Healthy Holiday Bootcamp- starting November 14th!!

Hey everybody!

Most of you know that I started a HEALTHY lifestyle change 2.5 years ago and it has forever changed just about every aspect of my life. 

It's time for me to GIVE BACK and invite YOU to our upcoming accountability & support group that starts November 14th!

We are going into one of the HARDEST times to stay on track with our nutrition and fitness - the HOLIDAY season! 

We will be focusing on how to create HEALTHY HABITS that you can take BEYOND our accountability & support group! Habits that you can use for the rest of your life. Habits that will help you feel the BEST you have felt! Habits that you can incorporate with your family! Yes, everything we do is FAMILY FRIENDLY!

We will be focusing a lot on how to still be able to ENJOY the holiday season and goodies that come along with it, but also finding balance with healthy food and portion choices!

We will be supplying you with a TON of HEALTHY, family friendly holiday dishes that you're not going to want to miss!

Please select "Going" or "Interested" if you're ready to make a HEALTHY change in your life and you would like to learn a little more about the at-home exercise programs and nutrition tools that have helped me become the BEST version of MYSELF that I've ever been!

***There will be a few GIVEAWAYS during the event, so make sure you stay connected!***

Please note: This is for non-coaches and those who are not currently working with another coach! Thanks!

If you are interested, please head here to RSVP on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/195835497519726/ 

TGIF! Thinking ahead and preparing for Friday night temptations

I know it's Friday evening right now and maybe you're thinking about going out to eat, football games or unwinding after a long week. What you're probably NOT thinking about is making sure you get your workout in! 

The great thing is...my challengers THOUGHT AHEAD! They drank their Shakeology to keep cravings in check for Friday night happy hour. They logged their workouts early before work and before excuses could set in. 

I am so proud of each person in my group that is putting in the hard work to improve their health. It's so much easier to do when you know you're not alone. That's why I love hosting private accountability groups.

Keep it up, everyone! 1 week left in the month!

8 Great Smarts by Dr. Kathy Koch - why parents have a responsibility to teach their children in the way they were created to learn

            I just listened to an amazing another amazing podcast from Dr. Gary Chapman; it’s called Building Relationships. I've only listened to 3 episodes so far but each time there is a different featured speaker/author and topic. Tonight I heard the episode from April 2, 2016 with Dr. Kathy Koch. I saw her speak at the Hearts at Home conference last fall. She's an amazing author and I have another one of her books called “Growing up Social”, but in this podcast she was talking about her book “8 Great Smarts” tells about the 8 different ways that your child can be gifted.

            She explained what each different smart is and different ways that you can connect with your child and foster that giftedness and if they're not strong in one area you can get them interested in it. I totally loved it and I’ve decided that I'm going to be buying a copy of that book for both of Addison's teachers this year. I think that if you take that extra step to really understand your kids as a parent, then you can foster excitement in them for everything around them.

            I really feel like some people may have an issue with helicopter parenting and that sort of thing, but I don't feel like I'm a helicopter parent. Instead, I feel that I am an involved parent because I feel that especially in this age with so much information available, I feel like it's my duty and it's my responsibility not just to hum along and give her clothes, give her food, send her to school. That’s the bare minimum. It's my responsibility to identify the strengths and the uniqueness that God has put in her and help her develop them. It's also my responsibility to find those areas where she is not as strong and to help her identify that and work through those challenges.

            I think some parents just kind of float by with the absolute minimum needed to raise their kids and I think that with all of the knowledge out there  – there's books, there's podcasts, there's so many different things – why not take advantage of all that knowledge and truly pour your heart and your passion into making your children become the best people that they can be?? Our kids are going to be the adults of tomorrow; if we want a better country, if we want a better world as we're getting old and gray, then we better put the work in now to be creating these amazing children that we are blessed with.

