Fitness: A Priority

For a long time, I’ve always come up with excuses for not making fitness an integral part of my lifestyle. I was too busy, I work 10 hours a day, my work schedule changes. Other excuses I’ve had were everyday chores, I was too tired, I don’t have the energy, I wasn’t motivated. At the time, living a healthy lifestyle wasn’t my primary concern. All I cared about was making enough money to pay the bills and put a little in savings. I wanted to finish my house chores. I cared about keeping my German Shepherd under control. Spending time with my husband was also important to me.

So the last three years, fitness wasn’t my primary concern, and wasn’t even on the top of my priorities list. Sure, my health is important to me, but aren’t health important to everyone without all the hassles of exercising, eating right, and taking the right kind of supplements? No one wants to be sick, have a vitamin or mineral deficiency, or a weak immunity system. So the last three years, as other things became my primary focus, my health was at the bottom of my priority list. I gained weight, ate junk food, and did the occasional “I should start working out” pep talk to myself. Fitness was even on my resolutions list for the New Year. However, I never really succeeded. Fitness just never clicked for me, and it never made its way into my top priority list.

So what changed? How is fitness now a priority? I chose to make fitness a priority. A few months ago, I was considering a temporary part time job to make some extra money. A friend of mine asked me to come on board with Team Beachbody. I am familiar with the group from the Shakeology, P90X, and other fitness products that she uses and sells. I thought, why not? It could help me be in better shape of my health and body. And, boy did it help! Along with becoming a member of a wonderful team of coaches and learning about fitness and health, I could sell products, make a little money for myself, and get discounts on the products I want to use. Not to mention, I could really help people with their fitness goals! For this to be successful, however, I had to work on my priorities. I had to choose to make fitness high up on the list with my family and faith. Self-accountability for my goals helped put things to focus. I learned that fitness goes hand-in-hand with health. A strong, lean, happy body is a healthy body.

Holding myself accountable for my goals and having a team of other coaches helping me keep up with my accountability, helped me become more aware of the foods I consume and what I am doing for my health. I have learned so much and am happier with my body and health since I joined Beachbody. Fitness was finally a top priority with my family and faith, and now I have no excuses for not working out! I’m motivated everyday, I found a workout program that works for me, and I’m happy! Fitting a workout into my busy schedule is non-negotiable. It has to be done. I found a way to make it work and I love the results I am seeing from my body changes.

The key to successful fitness is making your exercises a non-negotiable schedule. You get the workout programs on your schedule and you tell yourself that this schedule cannot be changed, just like your work schedule cannot be changed. I cannot stress this enough. If being in shape and having a healthy body is important to you, you must make fitness a priority.

One change in particular that I noticed since I became fitness-conscious was the food I consume. Sure, I was eating healthier food so what I consume doesn’t undo my workout purposes. However, it didn’t always matter how low the fat is or what the calorie count is, or if it’s got enough proteins and fiber to be considered a meal. What really mattered is the nutrition and the ingredients behind the foods I consumed. All the additives and preservatives… they’re not good for the body. I had to learn to look beyond the nutritional information and consider the ingredients. The more natural foods consumed are healthier for my body. It’s a learning lesson every day I choose to make conscious, informed choices for myself.

For people to be successfully fit, they made the choice to have fitness be a priority in their lives. It’s a priority in my life now… and I couldn’t be happier with my choices!

Hey!! LOOK At What You Are Consuming!!!

Let's face it: We are now living in the times where what we consume are going to have a lot of stuff added to the foods and drinks that just might make our stomach slightly upset, make our digestion a little out of balance, and have gunk build up in our bodies (arteries, intestines, etc). When we eat a lot of these processed foods on a daily basis, we're slowly becoming even more unbalanced, slowly getting that build up of gunk in our bodies.

