Set goals like a boss

I love Pinterest. Seriously, if there was a Pinterest Anonymous club, I would need to join it. But here's what I  absolutely HATE on Pinterest: people posting pictures of super skinny, model-like figures to motivate themselves into working out, eating better, or losing weight. In fact, I immediately stop following any boards that contain those pictures. How often does they really work? Let's give it a try, shall we? Look at her:

Raise your hand if you feel better about yourself now. Anyone feel motivated? You might be motivated right now, but 3 weeks from now when you look at this picture and realize you still don't look like that, you will become discouraged and eat a gallon of ice cream to soothe yourself because "Heck, I'll never look like that, so why bother trying?"

That picture is the ONLY one of it's kind that I will ever put on this blog and I only did it to prove at point. That looking at pictures of skinny girls is not going to ever motivate you enough to change. Want to know why hardly anyone gets those kind of results? There are a couple reasons, but the biggest one is a shocker- WE ALL HAVE DIFFERENT BODIES. Therefore, no matter how much we work out, chances are we are not going to look like Barbie doll there. A healthy weight for you most likely does not look like that. You know this to be especially true if you've had children. Labor and purple striae do wonderful things to a woman's body. The point is, stop trying to look like Barbie face and just try to look like a healthy you!

So if you're not supposed to set a goal based on what someone else looks like, how are you supposed to set goals? For me, it was easy. I simply reached for pre-pregancy weight because I already knew that was a healthy weight for me. If you don't know what you should weigh, a quick way to figure it out is to check your BMI. This measures your height and weight to give you a certain number. A healthy BMI is anywhere from 20-25. More than that is overweight and less than that is underweight. So strive for somewhere in that number range. Here is the link to a BMI calculator to help you figure it out.

http://www.nhlbisupport.com/bmi/

A non-weight related goal is also something you should strive for. Confession: I am a big BIGGEST LOSER fan. Love that show. In this past season, my favorite part was when one of the contestants went home and said to her family, "I weigh blah-blah-blah, I've lost blah-blah pounds, and I am no longer a Type 2 diabetic". Holy crap. That's amazing! She overcame a chronic disease because she lost weight and became healthier. That kind of goal is much more meaningful and impressive than Ms 8-pack's stomach there. I hope you understand how cool that is, because it's freaking awesome!

Weight loss and a healthy lifestyle is going to take a lot of motivation. I'm not talking about a week's worth of motivation, but a lifetime of motivation. You can use how much weight you've lost to motivate yourself, but in the end, that's not what you should care about. You should care about your awesome blood pressure, your strong heart, your strong bones, how much more energy you have and how great you feel! That is what keeps me going. Let the fact that 90% of people I saw in the hospital were overweight motivate you.

Be careful about how you achieve your goals though. Like I said this blog is not a weight-loss program. I don't believe an online blog can do that because our bodies will all react differently to what we do. But this blog is a collection of general health tips to follow. Pick one thing to work on and when you've mastered that, move on to another. You are not going to be the perfect model of health in a month or even 6 months. And if you try to run and workout and stretch and eat veggies every day and eliminate desserts, you will get discouraged and then...hello ice cream. One thing at a time. Simplicity at it's finest.

One last warning about setting goals- creating excuses. Excuses get in your way :-( Let me tell you, post-pregnancy, I had every excuse in the book, yet I didn't let that stop me. Take a look.

Excuses:

- I have no time: I was a nursing student, housewife, new mother, and my husband worked a crazy schedule, so I often was like a single mother.

-I have no money- My husband was working a crazy schedule, but that doesn't mean we had crazy money. There was nothing in the budget for gym memberships

-I wasn't seeing immediate results- After losing a bit of water weight, it still took me a while to lose the 40 lbs extra I had. At an average, I was losing a pound a week and that's all.

-I'm in poor health- I was having trouble with my blood pressure and my heart rhythm for a while last year. I was passing out 2-3x/day and it was difficult to maintain fitness.

My advice is to put away the Barbie pictures, put away the excuses, set some realistic goals and then you are ready to roll!

Introduction

          I have been asked several times to create a blog on how I lost weight and created a healthy lifestyle for myself. So finally, I declare your wishes granted! The purpose of this blog is NOT to be one-size-fits-all weight-loss program; there's already enough of that crap going around this country. This blog is to show the simple things that I did to lose weight and keep the weight off. Simplicity is an incredibly underrated value. I hope to show you tips to creating a healthy lifestyle. I will be posting workouts, exercise tips, recipes, and any other things I can think of to help YOU become a healthier you. And I won't post these things unless I try them first and find them beneficial. You may call me your personal health guinea pig. However, don't be discouraged if what worked for me doesn't work for you. Our bodies are all different and it is your job to do what best for YOURS.

But first, I think a little history is needed so you can understand where I'm coming from and why health is so so so so so (and many more so's) important to me: 

      I come from a family where incredibly fast metabolism runs in our genes. Go ahead, hate me for it. The good old days of high school and college were filled with lots of yummy treats, plenty of fast food, hardly any exercise, and not a pound gained on my body. Then I got pregnant. Then I gained 50 pounds. Then I had a baby. Then I waited for my light-speed metabolism to kick in and take off the other 40 pounds. It never happened. I panicked. All of a sudden, I was going to have to work for a healthy weight that used to come naturally. But I am one incredibly determined individual and after weeks of lifestyle change, I was back at pre-pregnancy weight! 

But I can't take all the credit. In fact, I can't even take most of the credit. Because there were several sources of inspiration and they will appear often in this blog. So let me introduce a few of them:

"French Women Don't Get Fat"- an amazing book that changed my perspective on eating for pleasure, yet not gaining weight. I can't recommend this book highly enough. It will change your life.

Robin Edwards and Casi Bludorn- two fantastic sisters-in-law that inspired me to get off my butt and move in more ways than one.

David Eyerly- a pretty wonderful man, who just happens to be my husband. He was and is my biggest supporter during my weight loss journey.

My religion- I can't emphasize enough how much this impacts my life in general, not to mention my healthy lifestyle. In my religion, we are taught that our bodies are temples and need to be treated as such. Temples, not Chick-fil-a's. We also know that we all have the potential to become like our Heavenly Father if we strive to be like him. I can't see our Heavenly Father as someone who doesn't take care of Himself. And I can't see us creating and managing worlds without end, if we can't even manage ourselves!

In case you haven't figured out yet, I am brutally honest in my opinions and beliefs. So please do not get offended when I voice my thoughts (and I have LOTS of them when it comes to being healthy). I am a nursing student and want to be a lifestyle coach. Therefore, I have seen too much what a self-destructive thing an unhealthy lifestyle can be. I would not wish those fates on anyone and so I must be honest with myself and the people that I think may be reading this. 

One last thought: Health is not a goal you set and once you achieve it, you're done. Health is an ongoing process, something you continually work for. There is no "cruise" setting with this. You either continue to make good choices and benefit, or fail to make good choices and fall back. And I'm hoping you choose the former so we can be fit and healthy- like a boss!

PS- credit goes to my hip brother, James, for teaching me the phrase "like a boss"

Me, Dave, and our son, Cage