Your Inner Critic

I want you to talk to yourself the same way you talk to your friend when she’s going through some sh!t.

You know what I’m talking about. 

Your girl calls you with ALL the drama about whatever, and you’re the kind, sympathetic, listening ear. You show love, you show support, and encouragement.

Annnddd you might offer to drive the get away car. Provided snacks are involved.

Girl you have to do THAT when your workout gets hard.

Instead of what you currently do…

You know what I’m talking about: that workout starts to suck or an exercise in the workout isn’t your favorite and you immediately go down the negative rabbit hole.

We talk down to ourselves and we beat ourselves up, and really we treat ourselves like absolute trash when logically we know we’re not. We know we’re better than that and we know we don’t deserve that negativity.

Here’s my challenge to you during your workout today:

When it gets hard, pause and listen to what you’re telling yourself. 

What are you saying?

I hope it’s kind.

You’re talking about my friend after all and she doesn’t deserve your BS.

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3 Rounds

15 swings

10 bent over row

10 push ups

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Working Out At Home

Here’s the difference between working out at home and working out at a gym: 

At a gym, the people around you hold you accountable. You have the person next to you who you can silently compete with, you have the friend in the class who makes sure you’re going to be there, and you have a community.

That community gives you energy, it motivates you to show up, and gets you excited (even on the smallest level) to do the work.

At home, YOU have to hold YOU accountable. 

That is such a hard thing for people. Myself included. When I started working out at home after I had my daughter, it was SO hard to stay motivated. I missed the energy of the class, not the competitive nature, but just being around other people and having them join me in getting stronger.

It made it super easy for me to quit on an interval when I only had a few seconds left, or skip an exercise because I didn’t want to do it.

When I started noticing that I was doing that, I seriously checked myself. Granted, things didn’t change overnight, but I started reflecting on why I would waste my own time when my time was so limited.

Knowing that I didn’t have a lot of time to workout, I gradually stopped half asking my work. I started becoming competitive with myself. I started drawing inward to find the motivation I needed to keep pushing so I could become stronger.

It wasn’t always cute and definitely wasn’t comfortable, but over time, I began to rely on myself for my own accountability instead of the people around me.

How will you show up when no one else is watching?

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Grab the workout below to show yourself your strength.

Pyramid AMRAP

5 minutes

Start with 2 reps of each exercise

Increase by 2 reps on each exercise until the 5 minute mark

Rest for one minute

Start where you left off, and work back down to 2 reps of each exercise

Reverse fly

Hang clean

Reverse lunges

Have Kids They Say...

I was never the mom who wore the destruction of my body from having a baby as a badge of honor.

Labor is hard. Even when it goes smoothly, the transition into parenthood is like being initiated into a thunder dome. It tries even the strongest of people and it’s something no one else can understand unless they’ve been through it themselves.

I remember prior to having my daughter, telling my husband that even on the toughest days, I was going to shower. I wasn’t going to be one of those new moms who went days without brushing her teeth or taking a shower or changing my undies.

Even if I had no time for the kind of selfceare I would want to have, I would have time for something small like a shower.

I didn’t want what happened during labor, how quickly it spiraled out of control and how difficult it was after to become an excuse for me.

I didn’t want the newborn phase and the pure exhaustion and elation that came with it to be an excuse to let myself go.

I knew that if I went there, it was a slippery slope for me neglecting myself, and that neglect would lead to my chronic pain kicking in.

I also knew, that for me, if I went there, I wouldn’t lose the baby weight and eventually that last 10 pounds of baby weight would just be 10 extra pounds of weight.

It wasn’t a reason for me to give up on my body or how I looked in my clothes.

It was, frankly, another injury I needed to overcome.

With love 💗 , care, and a whole lot of f-ing patience. Not just with myself, but with my new schedule of having a newborn 👶 , and with the physical capabilities OF my body.

This is what I learned through that process: 

Change comes from challenge but the challenge needs to be realistic. You have to meet your body where it’s at, without judgment or criticism, in order to push yourself to get the change.

Respecting your body and honoring it will get you change. Your body will respond to that love and support.

Trying to meet an unrealistic expectation for your life, your body, or where your head’s at, is only going to end in disappointment.

I also know that figuring out how to do this for yourself is overwhelming af.

Not just because you don’t have the time to figure it out because you don’t even know where to start.

But start you MUST so you can feel better. You deserve to figure it out because you deserve to feel better and to step into your own power and strength.

Ask for help, use the resources at your disposable to get you there, and don’t forget to take a deep breath. Change is a gradual shift, but it will happen as long as you continue to take steps forward.

