens to be a personal trainer (good friend to have hey?). She gave us the best advice once about listening to your body. She said that you want to feel your workout the next day but you don’t want to be so sore that you can’t move. A little soreness is a good thing, not being able to sit or stand is a bad thing.

A big part of listening to your body is also monitoring yourself when you are working out. As I said last time, I go to a kickboxing circuit and on each station I try to ask myself: can I push harder or is this pace good? I know when I’m flaking out or when I’m going over board, so I need to listen and adjust.

8) Don’t be ashamed to eat (when appropriately hungry) and to enjoy food.

Oh my gosh, I freaking love food, too. Especially good food. So I need to remember, not to overeat. For me, now I eat until I’m full… not stuffed. I’ll be honest, this takes some getting used to (and includes tip 7, listening to your body). Here’s how I do this:

1. I don’t eat fast. This gives my body time to process the amount I have eaten already.

2. I don’t fill my plate. We have this tenancy to fill our plates to have every inch covered. But our North American plates can be huge. You could even try using a smaller plate.

However, this is not the same restricting food. You’re just changing your focus to a healthier portion.

3. I don’t have to eat all the food on my plate. I think this comes from our childhood: if you don’t eat everything that’s on your plate you won’t get dessert. Guess what? The sweet part about being an adult (!!), is that you still get dessert, even if you don’t finish your dinner. This drives my hubbers crazy! I always leave food on my plate and he always says: Kells it’s just one more bite, why can’t you finish it? And I always tell him: Cuz I’m full. That one last bite can be the difference between full and stuffed. And remember, we don’t want to be stuffed! (plus I like to save room for dessert!)

Again, I want to refer to tip #7, listening to your body. We all have different reasons we eat. I’m a boredom eater. If I’m lazying around the house, you better believe you will find me in the kitchen looking for food. But I have to ask myself: Are you hungry? And most of the time, no I’m not. I’m just bored and want to munch. A glass of water will do the trick and get me out of the pantry! I’m also a chocolateholic when it’s that time of the month. I feel that I just can’t get enough sweets. But again, I need to listen to my body. a little chocolate is fine…6 chocolate bars and a bag of chips is to much (even though I feel I deserve it cuz moon time sucks!).

Also make sure you are getting enough water! I try to make sure I have a cup of water handy. If it’s not handy then I’m not going to drink it. So I make sure I have a water bottle on my desk at work, or a glass next to me while I watch tv. It’s like the Field of Dreams, if you build it, they will come! Same goes for water, if you pour it, you will drink it. You get it, right?

Speaking of food…do you have a good healthy recipe you wanna share? Please email us so we can try it and share it with others… with a credit to you as our inspiration, of course!

Do you have any food for thought?

How do you feel about the ME Method?

Or the Tips? Or how I rolled them out to fit my life?

Please leave a comment below!

90 pounds: Helpful Tips 5-8

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Oh la la we are on to Helpful Tips 5-8!

So in previous posts, I describe my battles with poor health, the benefits I got when I improved my health and the first batch o’ tips. You can read how Kells put them into action.

About 15 years ago, I was kinda miserable (more or less on the daily). I was skimming the surface of life. I wanted to look a certain way. But I had a devil of a time to changing my unhealthy ways.

I transformed by:

Changing my Motivation.

When my focus switched from I have to look a certain way to I want to live a life that’s healthy, then my behaviours changed accordingly. What flipped that switch was getting a diagnosis of a chronic medical condition… one where most people don’t seek help til decades later when physical damage has been done. And it’s way harder to change behaviours. My free get-out-of-jail card did wonders for my motivation.

Empowering myself.

As humans we have this amazing capacity to have awareness, to perceive and to change. Take advantage of this, yo.

Educating myself.

I observed my habits and responses, got info on my condition, spoke with licensed health professionals & hob-nobbed with like-minded folks.

Support is important. Though only you can change yourself, you will need help. Don’t be afraid to ask.

Exercising my goal.

I figured out my game plan by using S.M.A.R.T. goals. Then by golly I exercised that plan like there was no tomorrow! (Uh well in a manner of speaking. One of my motivators was to improve myself for those tomorrows.)

: Empower

Continuing on with Les Tips …

5) Reward yourself when you achieve your mini goals.

Celebrate your accomplishments! You worked hard to slay that goal. Of course you should break out the proverbial champagne!

Try to steer away from food rewards. This is so that you keep healthy associations with food. (See point 8 so you know I’m not saying that food is bad. For me, I needed to break maladaptive associations between food=reward and food=coping strategy.)

Rather, focus on the other treats in life: get a massage, buy some saucy lingerie, go on a vacation, get a makeover (MAC and Sephora give freebies!), putz around in the garden, go to the auto show, take funky photos in the park, sleep in (or take an afternoon snooze), take a tour of your city, read a chapter of the book you were saving up for your hols, start a blog, tinker around with that old jalopy you’ve been meaning to restore…

: Read

: How N & K complement each other

: Start a blog

: Do your nails

6) Don’t beat yourself up if you didn’t achieve your goal that week.

Instead, learn from it.

