My youngest son is in Kindergarten this year and this is the age where they bring home all sorts of things about their family, their friends, what they like, what they don’t like and so on from school.  So last night, as I’m sitting in the family room vegetating on the couch (complete and utter shame), my son decides to go through his school pile on the other side of the room and bring me select items.  Somehow in this pile I missed this “What I Know About My Mommy” write up that came home in last month or so that describes a bunch of things my son knows about me.  Who hears me when I say that these things are absolutely precious and well worth the read?  Well this one did not disappoint.  I’m not going to put them all here but the one that got me…

My mommy’s name is “Jodi”.

My mommy is “22” years old.  Hahahaha!!  Almost 2 times over!

But the kicker—cuz there were some good ones—is what I do for a living:

“talks on the phone and is doing work with her friends”.

Oh you gotta love him!  Well he’s right, mommy talks on the phone for work and the women I work with are ‘friends’ in an odd way and honestly, I love what I do.  But one thing I do not love about what I do is running into things that I cannot explain, see more often than I like and cannot find research for.  These things drive me crazy because you want to help but you are not sure how and one of those things is a food intolerance.

Think about this scenario: one day…for no particular reason that you know of at the time…you suddenly find yourself sick as a dog after eating your lunch.  It’s the same lunch you have had for months.  You made it so you know its fine, it’s not spoiled and it came from the batch you ate the day before and so on, so you know it’s not that the food is bad.  But for some reason you are nauseous beyond belief and your digestive track is doing the Olympics.  If this was just one day, you’d overlook it.  But it’s more than just one day—it’s been a few weeks now.  And there’s no pattern to when you’re getting sick vs. what you are eating.  You start to guess a whole host of things wrong with you beginning with celiac, moving over to lactose intolerance and rounding out with a fresh case of IBS but I am here to tell you that it’s most likely none of those.  What seems to be killing us more is that we are intolerant to the foods we call “healthy”.

For the longest time I would talk about rotating foods in our daily diet because it’s not healthy to eat the same thing day in and day out.  I would say that you are limiting the amount of nutrients in your diet and that you are exposing yourself to the same pesticides all the time and they will build up in your system, etc, etc, etc.  At the time, I knew this to be true through research but what I didn’t know was one step further which are the food intolerances that created.  I didn’t have hardcore proof—just an inkling—and I didn’t have the amount of experience I have now to be able to stand upon what I was saying until now.

EATING THE SAME FOODS DAY IN AND DAY OUT FOR WEEKS ON END WILL ABSOLUTELY PUT YOU IN A POSITION TO DEVELOP A FOOD INTOLERANCE.  YOU MAY NEVER DEVELOP ONE, BUT YOUR POTENTIAL IS GREATER THAN OTHERS.

Ok, let’s first acknowledge that that is based on anecdotal information and not hard core, double blind studies.  Second, I have not worked with anyone who has a food intolerance that has also had a varied diet but that’s not to say that they do not exist–I just have not worked with them.  So with that being said, let me tell you about the 3 main culprits that we like to eat like psychos that could be getting ready to wreak havoc in your life:

Egg Whites

Yes we love them because they are fat free, a complete source of amino acids and the only acceptable protein for breakfast besides protein powder (for most folk) but these suckers are a loaded weapon.  Besides the obvious fact that eggs aren’t eggs anymore mainly because chickens aren’t chickens anymore, the thing that makes these things so lethal is that they are easy.  Not only are they easy, they are the only acceptable binding agent out there for us clean eaters (protein pancakes or muffins anyone?).  So not only do you eat them every day, but you eat them 2 and 3 times per day.  You put them in shakes, you scramble them, you have muffins, you have bars, you have a ton of different things all made with egg whites.  OY!!  But what you may not know is that egg whites are a known allergen and eating large amounts of them may cause a food intolerance.  How I’ve seen this one show up:  nausea or vomiting, headaches and red rashes in the winter months.

