Welcome to the blog of master-trainer, health and life coach, Vanessa Richardson.

Avoiding Self Sabotage – 7 steps to Permanent Positive Change

Friday, October 2nd, 2009

screaming

Self Sabotage is something we are all guilty of at times, however those who engage in constant negative self talk find this cycle of initial motivation to complete failure is a regular occurrence in one or more areas of their life. People can and do change! Do not, under any circumstances assume you are “just like that” and cannot legitimately transform your actions, behavior or circumstances. I’ve done it and seen plenty of other people do it too. If you have taken the time to come here and read this, you are already on the way to achieving it! I believe self sabotage stems from people not believing that deep down they deserve what they want. Life doesn’t have to be depressing, hard, sad and pointless.
Life should be abundant, happy, exciting, educational and emotional, don’t settle for anything less.

My personal experience

I’ve noticed the people most affected by this tend to be very selfless and generous. Always doing things to please other people. They get immense pleasure from helping and supporting everyone around them, to the extend that they are uncomfortable if the favour is returned and feel awkward asking for help when they need it.

If there is one point I want you to take away from this article, it would be:

If you notice you are in a cycle of self sabotage, become more selfish.

Learn to become comfortable with doing things for your own benefit. Take time to consider how your intended behavior or action might affect YOU in the near or distant future. Will it be a good day at work tomorrow if you yell at a colleague because they are late on a task? Will you be fitter next week if you skip today’s training session? I believe just as we can have physical imbalances in our bloodstream/body, our emotional levels can be out of balance. If you self sabotage in any area of your life, it might just be that you need to be more selfish and realise that if YOU are happier and healthier, it will resonate with everyone and everything you deal with on a daily basis. If you enjoy making other people happy, you should know by now how to do it, so give a little of that medicine to yourself.

What do I mean when I say for your own benefit?

  • Being comfortable handling highly stressful situations
  • Being assertive at work without being aggressive
  • Eating wholesome food to support your body (your life’s vehicle!)
  • Avoiding conflict by calming down before responding to accusations/arguments
  • Using spare time to educate yourself on something you need to be better at
  • Telling people you love, that you love them!
  • Celebrating achievements no matter how small

Do any of these things “benefit” you?

  • Flying off the handle during arguments
  • Admitting defeat before you begin
  • Unwillingness to increase demands during training
  • Make excuses for not eating nutritionally dense, healthy food
  • Blame someone, something for anything that you perceive as going “wrong”
  • Procrastinating instead of taking immediate action
  • Taking on too much at once
  • Being disorganised

Everyone has the resources and ability to initiate a true change in their behavior to stop the cycle of self sabotage. The positiveness can and will snowball to the point where you have no choice but to accept it! You need to get momentum with that initial drive and goal, and then change into a comfortable gear to get through the journey in a reasonable time frame.

Are you lazy by nature? If so, it will strongly affect any long term change. Be prepared for this and do whatever it takes to remind yourself daily that this really matters to you. I’ve said before – a bad day shouldn’t create a bad week. Accept you didn’t get it right this time and pick up where you left off, immediately. Celebrate improvements and ignore failures. Focus the energy on what you want, not what you are doing wrong.

Be realistic with goals, expectations, time frames when planning anything in your life. Keep in mind that other people will do their best to bring you down, not even consciously a lot of the time. Jealousy can cause people to say and do things they wouldn’t do if they were conscious of it. Don’t rely on other peoples compliments or comments to uplift you. Beating self sabotage is a deeply personal, internal experience that must be driven by you, for you.

Ready to stop self sabotage? Get a pen and paper and continue on:

  • Allow yourself to accept praise. You need to be comfortable feeling proud of any change and achievements. Give yourself permission to shine! What has happened in your life to make you think you do not deserve long term success? Write it down.
  • IDENTIFY Take the time to write down what it is you are “failing” at. What areas of your life do you continually self sabotage? Next to each one, write how you can combat it. You might plan to count to 10 before responding to an email, or packing your training gear into the car so you can get changed at work and go right to the gym. Plan simple strategies to combat the individual circumstances so you have a failsafe in place to keep you on track.
  • What is the PATTERN? Get detailed here and really express on paper what goes through your mind before, during and after a cycle of self sabotage.
  • How long does it take from motivation to failure? (hours, days, weeks, months?)
  • Barriers to success – List anything or anyone who presents a challenge to your success? (e.g. work hours, family member, lack of information) Present solutions to each of your barriers.
  • What should the priorities in your life be? (For me they are fitness, health, education, happy relationships, time for rest/play, helping others.) Can you combine priorities to ensure success?
  • Seal the deal. If you train yourself to have immediate awareness when initiating your pattern of behavior that results in self sabotage you can stop it before it gets any momentum, and redirect your energy.

Thankyou again for reading, I genuinely appreciate you taking the time to check out my articles. I love writing and hope I have helped someone today!

