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Finding inspiration…

Posted in Crazy Wisdom,Workout on Monday, January 30, 2006 at 1:42 pm by flerly.

The article said “Where the mind goes, the body will follow” and it led to the notion of making an inspirational wall collage of fitness images and tips and putting a giant naked lady on our fridge door. You can take a peek at them here: wall collage and the veggie girl.

Note: My favorite parts of the poster… “Stress collapsed under the weight of her strong body”, “More muscle tone, less body fat, a boost in your metabolism, a healthy lowfat eating plan, decreased stress… everything you want is right here” and the simple “exercising CHANGE,” “patience PAYS OFF” and “STICK WITH IT!”

Dr. Peeke (Body for Life for Women) suggests coming up with a fitness mantra to help with your inspiration. In fact, she suggests you come up with no less than five of them, which you write down, though you stick with using one of them until it doesn’t seem strong enough, then you go to the next on the list.

To create your mantra, you must first imagine yourself “at your worst” then place yourself in a scenario in your head that stresses how you would then be interacting in the world and how uncomfortable you might feel. The first half of the mantra is to “move away” from this scenario. The second half of the mantra is to “move toward” a positive scenario.

For example, she imagines being so embarrassed by her body image that she feels the need to cover even her arms and legs the entire time she is at the beach. She pictures this taking the form of a head to toe dark shroud, where all you are allowed to see is a glimpse of face covered by large sunglasses. She imagines how awkward it would be to try to do anything enjoyable in this outfit in the hot sun of the beach. In her mental scenario, if she does not exercise her will to improve, she has visualized herself in the future being completely covered and uncomfortable, even in the most leisurely situation. Thus, she has half of her mantra.

To get the other half of the mantra, she visualizes herself positively reaching some fitness goal, such as she enjoys riding her bike for fitness. Thus, she might visualize herself riding her bike in some charity event and finishing at a respectable time.

The full mantra is supposed to conjure both the negative and the positive image. When you are faced with a situation where you can affect what you are eating or whether you will work out, you use the mantra to ward off the bad decision by saying to yourself, “I will move away from the path of dark shrouds. I want to move toward finishing the course.”

To come up with five mantras, she suggests you first make a list of the reasons you want to become healthier, such as family medical history, increased stress in your life, physical pain or illness, inability to perform a task you used to enjoy, increased self-confidence, even increased sexual pleasure or attractiveness. The goal is to be honest with yourself. Then you use those items to help create your “at your worst” scenarios.

Another source of inspiration or simple reminder to be more active might be to purchase and wear a pedometer. The 10,000 steps program is a highly recommended, easy to implement weight loss and fitness solution for people of all ages. They suggest you wear your new pedometer for 3-4 days first to get an idea of your average daily steps. Your goal is to increase your total daily steps by 2,000 per week until you are at the level of 10,000 steps per day. That is the number suggested for weight loss and improved fitness. Maintenance of fitness may require as little as 5,000 steps depending on diet. Shape magazine compared many models of pedometers for use with this program, and rated models made by http://www.new-lifestyles.com most highly for their accuracy and features.

Bottom line, you have to decide what motivates you. Write it down. Keep it in mind. Tell it to yourself everytime you are faced with a health decision. And, to again refer to Dr. Peeke, when it comes to fitness you have to Just Do It!… don’t overthink it, don’t just talk about it, don’t waste time trying to decide do I have time or not, just do it. The results are always worth the effort.

No excuses. Just move.

ALSO: #1 recommended filling and healthy snack, from Dr. Peeke… great for breakfast, snack and pre-workout. 1 medium apple, sliced, with 2 tablespoon reduced fat peanut butter.

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