Descending Dove

Factory reset.

Long story short. Two weeks of my Fitbit blanking out my HR during my classes, it was finally suggested to hit “factory reset.”

Famous last words, right? There goes three hair raising hours on a Saturday afternoon. 🙍🏻‍♀️

Don’t we all sometimes need a factory reset? Life gets going too fast, too much information is flying all at one time, your head starts spinning and then finally you sit down and say “I need to reset.”

So here is my suggestion. Hit your reset button at least one time, once a day. 👈🏻

Reset your diet, reset your workout, reset your train of thought. Reset yourself back to factory settings and start again.

Did you mess up your diet over the weekend? Missed a hard workout? Didn’t get project X done and ready to throw in the towel on any and all of the above?

Well don’t. Reset. Start again. Because whatever it is might in fact start working again after the dreaded “factory reset.”

I have factory reset plans available, and y’all know how to reach me. 🙋🏻‍♀️

Your body will achieve what your mind believes.

Your first goal may not be a bikini body, but simply walking up a flight of stairs.

It might not be to run a 5K, but to walk from your car to the store.

Whatever the goal, let it be small. Many small goals will equal a larger one…it’s getting from small to big that makes the difference. 😉

Having a plan is half the battle. It’s the action you put into the plan that will make you win.

I think there is something that drives us all to a goal. If it’s finishing school, the career lift off we work so hard for, that pesky “get fit” goal. 💪🏻

When it means more to us than just a diploma, an increase in our job title, or losing some weight…

That’s when change actually starts to take place. The ACTION between “wouldn’t it be nice to…” and “I am _.”

And within that switch, comes the accomplishment of your goal. It is possible…just act on it. ⭐️

Spinach, Tomato, and Quinoa Breakfast Casserole

Make this pan of veggie-packed egg and quinoa casserole and you’re set for a week’s worth of breakfasts!

It makes five servings of hearty, protein-packed meals. Just reheat briefly in a microwave or toaster oven, and go.

Quinoa might sound like a surprising choice for a morning meal, but its nutty flavor complements the dish and combine with cottage cheese (or ricotta) makes for a filling, protein-packed meal.

Use this recipe as a template for other delicious combinations. You can swap the spinach and tomatoes for any other vegetables you like. Try kale and mushrooms, sautéed bell peppers and onions, or asparagus and artichoke hearts.

This breakfast casserole recipe was made vegetarian, but it would also taste great with cubes of lean ham, turkey bacon, or chicken breast.

https://www.beachbodyondemand.com/blog/spinach-tomato-and-quinoa-breakfast-casserole-recipe

Simply stopping to breathe and stretch your shoulders and neck can release tension from a busy day and/or your workout.

Because we spend too much of our day hunched over our phone or working on a computer, we hold tension in our neck, shoulders, wrists and forearms.

I routinely use this sequence with my clients at the end of a workout to help them set up their day. I also say that it’s important to repeat a sequence like this before bed to relieve any tension the day brings.

I recorded a quick sequence so you too can enjoy 7 minutes of yoga stress relief. I hope y’all enjoy! Namaste. 🧘‍♀️

Link:

To maintain my personal trainer certificate, I go through continued education courses throughout the year and I recently completed and received my behavioral change specialization certificate. 💁🏻‍♀️

With that comes advanced knowledge to understand the how and why people go about wanting to change their health and fitness behaviors, then helping them follow through with an action plan toward their goals and to maintain those lifestyle changes.

There is a bumpy road between WANTING to live a healthy lifestyle, creating ACTION on a program, and then MAINTAINING a healthy lifestyle.

There are obstacles, barriers and mental blocks that you must break through. The biggest challenge is adopting a doable plan that will get you there.

And that’s where I come in. 🙋🏻‍♀️ When you contemplate the want, there needs to be a plan, and with that plan comes action, and with that action comes work.

Your action plan then leads to attaining your goals and maintaining a healthy lifestyle. It’s not always easy and that’s the advantage of having a coach who can help you through those steps from “I need to get healthy” to “I have a healthy lifestyle.”

Y’all know how to reach me. 👍🏻

Never go to a restaurant full on hungry.

You have no idea how many people I know that will “eat light” all day to “save up” to go out to eat later on.

That’s the equivalent to not going clothes shopping for a year and then walking into Nordstrom’s. 💁🏻‍♀️

It’s a recipe for a disaster and there is no way to return the food and get your money back. 🤦🏻‍♀️

What you don’t know won’t hurt you??

When you eat out, you can order your meal a specific way, but what you don’t see is exactly how it’s prepared.

