It’s perfect!

The timing, that is. To create your own healthy, fit, happy and hot ripple effect.

Of course, it’s ALWAYS perfect timing when it comes to building and reinforcing healthy habits.

Yet somehow coming off of the ‘season of indulgence’ we become more strongly attuned to how much better fit, trim and energetic feel than acidic, fluffy, and fuzzy. Know what I mean?

And for each choice you make on the behalf of your own health and beauty, a ripple effect is created.  These ripples have potential far-reaching effects as your choices become habits, then lifestyle, then destiny.   Things weren’t ‘meant’ to be, you MAKE them be.  Get it?

Set up a schedule and keep  it simple

Your assignment – should you choose to accept it (you know you want to!)- is to set up a schedule for the next week.  Sit down and DO it.  Just look to the next 7 days, then reassess.  You can do anything for a week.

To keep it simple, let’s focus on the 3 basics:

• exercise
• food plan
• mindset

1)  Exercise

If you don’t like the word ‘exercise’, get over it.  Or just slip in “activity” or “workouts”  in exchange.  It all comes out the same in the wash.  Moving your body.

Remember this is easy to structure – just take a look at the 4 pillars of the ideal workout schedule.  To recap, each week you need to include:

1. cardiorespiratory:  aerobic exercise of moderate intensity for 30 to 60 minutes at least 5 x a week, or higher intensity for 20 minutes 3 times per week, or some combination of these.  This can be accomplished with 3 Burst Training Sessions (pick up your free guide to Burst Training in my kit HERE).  Or you could go on 5  – 30 minute brisk walks a week.  Mix and match as you like
2. resistance exercise:  work every muscle with overload challenge at least 2 times during the week.  You can up it if you like.  2 – 3 times is bare minimum.  If you are lifting heavy resistance, you need more rest time.  If you are using less resistance and higher repetitions, you don’t need as much recovery time.  Both techniques build muscle - just be sure you are working to challenge.
3. flexibility exercise:  stretch purposefully 2 – 3x a week.  This may well be built into your resistance training program, depending.
4. neuromotor exercise:  for balance, agility, and coordination 2x a week.  Your resistance exercise choice may fulfill this.  To do so, it must challenge balance and coordination, requiring concentration to keep yourself aligned using core muscles along with your prime movers such as legs and arms.  For example, if you are doing all of your resistance exercise on a gym machine, you are not getting sufficient neuromotor exercise because the machine is guiding your balance.  If you are using all free weights or body weight, you may be getting all the neuromotor challenge you need.

2)  Food plan

The plant-based fitness expert’s blog is bulging with articles about eating, food, and healthy fuel.

To assist, for this week’s assignment take a look at the Julieanna Hever, the Plant-based Dietician’s, Food Plate.   It’s a simple and easy visual for building your daily food plan.

These Food Plate charts can be purchased  – along with her book The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Plant-Based Nutrition - at Julieanna’s website here.

3)  Mindset

Let’s face it.  None if it gets done – the workouts, the activity, the eating and nutrition – without the right frame of mind.

It’s listed last in the triad not because it is least important, but rather because it serves as the base of the Success Pyramid.

When was the last time you sat down and listed – heck, the last time you even clearly thought about – what your goals are with health, fitness, weight, and body shaping.  Have you been specific about what you want, or have you just been muddling forward hoping for the best?

You wouldn’t build a house like that.  Why try to build a body like that?

Mindset assignment:  Sit down today for 5 minutes and specifically list what you want to achieve in the next month with your health, weight, and body-shaping.  Make your statements in the positive, and state them in the present to help you connect and align with realizing your vision.

Craft 3 – 5 sentences from these thoughts, ideas, and statements.  They should be associated in your mind with specific images and energy connections, creating an emotional draw for you.

Write these sentences on a 3 x 5 card.  Carry this card with you.  Pull it out and read it to yourself, if possible out loud, 5 times a day.  It doesn’t matter if you’re in the mood to do it.  It doesn’t matter if you believe what you are reading.  I’m not asking you to change the world in a day here.  This isn’t ‘affirmations’. What I want you to do is start to build new patterns of thinking starting with making new suggestions to yourself. 

Heck, if you are rife with negative self-talk, might as well experiment with something else, right?.  You can take it further later, this is just to get you started.

There you have it.  3 assignments for 7 days.  Use the momentum of new interest in your health coming off of the holidays.  Don’t wait until you are ‘in the mood’ to organize.  By organizing and making plans NOW, you’ll get yourself in the mood.  And then watch what happens after you complete your first day’s goals.  You will build momentum and craft an exceptional week.

Ripple effect.

Let me know if you have any questions about this simple, 7 – day guide.  You can post them in comments below.  Also, please post your workout plan, food tips, or mindset assignments to share.

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