By Jennifer Nicole Lee,
Fitness Expert
& Author
Miss Bikini America 2005, Miss Muscle and
Fitness
Health starts in the
mind and then flows to the body. In this chapter I prep
both the mind and body for the fantastic health advances that
lay ahead. You must be 100% ready to be committed in
making healthy progress in order to see and keep results!
Although it may be hard to be believe, but sometimes it is
ourselves who sabotage our own successes because we are not
mentally ready and committed to sticking to our wonderful
lifestyle improvements. You must create your results before
they occur, and prepare yourself for boundless energy, and
confidence.
In order to lose weight, get six pack abs,
a round butt, fight cellulite, find stretch mark solutions,
detox, tone up, firm up and get flat abs you must start with
your mind! A close friend of mine already sabotaged her
weight loss potential by saying to herself ?Why lose
weight? My skin will only be flabby if I lose the amount
of weight that I want?. She had already set herself up
for failure by pre-determining that she was not going to lose
weight. Another client of mine once claimed that she
wanted to lose the weight but was afraid of all the remarks
from those close to her, and how it might affect her
family. I told her that she would only be adding quality
to her life, and not taking away from it. And that these
healthy new changes would actually be helping her family as
well. In addition, the other side to this ?fear? was
rooted in the constant idea that she would never be able to
lose weight. What about the added health risks of heart
disease, diabetes, and not to mention the added pressure on
joints from the additional weight? These are examples of
people riding the fence; not knowing what side to get off on.
Make a decision to improve your life by being healthy because
your mind and body will thank you.
Mental Preparation for the
Whole Process: Preparing yourself Mentally to Loose
Weight
Start by asking yourself, do I have a
healthy mind, or a mind that will thwart my
efforts? Am I my own best friend or my worst
enemy? If you answered yes to the latter, well we first
need to clean your ?mental? house! Here are my top
7 strategies to giving yourself the right mental attitude that
will allow you to start improving your life.
1. Have a Crystal Clear Vision of What
You Want to Achieve
I have heard it so many times: my
clients come to me and cry ?I?m sick and tired of being
overweight!?, or they will complain ?I have no energy and I?m
tired all the time?. This will not help you! We
all know what we want to move away from. But what do we
want to move towards? I am referring to the fact that we must
realize where our main focus needs to be in order for us to
achieve weight loss success from now on. Since we have
all taken ?Before? picture of ourselves, we need to now have
an ?After? image of what we want. Envision what you want
to achieve. See the new you and imagine what it would
feel like to be that new you! Take out your journal and
write down what you want to achieve, what you want to move
towards and how you are going to do it. Picture yourself with
limitless energy, being able to handle your daily tasks, your
job, and all the while, still having enough steam left over
for your children and your personal life. If you want to
lose inches, release stress, sculpt your body, fight your
sugar addiction, and get on a low carb diet, you can do it!
How will it feel to put on a swimsuit and feel great about
what you see in the mirror? Imagine weighing yourself
and loving the number that you see! You will start to
relish the after burn of your morning workouts! You have
to know and understand what you are moving towards, and say
goodbye to what you are moving away from to be able to have
fitness success and maintain it!
2. Clean out Your Mental
House! Stop putting yourself down! That
unfriendly little voice inside your head needs to be silenced
now and forever! That super critical opinionated alter
ego of yours needs to know who the boss is. You
are! So what you gained 5 pounds on the family vacation
cruise. That does not make you a ?fat pig?. Rather
than beating yourself up by complaining, instead compliment
yourself by saying something like ?Yeah, I did have that
chocolate chip cookie for desert. But I didn?t have 3 of
them like I would have done before.? You need to learn to stay
focused on your objective and stay positive. Don?t let the
negativity get you down or blur the vision towards your
destination! Stop whining and take more control over
your actions and your life! Stop playing victim.
It doesn?t help you or others around you.
3. Treat yourself with
respect: Respect yourself. It is that simple,
but we don?t do it. If you had a best friend who you
loved with all your might, would you give them a fat laden
artery clogging fried cheeseburger with fries, or a crisp and
fresh garden salad topped with marinated and grilled
chicken? Yes, you would give them the salad. But why
don?t you do this to yourself? Most likely because the
psychology behind your actions does not allow you to treat
yourself with the respect and consideration you would have for
those you love. You are self sacrificing; always giving to
others and not yourself. Think about this thought: your
mind and body are temples and you need to treat them as
such. Why would you put something dirty and of no value
in a sacred and special place? Well of course you
wouldn?t. So start respecting yourself and treating
yourself right. You deserve better than processed fast food
with little to no healthy nutrient content. Also, you
deserve to chisel out at least 50 minutes every other day, for
a weight training session with a touch of cardio at the end.
Remember, you are the most important person in your life. If
you can?t help yourself, than how can you help others? It all
begins with you!
