Have a plan!
One of the first steps to a healthier life is being organized. If you are prepared and have a plan, you are much more likely to succeed. There are many things you need to prepare for. For example, plan when you are going to work out and what you are going to do. Otherwise, it is easy to put off your workout with excuses until your excuse becomes that you are too tired and you put it off until tomorrow. However, if you pick a time to exercise you can make your life schedule around it. Schedule and organize your meals/food the same way. If you know in advance what you’re going to have for breakfast, you are less likely to skip breakfast. If you pack a healthy lunch and/or snack, you will be less tempted to go out and eat something you shouldn’t be eating. Availability and scheduling are key factors to making a plan work. The more organized you are, the easier it will be to achieve your ultimate goal of losing weight. You are only helping yourself when you become more organized.
In addition to organization you need the equipment. If you have a bottle of water handy, you are much more likely to drink it than go get a drink of water. Just having the proper things around helps you be healthier. When it comes to exercise try getting a locker at your local gym or pack a bag or workout clothes the night before and put them in your car. That way you cannot use the excuse that you don’t have anything to workout in, and it will be easier to just go to the gym and not be tempted to go home and stay home.
Organization can go much deeper that just having things like water bottles handy. When I first started trying to count calories I was frustrated by having to remember so many numbers. I started a list of my favorite foods and next to them I wrote down a serving size, and the calorie count. This was especially helpful when I threw out the container but had leftovers. It was also easier to choose what would go in a meal and what I could eat that day having a list of things I liked already tallied up. I also found it helpful to label leftovers with calories instead of just the date -just on a piece of masking tape stuck to the outside.
I definitely see a need for a plan when it comes to special events too. At church potlucks I try to fill my plate up with fruits and vegetables first so I don’t have room for anything unhealthy. Additionally, I just have coffee while everyone else has dessert. When it comes to Thanksgiving, I’m going to make a list beforehand of the calorie content of my moms foods so I will know how much I can eat and how many calories I’m eating. I’m also going to try and cook something healthy myself to contribute that I know is healthy. At parties I’ve learned to take a seat far from the food and find someone to talk to who also isn’t really eating much. Think about any situation long enough and I know you can come up with a plan to help you avoid those calories. Have a plan and you can deal with any unwanted food situation and you can fit exercise into any routine.
Don’t give up just cause of one bad day!
Let me ask you a few questions:
Would you buy a house if you were only allowed to see the kitchen?
Would you purchase a new car if you were permitted to only see the inside of the trunk and the backseat?
Would you pass judgment on a book after only reading one page?
Neither would I.
You need to look at the big picture in life. This is not only true in purchasing houses, buying cars and reading books; it is true in looking at our life. One failure does not make the person a failure; just as one achievement does not make the person a success.
Life’s trials and temptations are only a page out of a book.
We are on a long journey. For me, at this time in my life, it is a weight loss journey. This journey does not stop once we lose the weight… it is a lifelong journey. We did not gain this weight overnight so we can not expect to go to sleep and wake up the next day at our ideal weight. That would be like reading the end of the book to read about the happy ending.
Have you ever done that before? I did once. I was short on time once but really wanted to see how the book ended (hoping for a happy ending) so I skipped to the end. I found that after I did that, I could put that book away knowing how it ended, but would that satisfy me? Did I learn anything? Did I appreciate the struggles and challenges it took to get there? Would I know of the happy times the characters had? The sad times? Would I know the characters at all? Would I care?
We need to look at this journey as a book. I have often heard that we have many chapters in our life. I can easily see that in my life.
As a kid I had chapters such as “
Sesame Street
is my Friend” and “The growing years”. The teen chapters of “Schools out for summer” and “Boy’s Aren’t So Bad”. In my twenties we had “Take this Job and Shove It” and of course there was a chapter of “Eating on a budget: Hostess Cupcakes for Breakfast and Pasta for Dinner”
Right now I am in a chapter in my life that I will title “Becoming a Healthier Me”. Someday I will hopefully be able to look back at this chapter in my life and see it as a success. Since I am living this chapter day by day, page by page I will be able to appreciate the struggles and challenges that it took to bring me to my goal, the happy times, the sad time, the sucessess and the failures.
