There is a Right and Wrong Way to Use the Scale for Accountability

The scale game starts as innocent accountability for weight loss and turns into a game of just how much we can get away with cheating on our program. Who is guilty? The scenario typically looks like this...

The fitness program is going great and the weight is coming off at a healthy rate. Suddenly, you begin validating food rewards for a job well done above what's considered moderation. 

You challenge the scale to see how far you can push those numbers thinking there's leeway. Besides, you're doing such a great job and deserve a weekend of pizza, beer, and pastries, right? Wrong. This is a risky gamble and not a definition of living a healthy lifestyle. 

The purpose of achieving a healthy weight is not to yo-yo back and forth. It means taking your health seriously and maintaining the lifestyle. If the scale gets in the way of that, it's time to toss it, especially when the 'scale game' derails your health and fitness goals. Relying on the mirror and how your clothes fit would be a better accountability tool at this point. 

You're not hurting anyone but yourself when playing games with your fitness efforts. There is no half-way living a healthy life. Not giving your best to achieve fitness goals is evident in more ways than a scale measurement. Do you like what you see in the mirror? How do you feel overall? These are also great ways to know if you're being true to your program. 

The scale game robs you of being able to achieve your best health and body. When the purpose of the scale is to justify eating off track or exercising less, it removes the positive benefit of keeping track of your weight. Weighing one time per week for accountability can be a healthy thing, but when it turns into an ugly game of number manipulation for a food frenzy this is the opposite of being healthy. 

Success will never come from games or lack of commitment to your goals. The results will come from consistent healthy food choices coupled with regular exercise. The scale has nothing to do with your choices. It's simply a helpful tool to let you know how you're doing with your weight loss program. When the scale is misused, it really can be detrimental to your goals. 

If the 'scale game' is an active part of a health program then it really isn't a health program. This may be a good time to dump the scale and start applying healthy accountability methods that align with your fitness efforts. 

Remember, it's all fun and games until your jeans don't fit anymore. 

  

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Why Looking Like Myself is an Important Part of Fitness

What do I mean by looking like myself?  Well, I have certain genetics and a lifestyle contributing to what I look like. I'm not supposed to look like anyone else including other fitness women in magazines.

Back in my competitive days, I do admit to more than admiring fitness competitors and felt I needed to look like them to win. I struggled with my body not responding the same way as another competitor. It was an unrealistic way of thinking. The girls in the magazines don't even look like the girls in the magazine. Straight up the fitness truth.

I'm so happy to have learned through that insecure journey. I have come full circle with knowledge, age, and wisdom. I embrace who I am and what I look like. I strive to be my best me and not anyone else. It would be such a stressful life to constantly compare myself to all the beautiful women out there. Life is too short to think unrealistic thoughts or goals.

Did you know all images in magazines are photoshopped? The pictures are smoothed, cropped and colored for marketing appeal. The purpose is to create unreal images of women and men representing something they're not. Many of these models may be in great shape with a normal healthy body. What's missing is their natural lines, bumps, blemishes, rolls, bootie, and hips revised with a few strokes of a computer. Anyone can get a photoshopped 6-pack now and this isn't a joke. I'm not anti-photoshop, but if I need to go to the image credits just to recognize the person, that is simply not right. 

Some of my older modeling pictures are slightly photoshopped. I have to say it's an art of knowing just how much to shop an image and loved when some softness was needed. Overall, I prefer my untouched edgy images showing the real me.

I prefer taking self-portraits not selfies without filters and in the middle of working out. I display those daily along with food intake on my Instagram. I represent the real me, over 50, no makeup and unscripted. This is a true fitness lifestyle exemplified as it should be. I'm a 'messy hair don't care' trainer where sweat and a smile are my best accessories. 

It's important for me to want to look like myself and not someone else. This tells me that I accept, embrace, and honor who I am completely as a woman, wife, mother, trainer, writer, daughter, sister, and friend. How could I even walk the talk of helping people get healthy if I didn't live this philosophy?

