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 27, 2023 | Diet/Nutrition, homepage, weight loss, Workouts
No more New Years Resolutions that end up in failure within the first month! These 6 tips will get you off that year after year roller coaster of failed attempts and set you up for success to reach your health and fitness goals now and in the long run.
Have the Right Mindset
To reach your health and fitness goals, you need to have the right mindset. You want to set yourself up for success, not failure. Most of the time, people approach their diet and exercise the wrong way and they set themselves up for failure. So what is the right mindset? Think big-picture, and think GOOD, not great. Most people think that they have to get all of their desired results NOW, and then when they don’t see them, they quit and then go backwards and even further away from their goals. You have to think big-picture.
You have to think long term. Remember, diet and exercise have to be a part of your life forever, so you might as well think of it in the long term. Our bodies are designed to be taken care of and if you don’t exercise and you don’t eat right, then you will go backwards. So, yes it is a life-sentence, but it doesn’t have to be a bad one. Your goal is to do good, not great, and do it for a long time. Most people try to do everything perfect. They go from doing no exercise and eating terrible to going crazy with their exercise and going on some super-strict diet. It’s too far from what you were doing and it’s too much to sustain, so you quit and then you are back to not exercising, not eating good, and you start going backwards. (this is the roller-coaster of losing 10lbs, then quitting and gaining 20lbs, then starting back and losing 10lbs, then quitting and gaining another 20lbs, etc., on and off for years and years). It’s all mindset! Think progressive changes. Think GOOD instead of great. Start exercising regularly and start making easy changes in your diet that will help you improve without total deprivation, which causes you to quit.
I can’t express how important this mindset thing is. I have spent 25 years teaching people how to be a normal person and still get results and how to avoid the pitfalls that cause people to quit. I have created a system that allows you to enjoy life while getting results. This is a system for the person who wants results and still wants to enjoy life. I could write several more pages explaining this, and I have… For a quick and easy read showing you exactly how you can get real results while still enjoying life, check out my book, Calorie Budgeting 101.
Consistency
I have worked with thousands of people over the past 25 years and I have found that the number one thing in common with all the people who reach their health and fitness goals, more than the best routine, or hardest worker, or who sacrificed the most, and so on, is that the people who reached their health and fitness goals were the ones who were consistent. The ones who consistently do their workouts and who consistently eat decent (while still cheating!).
While it is important what you are doing for your workouts, cardio, and diet, it is even more important that whatever you do, you do it consistently. The best program in the world will not work if you do not do it. So make consistency your top priority and then worry about what you are doing.
Commit to not quitting for an entire year. I don’t mean never missing a workout or never cheating on your diet. What I mean is commit to not quitting completely. Miss days here and there, go on vacation, take sick time, etc., but just like you do with your job, when the missed time is over, get back to work!
Pick the Right Workout Program
To reach your health and fitness goals, you need to choose the right workout program. You need to choose a workout program that is safe, efficient, and effective, and one that is sustainable for a long time.
Most of us are super busy, so time is of the essence. Look for workouts that are 45 minutes or less and cover pretty much every body part. This way time is not wasted and you won’t miss working any specific areas of your body. My workouts at Hoover Fitness and via my Virtual Personal Trainer are all 45 minutes or less and cover every body part. We also superset exercises and do combination exercises which make them very efficient.
It will be very difficult to reach your health and fitness goals if you get injured. But, you can get in great workouts that produce great results and great strength gains without getting injured. In our programs at Hoover Fitness and via my Virtual Personal Trainer, no one ever gets injured. The reason being is because the moves are designed for the individual and can be adjusted to their limitations and also because we use dumbbells instead of bars and racks. The benefit of dumbbells is that they conform to your body’s movements, whereas a bar requires more that you conform to it.
There are lots of great programs out there. I recommend finding something to follow that uses dumbbells, is not competition based, and that works multiple body parts per workout. Find a workout program that is safe, efficient, and effective, and also that can be adjusted to your improvements and advances throughout the year.
Do Cardio in Addition to Weight Training
The 3 main components in your health and fitness are to workout, eat better, and do cardio. If you haven’t gotten results in the past, there is a good chance it is because you left out one of these three, and usually it is cardio.
Cardio not only will help you with your heart health, stamina, and health in general, it will also help you burn fat and tone up. In addition to those benefits, cardio will help you have better endurance for your strength training workouts, thus enabling you to get more out of those workouts.
