A couple of weeks ago I sent out a newsletter to the subscribers of this blog and at the end I asked them what they wanted to see, what they wanted to know, and what they are interested in me writing more about.

The answer was getting motivated.

I was really surprised as most of the time I think about how it would be good to write about techniques of losing weight, muscle building exercises and news of the latest finds in science to get in better shape but of course to get in better shape you need to get started and stay started.

This week I am going to write a few shorter posts about motivating yourself to reach your goals. I want to cover everything from getting started to getting results and to continuing when things are tough or when you have reached your goals. And at the end of the week I am hoping that there is no question in your mind about how to start and get motivated, you will already be off and getting stuff done.

The first step towards this is to subscribe to my 21 days of fitness email course. If you look to the left above my smiling face you will see a little signup box. Just but in your name and email address and you will get an email once every two days for three weeks (12 emails in all) and these emails will take you through the basics of getting in better shape.

So this is how we will start this week. I am going to break the articles into smaller chunks so that you are able to pick up little bits of info and move on, I am sure the last thing that you would want to read is 30 minutes of text droning on and on and the trouble is I can write that too.

Good luck this week, let’s see how it finishes, I hope you are excited!

Looking to make a change and lose some weight? I have reviewed the top diet on the internet and you can go and read over 200 comments people have made about why this diet has worked well for them, as well as some of the problems.

What gets you motivated to workout, or to eat well? I know that sometimes this is a struggle for me and if I create a habit that makes exercise a part of my day automatically then it will happen.

Today is a very snowy day in Calgary (how many times has that come up on this blog?) and I know that my normal daily schedule tomorrow is going to get thrown off. I like to get on my bike and ride to work but there is no way that I can ride in a foot of snow and will take the bus instead.

Eating is the same way. I have a plan in the morning of exactly what goes into my lunch bag and I know right now that I will be having oatmeal for breakfast, bringing an apple and orange for snacks as well as a coke and chocolate bar and I will be having chicken left over from tonights dinner Read the rest of this entry »

We need to all become more aware of this process and see where we fail. Plan, Execute, and Reflect. This three step process is very important so that you are not stuck just making the same mistakes over and over again.

Plan for Success

So what do you know about your next event, what do you need to do to make sure that you succeed? If your next even is a marathon or even a 10k or to lose 20 pounds then what can you glean from the past? What were your failings and strengths last time around and how can you leverage those strengths and minimize the effects of your weaknesses. Make sure that you have a plan and that you have a fallback in case you struggle with the plan. Read the rest of this entry »

Craig Ballantyne of Turbulence Training sent this email about what to do to keep yourself motivated to workout even when you don’t feel like it.

There will be days (everyday?) when you don’t feel like doing your workout.

Sometimes you don’t want to get out of bed.

Sometimes you don’t want to leave your office because you feel like there are too many deadlines (but this is when you need a workout the most!).

Sometimes you don’t want to end story time with the kids only to head down to the basement gym.

It even happens to me.

But I knew how I’d feel like a million bucks after the workout.

And in the end, I know I can’t let myself become “soft” and start skipping workouts. I have to lead by example.

But if you are set on achieving a goal, then when it’s workout time, come heck or high water you’ve got to bear down and do the job.

Workout Motivation Tips

1) Reward yourself. Finish your workout and treat yourself to a magazine, a TV show, some extra time with your family, some new songs for your IPOD, or even a little extra time for yourself.

2) Or set up a punishment for missing workouts. Skip the workout, put $20 into a jar to spend on home repairs. Make sure your spouse controls the jar.

3) Review your goals everyday and every night. Keeping your goals fresh in your mind will help you stay on track.

4) Realize that the hardest part of the workout is often getting your butt to the gym. Once you get 5 minutes into the workout, you will be over the hump. So tell yourself, “I’ll just go in and do 1 set of the first 2 exercises, then I can go”. Next thing you know, you’ll have done the entire workout.

5) Visualize yourself doing a great workout and finishing strong. Get yourself mentally prepared and you will literally have better workouts each time.

6) Crank the tunes. Seriously, nothing motivates like music.

