How I get ready for a workout!

I was graciously inspired by the Team at ETB FIT to write a post on how I get ready and fuel for a workout! They are a legit company that provides fitness supplements for atheletes! When I was asked to write the post I was super excited because the topic of getting ready for a workout is right up my alley!

I am asked often how I get ready to workout especially when I don't really want to and how I stay so motivated to continue to workout. My answer may sound a little vain but after living for 10 years in a body I didn't like and being so comfortable in my skin now, I would not have it any other way. I am pretty accustomed to working out now, that it is simply, just a part of my day now.

To get started with my workout days on the weekend, I usually have a grain free and dairy free protein shake and if I am working out in the morning I wait an hour and then I do whatever workout I have planned for the day. During the week I have my protein shake and eat my breakfast around 9:30 at my desk and wait until my lunch break at 11:30 to workout. Now that I am training for a marathon I am running at 5 in the morning and doing some cross training 4 times a week. I am doing the 21 Day Fix Extreme and yoga on the weekends.

My typical breakfast

During my workouts if I am running I am a big fan of podcasts unless I am over listening to people talk, then I'll listen to dance and techno music on my iPod I usually find that keeping to a beat keeps me in cadence and I zone out on the music and focus on my form and steps which assists me in not being so tired. Music and podcasts keep my mind focused on other things rather than simply running. I know there will be times where I am on a long run especially at the beginning of my run where my mind likes to go to negative places and asks me why I am running so far ha ha ha.

 I am a firm believer in cross training. I don't think anyone should one trick pony anything. It keeps everything fresh and new which is why I incorporated strength training and yoga to my daily routine. I have been doing that for about a month now and I am still eager to get out and run just as much as I am to strength train and I am finding that I am recovering if at all from my longs runs by the next day, so there is something seriously to be said about that.

After my workouts I usually wait about half an hour and then go on about eating for my day. I don't take any recovery supplements at the moment. If it is during the week I will just grab my lunch and eat that after my workout and if it is during the weekend I tend to have a small snack or eat my next meal depending on how hungry I am.

Perfection......no such thing

I have been reading a ton of personal development and I opened up the book Gifts of Imperfection by Brene Brown. It is such a great read and something that I needed to read. There was a section in the book that spoke about perfectionsim and how it is a terrible reality to try to live especially when it comes to weight loss or succeeding in life.

It is really easy to go and look on Instagram and Facebook and see all these inspiring people who have lost a ton of weight and kept it off or are just plain fit. I know, I have been there too my favorite was YouTube. They post pictures of what they eat, what they do for a workout, and man their lives look so put together. I really fall for the pictures where people have this clutter free office or home, I envy that but who's to say that they don't stage that before they shoot? I know I would..........

It's a facade. I'm not saying that they are faking it or lying but people are not posting the truth about their lives 100% of the time. I don't either, I should now that I mention it (when it comes to food),  but I will admit that I do eat candy and it is something that I struggle with and I do eat the shit out of some pizza but I have balance in my life. I know that to maintain my weight I have to eat a certain way and give in 1 or 2 times a week. Meaning a meal, not day. It is not something that came easy to me and it was something that I had to tweak in order to make it work for MY body.

The point I am trying to make is that when you are looking at people for inspiration you are really only seeing their highlight reel. They put their best foot forward and wouldn't you? Healthy people are normal people and the ideas that we create in our minds about them is more than likely false. I know because I have been there.......HA I can't believe I admitted that but there are people that I have followed on social media or their blogs and I seriously thought that they ate the way they appeared to in my mind. When I first started my weight loss journey I saw a blog of what someone kept in their fridge and I stocked mine the same way and bloop I met this person and it was real but what I thought she was doing and what she really did were two different things. I thought she held this perfection of healthy eating in her mind when she too was human and ate a damn candy bar and drank some wine too.