And most importantly, working out regularly and doing cardio regularly take the pressure off of the diet. Your diet will never be perfect, so the more you can be consistent with your workouts and cardio, the less your diet failures will effect you.
My advice is always to work hard for 15-20 minutes. If you are working hard enough, 15 minutes on a regular basis is plenty. Often times people walk or do something easy for 45 minutes or an hour and get nothing really from it. Their mind tells them that they are working hard because they went so long, but the reality is that there is a reason they were able to go so long – it was easy. My best advice that I can give for cardio is that it is not how far you go or how long you go, it’s how hard you work.
As for what to do for your cardio, pretty much anything that causes your heart rate to increase and stay increased for 15-20 minutes will suffice. If you are at home, this could be a jog or run outside, up and down stairs, riding a bicycle, etc. At a gym, you can use the treadmill, an elliptical machine, a stairstepper, an exercise bike, or any other equipment in the cardio area.
Get out of your comfort zone and be miserable, but only for a short amount of time, like 15 minutes. Not only will you get better results, it will be better for your joints and keep you from racking up chronic injuries that accrue over time when you just keep rolling up that odometer.
Have a Realistic Diet
You can’t reach your health and fitness goals by going on some crazy, miserable fad diet. You need to have a realistic diet. Start simple and with small changes. People fail on their diets because they change too much too fast and deprive themselves of everything and then they quit. And when they quit, they quit everything, including their exercise.
Commit to exercising, then the pressure should be off the diet. Your diet will come and go, but your exercise can be consistent.
Find ways to cut calories without being miserable. One way to do this is to take something that you normally eat and replace it with something that you like that has less calories. Then it becomes relative to what you normally eat, not relative to what the actual food item is.
Skip a meal. Yes, skip a meal. This is by far the easiest way to cut calories. The bottom line is your calories in vs. calories out. You have already increased the calories out by your exercise, so find ways to reduce the calories in. The bigger the deficit is each day, the faster you get results. You don’t have to eat 5 times per day, and you don’t have to eat breakfast. Never eat because you think you have to.
Avoid snacking. Grab a cup of coffee or a piece of gum. Cut out those snacks and you have cut out those calories.
Drink lots of water. Water will make you feel more full and also help your body operate better with your exercise. Shoot for 64-100 ounces per day.
I could go on and on about the diet and what to do and what not to do to keep you from quitting, but for the sake of simplicity in getting started, just implement these few diet tips. For a lot more easy diet tips and help with the mental side of all this, read my latest eBook, Calorie Budgeting 101. It is a quick read and the ultimate diet guide for the person who wants results and still wants to eat the foods they love and enjoy life.
Take Supplements
You get aftermarket accessories for your car. You get the best equipment for sports and hobbies. But yet when it comes to health and fitness, people hold back on getting “extras” that can boost performance and help achieve health and fitness goals easier.
If you take the right things, then you can get even better results with little to no extra effort, which is always a good thing to keep you going and keep you happy.
Think of taking supplements like an athlete having the best gear. A baseball player having the best bat and cleats and then taking supplements to get the most out of his training. Or like If you get into running, and you wanted to get serious about it, you wouldn’t just start running without doing anything else. You would probably start by getting good running shoes and then taking supplements for your performance.
There are a lot of quality supplements out there that can help you get results in the gym and with your diet. While there are a lot of great supplements on the market today, I am going to talk about the supplements that I take and recommend professionally. As always, do your own research. But if you want my professional opinion, then I would advise these.
As for workout performance supplements, I personally take and professionally recommend Prestige Labs products. If you are looking for something to help you lose weight and burn body fat without having to do anything other than take a product, then take a look at the Prestige Heat and the Prestige Crush. These are two of the most popular products we sell in our weight loss workout programs. Check out all of their amazing products by clicking HERE.
As for health-type supplements, I recommend Juice Plus+ fruits and vegetable capsules. I have personally been taking Juice Plus+ for almost 20 years and it is a great way to get real, whole food nutrition without having to eat a ton of calories. The recommended amount of fruits and vegetables is 7-13 servings of raw fruits and vegetables per day. If you eat this amount, then you will reap amazing health benefits, including heart health, feeling better, better immune system, and much more. The problem is that it is impossible to physically eat that amount. Plus the cost and the calories would be way too high. Juice Plus+ gets you this amount of fruits and vegetables daily, in a capsule! learn more at by clicking HERE.
