Yes, you can cheat!

Dear clients, family and friends,

It’s a proven fact that stress can make you fat. So if your goal is to look and feel your best, you’ve got to figure out how to either reduce your stress or respond to it better. I thought this would be a timely topic considering the holiday season begins tomorrow.

Exercise Tip #1: Breathe. Take 60 seconds to just stop and breathe deeply and be in the moment. Just this very act of oxygenating your entire system including your muscles, tissues, heart and organs brings forth incredible health benefits. Can you stop and do it right now? It’s only 1 minute. What do you have to lose?! (besides some negative energy and a lot of stress!)

Exercise Tip #2: Cheat Days are okay! (I thought this would be a good tip considering tomorrow!)

A successful nutrition plan will focus on what you need to be consuming every day rather than what you should not be eating. For example, set a goal of eating 3 fruits for the day instead of deciding to not eat any chocolate. In addition, allow yourself one or two “free” days every week. For example, if you love pizza, and chocolate, then one day a week allow yourself to indulge in these items. This will eliminate the feeling of being deprived of your favorite foods and you will be less likely to experience the inevitable binge that goes hand-in-hand with total elimination of your favorites. This type of plan is feasible for most people. You are not telling yourself you are never going to eat chocolate again, but instead, just limiting how much and when you will indulge. Just make sure you don’t go crazy on your free days. It’s not a free ticket to gorge! And try to avoid making deals with yourself regarding your free days. If Saturday is your free day, make sure you stick to Saturday. For example, avoid indulging on Thursday because there’s an office party and then promising that on Saturday, you will skip your free day. Often you end up of taking more free days than you agreed to and all of a sudden every day turns into a ‘free’ day.

We prefer to follow the 80:20 rule for nutrition, which states that if you are eating well 80 percent of the time, you can allow yourself to indulge the other 20 percent. Eating well 80 percent of the time will definitely keep you healthy and will be a much more enjoyable process. This type of belief system is long-term focused. It is important that you decide to only do things that you can see yourself doing for the rest of your life. The only way to do this is to achieve your goals while upsetting your life as little as possible. Look at it this way – even our Northwest Personal Training Personal Trainers indulge so don’t try to be ‘perfect’.

Yours in health and fitness,

Sherri McMillan