Chicken

I do want to ask…is that what they’re calling it these days?  Chicken is so full of estrogen and antibiotics that I’m not sure that they can call it chicken anymore.  But here’s another one that we eat on a level that’ll make your hair stand on end.  Many of us have some form of chicken EVERY SINGLE DAY.  Really right now?  And most of the times we are buying either the big Costco pack of it or we’re buying it at our local grocery store so we’re not getting an organic chicken or even an “all natural” chicken.  No, we’re knee deep in chemicals and additives talking about “we’re healthy”.  YIKES!  How I’ve seen this one show up:  MAJOR hormonal issues and/or super sensitive to all the other known allergens.  So you’re this walking pin cushion in terms of food additives and everything sets you off in either a rash, bloating, nausea, diarrhea, you name it.  But because chicken is so prevalent in your diet, you cannot lock it down to just that so you do not suspect.

Peanut Butter

What a nuisance PB is.  First, y’alls are obsessed.  A jar of PB can silence a room full of women.  It’s the Kryptonite of clean eaters.  You go from this hard core chic who can shut anything down in terms of temptations to a blubbering fool when someone pulls out a jar of this stuff.  It’s amazing to me the hold this food has on some of you.  And because PB is yummy, smooth on the palette and a form of good fat you eat it EVERY DAY.  No, I mean EVERY DAY.  You have anywhere from 2 to 4 tablespoons of PB a day—no joke.  However, PB is more of an allergen than any of those mentioned above and I’m not sure you care. Haha!  All joking aside, this is how I have seen this one show up:  a strong wheat/grain intolerance.  You cut out the grain thinking it’s the grain when it’s not—it’s the PB.  Nausea eating chicken or egg yolks.  Celiac symptoms such as diarrhea, loose movements or lack of nutrients even though you’re eating fine.

Let me make sure I say this so you’re not confused:

• I am not a doctor.
• I do not claim to be one.
• This is all anecdotal information.
• The clients that I work with that have verified these intolerances have done so through medical professionals.  So if I cannot verify that they have seen a doctor, I have not taken their situation into consideration.
• If you suspect you have this, go see a doctor.

This information is provided so that you can navigate your lifestyle effectively and begin to be proactive about the foods you eat instead of robotic.  Change the foods in your diet regularly!!  It can save you a ton of tummy ache.  If you are not sure how to do that, go here.  This is a series I did on how to safely and effectively change up your diet and keep the lean body you like and are used to.  Cool?  We’re in this for the long haul ladies.  Woop woop!!

You know I talk to so many of you crazy ladies all the time.  And I tell you all the time that you do not have the “one thing” that makes you more crazy than any other women in the world.  Somehow we always think that we are the only wack job out there and I am here to assure you that there are plenty of wack jobs out there—you aren’t the only one.  But lately I have been having some heart wrenching conversations with just about everyone I talk to (including my own conversations where I find myself confessing to my own friends) and there seems to be a common theme to them all:  a call for freedom.

Next week is Thanksgiving and Friday marks off the official beginning to the “holiday season”.  I figured in light of that, I would put my Christmas wish list in early.  I pray that yours looks very similar to mine.

All I want for Christmas is freedom for my sisters and me.  Freedom to…

• walk into a room and not wonder what anyone was thinking
• order anything off the menu without making an excuse
• get up and not step on the scale
• step on the scale and not care what it said
• step on the scale and have it say something jacked up and not care
• look at ourselves naked in the mirror and LOVE what we see REGARDLESS of what shape we are in
• to eat without wondering what others were thinking about what’s on our plates
• wear something form fitting without thinking about Spanx, bulges, ripples, dimples, divots or the like
• miss a day of working out and it not wreak havoc in our lives
• stop comparing ourselves to others
• stop finding something wrong with us every time we look in the mirror
• keep a tray of brownies on our counter or a cheesecake in the fridge or cookies in the jar without being compelled to eat it all day long
• eat something without calculating its cost in workouts for the rest of the week
• love healthy food like we love warm bread with butter
• have a healthy relationship with food instead of demonizing it to be able to keep this ship afloat
• to gain a pound or two without us feeling like we failed at something or can’t “keep our heads in the game”
• walk away from negative self talk, feeling like a failure all the time or thinking we are “less than” no matter WHAT we do
• be out of shape for a little while and it’s no big deal
• not be judged
• not judge