⇒ Maybe it was an unreasonable expectation. For example, do you need to scale back your goal from losing 2 kg/week to 1 kg/week?

⇒ Maybe that week was particularly stressful. Do you need to add a plan for when things get rough?* or maybe you can try again and see what this week will be like.

⇒ Maybe it wasn’t the right combo of behaviours. Instead of exercising AND making dietary changes in the same week… you can start instead by incorporating exercise first. When you have a handle on that, add the food changes (or vice versa).

After your examination, re-do that SMART goal with your newly processed info.

This tip was a huge one for me. I reached that infuriating plateau after a year of steadily losing weight. And oh holy Murphy this plateau lasted for years. Yes: y e a r s.

I had to remind myself that weight was just one outcome measure. What about other things I had accomplished? Firstly, I wasn’t going backwards, which had been my previous pattern with yo-yo dieting. I was losing inches. I was gaining muscle. I was gaining strength. My 2 fab docs weren’t concerned as long as I was keeping up a healthy regime. So I thought maybe this is just my body’s way of saying, “Change it up, missy!”^

7) Know when to push yourself and when not to.

Listen to your body. Why do you need to do 30 biceps curls x3 sets? If you strain your muscles, what good is 90 curls? This step ties in with the base-steps 2 & 3: Empower & Educate. You figure out what your body is about ⇒the good, the bad⇐ and then support that hawt-to-trot body! Do things that make it better, not worse.

It’s ok to have limitations. You can always work up to a goal. But it’s ok if you try and can’t. Well how about switching gears from bicep curls to taking the stairs instead of the elevator?

8) Don’t be ashamed to eat (when appropriately hungry) and to enjoy food.

Food is a HUGE ~~issue~~ consideration for me. I blamed myself for eating like shit because I felt like shit. These thought distortions are sooo NOT helpful. I eventually said to myself: I like food and I’m going to learn to enjoy food without feeling guilty. So I turned back to Tip 3 of Edumacating Myself. I have happy memories and my family uses food for comforting.

Happy memories: My mom enjoyed cooking which is something we did together as I was growing up. Food is also a big part of my family’s party scene (a la Big Fat Greek Wedding). The hustle and bustle of a busy kitchen gives me the warm n fuzzies. In the first year of dating, Mr. Nals and I cooked our first meal together. We had fun and it’s something we do to this day.

My family also used food to heal – for flu, tummy troubles or recovering from wisdom tooth-ectomies.

Cooking is also a weirdly-wonderful mixture of science (homeostatic v. hedonic hunger, kinky molecules in kitchen science, what grows together goes together) and art (gastroporn, complementary flavours).

Food is a way to our cultural history, family connections, memories, biology and soul. Embrace it!

Focus on foods you can eat, rather than the ones you shouldn’t. As per my docs, I should avoid certain minerals… which means I shouldn’t really have my beloved citrus and Mehjool dates on the daily. But I can eat … a whole buck load of other stuff.

Fun food fact**: Chai conjures up images of hot cups of spiced milk black tea from India (often called chai tea, which means tea tea, btw). Cha also means tea in Japanese and Chinese languages.

That’s it for this post, N&Kers! Stay tuned next week: Kells will do up a post on how she broke these Tips down and applied them to her fabulous life.

Do you have any food for thought?

How do you feel about the ME Method?

Or the Tips?

Please leave a comment below!

Footnotes

*I get particularly crabby during those delightful monthly hormonal surges. So I came up with specific how-tos for those sitches.

^ Oh gosh . The Plateau Years were uber annoying. I changed up all sorts – cut out refined sugars, upped protein intake, quit bootcamp to swim, ate smaller frequent meals, incorporated smoothies, did food detoxes, did Reiki, decreased stress… My weight stayed +/- 10 pounds for years. But I kept losing inches, gaining muscle and endurance. My docs weren’t concerned. What reignited my weight loss was working out daily. My beach-babe friend Coach, who is also a kick ass personal trainer, works out twice daily. So I thought wtf let’s give it a whirl. I’m not quite up to BID every single day but I’m workin on it! Remember that this is a good goal for me. I researched it then spoke with my healthcare team. Before you make dietary or exercise changes please consult with an experienced licensed clinician!

** hmm maybe more like a language fact?

Putting 1 to 4 into Action

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Nals started with 4 of 10 tips.

Here’s how I (Kells) put those first 4 into motion…

1) True motivation = YOU.

Nals said she changed her motivation from improving her looks to choosing to live.

What is MY motivation?

First, Let me break it down…what is Motivation? I mean we all know the word and I don’t think we need to Wiki it…but when I look at the word, what am I seeing? What is motivation? For me I see 2 things; 1. Motive and 2. Action. I need a motive and I need to act.

Honestly, I struggle every day. Unlike Nals, I don’t have a serious medical health condition to motivate me.

So what is my motive?

→At first, it really was to lose weight.

→Look better for others.

My whole life I have never really needed to work out.

I eat pretty well, even though I have tried a few fad diets.
I was sporty in school, did track and was always moving.

But getting older, doing a bachelors, then a masters, and a pretty serious car accident I realized, weight goes on easy.

