Dating & fat loss. We are going there today. Whether you are married, dating or single, this episode will tackle mindsets & strategies for staying true to your goals regardless of what people in your life eat or choose.
The reality is: no matter who you are with or what anyone around you chooses, you are always 100% in control of what you put in your mouth, how much & when.
Does this make it easy to make progress towards your goals when people are around you are indulging? Nope. But this is life.
I think it’s a huge asset to have people in your life who eat differently than you do. It’s an incredible opportunity to practice and become resilient.
I’m excited to talk about how I approach difficult situations, how I say no, when I indulge and how I strike balance between social eating situations and my goals.
If you have questions or strategies, please share them in the comments below!
If you want different results, you’re going to have to make different choices. You’ll reach a point where your current choices take you as far as they can & if you want to go further, you’ve got to push harder or work smarter.
You cannot go to the gym every day & do the same workout with the same weights and expect your body to continue to change. It won’t. The same is true in all other areas of growth & improvement.
If you want to change, you have to push.
If you’d rather listen to this blog than read it, click here to listen on my Anchor channel. Please note that Anchor is NOT my podcast, it’s just more personal, short-form audio content.
During my workout this morning, my coach instructed us all to use a kettlebell heavier than the weight we would normally choose. I selected the 53 lb kettlebell.
Why go heavier? Because it’s the only way you move from where you are to where you want to be. You have to push. You have to continue to try harder and do more.
This is true in life as well as fitness.
You can’t respond to temptations the way you always have & expect to make progress.
You can’t proceed with the same level of (in)consistency & expect to get somewhere new.
You can’t continue to make excuses & exceptions with the same frequency and move to the next level of your life and potential.
It won’t happen.
Just like you have to go at little faster on your run and lift a little heavier during your workout, you’ve got to push yourself in your daily choices & decisions.
How can you push yourself more today? How can you push yourself more this week? How can you intentionally move yourself to the next level?
What does that look like for you?
For me, this takes all forms. Right now it’s in cutting out dairy. That’s a way I push my nutrition choices. Often it’s by pushing to new limits at the gym.
Don’t settle. You have to push.
Intentionally seek out ways to push yourself beyond your comfort zone. That’s where growth comes from.
That kettlebell workout was a doozy! I had to modify due to my knee injury but I’m making progress each day!
Here’s how it went:
15-10-5
Kettlebell swings
Toes to bar
57 cal bike ride (legs only/no arms)
5-10-15
Kettlebell swings
Toes to bar
My shoulders were absolutely smoked afterwards! It was a great workout.
On the food front:
The weather is so beautiful in New England right now and I’ve been obsessed with my no-cooking-required cabbage salad bowl. After months of primarily Paleo Power Meals I’m glad to have this fave back in my life!
You’ve heard me mention it the last few days but I’ll say it again: raw red & green shredded cabbage, hardboiled egg, bacon & avocado. That was brunch. So filling & nutrient rich!
Want to know my hack? I hate cooking bacon. It takes too long – and don’t tell me to microwave it – I don’t like microwaves. But I’ll go to the breakfast bar at Whole Foods and because it’s based on weight, you get a crazy great deal on cooked bacon! I’ll get enough for a few days. Makes my life easier and it’s cheaper than buying it raw and certainly easier than cooking!
Dinner was a modification of the brunch bowl -heavier on the veggies, lighter on the fat. I added brussels sprouts (sautéed in ghee) to the cabbage and went lighter on the bacon & egg. So filling and super delish!
Make today amazing. Life is short & you deserve your best.
Sometimes I’m in a funk. Whether it’s hormones, circumstances, fatigue, my own negative thoughts or a combination, the funk feels very real. In the past, I’d let the funk win. It would suck me in, I’d feed into it with my thoughts, words & actions and it would become quite powerful (read: destructive). I felt like I was a victim of the funk. It felt paralyzing – like the funk itself prevented me from moving towards my goals.
You cannot wait for it to pass while you sit in it. You have to choose your way out of it, one small, simple choice at a time.
When we feel down, unmotivated, frustrated, emotional, depressed, or anything along the spectrum of feelings that discourage us from taking action towards our goals, we have two choices.
Fuel the funk with inaction, negative thoughts and perseverating on problems & emotion.
Choose our way out of it. Create a new state through action.
I completely understand that the last thing you want to do when you’re in a funk is eat a fat loss friendly meal or go to the gym. While those are options, they aren’t the only options. I like to simplify this by asking myself, “What is one action I can take right now to move out of this funk?”
Sometimes it’s as simple as taking a shower. Sometimes it’s as easy as putting on my favorite song. Other times it’s sitting outside for 10 minutes or reading a few pages of a motivational book.