Our goal should not be to look like someone else but working towards becoming the best version of yourself. As long as we do our best regardless of age, fitness level, or circumstance to reach our fitness goals is all that matters. Achieving good health is a journey and never a destination and age is not a definition of our fitness.

I embrace my fine lines earned from laughs, smiles, and a few frowns along the way. I believe aging is a privilege and an honor. Although there is no such thing as the fountain of youth, I feel fitness is darn close. It is possible to keep our body and mind young living a healthy life.

Consistent exercise, healthy foods, plenty of rest, and balance of work and play are essential components of a healthy lifestyle. This enables us to feel youthful and reduces our risk of disease and illness.

I want to do my best to live a good long life. When it comes down to me and the mirror, there is acceptance. How about you?

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Achieving Fitness Success Happens When We Put Our Thoughts Into Action

Most of us have the goal of wanting a fit and healthy body. Sadly, not all of us follow through with the action to make it happen. All too often something gets in the way of doing what needs to be done to make the wish a reality.

It doesn't matter how much web surfing, article reading, or fit people watching is happening. If what you're doing isn't motivating you to take action, it's nothing but wasted time. In fact, all that time surfing the web could be time used to complete a workout or meal prep.

I even have to limit myself and implement a certain amount of time for social media work. My life requires excellent time management to run my personal training business, writing obligations and maintain a healthy lifestyle. That means shutting down my computer and making the choice to exercise and prepare healthy meals for the week. 

It's fun to dream about reaching our fitness goals. I am the first to applaud and be motivated by a fit body because I know the effort it takes and the lifestyle required. Wishing and wanting can turn ugly when the doing is not taking place. Somehow feelings of resentment and bitterness can appear toward self and others even when no action to fix anything is occurring.

We are adults responsible for our daily choices. We decide our day to day happiness, outward behaviors toward self and others, and ultimately taking care of our bodies. If the choice is not to do what it takes to get healthy, then all the wishing and wanting are merely thoughts.

Putting our thoughts into action is how you will achieve a fit and healthy body. What we do determines the lifestyle we maintain. Limited time isn't a reason not to exercise for example. If twenty minutes is all you have, give it all you got with no excuses. Every step toward improving our health regardless of the time is positive progress. 

We really need to move past the wishing and wanting, and into the doing. Taking action is what makes results happen. When we become proactive, we feel accomplished, more confident, and overall in much better health.

Achieving the fit body we want and think about all the time takes responsibility, time, and effort on a consistent basis. This is true for all things in life: our jobs, education, relationships, and spiritual life for example. Sitting around thinking that things are just going to fall into our laps without effort is unrealistic. Some people really do believe that life works this way, are unmotivated, and feel they are owed a free ride. The truth is there are no free rides to fitness.

Life has never promised easy, and often we make fitness much more complicated than it needs to be. This is no reason to fall into a wish and wants pity party when the action has never been attempted. Time to wake-up and smell the coffee and honestly ask ourselves why we're not doing what it takes to get healthy. Daily choices and action is the only way to fitness success and to create a healthy lifestyle.

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Why Peanut Butter is a Big Part of My Sports Nutrition

I absolutely love organic peanut butter and eat it almost daily. I'm even guilty of eating a tablespoon straight from the jar. Peanut butter just so happens to be one of the best sports nutrition superfoods. It's a rich source of healthy fat and quality plant protein. Did I mention it tastes amazing!

I can be very creative with peanut butter adding it to oatmeal or mixing with protein powder. Eating healthy fats like peanut butter is one of the ways I obtain essential nutrients that maintain my fitness.

Did you know good fats help boost your metabolism to more effectively burn body fat? Unfortunately eating fat has received lots of bad press and blamed for making us fat. Not true. There's a difference between fats that help keep us healthy and fats contributing to being unhealthy. Compare a donut to a handful of raw nuts for example.

