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Fitness Journal!!
Last year we went for a walk and tried to answer the question our coach asked us:
What can we do on our end to get our clients 100% results?
What we came up with was this lovely journal!
Of course we love our small group personal training sessions, our 1-on-1 personal training sessions and our virtual client sessions. But, we also know so much of the work is done in your mind & in your home and we’re not always there.
So, our journal covers topics and exercises like:
- Healthy Habits
- Goal Setting
- Thoughts
- Healthy Favorites
- Staples Shopping
- Routines
- Time Blocking
- Trigger > Urge > Reward Cycle
- Intuitive Eating
- The 4 Types of Eating
- The Hunger Scale
- Meal Planning
- Future Self
And more! These topics are the little bits and pieces that really helps you make changes that will last a lifetime. They are the deep work you really need to succeed with any health and fitness goals. Our thought process was:
Let’s give them EVERY tool and advantage we can in order to help them succeed.
We know if you work with us when we’re together and you truly work with yourself when we’re apart, there is no way you can fail.
We are so passionate about this product helping our clients get 100% results that we even created over 17 coaching videos for each and every topic covered in the journal. The videos are bite size, nothing too long or heavy. But they are little balls of sunshine for whoever watches them because they encourage, they challenge and they will make you think.
If you know someone who might benefit from this journal, it’s available on Amazon.
We do offer free 15 minute coaching calls for folks too if you know someone who might be interested. We can speak a lot of life into people in 15 minutes!
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Don’t eat food you hate
Diets have gotten us into trouble because they continue to have people thinking they have to eat food they hate in order to lose weight. Lots of salads, dry chicken breasts and so forth. Unfortunately, restricting yourself to foods you don’t like is a way to guarantee you won’t be successful. And, even if you’re successful short term, you probably won’t make it very long.
The truth is you do not have to eat food you don’t like in order to make progress! You don’t. It turns out there are plenty of delicious healthy foods out there you DO like. So, we like for you to go through the list of fruits, vegetables, proteins, carbs and healthy fats and circle your very favorite ones. Then, plan your food so that you’re eating those most of the time. In this way, you’re setting yourself up for success. This way, you’re eating food you enjoy while also being healthy. You’re building healthy habits that will offer less resistance to keeping them long term.
Here’s a worksheet you can download to help jog your brain.
Here’s your game plan:
- Don’t eat food you hate. It doesn’t improve your relationship with food or with yourself. In fact, it makes it worse.
- Create a list of healthy foods you enjoy and look forward to.
- Plan your diet with those foods, tweaking as needed to meet your goals.
- Enjoy the ride to your health goals.
PS: If any of this resonated with you, we’d love to work with you 1-on-1. We teach our clients how to build a body they love and change habits slowly to match their goals. In a world with fake quick fixes, we help them adapt a lifestyle that they’ll want to keep. If that resonates with you, please get in touch with the form below!
We have a strategy here at Ideal Balance. That strategy is that you put so much yummy, healthy food down your gullet that your body 1) releases all the fat because it’s not afraid anymore and 2) you don’t feel the need to put as much other, unhealthy stuff in it. This process helps us change our relationship with food and with “diets.” So, when and what do we eat? Well, do you mind if we take a detour and talk about hobbits first?
I read the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings as a child. Nerd alert! Moreover, I do love the hobbits in the movies. So, when I’m asking clients to eat more (it’s hardly ever LESS than what they were eating), I like to tell them about hobbits. Hobbits love food and this is partly what makes them so jolly we are led to believe. So, they have six meal times daily.
- Breakfast
- Second breakfast
- Elevenses
- Luncheon
- Afternoon tea
- Dinner
- Supper
For our purposes, we’re going to change things up a bit. Here’s what we’re going to advise our clients eventually work to:
- Breakfast
- Shake
- Lunch
- Second Lunch
- Dinner
- Evening tea
Breakfast is usually one of the hardest habits for our clients to adapt. So many time busy folks are subsisting on coffee until lunch time. That isn’t going to work for us. We are building strong, healthy bodies that require fuel! So, we start by asking them to eat something simple like a banana just to get into the habit. Eventually, we’d like to move them over to a light but fueling protein + carb meal for breakfast.
