Blog # 19 Taking Ownership

"90 Days of H.E.a.T"

In the last few years since we first started our journey to better health and now to helping others reach their own health, fitness, and nutrition goals, I have really learned a lot. Sometimes I have to learn the same thing multiple times. One thing we always tell our clients and today I’m reminding myself about, is that this is your journey. You are the one who decides that your health is important enough to you to fight for it. You make a conscious decision every day to take care of yourself until it happens naturally and you don’t have to make the decision consciously anymore.

But you know what? Once you get yourself to that point the battle is not over. You may go 6 months, a year, 10 years, and suddenly you find yourself looking for a new reason to continue to fight for your health.

Yesterday I found myself feeling frustrated with my own weight loss as I continue to work to get my baby weight off and get into the kind of shape that the face of a health and fitness company should be in. I was remembering how hard I worked a few years ago and feeling disappointed with myself. I felt like I needed renewed motivation. I hear the same thing from H.E.a.T clients. How do I stay motivated? What happens when the 90 days are over and I don’t have you guys here to hold my hand anymore? Well what I tell my clients and what I told myself yesterday is that the first 90 days are about gaining the tools to help you deal with the inevitable ups and downs. We can’t be there with you at every meal or at every workout to make sure you follow through. 

This is where the psychology part of the program comes in and it’s the most difficult to master. Even the most disciplined of us breaks down and has an occasional slice of pie. But what does that person do the next day? They continue on with business as usual. They don’t waste time beating themselves up or allow it to throw them off their game. They accept it, process it, and they move on. They are self-motivated. Maybe that’s how you master the psychological part of any good health and nutrition program. Not by never falling off the wagon, but by being able to brush off the dirt and hop back on the next day with renewed energy and focus.

So how do we become one of these self-motivated, self-directed people? There are a lot of things we can do but the first thing is to TAKE OWNERSHIP. Recognize that this is your journey. The H.E.a.T program or any program you might try is only as successful as your commitment to it (repeat that a few times). I can walk you through a new workout routine but you have to prioritize and make time to do it on your own. I can tell what you can eat and how much. I can even walk through the grocery store with you and help you make good shopping choices. But you’re the one who has to think ahead to plan your meals so you don’t get stuck with nothing to eat but whatever is in the vending machine at work. At H.E.a.T we try to help our clients prepare for the inevitable poor choice, lapse in judgment, lack of preparation, or just all around bad day. We show them how to:

  
·       Create quantifiable goals: In life it helps to create short and long-term goals. It allows to you stay focused and motivated as you reach milestones toward your ultimate goal. If your goals are vague they are difficult to measure and therefore impossible to determine how close you are to meeting them. Give your goals some girth by assigning timelines, dates, and other metrics.

   ·       Prepare yourself: If you’re starting a cleanse or finishing one, remember to do it gradually. Going from one extreme to the other is not healthy and not sustainable. The attitude of “let me binge out on pizza since this is my last day of eating” is going to come back and bite you in the ass. Think about what lies ahead and how best you can prepare. Create a menu in advance, try to cook for several days at once, shop based on your menu or juicing recipes, set up an alarm to remind when it’s time to work out, prepare your workout routine in advance so you don’t go to the gym without a plan

  
 ·       Get support: You will find these days that everyone is doing something to get healthier and finding support for what you’re doing is not that difficult. Sometimes the hardest part is telling people what you are doing and asking for their support and encouragement. Tell your coworkers so they stop bringing you cookies or inviting you to lunch. Ask your family to check up on you and keep you honest. Don’t have supportive people around you? Find a blog, or a book, or a website that you like that is about people who are doing what you are doing or what you want to be doing.

·       Write it down: Keep a food journal and log your workouts. I know this sounds time consuming and tedious but this is how you become more disciplined. No one says you have to count every calorie or measure every step, but at least write down what you ate and at what time and what kind of work out you did, for how long, and at what intensity level. If you want to get more specific about it and you’re a little tech savvy use an app like MyFitnessPal or Runkeeper. Also don’t forget to write down your emotional, spiritual, and psychological state throughout the day and around your eating and exercise.

