by jc | Jan 16, 2024 | homepage, mindset
It’s that time of the year when people start the new year motivated and on a mission. It becomes mid to late January and then…. Some have already quit. Some are about to quit or are thinking about quitting. Some are still going strong. Some didn’t start recently and are still on a break from a long time ago. Some have never even attempted to start. Chances are, you are at one of those stages. Hopefully the still going strong stage. But if not, there is still hope and no matter where you are, it’s not too late!
This is the time of year (well, really all year) people quit on their health and fitness. For every great success story out there, I see 9 others who quit. While yes, some just give up, most are due to life getting in the way. Some valid reasons, some not. But the end result is the same – throw in the towel and lose any results or momentum you had. The one thing I can say without a doubt though is that the one out of ten that I see who stick with it, ALWAYS gets results. No matter what. If you keep moving forward and stick with it you will get results. You can’t do the right thing and get the wrong results. It really is simple math and logic.
But the majority still quits. Why does this happen? It is exercise warfare. The exercise devil is going to give you every reason not to continue with your diet and exercise. In your faith journey, you will have spiritual warfare. Satan will do everything he can to keep you from living the life God calls you to live. The same with exercise. He will do everything to keep you from exercising. Because he knows it’s good for you. And often times we listen to him and justify quitting.
I see so many reasons for people quitting on their health and fitness and quitting their workouts. Such as illness, injury, work issues, schedule changes, finances, kids activities, travel, lack of motivation, lost interest, burnout, laziness, and so on. These are all real things, and happen to everyone, myself included. And the ones that are valid excuses make it very easy for us to justify quitting. “It’s not our fault”
But remember – EXCUSES DON’T BURN CALORIES. Valid or not, any excuse or reason not to exercise still ends in not exercising….
The key to success with your health and fitness is the priority shift. How are you going to let events like these effect you? Exercise shouldn’t be optional. There are things in your life that aren’t optional, like your faith, your spouse, your kids, and your work. None of which work well if you are not healthy. Your body and your health is a constant moving product. It is either moving towards a better place, or moving to a worse place. Rarely does it stay the same. If you exercise and eat good most of the time, your body and health will move forward. If you do not exercise and you eat junk all the time, your body and health will go backwards.
You have to prioritize things. I have 4 kids, I am a business owner, I coach multiple youth sports, work 10 hours per day, sleep only about 5-6 hours per night, etc. Life gets in the way. Trust me I get it. But….I don’t let it keep me from taking care of myself. When life gets in the way, I adjust. Not exercising is not an option for me. It is going to happen regularly, regardless of what life throws at me. Some times may be tougher than others, but quitting is never an option. I may miss a day or two here and there when life throws me a curve ball, but I never completely quit and miss weeks and months at a time. When life is difficult, my relationship with God, my marriage, my parenting, my work, and my health and fitness continue on. Other things may get put to the side or put on hold, but those things continue on. Especially my exercise, because the other top priority things in my life are effected by my health and fitness.
The theme this year is consistency. Be standing at the end of the year. Regardless of what life throws at you! Life may knock you down a time or two. You may miss exercise days here and there and mess up on your diet. But get back at it. Never totally give up.
When you get sick or travel or take off work for any reason, when those missed work days are over, you don’t just quit work because life got in the way, you go back to work when the event is over. But for some reason when we miss our exercise or mess up on our diet, we quit totally or let one day turn into a week or one week turn into a month or even several months. The exercise devil says to us, “well you were doing good, but now you totally blew it, so what’s the point? Just quit.” And we listen to him and quit. Fight the good fight! Don’t give up. Get back at it.
Remember, it’s never to late to do the right thing. This can apply to everything in life. Especially your health and fitness. Have you missed workouts lately? No problem, just get back at it. The longer you wait, the further from your goals you will be. There is no better time than now to start. And when life gets in the way, and it absolutely will, work through it and don’t quit. Think about the top 3 or 4 things that you spend the most time and money on? This will tell you what your top priorities are. Is your health one of them? Do you think it should be? Invest in a better future for yourself by making exercise and eating better part of your life from this day forward.
To easily get started and lay the groundwork for your health and fitness routine, message me about our 60 Day Total Body Transformation – which can be done in person at Hoover Fitness or remotely if you do not live in the area.
Need help with the weight training? – Check out my Virtual Trainer
Need help with the diet? Try the easy to follow Calorie-Budgeting system
CLICK HERE TO SUBSCRIBE TO OUR MAILING LIST and get FREE weekly tips and advice that we guarantee will help you on your health and fitness journey!
by jc | Jan 11, 2024 | Diet/Nutrition, homepage, mindset, weight loss, Workouts
As you already know, this is the time of year people start diet and exercise routines with the best of intentions, and then usually anywhere from 2 weeks to 2 months later, something happens and they quit…. Then try again at some point in the year or the next January, and so on. The on and off again roller coaster of results.