4. Be creative: What does she
mean by ?be creative?? I don?t mean to be an artist or a
philosophical thinker. But we are in this for the long
run. Being healthy is a process, a journey, not a
one-time event. Fitness and health is going to be your
new lifestyle. Therefore we need to make it fun,
different with variety, and interesting. Ask yourself
?what are my favorite foods and the exercises that I love to
do most? If you answered Italian food, then go out there
and buy a low-fat, low-carb Italian cookbook and learn how to
remake over your old favorites! And if you love to play
tennis, join a tennis club or hire an instructor who will help
you strengthen your back hand or give you a better edge on
your game. If you love nachos, be creative and re-invent
the recipe using low fat ingredients rather than the real
stuff. Just open your mind to new and different tools
and use them as a bag of tricks that will help you fight the
war on fat. By being creative, you will make it fun,
refreshing, interesting, and there will never be a dull moment
in your new healthy life.
5. Put fitness first:
Well not exactly first, but make it a top priority. It
should be a rock in your life. If your car breaks down,
exercise. If you get a job promotion, exercise. If
your husband leaves you, exercise. No matter what
happens-stick to your routine! Of course we all will
have bad days and get off of our diet-but refocus yourself,
look at your compass, and get back on track! And prepare
to be tempted. This strategy of ?thinking five steps
ahead? will allow you to win at the game of fat loss.
You know that you have to attend your family?s barbeque dinner
with non-stop servings of hot dogs, potato salad, and sugary
deserts. So be smart and execute your fitness plan: munch on a
crispy apple before the bbq, this will fill you up cutting the
edge off of any uncontrollable hunger pains that might set in
while you are there. Then opt for the grilled chicken breast
with no bun, a side salad, and an ear of corn with no
butter. You put fitness first and you are still able to
enjoy your family?s social activities without ending your
fitness goals!
6. Set yourself up for
success: Put health on the shelf and the gym bag in
the car! Stock your fridge and pantry with the latest
guilt free snacks and treats. Low-carb and low-fat foods
are tasting better and better. Try something new
today. Have your gym bag ready to go in the car for a
pre or post work-day workout. Throw in a towel and a
change of clothes and you will not have an excuse, to not make
it to the gym. Everywhere you go and no matter
where you are, your healthy habits will follow you!
Therefore it will be almost impossible to not stick to your
plans and reach your goals. Buy used exercise DVD?s for
little to nothing online and have them ready to go in your
family room. Have your running shoes right there by the
bed so all you have to do is roll out of bed right into your
morning run!
7. Compel and Coerce Through
Pain:
Yes, pain CAN be your friend! Use it to
your advantage as a tool to get you motivated to make a
positive change in your life. I said that my technique
to losing the fat and getting in shape would be painful-well
almost! I created my success through constantly
reminding myself of what I looked like before, and the pain I
experienced when I was at my heaviest. Get some leverage
on yourself. First, it is absolutely necessary for you
to take a ?Before? picture of yourself. Secondly, it would be
best if you took this ?Before? picture and put it somewhere
where you can occasionally see it when you need to feel the
?pain? and that frustration associated with that picture, to
get you motivated. When you feel your motivation and
desire weakening-glance at those pictures and remind yourself
of the despair that you felt when you were at your
unhealthiest. To make yourself take action, you have to
be at the doorsill of pain looking directly at it, straight in
the eye. This is where your power and supremacy over your
future decisions will come from. Pain will be your
friend because you will learn how to manipulate it and use it
towards your advantage. The pain that I revisited often was
surrounded by my overweight ?before? photo. I deliberately
glanced at my ?before? image to use it as my pain, that then
coerced me into taking positive action. This pain was the
vital vehicle which propelled me into fast forward mode;
making sure I never pushed the rewind button. I used the pain
of feeling overweight, frumpy, and not being able to wear the
beautiful clothes that I wanted, as a therapeutic medium to
get me towards my goals. These were all the methods that
lead me to my weight loss achievements. Again please use these
techniques to stay on the right path. They are as
follows:
?P Look at my
Before Picture
?P Remember
how I felt to carry all that extra weight around
?P Remember
how I was treated differently when I was heavier
?P Remember
the confidence I started to experience when I felt
stronger
?P Compare my
old lifestyle with my new improved one and how great it felt
to be healthy!
?P And as I
speak from experience, I can?t say it enough, but it is
necessary to stop playing the victim and start making those
improvements in your life now to become victorious!
Fitness expert and author, Jennifer Nicole
Lee (JNL), has become an icon for women and fellow moms across
the world with her amazing 70-pound plus weight loss success
story. To ultimately improve her physical and mental health
and become more active with her children, JNL began a regimen
of exercise drills and performance nutrition. Training as an
athlete, JNL's goal was to lose weight, with the ultimate goal
of entering a bikini contest. Less than one year later, JNL
entered the ultimate figure competition and was crowned Miss
Bikini America 2004, realizing her goal and proving that
mothers can still be sexy, fun and fit!
This empowering experience catapulted
Jennifer Nicole Lee into the health and fitness industry and
gained her the respect of countless professionals. She has
shared her compelling weight loss story on national talk shows
including Oprah and Inside Edition, and has proudly graced the
covers of over 15 fitness magazines. Please visit http://aseafood.fitnessmo1.hop.clickbank.net/
for more information. Also visit http://aseafood.fitnessmo1.hop.clickbank.net/ and
http://aseafood.fitnessmo1.hop.clickbank.net/
for her Weight Loss Programs.
Smile,
JNL
http://aseafood.fitnessmo1.hop.clickbank.net/
