Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Happy holidays everyone! I haven't done one bit of Christmas shopping yet - aaaahhhh! Man, this sure is the time of year when things get a little crazy for everyone especially diet-wise I find! I recently found myself thinking 'there's just 2 more weeks of holidays, I may as well let myself eat anything I want throughout the holidays and start fresh in January', I realize this is the way most people think about the whole month of December... it's a free-for-all diet-wise and you have the holidays to blame for it. Yes, there are more parties, more chocolate hanging around, more baked goods coming your way, more heavy family dinners, more hectic days of shopping which can = mall food... but then I really thought about what would be happening over the next 2 weeks... there are 2 days when I might like to forget total healthy eating and have a few drinks, mashed potatoes, cake, etc. - Christmas Day at my mom's and New Year's Eve. That's just one cheat meal per week which is my norm even when being really clean leading up to a competition. So, why would I allow myself to be bad for the whole two weeks? I guess we trick ourselves into thinking it's the holidays that make you break your clean eating, when really we're just searching for a reason to let loose! So, I had a bit of a rocky weekend, but yesterday I started back on strong. I think that's another important tip to eating right and losing or maintaining weight, is to never give up or lose faith in yourself. I mess up so frequently by eating sweets, etc. but I always believe I can pick up and continue on anew the next day (or even better, the next hour!) Once people screw up too big or too many times, they often lose faith in themselves to eat right and live a healthy lifestyle and they do the worst thing and give up... resign to a life of abusing your body and not seeing and feeling your full potential. Remember, "if you believe it, you can achieve it!" - keep the faith and everything will work out in good time. And think about your day today... is there really a good reason to eat goodies all day today just because we're coming close to Christmas? Probably not! So grab some halthy eats that will really fuel you for all your holiday busy-ness and make you feel great!

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Back from my vacation to Punta Cana! It was awesome and a totally new (and challenging) experience going on vacation with a baby! So, back to real life now which I don't mean in a bad way (the way many people do after a vacay)- I am so excited to get back to work! I was inspired in many ways over the past week away and have come back to T.O. with even more ideas of things I wanna do (business-wise, artistically, competitions, and life stuff!) So, there will be lots of new, fresh things going on around the studio in the new year!

Right now one of my personal projects is staying sugar free always (and I started seriously today)! I've told a few people my plan and they've told me the holidays are a bad time to start... I actually had this thought too, but changed my mind. The way I'm looking at it is:

1) I believe that there's no time like the present to make a change in your life for the better (you don't need to wait until a Monday, a new month, or the new year to start bettering yourself)- do it now - don't waste another minute! So, I'm taking my own advice here!

2) There will always be something... right now it's Christmas, soon it will be New Year's Eve, then Easter, then someone's birthday, then... you get the picture! I hope I can learn to enjoy holidays and social events without food being my main focus... it sounds easy, but is quite hard usually and this phenomenon really kinda irks me. Of course food will always be an integral part of social gatherings, but I don't feel it should take precedence over connecting with family and friends, laughing, dancing, having fun! Just because I'm not stuffing my face with gingerbread and shortbread cookies (which, yes, I usually do around this time of year!) it doesn't mean I'm not having fun and celebrating Christmas. People wouldn't pressure a recovering coke addict to just have one snort for the holidays (I hope)- so don't hand me a cookie (ha ha)!

3) I'm a specialist in getting super-fit in a hurry for events or competitions, but often have trouble staying that way year-round (mainly because of my love of/addiction to sweets) so I'm really looking at cutting refined sugar and carbs as a new lifestyle not a diet or a temporary situation. I'm actually taking it even further and thinking I have an addiction to sweets and refined carbs so I need to stay off them (just like an alcoholic or a smoker). I have found that whenever I cut them out of my diet (like when I'm dieting for competitions) that I feel awesome and have great energy and pep, I drop weight effortlessly, and as soon as they're out of my system I don't physically crave them anymore so I think the trick for me is to never eat them and then things won't spiral into a big week-long sweet/carb splurge as they can with me sometimes!

There are a few books written on this topic - I actually bought one to read while away (called Sugar Shock), but only got a chance to get about 4 pages into the book because I was running after Zak the whole time so there wasn't much relaxing on the beach reading this time! I have no idea how this sugar-free-for-life idea will work out, but I'm having very positive thoughts about it and feel super-determined! I will be blogging often here about how my little experiment is going so check back often for updates!