If the previous paragraph describes you, then I have good news – you can easily get off that roller coaster and get results this year. This can be the year you stick to your new year’s fitness resolutions!
How??? One simple word – CONSISTENCY
I have worked with thousands of people over the past 20 years and I have found that the number one thing in common with all the people who have achieved the best results, more than the best routine, or hardest worker, or who sacrificed the most, and so on, is that the people with the best results were the ones who were consistent. The ones who consistently do their workouts and who consistently eat decent (while still cheating!).
If you want to make this the year that you stick to your new year’s fitness resolutions, you have to make exercising regularly your top priority, even over your diet.
Priority Shift
Start with a priority shift. Remember, if you eat bad all the time and you don’t exercise, you will go backwards in your health and weight. The key is to make exercise a priority. You are going to cheat on your diet at some point, and I totally encourage you to cheat. If you don’t, you are ultimately setting yourself up for failure because if you don’t intentionally cheat, you will do it at some point and then throw in the towel completely. So, start with exercise consistency as the most important part of your health and fitness journey. Your diet will come and go, but if your exercise is consistent, then you will always be either moving forward or staying the same, instead of going backwards. See when you place all of your results on your diet and don’t exercise, when you fail on your diet, you go backwards with your results because then you aren’t dieting or exercising. If exercise is consistent, then when you are eating good and exercising, you will be moving forward and when you are eating bad, you will at least not go backwards because your exercise will keep you moving forward.
Your Default Settings
Back to the priority shift. You have to change your default settings with exercise. You have to make it like your job. Let’s say you work Monday through Friday 9am-5pm. Your default settings with your job is that you go to work to work every day Monday through Friday, except for when you call in sick or take time off intentionally. You don’t wake up on Monday morning and say to yourself, “I think I’ll go to work today.” You already have work planned. It’s your default setting. You need exercise and diet to be the same. You have days you workout and eat good as your normal default setting and it’s already in your routine to workout and eat good that day – unless you get sick or decide to take a day off or decide to cheat on your diet. Then after the intentional day off, you are back on your plan. With work, we don’t miss a few days due to sickness or vacation and then say “well I missed so much work, the damage is done, I’ll just quit working…” But for some reason we do that with our workouts and diet. So, if and when, you miss, the key is getting back on your plan.
Don’t Aim for Perfection
Remember, you don’t have to be perfect with your routine. You don’t have to eat good all the time. You just have to never completely quit! I cheat on my diet very regularly. Probably more than most people. The difference is that I never totally quit. Most weeks I exercise 5 days per week and take 2 days off and cheat on my diet at least 3 or 4 times per week. But there are some weeks where life happens, or I travel, or holidays, etc. where I miss some workouts and I cheat more than normal. But after these weeks, I don’t quit, I just continue back to my normal default settings.
If you stay consistent, you will not only get results, you will keep them! Our bodies are designed to where you have to exercise and eat good (not great) most (not all) of the time. No one gets a pass. But for some reason we think our health is optional. As we all know, when we quit for months or years at a time, our bodies don’t just freeze and pick up where we left off.
So, make this the year you are consistent. Instead of trying to do great and then quitting, try to do good without quitting. Instead of 100% perfect diet and then quitting, try to eat good 80% of the time and bad 20% of the time, but doing this consistent without quitting. And never give up on your exercise – it takes the pressure off the diet!
Final Thoughts
I have used these principles and many more listed in my book, Calorie Budgeting 101, to get and maintain results myself and help thousands of others over the years, so I know without a doubt it works!
To easily get started and lay the groundwork for your routine, message me about our 6 Week Total Body Transformation – which can be done in person at Hoover Fitness or remotely if you don’t live in the area.
CLICK HERE TO SUBSCRIBE TO OUR MAILING LIST and get FREE weekly tips and advice that we guarantee will help you on your health and fitness journey!
by jc | Dec 18, 2023 | mindset
When you wake up each day, is what you do dictated by how you feel? Do you not exercise because you don’t feel good? Do you sleep until you feel well enough to get out of bed? Is your productivity at work determined by how you feel and how much energy you have that day? Do you stay at home because you don’t have enough energy to get out and do the things that you really want to do? If you said yes to any of these questions or anything similar then you are letting how you feel dictate your life.
It’s time to take control of your life and lead. I see it all too often – people do what they do based off of how they feel. People don’t exercise because they don’t feel up to it. They let their symptoms and the way they feel prevent them from exercise and the benefits of exercise. They have a million excuses as to why they can’t, most of which are based off of an illness or an injury. They let the injury or illness lead and dictate their life. If you think you can’t exercise because of a limiting factor then you are incorrect. Everyone can do something. All you have to do to get results is do more than you currently do, so literally everyone can get results. Everyone has a ceiling that they can work towards.
