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What To Do On The Weekend…

6 Ways to Have a More Productive Weekend

1. Make the Most of Your Mornings. An extra cup of coffee, sleeping in, or another 20 minutes of scrolling the ‘gram from bed are easy starts to the day. … But don’t let your weekend morning slip away! It’s been shown that waking up at the same time every day is better for your sleep, so if your internal alarm clock already has you up, make use of that time. Get out of bed and do a quick workout or do a little bedside yoga. Tack on an extra 15 minutes while walking your dog. Workouts at home are a great use of a few minutes to yourself in the morning! Getting them in before the rest of the house gets up ensures you’ve locked in some self-care before other things fill your day.
2. Don’t Save Everything For the weekend… If you’re the person who saves every life task for the weekend, those two days will get crowded! Try moving your major cleaning to Thursday nights, or break it up throughout the week into smaller tasks. Going into the weekend with fresh linens, a vacuum run, and a clean kitchen can do wonders for the psyche of having a relaxing space to enjoy.
3. Use Timers for Key Tasks…Set two alarms — one to remind you to pick up a book and one 30 minutes later. That time will fly by, and you’ll probably even want to keep at it! For less fun weekend tasks (cleaning out the garage, updating your home budget), set that same 30 minute timer and promise yourself to give it your all of that stretch. Once 30 minutes hits, reward yourself with a break for something fun and come back to it the next day if needed. I set timers all the time! Do the same thing for meal prepping in the kitchen! 😉
4. Hit All Three Buckets…Try to think of every weekend in three buckets — Must Do, Must Not Do, and Learning to Do. The Must Dos are just the essentials. Even when we enjoy catching up with family, running the kiddos to practice, or doing things around the house, they are still things on the calendar. Must Not Do means that every weekend should have a little slice of doing nothing. This can be whatever “nothing” means to you, but it should be whatever self-care or restorative activity brings you peace.
5. Take Fridays Seriously…Friday, you’re the best. Especially in summer, it can be easy to mentally call it a day sometime after 3pm. But that may make it more likely that you don’t effectively wrap up your week, and have work or other to-dos trickle into the weekend. Use the last few hours of Friday as your weekend power hours! Before you check out and get into full weekend mode, take some time to prep for Monday morning. Clean up your desk or workspace. Leave yourself a Monday to-do list. Take a few minutes on your networking efforts and forward along an article you think a colleague would find interesting. Closing out your Friday thoughtfully tees you up for a more productive weekend!
6. Give Work a Structure…Nowadays, it’s inevitable that many of us have to check in with work over the weekend. Be it email review or major projects, some things simply don’t get done in the 9-5. If this is your situation, just give weekend work some structure. Tackling a major proposal? Don’t pick away at it all weekend — you’ll just end up feeling like you didn’t get a break. Block out some serious time of a few hours and hammer through. If email floods in, let fellow co-workers know that you review emails at a settime, say, from 2-4 on Sunday afternoon. (We’ve all fired off a weekend email that we don’t necessarily expect a response to, so it’s okay to expect others to feel the same way.) Also think about setting up an auto response on the weekends stating you will get back with them first thing Monday morning or some other designated time.

Think you all can try one or most of these tasks for the weekend? Baby steps to a more productive weekend! 🙂

Have a Happy One!

Work Hard, Eat Clean, Be Blessed

What’s Your Motivation? How do you keep going?

I asked some of my members a few months ago to tell me their “why”…Why do you show up at CFU? Why do you go through what you do on the mats? Why do you meal prep on the weekends? The most common answer was, “because I want to live a healthier life and set a good example for my family” – that is pretty much my why as well.

If you recall, I told the story of how I was sitting down during a PE class telling my kids to run laps and do other exercises…SITTING DOWN…I was a freaking PE teacher for goodness sake! What kind of good example was I setting for those kiddos? Not a good one, that’s for sure! I remember counting down the hours before I could go home and just lie down and watch tv because I was always tired – something needed to give!

