It’s been a few months since I blogged…. Since then I have become a Certified Personal Fitness Trainer, I took my test the middle of September and found out about four weeks after testing. Today I purchased my insurance and my business cards, it’s really happening…took me long enough, but that’s the past, time to focus on the future. As for competing this year, that was pushed to the back burner, it just did not fit in the family calendar or budget. I am setting my sights forward to next year’s calendar for both the NPC and the ABA/PNBA, my goal is compete in a few competitions (maybe two from each organization). Anyway, onward and upward in getting some clients at the local gym and continuing to work towards my own physical goals and aspirations. More to follow….hopefully not as far apart as the last time.
Parables, Priorities and Life in General
The Mustard Tree
The Parable of the Mustard Seed
31 He gave them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. 32 It is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest garden plant and becomes a tree, so that the wild birds come and nest in its branches.” ~Matthew 13:31-32 New English Translation
This was the story at church yesterday and it really struck home for me, I want to be that mustard seed that grows in the good soil and becomes that tree. The seed represents each individual and the “greatest garden” is the world, you just have to find that good soil in your life to grow. The good soil is that place where you make good decisions in life, you love and help others, amongst other things. Part of doing this blog is for me wanting to help others, I want to share my goals, my experiences, my failures, and my success with you. This is my mustard seed that I’m planting, as I learn new things in my life I want to share them with you, and I want us all to grow through this. In my world I have my priorities the way I want them, perhaps yours are different, it’s ok if we don’t see eye to eye, we are all different. My faith is a huge part of my life, through the good, the bad and the ugly my husband and I have always said, God has a plan for us, even if things don’t make sense to us right now, even if things are not going as we have planned, we know that it’s all part of God’s plan for us and that everything will work out the way He intends for it. Not always an easy thing to say when what you have planned doesn’t work out and you’re not sure where to turn from there, or when you are at the bottom of that big black all-consuming hole and you’re not sure how much more you can take or where you are supposed to go from there. Life is full of tests, how we choose to respond to them is where our faith is measured. After my faith, comes my family…they actually both kind of intertwine, but I know without Him I would not have my family and we would not be where we are in life. I did not always view life this way, I had my times when I thought I have what I have because of me and only me, now don’t get me wrong I’ve worked hard (and we’ve worked hard) to get to this point in life. God doesn’t do the work for you, he just puts you in a place where you need to be, and you need to be open to hear him and know what to do next. That being said our family has been through rough times, but they have brought us closer and we have overcome those obstacles, again because we opened ourselves up to the word and I have learned through this process to not take anything in my life for granted. Part of being there for my family, which was a hard thing for me to do, was to make time for myself. Sounds selfish, but yes even with my family coming before me I still have to make time for me, …this was a challenge for the longest time. Making time for myself meant making myself healthy, hitting the gym, and changing our diet. The gym was the most difficult part because it meant leaving the kids to “fend for themselves” which in the beginning left me feeling guilty. My now 10-year-old used to say to me, “mommy, do you have to workout today? Can’t you stay home with us”, (talk about pulling on your heartstrings) if you’re not sold on the idea of making yourself a better person, a better parent and a better example to those around you, that would be it. My answer to her every time was, “yes, yes I have to go workout today, it makes mommy happy and makes mommy feel better, which in turn makes me a better mommy to you. It makes me more fun to be around, more understanding and more patient”, eventually going to the gym became a part of our routine and she stopped asking. In fact, now if I wake up and I’m “off”, they all are packing my gym bag and sending me off to workout, because they know I will come home and be a nicer person to be around. Since moving from Florida to Colorado, getting healthy has become a big family thing for us, we are always outside hiking, going for walks or bike rides and even our eating has done a 180…we have not been to a fast-food restaurant in almost three years, and my children have zero desire to. If someone mentions eating McDonald’s or one of those places they all say, “eeww gross”. Even if you are not your first priority in life, which is fine, I’m not necessarily my first priority, you still have to make yourself a priority at some point. I do what I do because it makes me happy, and it amazes me how far I’ve come in life. Working out and getting fit and even competing is not something that I boast about, in fact my trophies and medals from competing and running are not out in the general area of the house where people visit. Those medals and trophies are just examples of how I choose to challenge myself in life, they are hobbies that make me happy and do not define me. I am more than a gym rat, a runner, a competitor …before all of that I am a wife, mother, daughter, sister and a lover of all things and someone who just wants to make a difference in the lives of others. My biggest goal in life involves a mustard seed growing in good soil and helping others to do the same. XOXO
What is “clean eating”?