When you eat at home, you control the ingredients and also how your meal is prepared.

What you see IS what you get. 👈🏻

Is going out to dinner a special occasion or a routine action?

Just to compare calories and macros:

Chicken Parmesan from Olive Garden:
Calories: 1060
Carbs: 52g
Protein: 7g
Fat: 52g

Make at home Chicken Parmesan:
Calories: 251
Carbs: 14g
Protein: 31g
Fat: 9g

Obviously, your portion sizes will be smaller eating at home, but that’s with anything in our supersized restaurant world. You can bake the chicken instead of frying and use whole grain pasta or spaghetti squash for regular noodles.

Recipe below.

150 minutes of moderate exercise a week is only 21.4 minutes per day.

That’s it. 21.4 minutes. 👈🏻

What can 21.4 minutes a day do?

Regular, moderate physical activity such as brisk walking can increase life expectancy by several years, even for people who are overweight, a new large study shows.

While higher levels of activity were linked to even longer life expectancies, moderate activity was beneficial, according to the study of people ages 40 and older. The benefit of exercise was seen regardless of people’s weight, age, sex and health conditions such as heart disease and cancer.

For example, obese participants who did moderate exercise for 150 minutes a week lived an average of 2.7 to 3.4 years longer, depending on how obese they were, than those who were obese and did not exercise.

Those who were overweight (but not obese) and did 150 minutes of moderate exercise weekly lived 3.9 years longer those who were overweight and did not exercise.

Normal-weight people who exercised for 150 minutes or more weekly lived about 4.7 years longer than normal-weight people who did not do regular moderate exercise.

“Many individuals in the U.S. are overweight or obese,” and find that reducing their weight is difficult, said study researcher I-Min Lee, a professor of epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health. “Our study shows that by being physically active, even overweight or obese people can increase their life expectancy, compared to someone of the same weight who is not active.”

Here is a link to the article:

https://www.livescience.com/36723-exercise-life-expectancy-overweight-obese.html

So now I will ask you this. How many minutes today have you been checking your phone? Watching Netflix? Been wondering what to do next because you are bored?

21.4 minutes. 👈🏻

You don’t have to go hardcore everyday with your workouts and eating habits, just make everyday something. 👍🏻

If exercise just isn’t your thing, it’s not the only way to have good heart and muscular health. If you don’t like eating veggies and baked chicken all the time, that’s not the one and only route to eating healthy.

If you spend a good amount of time in your waking hours moving and being active, eating healthy food and taking care of yourself, that’s a hell of a lot better than nothing, right? 💁🏻‍♀️

“Healthy” doesn’t have to be hardcore, so even if it’s just “something” in your lifestyle, it’s better than “nothing” at all. 😉

If you want a better plan with something, let me know. 🙋🏻‍♀️

Two words. I can’t.

“I can’t do (that), so it would be a waste of time.”

Define (that) because we say this to ourselves every day with various different (thats).

I don’t know how to eat healthy, so I’ll just continue as is. I wouldn’t be good at exercise, so I’m not even going to start. I can’t seem to lose weight because I’ve done everything, so I just stopped trying anything different.

If our kids kept saying this, wouldn’t we put a stop to it? But yet we say this stuff to ourselves all the time. We talk to ourselves internally in a different way than we would ever verbalize or be “ok” with anyone else saying.

We are our own worst enemy. 🤦🏻‍♀️

But that can change. Every time you have a negative thought, think about something positive you can do.

I don’t know how to eat healthy, but I’m willing to learn. I wouldn’t be good at exercise, but I’m going to park farther away to get in more steps. I can’t seem to lose weight, so I think I’m going to really examine why.

As a coach, I not only educate and motivate others, I also have to calm down those negative thoughts and help you replace them with positive affirmations that lead you to succeed. 💁🏻‍♀️

It finally feels like Fall in South Texas!!! 🍂🍂🍂

And next week the temps are back in the 90s.🤔

I started working on my newsletter for November and the big subject I am touching on is KISS.

Keep it simple silly.

Too often we look so much at the big picture that we don’t focus on the smaller pictures along the way that create the larger collage.

We set a goal, get hyped up, absorb everything there is to know. Then a week later, we stop trying because we are overwhelmed and confused.

It happens so often that we get the feeling that we never seem to get anything done, never seem to accomplish the goals we set.

So I encourage to KISS. 💋 Keep it simple silly. Set a goal, create a simple plan, gather information throughout and keep plugging away to your goal in small, manageable ways.

Maybe then we will all be able to say we can KISS our way to accomplishment. 👍🏻