I love keeping motivational books on hand, full of underlines, highlights and notes. When I’m feeling down, a few minutes with one of these books makes a huge difference. My go-tos include:
No matter how you look at it: action is the antidote. We are always one choice away from feeling better. Every single moment is a blank slate and every choice is a chance to advance in the direction of your goals.
Today’s workout made me happy. It was solo (not at the gym) and pain free.
EMOM 21
12 cal bike
8 burpees
12 pushups
It was just enough to push me with enough rest to allow me to bring 110% effort to each minute. Workouts are what you make them. I always want to bring my total effort and not sandbag.
On the food front:
I planned to fast today but I didn’t. The decision to fast was a mental one, not a physical one – to remind myself that hunger comes and goes in waves and I am strong enough and aware enough to ride them out.
However, I made the conscious choice to have one large meal around 4pm and I feel good about that. I was feeling tired and unfocused and I wanted to feel energized and focused. The meal definitely did that for me!
In my Oxo Salad Chopper I combined raw red & green shredded cabbage with half an avocado, 2 hardboiled eggs, 2 slices of bacon and a drizzle of macadamia nut oil. Carbs from the cabbage & avocado, protein from the eggs, fat from the eggs, bacon, avocado & oil.
A few weeks ago, I sent an email to everyone on my free VIP email list with my thoughts on the documentary “What the Health”. Since then, I’ve received hundreds of questions about meat eating, dietary fat, fat loss, low carb diets and everything along that spectrum.
In today’s episode, I’m going to share my thoughts on “What the Health” but also share some deeply data driven opinions of experts, including some of the highlights and considerations from Primal Fat Burner, a new book from Nora Gedgaudas.
I think it’s a huge mistake to try to define ways of eating as “right” or “wrong”. I think we waste a ton of energy & potential labeling vegan, paleo, primal or low carb as “good” and “bad”. Realistically, they can all be done well and they can all be done poorly. They can all be built on high quality foods or low quality foods. They can all be designed to deliver great health or to create disease.
It comes down to quality, individuality and hormonal implications. That’s what we’re talking about in today’s episode.
I spent my weekend watching the 2017 Reebok CrossFit Games. The determination of those athletes is beyond inspiring. More than their performance over the weekend, the work they put in day in and day out throughout the year motivates the hell out of me.
If you’d rather listen to this explicit blog than read it, click here to listen on Anchor. Yup, I said explicit. There is a curse word in this post.
Mat Fraser dominated the men’s competition. He won by a landslide and exceeded everyone’s expectations. He did the same thing last year, but it wasn’t always that way.
In fact, in past competitions, he’s been smoked in areas where he was weak, specifically running and rowing. He’s known as a strong man, a strength guy with a powerlifting background, and until the past couple years, he’s been weak in speed & endurance events.
When people familiar with the sport talk about Mat Fraser, they talk about how he gets laser focused on his weaknesses and is determined to make them strengths.
He will not accept that he’s just “not good at something”.
During this weekend’s CrossFit games, after winning an event, an analyst asked him something along the lines of, “Mat, what’s your strategy when it comes to your weaknesses? How do you approach them in training to get better at them?”
His response was one of my favorite moments of the entire weekend:
“I just keep doing the moves until I’m fucking good at it.”
It’s simple. It’s also hard. It’s so basic and almost no one does it.
You practice and you practice and you practice and you don’t stop putting in the daily work until you’re good at it.
Excuses, avoiding, exceptions, negativity and complaining don’t make you better.
Showing up day in and day out to practice until your weakness is a strength – that’s how change happens.
Every time he posts on Instagram he uses the hashtag #HWPO which stands for “hard work pays off”.
It’s not fancy. It’s not easy. But it is simple.
Do the hard work. Then do it again, then do it again and again and again until your weakness is a strength.
That’s what you have to do if you want to be good. And if you don’t want to improve or you’re not willing to do the work, don’t complain about not being good.
Hard work pays off.
Speaking of hard work, there’s was lots of that in the gym this morning! I had to modify the workout to accommodate my knee injury but I’m adding in more impact and so far things are feeling good.
3 rounds for time
30 cal airdyne bike
15 clean & jerks
1 min max ski erg
No knee pain on the clean & jerks, which I’m super excited about. I’m hoping to start squatting again this week. We shall see!
On the food front:
I’m having two big meals today instead of 3 smaller ones and it’s actually the same meal twice. It looks like this:
A big bowl of shredded raw red & green cabbage with a couple slices of cooked bacon, 2 hard boiled eggs, a bit of avocado & some macadamia nut oil. In the second bowl I’ll add one piece of grilled chicken.
In between I’m drinking lots of water – I have a new favorite flavor of seltzer! It’s Polar’s Mango Limeade. So delish!