            That's one of my passions. I am a stay-at-home mom and I'm blessed with all day to be able to do that with Addie and spend time with her. If I wasn't doing that with my day then I don't think that I would be taking advantage of the gift that I have in being a stay-at-home mom. If our kids’ teachers aren't fully immersed and reading books like 8 Great Smarts on how to foster excitement and intelligence and all sorts of different gifts in the children that they are teaching every single day…then I think that they're in the wrong profession-plain and simple! If you don't have a passion for the kids that you teach every time and wanting to make them the best people possible and leaving an imprint on them, a positive imprint on them, then you need to stop teaching. Because you're sure not in it for the money, so I don't know why you’re there if you're not there for the kids and making them better people.

            I will be listening to this podcast again because it was so full of amazing information, and I’ll be ordering myself a copy from Amazon tonight and also copies for Addison’s teachers this year. I think that this kind of knowledge is something that not only every parent should have but every teacher should have because they are very big influences and our kids as well. So I encourage you to not only look at that book, but also follow Kathy on Facebook. I'm sure she's a wealth of knowledge. It’s bedtime but I just could not go to bed without sharing my excitement for this new book that I'm going to be reading.

            If you're a parent or a teacher or even a volunteer for a kids program (like I do for our church program AWANA), I think if you are involved in kids lives in any way you need to realize what a gift that you're being given: the gift influence on these young kids. You really need to take that seriously and do what you can to leave them better than when you first found them. Can you tell I’m passionate about this? I'm not an official teacher, but I teach my daughter every day so I feel like I'm a teacher!

looking for teammates

2.5 years ago I tried Beachbody because I wanted what my friend Toni had- energy, vitality, and happiness. I was sick and tired of being tired and knew I could use the tools from the 21 Day Fix to change my life and Corey's, too. Adding in Shakeology was awesome for me because I am very picky and don't like vegetables at all.

I never imagined that just by sharing my journey with others that I'd be inspiring them to start their own- or that it would become such a financial blessing for my family. It has paid for bills in a bind and also given us breathing room to have FUN and not be so stressed about money anymore.

If you've been watching my posts for any amount of time and have the tiniest bit of curiosity as to what it

is I DO as a coach, please comment or fill out this form at bit.ly/1flitlifegroup and I will contact you. I am hosting a free, no-strings attached informational group to give a peek into coaching that I'd love for you to be a part of.

You can't control everything, but you CAN control your reaction

            Good afternoon everybody! Although it's not been that good of a deal for me so far. L I don't know where you live but where I live last night we had some pretty strong storms and I was woken up not only by the storms but also by a couple things beeping throughout the house because the power went off.

            So this morning I got up kind of early and went to start working on the computer and it started making some noises and gave me the dreaded rainbow pinwheel and I thought “What's going on?” I had to hold down the power button for it to restart and then it had this grey screen and wouldn't work. I started freaking out and asked Corey “Can you get out of bed I don't know what happened!" He said to go workout I'll take care of it. He is a Mac pro and he was gonna try to burn the files off of there to hopefully recover it even though it wasn't starting up. And then it stopped doing that before he could get anything off. I took it into town and my hard drive is officially dead. Dead, dead, dead!!

            The good news is that most of my files for work are on Google drive so praise the Lord for the cloud. Another great thing is that I keep a lot of things on my phone that I don't delete and I also backup my pictures to Shutterfly. But the bad thing is that there were files on my computer that I did not have on my Google Drive or Shutterfly or even my external hard drive. My external hard drive does not do a real-time data transfer because it's not Mac-compatible so I have to try every month to do it (but I don’t always remember)…but it's too late so there are some things that are possibly gone forever.

            When I was at the Radio Shack in town I was so down and even if I think about it for too long right now, I get really depressed about it because so much of our life is stored on our computers now. On the way home I was flipping through the XM stations and heard Linkin Park’s “What I've done” and I thought “oh my gosh I don't need that song”. I turned the channel and next I heard Taylor Swift's “Bad Blood” and once again didn’t need that song, so I switched back to the Christian radio station on XM and it wasn't my favorite song but it started to ease my anxiety a little bit.

            With change my anxiety gets out of control; with traveling and then coming home and unpacking and trying to find a new routine my anxiety is bad and we're trying to clean up and do a big de-clutter around the house and get rid of things and sell things and so with that and now the computer, it's just too much.

