1 New Habit

I have been reading up on habits and how to create new ones.  The key is to pick one habit , keep it simple and focus on that habit for 30 days.
I found a great post about breaking bad habits from www.pickthebrain.com.  You will love this website. So much good information.

So My habit will be to get up at 6am and go to the gym. I am going to focus on this habit for 30 days!  I'm not going to think of fancy work outs or where I'm going to work out but that I am going to get up at 6 am and be out the door by 6:15.   The gym in closed friday mornings so I will do this Mon-Thursday.

Now I realize the hardest part of this is physically getting out of bed...Well I already started going to the gym this week and the key is: Do Not hit the snooze button.


There is no reason to hit that snooze button...the alarm goes off-lift up your head, turn off the alarm and get up!!!   If you don't get up right away then your mind will tell you to stay in bed.... You have to get out of bed before you talk yourself out of it!!
Don't even think about it, don't try to rationalize or think of excuses not to...just do it, just get up.  I don't even know why there is a snooze button.

Now that I have shared with you the getting out of bed part I will move on to some other tips:

Preparation for the night before:

• Set aside my work out clothes, shoes, phone, head phones & water.
• Prepare my coffee the night before. (set the timer)
• Be in bed by 10 pm.

Preparation in the morning

• Get out of bed and brush my teeth. (this wakes me up)
• Warm up & eat my banana protein muffin
• Also pour my coffee and start drinking
• Get dressed
• Out the door!

I eat my muffin first then I get dressed (i'm buying time for my food to digest)  and also the drive to the gym gives me time to drink my coffee.

weekly weigh in:

I'll get straight to it-last weeks weigh in was 149
Here are my stats today:
SW:152
CW: 147.8
GW: 136

This morning the scale read 147.8     I lost 1.2lbs!  That is great!
I have worked out every day this week and my eating habits are better. I noticed in the past sometimes I would lose 2 lbs in a week then .5 the next so I'm going to be patient.

I have to share this Amazing 6 week Seminar that I am participating in. It started Thursday night and its called Powerful Brain. Health Body.

I'm hoping it will give me the tools needed to lose 10 lbs.
Something that stuck with me is he said not to focus on Bad Habits and getting rid of them. Just create new healthy habits and focus on the new healthy habits!
The first habit that I am creating is waking up at 6am every weekday and working out.  So far so good. Monday was a holiday so I started on Tuesday, oh, now that I think about it I slept in till 7am on Thursday...but its a start, I worked out tues, wed and friday morning.
Now I have to think really hard about other new habits that I want.

There were 2 questions in our packet that we have to answer...it took some thinking but this is what I came up with:
Why do I want to lose 10 lbs?
I want to inspire and motivate those that I care about
I feel like losing 10 lbs is enough to change my appearance then others will notice and be inspired.Think about it..where does most of your inspiration come from? Not books, gimmicks or exercise machines but actual people!   When I need some motivation I look at before/after pictures of actual people who lost weight.
To have that feeling of accomplishment
People would say "you don't need to lose 10lbs" Why not? Why not be the healthiest you can be? Plus I like the challenge.   It really boosts your self esteem and gives you the courage and confidence to try other things..
Why is it important to me?
I value my health. I thank god every morning for my health. If you don't have your health you cannot enjoy your life. I am thankful for so many things, my husband, daughter, work, my family...but if I'm not healthy then its really hard to enjoy all the blessings in my life. Think of a time you have had the flu...you would give anything to feel better again right?      I want to live a healthy lifestyle so I can be a good example for everyone around me!  My husband, my daughter, family members, neighbors, coworkers, etc.     There are too many people out there that don't work out, don't eat healthy, they are depressed, tired, sick..but will not exercise...  I just don't get it???     If I can lose weight I hope that others will see me and get inspired as well.  There are a lot of people in my life that I care about that don't exercise and also eat junk! I want to motivate them.  
I have noticed in the past year I have become very passionate about nutrition and a healthy lifestyle. It all started from a program and my work called Healthy Utah. Once a year you can make an appointment and they will do a health assessment, if you pass then you get $50.  Passing would be a bmi of  26 or less and if you don't fall under 26 then they have other incentives like losing 10lbs, quit smoking, lowering your blood pressure. Its a really good benefit that not very many people take advantage of.  (Now that I say that I am curious to know the % of employees that do participate in this)

I will end with this alarming statistic that was thrown out during our seminar:
People with a BMI above 30 call in sick on average 14x a year!
People with a  BMI under 25 call in sick on average 4x a year!