Fit & Healthy Buffalo- Fitness Success After 40

  I get asked all the time: “How do you stay so motivated?” Fact: I don’t! …. So I work at it! Motivation is like a muscle – the more you flex it, the stronger it becomes. But what do you do to get your motivation “muscle” in shape in the first place? You find ways to  intentionally  keep yourself motivated! I’ve put together a list of proven ways to build motivation right into your healthy habits. 1. Make it fun!  Try a new recipe. Do a new workout (working with a fitness pro is a no-brainer for this one!). Listen to your favorite music. Challenge yourself to try one new fruit or veg a week. 2. Set a goal that gets you psyched.  Sign up for a fun run. Go for a weekend mountain biking getaway. Try a new recipe every week for three months. Sign up for a dance or jiu-jitsu class. 3. Make it part of your routine.  Park farther away from your destination. Take the stairs. Go for a lunchtime walk outside. Work out as soon as you wake up in the morning. H

  “Don’t get ahead of yourself.” That phrase used to drive me crazy when I was a kid! It felt like grown-ups were always trying to hold me back. But they weren’t. They wanted me to reach my goals – and I’m sharing this with you today to help YOU reach your own goals. → The only thing you can control is what you do TODAY. It’s human nature to want to speed ahead – to focus on where you want to be, instead of where you are now. But the fastest route to your goals is to focus on TODAY. Your actions today (right now!) have a direct impact on your tomorrow. Multiplied over many days, your actions predict your future. Powerful stuff, right? But that’s only half of it. Imagine every one of your “todays” stacking up, teaching you valuable lessons. And those lessons don’t only help you REACH your goals, but MAINTAIN them and BUILD on them into the future. That’s priceless! Books are written one word at a time … fortunes are amassed one dollar at a ti

  There’s nothing quite as inspiring as a truly jaw-dropping before and after picture. I’m talking about a 50+ pound weight loss where they look like an entirely new person. It’s striking how much younger people look when the extra fat comes off. An attractive, happy, energetic person was inside of them all along. Many popular magazines showcase transformation success stories like this at the beginning of a new year. Flip through the pages of before and after photos and it’s hard not to feel inspired to make healthy changes in your own life. It’s also interesting to read how each person managed to lose all the weight. What was their exercise routine? What diet plan did they follow? The truth is that there are many routines and plans that bring success. The key is to choose your plan and stick with it. Of course, this is where things get tricky, during the stick with it period. This is when life tempts you to lose your focus and get lazy. This is when even the best

  Do you have a specific fitness goal that you are hoping to achieve? This goal could be a number on the scale, or a clothing size. Or maybe you are hoping to wear a certain cut or style of clothes like strappy tank tops, shorts, or a bathing suit. While having this goal is great, it will NOT guarantee success. You knew that, though, because this isn’t the first time that you’ve had a fitness goal. A goal that you didn’t meet. In fact, you probably know dozens of other people who also have struggled to meet their fitness goals. Here’s the typical scenario: you get all pumped up to lose weight and get into shape by starting out completely gung-ho. Your enthusiasm lasts about two weeks, before old habits and routine slide back into place, cutting your results off before reaching your goal. Then your goal begins to fade from your mind, and life goes on. The problem, my friend, was your initial focus on the result rather than a sustained focus on the process. Let me break

  Have you ever noticed how two people can do the exact same fitness routine for a period of time and one will have breathtaking results while the other looks the same as when they started? Why is that? It’s frustrating when you are the person going through a fitness routine without seeing dramatic results. Might make you look for a reason outside of yourself to blame, such as genetics. In reality, the thing holding you back is something that you have complete control over: it’s the intensity with which you exercise. Intensity is something that’s difficult for the outside observer to measure but is felt within your body as you go through the motions of an exercise. It’s how hard you push yourself to go as heavy and as quickly as possible. It’s picking up a weight that feels hard to handle. It’s putting a boost behind each stride as you run. It’s resisting the urge to simply go through the motions. It’s outdoing your efforts from last time. Now

  According to popular statistics, only 8% of New Year’s Resolutions are successfully kept. This means that 92% of us that are brave enough to set out for self-improvement will fail. Those aren’t very good odds. Thankfully there is science that explains this curious “Snap-Back Effect” and offers us tools to make the effect work in our favor. Snap-Back Effect:   A term coined by Dr. Maxwell Maltz, the author of Psycho-Cybernetics to describe the rampant self-sabotage of personal improvement goals. Maltz noted that you can stretch a rubber band only to a certain length and hold it only for a certain time until you get weak or get distracted and the rubber band will then snap back to its true shape. This is essentially what happens when you attempt to achieve a new level of self-improvement. Sooner or later you sabotage yourself and get back to your normal level of achievement. What sort of person do you believe yourself to be? This mental image of yourself is your self-image. All of your