Good evening Beautiful,Guess what? Tomorrow is Friday and we’re going to a Blue Jays game!! I absolutely love going to Jays games, they’re always the best time, and there’s always somebody there to laugh at! That sounds bad, but it’s true. The only downfall is the fact that they don’t exactly serve “clean drinks” and “clean food” at events such as this. I try and avoid food at baseball games if at all possible, but there’s no way to avoid drinking beer, that’s all there is! That, or super sugary pre-mixed drinks that cause severe hangovers. I’ll stick to my Bud Light Lime… I tweeted to JP Arencibia to let him know I was going to see him, my baseball husband, but he hasn't tweeted me back yet. Actually, he hasn't responded to any of my tweets yet. It's just a matter of time, I know it! :)Today, I was doing work (shocking!) and I had someone who wanted to cancel their gym membership. The administrators said “Another New Year’s Resolution bites the dust!” and that got me thinking, why do people give up on themselves so easily when it comes to fitness and health? What is stopping all of these people from just taking 1 hour out of their day, three or four times per week? I’m not even asking for every day, I’m asking for every OTHER day! One hour! That’s 30 minutes per day on average. How long does the average office go-er take for lunch, sit at a table and read gossip magazines? How many nights/week do you spend 2+ hours on the Gardiner Express Way bumper to bumper and suck it up because this is “normal”? I wish that fitness were the norm for everyone, our world would be a much better (and healthier!) place.So I was curious and Googled the most popular reasons why people give up on their fitness goals. I picked the first link I saw, and this is what I’ve discovered:Reason 1: Inadequate analysis and evaluation of fitness goals
If you ask people what their fitness goal is over the next month, they’re most likely to say “lose weight”, “tone up”, or “general health” – but what does that actually mean? People need to find out what is realistic when it comes to fitness goals, and having a goal that is so unrealistic is likely to result in discouragment.Reason 2: SMART Principles are not used in setting fitness goals
SMART = Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Timely. People are not specific enough when it comes to what they want to achieve and that’s a set up for failure. How are you then able to track your progress to know what you have/have not achieved? Setting land marks in your fitness journey helps you to "check in" and see if you're maintaining your workouts and sticking with your nutrition. Like I've said before, failing to plan is planning to fail.Reason 3: Lack of self-accountability
People are usually held accountable to someone besides themselves. A boss, a boyfriend/girlfriend, a parent, a child, etc, but very rarely are people held accountable by themselves. Do you think if you decide to skip the gym and go for beers with the guys after work, that anyone is going to say anything about it? The only way to succeed is to hold yourself 100% accountable to yourself and stop making excuses, it's only interrupting the goals you want to achieve.Reason 4: Lack of adequate professional fitness advice
Anyone can google fitness and find tons of different theories, articles, workouts, and it causes mass confusion and not seeing results instantly discourages people. A personal trainer can help clear any confusion you might have! Only 25% of people actually achieve their desired fitness results, and 9 out of 10 of those people have a personal trainer. If you’re new to fitness and/or don’t have a fitness background, a personal trainer might not be a bad idea for a while, until you gain knowledge and know what works and doesn't work for you and fitness is now habit, not a chore.Reason 5: Insufficient emphasis placed on nutrition
“Abs are not made in the gym, they’re made in the kitchen”. I’ve heard this saying many times. A lot of people think just because they workout a lot, they can eat whatever they want. Wrong! You’re just reversing all of the work you did in the gym to begin with. Eating healthy is 80% of the equation when trying to reach a fitness goal. Don’t sell yourself short. Eat fresh food, grass-fed meat, tons of veggies, no processed foods and that should help. I absolutely hate it when people cancel their gym membership because I know it’s not for something legitimate (unless it’s actually a medical reason) and their either discouraged and not saying anything about it, or are actually just lazy. I hate the fact that people give up on themselves so easily, and once their mind is made up, it’s very hard to change it. With that being said, I hope people read this and become inspired. I believe that you can do it. I believe that if you want something bad enough, nothing should be able to stand in your way. Can you really compare the feeling of losing the last 5lbs, or finding that you’ve lost 3% body fat, or that you can run a 5km and have never been able to do that before? Or train for 16 weeks to run a half-marathon when you've never ran more than 5km? I did that, and I can promise you the feeling you get when you reach your goal is totally worth it... Thank you for listening to my mini-rant. Much appreciated!Last night was The Bachelorette night with my girlfriends. I went to my friend Marina’s apartment and I swear to god, I was literally the biggest one there. I know I’m not a big person, but every other person was so tiny, it was crazy. They got on the topic of “behinds” and how some of them dislike theirs. I’m not one to comment because well, it just makes me feel bad about myself. I try not to think of my problem areas and work my whole body equally. Not today! I was thinking about what I wanted to do this morning for my workout, and decided to work on the typical woman problem areas, my butt and my abs. I’m not one for working on lower body because I hate it. It burns, and it burns, and then it hurts, and it’s tight, and it’s just an unpleasant experience. Today though, I sucked it up, put on my tough face and decided to make a WOD of my own.5 minute warm up on the treadmill, walking at 3.5 on a 10 inclineAMRAP for 20 minutes of:
10 deep squats holding a 4kg medicine ball
10 walking lunges
10 glute kickbacks on each leg.I did 12 sets plus a 13th set of squats which means 130 squats, 120 walking lunges (60 per side), 120 glute kickbacks per leg, then I did:
1 minute plank
3 sets of medicine ball twists for my oblique’sI was sweating a ton, and my legs were like jelly walking down the stairs back to my office! It was awesome! I’m hoping to do this once/week so I can track my progress. If I’m going to be wearing a short dress to my companies awards gala in August, I need to have some killer legs! C and I are hitting up the hot tub in our condo tonight, hopefully that will make me less sore in the morning. What should I work on tomorrow? Good question…Stay sweet.
xoxo