But how do you find the motivation to one day start from scratch? Yes, I had the knowledge to exercise and eat healthy, but where would my motivation come from? I tell you, it had to come from deep within; being sick and tired of being big and lazy, I knew that baby steps would get me started. I told my husband my plan and set off to the Y every morning at 4:45am (yes, I know that’s crazy, but it was the only time I had in my crazy schedule). I found some accountability partners through an online group where we shared our workouts and nutrition tips. It’s what kept me going! And the rest is history!

It all started with motivating myself to do better for myself and my family BUT…I had to keep going! Everyone has those days where they really don’t feel like doing anything – heck, there’s even a song about that!

Things that may help you stay motivated:

1. Set Goals! Make sure they are reasonable…don’t say I want to lose 50 pounds then get upset when the scale doesn’t budge in a week. Baby steps! Make sure the goal is specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and has a time domain (SMART)
2. Make your exercise/fitness routine FUN! If you dread going to the track and doing circles, change it up and hit the trails instead; take up biking or hit up a dance class. Step out of your comfort zone and keep things fun! It also helps keep you young! 🙂
3. Make activity part of your daily routine! Every day do something active. On our fitness tracker app at the gym, I’ve put in a daily cardio section where members can put in their own workouts/runs in case they can’t make it to the box. This helps with accountability and keeps them on track!
4. Put your activities (fitness/nutrition) down on paper…write.it.down! I used to (I should do it again!) write down everything I was going to eat the next day the night before so I was prepared for the day along with the workout I was going to tackle. Once I ate that meal or did that workout, it went on the “finished” side of my journal. That journal helped me stay on track especially with my nutrition so I didn’t have to “wing it” on a daily basis!
5. Join forces with friends and family! Not only will you obtain the accountability, you will help them out with their fitness! It’s a WIN-WIN! 🙂
6. Reward yourself! 7 days without any sugar, buy yourself a new pair of workout shorts! 21 days straight with daily activity, take yourself out for a nice meal! Set PR’s on lifts or runs, post that stuff and let people celebrate with you! Believe it or not, people do love to celebrate other’s accomplishments, plus it helps them with their motivation too! Seeing all of my athletes at CFU accomplish what they do on a daily basis inspires me to push a little bit more even on the days I don’t feel like it!
7. Be Flexible! Don’t beat yourself up if you miss a workout or two; your body will NOT fall apart! Last week I was sick with a migraine and vertigo…NOT FUN and I missed Sunday-Thursday workouts; talk about getting off track, but I knew my body needed to rest in order to get healthy again. My body didn’t fall apart, I was right back at it on Friday! So give yourself a break now and then and realize that you are human and things are going to come up that get in the way of some of your fitness and nutrition goals!

If anything, write down or save photos/quotes on your phone so you can see them daily. I like the positive post-its…seeing positive messages helps me stay on the right track to where my mind should be. If you are having trouble finding the motivation to either get started or keeping the momentum, reach out and let me see if I can help! We offer personal training, group classes and online training if you don’t want to start out in a gym. Just let me know at crossfitunstoppable@gmail.com

Have a Happy Tuesday!

Work Hard, Eat Clean, Be Blessed!

Be Happy, Be Healthy, Be Safe, Live w/ Ease

What does this mean to you? What makes you happy and makes living easy? Many times I ask my trainers to tell me what their “perfect day” is…What would make your day perfect?

I think mine changes daily (especially with the hot weather here in MO!) We had some beautiful weather a couple of weeks ago where the temps were around 72 degrees and there was no humidity! Now THAT’S a perfect day weather wise. But to pinpoint what my perfect day after that is, changes from time to time. First and foremost I want my family and friends to be safe and healthy (and happy of course!). This morning I listened to a morning meditation – where I got my headline from 🙂 where we were always encouraged to come back to that phrase if we got sidetracked with our thinking.