Final Thoughts
Make this the year that you stick with it. The year that you get results and keep them. The year that you make exercise a priority in your life. January is the time to get started. Motivation is usually very high in January, so use that motivation to get started. But have the right mindset, be consistent, pick the right workout program, do cardio in addition to weight training, have a realistic diet, and take supplements, so you will be able to make this the year. Realize that health and fitness is not optional and that to get results you have to do the things things that are needed on a regular basis. If you make the right decisions with your health and fitness, you will be able to get results and keep getting them for a long time.
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by jc | Dec 7, 2023 | homepage, weight loss, Workouts
I want to do cardio but I cannot run. What do I do? In this post I will give you some good non-running cardio ideas, and how to do them effectively!
You will hear me say over and over that running is the best form of cardio because it is efficient and yields the best results in the shortest amount of time. When I talk about running though, I mean 15-30 minutes of running, not hours of running per day or marathon running, etc. That gets into running for sport, which has as many negatives as it does positives. I mean running at a high intensity level for 15-30 minutes 4 or 5 days per week. This gives you maximum output and keeps your odometer low, thus keeping you from chronic injury. But, back to the original point of how to get in good cardio without running????
I recommend doing other options for 15-30 minutes at a high pace and high intensity. Remember, 15 minutes is enough time, if you are working hard enough. If you can go a whole hour, then you are not working hard enough. I also recommend doing a progressive plan. Pick a time between15 and 30 minutes and increase the level or speed every minute or every few minutes. Try to avoid going fast one minute and then resting one minute. The goal is 15-30 minutes straight of working hard. You can rest when you are finished…
So, let’s take a look at some non-running cardio ideas.
1. The Stair Stepper
One of my favorite non-running cardio ideas is the Stair Stepper. I recommend the stair stepper as one of the next best options to running for cardio. One of the best things about running on a treadmill is that you are at the mercy of the belt speed, which means that in order to slow down, you have to push a button, so as long as you don’t jump off or reduce the speed, you cannot slow down (like you can when running outside). Well, the same is true with a stair stepper. Most are designed to where you have to keep moving or else it will sink to the floor. So, like the treadmill, you have to adjust the level to make it easier, you can’t just simply slow down. One thing to note is that in order to make a stair stepper effective, you have to use your legs. I often see people leaning on top of the stepper and taking all the pressure off of their legs. Don’t do that!! You can hold on, but just make sure that you are using your legs to step and you are staying upright.
2. The Fan Bike
I also recommend the Fan Bike as the one of the next best options to running for cardio. The great thing about the fan bike is that it has arms and legs movements that can be done simultaneously or individually. I find the best way to work hard on the Fan Bike is to do intervals of each movement. I do one minute of just peddling without holding onto the arm handles, then one minute of just moving the arm handles back n forth without moving the pedals, and then one minute of doing both together. Another good option is to just do the arms and legs together the entire time and push through it at a good pace continually.
3. The Elliptical
The elliptical is a tricky animal. The tricky thing with the elliptical is that you can make it easy and simply “ride it” instead of working hard. I see this all the time. People log hours and hours on it with little or no results. So, make sure you have it moving at an uncomfortable or miserable pace with speed and resistance. Start medium and increase every few minutes. Try to work progressive, increasing every few minutes without stopping or resting until you are finished. A good way to ensure that you are working hard on the elliptical is to make sure that you stay level. Imagine there is a ceiling 1 inch above your head and you cannot hit it. If you do this, your legs will be on fire! When you go up and down with the motion of the elliptical, you take away a lot of the resistance. Staying level will prevent that.
4. The Upright Bike and Recumbent Bike
Both of these can be good cardio ideas and be very effective if done right. You have to have the right combination of speed and resistance. Don’t make it too hard to pedal. But also, don’t go too slow. And, make sure you are gradually increasing the intensity. These bikes can be very effective, but just like a bike on the road, if you are coasting, you are getting nothing out of it, so make sure that you are actually working hard. One great tip to ensure that you are working hard is to pick a speed that is fast and fairly uncomfortable and keep it above that speed the entire time. You have to remember to keep an eye on it thought, because you will automatically slow down if you don’t. The speed is usually indicated on the bike’s screen as RPM. Gradually increase the resistance while keeping at the desired speed and you will get a great cardio workout on the bike.
