My August Chalenge to you. Prioritize for health and happiness

"I want to be in shape, but I just don't have the time to workout." Eating healthy is too time consuming; who has time to cook?" "It's too expensive to have a gym membership." Fresh, whole foods cost too much. Plus, they go bad!"  I would love to eat healthy, but my family won't eat that kind of food."

I hear it all, and have said a few myself!

We set our lives up to be what they are. We make decisions every day that dictate our priorities and cause us to say these things when talking about our own health, happiness, and well being. 

We have made the decisions that having that nice car (payment) is more important than a gym membership, or buying those (cigarettes, beer, cookies, soda) is more important than using that money for whole foods, or over scheduling  little Billy with 4 different sports  in one season is more important than Mom's sanity and maybe a yoga class, or (in my case) taking on 5 classes a week in addition to my full time job, is more important than family time and time for myself. We all fall victim to our own choices and then hide behind them using excuses as our cover. 

But, how often do we step back and re-evaluate our priorities? 

How often do we lose our site of our priorities as we get sucked into the vortex of being too busy to remember what they were?  

Every so often, We need a mental day. A day to step back from our life and look at the big picture. Am I spending enough time with my family? Am I happy with where my health is? How is my stress level these days? What am I neglecting?  What can I give up or delegate to free up time or money for what is more important? 

My August challenge for you is to pick a day this month to take for yourself.   Use this day with no kids, no spouse, no work (you have the whole month to set this up, so plan for sitters, a day off from work, or what ever conflicts may come your way.) Take this day to re-evaluate your priorities. What do you want from life that you are not getting? What is standing in your way? What can you do without, get rid of, or delegate to free up the time or money needed for this?  

I do this on the regular! At least 2-3 times a year, I find I've lost sight of my priorities and I take a day to strategize. I usually find it's time to reduce my teaching schedule, or stop going out to dinner so many times in a week to free up money for a vacation with my hubbs, or spend less time on Facebook to free up more time to be in the kitchen prepping healthy foods. 

Sure! Giving up some responsibilities or making changes may disappoint others, but really? Is it all worth it if you're not healthy? If you're not happy? If you're not feeling fulfilled? What's the point? And honestly, the healthier and happier you are, the happier the people around you are. You know what they say... "If Mama ain't happy............."  

Make the time to get your life the way you want it to be. Life is too short to feel unhealthy, unhappy, or over stressed. Take the time to reconnect with what's really important to you.

Surround yourself with like-minded people for success!

The fastest way to reach your goals is to surround yourself with like-minded people. People who are successful at what you are trying to achieve. 

This is my soon to be Sister-in-law, Rachel. Gorgeous, yes? 

We recently took a road trip to Cali to help her and my brother-in-law with a convention they were putting on. Prior to this road trip, I allowed stress to get the best of me and my healthy eating became less consistent than I would have liked. As a result, I put on a few pounds and was feeling a bit sluggish. 

Road trips are goal busters for me!! Try as I might, inevitably I end up munching on all the wrong stuff and lots of it, just to stay awake on the road.  I knew I couldn't afford to do that this trip. 

This road trip was a success. All good food choices and knowing I needed little calories to sit in a car all day, I did great with raw fruit, vegies, and nuts!

Next challenge? Eating out!! 

We were so busy working on this convention, there was little time to cook. This is where Rachel taught me a lot.  Rachel has many food restrictions due to food sensitivities and her quest for better health. Watching her order, it dawned on me that now-a-days, most restaurants will modify and allow you to special order to fit your needs.

Going out to breakfast, the diner's menu options looked terrifying to my health and waist line. Following Rachel's lead, we ordered oatmeal, poached eggs, and a side of avocado, with lemon water. PERFECT!! So simple, yet special ordering for some reason didn't dawn on me before. I would have always picked the least offensive thing on the menu, knowing it was still unhealthy. 

Through out my entire stay, I watched the choices Rachel would make and allowed it to inspire me to make healthy choices, even when away from home. Funny right? It's simple common sense, but sometimes it takes watching someone else doing it for the connection to be made. In addition, Rachel's house is full of organic, whole foods. My house is pretty healthy, but I'm pretty sure her's well outdoes mine.

