A Little Help From a Friend

Today, I'd like to share something with you that has helped me a lot.

I don't know about you, but the feeling of being in limbo or lost is something I'm familiar with. Sometimes it happens when I'm between goals. Sometimes it's when a goal doesn't go as planned.

So how do I escape the maddening feeling of standing still?

Often you hear that instead of just dreaming, you should be doing. But I say, dream away! Take a piece of paper and a pen and write out your dream life. What do you want one year from now? What would make you very happy? A better golf game? A bigger apartment? A new car? A career in photography?

Imagine it and write it as though it's already happened.

The next day, write another list. A huuuuge brain purge of ideas to help you get to your goal. Literally write down EVERYTHING you'd need to do to achieve your goal for the year. Then divide your brain storm into 4 different lists:

TODAY:
THIS WEEK:
THIS MONTH:
THIS YEAR:

Things may move around a bit. But to have a To Do list is to have a game plan. When it comes to exercise, I often say, "fail to plan, plan to fail." That goes for other aspects of your life too!

There is NOTHING you can't do without a plan and the willingness to put it into action.

I hope this helps you as much as it helped me! If you want to take your success a step further, I HIGHLY recommend buying the book 30 Day PUSH by Chalene Johnson. Chalene is NO JOKE and her book will help you dream bigger and do more!

Happy Monday!!

Fun Facts About Moi

So you think you know me?? But did you knowww....

1) I have a blue-tongue skink named Reptar. He's roughly 7 years old and I've had him for two years. The poor guy has been abused in the past. His first owner didn't feed him, his second owner chopped off his fingers, his third owner was GREAT and couldn't keep him, and now he is my little buddy. 

2) When I read books, I often become so consumed by them that I end up acting like the main character of the book. I try to read a really light and fluffy book right after I finish something dark.

3) I have clubbed thumbs. If you've ever watched Transformers and saw Megan Fox's weird thumbs, that's what mine look like. I look just like Megan Fox.

4) My guilty pleasure is The Bachelor franchise. The Kardashians make me stabby. I think most of the Real Housewives look like they could be their husband's mothers. But The Bachelor? Hot people feeling entitled to love by other hot people? I'm all about it.

5) I'm a feminist. I hate the reputation that feminists have as "man-hating". A feminist is just this: someone who believes women should have equal rights to men. If you share this idea and want a laugh, go to twitter and follow @notofeminism. It's satire and it's hysterical.

6) I met my boyfriend on Tinder. We found love in a hopeless place.

7) My favorite band is The Beatles. John Lennon is my spirit animal.

8) I obtained most of my jewelry from deceased relatives. None of it is real, but they still mean a lot to me.

Blurry pic I took of Mike Birbiglia

9) I have a disorder called Trichotillomania. It's a form of OCD where a person plucks their hair out without even noticing or with an inability to stop. I am really lucky because it was never as bad as other cases. I talk to women in a support group who wear wigs. I mostly plucked my eyelashes growing up and I wore falsies through most of my senior year. It's something I still struggle with in phases, but I've gotten a LOT better at controlling it.

10) I'm a comedy junkie. Some of my favorites are Mitch Hedberg, Lucille Ball, Louis CK, John Mullaney, Conan O'Brien, Mike Birbiglia, Jim Gaffighan, Aziz Ansari, Amy Shumer, Daniel Tosh, Hannibal Buress and Bill Burr. 

I hope you enjoyed this revealing insight into my life, dear reader! xo

How To Shop Health Consciously

Do you think the thing that keeps you from losing weight is hiding in your kitchen? Let's fix it!

1) Go into your kitchen and throw out the following:

-Fried chicken

-Canned vegetables with added salt

-Flavored yogurts

-White bread, white rice, pasta that isn't whole grain

-2% milk

-Sugary drinks

-Ice cream

-Cookies

-Potato chips

-Crackers

-Anything that is marketed to kids and has a cartoon character on it or added sugars.

We can replace all of that with:

-Grilled meat instead of fried

-Fresh vegetables

-Plain yogurt (add fresh fruit and granola YUM)

-Whole grain bread, rice and pasta

-Coconut of almond milk

-Freeze bananas and cover in dark chocolate for a more healthy option then ice cream
-Brookside chocolate covered blueberries/pomegranate/crunchy clusters. These are SO filling and the crunchy clusters taste like a little crunch bar!

-Check instagram for healthy "cheat" meals, get recipes and add them to your grocery list

-Crackers made from seeds, like Mary's Gone Crackers. SO good with hummus. 

Healthier muffins! Thanks @neuroticmommy !