We of course LOVE our Shakeology, so that’s going to be an excellent snack for our clients, though many of them choose to have them for breakfast. Our shakes fuel your bodies with nutrition, energy and digestion enzymes. That means the earlier they get it in, the better. It will serve them as the eat food throughout the day and it will keep the cravings at bay as well. Plus, it’ll help them stay regular. 😉
Next up we’re going to have our “comfort” lunch. Yes, in this lunch you’ll likely find some sort of carbs in them. Now, we work with each client individually to dial their nutrition in according to their goals. So, if they are still consuming some flour or sugar in their diet AND making progress, we are good. If they aren’t, we will incorporate small changes so they keep making progress. Over the course of a client’s journey this might look like:
- Track what we’re eating for lunch (Sandwich or tacos)
- Modify portions for lunch (Half sandwich or 1 taco)
- Change types of food for lunch (salad or bowl)
- Avoid flour + sugar unless planning for joy eating (beans, rice, quinoa, sweet potatoes, etc)
Remember, we only dial the nutrition in as the progress slows. If you’re making progress, we’re happy. But, as you slowly change, what’s hard today will be so much easier in six months. And when it’s easier, we know your body will adjust and will need a little extra to keep losing weight. Our key here is that carbs are done and over with by this lunch meal, so enjoy them! Carbs are not the enemy we say, but we do like to use them to our advantage.
On our hobbit-like journey, we’re now going to have second lunch. Now, this second lunch will be according to your body and your goals. Either way, we’re looking for fill in any nutritional gaps you might have. So, if you’re needing more veggies, fruit, healthy fats, etc, this is the time! This second lunch is likely a form of an adult lunchable. So, we might have a favorite fruit, a veggie w/ hummus or avocado and hard-boiled eggs. We’re popping in nutrition that is yummy and fun to eat!
When we get to dinner we’ve have a lovely day full of yummy food. We might not even be super hungry, but we are going to eat for fuel. When we eat to fuel at night, we want to be sure to eat in a way that will support the night both in terms of digestion and in rest. You don’t want to be super hungry when you go to bed but you do want your tummy to not be very full either. You also don’t want to eat foods that are hard for your body to process. As we progress along your health journey, you’ll figure out what that means for your body. We have healthy dinner ideas that are lean and nutritious here.
Evening tea is a fun way to help think about relaxing and avoiding temptation at the same time. Evening tends to be the time our clients struggle the most with eating or drinking in ways that is not in alignment with their plans. So, we might try to modify-not completely change- that habit to something healthy that still feels a bit indulgent. So, a warm cup of tea might just do that trick. It will satisfy our need for manual stimulation while also giving us something simple to put in our bellies!
Okay, that’s it. That’s how you eat like a hobbit while avoiding their waistline. 😉
PS: If any of this resonated with you, we’d love to work with you 1-on-1. We teach our clients how to build a body they love and change habits slowly to match their goals. In a world with fake quick fixes, we help them adapt a lifestyle that they’ll want to keep. If that resonates with you, please get in touch with the form below!
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10 Yummy & Lean Dinners
Hey! We have a process over here at Ideal Balance for slowly dialing in your nutrition according to your goals and your progress. So, while our clients may not START here, they will eventually work there way up to this idea: Dinner is fuel.
Yes, by the time dinner rolls around, they’ve had so many delicious, healthy meals that they’re kind of just eating dinner to stave off middle-of-the-night hunger. They know they’ve had a full, productive day and that they don’t need an explosion of calories for the evening. No, the evening is the time to rest & recover so they don’t need to take in a lot of fuel. They also know what they eat for dinner will determine how well they sleep and how well they fell in the morning. So, unless it’s a plan for joy eating, they’re probably going to stick with a lean protein and veggie for dinner.