It’s been a few days; hope you are hitting those goals hard! I know so many people right now who are struggling to lose weight and get healthy, so let’s focus a little bit on your eating to start with. Do you know what it means to “eat clean”? When you are trying to lose weight you need to realize that although getting in daily activity is important the biggest thing to successfully loosing weight and getting healthy is what you put into your body on a daily basis. Not all calories are created equally and you need to view it as lifestyle change and not a diet. What’s the difference you ask? A diet is something temporary, a quick fix or a band-aid for the problem. A lifestyle change is something you can do for the rest of your life.
Let’s start with what it means to ‘eat clean”, there really is not one specific definition to describe it. To help with describing what clean eating is I am going to refer to clean eating guru Tosca Reno (LOVE her books, she is amazing). http://www.cleaneatingmag.com/food-health/food-and-health-news/what-is-clean-eating/
She describes it as eating smaller more frequent meals, three meals and two to three snacks throughout the day, approximately every two and a half to three hours. These meals should include lean protein, complex carbs (examples would be sweet potatoes or brown rice), and fresh fruit and/or vegetables (you want to eat more fresh vegetables and keep your fruits to before and after your workouts if you are trying to lose weight). If you learn what are considered portions then you shouldn’t need to track your calories. A good way to figure portions is by using your hand as a guide, example make a fist that is a good portions size for a potato, now hold your hand out flat that’s a good example of a portion for a chicken breast. You also need to drink plenty of water, Tosca Reno says you should drink two liters of water day, others say half your weight in ounces. So if you are a 120 pound female, than you should be drinking a minimum of 60 ounces of water a day. Many people without even realizing it drink the large portion of their calories in drinks like juice and soda, not only will this not be filling, the sugar and chemicals will cause chaos in your body. Your food should come from as close to earth as possible, this means learning to read the labels. Look for fewer ingredients and ingredients that are real. The less it takes to make it means the less processed it is, and the better it is for you. If it sounds it sounds like a science experiment than it probably is. When grocery shopping a good rule to follow is to stick to the perimeter of the grocery store, that’s where all the real food is. Another general rule about determining if the food is healthy is the farther out the expiration date it is, the more chemicals it has in it. Fresh food has a shorter shelf life because it lacks preservatives (AKA chemicals) to keep it from spoiling. Remember the big fat-free frenzy in the late 80’s, well there are studies and reports now that are saying this big change to our diets is what caused Americans as a whole to get fat. All the chemicals and processing that whole foods went through to become fat-free, in short couldn’t be effectively broken down and utilized by our bodies and instead turned into fat. We need to have fat in our diet, yes you read that correctly, you must eat fats to be healthy. Here’s the catch, it needs to be healthy fats from things like nuts, seeds, fish and not the processed chemical laden fat sources. Again learning portions is key, just because raw peanuts are healthy for you doesn’t mean you can seat down and eat two pounds of nuts in one day (and they need to be raw nuts, not mixed nuts with peanut oils in them). In the age of our fast paced lives people often do not make time to sit and eat a proper and healthy meal, we find ourselves going through the drive thru of major food chains for greasy burgers with super sized fries and soda and then we scarf down while driving. Not only are we not burning off the calories because of our inactive lifestyles but we are slowly poisoning our body with foods that are not healthy and well it’s even questionable whether we can call some of that stuff “food”. It is super easy to pack yourself a small cooler with some snacks in case you are going to be out for a long period of time, put hardboiled eggs, Larabars, nuts, fresh fruit and/or fresh-cut vegetables in it….and never leave home without your water bottle.