• share all the psycho stuff floating in our brains to someone safe who cares and understands and not worry endlessly now if they think we’re a wack job that has psycho stuff floating in our brains
• not fit in with everyone else
• eat without wondering if that was the one thing that was going to finally make us gain 100 pounds
• stop searching for the perfect workout program
• get on Facebook, Twitter or what have you and not feel like everybody else in the whole world has a better body than us
• live without anxiety, fear, stress or the burden to achieve
• sit quietly in a room and not be intimidated by the silence
• keep from saying biting things to other women
• keep from receiving biting words from other women
• want the body without the backlash and judgment that comes from it
• keep from turning around and judging others now that we have it

We all have tiny voices in our heads telling us something at some time that isn’t cool.  Stop listening to it, please.  Enjoy this weekend.  Enjoy this coming holiday season.  Enjoy this journey.  When you feel yourself succumbing to any of these things on the list, STOP!  Instead, begin to walk through every reason as to why whatever you are thinking isn’t true.  You deserve freedom girl.  We all do.  It’s our right as a woman.  Now make it happen today…please.  Remember:  you are not the only wack job out there.

With lots of love and understanding…. Woop woop!

I wrote this back in the winter time and it was the last email I sent out from Jodiojo.  I never had the chance to follow up with the series and put on paper all that I see day to day with clean eaters.  I am sending them out in the beginning of next week.  If you are not signed up on the blog, yet, you still have time.  This is an eye opening series that I am sure at some time in your clean living history you will experience.  Sign up and find out what you don’t even know you don’t know.

One of the most frightening things that I could ever read is an email from someone who wants to works with us that starts out with, “I run/bike/do cardio/whatever 7 days a week for at least an hour, eat clean, lift 4 to 5 days a week and want to lose X amount of pounds for my sister’s wedding in 8 weeks.  Can you help me?”  Ummm…

Getting lean the first time around is not that hard.  For some people it is a chore but for many of us, it is the most magical time period ever because you are on top of the world and you are invincible.  You look great, you feel great, all is well in the land and you think this will never end.  In fact, you walk around speaking “truth” to everyone about ‘how they need to clean up their act’ and ‘they should get in shape’ and ‘how it’s not that hard’.  You have become a walking billboard for the American Heart Association and you shun those that take elevators and eat junk food.  At some point we all lose our minds and become, even if just a little bit, self righteous and pious in our fitness.  It happens to the best of us; don’t think about it too much about it.

But then trouble begins to brew in paradise.  We start to have little things here and there that undermine our progress or even worse, jeopardize our maintenance levels.   This sets off a conundrum known as, “Oh I’ll just…” which is one of the most damaging phenomenoms  known to woman-kind because it takes all logical, rational thought and turns it on its head.  Basically, you’re going down hard because you begin to lose control and you think “you will just do XYZ” to get it back but it doesn’t work.  Somehow, someway you pushed it and the result of that is either plateau or dangerous territory known as weight gain.  None of us really want to admit that we’ve gotten to that place so I am going to spell it out for you so you can connect the dots.  Here are 3 common scenarios for you in terms of pushing it:

1. You cannot stop cheating for the life of you. In the beginning it wasn’t so bad because it didn’t affect your weight or your leanness so who cared, right?  But now, you’re softer and up a few pounds and you cannot “fix it” no matter what you do.  Sugar or salt can send you into a fit of nibbles that is essentially uncontrollable and mentally debilitating and happens way more often than you would like to admit.
2. You are falling apart at the seams. Because of the endless cardio and workouts, there is not a part of you that doesn’t ache.  You have just about every “itis” you can think of:  bursitis, tendonitis, shin splints, rotator cuff and so on.  You feel like a walking zombie because you are in perpetual motion and after a while you don’t even notice the pain anymore.
3. You are an emotional wreck. Can I just admit to you that I am a crier?  It takes nothing to make me cry—in private.  In public, I can hold it together like duct tape on a kid’s toy but you…you can’t hold *anything* together.  You cry at Bud Light commercials (those dogs are cute, though) for Heaven’s sake!  Anxiety, irrational behavior, drama and crankiness define your life now.  Girl, you are not happy and we can’t leave you like that.  There’s not enough tissues in the world.

If you have any one of those scenarios, are very lean and are working out hard…you are who I am talking to right now.   Fighting for leanness is bad business…seriously…knock it off now.  Instead, let’s talk about our options and what that really looks in the world of clean living.   There are 3 different situations you may find yourself in or have found yourself in already and handling them in the best possible manner could save you hours of cardio and pounds of regret.  Each one of these situations represents an email in this series and will have real guidelines in them to help you navigate your journey from lean to not so lean to lean again.