2) Make yourself a grocery list and a list of recipes you're going to make for the week with all of our replacement items. Go onto pintrest and instagram for other healthy, tasty things that look good to you and add those ingredients to your list. Two AWESOME accounts to look at for healthy recipes is @skinnykitchen and @neuroticmommy. They both actually give you amazing recipes to try instead of teasing you with tempting food photos.

3) EAT A MEAL. Never go to the grocery store hungry. If you do, the following will occur:

-You will buy what you CRAVE and veer away from your new list

-You will spend more money than you intended

-You will lose your temper with the old lady who is standing right in the middle of the aisle instead of just saying "excuse me" like your mama taught you.

4) Go to the grocery store. Try to avoid the aisles as much as you can. Get your vegetables and fruit from the fresh produce section. You can get frozen fruit if you're really big into smoothies and you don't think you'll use your fresh fruit before they go bad. 

5) Avoid anything with "trans-fats". Trans-fats are put into food to make them last longer on your shelf. Don't buy anything that you intend to keep for a long time. And remember, just because it says "gluten free" on it, it doesn't mean it's healthy. It just means it was made without gluten. It can still be full of sugars, trans-fats and other things you don't need. 

6) Go pay

7) Go restock your kitchen full of the goodies you've just bought! 

Bonus: Here's a quick and easy way to fill your tummy!

-Prepare a veggie burger. They make some really great ones, my favorite is the California veggie burger by Dr. Praeger's.

-Put some lettuce and cut up tomatoes in a whole wheat wrap

-Put a tsp of red roasted pepper hummus in the wrap

-Chop of the veggie burger and put that into the wrap

-Wrap it

-Eat up! Very yum. Enjoy!

Niki Webber: A Love Story

          N I C K I  M I N A J ?  T R Y   N I K I   M A S S A G E....

 I was born with a desire to be needed and to nurture. This has come with a lot of consequences, but leaving college and abandoning my journalism studies to pursue a career as a massage therapist was not a bad one. Now, I've been in the wellness industry for over five years. I am a licensed massage therapist, a certified personal trainer and I'm studying to obtain a certification in fitness nutrition. But my favorite title is Beachbody coach. It's the way I help the most people become healthy and increase their quality of life in an affordable way.

   First came the massage license. My plan was to work and save enough money to get liposuction. I had a brutally honest friend in massage school tell me that if I were to start spouting out information on how to live a healthy life, people probably wouldn't take me all that seriously, ESPECIALLY if I got liposuction. He said, "We are going to do a triathlon next year."

  Well, we didn't. But that doesn't mean I dismissed what he said. In six months, I was down from a size 12 pant to size 6 by eating well and doing a DVD workout called Turbo Jam on rainy days. On nice days, I was riding my bike or running, which were things I used to hate to do. I became passionate about exercise in those six months. Not as much about food, but I can say I haven't had a bowl of Cocoa Puffs since that time, so it was a start. 

  After a year of being licensed, massage therapy started to wear me out. I was being worked to the bone, literally on the verge of carpal tunnel, by a corporate spa. A majority of the people who came in didn't come in because they were stressed or had anything wrong with them. I was unfulfilled. My heart was in fitness.

I   L I F T   T H I N G S   U P   A N D   P U T   T H E M   D O W N.

  I cut my hours at the spa and went to school to become a personal trainer. I was also drinking Shakeology and for the first time, I could see some definition in my arms and legs. I started reading more about nutrition, too. When I was done with school, I started doing Insanity (since I'd learned about the benefits of HIIT) and I got my first training job at a beautiful fitness center at a golf club.

  I LOVED working at the fitness center. I even got to work out there, which was amazing. I adored my clients. I felt great. My parents saw how I was feeling and joined the gym near our house. They even started drinking Shakeology with me and benefitted from the energy. After two years, I decided to move to a big city in another state and get a job at a bigger gym... a corporate gym. 

  The gym was wonderful. It was pristine, the equipment was brand new and there were even A-list celebrities working out there regularly. But even as a trainer, I was intimidated. The clients were in better shape than I was. The other trainers had run marathons and Ironman races. I had the highest body fat percentage of all the girls there. One kid repeatedly called me "meatball." I know he was trying to be cute, but it made me feel extremely self conscious and it hindered my confidence, which made it difficult for me to talk to clients. I was losing money, fast. The commute to work was running me into the ground because train tickets were gone fast and parking was absurdly expensive. I had to eventually realize that I failed and I went back home.