Well, if you take control of your exercise and diet and your health, you can dictate the terms. You may have to take a step back to take two steps forward, but trust me, you will never feel better until you do. You will just be managing symptoms and never doing what you want and living how you really want to. Start exercising! Don’t wait until you feel better. Exercising is one of the things that makes you feel better. So if exercise is makes you feel better and your plan is to wait until you feel better to start exercising, then you will likely never feel better by waiting. In addition to exercising, also try to make diet improvements such as budgeting your calories and eating more fruits and vegetables, (Click here to learn how to budget your calories and here to learn how to eat more fruits and veggies), start drinking more water (a lot more!), get more sleep, and reduce stress. Do these things – even when you don’t feel like it!
When you invest some time and effort taking control of your health and fitness, you will feel much better. When you feel better, you dictate the terms of your life. You take the lead. You decide what you want to do each day based on other things besides the way you feel. Don’t be a slave to your symptoms any longer. Take control. Feel better, live better!
Need help with the weight training? – Check out my Virtual Trainer
Need help with the diet? Try the easy to follow Calorie-Budgeting system
CLICK HERE TO SUBSCRIBE TO OUR MAILING LIST and get FREE weekly tips and advice that we guarantee will help you on your health and fitness journey!
by jc | Dec 4, 2023 | homepage, mindset, Workouts
The “Perfect Week”
To develop a good workout routine, you need what I call the perfect week. Your perfect week is basically your baseline. Your default setting. This is what a week will look like if everything goes as planned. Now just like work, school, or anything else in life that carries a high priority and a normal schedule, this perfect week will not always occur as planned. The goal is for the perfect week to be the normal setting and then you adjust when needed. It’s like your work – you have a normal work schedule and that is the schedule unless something changes, like you call in sick, take a vacation, etc., then back on track. The same for your diet and exercise. You do your normal week, except when something happens that causes you to miss, either intentionally, or not intentionally. Either way is fine. You miss, then get back on track. This will keep you from on again, off again, rollercoaster of diet and exercise. This will get you on track for doing good the majority of the time and bad the minority of the time, and continuing on and on forever without quitting.
Be Consistent
Remember, the most important thing is consistency. Don’t ever quit. That doesn’t mean that you can’t miss a day or more, it just means make it one of those things that is always a part of your life. So, develop your perfect week and make that your plan every week and when everything goes as planned you will complete your perfect week of exercise and when life gets in the way you get in what you can and then try again the next week.
It’s all about averages
It’s all about averages. Let’s say your perfect week is 5 days of exercise and 2 days of rest. Some weeks you will get in 5 days. Some weeks life will happen and you will only get in 1 or 2 days. Some weeks you will be inspired and get in 6 days. And some of the weeks you get in 3-4 days. At the end of the year, you may average around 4 days of exercise per week. Or you may even average 3 days. But either way, 3 or 4 days per week average for a year is way better than 2 great weeks then quitting for a month and then 1 great week and then quitting for 2 months, and so on and then end the year averaging like 1 or 2 workouts per week. Approach this logically and look at the big picture – the year as a whole.
How to Develop Your “Perfect Week” (and what mine looks like)
The first thing to do is look at your amount of days. I think 3-6 days is a great range. I think the minimum perfect week should be 3 days and the maximum perfect week be 6 days. Your body needs a day of rest. 4-5 days done consistently is great. My “perfect week” is 5 days on and 2 days off. On a perfect week, I exercise Monday through Friday and take the weekends off from my normal routine. Does this happen every week? No, but the majority of weeks it does. let’s take December and January for example. The first 3 weeks of December I may exercise 5 days per week, but the next two weeks have Christmas and New Years, so I may only exercise 2 times each of those weeks. Then the next 3 weeks I am able to get in 5 days per week. So, if you look at the average, over an 8 week period, I can average 4.25 days per week.
The next thing to do is look at what you do those days. This is based on your goals. On my 5 days, I do 3 of my Virtual Trainer total body workouts, and the other 2 days I do traditional workouts (bench press, squats, pull-ups, etc.). I also run 2 miles on the treadmill each of the 5 days before the workout. Your breakdown may be different. The total body Virtual Trainer workouts work for everyone, regardless of their goals, so I coach everyone to have that be the main part of their perfect week. The difference is what to do on the other day or two. That changes per person based on their goals. It may be a cardio only day and a total body workout, or it may be two cardio only days, or a traditional workout, etc. I also recommend doing a 15-20 minute cardio workout every day that you exercise.
Not sure what your perfect week looks like? Contact Me and I can help you develop your perfect week.
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