Looking Good (for a mom)

One of the challenges of transforming your body and life is that it takes some time for your mental image and perception of yourself to catch up with your physical reality. Just like it took looking at myself in a picture, instead of in the mirror, to see how fat and out of shape I’d become, it’s taking time for me to see myself positively in the mirror now that I’m fit. Likewise, it’s taking time for me to think of myself positively... Read More

So clearly, I’m a mom. And as a parent, I want my kids to grow up enjoying exercise and having a healthy relationship with food. It’s a constant struggle to find the balance and decide how I should react when the kids want to binge on snacks instead of eating healthy food. What I’ve learned is that the best way to help your kids adopt healthy behaviors is by setting a good example... Read More

Guilt. It’s what drives so many of us to attempt to follow militant diets, or spend hours doing cardio exercise, trying to reach a calorie burn that matches whatever it is we ended up eating to cheat on that same militant diet... Read More

When you have a hectic schedule like I do, with a full-time job, two kids (and their activities), and a husband, trying to keep up with an exercise program and plan meals can be difficult to manage. The one thing that always seems to be sacrificed for me is sleep. I’ve been recently reading about the importance of sleep and its effects on weight loss, muscle building, and health... Read More

People spend an amazing amount of time trying to find the best exercise. A google search on the words retrieves millions of articles on the subject, and there are nearly 20,000 books on exercise! People search through dozens of these resources looking for answers. They’ll look for the best exercise for weight loss, muscle growth, whittling their waist, or whatever their current goal is at the time. Then they’ll spend hours each week sweating away at whatever exercise is the recommended one of the era, even if they hate it the entire time. It’s a recipe for failure. If you’re going to stick with an exercise program for the long-term, it has to be fun and something you enjoy... Read More

There are a few things I’ve learned NOT to do over the past year. These are common fitness mistakes that either waste your time, or cause your workout to be less efficient. Some of these are mistakes I made, others I was fortunate enough to learn not do before I made them. But they are all thing I see other people doing in the gym, just about every time I’m there. So here’s a quick list of things I’ve learned to avoid — and now you can too... Read More

Many women (and even some men) that I know have figured out how to lose weight by eating healthy. They might be using Weight Watchers, or a program like Jenny Craig, or maybe they’re just being successful counting calories. But once they lose the weight, then the really difficult part starts: How do they keep it from coming back?.. Read More

I recently read a summary of a very interesting study regarding energy level and quality of life in women. In the study, healthy sedentary women (average age around 57) were put into one of four groups. Three groups did exercise at varying levels of intensity, from light exercise (The amount of time spent exercising ranged from just over one hour weekly in the light intensity group to three hours weekly in the high intensity group.) The fourth group was a control group – they didn’t begin an exercise program... Read More

I’ve been talking to a lot of my friends over the past few days, and more often than not, the conversation takes a turn to fitness. I wanted to do a brief post, just to talk about some of the motivational strategies that have worked for them (and for me). The point is that this is a menu. Know yourself, and choose from the menu the things that will work to help motivate you... Read More

I’ve spent the last few days getting over a cold, and it reminded me how easy it can be to get off track. Maybe, like me, it’s a cold that sidelines you from your workouts, or maybe it’s a disruption to your schedule. Maybe it’s even a setback on the scale, or a few days of eating off plan... Read More