Living Magazine Fall 2014 Living Magazine | Page 8

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your lifestyle. Eliminate the unimportant, time-consuming activities that get in the way of living each day to
the fullest. Make time to ponder and consider your
wellness. Don’t be so rushed that you force yourself
into a position that you limit your options when it
comes to food (yes, that means avoid fast food!). And
most importantly, make time to have fun while being
healthy. No matter what level of fitness you are at,
there are ways to have fun while being active. Search
out those things and enrich your life with them.
Remember that this is all about long-term wellness,
not a short-term competition. Starving your body or
feeding it a drastic diet to see quick results will only
hurt you in the long run. Begin by developing healthy
eating habits that you can sustain for the rest of your
life. Keeping your body’s cells well fed with the proper
nutrition is essential in the weight loss process.
Don’t let the tiny setbacks outweigh your overall
progress. I weighed myself every morning during the
competition. My weight would sometimes fluctuate 5
pounds up or down within 24 hours. At first, I was
mortified on the days the scale would tell me that I had
gained several pounds. But as I stuck to my goals and
followed the program I made for myself, I learned that
this is perfectly normal. In the end, I stopped worrying
about the day-to-day fluctuations and was amazed at
the progress I saw in the long run.

STEPS TO SUCCESS
1. NEVER GO A SINGLE DAY WITHOUT NOURISHING YOUR
BODY WITH LOTS OF HEALTHY, NUTRITIOUS FOOD. No
matter how hard you work out, you will not lose weight
with a poor diet.

2. CREATE A WORKOUT ROUTINE WHERE YOU CAN
TRACK PROGRESS. Watch your improvements from
week to week. It’s motivating! There are many great free
apps for tracking fitness on your phone.

3. MAKE SURE YOUR WORKOUT ROUTINE INCLUDES
DECENT AMOUNTS OF WEIGHT/STRENGTH TRAINING.
Building muscle burns calories, tearing muscle down and
repairing it burns even more. Not to mention it looks
good, which increases your confidence and makes you
want to work harder.

4. EAT A LOW GLYCEMIC DIET. Foods with high sugar
content (that includes starchy foods like potatoes) raise
insulin levels that aid in the storage of fat and can cause
cravings when the excess of insulin causes low blood
sugar. This creates a cycle of high and low blood sugar
that can lead to binging. Balancing my sugar intake has
been one of the most important changes I’ve made.
5. CREATE A SUPPORT SYSTEM. Find friends that will keep
you accountable to your goals. In the beginning, the
majority of my success came from letting my friends
push me. Even now it is always more enjoyable to work
out and be active with friends.

6. MEDITATION IS A VERY POWERFUL TOOL IN THE
WEIGHT LOSS PROCESS. It is the link between our
conscious goals and getting our body to respond
through our subconscious. There are many good hypnosis recordings out there. I prefer one that has you create
an image in your mind of what you want your future
body to look like.

7. IDENTIFY REASONS THAT MAY BE KEEPING YOU FROM
LOSING WEIGHT. Emotional obesity is a real thing.
Problems from the past you may not be aware of and
that haven’t been addressed could be keeping you from
weight loss success. “The Gabriel Method” does an
excellent job identifying and exploring what some of
these issues might be.

8. SLEEP. If you aren’t sleeping well or enough, you are
crippling your body’s ability to recover and perform at its
best. Make it a priority to get a good night’s rest every
day. For me, lack of sleep equals lack of will power.

9. LOVE YOUR BODY. Love everything about it and don’t be
ashamed of it for any reason. I found that respecting my
body and not feeling ashamed of it allowed me to work
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