02.10.2009 Motivation, Self Improvement 2 Comments

110kg to 56kg – Melinda’s Story

Tuesday, September 29th, 2009

I’ve taken some time this week to have a chat to Melinda, a 32 year old mother of 3. I wanted to share her story with my readers because she is nothing short of inspirational. Her journey to health has not been easy, nor did she have a lot of support. What she did have was determination and the strength to continue on no matter what was thrown at her.

Melinda went from obese at 110kg, down to a strong 56kg. She still has goals and is constantly seeking to challenge herself further. I am certain her story and experience will show you that anything is possible and that any goal is realistic if you are prepared to be in it for the long haul and make a commitment to your health. Here is Melinda at her heaviest:

My interview with Melinda follows:

What bodyshape did you have as a child/teenager?

I was skinny & bony as a kid, and went on the pill at 17. I started to put on heaps of weight, went from 45kg to 85kg at age 20. I went on fad diets, starvation diets lost weight put it on again. At 24 with exercise & a bad diet due to lack of education on food I went down to 57kg.

What did pregnancy and/or eating habits change about your body?

During my pregnancy I got really depressed, thought I was eating for 10, worked for a company where there was photography studios, they were shooting food, when they were finished with it I got to eat as much of it as I wanted, every day! Packets of chips, cream cakes, hot chips, roast lunches (along with living at Mcdonalds.) I ended up with huge with no neck & strechmark city.

What weight did you get to at your heaviest?

Went from 57kg to 110kg. 3 months into my first pregnancy I was in maternity clothes by 6 months they didn’t have a hope in hell of fitting me & by the end of the pregnancy. I was wearing size 24 clothes. 8 months after the first baby was born I was still wearing size 22 at 105kg

Bra size was a 16DD & that was tight.

What did the weight make you feel like or stop you from doing?

Having this much weight made me feel depressed & suicidal, no confidence, no friends, judged by others. Less of a person like I didn’t mater. I walked into Sports Girl once & the sales girls would not even acknowledge me, they were so rude because they didn’t cater for my size, I walked out in tears I felt about 50 years old not 24.

At one point when my baby was around 11 months I was so close to a nervous breakdown.

I couldn’t do activities with my baby, wouldn’t go swimming had no energy to even go for a family walk it started to create marriage problems because he was embarrassed by my weight, even a marriage counsellor suggested along with my husband that I should lose weight that just really upset me.

Tell me about the decision to change (how, why, when, with what help)

My decision to change came from nasty judgmental comments that still ring in my head to this day (which I can now laugh at those who made them). “You will never lose that weight”,” look how fat she is, hahaha”. I said to myself, stuff these people! and set out to prove a point.

From the time my first baby was 8months old it took me 5 years but I did it. I started off with a personal trainer, dietician, determination & dedication also asking the right people in gyms etc lots of questions along the way.

What food habits did you have to break?

I had to break eating Mcdonalds, hot chips, hamburgers, chocolate & any other crap you can imagine.

What kept you going every day?

Determination & wanting to prove a point to those people with negative comments that I’m better than them!

Did you find it hard or easy overall?

It was a very rocky road lots of highs & lows, lots tears, frustration & anguish. I was ready to chuck in the towel many of times, it was the hardest journey of my life.

What does it feel like now, to be training as an athlete and eating even better than ever?

Now after 3 children, & a huge life style change, eating healthy food & regular exercise  I feel alive & well like Im 20 years old not 32!

It’s unreal I now have more confidence than I have ever had, friends & I’m happier than ever at 56kg & a size 8. Im in much better shape than all the judgemental people who I now seriously laugh at. I’m doing things I never would have imagined possible 8 years ago & with the best trainer that I’ve ever had encouraging me, I’m training to be in the best shape I can possibly be in. I want to be a personal trainer & help other women or men who are in the same situation that I was in because I understand them & know how hard it is. It is possible!

I hope by now you can see that the results you get from what can be a quite a long, challenging journey are well worth it. Melinda will never go back to her old ways, one chat with her and you get the impression she means business! She made a decision one day, and stuck to it. She does miss days of training and does eat chocolate and icecream, but the majority of her days are based on good nutrition and short, intense exercise sessions that continue to give her results. She doesn’t have a trainer coaching her for 5 hours a day like on The Biggest Loser, so yes it did take a little while. If you can understand that and respect that your body took some time to get big and will need more time to reverse the damage you will find it easier to be consistent.

What sets her apart from people who fail to sustain change is that she picks herself back up when she has a bad day, and gets on with things again, rather than spending a week eating herself sick because of one small mistake. Despite having a demanding role as a mother of 3 (her youngest is 18 months) she makes time for exercise (20 mins 6 days a week) and puts the effort into educating herself about new foods and recipes as much as possible. She stopped making excuses and started demanding better respect from herself and everyone around her so she could live again. Get off your chair now, and go bash out a set of push ups, or look up a new healthy recipe. It starts with one small step!

29.09.2009 Motivation, Physical Health, Self Improvement No Comments

Functional Fitness – forget the machines and train properly!

