10 Ways To Get And Stay Motivated

Having trouble staying motivated? Here are ten useful tips.

1. Create a fitness vision board. 
I pasted photos of bodies I would like to have and some of myself when I was younger and fitter. 

2. Hang a "target outfit" in plain view.
I hung a pair a jeans that no longer fit on the back of my bedroom door. Seeing these jeans everyday and imagining myself wearing them helps to keep me inspired.

3. Post motivational quotes in key areas in your home. 
I posted many motivational quotes throughout my home, including my refrigerator. Keep these quotes positive and you will always feel inspired. I remember my friend's mother had a refrigerator magnet with a picture of a very large woman with the caption "keep out!" While this is humorous, this did little to inspire my friend's mom to lose the unwanted pounds. Reminders that "you can do it!" will help you to show up for yourself everyday.

4. Pack your gym bag the night before. 
Having one less thing to do in the morning will eliminate the excuse of being too rushed to pack a gym bag. Put your gym bag by the door, so it will be ready to go.

5. Pack a nutritious lunch and snacks the night before.
Packing a delicious, nutrient rich, colorful lunch and putting it in the fridge the night before will eliminate the temptation to forgo the morning preparation and "grab something" on the go.

6. Pick out a colorful, fun outfit to wear to the gym. If you work out in the morning, set your gym apparel out the night before (and as I mentioned, have your work outfit packed in your bag and waiting for you by the door). Seeing a vibrant, colorful set of gym clothes will brighten your mood.

7. Make it a habit to do a morning meditation.
It doesn't have to take too much time. Five or ten minutes of deep breathing, with a meditation mantra can help you get motivated. There are plenty of meditations on You Tube and many of these channels carry downloadable mp3's.

8. Grab a workout buddy.
Having an accountability partner or hiring a trainer will help you stay on track. If you don't don't show up, you're not only letting yourself down, you're letting your friend down.

9. Schedule your workout when it's easiest for you.
If you're not a morning person, no matter how many articles you read on the pro's of a morning workout, it won't be very effective, because you won't show up on a consistent basis.

10. Make your workout FUN!
Doing activities you love makes the prospect more enticing. Remember, you'll be working out for a very long time, so you might as well enjoy it!

Your Best Body - A Matter of Choice

Yes, your best body is a matter of choice! Isn't that great news? Because when you leave your shape up to chance, you will end up with whatever mother nature decided to give you. I always had saddle bags and a stomach. No matter how many sit-ups I did or how many miles I ran, I could not lose the fat in the "trouble spots". An article that had been released letting us know there was no such thing as "spot reducing" sent me into a teary tailspin. Couple all that cardio with a micro-calorie diet and I was setting myself up for failure.

It wasn't until I discovered weight lifting that I began to see changes in my body. Right now, I'm a work in progress and I promise to post before and after pictures soon. I lift weights three days a week and do some form of cardio three days a week.  I am eating a clean diet with no bleached flour or "white" carbs, no excess sugar, lots of proteins and plenty of veggies. I also began a nutritional cleansing program. Why the cleansing program? Because we ingest toxins every single day - from the foods we eat, the products we use and the air we breathe. Our bodies have a defense mechanism against toxins and that is called "fat". Yes, our fat cells grow to protect our organs from being contaminated with these impurities. As you cleanse and eat a healthy diet, these cells eventually shrink. If you want to know more about cleansing, fill out the contact form to the right of this article. I will be more than happy to assist you.
Cheers!
Ellen

Skinny for summer? How about fit for life?

Throughout most of my adult life, one of my main concerns was "taking it off for summer". No, I'm not taking about my top, I'm talking about the ten to fifteen pounds I had "put on" during the winter months of hibernation. This became a habit of yo-yo dieting, which wrecked my metabolism. The older I got, the harder it became to maintain my ideal weight. 

A body without much muscle will not burn as many calories as one with lean muscle, simply because muscle requires more calories to sustain it. Before I discovered weight training, I had my share of "trouble spots", such as hips, thighs and belly. I would try to "spot reduce" and would end up losing valuable muscle instead. When we practice muscle inducing exercise and eat properly, our bodies take care of themselves. The "trouble spots" seem to go away and you're left with a nice sleek form with curves in the right places. 

7 Kettleball Moves That REALLY Burn Calories!

Here are some kettleball moves for fantastic results!

http://www.fitsugar.com/Kettlebell-Exercises-Weight-Loss-21504882

21 Reasons To Stop Drinking Coffee

21 Reasons to Stop Drinking Coffee
by Larry Fuchs Jr.

It is recommended that you stop drinking coffee. Many people kid themselves, bragging I drank coffee while doing my Isagenix program and I still lost weight. Facts are that you probably would have released two or three times the weight if you had given up your coffee.  Remember the goal of Isagenix is not weight loss, but to remove impurities from your body.
The toxicity of caffeine can be found when trying to remove this stimulant from your diet. The withdrawal symptoms of detoxification alone should clue you into how terrible it is for your body. Common symptoms include headaches (caused by sudden increase circulation to the brain when blood flow is no longer constricted), fatigue, sleepiness, lethargy, irritability, depression, muscle pain and stiffness, and sometimes even flu like symptoms. The narcotic effect of caffeine is so powerful that its influence is abundantly clear when the addict reintroduces this stimulant and all symptoms vanish.