It’s with that in mind that we present you with 10 dinners that would be Ideal Balance approved! These are dinners that you can look forward to but that will keep you on the progress train toward your goals!
- Turkey Meatballs + Zoodles
- Unstuffed Egg Rolls
- Beef & Broccoli
- Chicken Fried Cauliflower rice
- Chicken Rainbow Sheet Pan (minus potatoes)
- Salmon w/ Feta + Pine Nuts
- Turkey Lettuce Wraps
- Stir Fry
- Steak + Green Beans (choose a lean cut)
- Salad
- Chicken Veggie Soup
- Whole 30 Chili
PS: If any of this resonated with you, we’d love to work with you 1-on-1. We teach our clients how to build a body they love and change habits slowly to match their goals. In a world with fake quick fixes, we help them adapt a lifestyle that they’ll want to keep. If that resonates with you, please get in touch with the form below!
Today we’re going to talk about the four types of eating that we do. We got this concept from Brooke Castillo @ The Life Coach School if you ever want to check her out. There are two types of eating we want to do & focus on and there are two types of eating that we want to break habits from as much as possible!
Fuel Eating
This is how we should be eating most of the time! Eating to fuel your body because it needs energy to do all the things is great. This means we’re putting good, whole, healthy and delicious foods in it. This will look a little bit different for everyone because you will know what types of foods really fuel you best.
Fog Eating
This is the eating we do and we don’t realize it. It’s the bag of chips while eating TV when we were just going to have a couple. It’s the grazing by the snack table while talking to some friends. Fog eating is just any time we are eating and it’s not a deliberate, conscious decision. Let’s not do this.
Fog eating is just any time we are eating and it’s not a deliberate, conscious decision. Let’s not do this.
Storm Eating
Storm eating is any time we’re eating as an emotional response to something. That might be stress, disappointment, sadness, heartbreak, anger, or what have you. If you eat in response to something happening or a way you’re feeling, that’s storm eating. What we want to do is retrain our brain and our habits to deal wit the emotion in a way that will actually help (bath, walk, journal, talking with someone, taking a nap). We want to NOT do this guys.
Joy Eating
If you plan to eat something for fun, enjoyment or even in celebration, this is joy eating. So, if you’re planning to go get ice cream with the kids on the last day of school to celebrate-that’s joy eating. Fun date night at a new restaurant-joy eating. Weddings and birthdays are also joy eating. The key with joy eating is that you planned it and it’s something you’re looking forward to0-it’s not because you want to “cheat” or you’re being emotional. Food is meant to be enjoyed, so this type of eating is totally okay as long as it’s in your plans for the right reasons. Of course, the amount of joy eating you do will directly reflect in the results you get for weight loss. So, if you want to get results faster, be a little more stingy about how often you do joy eating. Consider once a week or a few times a month.
Food is meant to be enjoyed, so this type of eating is totally okay as long as it’s in your plans for the right reasons.
If you’re interested in working with us to get healthy, get organized or get out of debt, fill out the contact form here and we’ll be in touch.
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Calibrating your hunger scale
Eating when you’re hungry seems pretty obvious. But…..think about the last time you ate. Did you eat because you were hungry? Did it something like this:
- go hunger > decide to eat > food
Or, are you like most Americans, and you ate because there was food nearby or because it was time to eat? That goes something like this:
- food > decide to eat
- clock struck noon > decide to eat
Yes, most of us are totally out of whack when it comes to even feeling hungry. Because of the food we eat we don’t often feel hungry because of the effects flour and sugar have on our hormones and digestive system.
There’s SO MUCH CHEWING involved with the veggies that it gives your brain time to send the signal that you’re full.
What we like to teach is how to recalibrate your hunger scale. We want you to get in touch with yourself and learn to honor you body’s request for fuel (hunger). We also want you to start noticing when you’re eating for other reasons.