Ok, well I’m going to jump off my “clean eating” soap box, I could go on for days about it, but seriously I’ve included a link for Tosca Reno’s blog where she can help with getting on the right track with your diet. I am not a certified dietician (yet) and cannot offer specific advice, but I do recommend from personal experience starting with reading some of Tosca Reno’s books, it’s a step in the right direction. I specifically recommend her book, “The Rules: Tosca’s Guide Eating Right”, it’s chock full of information about clean eating, and I found it very helpful to start making baby steps to clean up my diet.
Did I REALLY say that out loud?!?
Yes, yes I did…I publicly shared with you a few of my goals in life! That gives me that little bit of excited nervousness because I just made public what I want to accomplish. Throwing yourself out there in that way makes you feel a bit vulnerable and makes you more accountable. I have been struggling through the book and lectures for my Personal Trainer Certification, plagued with fears of failing the certification part, fears that I will be a horrible a trainer as well as other fears about this process. I’ve gotten more studying done between yesterday and today, throwing it out there, that I want to finish up my certification has motivated me to get it finished, held me accountable to finishing it up. As of today I have two and half lectures left and then some reviewing of the concepts that I just can’t seem to remember. TICK TOCK TICK TOCK, my plan is to get it done by September 1st (and just so we are clear that’s of 2014). There it is again, that twinge of nervous excitement!
There is more to setting your goals than just sharing them with others, although that can be a pretty big step itself. Once you’ve decided your goals and written them down (that’s key too, black and white right there staring up at you), prioritize them. Maybe there’s a time line, one that needs to be done before you can move to the next (baby steps to a big goal) or maybe some are just more important/affect bigger aspects of your life. For example with the goals I shared yesterday, the top two priorities are finishing my certification followed closely by the two competitions I want to do this Fall. These are two goals that for a short amount of time I will be working on simultaneously because prep begins July 19th (12 weeks out from the first show). Although I would love to become part of Team Savage and have them coaching me through my two competitions, that’s not a realistic goal to set….unless of course that money tree I planted out back has started to grow, LOL! If only it were that simple! There are all kinds of ways to help plan out your goals, I learned as I surfed the internet today to get some ideas how to put this all together, talk about information overload! You need to find a way that works for you, after all we are all unique in how we think, feel and communicate. For these two goals that are at hand for right now, I’m going to whip out my trusty vision board from last year and put it back on the pantry door. Of course I’ll touch it up a little bit and put some dates on it for completion (no more open-ended dates, time to set a date and just do it), it’ll be right out there in the open for me to see as well as my family, it’s that whole accountability thing popping up again. What can I say, sometimes I just need that little reminder of what I’m on a mission to do…
So, say it loud and say it proud….what are you on a mission to accomplish? Write it down, make it a poster, put on the bathroom mirror, on your FB page, on your car dashboard…wherever it will be a constant reminder of what your goal is. My new mantra…I CAN, I WILL, I MUST!!
ALL OUR DREAMS COME TRUE
IF WE HAVE THE COURAGE TO PURSUE THEM.
~WALT E. DISNEY
Goal Setting and Planning
So, we all have goals in our lives…they can be something as little as drinking eight glasses of water a day to something as big as being debt free and financially set by a certain point in our lives. After we set those goals, the next thing we need to focus on is a plan of action for achieving these goals. That’s where I’m a right now in my life, I’ve got some pretty hefty goals that have been floating around my head for a few months now. I grabbed a notebook and a pen this afternoon and started jotting down my goals, the next step is come up with the plan of action. This is the hard part, all the gory details and logistics of how and when I want to achieve these goals. NOW, NOW, NOW is when I want them done, LOL, not very practical and not even remotely possible, if you’re not careful in making sure you are being realistic about your goals and the time frame you are automatically setting yourself up for failure. For example, you cannot lose 50 pounds in two weeks, without some sort of crazy medical procedure or some scary and harmful drugs. So make sure you are starting out with a practical plan of attack. Here are a few of my goals for the future, some closer than others.