In our book we can view each day as a separate page. Some pages may be filled with successes while some may contain what we consider failures. However, we need to remember that just because you failed on one page, does not categorize our whole book a failure. In turn, just because you had one success on a page does not make our whole book a success. It is everything from one cover to the other that matters. In this journey, we will have successes and failures. We just need to remember to turn the page and continue through the book until we come to our own happy ending.
So as you write your chapter for the weightloss journey you are on remember that after a bad day you just need to turn the page, start fresh and keep writing.
A Pep Talk -for when you need cheering up!
Everyone of us has a day when we are down in the dumps, food looks comforting, our weight loss seems hopeless, and we’re ready to throw in the sweatbands in exchange for a tub of ice cream. On those days we just need to hear a pep talk -nice things. I think it’s important to add one to the articles listed here so even when you can’t thin of anything good about yourself you can have somewhere to come and be cheered up. I’m writing this thinking of everyone who has written posts here and how inspiring you all have been to me and to each other.
Today has not been the greatest day. But that’s okay -we’re all human. I bet even Bob and Jillian have bad days too where they have had a bowl of ice cream. But you have a greater goal in mind for yourself and one bad day won’t stop you. You always have the chance to improve yourself, your health, your quality of life, your happiness. So pick yourself up and look not at one bad day but all the inspiring things you have done. You have spent time exercising! You have gotten moving, even when you didn’t feel like it. You have gotten up mornings and exercised late at night to get it all in. You can always be proud of that, and you can do it again starting now.
You have passed by so many unhealthy foods -many desserts, alcoholic beveridges, things covered in cheese and butter, and you have increased your life span each time you said no to unhealthy foods. You can be proud of all those pounds you chose not to load onto your body. Even if you haven’t been eating the best lately, if you slipped up, it’s okay. In the big picture it won’t matter a bit. You’re forming a new lifestyle for yourself. Every day will not be perfect, but you will learn from your mistakes and gradually exercise will become easier, food will become less tempting, and your clothes will fit a lot better.
You want a lifestyle and you can have it no matter what happened today or yesterday. You do not have to always be overweight. You can change this about yourself. You deserve to have a fit body -and to do all the healthy activities with it you can. You can be the old you, or the new you, or anyone you want to become. You may stumble from time to time, but the harder something is to get the more worth it in the end. The biggest loser contestants all win, something more than a cash prize -they win their lives back. Your health and a longer life is worth so much more than money can buy. You can do it and it is worth doing!!!
Forgive yourself, give yourself a pep talk, and get back on track as soon as you can. You are probably inspiring others to do their best as well. You are already better off for making this decision, now keep it up and you will have a reward no one but you can give you.
Tracking Your Progress
If you are one of the many who have decided to lose fat weight than you will need to know about the best methods for keeping track of your progress. Most people weigh themselves on a scale. But a bathroom scale doesn’t tell you how much fat you’ve lost, but only indicates the total amount of muscle, fat, bones, connective tissue, cartilage, water, in addition to food that’s in the stomach. The scale is not the most accurate measure of weight lost, but it’s probably the most popular and will give you regular feedback on how you’re progressing. If you are just beginning an exercise program than you will also be gaining muscle weight in addition to losing fat weight. If say you gain four pounds of muscle and lose five pounds of fat, you will only lose one pound of total body weight, but you are still making progress. The scale will help you recognize when you are not progressing and also allow you to make the needed adjustments in your food portions. To keep track of your weight, weigh yourself in the morning and record the results in your fitness journal.
There are a few other areas where progress can be monitored. If you limit your focus too narrowly you could be missing some other important areas that are effected by weight loss. However each one of these methods are only an approximation and a tool for helping to measure your progress and should not create unrealistic expectations.
Measuring your body fat percentage is a more accurate measure of fat loss than the scale. This is a measurement of lean body mass compared with total fat mass. It will tell you the percentage of fat weight you are carrying around. For men anything above 25% is considered obese, and for women anything over 32% is considered obese, depending upon your age.