Healthy fats like peanut butter and other nut butter are shown to promote good health. Another thing to keep in mind when enjoying peanut butter is portion size. I don't sit around with a spoon in my jar until it's gone, although tempting. We can enjoy our good fats but just like with all macro nutrients, eating the right amount to maintain our fitness is essential.

Good fats have numerous health benefits and studies show can help reduce the risk of heart disease, stroke, hypertension, joint pain, and boost our immunities. The nutrients contained in peanut butter provide our body with protection from many illnesses including certain cancers and neurological disease. It's also shown to reduce our total cholesterol, specifically LDL cholesterol (the bad stuff) and triglycerides.

My love affair with peanut butter began with 'PB and Js' and still remains to this day. Mom wasn't far off with the importance of eating this healthy fat. It has helped me maintain my physical fitness over decades. I use peanut butter toast prior to and even following my workouts. I also enjoy a tablespoon when craving something before bed. If I want to create my own peanut butter cup, I toss a few dark chocolate chips on the spoon for an awesome treat.

I realize some have peanut sensitivity and allergies and therefore can't consume peanut butter. However, there are a wide variety of other kinds of nut butter just as nutritious and satisfying. Peanut butter works for me and my healthy lifestyle and probably the easiest healthy snack I eat daily. 

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Food Journals Can Help Us Get Back On Track Sooner Than Later

Keeping a food journal can be your best friend and accountability partner when learning how to implement a healthy nutrition program. It can also feel like a burden depending on your commitment level. 

I have heard it all when it comes to food journals and the love/hate relationship caused when keeping track of every morsel. The problem is really not the food journal, but the issue of not wanting to be honest with ourselves. When life is going great and our program is on track, we gladly write down every healthy bite and proudly share eating habits producing positive results.  

On the other side of the spectrum is feeling guilty eating off track and not wanting to write it down. We even convince ourselves somehow not writing it down means it didn't really happen. We tend to have moments of forgetfulness when we stop being mindful of our eating behavior. 

The truth is regardless of what we want to include in our food journal, our body keeps an accurate record. You can run but your body will not hide the consequences of unhealthy choices. 

Our food journal wants to know all the hidden secrets causing us to get off track. Are there food triggers? What's going emotionally and how is it affecting your day? These are important facts that could help figure out why we're eating unhealthy. Using the food journal as an emotional outlet helps resolve potential behaviors that may occur, and allows us to get back on track sooner than later.

Giving our food journal the stink eye for poor food choices is not where the blame should be placed. We are responsible for living a healthy or unhealthy life. If our fitness program is off track, we should be grown up enough to own it, plus the consequences of those choices. Keeping secrets from our food journal does nothing to help in a positive way. In fact, being dishonest with ourselves will prevent us from reaching our health and fitness goals. 

We can come up with all kinds of reasons not to journal: too hard, waste of time, it’s not working, controls me too much, refuse to feel micromanaged, and the list goes on. Keeping a journal is truly a personal choice but can't be blamed when poor decisions are made. When it doesn't work, it's about the dishonesty occurring when we cheat on our journal. 

Studies have shown increased health and fitness improvement when food and fitness journals are maintained. This is great news but they won't work if we're unwilling to use them correctly. Cheating on our food journal takes away it's ability to be used as a learning tool to help us correct unhealthy eating patterns. 

We have the choice to view the food journal as friend or foe. If we view the food journal as a friend, our chances for improved health and fitness would significantly increase. Good friends help keep us accountable even when it's difficult to hear the truth. It may be hard to see our poor eating habits on paper but it's necessary to stand in our truth so we can make healthy changes. Friends should be able to offer constructive criticism and have it be accepted in a positive way without defensiveness. 

The food journal is there to do that very thing: show you what has gone wrong, where you can improve, and ultimately help you make better choices for living a healthy lifestyle. 

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