Eliminate the opportunity for excuses! Pack the night before!

If you didn’t have your gym bag ready and packed the night before, you really had no “real” intentions of going to the gym. Be honest, that’s the truth and you know it. As bad or as much as you wanted to be able to go to the gym, there was no plan of action to get there. Wanting something badly doesn’t create change… you have to actually “do” what it takes to get there!!!

Think of it like this, your job and your financial security is important to you, right? If you had a job interview and you really wanted that position, you would already have your clothes picked out, resume in hand, ideas of possible answers to certain questions and you’d make sure that you have plenty of time to get there. The same thing applies with your workouts. If it’s really a priority, you will make sure it happens. Your clothes need to be packed the night before and you need to know what you are doing for a workout way before you just “show up”. What good are your clothes being packed with intentions of going to the gym, but not having any clue what you are going to do for a workout?

How many times have you told yourself you’ll pack your gym bag in the morning and then some how you just “run out of time?” All of the sudden your priorities shift and you are not concerned about packing your gym bag, you are just trying to get your usual routine together and leave soon enough to get to work on time. Once at work you either a) justify the fact that you can’t go to the gym today because you didn’t have time or you forgot to pack your stuff or b) you tell yourself that you will come home after work and grab your gym stuff. DON’T FOOL YOURELF !!!! As much as you would like to be able to, you know you’re not going to the gym once you come home from work. At home there are too many distractions and responsibilities; laundry, dishes, dinner, kids homework, email, family, etc. Let’s not forget the biggest time stealer of all… your TV! Once you sit down on that sofa to “relax” from your day, you know you’re not getting up. Another day of no exercise gone and lost all because you didn’t take 2 minutes the night before to plan ahead and pack. Yes that’s right… all it takes is 2 minutes.

Packing my gym bag before I go to bed is part of my nightly routine. It has become so routine that it is like brushing my teeth… I can’t go to bed until I know that it’s done. I toss in a pair of shoes, followed by some socks, a sports bra, a tank top and shorts. Done! My IPod is fully charged every night and gets plugged in next to my phone so that I have no chance of forgetting it. (I disconnect it in the morning when I disconnect my phone).

I wake up at 4am every morning and leave my house by 5:15. My work day is busy just like yours, but I still make the time to take time for my workouts. I take my lunch break at the gym for some morning cardio, and then after work I go back to the gym to hit the weights. Every single night, my gym bag is packed. I never leave in the mornings without it. It sits at my front door so that so that I can’t miss it on my way out. It has become so routine that if I ever left the house without my bag on my shoulder… something would just not feel right.

My gym bag always has its own set of toiletries that I never take out or shuffle between my bag and my bathroom. I’m never transitioning stuff from my bathroom to the gym bag because I never want to make it a possible opportunity to forget something. These are the items that I always keep in my gym bag; deodorant, lotion, face wash, face lotion, shampoo, conditioner, hair spray, body wash, body spray, a razor, hair ties, tooth brush, toothpaste, a hair brush, heart rate monitor, a shaker bottle and a few bags of protein powder. (I never want to be hungry or without food….but this is whole separate topic!) By keeping these items with me at all times, I have eliminated any and all excuses and inconveniences for not being able to work out.

You can do it too! You just have to make it a priority in your life! Take charge of your life and be proactive about your time! Everyone starts somewhere! I didn’t get this good about routinely packing my gym bag overnight! I found the one right way only after I tried 600 other ways that didn’t work! Being prepared and planning ahead is the only thing that works!

To get you started with a workout plan at the gym, scroll down and use my leg work out that I just did for myself last week. I promise you that if you are doing it properly and lifting to your full potential and resting appropriately, this should be all you need for your leg day!

If you are still having a tough time getting to the gym, get a workout partner. Making yourself accountable to someone else helps. It that still doesn’t work, hire me!

Karra’s Leg work out:
Leg press- 20x 15x, 12x 10x superset with 8 box jumps on a 3 foot step
Stiff leg dead lift 20x, 15x, 15x, 12x superset with 8 box jumps
Lunges with smith machine 15x,12x 10x
Seated ham string curl 15x, 15x, 12x superset with walking lunges with heavy dumbbells

The Chimichanga Justifies Procrastination

Its 8:30 am now and I have already had my 2nd meal of the day. I am getting ready to have to leave soon to drive down to Mesa Arts Center for our district meeting. I know that this meeting is going to take about 3-4 hours so I made sure to bring my lunch box with all of my meals and my gallon of water. Yes I drink out of a gallon of water a day and yes, I actually bring it with to work.

As I get to the meeting, I am sure that my co-workers are staring at my funny because I have my gallon of water in one hand and my lunch box in the other. I’m sure they are wondering what in the heck I’m doing with this stuff, but I don’t care; by now I’m used to the jokes.