5. The Spin Bike
You don’t have to be in a spin class to use the spin bike. These bikes can get you a killer workout. As a matter of fact, I don’t really recommend spin class often, but that is a whole other topic that I will go into in another post. But, for your 15-30 minutes of high intensity cardio, you can use a spin bike. On the spin bike, I recommend going back and forth between fast and resistance. Notice I didn’t say fast and slow, or hard and easy. Once again, we have to stay out of the resting zone. So, start by going fast for a minute and then after that minute, make the resistance very hard and try to count 100 pedal revolutions. When you finish the 100, you can go fast one minute then do another 100, and so on. You can also do 30 seconds fast, 50 resistance revolutions, and other time intervals.
Other cardio ideas
There are other cardio machines out there. There are some that are like ellipticals and steppers combined, row machines, etc. You can also jump rope and things like that. Any of these can be effective if you work at a progressive pace and if you start and don’t rest until you are finished. So, be careful on some of these and make sure you are working hard enough. If you can only do a few minutes at a time, then you are not really doing cardio, you are doing more like weight training.
So, to recap…
*15-20 minutes is enough if you are working at an intense pace and you do it consistently (shoot for every day you do a workout)
*Work progressive – gradually increase intensity. Don’t go fast one minute then rest, etc. Remember, your results happen when you push through, not when you rest.
*Use the misery index – If you are miserable, then you are probably working where you need to be. If it is easy, you will not get results. You want to work at the level of where the minutes go by like hours and the seconds like minutes. Use music, videos, tv shows, prayer, and any other things you can to distract yourself.
Use these tips to help you maximize your cardio. And remember to do all three, Weight Training, Cardio, and Calorie-Budgeting to get maximum results!
Need help with the weight training? – Check out my Virtual Trainer
Need help with the diet? Try the easy to follow Calorie-Budgeting system
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by jc | Nov 17, 2023 | Diet/Nutrition, homepage, weight loss, Workouts
Jump-start some serious results and get in shape fast!
Do you want to get in shape fast? Are you already working out? Do you already do some form of strength training? If not, then you really don’t need to read much further, you simply need to get started and you will see results no matter what you do! Remember, it’s all relevant to your current situation. If you do already do some type of strength training exercise though, and you have hit a rut, or simply just want to boost results, then these 3 EASY TIPS will help you.
1. START RUNNING
The first of our 3 easy tips to get in shape fast is to start running.
Now, I know, immediately some of you had all these running-defense mechanisms pop up telling you why you can’t run. I’m sure there is a long list of reasons why not. And, for some of you, this may be true. But… for most of you, you can run, even if you don’t think that you can. If you can handle running to any degree, then you should strongly consider it.
How much running? That answer is easy – simply more than you already are doing. But, to be more specific, it would be good to do a plan, such as a couch-to-5k type plan. Or a plan to get up to 2 miles. Don’t worry about getting into “running” and running long distances. The goal here is still to try to stay under 30 minutes of high intensity cardio, but just to make that cardio running.
I also think a treadmill running plan is great. The benefit of the treadmill is that it makes you work hard. When you are running outside, sometimes your body will automatically slow down when you get tired, but when you are on a treadmill, you have only two options, do what the treadmill does, or get off. Basically, it is harder to cheat on the treadmill.
(For a FREE progressive treadmill running plan, click HERE and request treadmill running plan)
Note: I am not saying get into running for sport and running long distances. Running for sport is different and can wear your body down and cause chronic problems. I am saying running for cardio and trying to keep it to like 3 miles or less on a regular basis. If you stay in this zone, you will avoid joint problems and other problems.
If you take a look at those people who are in good shape, or those who have seen the results that you would like to see, then you will see that one common denominator usually is that they run, in addition to strength training. Myself included.
If you want to run, but honestly can’t due to physical reasons, then try another form of cardio, just make sure the intensity is high and that you are working hard! The reason that I recommend running is because it is an easy way to work hard. It is very efficient. But, if you can work hard on another machine, then by all means, go for it. Just make sure it is as difficult as running.
2. CUT SOMETHING OUT OF YOUR REGULAR DIET
The second of our 3 easy tips to get in shape fast is to cut something out of your regular diet.
You don’t have to eat all the time! I know, you are probably thinking about everything that you have heard about having to eat every few hours to keep your metabolism going, etc., but you don’t! I see so often people eat just because they think they have to or they think that if they don’t eat then they will starve or they will lose their muscle, or even worse, they will tell themselves that they have to eat so they can justify eating and not have to have as much discipline.
When it comes to health and fitness, everyone seems to freak out a little and think that if they don’t eat that something bad will happen. People always tell me that if they don’t eat then their metabolism will slow down. So what do they do? They go and add all these extra calories that they now have to burn.