            Corey found a company that you send your hard drive to them and they are super experts at recovering stuff so I'm really really hoping that they're able to recover things. My first inclination when the hard drive crashed I thought “Maybe I'll just get a brand-new computer and file a claim through our home insurance because the power surge/storm caused it to die." But then the Radio Shack person said they would recommend to simply replace the hard drive and those are cheap- we actually have a spare one in the closet right now. So at least for now we are saved that $500 deductible for replacing the entire computer; that's a blessing in this negativity. But we still have the issue of losing my files.

            I titled this post that you can't control everything, but that you can control your reaction. I used to listen to non-Christian music and so when I would get down and be depressed and have anxiety and get stomachaches over things, the music I would listen to what would perpetuate that and make it worse. I’ve found that listening to Christian music really helps and working out does too. I might need to have another workout later just to get this frustration out it so I don't cry about it. Another thing I think a lot of people do in stressful situations (because I know I do it too) is turn to food. I initially thought “Oh gosh, I'm so frustrated. I need to go to McDonald's and get a frappe right now.” A chocolate chip frappe is my ultimate indulgence- my cheat. ;)

            Why is it that the first thing that you do when you're stressed is to reach for food?? Food is not gonna fix your problems; it's going to make them worse, especially after the sugar high wears off. Reading personal development can help get your mind right, and you can talk to God for a while and He will ease your anxiety. I can't remember the exact Bible verse right now but if you pray to God, “The peace of God, which transcends all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.” That's like my life Bible verse!!

            I wanted to let you guys know about this crappy thing that happened and the first things that I thought about were: money- how am I gonna pay for this, and the yo-yo of just the last few hours with the stress of possibly having to rebuild it. I encourage you to take these difficult situations in bite-sized chunks and when you can't handle it go escape somehow. Don't escape into food; escape into a workout, escape into a game with your kids, find a more constructive outlet for your for your stress, meditate, pray, journal, listen to uplifting music (not music that's gonna drag you down), find a good book to read and just check out of that situation for a while!!

            So often your anxiety can consume you and you just get drug deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper and before you know it, the whole day is gone and you're even more entrenched in this problem. I wanted to share that message with you guys today that if something crappy is happening to not let your initial reactions go make you go crazy. Right now my plan is to go play with Addison and finish my Shakeology instead of going through the drive through at McDonald’s to get a frappe.

            You’ve got to stop yourself when you when you recognize that you're going down paths that aren’t healthy for you to deal with, and know that you have the power to control how you are affected by things. And you definitely don't have to deal with your anxiety alone- please tell someone if you are being burdened with anxiety and depression.

Taking care of your WHOLE self

            Hey everyone! I wanted to share some things with you today. If you've been following my blog at all you probably know that I have had a really busy July: at the beginning of the month Addison and I took a one-week road trip to my best friend's house and had a great time playing with her kids and Toni and I did a lot of work for business together and it was great to collaborate. We came home for a week and then we were right back for two more weeks over at my parents’ in Illinois and then I went to Summit in Nashville for Beachbody. Now I'm finally home and unpacked with put everything away and I'm trying to get back into a routine.

            I’ve been feeling off all of last month and some of that has been my nutrition; even though I've been drinking Shakeology, my other meals are not on point when I'm traveling. I've been doing awesome with my fitness, which (for me) once I get started it is it is just a non-negotiable for me but I've recently realized that I haven't been taking care of my whole self.

            I’ve been doing my workout which is great: I've been doing 22-Minute Hard Corps so it's just 20 minutes and I’m in and out and I'm done and I'm moving on with my day. I'm drinking my shake every day, no issue. Well when I was traveling, we were eating out a lot and my cravings got all messed up and my complexion is a reflection of that right now. But another thing that was off for me was my personal development: reading books!

            My small group this summer has been reading “Grace-Filled Marriage” and I got about halfway through it and then with traveling and everything I stopped reading it. I'm the type of person that when I read a book where you learn things and implement them I really need to focus and take notes and highlight. I’m very engaged when I read; otherwise it's just pointless. I could just be reading a novel or some other fiction but I really like to make the books that I read “count” and I haven't been doing that.

