Time to Level Up

I’m asking you to level up. 

I was asked on a podcast the other day how I know when to push my clients and when to back off.

Truth: some of it is a spidey sense from doing this for so long of knowing when clients are ready to be pushed.

Here’s the key: the push has to be successful or the person will feel small and not want to come back.

I am NOT out to make people feel small. I want people walking out of their workout feeling empowered and confidence and taking those feelings into the rest of their day.

But I’ve learned over the years that being ready to be pushed will only happen when you can check your ego at the door.

Pushing yourself isn’t always about taking the hardest option or working to the point of throwing up or injury.

Pushing yourself means expanding your horizons so you can prove to yourself that you are that badass.

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What does that mean in your workout?

• You have to be present. The expectation of what you should be able to do because you did it yesterday, can’t apply.

• Check that little negative voice that tells you “I can’t”. There’s nothing you can’t do, it’s all in your approach.

• Ditch the fear. Try the heavier weight, try to go faster. If it doesn’t work, you’re not failing, you’re just discovering new starting points.

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It All Adds Up

You are a sum of all your choices.

That’s really what healthy living boils down to, a series of choices. It’s those incremental choices that will eventually lead you to the healthy lifestyle you’re seeking.

This doesn’t mean you have to be perfect all the time. That’s not realistic. Neither is healthy living that requires you to cut out all the things you love. Healthy living needs to incorporate the things that you know if you gave them up, you would binge tf outta them once you had the chance to have them again.

Like wine. Or chocolate. 

That’s why getting healthy, working out regularly, and eating well consistently is hard. Because it’s about balance just as much as it’s about learning why you’re making the decisions you’re making in regards to healthy choices. Then understanding how to have those things you love with moderation.

But how do you get healthy and not give up the things you love? Like pizza?

Grab Your Dumbbells!

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I encourage my clients to have what they want, I don’t adhere to cutting out every single treat you love or working out to the point where you feel like you’re going to break. Those paths, as my time training people has taught me, are not sustainable. 80% of the time, you need to be making the healthy choices even if that’s not the choice you want to make. It’s showing up for the workout when you would rather be doing anything else, and eating well when you would rather have take out. 

Then it’s you allowing yourself those treats in moderation. Over time, you’ll learn that you don’t actually need the WHOLE bag of chips, but just a bowl. 

So have your chocolate. Drink your wine boo and be ok with it because you know that you’re doing it in moderation. You give yourself those allowances so you don’t go overboard like a college kid at her first frat party. 

And know that with each one of those choices you’re creating balance and a strong foundation for a happy and healthy life. Also know that with every single choice, making those choices will become easier and more routine.

How Are Those Distractions for You Today?

Cuz I feel like I’m being pulled in a million different directions. Seriously. Good luck getting time to workout 🏋️‍♀️ when every SINGL B E I N G in your space needs something from you. Right now.

Grab Your Dumbbells!

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Seriously y’all let me down when I became a mom. You forewarned me about ALL the things. All the weird and disgusting things. You had stories on freaking stories. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciated all of it, but dang could one of you have forewarned me about how busy the days are and how fast they go?

I seriously was NOT prepared for this. It’s like I blink and the day is over and I’ve done abso-fucking-lutely nothing.

I’m just saying, a heads up would’ve been nice. Like hey make sure your time management skills are on point or you’re going to be late to everything all of the time.

I never knew life could be this busy, nor did I know that I could have my attention be pulled in so many directions as the same time. I swear, sometimes I get to the end of my day with NO idea of how I got to that point because I’ve been moving THE WHOLE DAY.

Trying to add in a workout to that mix can be crazy making.

That level of time insanity makes me completely understand why people let their workouts slide down their priority lists. It’s not just like you workout and you’re done. You workout, then you have to factor in eating and getting ready after the workout. When the day is already going by so fast, even another hour devoted to something else can lead to a nervous breakdown.

It’s not like those distractions go away just because you’ve decided you’re going to workout.

I know you need some hardcore tunnel vision and focus to make your fitness game be fire , I also know that’s easier said than done. Especially when you’re now working from home and a school teacher.

Here’s my Top 3 Tips for Shoving Your Distractions Aside so you can actually workout:

1. Make sure your workout 🏋️‍♀️ is clear. There’s nothing worse than starting your workout and seeing all your kid’s clutter in front of your face. Take 5 minutes to clear it out or go somewhere else.

2. Schedule your workouts. In your calendar 📆. Like an appointment with your doctor. Then have a back up time in case shit hits the fan and your initial time doesn’t work.

3. Plan your workouts. Know what you’re doing before you even get started and have a back up plan in case shit hits the fan. There’s no bigger distractor then having the time to workout and spending 15 minutes figuring out wtf you’re actually gonna do.