Yesterday I wrote about stress management and how to deal with it; did you try any of the listed methods? One of those methods could very well be meditation. Start with just 2 minutes in the morning; I like turning on some “soothing music” (I use the Calm app) and just focus on my breath and the noises around me. I have found that sitting out on the back porch at 7:30am is not a good idea because of the noisy traffic that early. But I like outside because I get to hear nature and it brings me back to more simple things; it helps me forget the lists of things to do, it helps me remember that all things were created for a purpose and it helps me to focus on basically nothing for a little bit. I’m not sure how people meditate for longer than 10 minutes because my mind goes a mile a minute! But I’m getting better! Try it just for a little bit this week and see how you feel.

See I got sidetracked from my “perfect day” 😉 Anyway I like to start my day off with coffee and quiet time…if I want to go in early for a workout I do that but most times it’s mid-morning before I get to workout because of the list tackling at home before heading into the “office”. I watched a documentary today (another perfect day activity, watching shows that I like) and it was discussing the fight or flight phenomenon in which when we are put in stressful situations, the adrenaline and cortisol builds up to help us combat the situation…if the situation isn’t remedied then this stress stays with us. Something that I like to do to relieve stress that is part of my perfect day is helping people. I want to help people be better than yesterday…in this documentary, they had a name for this (I forget what it was) but many people de-stress by giving back to others and helping someone out. Sometimes if it can’t be through monetary means, it’s through acts of service. So part of my perfect day is giving back. Eventually, I want to start a program for disadvantaged youth in the area…so that’s on my bucket list-watch for it 😉

I think I’m just rambling a bit, but I wanted to share a bit about how I like to be happy, healthy, safe and continue to try and live my life with ease. No, life is not always easy, but we can make our lives a lot better by striving to be the happiest and kindest possible human there is! I challenge you all this week to pay it forward to just one person…not because you have to, but because you WANT to! Don’t you want to put a smile on another person’s face 🙂 I sure do! Have a Blessed Week!

Work Hard, Eat Clean, Be Blessed!

Stress Management – How do you deal with it?

Happy Father’s Day to all of the dads, step-dads and granddads out there! I hope you have a great day doing the things you love with the people you love! 🙂

“If you want to conquer the anxiety of life, live in the moment, live in the breath.“~Amit Ray

Are you experiencing a lot of stress and anxiety these days? How do you cope with it?

This morning I listened to a Facebook Live message from our Two-Brain leader, Chris Cooper and he explained in laymen’s terms on why our bodies handle the stress the way they do…Our brains are constantly ready to either fight or flight when subjected to a situation. The more we put on our plate, the bigger that part of the brain grows…we don’t want that to happen. Why? Because the more stressful situations we encounter, the harder it is for us to process everything and the stress hormone, cortisol builds up. Believe me, this is not good!

If you’re like me, you are dealing with stress coming from all angles; family life, work life and fitness life. There are ways to combat the stress in our lives and that is to be mindful of how we are reacting to certain situations. We need to re-wire our brains to meet the daily demands that this stress causes.

Some of the ideas Chris shared were:

1. Set up 2 one-hour blocks of no-screen time; if you don’t have a set time during the day when you can do this, set up one hour when you wake up and one hour before you go to bed. I like to put my phone on “DND” (do not disturb) from 9:30pm-9am so I am not interrupted. Sometimes this works, I just have to stay off of that time sucker! 🙂

2. Set up a time where you check your emails, social media and responding to texts. If you wake up in the morning and the first thing you do is scroll through emails, your brain automatically goes into that stress mode where you think you need to do everything at once. Take some time for yourself and ease into your day.

3. Do something that is of long, slow duration. I like to go for 30-45 minute walks where I turn off my phone except for my “Calm app” listening to rhythmic music…It helps clear my head.

4. Do something for yourself that requires your full attention like reading or playing a new sport. This would then take your mind off of the stress you are experiencing.

5. Celebrate the bright spots in your day! Focus on the positivity that is going on in your life and surround yourself with like-minded people so the ripple effect continues.

Finally, always take a few deep breaths and contemplate your reaction to stressful situations. Those deep breaths could make a world of difference! I hope some of these tips help you deal with your daily stress; I plan on implementing them…I just have to stick with it and create the habit! More on good habits in another blog! Until then, have a Blessed Day!

Work Hard, Eat Clean, Be Blessed