            The other book I've been reading is “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” because I want to become a better person and a better leader for my team so that I can help them to start achieving their goals for themselves. I'm a very scheduled person and I thrive on that; so although it was nice to travel and see people, when I got out of my schedule I wasn't reading before bed every night or taking notes or listening to my podcasts regularly either.

            I think that so often people forget that your health is multifaceted! Even just missing one Sunday at church makes me feel “off” because I'm not getting my cup filled. I love getting daily devotional emails and I share them quite often on my Facebook page if you if you look through it (bit.ly/1fitlife). Those quick little nuggets fill my cup and make me feel more whole. Reading a book about bettering my marriage, or reading a parenting book, or reading a business book, or just a feel-good book help me “fill up” my tank in all areas of my life.

            I think one of the next books I'm going to be reading is called “The Energy Bus”; I've had a lot of friends tell me that it's amazing and so that is in my cart on amazon right now. I want to encourage you to not just focus on one area of your life; you need to focus on all the areas of your life. Your fitness is important; your nutrition is important; your spirituality is important. If spirituality for you means your faith and your relationship with Jesus like it does for me, or the energy of the universe, yoga, meditating, or other religions that's fine. But it's taking care of your inner self that's really important to do, by taking some time off for your mind to unplug. I just spent half an hour in the backyard just picking through the grass at the clovers and just letting my mind be blank for a while and letting my fingers look at a puzzle and not have to be focused or figuring out anything else.

            One of my commitments this August (I'm not waiting until school starts up again) is that I'm taking little little bits of time after Addie goes to bed or trying to get up before she does to get plugged back into my personal development. I’d like to share some of that with you, too. I've read so many amazing books recently and since I mentioned I am a note-taker, and I want to share that with you. I'd really like to start posting more things about personal development and bettering yourself in all areas, so that’s where I'm at right now right now.

            My fitness is doing great, I love my program. My nutrition is getting back on track now that I'm home: Corey and I have our monthly meal plan calendar out for dinner and we went grocery shopping and we are staying on point with that. I’m also getting back on track with my personal development now, too. If you are looking for a good book to read please don't hesitate to reach out and ask; I’ve got a great bookshelf that I'm filling up of books that I've read.

            I love that part of being a Beachbody Coach is taking care of your inner health as well as your body. If you would like to read some of my takeaways from the books that I've been reading because I hope that the information that has been blessing me can be used to bless you as well, please follow me on Facebook: bit.ly/1fitlife

fitting my job into my life, not scheduling my life around my job

I hear from so many people that they have NO TIME to be a coach. I used to think so, too!! I've learned that you CAN create an income by using the little nuggets of your day. 

I listened to personal development on my drive down to the baseball game. I drank my Shakeology instead of having candy and a hot dog at the game. And I've been checking in with my challengers in between customers at the concessions stand. Not a huge time commitment, just bits here and there! 

If you've seen my posts and wondered even a little bit what coaching might be about, like or comment to this post. My team is hosting a free, no strings informational group this week to answer any/all questions you have about this coaching thing I do.

What's your love language?

How do you express love and caring to your spouse (or anyone for that matter)?
❤️
My husband has enough to worry about while he's gone for 12 hours a day teaching and coaching. The last thing I want to do is greet him with a "honey do" list as soon as he gets home. I do my absolute darnedest to accomplish things on my own during the day so that I don't bog him down when he's home for family time. 
A less secure man would see my pulling these big (thicker than my arms, easily 20 feet long) broken branches to the street from our backyard as me taking his "manly responsibility" from him.
It's a good thing we both rank very high on "acts of service" as a love language, because he will see me doing this and know it comes across as a caring gesture.

Who else loves getting fun rewards?! ✋

I have been blown away by the hard work of some of the ladies in my current 60 day accountability group. 💪 I know it's SO hard to stay committed to a new habit and lifestyle, especially for something as long as 60 days! I LOVE giving little prizes as a way to say THANKS for their hard work and to spur them on toward the finish. 

🎉

Be watching your mailboxes, ladies!