You can look at it like this – Jane wants to reduce her caloric deficit by 300 calories per day. She hears that if she doesn’t eat then her metabolism will slow down. Her goal was to burn an extra 300 calories per day. But, since she doesn’t want to slow down her metabolism, she eats a 300 calorie snack between meals or a 300 calorie meal that she didn’t want because she didn’t want to slow down her metabolism. The way I look at it is that any amount you slow down your metabolism by not eating (which I do not believe to be all that true) is definitely not 300 calories worth of slow down. The benefits of eating when she thought she had to were not 300 calories worth!
Another way to look at it is to think about fasting. I used to think it was bad for me not to eat, and then I started fasting for spiritual reasons and then after many long fasts I realized that if fasting wasn’t bad for me when I did it spiritually then why was it bad for me when I did it for diet reasons??? Your body can go a long time without eating. And a lot less of your energy than you think is derived from food. I am not telling you not to eat, but what I am doing is trying to inform you that you don’t have to eat as much as you probably think and that it’s ok to skip a meal to save hundreds of calories!
This tip is just one of many in my Calorie Budgeting System. If you really want to get in shape fast, read my short eBook, Calorie Budgeting 101.
3. DO SOMETHING EVERY DAY FOR 21 DAYS
The third of our 3 easy tips to get in shape fast is to do something every day for 21 days.
Years ago, I started The 21 Day Fast Blast at Hoover Fitness. The goal of the 21 Day Fat Blast was for people to workout 21 straight days. The results were great, but the real success was that it developed a habit of working out and exercising for people. After the 21 Days, going down to 4 to 5 days per week wasn’t a problem.
The important thing here is to develop the habit. If you can do it for 21 days straight, then you will prove to yourself that you can do 4-5 times per week on a regular basis and that you will be able to finally incorporate exercise into your lifestyle and rise above your previous excuses and limiting factors.
The other part of 21 days straight is that it can help you get fast results because you will be doing more in those 21 days than you normally have been doing, even if you have been working out regularly. If you are working out 3 or 4 days per week consistently and you are stuck in a rut and not seeing great results, 21 straight days could get you out of it.
Need ideas or workouts to follow for your 21 days? My Virtual Personal Trainer will deliver them to your inbox daily and comes with easy to follow instructions and video demonstrations.
Final Thoughts
Get in shape fast by running or improving your cardio, by cutting out something from your diet, and by trying 21 straight days. If you are looking for more results, that means that there is something missing from your routine or you are doing something wrong with your diet or exercise and you need to change something. These are 3 easy changes you can make that will get you results and set you up for more results in the future.
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 | Nov 13, 2023 | homepage, weight loss
Do you want to avoid holiday weight gain? If so, then now is the time to put your foot on the throttle…..
How would you like to wake up January 1st in the same shape you are now, or even better? As opposed to being in worse shape than you are now and having to work it all off and start the year with the usual uphill battle?
Most people start to fall off the diet and exercise wagon right around Thanksgiving. They eat bad at Thanksgiving, then they look at December and the holidays approaching and that little diet and exercise devil says to them, “life is just too crazy the next 6 weeks, so just wait until January to get back to the gym and eating good. You’ll be fine.”
Then you wake up on January 1st, with an uphill battle because you are further away from your goals than you are even today. Which makes it even harder to get results, thus increasing your chances to quit and go even further backwards.
Remember this – December should be the month that you go to the gym the most! Not the least. Think of it like money. Do you quit working on your most expensive months? We all know there will be holiday eating and times you have to miss exercise and eat bad. So, it is even more important that you eat good on the days that you aren’t eating bad and exercise on the days that you don’t have to miss.
So, take the holidays and enjoy them. Eat bad. Travel, go to parties, miss workouts, etc. But take a look at all the days when you don’t have to eat bad and miss your workout and cardio. On those days, be super-dedicated and do everything you are supposed to do. Chances are, if you do this, you will avoid holiday weight gain. You will not only break even during the next 6 weeks, but you will probably GET AHEAD! – And, you’ll be able to enjoy the holidays guilt free!!!
Below are 5 easy tips to help you avoid holiday weight gain. Apply these 5 easy tips to avoid holiday weight gain immediately and you will get ahead and stay ahead during the next several weeks and you won’t have to start the new year behind and with some crazy resolution – you will already be there!