Then I had back surgery. This slowed me right down and doctors told me that I would need to take care of my back.

Trust me, this was a slow process.

But it was my motive. I could see my future of being bed ridden and suffering if I didn’t start to exercise. Which pushed me to action.

2) Empower yourself through education & wise choices.

Nals talks about surrounding yourself with like minded people.

And she’s right!

I have a lower back injury. So I can’t just do any old exercise. I needed to find what was right for me. I like to do this kickboxing circuit but I wasn’t able to do some of the stations. It was frustrating because I was able to do them before and I thought I may have to give it up. But I spoke up, talked to the trainers, met with a personal trainer and was able to figure out modifications.

Yes there are days that still don’t work for me. And yes it is frustrating. BUT I keep telling myself my motive.

**3) Aim for S.M.A.R.T. goals.**

If you read Nals post she links to SMART goals. What’s interesting about this, as a social worker, I get to teach groups and two of the groups I have taught is motivational enhancement and SMART goal making.

Since Nals linked to the SMART goals template, I will give you my example. After years of off and on again gyming, fad diets and yo-yo weight I realized my goals we not working for me. As soon as I start to think long term goals; like I need to work out 5x this week or my brother’s wedding is in July, I need to get in better shape for that, I get overwhelmed and fall hard. I shut down and stop going.

In Sept 2017, I started a project, where I started to count the days I went to the gym consistently.

I stopped thinking about how much I needed to do, and
I started with one day at a time.

And this has been a huge difference!

I don’t know if you have seen our Instagram page, but I just posted 48 workouts.

(It’s more than 48 now…can you guess where I’m at?)

4) Implement exercise. Keep it enjoyable & doable.

Nals says it all: Enjoyable and doable.

My gym is literally on my route to work. I barely have to get off the road to go in. Completely taking away the excuse that it’s too far away.

I enjoy it. Kicking the stink and punching the fluff out of the bags is so satisfactory to me. I leave it all there. The bags at my gym have felt every negative day, every frustration and every bad thing that happens at my work and in my life.

And let me tell you, it makes me feel so much better. Not only am I getting fit, but I use that moment between me and the bag to focus, pray, and ground me.

That’s it for me. But here’s my encouragement for you:

Take 10 mins to sit down and write out your 1 through 4.

What is your motivation?

When you think about motivation, what does the word mean to you?

2. What education do you need to empower yourself?

Do you need a personal trainer? To see a doctor? Maybe talk with a friend? How will you empower you?

3. SMART Goals

Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time frame. And don’t forget these may change…so it’s important to review them often.

4. What do you find enjoyable and doable?

Remember, keep it fun and doable. Working out shouldn’t be a chore.

Oh and PS. Nals is a huge inspiration and motivator for me. I have known her a few years now and watching her journey has been a blessing. I don’t think she realizes how much she motivates me! (THANKS NALS!)

What do you guys think of our first 4 tips?

Do-able?

Fabulous?

Inspiring?

What’s your guess for which number I’m at in my workout days?

Leave us a comment with your thoughts below!

Let’s keep on keeping on…

5) Reward yourself when you achieve your mini goals.

6) Don’t beat yourself up if you didn’t achieve your goal that week.

7) Know when to push yourself and when not to.

8) Don’t be ashamed to eat (when appropriately hungry) and to enjoy food.

Do you have any food for thought?

How do you feel about the ME Method?

Or the Tips? Or how I rolled them out to fit my life?

Please leave a comment below!

Oh la la we are on to Helpful Tips 5-8!

So in previous posts, I describe my battles with poor health, the benefits I got when I improved my health and the first batch o’ tips. You can read how Kells put them into action.

Changing my Motivation.

5) Reward yourself when you achieve your mini goals.

6) Don’t beat yourself up if you didn’t achieve your goal that week.

7) Know when to push yourself and when not to.

8) Don’t be ashamed to eat (when appropriately hungry) and to enjoy food.

Do you have any food for thought?

How do you feel about the ME Method?

Or the Tips?

Please leave a comment below!

Nals started with 4 of 10 tips.

Here’s how I (Kells) put those first 4 into motion…

1) True motivation = YOU.

Nals said she changed her motivation from improving her looks to choosing to live.

What is MY motivation?

H­onestly, I struggle every day. Unlike Nals, I don’t have a serious medical health condition to motivate me.

Trust me, this was a slow process.

2) Empower yourself through education & wise choices.

Nals talks about surrounding yourself with like minded people.

And she’s right!

3) Aim for S.M.A.R.T. goals.

And this has been a huge difference!

4) Implement exercise. Keep it enjoyable & doable.

Nals says it all: Enjoyable and doable.

That’s it for me. But here’s my encouragement for you:

What is your motivation?

2. What education do you need to empower yourself?

3. SMART Goals

4. What do you find enjoyable and doable?

What do you guys think of our first 4 tips?

Do-able?

Fabulous?

Inspiring?

Honestly, I struggle every day. Unlike Nals, I don’t have a serious medical health condition to motivate me.

**3) Aim for S.M.A.R.T. goals.**