A couple weeks ago I bought my first ever size 6 pants…..size 6!!!!!!!! I Think I am still in shock. I never would have thought I would be a size 6 but with some simple life style changes, it has happened.
The biggest lesson I have learned is, I need to become mentally strong. Your mental game will make or break you. Becoming mentally strong will separate you from the pack and help you achieve higher levels of success. Dan always tells me, “You are above average”. I hear this statement when I don’t want to go to the gym, or don’t want to do the extra cardio. Those are the times I need to hear it, to turn my perspective around and say, you know what “I am above average and I will reach my goals.” I feel everyone possesses some level of mental strength and if not then it can be easily obtained. I also feel the stronger you are mentally, the more likely you are to achieve bigger and better goals. About three weeks ago I weighed myself on a Friday morning and was convinced I had lost at least 2lbs to go along with my 3lbs the week prior. I was so sure. When I stepped on the scale I had actually gained 3lbs. I was devastated. A lot of you would say, “It’s only 3lbs” but it was a lot to me and really rocked my mental strength. I left for work that morning saying goodbye and I love you to Dan like every other morning and with that he knew I gained. He knew because when I lose weight it’s the biggest deal in the world and he is always the first to know. He didn’t mention it all day but that evening he said, very casually, “how did your weigh in go” and I said, very casually, “I don’t want to talk about it” and then it was like verbal diarrhea, it just wouldn’t stop. It went something like this, “I gained 3lbs, 3lbs. I was so sure I had lost weight but no. It’s the cheese bread I ate at grandmas on the weekend. Its just not fair, I work so hard through the week and then eat cheese bread and gain 3lbs. I don’t want to do this any more, this sucks, all my hard work for nothing” and on and on and on it went. After Dan calmed me down, we discovered that I ate WAY more than just cheese bread that weekend (Cheese Bread has now become a joke and a lot seems to get blamed on the cheese bread). That morning Dan received his “Darren Daily” (A great motivational speaker who sends out daily inspirations for entrepreneurs) which he forwarded on to me because he felt it was so fitting for me at that time. It was all about developing your mental strength to be successful and to be prepared for life’s battles. I will look at a few in this blog and put my own spin on it as we go. (Side note: In previous blogs Dan and I have both written about not weighing in regularly, which we whole heartedly believe in. I was doing weigh in’s for a 3 week period as I was doing a Burn Phase. Keep your scales put away) Mental strength conquers self-doubt. I have set many goals over the last year and with each of those goals has come a level of self-doubt, more doubt for some than others. If your goal is to bench press 150lbs, run a 10K or lose 40lbs you will likely experience self-doubt. This self-doubt is normal part of the achievement process. When you are mentally strong you will be prepared for the negative self-talk and ultimately be able to re-frame your negative self-talk and look at your goals with increased confidence. With self-doubt you are listening to your negative thoughts on a daily basis. To overcome this you first need to become very aware of this talk, change it to positive self-talk and become your own cheerleader. This may seem like common sense but so many are unaware they are listening to their negative self-talk. Take this a step further and start listening to motivational speakers while working out, in your car, first thing in the morning and before bed. All of these changes will be your constant positive defense against that negative mental offense. Mental strength keeps your focused and motivated. I think we all find it easy to stick to our goals when we are feel great, are on top of the world and motivated, but we all know this feeling doesn’t last. When mental strength is in place you will keep focused on your goals and moving towards them, especially on the days you don’t feel like it. Dan has said to my countless times when I don’t want to be at the gym, “These are the days that count the most, these are the days you need to be here.” The “I Don’t Feel Like It” days are the days when you need to dig deep and discover the inner strength that has been waiting to be discovered. Mental strength helps you decipher unhelpful advice. We all have them…those doubters, haters and critics, the ones who offer advice when you didn’t even ask. I have come across some terrible advice in the last year, people telling me to stop in case I hurt my back, people saying I shouldn’t work so hard, people saying I should not lose any more weight. All of these comments shook me, some I started to believe. Since I work out 5 times a week, I am getting stronger and my back is healed and because I have made lifestyle changes the weight is coming off regardless of what I do because my body is healthy and working towards a healthy homeostasis. Mental strength will help you tune out the unhelpful criticism and bad advice from those around you. Being strong will help you stay true to your values and keep you focused on making the best decisions, regardless of the feedback you receive from those around you. “Don’t let some ones else’s opinion of you become your reality” –Les Brown Mental strength ensures you will learn from your mistakes. The worst thing you can do on your fitness journey is to make excuses. I have heard COUNTLESS excuses from EVERYONE (Dan and I write them down and will one day make a book of the excuses). What I have learned is you cannot push people when it comes to their fitness; they have to want it for themselves. When you