Hello friends. Happy New Year! Since it’s the first day of 2013 (well at least for my part of the world), I wanted to recap some of the highlights from the year. Hopefully, they will motivate you to keep up the good work throughout the year.

Nutrition Tips:

Diet is crucial. Garbage in=garbage out. If you don’t eat quality food, your body won’t perform well. Most people fail in the diet area and expect good results on the scale. Not going to happen. I read somewhere it’s 70% diet, 30% exercise. I used to eat a rather unhealthy diet and work out like machine. My results were minimal.

Whole Foods. Eat whole foods. What are whole foods? Fruits, vegetables, unprocessed foods. Check back to early posts on healing foods. https://restoremindbodysoul.wordpress.com/2012/10/15/eating-healthy-healing-foods/. I recommend checking labels. Some foods say whole food and they contain tons of preservatives, additives, sugar, and salt.

Sugar and excess salt are not your friend. The melting of my belly fat came from giving up added sugar. I tried many other things and giving up sugar was the only thing that was effective. See post on fat loss. https://restoremindbodysoul.wordpress.com/2012/10/13/detox-from-sugar-fat-loss/.

Fitness Tips:

Drink Water! A dehydrated body is like a car running without gasoline. It’s imperative to stay hydrated if you want to be healthy and lose weight. Water helps flush the toxins from your body.

Hit the Weights/Resistance Train. Cardio alone,unless you are working your entire body, is not enough to change the shape of your body. Muscle also burns more calories than fat. I used to avoid the weights thinking I would look bulky. The opposite occurred. Resistance training is good for our bones and to change the shape of our bodies.

Train hard-get better results. I used to think walking or the elliptical was enough. I am not against those activities if you cannot do other exercises. However, I have seen the best results from challenging my body (no abusing it).

Be consistent (work out regularly) and change it up. Our bodies are smart. They adapt to what we are doing. Sporadic workouts mean minimal results. Doing the same things over and over leads to diminished results. Every 6 weeks switch it up. Once your body adapts to a routine it becomes more efficient at using less energy or burning fewer calories doing the same things.

Emotional/Mental/Spiritual Health:

Stress hurts your health. I found out some of my bodies resistance to losing weight was due to excessive amounts of stress. Find your stress triggers and figure out ways to adapt.

My Tips for Reducing Stress

1. Start the day positive. I start the day with prayer. If you’re not a person of faith, try to find a positive way to start the day.

2. Workout instead of eating when you’ve had a stressful day.

3. Try to plan ahead. One of my greatest stressors was misplacing things. Now I make time to plan, put things away, etc…

4. Limit time with people who stress you out, if you can.

5. Find positive people and spend time with them. Everyone needs cheerleaders. The world has given us enough critics. If you surround yourself with people who don’t love, respect, or treat you with dignity, you will be stressed out!

6. Give up trying to change things you can’t or expecting people to be someone they are not. I’ve found rude people are everywhere. I can let them stress me out, or I can say, “You’re unhappy and I refuse to let you make me unhappy.”

7. Be your own cheerleader, celebrate successes.

8. Ditch perfectionism. You’re human which means you will not be perfect. Embrace being human. Accept yourself with flaws and all. The goal is to become a better person, not a perfect person.

9. Take time to relax. I’m a pretty busy person. I work full-time, write for three blogs, and I am working on my second book. I have to take time to do nothing.

10. Limit what you allow in your mind. Just like with food. Garbage in=garbage out. I limit time with people who gossip, never have anything positive to say, or are critical or negative. Where the mind goes, the body follows.

11. Give and help others. There’s something great that happens when our lives aren’t just about us. What we do for ourselves, dies with us. What we do for others and the world, remains after we are gone.

Well, that’s all for today! I hope this motivates you to keep going. You can do it. I believe in you! I am excited for another year to Carpe Diem. Hope you are too.