So, if we can focus on paying attention to our bodies, eating when we’re hungry we’ll have won half the battle. Of course, the other half is to stop eating when we’re comfortably full. So, don’t keep eating if you’re no longer hungry. (PS: One trick for this is to load half of your plate with vegetables and eat those first. There’s SO MUCH CHEWING involved with the veggies that it gives your brain time to send the signal that you’re full.) This is another way to be in touch with our bodies!
- Starving, Weak, Dizzy.
- Very Hungry, Irritable, Low Energy, Stomach Grumbling.
- Pretty Hungry, Stomach beginning to Growl.
- Beginning to feel hungry.
- Satisfied, Neither Hungry Nor Full.
- Slightly Full, Pleasantly Full.
- Slightly Uncomfortable.
- Feeling Stuffed.
- Very Uncomfortable, Stomach is Aching.
- Very Full And Feeling Sick.
So, spend time this week thinking about calibrating your hunger scale. The hunger scale is the just the range of hunger and non-hunger you have as a human. When you’re at a 1, you’re absolutely starving and even feeling weak and dizzy. When you’re at a 10 you’re very uncomfortable and may even feel sick (think Thanksgiving!) So, as you go through your week, notice when you’re hungry and when you’re full. Try to stay away from getting to 1-2 or 7-10. Stay in that 4-6 range. It will take practice. Feeling a bit hungry should be a proud moment because that means your body has used the fuel you put into it! You don’t want to overdue that, but it is good to notice these things.
If you’re interested in working with us to get healthy, get organized or get out of debt, fill out the contact form here and we’ll be in touch.
I’ve been a runner for years. I run almost daily but definitely every other day, week in and week out. You can imagine my dismay when my bare pinkie toe went toe-to-toe (pun intended) with my husband’s steel toe boot. Although I didn’t want to, my black, blue and swollen toe indicated I needed to lay off running for a moment. That moment was excrutiatingly long. Finally the black and blue went down a bit and I thought that day would be my day. Imagine my dismay when I laced up only to be confronted with a three day pouring rain storm.
This morning I finally got to go on a run after almost two weeks off. The last time I’d not run for two weeks was at least 6+ years ago when I was in the final stage of pregnancy with my youngest child.
This morning as I set out I thought, “Ah, that feels good. I’m back on track.” Yes, through the years I’ve had ups and downs with running. I’ve had setbacks, pauses, weather problems, injuries and all kinds of things that have required me to “get back on track.” Because of that, it’s very easy for my brain to understand that:
It only takes one moment to get back on track.
Compare that to what your brain might make a minor setback mean. Yes, our brains like us to stay in this all or none, black or white. We’re either on a diet or we’re cheating and giving up and clearly we were always going to fail. We’re either working out like mad day in and day out without fail or we’re couch-ridden sloths who are lazy.
So often there’s no room in our brain for what smart people call cognitive dissonance. You see, your brain thinks that the fact that you are a healthy person working toward a goal AND that you are a person that occasionally eats for joy CANNOT be true at the same time. So, when you step outside of what you imagine your perfect healthy self to be, it wants to put you in the other category. The well-I-failed-nevermind category.
But how does that serve you? Well, it doesn’t. Instead, what if it was simply true that you get to decide differently. So, if you have a minor “setback” you can DECIDE what you make it mean.
One of our FAVORITE decisions for our clients to make is this:
It only takes a moment to get back on track.
Yes, just like it took a simple moment to get off track, it can take a simple moment to get right back on track. Just like it took a moment for my pinkie to get annihilated, it took one moment to put one running- shoe-clad-foot in front of the other and begin a run.
Just like it took a moment to devour the ice cream, it will take a moment to eat the healthy food you planned the very next meal. It takes just one healthy choice to be right back on plan!
It’s a moment. You get to decide. Instead of going into a downward spiral where you brain tells you what to think you can decide to tell it what to think.
Many times your brain will think you have to wait until tomorrow or even next Monday or even next month to “restart” or get back on track. Nope, not actually true brain! you can get right back on track immediately whether it was a whole day, a whole weekend or even a whole year. The great news is the very first workout or the very first healthy food you throw down you gullet means YOU ARE BACK! You don’t have to wait, you don’t have to swell or linger in the spot you’re not super proud of. Nope, you can immediately get back to it.