Maybe it's time to start paying attention what we're consuming, yeah? For example: Lean Crusine. This brand does offer healthier alternatives to frozen food, fast food, and pizza. However, nutritional information is not the only thing we need to be looking at. We also need to look at the ingredients list. When looking at the ingredients list, you can see there's a bunch of stuff listed in there. An average individual like myself, who is not a registered dietitian or nutritional expert, am not going to recognize a lot of these words such as "gum arabic, autolyzed yeast extract" and so on. However, we can tell they are additives. To keep the food fresh, to add flavor, etc. Oh yeah, and a lot of them are going to have a high sodium content. I've stopped eating Lean Cruisine when I started to realize there are a lot of additives that doesn't sound healthy but is fine to eat on occasion. Our bodies are not made to easily process additives and anything chemically processed just to make the food taste good. It's not natural and I'm willing to bet that long-term use of these foods can eventually catch up to us and we will have problems later in life from the processed foods we eat.

MorningStar Farms frozen food. I've heard some healthy stuff, but the long list of ingredients is a little alarming. Just a little for a reason. A lot of their products got half of the natural ingredients. The other half are ingredients I can't pronounce and the only time I usually see these words are in chemistry class. What's worse is, why does the brand feel the need to add what kind of vitamin a chemical is? If it's naturally added... it wouldn't be on the ingredients list. The vitamin would be in the nutrition information list. This getting you to think?

I'd like to add something about natural flavors. Just why do they feel the need to say "natural flavors", hmm? Maybe they're also added stuff that's just under the federally regulated guidelines for what is artificial flavoring and natural flavoring. Just my opinion here. It could be "natural flavors" because that's the natural flavors of that flavor. One of these days I will be taking classes on nutrition and learn more about the foods we are eating and whether or not I was right to be concerned with these things.

On a lighter note, I got good news for the coffee drinkers. We've all looked at our ingredients list from time to time to see what's in the coffee creamer we consume, right? And we all see just how many stuff is in one tablespoon's worth! I'm happy to announce that I have tried CoffeeMate's Natural Bliss. Instead of the 20-somethings (might be more, might be less) ingredients found in most processed coffee creamers, the two flavors of CoffeeMate's Natural Bliss only have four ingredients. That's right, just four! Nonfat milk, sugar, heavy cream, and natural flavors. Again, not sure why they added that last part but it's still much better than the regularly processed coffee creamers, yeah? Maybe the Sweet Cream Natural Bliss's "natural flavors" would be just that: the natural flavor of Sweet Cream.

Hopefully this post have gotten my readers to start thinking about the foods we eat. My hope is that my readers will start looking at the ingredients list and weigh in whether or not the product is worth the lower calories and fats for all the additives in that food. No more just looking at the nutritional information. Sure, it's nice that the food tastes great. Are they worth the trouble our digestive bodies will have to go through to reject the processed chemicals that we don't need to be consuming? That's the question you all need to ask yourselves. Think about it: They lowered the bad stuff in nutrition, but what did they add to keep the food tasting great?

Update!

Let's face it. I'm destined to have random accidental self-inflicted injuries. Several weeks ago, I fell onto the gate in my driveway and had a huge hematoma in my thigh. I've had no updated pictures of my body due to the biggest, ugly bruise I've ever had. It's mostly gone now, and will be doing an updated picture in a couple days. That's not all that happened, however. I also managed to fall down the stairs and mess up my shoulders, so that put me off the exercising job for another week. During this down time, l had some time to think about the fitness program P90X. I noticed my body responds more to cardio-style workouts and not so much on weights. Not to mention, I do have bad wrists and am not really looking forward to being back on joint supplements again. P90X is a little too extreme for me to deal with. So after some research, I decided to go with TurboFire! This 90-days program is mostly cardio, designed by Chalene Johnson. I'm so excited to try this program! I should be getting it tomorrow and I will be starting this program this weekend. Sooo excited! I'm also worried, since the cold is here, the cold virus is everywhere, and I am really, really hoping that God will grant me the grace and the sense of balance I will need to make it through the next three months without hurting myself. Please pray for me! :)