The simplest method I’ve found for measuring fat percentages is the military method. Using a tape measure the men will measure the circumference of their waist at the naval and the neck just below the Adam’s apple. The neck circumference is subtracted from the waist circumference and the difference along with their height is used to determine body fat percentages from the following charts: http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/kurilla5.pdf
Women will need to measure their neck just below the larynx, waist at the minimal circumference, and the hips at the greatest protrusion of the buttocks. Add the waist and hip measurements then subtract the neck measurement. Look up the results from the following charts: http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/kurilla5.pdf
There are many other methods for measuring body fat and if used correctly are usually accurate within 2~5%. Try and measure your body fat every month or two as minor changes in body fat will not register. Knowing your body fat and weight will let you know whether you are losing fat or gaining lean mass. Multiplying your weight times the percentage of body fat will tell you how many pounds of fat you are carrying around. Subtract the pounds of fat from your total weight for the total amount of lean mass.
Another important indication of your fitness level is your resting heart rate (RHR). Your heart rate is an indication of how hard your heart works during exercise and as your fitness level increases your heart rate becomes lower. Athletes usually have lower heart rates than sedentary people (no fooling). Measure your heart rate first thing in the morning by counting how many times your heart beats per minute. Take your heart rate for three days to get an average and record it in your fitness journal. You will also be using your RHR to figure out your Target Heart Rate (THR) for getting into the ‘fat burning zone’ while performing cardio exercise, which I will be posting in a future article.
Your measurements will also change as you lose weight so record the following measurements in your log; Waist- measure your waist roughly one inch above your naval. Your waist line is your life line and this measurement should always go down while you are losing weight and never up. According to Dr. Oz waist measurements for women should be 32 inches or under, and for men 35 inches or under. The extra inches that you add to your waistline could be subtracting years from your life. If you only take one measurement, this is the most important one, even more important than your weight.
Hips- measure your hips at the widest part of your buttocks with heels together. Thighs- measure the upper thighs just below the buttocks. Chest- measure around the widest part of the chest, and for women take a second measurement just under the bust line. Arms- measure your upper arms at the widest part above the elbow, than record all these measurements in your fitness journal. Taking your measurements will tell you where you are losing the fat.
Other ways of tracking your progress include keeping a log of all your workouts and cardio sessions. This is especially important if you’re engaged in weight training to record the number of reps, sets, poundage, and types of exercises after every training session. Otherwise how will you know how much weight you used last time for a particular exercise? An exercise journal along with your measurements will also allow you to look back over the years and see which routines worked best for you and which exercises gave you the best results. Use the Excel spread sheet program to create your own personal exercise log or ask a friend to create one for you.
Take a before and after picture of yourself. Taking a picture of yourself will allow you to see just how much you’ve changed and to make visual comparisons. Every picture tells a story doesn’t it. Take one picture clothed and another picture wearing a bathing suit. One day you may use your before and after pictures to inspire other people, may even someone close to you who needs to lose weight for health reasons. You will not only be helping yourself but also helping others by inspiring them with your success story.
If you haven’t already done so, write down your goals and reasons for wanting to lose weight and when and how you will achieve those goals. The more specific you are about why you need to lose weight and the time you expect to accomplish your goal is vital to your success. Now you’ll be better equipped to measure your progress more accurately and see whether you are advancing towards your goals. This information will allow you to fine tune your diet and exercise routine plus you will have a permanente record of your journey to use as a reference for years to come.
Try not to get too caught up in the measurements as they are only a tool. Just because you don’t see a change on the outside doesn’t mean that you’re not changing in other ways. Remember it takes time to take off weight and that you are also improving on the inside as well, for you may be lowering your blood pressure and cholesterol levels, which is a very significant change. Just remain focused on your goals and the reason you’re doing this, and for every pound you lose means one less pound of unwanted fat.
Before you begin any diet or exercise program consult with your physician.
Things you will need;
A fitness journal
Tape Measure
Pencil or pen
Camera
Weight Scale
A mission statement