You aren't always going to be perfect on your journey to health. When you begin your journey is probably when you are going to make more errors in judgement than later on in your journey but the thing for you is not to quit. The more consistently that you do things the better they are going to be. It's much like riding a bike. You start and you can't keep your balance you fall off but what do you do? You get back on that bike and keep riding it. It's the same concept with a healthy lifestyle, you are going to trip and you are going to fall off but you are creating change a little bit at a time to get better, and to make yourself a healthier version of you. Let go of the perfectionist mentality and set your mind to make better choices and give yourself a break when you indulge a little. If this is a lifestyle you are creating you should be creating a lifestyle that consists of balance.

Why not you?

10 years. 10 years is what it took me to open my eyes and push myself to get my true grit back.

Grit- 

courage and resolve; strength of character.

synonyms:

strength of will, moral fiber, endurance;

I blamed everyone else for my problems and the way that I looked. I blamed it on my kids on my circumstances. It was everyone elses fault but my own.

There I stood in front of that camera not knowing what the hell I was going to get myself into. 10 years I hated that body I was in. I stood in the mirror, picked myself apart, and I didn't truly love myself anymore.

Why?

THIS is the person that I was. Of course all you see is a picture of someone that is overweight and that doesn't look happy but let's go inside the mind of Jeannette in 2011.

In May 2006 my life changed forever. I had experienced the ultimate betrayal of physical abuse in my marriage, then later I found that there was infidelity, I got into the Coast Guard months after these incidents, met my current husband, had a baby with him, got divorced and lost physical custody of my first son who now lives with his father. We do share 50/50 custody, not ideal but I am making the best of the situation at hand.

To top it  all off my job sent me and my new family to Kodiak Alaska so not only was my first son living in another state, I was going to be on the other side of the world! Everything was taken from me, my marriage, my son, my possessions, and my body was disrespected and trust betrayed.  I was blessed by having my husband and my second son but I had never truly gotten over the pain of my past in order to fully appreciate what was right in front of me all along and didn't see the blessing that had come.

In between getting divorced and getting pregnant and into another serious relationship alcohol was my best friend. I drank every night to escape my problems even though I was seeing a counselor alcohol was the ultimate way to get away. I knew my first marriage was over long before it was really over but my kid......that still gets at my core even now as I type. Now, years later things are forgiven and the anger gone but it sometimes cripples me that things didn't pan out the way I wanted or pictured them to.

So there I was in this picture standing looking at the camera never having gotten over my son being gone and the anger that I held with my ex in regards to the whole situation of our marriage falling apart and there was more to it and I was by no means a great wife either but the physical abuse was something that I couldn't move past. I was and am happy in my current marriage (7 years strong) and going through what I did with my son helped me to become a better mother and person overall but that part came later. I was in a place where I was away from everyone that I knew, my husband was gone on a patrol, so it was me and my second baby boy home alone in a world we didn't really know. The first part of that tour there was a hot mess and I was so angry and blamed everyone else for my current situation. I didn't realize how much that time alone away from everyone I knew was what I desperately needed. I needed to focus on myself and just having to care for my son at the time was really all I could handle.

I was sick and tired of being sick and tired and in Jan 2011 I decided to go back to the Jeannette that I was before "the rock bottom pit" of my life. Before my first marriage I was totally positive, I didn't have self esteem issues, and I was seriously SO determined to succeed, it was in me. I remember a moment when I was in the Army and we were doing an obstacle course and I told myself, "You need to run by 10 guys just push past 10 of them don't let them beat you." I wanted THAT girl back, the one that fought to better herself, not the one that was broken from everything going wrong in my life.

I wanted my old mentality back, so for me getting that back was physically getting myself back in shape and that is what I sought out to do.  I started my fitness journey. I joined a fitness accountability group and I was surrounded by the most positive people ever. Which was crazy. I mean all these people are really lifting me up. There are people like that out there in the world. Not everyone is mean and eventually I started seeing the good in people.

I thought to myself daily, "Why not me? Why can't I get me back?" I am good enough and I want this for me. I want to feel "normal." I want to have my confidence back. So, I started working out and eating healthy and there was no looking back. I sweat, cried at the frustration that I had because I wasn't as strong physically as I thought I was but I was getting there one day at a time. It was a true test for me which is crazy because who seriously would think that starting a workout program and joining an accountability group would change my life so dramatically. The thing is is that I decided to change, it started with my body and ended up being my mind and my life. The side effect was a reflection in the mirror that I loved inside and out.

