Sunday Inspiration: How simplifying your life can help you get healthy faster

If you found this blog and you're on a weight loss journey, welcome! I'm glad you're here. If you're not on a weight loss journey but are needing some hope and inspiration that all things are possible, I'm so thankful you found your way to me today. There's no doubt in my mind we were supposed to connect today.

As usual, I'm in my jammies, sipping on coffee, feeling so thankful that I was up watching the sunrise this morning. I am in Tennessee, United States, and we are experiencing an unusual cold snap, and when the sky is clear here, and it's 20+ degrees F, the colors are brilliant. I hope today found you thankful you were awakened.

I constantly read. As a personal trainer both in person and online, I'm always reading and staying on top of what is the latest techniques, both for physical strength, yoga flexibility, and for fat loss, and weight loss. I also read about developing my personal training business so that I can become the absolute best for my clients and set a standard of excellence for my family and honestly, make my mentors proud of me within this journey of incredible success. My clients becoming successful, is always my top priority. My goal is to create an environment where that can absolutely happen.

Lately what's been on my heart is simplifying my life. I have a precious client, Rebecca, who is an incredible mother to 8 children. I have trained her now close to 8 years or more, and she has taught me so very much about simplifying. She lead me to another blog she really gets a lot from called Becoming Minimalist. You may be thinking "8 children!?" And I think a lot of people are taken aback. Big families are more and more rare. But she runs a tight, love-filled ship. Probably one of the most incredible mothers I've ever had the honor of getting to know so well. And outside of her incredible faith, simplifying her life has been key to not only her success in keeping her body healthy, but also her mind, and her spirit. A lot of soul work happens in the unseen, and how many people actually get to see inside your home? Our outside reflects our inside, our mind; and our home also reflects the turmoil we walk through. So one thing I've discovered is that sometimes, the first key to losing weight, is simplifying and decluttering your life and home!

Don't hang up on me. Hear me out! What if I told you there were 10 things that if you did them TODAY you would just wake up more energized and ready to tackle your fitness and health journey?

Becoming Minimalist has a great top 10 list if you check out their blog, and truly, I highly recommend it. But I also have gleaned a lot from a great motivational speaker named Terri Savelle Foy, and she has a great book called Declutter Your Way to Success that I also have some points from.

1. Toss your cookies! I always tell my clients to take a garbage bag and get rid of ANYTHING pre-made or processed. If it's not there, you can't reach for it. And once you clear the path, you'll be able to see what you have! Which is a good thing! It's so important to completely avoid refined grain and sugar, and high-fructose corn syrup. Doing your best to almost never consume these ingredients will improve your energy level now and ultimately, in the long run, your health. Limit the amount of over-the-counter medicine, your body has to always cleanse these things back out, so if you're able to endure and avoid, do that so your body can heal and feel.

2. Stop the hands of time! Your time commitments. Time to simplify them! The MOST common excuse clients have used for not working out or cancelling a session is their work or children's schedule. I'm not condemning this, I just want to give you perspective. If work is your excuse, your job will become better if you figure this out. You'll be happier and more thankful. For the children, you not making your health a priority that's clear to your family, that will become what they do. If obesity is part of your life, is this the lineage you want to leave? Stick on your long term vision and picture your grandchildren struggling with obesity. There are other time commitments that stop you, but you're using the kids schedule as the excuse. So it's a good time to minimize this. Can you set something else aside so that this can truly become a priority? Your children will do what you do, not what you say. ALWAYS. If you don't have children yet, what kind of habits do you already want to have set up before you bring them to the table?

3. GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLL!!! Have a clear goal in regard to your weight loss, or fitness. This needs to be something that becomes so crystallized into your mind that you can at any time spit out what your goals are to anyone. Do you have a goal? What is it? Why do you have that goal? Those 3 questions must be answered.

4. STOP SKIPPING! Borrowing from the incredible Terri Savelle Foy, Plan each day the night before. I have my planner beside my bed at night so that I can clear picture tomorrow in my head, so that it's the first thing in my mind when I get up the next day. She also mentions a Sunday night strategy which is an excellent plan of your week! Because this will ensure you have your workouts and food in place! I constantly say "success is a planned event" because it is. I do a Sunday night strategy, but I also make sure my schedule is in place every night for the next day, or I will figure out a way to skip things. You may have hear me mention that I'm ambitiously lazy.