When the meeting is over, my co-workers are all in agreement that they would like to go out for lunch and since I car pooled, I’m obligated to the unanimous vote. But that’s no problem because I already got my workout in at 4 am this morning, so I’m not worried about using up my lunch hour and I have my meals with me. I let them chose amongst themselves about where they would like to go. I don’t need to have an opinion about where they are eating since I already have my food with me I don’t have to worry about eating somewhere that doesn’t offer food that I won’t eat. Of course everyone wants Mexican food. Mmmmm! I love Mexican food! That’s okay. I have my chicken and squash and I can pour some salsa over it to make it a little more “Mexican”.

While my co-workers order and dive into their entree’s (chimichanga) I bust out my tuperware of food and enjoy my meal as well. No one thinks I’m weird for bringing my own food. Actually, they complement for having such impressive self discipline and tell me how they wish that they could do the same thing. While I can appreciate that they are impressed by my discipline, I am asking myself, “why can’t they?” I didn’t do anything except plan! We’ve all heard the phrase “if you fail to plan, you plan to fail” but then why do they never plan?

Those plates of chimichanga’s were licked clean! And you know something? The people who ask for my help and guidance the most are the ones who somehow talked themselves into ordering that kind of a dish over a salad and ate the whole thing! One chimichanga has over 1100 calories in it!!! That’s not including the side of rice and beans that come with it and the non diet soda you ordered. Add that to it and now you’re near a 2100 calorie meal for lunch! No wonder why employees have lunch and are then tired and unproductive afterwards. They’ve just killed their metabolism! And somehow this behavior was justified because, “it’s Friday” or “we never spend time together outside of work”. After the meals have been devoured, I hear things like, “Oh, I’m so tired”, “why did I eat all that”, “that was so good”, “diet starts back on Monday”.

Monday? …Monday? Are you serious? You hate what you just ate, you feel guilty about it, but you’re going to sabotage yourself for two more days and start again on Monday? You just ruined your diet for the day but apparently Monday is the magic day that is going to get you back on track….. Why wait till Monday? Fix it and make corrections now! Don’t procrastinate! This has got to be one of my biggest pet peeves.

The only thing that waiting till Monday is going to do is allow you to eat more of the crappy foods that you know you shouldn’t have any way. You know you are going to eat more than you want to and the quality of your choices is going to be worse. You will more than likely talk yourself out of doing any exercise over the weekend as well. What’s the point, right? If you plan on waiting to get back on a “healthy diet” for the next two days you may as well wait to get on an exercise schedule as well. All of this will be okay with you because you are able to “justify” and make excuses for it before hand because you are telling yourself that you are going to “get back on track on Monday”. Really? Does this sound like anything that you have ever said or thought to yourself? How many times have you said this to yourself? How many times have you done this to yourself? Final question… how has that been working for you?

Let me tell you something; it doesn’t work! I know because I’ve been there! I used to do the same thing! I’d over eat on bad foods, feel guilty about it and tell myself that it’s okay I’ll start my diet again on Monday. Then the weekend would come and of course I’d eat whatever I wanted, justify my eating behaviors on the fact that “it’s okay, this is the last time I’m going to eat this for a while so I may as well get it in now”. Then Monday rolls around and I told myself that today is the day! (for the umpteenth time). Monday starts out great, I’m motivated and on a sugar high from my weekend of eating everything that I think I’m not going to get to eat for a while, but then, somewhere throughout the day I slip up; I eat a little something I shouldn’t, I miss a workout, etc. Since I’ve become such a good “justifier of my behavior” I figure that today is not the fabulous Monday that I thought it would be so since I already goofed, I may as well start full power again next Monday. Hello????? Does anyone see what is happening here? I just lost 7 days, gained more weight, and am emotionally beating myself up about how I just can’t stick to anything, all because I didn’t nip in the butt and get right back on track immediately!

If we procrastinated on everything else in life the way that we do with diet and exercise, our lives would be a disaster. If you’re a student and you have a paper due on Friday, but “life gets busy” and you turn it in on Monday… what kind of a grade would you expect to get? ” Those low grades are harder to pull up had you just turned your assignment in on time. If you had to make a credit card payment and you paid it late, you’d expect a late charge, right? Same thing with your body, if you over eat, under exercise and procrastinate on proper diet and exercise, you are going to gain more weight! Consider that your “late fee” or “lose of points on your graded paper. If you keep putting it off you are making more work for yourself later.

Procrastination is a sabatager. Don’t do it! If you know you need to make change, do it now! Your body needs to you to take care of it. What are you waiting for? There’s never going to be good time, a better time, a convenient time or enough time to make change, but you have to just do it!