hide your mistakes and make excuses for your blunders, this increases the chances that you will repeat your mistakes again. I had a huge realization a couple of weeks ago when I discovered an excuse I was making that if Dan can cheat on weekends so can I. Because I work out so much through the week, I thought it was ok for me to indulge on weekends. I realized two things; Dan has been working out for 20 years, is a male, I am just starting my journey and food is a major factor in my success. Secondly, I am an endomorph, my body tends to be bigger and hold on to fat so I need to be stricter with my eating. I took this as a learning opportunity and was happy that I only gained 3lbs. I used my mental strength, taking my thoughts from “I want to die I gained 3 lbs” to “I ate like crap on the weekend and only gained 3lbs”. Mental strength helps you humbly accept responsibility for your actions so you can ultimately learn from your mistakes. Through each mistake you will learn a lesson and through each lesson you will grow and with each growth you will reach your goals…I promise! Mental strength provides courage. When I first started at the gym, I was so scared and intimidated by the meat heads that I went on the stairs for 10 minutes and left. Dan called me later that day to ask how it went and I contemplated making something up (aka lying) but I told the truth and after he was done laughing at me he said how proud he was of me. I went with Dan after that and developed confidence in the gym ultimately developing mental strength! I know for many newbies you think everyone is watching you BUT listen when I say, people are not watching you, most people are there doing their own thing working on their own mental strength…trust me. If you ever want someone to go with you to the gym to show you the ropes leave a comment below or message me and I would love to go with you (for free!!). Stepping outside your comfort zone is difficult, but mental strength gives you the courage to face your fears and never look back. Mental strength helps you bounce back from failure. While failure causes most people to give up, mentally strong people bounce back from failure even better than before. I have faced failure over the last couple of years in many areas of life, not just at the gym but because of my mental strength, now failure is my biggest motivator. It drives me to push harder than I ever have, it makes me want it bad, it’s the animal in my competitive nature. This mental strength has helped me to develop my self-worth and realize I am worth fighting for and when I fail time and time again, I get back up without fear. Building mental strength will help you use failure as a stepping-stone to future success. “When life knocks you down, try to land on your back because if you can look up you can get up”- Les Brown Mental strength helps you regulate your emotions. This to me is the most important area to develop mental strength. Any road to success, especially the fitness road is filled with emotional highs and lows! If the skills to handle your emotions around these highs and lows are not in place, you will struggle in all emotional areas. Mental strength is the key to controlling your emotions so your feelings don’t get in the way and lead you astray. There will always be obstacles and challenges that threaten to derail your road to success. Building mental strength will help you develop resilience to life’s inevitable obstacles so you can overcome setbacks with confidence. It is truly about the journey you are on and not just the end result. If you can take a step back and be aware of your journey, I truly believe you will achieve your goals. Take each day as it comes and work at being better than you were yesterday. If you hit the pinnacle of the mountain, there is nowhere left to go but down and I am not ready for the decent. Keep pushing each day, enjoy your journey and develop your mental strength. Until next time Tiffany Ashmeade
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I had the opportunity to speak at my church a little while ago and share my testimony of the last couple of years. A part of my testimony was a line…“The Battle is not over, the Journey is not done…”
This line was not intended for my fitness journey but it popped into my head the other day as I was thinking about my fitness and I thought it was very fitting for where I am at today on my journey. I started to dissect the statement and look at how I can parallel it to my fitness journey, starting with “The Battle” The Battle…my battle… I started thinking, how is battle defined? So like anyone my age, I Googled the word battle and this is what came up, “a lengthy and difficult conflict or struggle.” A fitness journey is so simple, eat well and workout, how hard can it be? But in all honesty it has been a difficult conflict and struggle for me at different times, sometimes even daily. At this point, a year and a half in, it now has incorporated the “lengthy”. In the last 3 months I have lost 33 inches but no lbs! Still sitting around 175lbs. This has been my biggest mental battle. Dan and I had a great talk the other day in the car and again I “threw out” the notion that I will be “happy and complete” once I hit my goal of 140lbs. This is a lie I have been believing and I continually have to remind myself it’s not about that number, this is not the first time I have said this! Dan encouraged me to keep doing what I am doing, working out 5 times a week and eating healthy. My body will continue to change. I continually remind my clients that it’s not about the number on the scale but rather how you are feeling and your inches lost. I take pictures and measurements of my clients and focus on working towards feeling well and leading a healthy life. It’s a day by day battle and sometimes even a meal by meal battle! I still struggle with temptations