S T A R T I N G   O V E R

   For a month, I stayed at home to figure out what I wanted my life to look like instead of crawling back to the places I'd left. I felt humiliated. I deactivated my Facebook because I couldn't play pretend with the world. Until that time in my life, my happiness never felt faked or forced so I didn't want it to start then. In that month, I realized that big gyms and spas and fancy clients were not ever going to truly make me happy because all along, the common denominator was that I didn't feel like I was actually helping anyone. So, I got a job at a smaller spa where I work with paralyzed clients, cancer patients, survivors, dancers, and athletes. I started teaching group fitness classes and I went back to working on myself using the products that had given me success in the past- Shakeology and Insanity. Then I did the 21 Day Fix and it brought my fitness and self-esteem to a level I never knew I could achieve. I used the meal plan from the fix and exercises from Insanity to train for and kick ass in a triathlon. I missed training people in a gym so much, but none of the jobs seemed like they would make sense in my life. Working in a gym is fun, but you can only see about 10 people a day and that's only if you don't have other jobs (and I like my jobs too much to give them up). And ten people a day seemed exhausting. How can I eat my six meals a day and get my own work out in? I want to help people, but I want to live by example myself.

   The answer to my happiness hit me like a ton of bricks one day. I was doing my third round of the 21 Day Fix and my whole family was doing it with me. I was telling people about it and they were interested. People like ME. People I'm friends with. People I went to high school with. People who have been down and couldn't afford a gym membership but really wanted to turn things around. And that's when I decided to give my all to Beachbody. 

    It took me six years to get to where I am now and I'm so glad it took this long because I've learned so much about a lot of things: what works, what doesn't work, what failure feels like, how beautiful it is to rise again, how to fit self-care into a busy schedule and how to fall in LOVE with myself. I can't wait to share that information with the world. 

Oh Hey

A L L O W   M E   T O   R E I N T R O D U C E   M Y S E L F...

I know it's been a while since I've blogged and I'm SURE you're wondering why I think I can just roll back around here like I own the place. Well, firstly because it's my blog. Secondly, because I feel like I've been waiting to reach a "perfect" and "inspiring" weight and physique to be able to help other people. But I'm realizing now that it's where I've come from that gives me credibility, not so much the massage license, the personal training certification or the jobs in group fitness.

I started this blog to try and take the guesswork out of beginning to adopt a healthy lifestyle. When I started, I was in massage school eating salad that had more ranch dressing than lettuce and thought I was being healthy. I was spending hundreds on a gym membership only to go on the treadmill for a bit. I was still friends with people who laughed at my efforts to change and that, I think, was my biggest setback. 

F I N D I N G   S E L F - L O V E   I N   A   H O P E L E S S   P L A C E

Have you ever felt like a you were playing the sidekick in someone else's movie? I totally did. For a really long time I felt like a supporting character. It's not like I didn't know I had value, it's just that I got that feeling from the wrong places. 

I won't say that I was the "fat friend", but I was always the one who guys came over to talk to just to ask what my friend thought about them. I didn't really mind until I realized that it was kind of the ONLY reason guys would talk to me. My leading ladies weren't always helpful, either. I showed one a picture of a guy I liked and she said, "don't introduce him to me." It was so hurtful- and so surprising- to hear a person who I called my best friend say that right to my face

I'm not very good at forgive and forget. I over-forgive and make excuses for people and I NEVER forget. But I kind of consider that a good thing. Because those moments of pain, of being pushed down, made rising up SO much better. 

It's funny what happens when you start to change your lifestyle. I didn't do it so that guys would talk to me just to talk to me. I did it because I found myself to be totally boring and kind of sad. Here I was, in massage school trying to help people with their wellness and health and I wasn't even well myself. I couldn't speak to how to live a healthy life.

You realize who your real friends are and that helps you to realize what is truly valuable about you. When I started being healthier and having goals for myself, like completing Insanity, I had friends try to push me down. They'd ask why I was doing what I was doing. They would make jokes about my new habits or glorify their excuses to me and hurt my feelings. The more pain they'd cause, the more I'd wake up and distance myself from these people.

So yeah, changing your lifestyle may not only change your waist line or your strength. It can change who you consider a friend. And that can be scary. But once you find people who relate to you and celebrate you and WANT to see you be happy, you don't miss the lackey lifestyle anymore.

The reason I continued to be drawn to Team Beachbody and online coaching over the years wasn't just because the challenges and Shakeology worked for me. There is a sense of community. People on Facebook who "liked" what I was up to helped me realize I'm not alone in wanting to better myself. The community of coaches I'm a part of is so supportive and a truly beautiful group of people.

If you find that any of my story sounds like yours, talk to me. I want to know the you behind the smiling Facebook picture. I promise I can help by walking beside you and lifting you up, not breaking you down.