5. Food Glorious Food! Grocery shopping on a good day can be overwhelming. Heck when I went yesterday, they had a new all inclusive meal prep, and had I not had a list, I would have just been immediately distracted by the pretty display and looking at what they had done to make food prep easier, and would it work for my clients! I was so excited! For $18 there was a completely balanced low carb incredibly healthy meal! Annnnnnnd had I not been organized when I walked in and had a plan, I would have lost every thought in my head. LOL yep, and maybe you can relate. Terri mentions a Master Grocery List. These are the things that typically get purchased every week, Make this list, and print it so all you have to do is add the things for the new recipes. And you can always mark stuff out you don't need. THIS IS A HUGE TIME SAVER. Do this! You will love it, and want to kiss Terri's face! Because why on earth didn't I think of that?!

6. You control your thoughts. This is a big one. Honestly, it probably should have been number one. negative emotions are completely optional. We forget that sometimes, don't we? To quote The Minimalist blog, "Most negative emotions are completely useless. Resentment, bitterness, hate, and jealousy have never improved the quality of life for a single human being. Take responsibility for your mind. Forgive past hurts and replace negative thoughts with positive ones." Avoid especially self condemning thoughts. Don't get me wrong, there's a place for sadness. It's time for the holidays here, and they are hard for me. I miss my dad, I miss being married and the joy we once had, and I miss my older children. BUT I feel my sadness, walking through it and NOT away from it has been an important lesson for me. If you haven't watch the movie "Inside Out", I highly recommend for you to actually visually see and understand how important and critical sadness is to your own joy. These are my personal rules with negative emotions:

a. Never turn to food or drink when experiencing negative emotions, it never actually fixes anything, just causes you to hide from truth, which will house and grow negative emotions

b. Never find a human to complain to, it continues to house and grow that negativity; I pray, God always has an ear for your precious pain

c. ALWAYS find a person that speaks life into you, and MOST of the time that's the person staring back at you in the mirror, yep, she talks. What's she saying? YOU CONTROL HER, EVERYTHING ABOUT HER so get her talking GOOD THINGS, even though it's weird, the first thing that happens is I laugh and that starts to break apart all of my pain...your goal within this is to replace negative thoughts with positive ones. Don't knock it if you haven't tried it, it's powerful

7. Clean my house?! This one seems like a no-brainer, but keep your main rooms in your home clutter-free. In my home it's the living room dining room and kitchen. If these are clean, my heart is set at ease and I can think. GET RID OF STUFF IF YOU CAN'T KEEP IT CLEAN. If you're having trouble thinking, I encourage you to start with the main rooms. If this is a daily habit, you'll be amazed at how much this frees up your mind to think clearly. If you have littles that will follow you around and undo what you did, lay down a blanket filed with toys while you work, and hopefully you can get it mostly done.

8. Wash my clothes? Do at least one load of laundry EVERY DAY. From wash to dry to put away, even if one doesn't need to be done, wash rugs that day or towels. Make it a daily habit. You'll be surprised how quickly this will become one of the things that helps you create order in all things.

9. Dirty dirty dirty! Never go to bed with Dishes in the sink. Even if there are two. Make yourself take the 30 seconds to wash them up before bed, and then wipe out your sink. Waking up to a clean kitchen, is one of the best feelings in the world. You'll feel automatically better, even if you awakened with a little bit of a gray cloud.

10. Skippety Do Dah! Never ever ever go more than one day without working out. Your body loves consistency. And if you haven't been up til now, it doesn't matter. If nothing else, grab your dogs and go for a walk! Grab your kids and check out one of my FREE YouTube HIIT workouts that are totally family friendly. If you're stressed, make it a FREE yoga workout. I have the FREE ones on there for a reason, because I care about you having a go to workout on hand, and I'm right there with you, in all my imperfection. Sweating, and smiling.

In the long run, your list of 10 may look different. And maybe details overwhelm you, that's cool. Try step one first for a week, and then add step 2 etc. You're literally one daily decision away from being a new you. And HEALTHY Looks good on YOU my friend.

Stay grateful. Stay humble. Stay in the mode of always becoming the best YOU! Here's to you and the ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE day ahead of you!

Healthy Looks Good On YOU!

~d

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