Email #1               Being Realistic:  What true maintenance looks like.

Email #2               Being Diligent:  Getting back to lean after gaining a few pounds.

Email #3               Being Smart:  Knowing when to say ‘uncle’.

If I do nothing else I want to impress this upon you:  There are a lot of ‘gurus’ in this industry.  Many of them are very good at what they do but very few of them do this.  Make sure all the blogs that you are reading and all the articles you are absorbing are talking about lean folk trying to get lean again.  Most of them are always referring to the first time around and like I said before, that is easy.  What worked before will not necessarily work again—or at least not without a fight.  We are all about balance here at Jodiojo.  All of us in some way, shape or form have had this struggle so we are more than qualified to talk to you about it.  If you have any questions during this series, feel free to hit us up at Jodi@trans4mationstation.com.   Please note:  the emails are not the same as the blog.  Don’t forget to check us out at www.jodiojo.com/blog  Monday through Friday for articles on living clean beautifully.

I am sure you can’t even count how many times you have been in a conversation with someone who has an issue and you can plainly see what the problem is yet they are completely dumbfounded.  Most likely you, just like everybody else, lost your patience and told them how to fix it without even letting them finish their story.  They could be crying, whining, mad—who knows, but all you know is that you didn’t have the time to listen to the story any further because “THIS” is the problem and they need to fix it.  At that time, whatever advice you gave them seemed like “common sense” to you but I can guarantee you, you were speaking Swahili to them.  Why?  Were you not making sense?  Are you just that much “smarter” than they are?  Are you the ultimate in wisdom?  Umm…that’d be a negative on all of those questions because at that time it had nothing to do with what they knew (do you really think she thought it was ok that her man went on vacation with his friends to the Hedonism resort? Really?) it had everything to do with what they were *willing* to see.

There was a time in my life when I standing in the middle of a forest, crying my eyes out, desperate as all get out, *leaning* on a tree mind you, rummaging through my bag looking for a compass, GPS, or whatever to help me find a tree!  Have you ever been there?  We never see where we are, what we have or what we could do in the midst of the problem until we are either on the other side of it or better yet…gain understanding in the process.  Luckily for me I have some amazing friends who didn’t try to “fix” my problem but instead, took time to point out things in my life that gave me understanding so I could, in turn, fix my own problem.  I pray that the following descriptions can do for you what my girlfriends did for me with what I was going through at the time:

Sad thing is, I am just this happy and goofy looking.

I HATE my butt—it’s so big!

No it’s not…your top is too small.  Guaranteed whenever I hear this from a girl, it’s not that she’s big on the bottom, it’s that she’s too small on the top. So what you see is the imbalance between top and bottom.  I’m sure you want to make your booty smaller but some of that is just you girl, and you can only squat, lunge, sprint, etc. so much of that away and at some point you are left with you.  Some of y’alls would remove your booty altogether and replace it with a loaf of bread so that it’s still soft but it’s now contained. Haha!  So what trees are you missing?

• If you have a big booty, you have a small waist.  Period.  And what a gift that is.  You cannot exercise, crunch, plank or twist enough to make your waist smaller.  It is what it is.  And a small waist line is pure femininity and pleasing to the eye so while you pinch, poke and sneer at your butt the rest of us want to lynch you for your gorgeous waistline.  Phooey on you!
• You can tighten without getting muscular.  Not a good thing if you want to have a ton of muscle, but most of you do not—you want to be firm with shape without being overly muscular so go for it!
• You can gain weight and no one notices!!  Why?  Because you have a small waist!  Everything on you will get bigger EXCEPT your waist.  The upside: do I need to mention?  The downside: you will never have shredded abs.  No lines ever.  But who cares—you look like Halley Berry!
• You are pleasing to the eye—well…not yours—but everyone else’s!

I have no hips!