Everyone’s journey is different. Some people hate the juice and feel tired during a cleanse rather than fresh and rejuvenated. Some people’s first experiments with a new menu turn out great! Others, not so much. Just because you are allowed to eat black beans and spaghetti squash doesn’t mean you should eat them together! Some people love burpees…wait no one loves burpees, nevermind that. And yes ladies, your husband will pretty much always lose weight faster than you do. This is why it’s important to set goals that are measurable, attainable, and realistic given your time constraints and other commitments. This way you can measure success based on your own progress and not compared to someone else.  Your progress is the only thing you have any control over so don’t waste your energy on what everyone else is doing.

blog #17 - Won’t Someone Think of the Children?

I’m gonna lose some fans with this blog, I already know, because this is a touchy SUBJECT!!... But I hope to gain even more.  As you all know I’ve made it one of my main priorities for the last year of my life to gain information about how to take care of myself and my family.

But one area that I have never really talked about in the blog is how this lifestyle change has and will impact the life of my 3-year old son, Blake.

If you know me, you know I am dedicated to his good health and he has come on this journey with us and we hope we have started him on the path to a lifetime of taking his own health seriously. People make fun of me and even roll their eyes because I don’t let my child eat candy and he only gets cookies or pastries that we either make ourselves or are full of flaxseed, whole grains, walnuts, honey instead of sugar, etc. He still has yet to have a chocolate chip cookie. But you know what? He is developing such good habits. For instance, he does not like donuts.

Wants nothing to do with them. Imagine such a thing! He is used to the taste of food not sugar so he doesn’t get disgusted if there is a chunk of broccoli in his pasta or spinach on his pizza. And the thing that amazes me most of all is that no matter how much he loves what he’s eating, when he’s not hungry anymore, he stops. Interesting concept isn’t it? Stop eating when you’re not hungry anymore. Sounds logical enough but we all know it’s not as easy as it sounds.

Just this weekend we went to the Orange County Fairgrounds where they have a big swap meet including an awesome Farmers Market. Since we are doing a juice cleanse right now it’s our main grocery shopping trip for the week. The only way we can get Blake excited about going is with the promise he will get to play to his little heart’s content on the huge slides and jumper houses at the fairgrounds. So we quickly get our produce fix, do a quick lap around the swap meet to see if there is any new foolishness for us to buy and then we generally spend the last hour and a half watching Blake play (and wishing we could join all the other parents in a plastic cup of beer or margaritas which unfortunately does not count as juice). This week I noticed how many of the kids in the play area were overweight.  Even in this mecca of vanity and health consciousness, a good number of children between ages of 3 and 10 were significantly overweight. You didn’t have to look far to see why of course as their parents clearly were not serving as good examples for them.

As a kid who was overweight from the ages of about 6 till about 14 and as an adult who has had to continue to battle her weight despite being an athlete and living an active lifestyle, I know that starting your kid out with good eating habits from the beginning is extremely important. When I was a kid going to McDonalds was a treat. We ate our meals at home and fast food was only for days when we were out doing something fun and we would end our day with a burger and fries.  These days parents feed their kids fast food every day and what they cook at home might as well be fast food. Meals that are pre-packaged and just have to be tossed in the oven do not constitute home-cooked meals.

So what is our problem as parents? I know we say we are so busy, our kids schedules are full, healthy food is expensive, and kids waste it anyway because they only want chicken mcnuggets. If your kids are older then making this change will be more difficult. It’s best to start when they are little. But I have seen and talked to many people who completely revamped their family’s diet even with teenage kids who are used to eating chips and cookies on a regular basis.

The first step? Well the first step is stop making excuses for why you can’t make this change. You already spend a zillion dollars on groceries. Bags of chips and cookies and Hamburger Helper cost more than a trip to produce section. You also probably already spend a lot of time in the kitchen. Time to start using that time more wisely.

The next step is to get all that crap out of the house! If it’s not there you and your kids can’t eat it. Don’t know what to feed your kids instead? Buy or download some recipe books (see links below). If you’re used to cooking unhealthy food you will need help with ideas for how to go from pork chops and mashed potatoes with a frozen veggie soaked in butter to homemade chicken nuggets with sweet potato fries and fresh veggies sautéed in coconut oil. If time is an issue there are plenty of healthy recipe books out there with meals you can prepare in 30 minutes or less. Buy some recipe books that have fun ideas for healthy eating and involve your kids in the process. Get them out from in front of the tv and get them in the kitchen with you so they can see all the great things that go into the foods they eat.