Give Me Your Best Excuse

I’ve come to really enjoy hearing the sheer amount of excuses that keep a person from working out over the years.

Seriously, come at me with your best excuse. I bet I’ve heard it before.

Don’t get me, I’m not referring to excuses as the valid reasons as to why you can’t do something. Those valid reasons are usually medically related and due to injury. Even those valid reasons are things we can work around. 

Back to the excuses…

This is actually a legit internal monologue I have all the time. It’s really hard for me to understand why someone would let their workouts fall on the back burner when they know the benefit they get from working out. Conversely, they also know how poorly they feel when they don’t work out and how frustrated they get when they stop working out and have to do all this work to get back to where they were before.

I understand that the fitness industry puts emphasis on crazy results that happen in a quick amount of time, and that’s what we want. I also understand that most of us, generally speaking, don’t want to or don’t like to workout, so it’s easy for our workouts to fall low on the priority list.

We want to look good naked with the lights on to ourselves, with minimal amount of work, without understanding that the work we put into our bodies now insures our health over time. We just want to look good. I’m here for that, because duh I do too. There’s something to be said about the confidence you get when you’re feeling yourself.

Today’s Workout

Tabata

10 rounds

Kettlebell swings

I was lucky though because when I got hurt, I had a group of people around me advocating for my health and encouraging me to think about the longevity of my health. To be proactive about taking care of myself so I don’t end up back in a place where I needed to lose a ton of weight or get over a debilitating injury.

Because I know being in that place is more frustrating and more demoralizing than figuring out how to schedule in a quick workout.

The focus for me became how I could workout safely to continue seeing results, so I could not only look good naked with the lights on to myself, but also FEEL good

Knowing that about myself, it kills me even more to know that most of the time the workouts aren’t happening because you’re getting stuck wasting your time on BS like refreshing your email or getting stuck in the scroll hole on social media.

If you have 20 minutes to spend on IG or scrolling through TikTok, you have 20 minutes to workout. You have the time, it’s just a matter of how you’re spending it. Trust me, you can scroll TikTok again after the kids go to bed.

I know we use those outlets as a means to let go, decompress and not think, and I’m here for that, it has it’s time and place, but it needs to be after you’ve taken care of your health. After you’ve given to yourself, go for it, lose yourself in the scroll hole. But get the workout done first.

Change is Hard

The change I’m proposing you make is the harder one.

When I started A Healthful Life, I had a nightmare of a time figuring out how to convey to people that I wanted to create custom tailored programs for them to find THEIR health. In a way that would last.

When I got hurt, I was really blessed to have a group of people advocating for my health and encouraging me to think about how I wanted my health to look over the longevity of my life. 

This is the difference between you and me: I don’t approach fitness from the standpoint that this is a 30 day and done program. I don’t view this as a temporary aspect of my life. I don’t see this as something I can “take a break from” or let up on.

I know that if I let my workouts go, if I let my eating go, my health will immediately go and I will know that because chronic pain will absolutely debilitate me. I know the potential consequences are not worth the risk.

However, I also know that most people don’t approach health in the same way as me. We, as a fitness industry, have established a standard of the quick fix with no road map of how to maintain the results you achieved.

Meeting someone where they’re at and creating change in a realistic way turned out to be the easy part. The hard part was getting the person on board with the change taking longer than what they wanted.

It means being patient and it means being willing to fail. You have to be willing to try things, see how they work and change them when they don’t. Which means you can’t beat yourself up when you try something and it doesn’t work, you have to be flexible and adaptable to try something different.

I get the appeal of the fast change. The instantaneous results. You want that fast result because you’ve taken so long to change that by now, you wanted that change like yesterday. You don’t want to take the time to make change that will last for the long term. It’s the “I just need to lose 15 pounds” but not thinking past what happens AFTER you lose 15 pounds. 

What I teach is not the temporary, rigid, give up your whole life change just to drop a few pounds. It’s the change that will teach you how to effectively incorporate healthy habits into your life, so you feel like you have balance and you’re not deprived of the things you love.

So you feel like you’re thriving and not surviving.

So you don’t make a drastic change just to lose it a year later when you permanently fall off the wagon, because you gave up too much and couldn’t take it.

I want you to know health as just life. Not a sacrifice, not an inconvenience, but just how you live your life. Healthy, sustainable change means taking the long road. It means trial and error to find what truly works the best for you, and being able to have the skills necessary to make changes when your life changes.

Snack Time

I don’t play in my snack game. 

I mean I’m Italian and I’m an athlete, food is no joke in my life. My grandpa seriously used to take those root beer barrel candies from Claim Jumper’s just to have snacks in his car. 

I love snacks. I’m a perpetual snacker. So needless to say I’m serious about the snacks in my house and the snacks that go on the road with me. 

