5 Km running, 500 rowing, 10 min cross trainner :-)) 47,30 min

Well done hunny!!!!! It was fantastic!! XXX

Losing Weight – Mental Strength

What is Mental Strength?
We all have it, although some people seem to have more than others! Do you notice how some people seem to be able to stick to their plans and achieve their goals! Whereas others seem to give in and fall back in to bad ways! Mental strength is needed to stick to your intention despite all the things that life and our own destructive habits throw at us.

It is hard work; you are often fighting engrained bad habits around poor diet, lack of exercise, negative thinking and bad self talk.

So the key is: Break your bad habits and create new good ones! You need to develop your mental strength.

What Helps to Develop Mental Strength?
We have already covered in the blog ‘Losing Weight – Intention’, you have to have a powerful vision that you believe in and don’t lose sight of. When the going gets tough you need something you can easily bring back to the forefront of your thinking.

You need to believe in yourself. The people who succeed haven’t got anything that you don’t have; they are ordinary people doing extraordinary things. They believe they can do it, and when you talk to them they will say that the voice in their head, ‘self talk’, is positively supporting them! No magic recipe here; you need to study and reflect on what your ‘self talk’ is saying, analyse it and dig for the truth, invariably it won’t be true, so then you can change the message.

From setting your intention (objectives) you should know some of the negative things that are preventing you from achieving your goals. You need to make a commitment to face these, if it is changing your diet or getting into an exercise programme, do it! Face the issue and confront it and keep confronting it even if you fail the 1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd …… time. Get back up and get back on with facing the problem.

Regularly review what you are doing against your objectives, make sure you are staying on track – reflect!

Make sure you are doing everything you can to get enough sleep. Research generally says you will need between 6 and 8 hours a night, but the main thing is that you listen to you mind and body, you should try getting some extra sleep and see how you feel. As a rule, don’t ‘sleep in’ to get extra sleep, go to bed early.

Work, exercise, sleep and being with family and friends are all important, but don’t under estimate just chilling out. Make sure you take time out to do nothing; this will help you reflect on how you are feeling about your objectives and the progress you are making. Meditation is a great tool for helping out here!

Get a support network that helps, create a network of friends and family with whom you can share your successes and failures. Seriously consider those people that don’t help you, how can you minimise their impact!

What Hinders the Development of Mental Strength?
I don’t want to be a ‘Kill Joy’ but are the benefits you are getting from alcohol really worth it? I know from personal experience that Alcohol destroys ‘will power’, alcoholic drinks are not only high in energy, they spike your sugar levels to make you hungry, and then you just need to snack! Drugs – Where you have to take these for medical reasons then ensure you consult with your medical practitioner on how best to manage their impact. Illegal drugs it goes without saying are pointless and do you absolutely no service, seek help straight away if you have a problem.

We will be talking about good food practices over the coming months. The key elements that will damage your success and mean that you need even greater mental strength are:

• A lack of fresh fruit & vegetables
• Portion size too large
• Sugar spiking
• Too much processed foods
• Engrained bad habits

The same goes for issues relating to exercise, what are the usual problems that make things even harder for you:

• Lack of regular exercise
• Sedentary job / lifestyle
• Reduced strength, flexibility
• Overweight, unfit and probably unhealthy
• No goals or targets

You CAN do it.
There is no doubt you can develop enough mental strength to achieve your objectives, you can find plenty of examples of people beating their weight problems as I know myself, having lost significant amounts of weight; ordinary people can do extraordinary things!

Start thinking about how you can implement some of these changes, don’t wait, just do it. Keep doing it, even if you fail, get back on plan, keep going.

Let us know how you get on!

attila

(wrote : Gavin Henderson)

Weight-loss help: Gain control of emotional eating

Find out how emotional eating can sabotage your weight-loss efforts and get tips to regain control of your eating habits.

By Mayo Clinic staff

Sometimes the strongest cravings for food happen when you’re at your weakest point emotionally. You may turn to food for comfort — consciously or unconsciously — when you’re facing a difficult problem, stress or just looking to keep yourself occupied.

But emotional eating can sabotage your weight-loss efforts. Emotional eating often leads to eating too much, especially too much of high-calorie, sweet, fatty foods. But the good news is that if you’re prone to emotional eating, you can take steps to regain control of your eating habits and get back on track with your weight-loss goals.

The connection between mood, food and weight loss

Emotional eating is eating as a way to suppress or soothe negative emotions, such as stress, anger, fear, boredom, sadness and loneliness. Both major life events and the hassles of daily life can trigger negative emotions that lead to emotional eating and disrupt your weight-loss efforts. These triggers may include:

• Unemployment
• Financial pressure
• Health problems
• Relationship conflicts
• Work stress
• Bad weather
• Fatigue

Although some people actually eat less in the face of strong emotions, if you’re in emotional distress you may turn to impulsive or binge eating — you may rapidly eat whatever’s convenient, without even enjoying it. In fact, your emotions may become so tied to your eating habits that you automatically reach for a sweet treat whenever you’re angry or stressed without stopping to think about what you’re doing.