GOALS:
- Complete my AFAA Personal Trainer Certification (and of course pass it)
- Compete in two NPC shows this year, one in October and one in November
- Sign up with Team Savage (this requires working on funding)
- Start training clients
- Work on and complete a certification in Nutrition
- Become a Sponsored Athlete
Like I said some pretty lofty goals, and that’s just a handful of them to start with. Now that I’ve said them out loud, it’s time to come up with a game plan!
My Story
Good Evening! This is my first blog, so I’m going to start with a little bit of an introduction of myself, and see if I have this baby up and running correctly. Bare with me, LOL…and let’s see how this goes.
My name is Brenda and I am a wife to the an amazing man who is in the United States Navy and mother to our four amazing children. When I was six years old I was diagnosed with Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis in my left knee, because of this I was not permitted to participate in sports and such growing up. I had many issues with my knee growing up and spent most of my elementary school career in and out of the hospital, the doctors told my parents that the arthritis would spread and that I would be wheelchair bound by the time I was 18. As an adult I carried around the fear of doing things that would potentially cause the arthritis to flare up and feared the “what if’s” of spending my life in a wheelchair. When I was in my mid-30’s I decided to run a 5k with my oldest daughter, that lead to a few more and then eventually a half marathon with my husband. After that I joined a gym with my friend and become a bit of a cardio bunny with very little lifting, I feared the same thing all women seem to fear..OMG I DIDN’T WANT TO GET BIG LIKE A MAN!! LOL, trust me that’s not possible without some serious (seriously harmful) supplements, but I did not know that then. Gradually I let myself go, didn’t exercise regularly, regularly did the drive-thru at McD’s with my kiddos, stayed up late. All of this lead to me becoming heavier than I ever had been, besides being pregnant, at five feet tall, 140 pounds and wearing a size 12, I was miserable! I didn’t want to be intimate with my husband, I wouldn’t wear shorts…in fact we lived in Florida and most of the time I wore “moo-moo’s” to cover what I didn’t want to see. In June of 2011 a fellow military wife and friend had invited me to join her in a boot camp, she invited me several times before I finally went. The night before I decided to try it out I polished off the Klondike Bars that were in the freezer, three of them, one right after another. That first class was a doozie, I made it through the class huffing and puffing along and then threw up just before the warm up, I was so embarrassed, but I came back for more. I had reached rock bottom, I was disgusted with how I looked, on top of the arthritis I had been diagnosed several years prior with Hypothyroidism, I felt horrible, always exhausted, always moody. I decided it was time to lose some of the weight, my initial goal was to get “skinny”, my husband was deployed and so my goal was to lose all the weight I had gained and be “skinny” when he came home. I started running again and completed a full marathon and I was hooked on this whole new thing. I began changing my diet as well as my children’s diet, I started to see changes not only in my clothing size but also in my energy levels, my moods and just my overall day-to-day life was better. My goal went from being “skinny” to being fit and healthy, I wanted to be a good role model for my family. I entered into my first NPC Figure Competition in May of 2013 and placed fifth in two out of three divisions that I competed in. From there I decided to I wanted to help motivate and inspire others to get healthy and am currently working on my Personal Trainer Certification with hopes of also obtaining a certification in nutrition in the near future.
You see in the three years from when I first stepped into the boot camp group through to now, I’ve overcome my fear of the “what if’s”, I decided here I am 39 years old and I’m not in a wheel chair, the arthritis has spread to my hands and possibly my hip, but I’m still going strong. I’ve decided that God has a plan for me that is bigger than me, bigger than the arthritis and the hypothyroidism, bigger than my fears of being stuck in a wheelchair, right, because here I am 21 years after the “predicted” time and I’m healthier and stronger than ever. I want to help other’s forget about their fears, help them to find their inner athlete, because I believe we ALL have one, I want other’s to become healthy. Your goals may not be the same as mine, maybe you just want to keep up with your kids and be there to see your grandchildren grow up…being healthy is the key!
Anything is Possible, set your goals and work for them.
FitFulThinking 