but I focus on each day and work on enjoying my battle, more like seeing it as a competition with myself. The Journey…my journey…our journey Journey can be defined as “traveling from one place to another”… I added “and learning to enjoy it!!” Over the last couple months I have transitioned from an Office Manager position into the role of a Personal Trainer. I left my comfortable salary pay to full commission. This has been a huge trust lesson for Dan and I, being reminded that God has a plan, He knows what He’s doing in our lives and we need to trust Him. One of my favourite Bible verses is “For I know the plans I have for you declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.” This is a verse I clung to when life got hard and now I can cling to it in another ways, from a different perspective. Life is constantly changing and when we are able to cling to Gods amazing truth found in this verse, we are given a hope and drive to keep trusting. It has been interesting to watch the fear and anxiety associated around our finances creep in over the last couple months as I have a very detailed budget, know what we need to make and are aware of what we are making monthly. There have been a few times I have come to Dan, with tears in my eyes expressing my fears around money and without fail, he calms my heart, we pray about it and we either receive an email or a phone call of someone interested in our Personal Training services. Dan suggested I stop worrying so much and leave my anxiety in God’s hands, and my response was “actually maybe I should keep worrying because every time I do we get a new client within minutes. Lol” With all joking aside, this is a part of my journey were I have really had to trust God and know that we are well taken care of. We are at a point in time where are journey has become very exciting. We have so many different ideas brewing, lawyers working on contracts so we can start building a team of trainers, and recently started looking into implementing a Corporate Wellness program. God continually has been opening doors to avenues I never thought possible and I just keep saying, “Okay God” as we walk through each door. Lastly, there is still my fitness journey. There are times when I hate this journey and I just “want to get there”…wherever “there” is. I have really been trying to just enjoy it, enjoy watching my body change, enjoy my progress in strength training, and enjoy helping my clients achieve their goals. I now consider my journey a blessing, as I am able to relate to my clients, their emotions, their mental state, their downs and ups. It’s very rewarding to help people get back to who they feel they are inside and to feel better about who they are. I started this Journal with a couple pictures of me 5 years ago…I feel like I don’t even know this person. I was lost in a body that I hated and it took strength and determination to fight my way back to my good old self. I finally feel like me again. See below for my latest transformation! Sadly, we are apart of a generation that wants everything NOW and with your fitness journey it can’t be now. My journey will never be over, I will always have a battle with food, but its learning to enjoy the ride and overcome the food addiction. “The battle is not over, the journey is not done but Jesus Christ is Lord of my life and I will chose to make Him Lord, every day, every hour, every minute” One of my biggest challenges as a Personal Trainer as I have been working with clients is their mind set around food. I cannot stress enough the importance of eating right. This Journal Blog I am going to talk to you about your mindset, the importance of eating clean and practical tips you can follow. Mindset is everything, if I have said this once I have said it a million times. If you are not in the mental game when it comes to your fitness, your battle will be substantially harder. You need to wrap your mind around a couple of key points in order to be successful.
Eating clean is crucial to your fitness journey, sorry I am not sure you heard me correctly, Eating clean is crucial to your fitness journey. I am sure most of you have hear the 80%/20% concept where 80% of your fitness journey is what you eat and 20% is the physical activity. Well this has recently changed; it is now 80% healthy eating, 10% physical activity and 10% genetics. If you don’t eat clean then you essentially sabotage your physical activity. Society has made food soooo tasty to the point where we now crave it. They have also made it fast and easy which is convent for so many of us in our fast pace lives…BUT they have also made it very dirty, the complete opposite of what we need to be eating. This is where the mindset part comes in and you need to see food as fuel and not something just to eat. Constantly ask yourself “Will eating ____ fuel my body?” If the answer is “no” then guess what….don’t eat it, its truly not worth it. There is something to be said about the people who “get it”. The people who meal prep, who care about what they consume, and the people who put their fitness above all else. You know that saying “if people are doing it and it works, maybe I should do it to”. Well now is the time to start doing what they do. Here are a couple tips to help you on your journey:
i.Fed Up ii.That Sugar Film iii.Hungary for Change iv.Food Matters v.Food Inc vi.Frankensteer vii.Fat Sick and Nearly dead I know not everyone believes in the Bible, but there is a key verse found in 1 Corinthians 6:19 which states “…your body is a temple” and I truly believe we need to change our mindset and start viewing our bodies this way. We only have one, so lets take care of it. Make your fitness healthy a priority.
Thanks Tiffany Ashmeade Ps. Eating clean is crucial to your fitness journey...in case you missed that point |
"MADE NEW"
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