Category: exercise

#35: Overdoing It

Be consistent without overdoing it—or it will not last.

I’m not a fan of deprivation. So if you ask me what I think about your “grapefruit cleanse,” I’ll probably tell you what I think, and it won’t be, “Well, get to it!”

Have you ever tried to go without sugar for a week? Alcohol for a month? Meat for a day? Then you likely know that for that sugar-free week your mind was racing….and all it was thinking about was the jar of Hershey’s kisses on your co-worker’s desk. Deprivation doesn’t work. It makes you crazy in the head until you break down and eat not just one Hershey’s kiss, but half the jar. If you had rather taken just one candy for after lunch each afternoon, you would have been satisfied of your sugar craving, and would have moved on to the rest of your day just 26 calories heavier, rather than the embarrassing number of calories heavier you are now that you ate seven kisses without taking a breath.

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New Year’s Toast

From my heart and core.

It’s nearly time to put a pretty fantastic year to bed. In 2011, I put FaceBook to work for my business. I got t-shirts designed, made, and onto many of your backs. We worked hard, then harder, and made brides-to-be buffer and new mommies slimmer. I learned from you all and I certainly hope you learned a thing or two from me. I feel like I’m giving everything I’ve got to my “ladies,” my trainees, and my workouts, but there is always, always room to grow. So look forward to many new challenges from the Fitness Girl in 2012.

#34: Small Steps Forward

New Year’s resolutions are oh-so cliché. And yet…

There’s something about the new year, the clean slate, that motivates us to make positive changes. I see it maybe more than a lot of people because of my business, since starting a new workout routine ranks pretty high on the list of all-time-most-cited resolutions. I get it, I really do. It’s more “me” to use every new month—or even week—as a chance to start fresh, but how wonderful it must be to be able to put something you really don’t want to do off for months at a time! I’ll start next year! Really! In 2012 I’ll be ready!

Maybe one of your resolutions this year can be this: Resolve to use each new day—each new hour!—as a jumping-off point for those things you’d really like to see yourself do. Resolve to start now. When you take baby steps—walk just 10 minutes on the treadmill; eat out just one less time a week—your stride gets stronger fast. Soon you’ll be walking 20 minutes and buying new cookbooks. But you can’t rush to the end result. You have to be patient and see those baby steps as part of the entire picture. Without them, you’ll never get to the long strides. The baby steps are all part of the plan. That weight won’t just fall off because you worked out really hard one time. But you’re better off than you were before that one workout.

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Wish for a Workout?

Add fitness to your wish list.

OMG. Did you know you can add Karen the Fitness Girl classes and training to your Amazon wish list? It’s true!! Amazon lets you add items from outside the Amazon world now. You have to install an add-on button through Amazon, and thereafter, anytime you see something you’d like to add to your wish list, you just click on the button. For classes or sessions with me, you just go to karenthefitnessgirl.com, click on the Amazon button, and input the amount of moolah you’d like to see go toward precious moments with the Fitness Girl! Giving the gift of “you” time (or should I say “me” time?) just got even easier. I love it!

#31: Doing 40

Might as well get used to it….

My grandpa turned 96 in June. His mother, my great-grandmother Belle, lived to be 101. So if the Frost genes are working for me, I won’t be so extreme as to say my life is half over…although it’s true that I am now the big 4-0.

Far from making a special point of writing about this occasion, part of me thought I should rather just ignore it, let the moment pass by without a mention, since after all, I truly feel no different. But being in the business of helping people stay youthful, I figured I should at least give it a mention.

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#30: Staying Motivated in the Colder Months

When the thought of taking a shower gives you the chills

Lovely fall, magical end to the heat of summer. Smells of burning wood seem to come out of nowhere. And thoughts of warm bowls of chili, oversized sweatshirts, and couch time start sneaking in.

So how can you stay motivated to exercise in the chillier months? Usually when you are leaving for your exercise class the sun is still up, but now it’s getting dark and your sofa is beckoning. It is hard to keep it up! It is! But you must! Here are some ideas to help you make it through the colder months:

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#23: Embrace Your (Fleeting) Passions

Work to find the “yes.”

As parents, Mike and I try to say “yes” to our children more often than “no.” We both very much dislike a morning or couple of days when we hear ourselves saying “no” too many times. I start to put myself in the shoes of my child, and imagine hearing “no, no, no.” The kids smile less during these episodes.

So we work to find the “yes” in the situation. Maybe instead of “don’t do that” it’s “do you want to do this?” I guess we aim to have our glasses half full most of the time instead of half empty.

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#19: Starting early

Rather than stress, embrace.

This very early wake-up due to baby is taking its toll. I’ve been feeling more than just tired—less patient, more high-strung, more overwhelmed about everything. So yesterday, after researching “baby wakes too early” online and finding that a) it’s incredibly common and b) there’s really not much to be done about it, Mike and I decided rather than stress over this thing we can do little about, we should attempt to embrace it.

We took out a notepad and actually wrote down a rough sketch of what our mornings might look like if we roll with it rather than try to get back to sleep after the crying has started. We acknowledged that this will be a relaxed plan, since some days baby will wake too early, some nights we will go to bed too late. Today was Day 1 of this experiment—and it was AWESOME.

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#18: Chest Pains

It hurts to think of not breastfeeding anymore, but it’s time.

Ah, nursing. Or should I begin: Oh, my boobs. What they’ve been through. Or rather, are going through. I have a thriving, well-fed 15-month-old boy who just thinks mommy’s chest looks better and better by the day. It’s become a comfort thing by now—clearly, since he eats well and drinks plenty of whole milk and water throughout the day. I never thought I’d still be nursing at 15 months, but here we are.

I never thought I’d be the one to say I’m done with it first either, but here we are. I love looking down at my tiny one while he’s cozying up to my body. I do. But I don’t like the way he tugs at my shirt and paws my chest when I’m holding him. And I don’t like how he wakes up before 6 a.m. looking for that comfort. I do believe I’m ready to have my boobs back to myself.

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#15: Hovering

As in me, hovering over you.

I can’t be with you every day, but oh, how I would like to be. I want to watch over each and every one of you who are working so hard to be the person your spirit says you are inside that body of clay we are molding!

I suggest we try some challenges together, to keep us working together even when we’re not face to face.

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