They will be proud of the delicious meal they helped prepare and the ideas in these cookbooks are imaginative and fun (like there really is a way to make your own chicken nuggets that are healthy, fun to make, and delish!). Eventually it becomes a game of seeing what we can try next and whether or not we will like it. A dear friend of mine has done this with her family and has a blog that is proof this is a possibility. Make food fun and adventurous and soon the sight of a burger cooked in a steam tray won’t even look appealing to them, OR TO YOU!!!

Please check out my friends blog www.themullies.blogspot.com

If your kids are teenagers play on whole clean eating health revolution that’s going on right now. It’s very chic these days.  Share with them all the great benefits of improving what goes into your body like more energy for sports and activities, clearer

skin, shinier hair, and less fat to fit into those damn skinny jeans that just won’t go out of style. Little kids are easier because they love doing anything with their parents so they will be happy to help (just make sure you have an extra 30 minutes to spare because they are painfully slow).

Of course the way we eat isn’t the only answer to childhood obesity. I could write a whole separate blog on getting more active as a family (hmm, maybe I will). But we have to start somewhere and changing what we put into our bodies and into our childrens’ bodies has multiple, lifelong benefits. The best gift you can give your child is good health and that means your good health and theirs. They want their mommies and daddies to be around forever and

they want you to have the energy to keep up with them. And as a parent, that’s all we want in life.

LINKS:

The Mullies

Micheal Symons 5 in 5 

500 Paleo Recipes

Kids cook 1-2-3

Junior cook book

Blog video #2

creampuff Blog #7

Thank you for reading my blog!!

The Other 10% (that sometimes feels like 90%)

So they say living a healthy lifestyle and losing or maintaining your weight is 90% what you eat and 10% exercise.  Well although that may be the formula sometimes it feels like designing a workout program that is challenging yet not discouraging is a bigger task than eating right. I know I have been through a million different iterations of what I call my “workout routine”.  And the more people I meet through H.E.a.T the more I find that people really struggle with the exercise part of staying healthy. So I wrote this blog to share with you my exercise story as well as provide some tips on how to design a program for yourself.

Anyone who knows me also knows that volleyball is my sport. I have been playing since I was 12 years old and only stopped a few years ago when I got pregnant with my son. I always played on leagues or found pick-up games or open gyms. Wherever there was volleyball, I was there. It was my main source of exercise along with whatever conditioning and weight training came with volleyball practice. I was not by any means a gym rat. I should note here that I grew up in California so there was no need to go inside to work out. I didn’t really start fooling around with gyms until I moved to New York for grad school and did a semester abroad in Belgium.  During the cold, snowy winters I discovered the treadmill and weightlifting. My classmates Yvette and Patrice were my first gym buddies and we would navigate the cardio machines, free weights, and nautilus machines together. Yvette and Patrice had both been cheerleaders in college and oddly had spent more time in the gym than I had. I guess cheerleaders are indeed athletes too LOL. However I found that I took to the gym like a fish to water and later when I moved back to California and started taking classes at the gym, I really fell in love. But my humble beginnings were in Rochester, New York and Leuven, Belgium.

While I was in grad school my sister Shannon took up running. And much like everything she does, she couldn’t just take up running, she had to become a marathoner. So while I was plugging away learning how to lift weights she was busy running 26.2 miles. While I was doing my summer internship in San Francisco she brought me into the fold. First we started with Lake Merritt and eventually ended up in the windy hills of San Francisco at the Nike Women’s Marathon, my first competitive race. Becoming a runner was to me the completion of the athletic trifecta. I could play sports, I could lift weights, and now I could do some serious cardio. How it was that my weight yo-yoed so much during this time I will never know (maybe that 90% thing). Of everything I had done, learning how to run was the hardest. It’s not just about being strong or fast, or even being an athlete. Running requires a whole different skill set; a physical and mental endurance I had not previously experienced.