Why Do HIIT Workouts Work?

When I first started going to a CrossFit box in 2007, I went because I wanted to prove to myself that I was still strong after my injury knocked me on my literal ass. After working out at an insane pace for so many years, just to land myself on bed rest, and then to be denied by the community I thought was my family, I was LOST. That’s putting it mildly. I was flailing.

I remember a friend telling me about this CrossFit concept of working out. Olympic lifting, hardcore interval training, body weight work, and gymnastic style exercises that could be done quickly. 

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It worked perfectly with my work schedule, but more importantly it worked perfectly with my heard. I needed a mindset reset so I could regain the confidence I lost, and also find a place where I felt like I belonged.

Back them, CrossFit and this HIIT style of workout was not a thing. There was ONE box in San Diego, in a not so safe neighborhood. But damn did I fall in love with it.

I loved being able to move heavy things. I loved being able to move quickly, I loved the community I was in, and mostly I loved the results I was getting.

I felt strong.

I could do things I never thought I would be able to do, and never thought I would be able to do again after my injury. It helped restore my sense of self.

But no one around me understood how I could get results from a workout that was 7 minutes long.

HIIT now is a trendy workout. CrossFit is trendy af.

People love it because they see the same results I saw all those years ago, but don’t quite understand the science behind it. My current clientele included.

Here’s a basic way to explain it:

You know when you workout, your heart rate increases. HIIT training exploits the increasing and decreasing of your heart rate as a means to build muscle and burn calories.

Think of it like this: you know in that HIIT workout when you get breathless and you feel like maybe you might just barf?

That’s your body going into an oxygen deficit.

When your workout is complete, your body is determined af to restore it pre-exercise state. 

It does this through increasing your metabolic state. Increasing your metabolic state means you’re burning more calories. Burning more calories means you’re going to see better results.

Granted, this rate at which your body can restore its pre-exercise state is different for every body, it does work for every body. 

The way to make this work more efficiently is to make sure you’re pairing your nutrition properly post workout. That way you can maximize the caloric burn post workout, seeing even better results. 

I Just Need to Sweat

There are some days where I just need to sweat. It doesn’t even matter if I’ve been on my feet all day working, and I’m totally exhausted, sometimes I just need to move. 

Maybe it was a tough day, maybe I just need to burn off some steam, or I need a place to put my stress. Regardless, it’s those days when I know without a shadow of a doubt, I’ll feel better when I’m done.

I know you have those days. When the workout is serving a bigger purpose than just moving your body.

To sweat and be able to leave my day in a puddle on my mat.

On days like those, I know I need workouts that are going to push me. I need the workout that has me focusing on nothing else except the work that I’m doing. 

That kind of challenge.

I need a workout that was hard enough to forget about all BS.

To give me space to breathe, to focus on something other than all the things I need to take care of or things that are pulling at my energy.

All the laundry, the dogs need to be walked, and dinner that needs to be prepped, I just needed a minute from it all. Sometimes I know that I need to walk away for a minute so I can actually get those things accomplished. 

Before, I used to neglect that need because I didn’t think I had enough time to get a good workout in if I only had 20 minutes. Shoot, being honest, more like 10 minutes. But then I found myself getting frustrated at everything. My fuse was super short and I had NO patience for anyone or anything.

Now I know I can get a quick little burn in if I’m smart about my time and how I’m utilizing it for my workouts.

HIIT workouts are my Go To workouts for those times. They’re designed to be short and if you push yourself hard enough (and pair it with some sold post workout nutrition), you can continue burning calories AFTER the workout is over. 

It’s a process called Excessive Post Oxygen Consumption or EPOC. When you go into a HIIT workout, your body goes into oxygen deficit. As a result, when the workout is over, your body works harder to restore that loss of oxygen, so you can return to your pre-exercise state. Your body does this process by increasing your metabolic rate and burning more calories. 

That process kicks in once the workout is over, which is why you can continue to burn calories POST workout. It’s an awesome thing our body can do and one of the reasons why people gravitate to the harder, more intense workouts. Because they know results will keep coming.

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Today’s Workout

Tabata

10 Rounds

Even number rounds: swings

Odd number rounds: push press

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Go To Dinner Recipes

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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.

Make the Change

I had to make a change because I was over having to suck in my tummy ALL THE DAMN TIME. Seriously. My abs hurt 😔 .

I didn’t feel like I was asking a lot to feel comfortable in my own clothes. Much less my own skin.

But dang girl, how do you even take accountability for your health when you’re responsible for EVERYONE AROUND YOU and that To Do List isn’t getting any shorter?