7) Get social support. If you have a workout partner, you’ll feel like crap if you let them down. Or become accountable to everyone in the Turbulence Training workout forums…if you don’t post your workouts, they’ll track you down and demand to know why you’ve fallen off track! So online or offline, get everyone on your side!

Now get out there and kick the fat to the curb,

Craig Ballantyne, CSCS, MS

One of my goals this year is to pull some of the posts off of this blog and create blogs that are more tightly focussed. Don’t worry about the posting frequency or the content, I just want to make sure that this blog concentrates on diet, exercise and fitness. Over the last year or so I have been diving a little bit away from this focus and giving you posts about a few other topics.

Today I want to announce that I have moved off all of the acne and skin care posts over to a new blog. That blog is Acne Info Today. Acne info today will be focussed exclusively on skin care.

So as I start looking through the 600 or so posts on this blog what would you like to see? I have been thinking of doing more muscle building but of course the motivation for diet and exercise are important as we get near the end of January and the quick death of the new years resolutions. Do you want more diet articles? More supplements? I started new categories for both supplements and for nutrition so that I could start getting a bit more concentration on those two important topics.

More to come.

I have been writing this blog for a couple of years now and this post should probably have been one of the first posts that I ever wrote. Change is hard, change is difficult, most of all change is exciting and helps you grow as a person.

We all want change and change needs to happen at many points in our life.

Of course that is not always true as our bodies and our minds fight change all the time even when we know how important it is.

So we end up having two choices, we can either stay the same or we can change. I like the idea of change.

So if you want to change, what does it take? I think there are a few things that you can do to make sure that you actually make some or all of the changes that you want to make. Here are a few tips that you may or may not know already.

1. Everytime that you find something that you want to change in your life write it down.

2. Align yourself with people looking to make the same changes

3. Every morning and every night look over your list and look at what you did to get closer to the change that you want to make (who cares what you failed at, we can fake it till we make it)

4. Don’t obsess about what you want but instead look at yourself as having already got there.

The simple fact that is most overpowering to all of these tips is that if you want to make changes then you must internalize and believe that the changes are already a part of your being.

I remember years ago how much I struggled to quit smoking and when I finally did quit I realized that it had not been hard at all as long as I want around smokers. About a year later i ran into lots of people that would say “I quit for 2 years and then I started smoking again” These comments made my will waver a little but I never started again and now after 10 years I do not even feel like I ever smoked. I have lots of things that back me up so it is not just my word in my mind telling my that I am not a smoker, it is my actions.

Fit people don’t smoke

People that exercise don’t smoke

Only unhealthy people smoke

This is exactly the way that my mind now looks at smoking. I am sure that almost everyone that reads this has some kind of weight issue that they are dealing with. You either want to lose weight or you want to gain muscle, or both hopefully. All you need to do is get all of your knowledge together and act on changing the way that you think of or picture yourself using the four points above.

I was again look through all of my feeds and surfing around and found a few great pages of info that I thought would be great to share. It isjust a few days until Christmas and this is the first of a few links pages probably as I get busy, maybe a little too busy to get a lot of quality stuff for you to read.

Other people write great things and I wanted to share these with you.

I occasionally have trouble with my back if I am working on the computer with bad posture. Here are some great back health tips

Don’t Break Your Back! Tips to Healthy Posture | ThinkSimpleNow.com

Self confidence and bad attitudes can kill your motivation and make you much less successful in all areas of your life. Here are a few ways to use your mind better

6 Steps to Deflate Self-Defeating Fears | ThinkSimpleNow.com

How to get rid of laziness. I really like this as sometimes procrastination will get the better of me although not much lately fortunately

11 Tips for Nuking Laziness Without Becoming a Workaholic – lifehack.org

Mood foods? Mens health always seems to have some crazy articles and this one is no different. Linking your moods with the foods that you should eat at those times.

Mood Foods – Men’s Health

I have written about Apple Cider vinegar before and here are 5 more health benefits to getting more vinegar in your diet.

5 health benefits of vinegar – Green Daily

I have taken it a bit easy that last week and a half or so. I had access to a car for work, we had a long weekend up here in Canada and I was just being a bit lazy.