In 2006 on Cyber Monday (the internet version of Black Friday) I took advantage of a deep discount on a membership to 24 Hour Fitness.  Looking back on it now I know it was the first day of my life as a woman who put her health and fitness at the forefront of her life.  Even though I had been running I was finding that I wasn’t losing weight the way I wanted to. So when I joined the gym I was one of those people who didn’t feel comfortable in the main exercise area with all the big, muscular guys and all the tiny girls who work out in matching pink sweatsuits with their hair down. So I started out in the last row of a class called Turbo Kickboxing. I should also note here that not only had I never taken an exercise class before but I am also a little, well, rhythmically challenged. So I camped out in the back of the room for a few weeks until I made a few friends who encouraged me to move up a row or two and let the newbies fill in the back. Eventually I worked my way up to the front row, started taking strength and endurance classes and pretty much any class that I could fit into my after-work schedule.  I was such a regular I even had my own spot in the room. Instructors always crack up when they hear how territorial their members get. By the way if you are new to the gym, regulars do not like routine to be messed with. On the rare day I was late to class and someone came in that didn’t know that was MY SPOT and none of the other regulars had been able to properly explain the social order, I would set up as close as possible to my spot and proceed to glare at the squatter and give her as little space as possible throughout the class. Generally by the end of the class I would have forced my way back into my spot. Hey man it’s brutal out there! Anyway before I knew it I had been a member for a full year, I had made a ton of new friends (including the instructor Shola and my current bff/sister/lifesaver Selena), and I had lost 70 pounds! This was due to a combination of running, taking the classes, and taking my diet more seriously which meant portion control and cutting back on bread products.  I had fallen in love with exercise and without even realizing, reaped the benefits of taking better care of myself.

Fast forward to today. I have found that exposing myself to and being open to learning about the benefits of multiple forms of exercise really helps keep me encouraged to work out every day. So many people I’ve talked to say they are bored with their exercise routine. More often than not those are people who only do one thing. Either they just get on the treadmill/elliptical, or they just lift weights, or they just run, or they just take classes. The best way to not get bored is to switch up your routine. That’s also the best way to maintain your fitness level or to lose weight. It helps to you challenge yourself and ensures you work different muscle groups and focus on different aspects of your fitness (cardio/strength/endurance/flexibility/core). Some days we still just go for a run but most days we do some combination of exercises. For instance whenever we lift weights we either focus on a particular area (arms, back, upper body, legs, etc) or we do full body and we always supplement with some cardio and some ab work. We also like to exercise outside and take advantage of the great weather and scenery and the later hours of daylight (soon to end sadly).  We have put together our own interval training programs that combine strength, cardio, resistance, core, a little of everything.

My advice for getting out of your exercise rut or getting started on a new routine is twofold. The first has to do with the physical part. As I’ve already explained you have to get creative with your routine and be open to different types of exercise. A lot of times women are afraid to lift heavy weights and prefer to stick to the little pink and turquoise dumbbells. Colorful dumbbells are for strength/cardio classes and power walking. Put those things down and head for the free weights! Don’t be afraid to step out of your box. Conversely men think they can’t do aerobic exercise or core work. Take a step or kickboxing class and build your endurance. There is such a thing as too much lifting especially when you don’t have enough endurance to run from one end of the gym to the other.  Pilates and planks are not just for women. Building your core is not only good for your midsection, but it increases your overall strength and helps to avoid injuries to your back and shoulders which is very important for weightlifters.

Being strong does not always mean being muscular. Guys don’t discount the importance of lean muscle and ladies, there is nothing wrong with a little gun show!

Blog #15 Moving with the Mendozas...

Oh man what a freakin whirlwind. Since early May when I accepted a new position within my company, we have been planning our Orange County relocation and return to our home state of California. 

We finally

arrived in Irvine on August 6^th after an extremely stressful couple of months looking for a new place to live, a new school for our son, trying to find new tenants for our house, packing, packing, and more packing, all while dealing with a new job that is much more demanding than my last job. Today is September 30, 2013. 