Here’s my Top 3 Easy Changes to Start A Healthful Life NOW:

1. I was realistic with my time. We all have demands on our time that can’t be changed. Don’t put extra pressure on yourself to workout 🏋️‍♀️ on a day when you know it realistically won’t happen.

2. I checked my portions. I’m not one to cut out anything unless it’s due to a medical necessity like an allergy (I mean we only get one life, so I’m gonna eat the chocolate 🍫 and drink the wine 🍷), but life is best lived in moderation so I had to learn how to cut myself off of the things I adored. (Extra PRO TIP: portion out your snacks or meals and then put everything away. That extra level of effort to get more will have you thinking 🤔 twice before you do it).

3. I increased my water intake. Most of us live in a state of dehydration without even realizing it, making us feel sluggish or hungry when we’re truly not, so I invested in an awesome reusable water bottle that I could cover with stickers and I take it with me everywhere. That way I have no reason to NOT drink water.

Stronger Today than Yesterday

I dare you to get stronger than yesterday. 

The first time I worked out after I had my daughter, I legit felt like I was going to have to get a new job. I felt so weak, I didn’t think I would ever be able to train people again.

It sent me into a straight panic.

I had no idea what I was going to do or how I should handle things. I felt weak and it made me feel so discouraged. I pride myself on being able to teach people the things that I put my own body through, and at that point in my life, I didn’t feel like my body could effectively do anything.

Then I realized that I wasn’t any different from the people around me. If I felt that way after having a kid, I probably wasn’t alone in that sentiment of feeling like I would never be strong again. 

I knew I could fix it though. I just knew it would take time.

I regained my strength. It took time and a whole lot of patience because I knew that in order to regain my strength and maintain my strength in a healthy manner, it wouldn’t be an overnight adventure. 

But then I took a deep breath, and I set small incremental goals so I could regain my strength and whenever I felt like I wasn’t getting there quickly enough, I reminded myself that consistently doing the work would get me the results I wanted.

I'm Not Comfortable

I never knew that I could feel so freaking uncomfortable in my own skin and it made me sad because I didn’t think I had the power to change it.

But the prospect of changing things was so daunting because my days were stacked to the BRIM with stuff that needs to get done.

Want to make a change and not sure where to start?

Here’s the Top 3 Changes I Made to Get My Comfy Back:

1. I did something active every day. On the days I could workout, I definitely did, even if it was a HIIT workout that was only 10 minutes. But if a workout wouldn’t work for my day, I made a point to do something that was active. I went for a walk with the dog 🐶, I stretched 🧘‍♀️, I took the stairs instead of an elevator.

2. I drank more water 💦. It’s so easy to forget to have water when you’re running around like crazy 😝, but the benefits are beyond worth it. Pro tip: can’t remember to drink water? Set an alarm on your phone to remind you.

3. I became mindful of what I ate. I didn’t cut things out, but I made sure that healthy, whole food 🥘 made up the majority of what I was eating.

You'll Never Be Ready

If you waited until you were ready it would never happen. Your life will always be busy, your plate will always be full, and there will always be entities in your life demanding of your time and energy.

If we know nothing else for certain, we know that.

Change takes a leap of faith. But not in the way you’re thinking.

This is a leap in faith in YOUR ability to make your workouts work in YOUR life and your schedule. I know it’s the easy answer to tell you that you’ll just figure it out, when the reality of figuring out is super daunting.

But at the end of the day, if you want to see that healthy living change, where living to your best ability means regular workouts and solid nutrition, you will figure it out. Maybe it means HIIT workouts so your workouts aren’t as long, maybe it means being realistic with how many days you can workout, and maybe it means incorporating in some meal prep so you’re not as stressed about grabbing healthy food.

Whatever the solutions are for you to get all these things under control, it’s going to have to happen when you’re not ready. It’s going to have to happen when life is busy and crazy and chaotic. It’s going to happen before your schedule is ready. But it is going to happen when YOU are ready. When the prospect of NOT changing is worse than the prospect of changing, feeling better, and being healthier.

My best advice to you? If you know you need to start before you feel like things are perfect and the planets have aligned, ask for support. Let other people know that what’s going on with you. That doesn’t mean you need to spill your guts and tell them that deep down embarrassing goal, you can keep that to yourself, but you do need to tell at least one person what you’re going to be doing.

Have that person hold you accountable, love you and support you. Then the pivot won’t seem so daunting because you know you’ll have someone in your corner who will love you through it.

Grab Your Dumbbells!

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