You’re right…you don’t.  In fact, you look like bookmark without the tassel so what do you think about that?  Your measurements are 36-36-36 and someone once used you as a plumb line for something they were measuring.  I’m sure you complain that you look like a boy and you have a thick waist and yadda, yadda, yadda.  Ok, are you done picking on yourself?  Let’s look at your gifts because you have many:

• You make muscle easily.  What takes the ‘hip’ girl months to do in the gym, you can do in weeks.
• Your abs are waiting for just the right block of cheese to come by so you can shred it.  You have more “packs” in your abs than a 12 pack.  It’s ridiculous.
• You have thin skin.  This means even at 16% bodyfat you have veins a-poppin’ and noticeable muscle separation.
• You lose weight easily.  (The hip girls are about to smack you around so keep moving quickly!)
• Typically you have great legs.  If you don’t, see below.

I have no quads or hams!

You ladies are brutal to yourselves.  You call yourselves tree stumps, uni-leg, snausages—if it’s derogatory about your legs, you’re calling it out.  As much as I can’t stand listening to it, I have to say some of y’alls have had me on the floor with the one liners.  What’s your gift?  Best of both worlds:

• You have a small waist line—not tiny but you’re not a boy either.
• You are shredded from the waist up so you have all the gifts of the boys.
• You lose weight easily—in your upper body.  Not so much the lower.  In fact, I don’t care if you choose to freeze your legs and then try to carve them with a knife—nothing is going on down there without a battle.  Is it hopeless?  No.  But you can give up having a defined quad and bulging hamstring naturally.
• You are typically symmetrical in terms of overall size but not in terms of body fat distribution.

These are the most popular body types that I see and each one has its share of gifts.  Stop focusing on the negatives and start highlighting your positives. You’ve been chasing a body that’s not even yours because you think yours isn’t worth the time.  Look at how wrong you are! There are many more because we are all so unique but this sums up about 80% of all women.  I didn’t mention the girl with the big arms or the girl who is big on top and small on the bottom but I will.  I am about to go through all of these again but with ‘what’s the best way to train for their body type’ type of slant.   It’s not a definitive Bible—nothing is—but it will help you if you are the one in charge of your own journey.  Cool?  Enjoy the day if you live in New England…it’s gorgeous out today! WOOP WOOP!

Honestly, you women are crazy.  Last night I was on the phone with Kas (former Tuesday blogger) chatting away just catching up when I casually mentioned that I was blogging again.  Well she nearly flipped her lid and yelled at me saying that I never told her and why was I holding out.  But wait it gets better…  She’s on the phone with me, clearly agitated that she is now strapped in by this call that we’re on because she wants to…yes, wait for it…hang up to go read what I wrote.  WHAT?  Why not just ask me while you have me on the phone?  Hahahaha!!  Needless to say, we got a good laugh over that but she still hung up on me to read my blogs.  Ummm…whatever.

I am not sure if it’s me or what but this just makes no sense!

But this is our life, ladies.  We do things that do not make a lot of sense a lot of the times thereby wasting precious time.  But what if there were some things out there that do not make a lot of sense but somehow are beneficial for us?  Would you do them then?  Probably not but it’s worth a try:

1. Eat more to break a plateau: No matter how much I try to convince people this works, they still treat me like a dude with a big poster on himself that claims the world is ending tomorrow.  If you find yourself lifting 3 to 5 days per week, doing cardio even more than that and eating next to nothing and your body fat loss has come to a hault—consider eating more before eating less.  See most of you start off dieting and training with parameters that you should have at the *end* of your dieting and training season—not at the beginning.  If your goal date is 12 weeks away and you are already starving to death doing endless cardio and lifting like a fool, you’ve got a long, wasteful road ahead of you.  There is no doubt that somewhere in there you will hit a plateau.  When that happens  EAT MORE…not less!  Let me explain what this looks like:  all clean food, over a set amount of time, at least 50% more of your present intake and then go back to your original diet.  You’ll drop right away and be shocked.
2. Go on vacation to lose weight: Say you are the girl above and not only are you stuck in a rut, you are also exhausted.  Here is a little known secret:  you lose weight when you sleep, not when you move.  So if you never sleep, you never lose.  This is for the girl right now who is reading this and is getting 4 to 6 hours of sleep/night and can’t figure out what is wrong.  A surefire way of knowing if this is you is if you decide to go on vacation and you come back 5 pounds lighter after fully enjoying yourself for the week—this was you.  Ladies, give your adrenals a break and go to bed.
3. Can’t stop cheating?  EAT THE TREAT!: Deprivation causes madness.  Hands down.  ‘The more you deny, the more you will try’ and it can become all consuming if you allow it to be.  What’s the answer?  Take the temptation out by scheduling the treat in the diet.  And don’t just schedule it.  BE OK WITH IT.  *KNOW* that it’s fine.  Know that you are allowed to have this thing and it’s not going to do any damage.  If you don’t know it on the heart level not just the mind level, you will continue to snack uncontrollably.  TAKE THE TEMPTATION OUT and you will knock it off!