1. Change Your Mindset
Stop thinking that the damage is done and that there is no point to even try during the holiday season. That thinking will only set you back further. Don’t throw in the towel during this time. It will only make it worse in January. Change your mindset from the damage is done thinking to it doesn’t have to be perfect during the holidays thinking. Make the most of the situation. If you follow my diet and exercise teaching and my Calorie Budgeting System, you will see how I budget for good and bad on a regular basis. The holiday season is no different, there is just a little more bad than normal.
2. Work Your Calendar
The holidays can be a very busy season. You have a lot going on, so it is important to schedule things on a calendar. Hopefully you use a calendar to organize and schedule the important things in your life. Your diet and exercise should be important to you and should be included on your calendar.
Look at your calendar on a weekly basis from Thanksgiving to New Years. Each week, mark all the events that you have that would keep you from exercising or that would make you eat bad. Then take all the other days and schedule exercise on them and eat good on those days. It is fairly simple, you just have to hold yourself accountable on those days.
Note: if you are a busy person on a regular basis, take a look at these Health and Fitness Tips for Busy People.
3. Do Your Workouts
It doesn’t matter if you have missed lately or how crazy your schedule is. At Hoover Fitness we have 16 classes per week available. Chances are you can make more classes during the next 6 weeks than you did during the previous 6 weeks! If you can’t make those classes or you are at another gym, you can follow the workouts on our Virtual Personal Trainer. You can even do those at home.
If you don’t workout already, now is a great time to start. Don’t wait until January to start. There will never be a perfect time to start. Check out these Workout Tips for Beginners to help you get started.
4. Do Cardio
Now is the time to start a cardio plan to do in addition to your workouts. With Cardio, you will greatly increase your chances for results. During the holidays, you will be consuming more calories than normal. Cardio will help you burn more calories than just doing your workouts only. Think of it like an extra job. If you are spending more money than normal, then you can get an extra job to pay for the extra expenses. Cardio is like a job and the calories you eat are like your extra expenses. During the holidays, not only do cardio, but do extra cardio to pay for the extra calories.
For cardio, my advice is to work hard for 15-20 minutes. If you are working hard enough, 15 minutes on a regular basis is plenty. Often times people walk or do something easy for 45 minutes or an hour and get nothing really from it. Their mind tells them that they are working hard because they went so long, but the reality is that there is a reason they were able to go so long – it was easy. My best advice that I can give for cardio is that it is not how far you go or how long you go, it’s how hard you work. The holiday season is a busy season and you are limited in the amount of time you have anyways. So make the most of it and work hard during the limited time that you have.
5. Eat good when you are not eating bad
Thanksgiving through the entire holiday season, you are going to eat bad. And that is ok! My goal is not to tell people that they cannot eat bad, it is to show people how they can eat bad and still get results.
It is important that you take advantage of the times that you aren’t eating bad and be sure to eat good during those times. Cut calories during the times you are not eating bad. Think of it like saving money. Save the calories for the bad eating. Don’t waste them on the good eating.
If you want to learn how to easily budget your calories to be able to enjoy foods that you love, check out my eBook, Calorie Budgeting 101.
Final Thoughts
Take a serious look at the next 6 weeks. Make this the year that you avoid holiday weight gain. You can enjoy all the good stuff that comes during this time, and still get results. You don’t have to quit during this time. I promise, you will not regret it. The only chance of regret is by throwing in the towel and waiting until January to do something.
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by jc | Oct 27, 2023 | Diet/Nutrition, homepage, weight loss
Below are 7 easy weight loss diet tips that you can start using today to get results and that will set you up for a diet that is easy to maintain for a long time. Chances are, you have probably gone on and off of diets for years. You start a diet and lose a little weight, then you realize you are miserable and the diet is not sustainable so you quit and gain back more than you lost, then eventually you repeat the process again and on and on until you have dieted your way to misery and to overall weight gain. These tips are designed to not only get you some quick results, but also to keep you from quitting and allow you to enjoy life while getting results.
These tips are more mindset than anything. They are designed to keep you from failing. I know you probably are looking for “eat this” and “don’t eat this” but TRUST me here, the information you will read in this article is much more valuable than telling you exactly what to eat. You have probably tried that a thousand times already with little success, so give this a shot!
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1. Do Good Not Great
The biggest problem for people with dieting is that they try to be perfect. They think that they cannot get results unless their diet is perfect. They go on a strict diet and try to do great and deprive themselves of foods they love, thus depriving themselves of happiness and then eventually quit.