In addition to healthy eating, Being around Rachel is very calming. 

By nature, I am a high stress person. This trip was as high stress as it could be. So much to do with a tight deadline. To top it off Rachel was sick, and I was consumed with phone calls to the hospital my Mom was placed in due to serious illness. Through out all of the pressure to get so much done, I never saw Rachel get frazzled. I'm not saying she didn't feel stress, but she vented about the annoyances, and moved on, never losing her cool.

The last thing I want to do is paint a perfect picture here. Far from it! 

The thing that inspired me the most is all she has been through to get to this point. Rachel hasn't always been this healthy. In fact, it was her severe depression, endless health issues, and a wide variety of medications, that finally made her decide to change her life. Through cutting processed foods, as well as spending a lot of time finding which foods were affecting her health through food sensitivities, and taking up Bikram Yoga, Rachel has done a complete overhaul of her mental and physical health and has decreased the amount of medication she has to be on.

It is this perseverance that makes her one of the most inspirational people I am fortunate to know. Whenever we visit, I always find some inspiration to take home and apply to my own life. 

When you surround yourself with like-minded people who go above and beyond what you do in your own life to meet their goals, you learn more and are inspired to do more yourself.

I'm only just now really getting to know my sister-in-law, but I am so grateful to have her in our family!

It's the people who are willing to push through, no matter how hard, that inspire me the most. Those are the ones I seek to spend my time with. 

Who inspires you?

What will become of Shred?

The last two months have been a bit of a roller coaster. My main health club got bought out and is now a large franchise. It is going to be an amazing club. The owners have  great vision and a lot of heart. I want to stay and be a part of it all, but that would mean sacrifice, yet much opportunity for Shred. The owners of my new gym have offered to pay for my PT (personal training) certification and support Shred to becoming more than just a class, but maybe a well known format with-in their gym and possibly beyond. (Look out Chalene Johnson, here I come!) This offer came in a meeting yesterday with one of the owners. The owner put me on a pedestal so high, I couldn't see the ground. It took a lot after that meeting to grab my ego off of cloud nine and think about the offers presented. What an amazing offer!! What an amazing meeting!!! 

There were only two conflicts.

Both surrounding what Shred has always stood for, "Diversity and being accessible to everyone"

 1. I would have to charge extra for my class with-in this club.

   2. This class would likely have to be exclusive to this club.

Later that evening I received a call from our new community center I started teaching for in May. It was the head of the adaptive Recreation department telling me how some of  his members were excited about the equipment I was dragging outside for Shred and they  wanted to come check it out. He asked if it was possible to make this class adaptable for those with special needs. Wow! That poses some challenges. I'm not adequately trained for this, am I?......  I'll learn!...... I got this!!

There is one guy with Spina Bifida who is always working out on the weights and had a big gleam in his eye when he saw my tire...He has "that look" almost every time I see him. If you know me, you know what I'm talking about. That glimmer in his eyes when met with a challenge. The glimmer that say's, "Oh Hell yeah, I got this!" 

This is the heart of Shred. This is why I teach. I would not be happy simply teaching a class to those who can afford to pay extra to take it. The heart of Shred is the diversity of my community. Accessible to the masses, not the few. I know I'd be successful charging people extra in a large gym, but my heart is just not in that space. 

Right now Shred is small and on the brink of starting over. My hope is that Shred will grow with-in our community. That people will come check it out and get involved with the community of supporting each other in our healthy living and fitness goals. 

Of course lingering in the back of my mind are the questions, "Am I making the right choice? Am I walking away from an amazing opportunity?"

My only hope is that there is no wrong decision when you lead with your heart. (Cheesy, I know!)

One decision that I did make however, is to get my PT cert. Given the the conversations I have had over the last 2 months, it has become abundantly clear that this is the road I need to take for my own personal growth as well as the growth of Shred. It will be hard financially, and I know it will take a lot of studying, but I'm doing it!

Thoughts are welcome! This is just me, clearing my head, and putting things into perspective.