Here are the facts you should know about what really happens when you drink coffee:

1. Numerous studies link coffee to calcium loss contributing to osteoporosis, and more bone fractures. Calcium is robbed from your bones to neutralize every time you consume something acidic like coffee.

2. A healthy body maintains a blood pH of around 7.3. Coffee is 25.1 on the acidic scale and 5.0 on the pH scale. All disease is promoted in an acidic environment and your health goal should be to create an alkaline body.

3. Decaffeinated Coffee is just as bad as and even more acidic than regular coffee. Most Decaffeinated Coffees are processed with formaldehyde, which is one of the most toxic substances to humans. Even in small amounts, formaldehyde can cause serious health problems and unfortunately takes years to finally dissipate.

4. Coffee dehydrates you, raises your cortisol levels (aging you more rapidly), and makes you acidic.
5. Coffee also hurts our natural intestinal flow, raises anxiety to high levels, aggression and blood pressure, along with staining our teeth as the least of the issues.

6. Coffee is another way to borrow energy from the future, but crashes you in the end.

7. Coffee makes your anxiety heightened and therefore hurting your ability to focus.

8. Coffee has also been linked to cancer.

9. Heating the coffee bean creates the chemical Methylglyoxal, benzopyrene, and chlorogenic atractyosides. A 1981 study from the Harvard School of Public Health concluded that drinking coffee was the cause of half of all pancreatic cancer cases.

10. It also found that drinking three cups of coffee a day increased your risk of pancreatic cancer by three times.

11. People who drink too much coffee often have difficulty getting rid of chemicals from their bodies, and their liver function is off. Caffeine just isn’t that easy to digest. To break down the coffee you ingest and deliver that burst of energy to your blood stream, your liver uses enzymes. If all of your enzymes are hard at work within your liver trying to break down the caffeine, they aren’t ready and active in your blood to knock out other bad chemicals it needs to get rid of.

12. It takes 64 ounces of water to neutralize one 8 ounce cup of coffee.

13. Caffeine constricts blood vessels of the brain and causes decreased flow of blood, which cuts the oxygen supply to the brain, resulting in a headache. It also increases your heartbeat 15% and makes your lungs work 13 times harder than normal. It greatly plays a role in fatigue as well.

14. Stop drinking coffee and you may see a huge gain in your sex drive! The adrenal glands in our bodies are the glands responsible for making hormones that make us feel sexual, like testosterone. If you have low testosterone, you will have a lower sex drive. Both woman and men have testosterone, obviously lesser amounts in women. But both sexes will see a difference in their sex drive if they drink too much coffee. If your cravings for sex have decreased and you drink a lot of coffee, weaning yourself off may be the first step to getting your sex drive back to normal.

15. People can have trouble getting pregnant or impregnating their spouse if they consume too much caffeine. To carry a baby, a woman has to have a certain amount of a hormone called progesterone. This hormone also helps women to become pregnant. Our adrenal glands make another hormone called cortisol, which is used up by our bodies during times of stress. If our adrenal glands are suffering, they can’t make cortisol, and your body may take progesterone so it can make more cortisol. And without the progesterone, you can’t get pregnant or carry a baby through a full term. If you are attempting to get pregnant, cutting the caffeine from your diet is step one.

16. Caffeine is also blamed for eliminating your feelings of being happy, as it kills the neurotransmitters in your body. Your brain won’t be able to produce enough of these happy chemicals with lower neurotransmitters. People who are depressed are often lacking in a hormone called serotonin, which keeps you feeling good and satisfied. Caffeine is actually one of the main suppressants of serotonin, so steer clear of coffee if you suffer from depression or are feeling a little down in the dumps. While most people believe that coffee will lift them up, in the long run, it pulls them down.

17.  Your adrenal glands actually store energy on your behalf, and they make chemicals that help your brain to feel happy, strong and motivated. Because caffeine is a stimulant, it causes your nervous system to run on high, making adrenaline, which we know we need in situations requiring action, or stress. If you can tolerate high levels of caffeine without a response, this is a bad thing - it means that your glands have actually stopped responding to you, like the boy who cried wolf! This can leave you susceptible to accidents, sleepiness, and health problems.
18. Coffee has the most pesticides of any food on this earth. So let’s be clear- I’m not saying it has traces of pesticides, I’m saying you can’t find any other plant in the world that has a higher toxicity of pesticides than coffee. It is so heavily treated with chemicals and fertilizers that it is even proving deadly in crop workers in many countries. Studies have shown over a thousand chemicals in coffee! If this isn’t enough to put your cup down, read on… about twenty of these chemicals are proven to cause cancer. Is it worth the risk?