Food also serves as a distraction. If you’re worried about an upcoming event or stewing over a conflict, for instance, you may focus on eating comfort food instead of dealing with the painful situation.

Whatever emotions drive you to overeat, the end result is often the same. The emotions return, and you may also now bear the additional burden of guilt about setting back your weight-loss goal. This can also lead to an unhealthy cycle — your emotions trigger you to overeat, you beat yourself up for getting off your weight-loss track, you feel badly, and you overeat again.

Be patient and persevere

It might take a week or two before you notice any changes, but they will steadily appear. After the first month you’ll be able to see the results and measure them in terms of looser fitting clothes.

Keeping your motivation up is one of the most difficult aspects of dieting. There will be days when healthy eating goes out the window, and there will be weeks where you may not lose any weight – or put a little back on.

This is normal for everyone – dieters or not – so don’t let it undo your plans for a slimmer you. You’re not doing anything ‘wrong’, but you may need to look at your plan. Do you need to increase your activity levels? Make a few more changes to your diet? Put more effort into sticking to your current plan?

The other side of this is to make sure you celebrate your goals. While there’s joy enough in stepping on the scales and seeing them dip lower, be sure to mark long-term progress with a reward – such as new clothes or time off from domestic chores.

Celebrating is also a way to involve your nearest and dearest – it’s up to you whether you want their encouragement in the form of gentle reminders not to eat certain foods. But support from other people can get you through the bumpy patches.

Health benefits of weight loss

Studies show that overweight women who lose between 10lb and 20lb halve their risk of developing diabetes. For men, the risk of heart problems reduces considerably.

Generally, we gain weight as we age. A few pounds over the years are not a problem, but people who gain more than 20lb compared to their weight as an 18-year-old will rapidly increase their risk of health problems due to that extra weight. In particular, women increase their risk of heart attack and double their risk of dying from cancer.

It may seem like these are problems to worry about in the future, but time flies by and tomorrow becomes today. By keeping your weight in the healthy range, you’re less likely to be troubled by illnesses in your later years.

While agave (pronounced ah-GAH-vay) is best recognized as the plant from which tequila is made, it has also been used for thousands of years as an ingredient in food. The nectar made from the plant is known in Mexico as aguamiel, or “honey water.”

The Aztecs prized the agave as a gift from the gods and used the liquid from its core to flavor foods and drinks. Now, due to increasing awareness of agave nectar’s many beneficial properties, it is becoming the preferred sweetener of health conscious consumers, doctors, and natural foods cooks alike.

Where Does Agave Nectar Come From?

Agave nectar (sometimes called agave syrup) is most often produced from the Blue Agaves that thrive in the volcanic soils of Southern Mexico. Agaves are large, spikey plants that resemble cactus or yuccas in both form and habitat, but they are actually succulents similar to the familiar Aloe Vera.

Agaves come in many sizes and colors — well over 100 species. Due to the Blue Agave’s high carbohydrate content (which results in a high percentage of fructose in the final nectar), Blue Agave is the preferred species for producing nectar. Though there are other species used to produce agave nectars, such as the Maguey Agave, the premium nectars are produced from 100% Weber Blue Agave.

How is Agave Nectar Made?

When the agave has grown to 7-10 years old, the leaves of the plant are cut off, revealing the core of the plant (called the “pina”). When harvested, the pina resembles a giant pineapple and can weigh in at 50 to 150 pounds.

To make the agave nectar, sap is extracted from the pina, filtered, and heated at a low temperature, which breaks down the carbohydrates into sugars. Lighter and darker varieties of agave nectar are made from the same plants. Because of the low temperatures used in processing many varieties (under 118°F) raw foods enthusiasts generally regard agave nectar as a raw food.

What Does Agave Nectar Taste Like?

The taste of agave nectar is comparable, though not identical, to honey. Many people who do not like the taste of honey find agave a more palatable choice. It also has none of the bitter aftertaste associated with artificial sweeteners.

Though some purveyors offer a half dozen varieties of agave nectar based on different plant varieties and varied preparation methods, most brands offer two types: a light and a dark. The lighter syrups undergo less heating and a more thorough filtration to produce a more mildly flavored product that is neutral enough to be used in many culinary applications. The darker syrups are filtered less, and the solids left in the syrup make for a stronger nectar with a flavor sometimes compared to maple syrup.

form more information visit  http://www.allaboutagave.com/

We did our first running training!!!!! Jo was fantastic!!!! 24 min jogging  wwwwwwooooooooowwwww

and some maths 100 days + 50 training = -52 pounds       WELL DONE!

Jo felt the BURN on the kettlebell training tonight!!!!!

We going to start to run with Jo from next week. I would like to take her for a 5km run 6 weeks time :-)))

Jo has never run before and she was exhausted after 1 min running……….LOOK AT HER NOW!!!! WE GOING TO SHOW YOU EVERYTHING IS POSSIBLE!