One super easy weight loss diet tip is to do good, not great. Good means eating better most of the time, not all of the time. do bad some of the time. Do Good forever, not great for a short time. When you try to be perfect with your diet you quit and end up just eating bad all the time. You go from 100% dieting to 0% dieting and over the course of time you probably averaged good dieting like 25% of the time. Think 80/20 rule. Eat good 80% of the time and bad 20% of the time, but doing this forever. Get out of the all or nothing mindset. You will get better results in the long run.
I have spent my entire career teaching people how to get results and still be able to enjoy the foods they love. Basically how to be a normal person and get results. These tips will easily get you on your way, but if you want to read even more tips that will help you get amazing results, check out my latest eBook that explains even more how you can live a normal life and still get results.
2. Budget Your Calories – Treat Them Like Money
Remember to look at the day as a whole, the week as a whole, and the month as a whole. With that being said, you have the ability to “budget” your calories. Save calories here to have calories there. What ultimately matters is if at the end of the day, week, or month, your calorie totals are where they need to be. And, the answer to that is that they need to be less than you are burning. Remember – eat less and burn more. It’s that simple.
With calorie budgeting, don’t waste calories. If you are eating good, then do good. Don’t waste any calories on the good days. Save your calories for your cheat meals. So, find as many ways as you can to reduce calories on your good days and save them up for your cheat meals.
Think of this like a savings account. You save up for something and then you buy it instead of charging it to a credit card. If you have the money and are able to buy something, then you are financially ok after the purchase. If you do not have the money and you buy something by charging it to a credit card, then you have to work and work to pay it off over time. The same goes for dieting. If you are trying to get 2000 calories per day, then you have 14000 per week to work with. If you are planning on having a cheat meal that is 2000 calories more than normal, then you should try to cut 2000 out of the rest of the week. If you cut those calories out in other places, then, after your cheat meal, you would still be at 14000 for the week. If you didn’t cut your normal days down some, and just added the cheat meal, then you would be at 16000 calories for the week, thus increasing your weekly total by 2000, which ultimately will lead to body fat gains. You will be working and working to burn those 2000 calories over time, just like you would be working to pay down that credit card.
Treat your diet analytical, but also don’t over-think it. Keep it simple. Think of it like a bank savings account. The more calories you can cut here, the more calories you can have there!
3. Exercise
Yes, one of the weight loss diet tips is to exercise…. When you treat your calories like money, your calories that you eat are like the money that you spend and the calories that you burn are like the money that you make. If you are wealthy, then spending money doesn’t hurt you financially. The same can be said about calories. If you burn a lot of calories, then when you eat calories it doesn’t hurt you as much.
Exercising regularly takes the pressure off the diet. Everyone will fail at dieting. Like death and taxes, diets are also undefeated. The problem is that normally people do not exercise so they place all of their success on their diet. Then when they quit their diet they are back to no diet and no exercise. Get super consistent with your exercise and make it a part of your life moving forward that way when you fall off of your diet (hopefully for only a short period), you will still have your exercise going and still be able to get results or at least maintain and not go backwards.
Not sure where to get started with your exercise? Check out these 9 Easy But Effective Workout Tips For Beginners.
4. Make the Obvious Changes First
One of the big mistakes that people make with dieting and trying to eat better is that people tend to go too far too fast. They also tend to over-think things and try too hard. These mistakes ultimately lead to another failed attempt at improving your diet. Remember to keep it simple! Don’t try too hard too fast.
With dieting and eating better, the two most important things that you need to know are (1) that it is relative to you and your current diet and (2) all you have to do to get results is improve upon what you are currently doing. Too often people pick a diet and switch from their current diet to this new and crazy diet that is light years away from what they are currently doing. The change is too much and this leads to failure. All you have to do is improve on your current diet. Simple logic tells us that if you improve what you are doing, no matter how small or large the improvements are, you will see results. Remember, keep it simple!
So, how do we improve? Start with making the obvious choices first. Don’t overthink your “new” diet. Your new diet is simply an improvement on your current diet. Make the easy changes first. Change the things that you know in your head are better choices. If you can say to yourself “I know better than to eat that” about a specific food, then you already have enough knowledge to improve your diet. At first, make the easy choices that you already know. Get help later. Start with less soft drinks, less fried foods, less sweets, etc. Everyone knows how to diet at this level. This will get the ball rolling and get you some much needed results. Trust that your knowledge will evolve as your diet does. You need to be gradually improving over time. You will hit road blocks along the way, and when you do, then you can ask for help or advice.