19. Caffeine Can Cause Obesity, caffeine stresses your adrenal glands, and your adrenal glands work cooperatively with your thyroid, the gland that takes care of your metabolism. If you have a slow thyroid, you will have slow metabolism, which means you’ll gain weight more easily than someone with a ‘normal’ metabolism. By drinking too much coffee, you’re intentionally slowing down your metabolism. So if weight is an issue for you, eliminating coffee from your daily diet is an easy first step to losing those unwanted pounds.

20. Caffeine limits the ability of your immune system to properly function. Your adrenal glands create or support over a hundred different hormones which help to keep you in good health. Caffeine has been shown to actually limit production by your adrenal glands, which eventually leads to lowered immunity, meaning more illness. So staying away from excess caffeine can actually strengthen your body’s ability to fight infection.

21. Caffeine slows down your body’s ability to absorb vitamins, minerals, and other valuable materials, which are vital for your health, drinking too much caffeine can actually cause your body to be unable to take in some of the very valuable ingredients you are feeding it. As an example, coffee can limit your holdings of iron by more than fifty percent. So besides the fact that this is bad for your health, if you are working hard to get all the necessary vitamins and minerals into your diet (by eating alone or through expensive multi-vitamins), you are simply throwing your money out the window.

This is for those of you that are ready to pounce on me, because e+ Energy Shots have caffeine. Sorry, it’s just not the same caffeine. Coffee contains the stimulant caffeine. Unlike bioactive caffeine found in green tea, black tea, yerba mate, guarana, and kola nut, the caffeine in coffee is considered dead. Caffeine is a central nervous system stimulant that is followed by a depressed phase involving exhaustion, nervousness, irritability, fatigue, and often headaches.

I know what you’re thinking; “just one cup a day is not doing damage”, right? The accumulative affects of drinking a cup a day is still unhealthy, just as smoking a cigarette a day is seriously unhealthy.  If you are addicted to the taste of Coffee, try an alternative to drinking coffee, Teeccino. Teeccino is an herbal coffee, made of roasted carob, barley, chicory root, figs, dates, orange peel and almonds. It is delicious and tastes just like coffee. You can find it at most health food stores such as Whole Foods or Trader Joes. Teeccino comes in many flavors. http://teeccino.com
References: The Dangers of Drinking Coffee, http://Dherbs.com
10 Reasons to Stop Drinking Coffee NOW!, http://idealbite.com
Caffeine, http://www.avoiddisease.com

Special thanks to Dr. Russell Brokstein.

Is Your Diet Helping or Hurting You?

The term "empty calories" is misleading. It makes one assume that when we eat junk food, the calories get used for energy and the chemicals, sugar, trans fats and sodium get expelled. Not so. Every time you feed your body, you're either feeding a disease or fighting it. Nutritionally dense foods contain disease fighting enzymes, promote energy and help your organs function at their peak. 

Wierd Stuff People Say When You Decide To Get In Shape

1. "Don't lose anymore weight. We won't be able to find you!" Also the seemingly more benign, "are you really planning on losing more weight?" and "are you still bulking?" Um, yeah, and who made you the authority on how I'm supposed to look? 

2. "You're getting thin / bulking up / getting cut, only because you live at the gym". Okay if you consider spending 1 1/2 hours someplace on a daily basis as "living there", I guess I do live there - you know like the way you live at your job. 

3. "I would work out as much as you do, if I had that kind of time". What kind of time, exactly? I have the same twenty four hours as you. I choose to get up an hour earlier than you and I forgo an hour's worth of TV at night. 

4. "Are you getting down to your hunting weight?" Yes! And if I keep up with my workouts, I'll be able to overtake my prey! He won't stand a chance!

5. "If I were young like you, I'd be able to maintain my weight." I haven't heard this one in awhile, but age is just an excuse. It is more difficult to maintain a physique with age, but not impossible. 

6. "I'm not interested in going all out with the exercise. I just wanted to get rid of my..." Sorry! Spot reducing is a myth. The only way to "get rid of" something is to lower your body fat percentage. 

7. "I don't want to get too big". Unless you eat protein by the scores and lift tons of weight, you're not going to look like a man. 

8. "Is that all you're going to eat?" Us lifters eat 5 or 6 small meals a day. We don't eat ourselves into a coma at each meal. 

9. "Okay, it looks like you reached your goal weight. Why are you still eating healthy and getting up at 5:00 am for the gym?" One word. Maintenance. 

10. "You're obsessed!" To a couch potato, I suppose we are obsessed. Anything worth achieving and maintaining takes effort.