Unpacking has been very slow going because I haven’t been able to take off work any additional time and our son

didn't start school till September 9^th which left my husband no time at all to unpack much less get any work done himself. But we finally finished unpacking and I promised my son we would take a trip to the beach in celebration. In his usual fashion he has shown endless patience with his parents and maintained his sweet temperament throughout this process. His parents? Not so much… 

I know the reason you all read the blog is because you appreciate my honesty and realism, right? Right! So this move has not been good for my health and fitness goals at all. As I’ve mentioned in the past I feel this duty to all the H.E.a.T  fans and supporters to be super guru and am finding it hard to admit when I am struggling. But this move has gone from juice to Slurpees and everything in between. It has been hard in so many ways. From just physically making it happen, to not having access to our juicer and all the good foods we like to eat, to the emotional toll it has taken on myself and on my husband.  

The move was expensive and we got to Irvine on fumes financially and spiritually.

We fought it as long as we could but finally gave in to pizza and burgers, even for our son which we NEVER do. We stopped going to our gym about a week before we moved and just went to our new gym last week for the first time (that’s about a month without working out). I’m finding myself having to squeeze back into jeans that were fitting me great and I had to put some of my pre-baby stuff that was starting to fit back up on the shelf. That svelte look I was beginning to get has once again been overtaken by the muffin top.  I haven’t actually gotten on the scale yet and to the untrained eye I probably don’t look much different. But I know it and that’s all that matters. It has been painful after working so hard for so long to have to start doing make-up work. 

  

Although I’m trying to not to beat myself up too much (these things happen) I am a little disappointed.   But what have I said in the past? Disappointment doesn’t do anything to help your cause. All it does is push you further in the wrong direction. Turning your life around takes strength and determination and you can’t be 

that person when you are making excuses and feeling defeated. 

So I’m allowing myself to feel a quick moment of disappointment and then getting my ass back on the horse. The great thing about this process has been that I have learned how to take care of myself. Last week when we went back to the gym I found that I could still lift the same weight I was lifting before (although it took a little extra effort). I have started running again during lunch and have been able to maintain my 10 minute mile pace even for a 5 mile run in 85 degree heat. I feel like I haven’t lost a step! And throughout this move we only stopped juicing for about a week while we were physically unable to get to our juicer or find a juice bar. So maybe it’s not as bad as I’m making it sound.

Oh wait I forgot about those Seven jeans I tried on this morning that laughed in my face.

OK, so it’s bad. But you know what? It’s OK! Because I know what I have to do get back to where I used to be and continue on this path to ultimate good health and fitness.   Further encouragement to get my butt back in gear is the great prospects for H.E.a.T down here in Orange County.  

We were a little trepid about the prospects for our little company as we feared that, here in the birthplace of the health and fitness community, we would just be another face in the crowd. 

But we are finding that is not the case. Even here we have yet to find a company that does exactly what H.E.a.T does.

There are the crazy exercise fiend companies. There are dieting and healthy eating companies galore. There are even quite a few combinations of diet of exercise out there (although not as many as you would think). However we haven’t seen any other company that takes its clients step by step, coaching them back to good health through resetting their bodies with a cleanse, and then teaching them how to eat and how to work out AND how not to get back to the way they used to be by working through their psychological and emotional issues around food and exercise. That’s a winning combination there that few companies offer. The more we look around the better we feel about the uniqueness of our company and where we might be able to take it.


Anyway, all that said, you can’t coach people back to good health if you are struggling yourself. My husband and I have agreed not to start accepting clients (for money anyway) until we are well on our way to the fitness model physiques we’re going for. You gotta give your clients something to aspire to and nothing does that better than being an example of how working hard pays off. That said, off to the running trails, free weights, and produce section I go!

It’s all about Team Mendoza and it’s all about staying healthy and keeping focused on our goals. It’s ok to fall off and get distracted or overwhelmed by life sometimes as long as you don’t fall too far or for too long and when the dust settles you are still on track to achieve your goals. As we’ve said a million times, it’s not a diet, it’s a lifestyle change. We will not let our brief foray into the dark side derail our hard work or upset our program. We continue to keep it moving around here in the Mendoza house cuz that’s just how we roll!

Consider Health Education advocating Techniques back up and running! And better than ever. Refocused and rededicated.

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