I decided to be free of the negativity and look to the positive. I started reading personal development books, I quit smoking, I started creating goals for myself, and making everything that I felt was negative and putting a positive spin on it. In May of 2011 I gave my life to Christ and I have not turned back from that either. God has seriously changed my life in addition to fitness. it's crazy!

I also started taking care of myself, paying more attention to my little baby boy, calling my son in Florida more often, being thankful to my husband and showing him more affection, apologizing to those whom I had done wrong in the past, and gave up drinking so heavily. I seriously believe that faith and fitness has helped me heal myself and to get the ME back that I knew was in me all along but I had to push past the pain and the heartache and enjoy the good, focus on the positive, and look forward and refusing to look back and fester there. There is nothing in my past now but lessons learned that I am now grateful for. My past made me who I am today but it doesn't define who I am now. I was capable of change to get myself back.

Why not you? Why can't you overcome? 

I am here to tell you that you can. The road that I traveled was not a short and quick one. My healing continues today and the more I heal I can see areas of my life where I am still broken. I am not perfect but I am not the same person that I was and you don't have to be either. You are capable of change, you are capable of being happy and to have the ability to enjoy life.

You are worth of being happy and smiling all day everyday. Why can't you? Because someone told you you can't or is it that you don't believe that you can? I am here to tell you to stop listening to everyone else and DO YOU and be HAPPY! You were not put here to be unhappy and struggling, you were put here to be ALIVE!

So when you are looking at people that inspire you ask yourself why not me and do something about it!

Where do you get MOTIVATION?

So, there I am at 154 and 125 pounds. The beginning of my journey (when I got cleared to exercise) to yesterday.

When I first starting taking an interest in before and after pictures I will be the first to admit that they were fake. That is, until I started my own journey to weight loss 3 TIMES. These pictures represent the struggle, the excitement, determination, hard work, and MOTIVATION.

The girl on the left never thought that she would see the girl on the right again. I was SO scared that I was going to be stuck with my "mom bod." I came from a place of negativity because I was self conscious and did not come from a place of confidence. I was SO insecure and DEVASTATED that I was back into my "old jeans." I saw reflections of me in the mirror and legit felt sad about how I looked. You can tell me all day that I just had a baby and I should enjoy motherhood but this "mom weight" was a struggle and while some women are all in the mom-ness I am just not one of those women. I did however know that it was going to take time to get close to where I wanted to be and I had the tools AND experience to get it done again so I DID grace myself with time.

The girl on the right has waited almost 9 months to get the weight off. It was not without struggle. December to February was TOUGH for me! I plateaued I was doing Body Beast and I got BIGGER in the arms and my hips were not moving. I took it upon myself to stop doing Body Beast and added in cardio with T25 and played around with 21 Day Fix workouts for strength and the cardio I believe was the KEY to my success. MY body needs cardio just as much as it needs strength training to get results. I listened to myself and I just did what my gut told me to do.

As a health coach people ALWAYS ask me where I find motivation to succeed AND to keep going once I had reached my goal. I have a few tips that may help you out!  

1.) Believe in the end result! 
I can't stress enough that even though there were plenty of days that I was not convinced that I would be the girl on the right, I believed OVERALL that I was going to get there. One day, I would get there. You may have your bad days but keep the end result in your mind. Visualize it! 

2.) Define short term goals and hit them! 
Saying that you want to lose 50 pounds is going to be a hefty goal. So break them down into scale and non scale victories. I made goals that I was going to go up in weight every week, or that I would eat clean for a whole week without cheats and that set my focus on being healthy which should be the end goal with a side effect of health being the vanity of losing the weight. 

3.) Remember your why!
WHY are you doing this? Write it down and keep it with you! When you make a goal to lose weight you should know exactly why you are doing it. There are going to be days when there is pizza (or insert not healthy food here) in your face and you are going to "forget" why you even started to try and lose weight because you are thinking about the now. THINK ABOUT THE END GOAL it can be either your big or small goal but think about how happy you are going to be when you get there and ALWAYS have a reason to start the thing. You need to have a vision of where you want your life to go and find a way there!