Sunday, August 30th, 2009

hands

When I sat down to write this article, it dawned on me that it will be challenging to put into words how much shifting to this method of training can change your life. I can only suggest you give it a go for yourself and leave all your old ideas at the door. I did! I’ve been heavily into weightlifting and fitness since the age of 14 (I am 29 at the time of writing). I’ve had decent results in strength and muscle development from traditional training utilising a mixture of machine weights, dumbells and bodyweight exercises. Recently I’ve moved into fully functional exercise following the Crossfit (http://www.crossfit.com) methodology/workouts and have comitted to never touching another machine again. The results I have achieved are nothing short of amazing. I should state I’m not affiliated with Crossfit and am not being paid to write this article. My personal improvement and success is my motivation to share this with my readers.

Crossfit training can be summed up as follows:

World-Class Fitness in 100 Words:

Eat meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch and no sugar. Keep intake to levels that will support exercise but not body fat. Practice and train major lifts: Deadlift, clean, squat, presses, C&J, and snatch. Similarly, master the basics of gymnastics: pull-ups, dips, rope climb, push-ups, sit-ups, presses to handstand, pirouettes, flips, splits, and holds. Bike, run, swim, row, etc, hard and fast. Five or six days per week mix these elements in as many combinations and patterns as creativity will allow. Routine is the enemy. Keep workouts short and intense. Regularly learn and play new sports.

-CrossFit founder, Greg Glassman

While you will get results from traditional gym exercise, you can get faster, more overall results from a truly functional fitness program. Your typical gym consists of a majority cable machines, perhaps some dumbells, a squat rack, crosstrainers, treadmills, step machines, aerobics classes. A typical crossfit gym will be filled with pull up bars, plyometric boxes, sandbags, olympic bars, kettlebells, ropes, gymnastic rings and the like. Concentrate your training on moving your BODY, rather than a machine, you are doing what comes naturally. If you are jumping, lifting, climbing, throwing and running, these natural movements are compound and multi joint which ensures extensive muscle fibre recuitment overall. There are 10 domains of fitness – cardiovascular/respiratory endurance, stamina, strength, flexibility, power, speed, agility, balance, coordination and accuracy. Crossfit ensures you are across all of these. The workouts change daily and can be scaled to any fitness level. The variety of training goes a long way to ensuring motivation and there is something exciting (and slightly sadistic) about checking the website each morning to see what torture has been prescribed for the day.

If it’s not working – do something different!

I have watched with interest some of the people training at my local gym over the 2 months since I started. They come in and do the same workouts, day in day out. 4 sets of 10 reps on each machine down the line while chatting to their friend on the next machine. They haven’t had any results. They don’t look like they are having fun and I know from my experience working in gyms, they will join the long list of inactive members before too long. I used to prescribe a mixture of machine and free weights with some separate cardio. Those days are over. You don’t need to do long sessions, or separate cardio and weights sessions. 20 minutes of push ups, un-weighted squats and burpees can do wonders! I’m not talking typical circuit training, it is far more intense, simple and effective than that.

I’ve personally been plagued with injuries over the years such as dodgy knees, a severe lower back problem, arthritic pain in many joints. I’ve been doing Crossfit for about 2 months and I am pain free, have put on a significant amount of lean muscle (which SHOULD be your goal even if you are female!), reduced my bodyfat level and imortantly achieved extreme improvements in cardio fitness, strength, agility and power. I was only able to complete 6 pull ups (chin ups) in a day prior to starting. Last week I did a session that lasted 20 minutes with 3 exercises. I completed 75 unassisted pull ups as part of this session! It doesn’t matter what your goal with training is – this truly is a one size fits all way of training. I have no experience with Olympic lifting, however am learning from the videos and all you need is a broomstick to start practicing. It doesn’t cost you a cent to go to the website and watch the exercise demos and view the workout of the day. If you want instruction you can attend seminars in your area, or join your local crossfit gym to train under the watchful eye of accredited Crossfit trainers. There are scaled versions of the workouts at the Crossfit BrandX forums and some very helpful people there to assist you.

The reason I wanted to share this is simply because it works. I know my body well. I know how long it takes to go up a notch on any typical gym machine, I know how much improvement I get in muscle tone week in week out using the machines. Changing to olympic lifts, bodyweight exercises and kettlebell exercises, with short, highly intense workouts that change on a daily basis has blown away all my previous notions of how much I can improve over a week or a month. Being the mother of an 18 month old toddler means I don’t have a lot of down time to get to the gym. The fact that these workouts average between 10 and 25 minutes make it appealing too. I don’t dread going to the gym, I burst through the door, power through the short workout and get home in under 30 minutes.

I apologise for the way this article promotes so strongly a commercial venture/branch. I don’t know of any other training system that is as functional and effective as this and I feel it is worth sharing. As mentioned, you can access it all for free, there is a great support network online and I am truly passionate about this method of training. The programming is done for you, you never get bored and anyone can do it. Once you Crossfit – you will never go back.

30.08.2009 Crossfit, Exercise Programming, Fitness, Motivation, Physical Health, Random, Self Improvement No Comments