I know it seems outrageous and sometimes even gloomy.  But hang in there…it really does work!

We will do just about anything over here to help you ladies see how destructive your behaviors can become if you are not careful.  Maintaining a great body with definition and tightness takes a healthy balance between workout, nutrition and emotional health.  Many talk about it but very few have it.  We have been where you are and know all of what you are going through—trust us.  It seems so simple but it really isn’t.

Keep checking in as we go through all the things that you need to do to make it through eating clean and clean dieting the healthy way.  THAT’s the difference here.  Ciao for now!  Woop woop!

I know you heard the saying “you are what you eat” but I am here to take it a bit further and say you are what you do, as well.

I think many of us sort of evolved down the same path to the way we eat and workout:  we wanted more out of our body and whatever we were doing at the time just didn’t cut it.  Like I mentioned in my last post, there are two types of weight gain out there and you would probably think then that there would be two types of weight loss, too, but no…there’s a bunch.  (There are also more types of weight gain but that really gives a good synopsis.)

Ok, so maybe you’re not running in the Olympics but some of you are racking up that kind of mileage without any “Olympic” results.

One of the ways I see all the time (and watch endless frustration with) is running to get a great body.  Now notice I did not say to lose weight.  You definitely can decide to get up tomorrow and start running and possibly lose some weight but the odds of you getting that body that you desire are slim and the risk you run with injury and overuse is quite high.  Running for a hot body without a concise plan is like heading to the bakery “to pick something up” for a party you’re going to later on—we all know that ends badly with bread tasting and cupcake snacking so let’s just be honest about it.  Go with a dessert already set in your mind, get in and get out or bring someone with you to bail you out when you go down hard.

Running is addictive to many women.  It’s easy, cheap, hard in the beginning so it is a great challenge, relaxing, rewarding and… *completely unsatisfying in the weight maintenance department* so the more we run, the more we have to.  We keep looking at the covers of the running magazines wondering why they have a hot body and we don’t although we log mile after mile after mile.  Yes, from the waist up you are getting there…from the waist down though you look like a Land O Lakes advertisement for their latest cheese product.  With cellulite and dimples abound, you run and run and run and run.  You have every color capris there is to own and you are an expert at tying your jacket around your waist.

But now you have solved that problem—or so you thought–because you became a savvy reader.  You started following the girls out there who have the hot bodies and began to mimic what they do.  You dropped your starches, cleaned up the diet, you lift now and yet, still…nothing.  Instead, you have no energy, you binge on carbs every 2 or 3 days because you just can’t take not eating them and you don’t know how to fit lifting into your schedule the way they do it.  What gives??

YOU HAVE AN IDENTITY CRISIS

• You are not a runner. You are a woman who enjoys using running as a means to getting the body that she desires.

• You are not a figure girl. You have no desire to get on stage—you want to run—but you want that body too.

• You are not your average consumer. You are willing to put in the work of eating clean and working out so following magazines that are telling you the same ole same ole like “top 10 superfoods” and so on is not helping much.

• You’re not a world class runner. You are quite competitive and have no desire to be the slowest runner out there but you are not a run-nut either.  You don’t own the latest heart rate monitor and you just want to enjoy your run.

Honestly, girl.  You need to know who you are so you can get what you want.  Taking pieces of everyone’s plans and trying to make them work is frustrating and unproductive.  I’m sure you’ve also noticed that the more you run the harder it is to lose weight.  So what does the running world say about that?  Run more.  Ummm…how’s that working for you?  Because at some point, you need to go to work.

We have much to develop over the next few weeks: nutrition, training, psychological warfare, supplements and so on.

Obviously this is an issue we need to really put on the table with some serious solutions for you.  This is one of the top questions I am asking no matter where I go.  Follow this series that I will talk about over the next few weeks and we’ll talk about taking off 5 pounds per 5K and tightening that bum.  Cool?

I’m looking forward to it!!  Woop woop!