Over time I grew to understand that being serious about my snack game meant I had to prep my snack game. Because given the opportunity to grab whatever was available, I would GRAB WHATEVER. Even if it meant making an unhealthy decision that would cause regression on my progress towards my weight loss. 

I do realize this means taking time out of your already busy schedule to prep snacks. At first thought you’re probably thinking that my idea behind prepping snacks is cute but not realistic. I’m here to tell you it was a hot mess at first. I had to play around with my schedule to figure out how I could incorporate this level of prep in my life without losing my mind. 

So I started prepping snacks when I was making dinner. I mean I was in the kitchen anyways so I might as well right? Then I made sure to make the snack easy without a lot of prep or cook time involved. 

My go to weekly snack? Hummus. It goes with just about everything, it’s easy to make, and travels well. 

Grab the recipe for yourself!

I Don't Have Time for That

I do NOT have time to make lunches 🥙 in the morning. 

I give a LOT of credit to the parents who do. Our mornings don’t allow for that luxury. Most of the time I feel like I’ve been shot out of a canon just trying to make sure everyone is handled at on time-ish to school and work. 

In fairness, it’s my own fault. I like sleep so I prioritize that over making lunches. I would rather have the extra 10 minutes of sleep. 

Generally this means prepping lunches the night before when I’m making dinner. 

My other work around? I have stuff prepped and ready to go in the fridge that’s easy to make, healthy, and will hold up in my fridge for the week. 

Here’s one of my favorites!

I Love Chocolate

I’m not doing any diet that has me cutting out wine 🍷 or chocolate 🍫. 

Hold on, imagine my sing song voice…FUCCKKKKK that. Life is too short to be lived without some of the simpler pleasures especially when we’re all adulting like it’s a professional sport. So shit, if I want to have a glass of wine at the end of a crazy day with my hubby, whist enjoying our gorgeous view and catching up on our days, I’m going to.

I know that every single fitness expert says that abs are made in the kitchen and blah blah and I am NOT at all in disagreement with that sentiment. But I do feel like what people need as a result is a healthy relationship with food 🥘 so they know they can enjoy life but in moderation.

Yes I am saying that means you don’t eat chips and salsa at the restaurant until you pass out or feel so full that someone could roll you out of the front door of said restaurant.

It’s definitely an easier said than done sort of thing though and it definitely is directly impacted by how badly you want the goals you’ve set out to get.

When you want that goal so badly you can taste it, all of a sudden some of those other things don’t seem to matter as much.

But if you need that support, that guidance or for someone to be that voice in the back of your brain asking if you really need that WHOLE bag of cookies, I got you.

Slow Cooker Recipes for the Mama Who Hates to Cook

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I Will Not Weigh My Food

Don’t ask me to weigh my food 🥘.

I’m kidding. But I will totally refuse.

I’m not a proponent of making super restrictive or insane dietary changes, unless medically necessary, when I coach someone because I know our relationship with food can be a tough one. 

We have this idea that in order to be “healthy”, we can’t have the things that we love. The occasional chips and salsa indulgence, a glass of wine with girlfriends, or some chocolate. We also think we have to calorically restrict ourselves to the point of deprivation.

The human body, and more importantly, the human mind is much more complicated than that. But the solution I want you to find is the harder one to obtain.

If you don’t have a healthy relationship with food you’re not going to get the transformation you want. All those things you restricted with your food will be for nothing because as soon as you stop, all the progress you made will totally stop.

I want to take the food you love 💕, the food your family loves and give you the transformation you want. 

Which means we have to examine your relationship with food as a whole, why you’re making the choices you’re making when it comes to what you get, and the appropriateness of those choices. It also means that at the end of it, you’ll be able to make choices about your food with  confidence, instead of beating yourself up for those choices.

Go To Dinner Recipes

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Fail Bigger

I want you to fail.

Just wait a second. I know it sounds crazy so just hear me out. 

I want you to have those moments when you tell yourself you can’t do it, when you quit, when you get so frustrated you don’t know how you’ll do this again tomorrow. 

There’s power in those moments. 

Because failing is a frame of mind. 

I tell my clients all the time the phrase “I can’t do it” isn’t allowed in my class. I know you can do it, maybe not today but you will. 

I also know that failing gives you a baseline. It shows you where you’re starting from, and where you’re going to grow. It gives you a foundation. A launching pad for continued strength and transformation. 

It also shows you that you’re more resilient and more of a badass than what you may have previously thought. Because after the moment of failure, you’re going to keep showing up and keep putting in the work. 

I know you’ll succeed and your fitness goals will become your reality, your healthy changes will become your lifestyle, but you need a safe space to figure out your starting point.

From there you’ll see your growth and ultimately get your transformation.