And then, all of the sudden, your identity changes to the kind of person who can deal with setbacks. You’re the kind of person who trusts herself or himself to be able to get right back on the horse if you fall off. That’s the ultimate confidence and trust with yourself.
So, challenge your thoughts. Next time you find yourself off your plan, off of what you decided to do, get right back on the horse. Decide now you won’t let your brain go into drama mode. What makes this process even worse is that your brain telling you how terrible everything is makes you feel bad. When you feel bad, you’re probably going to repeat the behavior and that will definitely make things worse. Choose instead to stop this pattern right in its tracks. Decide you won’t let your brain tell you what to think, you’re going to tell it what to think!
The good news is this applies not just to your health and fitness but also every area of your life where you have a plan or a standard you’ve set for yourself. Did you go off budget? Well, instead of making it worse, let’s get right back to it. Fix the damage next paycheck if necessary, but double down on sticking to what you said you would do right now! Did you yell at the kids? Well, do what makes sense to make it right and then immediately jump right back into acting and responding patiently and calmly.
It only takes a moment to get back on track.
If you are willing to accept this idea, willing to implement it, you will soon find yourself with so much evidence that you are the kind of person who stays on track, no matter what. And the entire process to reaching your goals is going to be much easier.
If you’re interested in working with us to get healthy, get organized or get out of debt, fill out the contact form here and we’ll be in touch.
We all have our moments. Everyone of us has patterns we slip into that do not represent our best choices or the goals we have.
For some of us, that may be the time you Netflix and chill and before you know it, half the ice cream or bag of chips is gone!
For some of us, that might be that busy time of day when dinner is being made (or ordered), people are getting home, homework is being fought and / or the laundry is sitting there staring at you. time for a glass of wine!
Still for others it may be an innocent meal out that turns into losing your willpower, binge eating and stuffing yourself so much that it hurts.
Listen, we all have moments.
The trick with health & fitness is to recognize what YOUR patterns are and then slowly try to tweak those moments so that they become winning moments instead of losing ones.
So, let’s take the first example. If you know that’s your problem, you can also come up with a solution. Perhaps the solution is to do something else with your hands while chilling. Or, maybe it’s simply changing out the snack. Maybe it’s reading instead of television. Whatever it is, we like to recommend small changes at a time until they get easy. Quitting cold turkey could work, but it’s not likely. It’s especially not likely to last long term. On the other hand, if you slowly teach your brain to change the habit over time, you’re likely to have success. We have no doubt you can be creative and come up with something that will work for you.
In the next example, you might simply decide to change something about the situation. Maybe try not to do all the hard things at once. Maybe homework waits until after dinner. Maybe laundry moved to another time and is paired with a favorite show or podcast. On the other hand, maybe you go for a walk while everyone is getting home and settled. Maybe you meal prep so you’re not in the kitchen at the busy stressful time. Finally, maybe you change to a sparking water or tea so you still get the manual habit, minus the calories and alcohol.
This is the way we tweak our patterns and habits that aren’t serving up. We do it slowly, in bitesize changes.
So what are your moments? Be honest, recognize who you are and when you’re making choices out of emotion or habit that DO NOT SERVE your goals.
Next, come up with a little hack to change your patterns for the better, slowly and surely.
- Moment ~> Small Change
- Moment ~> Small Change
- Moment ~> Small Change
- Moment ~> Small Change
If you’re interested in working with us to get healthy and feel strong, fill out the contact form here and we’ll be in touch.
Ideal Balance is The Life Coaching Facility in Navarre focused on Fitness, Family & Finance. We know people are stressed about money, they’re unorganized, they’re unhappy with their bodies, they’re distracted and they’re not thriving. But we believe humans are built to be strong & energetic and that good things come to those who work hard and are disciplined. So we coach people to get healthy, to get organized, & to get debt free. The vision is people having a happy & healthy life they’re proud of. We don’t take excuses but we do get results!