Next Post in Series

I go to the gym every morning right after I throw my kids out of the car while it’s still moving drop my kids off at school.  Today was no different (although I will say they landed much better today).  So here I am, minding my own business (who believes this?) and I catch a glimpse of a man with an extended belly on one of the 100 TV screens going across the wall.  (Seriously, I am all for a bit of TV but jeez louise!)

First, I have to say I do not watch TV.  Not my thing.  So it’s a big deal that I “caught” this news story while it was on.  Second, I loathe ANYTHING fitness on TV—hence my last post—so to know I stopped long enough to know what it was about is a miracle.  But there is a trainer out there somewhere who was a hot body but has purposefully gained 80 pounds so he could see what his clients are currently going through and to inspire them along as he loses it with them.

I truly applaud your efforts and your honesty about how hard this has been but volunteering to be heavy is not the same thing as being heavy and judgment against heavy men is no where NEAR as bad as judgment against heavy women.

Ok…my mind is everywhere right now so let me get this out slowly.

1. WOW!!  Are YOU full of yourself or what?  Now, granted…he admits in the clip that he did not expect to go through the emotional stuff that he has gone through but STILL!  WOW!  Ahh-Row-Gance!
2. The majority of his clients are most likely women (we are 80% of the training market) so the point would have been made better if his WIFE did it but I’m sure she told him to go fly a kite and where to fly it too!!
3. This is only relevant if he is stressed to the max, has 2 kids hanging off his leg and was infused with estrogen when we weren’t looking.
4. This is the hugest smack in the face to anybody who has gained a ton of weight.  There are 2 kinds of weight gain: 0-20 and sometimes up to 30lbs is normally a case of “I have no idea how that happened” and all you need to do is get your head out of your behind and get going.  Then there is “30 and above” which is more of an indication that something isn’t right somewhere.  Could be emotional, could be physical, most likely it’s both.  But the point is, you don’t get to 80 pounds overweight because you love bread.

ANYBODY?  CAN I GET A WITNESS HERE?

I am having a MOMENT right now in my office.  Oh we have SO MUCH to talk about!!

When’s the last time you looked at a man’s weight loss and got inspired? PLEASE!  I love my husband with everything I have.  We have been together 24 years this coming February.  There is no other for me.  But when he gets up in the morning on a Monday and says he’s up a few pounds and needs to do something about it and then on TUESDAY—read that…TUESDAY—says he’s down 4 pounds since the day before, I want to impale him with stick of salami!  Anyone?!  I could be talking to him and he will lose weight as I’m speaking:  “Baby…did you…just drop…a few pounds…while I was…NEVERMIND.  Pick those few pounds up off the carpet before it leaves a stain.  Jerk.”  GRRRR!

Losing weight the first time around is EASY!  Piece of cake!!  Seriously!  You are almost afraid to jump out of bed in the morning for fear a piece of your butt might go flying!!  But every time you gain back a few of those pounds you lose, it becomes harder and harder to take off again.  Suddenly the tricks no longer work:  cutting out carbs, eating just chicken and green beans for 5 weeks, lots of cardio…you name it.  Then it turns from shock to frustration and from frustration to panic and from panic to either depression or depravity.  Either way, it’s not a good scene.

Oh it is time, ladies, to learn how the body really works for us.  To understand what it takes to get a fit body, be fit and stay fit and what to do if we deviate a little and want to come back to being fit without selling our soul to the scale.  And to realize there is a WOMAN attached to that goal.  You know…one who has feelings…one who is self conscious…one who just wants this to be over…

I want to be very clear as I wrap this up.  First, I hold no ill will towards this man and truly, truly pray that someone is blessed by his journey.  I honestly know that he has no idea how he is coming across to those of us who work with women all time and that he has the best intentions with his efforts.  If you leave knowing anything after reading today’s post, I pray you know that.  Second, there is a battle out there, ladies.  It’s called sanity and it is a fleeting target.  Try to get through a day without losing your mind watching all the madness out there.  Pour that frustration into a sensible, hard workout and a clean eating day and you will make it through.  And thirdly, I promise I will begin to tell you how to lose body fat, truly be healthy–not just thin and sick and keep your sanity while doing it over and over and over and over (did I say over?) again.  Cool?

Ciao for now!!  Woop woop!!