This week started on Tuesday with a very windy morning that continued to yesterday and I had some really tough riding.

This morning I got up and started getting ready for work. My wife asked me what all the grunting was about and I realized that I was having real trouble with sore legs. I had not noticed it yesterday but the riding in the wind after taking it easy had done it’s job to put my legs through the ringer.

I took a couple aspirin this morning, hopped on the bike to a breezeless  dark start to my ride and by the time I arrived I felt great.

I know that sometimes we get sore from our exercise and although I am not much of a fan of any pills other than regular supplements I sometimes find that aspirin will do the trick to make me feel better. If there is anything that will kill motivation quickly it is sore muscles. When you have sore muscles your body will come up with almost any excuse not to do what you need to.

Setting short term weight loss goals is very important. A couple of nights ago I was watching a fitness show filmed out of Vancouver called the Last 10 Pounds Bootcamp, and it really got me thinking about goals that most people have for their fitness.

Last 10 Pounds Bootcamp is a 30 minute show with a trainer and a nutritionist. The idea of the Last 10 Pounds Bootcamp is that the person will change their life, for a reason, by losing 10 pounds in one month. The girl on the show this week was going with some friends to Los Angeles and wanted to fit into a new dress for the trip. In the end the girl did lose the weight and looked great after losing 10 pounds.

The show really illustrates the power of short term weight loss goals. The reason that the show got me thinking is because most of the time we hear about people with really long term goals. Lose 50 pounds, lose 100 pounds, run a marathon, completely clean up your diet. What if instead we got shorter term goals that we could achieve quickly, easily, and repeatably?

Of course all of us that have tried to complete a goal have been able to make these long term plans but I am suggesting that you make no plan for change that takes more than a month. Can you instead set a short term weight loss goal? Can you lose 10 pounds in a month? Why not make a few goals not for the next month and then after you have achieved, or almost achieved your short term goal you can go and make another similar goal.

If you have a very large dramatic life changing goal it is going to be hard to keep up the work it takes to attain your goal if it is going to take three years or something so instead I suggest you break down that life changing goal in to a smaller goal, maybe a short term weight loss goal, that you can still get excited about and you can then work towards this bite sized chunk and then slingshot yourself to the next goal on this success.

My wife has always said that she wants to lose 100 pounds. If you saw a pic of my wife I am sure that you would agree with me that there is no way that she can lose 100 pounds but she could probably lose 30 if she wanted to. I have seen up close how my wife, although well meaning has struggled with temptations, occasional lack of motivation and sadness because she has set her self up to a goal that is to big to easily see the end of. If I could have her just see the end of the month or maybe by now the end of December and no later then she would have a lot more success.

If you are having some struggles try this idea of looking at where you are today and where you want to be in a month and see if you can do this instead. These short term weight loss goals are the real secret to continuing on your diet.

OK now we can talk about one of the main determining factors on whether you will go to the gym now or then or all of the time. You may think motivation will always carry you through but in actual fact if you are only a block away from the gym you will probably have a better chance of making it to the gym on a regular basis.

The closest health club to your house may not be the best one for you but the important thing is to look at your schedule and decide when and where you are going to work out. In the past I have worked out before work, at lunch and in the evening. Decide when in your schedule you would like to fit in your exercise and from there decide if you are going to work out before work? Are you going to go to the health club at lunch? Are you going to go to the gym after work or after dinner? One other time that you may think about a workout is on the weekend. If you are going to be working out during the week closer to your workplace then maybe going to the gym on the weekend is just not that important to you. On the other hand if you have a busy schedule during the week then going to the health club on the weekends may be one of your best options and in that case you will want the gym to be close to home.

I have found in the past that the price that a gym charges is based on how far it is from the downtown core. Here in Calgary I was once able to join a gym in a non residential area for $19 per month and another downtown for $55 per month..apparently a good deal though. You are going to find that if you want to have a buddy or spouse join a health club with you then it will have to be close for both of you and convenient for both of you as partnerships in the gym are really hard to keep.