Dealing with anger toward your children in a Godly way: God's timing for my personal development reading

          Sometimes your kids can give you big reality/gut checks. When Addie and I were talking before nursing last night, she said in a sad but serious tone "Mom I want you to apologize for spanking me." Now to clarify, it wasn't a spanking but I yanked her towel down off the ring in the bathroom pretty quick in frustration from her not listening to me and it got her hand in the process.
          But, I was frustrated and lost my cool and that's the truth. It's tough when your kid points out a fault you already know. But if I'm going to set a good example for her, I need to show her how to apologize and ask for forgiveness when she does make mistakes. So I apologized and we talked how you can sin when you are angry or if you don't listen to mommy that's a sin too.
          She responded by saying "I don't have sins anymore. God took them and made a hole in the ceiling and flew up to Heaven with them and now they're gone." 
          Then we prayed together. I went first to show her how to say I was sorry for my sin and ask Jesus to help me do better next time. Then she folded her hands, closed her eyes, and prayed an apology and asked Jesus to take that sin away.  We both apologized to each other and forgave each other and made a commitment to (me) take a deep breath first when frustrated and (her) listen to mommy the first time.
          I am so humbled by her innocence, growing faith, and the refreshing honesty she gives me on a daily basis. She is such a blessing from God for my own faith and that pesky pride.

          Fast forward to today. I was reading my personal development while Addison was at school. It was totally God's timing for me to read this chapter today out of Anger: Taming a Powerful Emotion by Gary Chapman. This book is such a blessing. I highly recommend it to everyone.

          Do you ever find yourself letting your anger get the best of you? It's not a sin to be angry! It is a sin to act wrongly because of our anger. We have a responsibility as parents to stop the cycle of not being able to handle our anger effectively and to teach our children to be in control of their emotions.

How does reading a book about anger help me in my business?

Anger: Taming A Powerful Emotion

I intended to read 1 chapter a day of this book and be done within 2 weeks. I bought it at a conference in November after I listened to a seminar on anger. The author is Dr. Gary Chapman who also wrote the book The 5 Love Languages. That book completely changed how Corey and I communicate in our marriage and I believe changed our marriage so much for the better.

Given some recent events that have happened in my family's life I feel like this book was was destined for me by God and I am already one quarter through it in one afternoon! I have highlighted and taken notes all over and I can't wait to pass this along to some members of my family who are really struggling with the emotion of anger and how to deal with it.

So many people, Christians included, feel like anger is such a taboo subject and we aren't supposed to admit that we are angry. This book is teaching me (as did the seminar several months ago) that anger, as an emotion, is rooted in the nature of God as a response to something that is unjust or unholy. Anger is designed to motivate us to take positive action when we encounter an injustice. It's purpose is to motivate us to positive loving action that will leave things better then we found them. This is totally not what mainstream media portrays as anger; they always show us something negative and destructive and that's because people don't know the origin of anger the purpose of anger and they don't know how to keep it from being a raging uncontrolled emotion or how to let not let your body take over you when you're angry.

Anger is the opposite of the feeling of love: love draws you toward someone and anger sets you against them. It's really a poison in your life and in your heart. I have learned and gone through firsthand how freeing it is to reframe how I think of anger and how I deal with it. If you're a Christian you are to be set apart from other people; other people should be able to look at how you live your life and know that there is something different about you, something good. I used to suffer from a lot of anger and fly off the cuff and have outbursts and not really control what I said (I always regretted it), and I had a festering bubble all the time inside of me waiting to explode. That's not a good way to live your life!

Personal development is one of the required behaviors for a Beachbody coach. True, I could be reading a book about marketing or some business topic and I have several of those on my bookshelf and my wish list, but honestly I want to better myself in all areas of my life. I want to be a better mother, a better wife, a better Christian; I don't want to suffer from having anger, depression, or anxiety take over me! I want all over health for my life.

For me, being a Beachbody coach is not about having a perfect body or selling products. Yes, it's helping people discover physical health and wellness through nutrition and fitness, but it is also creating all over health by investing in yourself with personal development, and financial health by sharing this opportunity with others and building your own business. 

If you'd like to see these sort of all-over changes in your life, please reach out to me because YOU are the type of person I want to align with and have on my team!