Just start improving. It is that simple! Don’t give yourself the excuse, “I don’t know what to do to eat a better diet.” So, the good news is that you already are armed with the knowledge to start eating better. The bad news is that you actually have to do it and you can’t use this excuse anymore!
5. Fix Breakfast and Lunch
The purpose of my weight loss diet tips is not necessarily to give you weight loss foods or just healthy diet tips, it is to show you how to eat to lose weight and still be able to enjoy life. If you eat 3 meals per day, then let’s focus on fixing 2 of them.
Simple math tells us that if you fix your breakfast and lunch you and leave dinner the exact same then you will have improved your day by 66%. Like everything else in this article, this is a mindset change. Remember, it’s all relative to what your current diet, not to a perfect diet. If you normally eat bad 3 meals per day, then you eat good two of those meals and eat what you normally eat one of those meals, then you have improved your daily diet by 66%, while still eating what you normally eat one meal. You have to get out of the mindset of if you do bad then you can’t get results. If you ate bad one meal and you still improved 66%, you will still sea results!
I always recommending fixing breakfast and lunch and leaving dinner the same. For most people this works best because you are more in control of breakfast and lunch and you can apply a little more discipline to those meals and tough it out a little and then you can enjoy dinner with your family and eat like a normal person. The toughest meal to fix for most people is dinner, so leave it the same for now. Don’t make it worse, just leave it the same.
6. Skip a Meal
The overall main weight loss diet tip is to cut calories. The easiest way to cut calories is to skip a meal. And from the previous paragraph, the easiest way to fix breakfast and lunch is to skip one of them.
You don’t have to eat 5 times per day and not eating will not mess up your metabolism. These are diet myths. (If you want to overcome several other diet myths that are probably holding you back, check out my eBook). Don’t ever eat because you think you have to. The goal is to burn more calories than you normally burn and to eat less than you normally eat. The greater the deficit the faster the body fat falls off. All that matters at the end of the day is that you created a deficit. Just like your money, all that matters is that you make more than you spend.
So if you can, skip a meal. Have a cup of coffee or a water or a zero calorie drink instead of those calories you normally have in a meal. This is also a way to enjoy the other meal or meals a little more. Don’t cancel it out by adding the same amount to your other meals, but if you cut out 500 calories at lunch and then add 250 to dinner, then you still came out 250 ahead!
7. Drink Lots of Water and Take Supplements
Drink more water! Shoot for a minimum of 64oz. per day. Try for more though, 100oz or more if possible. Since hopefully you will be exercising, your body will need more water. Plus if you drink a lot of water, it will help you feel more full, thus hopefully help you eat less.
I am a huge advocate of supplementing your diet with certain products. If you take the right things, then you can get results with little to no effort, which is always a good thing to keep you going and keep you happy.
Think of taking supplements like an athlete having the best gear. A baseball player having the best bat and cleats and then taking supplements to get the most out of his training. Or like If you get into running, and you wanted to get serious about it, you wouldn’t just start running without doing anything else. You would probably start by getting good running shoes and then taking supplements for your performance.
There are a lot of quality supplements out there that can help you get results in the gym and with your diet. While there are a lot of great supplements on the market today, I am going to talk about the supplements that I take and recommend professionally. As always, do your own research. But if you want my professional opinion, then I would advise these.
As for workout performance supplements, I personally take and professionally recommend Prestige Labs products. If you are looking for something to help you lose weight and burn body fat without having to do anything other than take a product, then take a look at the Prestige Heat and the Prestige Crush. These are two of the most popular products we sell in our weight loss workout programs. Check out all of their amazing products by clicking HERE.
As for health-type supplements, I recommend Juice Plus+ fruits and vegetable capsules. I have personally been taking Juice Plus+ for almost 20 years and it is a great way to get real, whole food nutrition without having to eat a ton of calories. The recommended amount of fruits and vegetables is 7-13 servings of raw fruits and vegetables per day. If you eat this amount, then you will reap amazing health benefits, including heart health, feeling better, better immune system, and much more. The problem is that it is impossible to physically eat that amount. Plus the cost and the calories would be way too high. Juice Plus+ gets you this amount of fruits and vegetables daily, in a capsule! learn more at by clicking HERE.
Final Thoughts
The 7 super easy weight loss diet tips that you can start using today will go a long way in helping you achieve sustainable results. Do good not great, budget your calories and treat them like money, exercise, make the obvious changes first, fix breakfast and lunch, skip a meal(s), and drink lots of water and take supplements and you will lay the groundwork for a successful weight loss journey.
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