After serving as a front desk assistant for 2 years, Gina graduated into the role of the DIAKADI General Manager for the past 7 years, directing all staff and interns while handling the coordination of a large variety of projects ranging from the management of facility upgrade construction, the development of new trainer education programs including one-on-one work on marketing and new business development for trainers, heading up the rebranding of DIAKADI Body into DIAKADI Fitness Performance Life (logo, look, website, blog), and most recently leading our team throughout our lease renewal, budgeting and forecasting work for 2014.

DIAKADI would not be the leading facility that it is today without the incredible work and love that Gina has for her work. Consequently, we are excited to announce that Gina will now hold the title of Associate Partner and General Manager of DIAKADI.

Congratulations Gina and thank you for your continued dedication to making DIAKADI the outstanding facility and home base for all of your peers, co-workers, clients and ‘family’.

Author | Commit to Fit 2013 Winner, Judith Zissman

If this blog was a novel, we’d be in a boring middle chapter right now – past the novelty of the beginning where everything is fresh and interesting, and not yet at the triumphant ending where everyone celebrates our delightful heroine and how far she’s come.

Much of life is a boring middle chapter, though, so it’s useful to find strategies for staying engaged.

The first is that I’m starting to really see some results. I’m down about 12 pounds so far, and that doesn’t seem like much to me (how many times have I lost that same 10-20 pounds?), but the combination of weight loss and muscle building has me feeling leaner overall. Other people are noticing as well – I ran into someone I hadn’t seen since my son was born and she commented about it immediately.

The second is to keep in mind exactly why I’m doing this: to keep up with my son for the short and long term. He’s a very physical kid – army crawling, pulling himself up to standing, and doing a fantastic plank position. Getting him to stop squirming long enough to change his diaper requires most of my upper body strength already, and he’s getting stronger every day. I need to keep up.

Billy was traveling for work last week, and it was tempting to slack off while he was gone. I could really have used a good nap or two during those afternoons, but I went to the gym and did the work, reminding myself that I’m not there to make Billy or Sarah happy – I’m there to meet my own goals, and napping doesn’t get me there.

The third is to surround myself with support and encouragement. A friend of mine has started a Facebook group for people she knows who are working on fitness goals, and each day we talk about the activities and choices we pursued towards those goals, and the challenges we faced along the way. Though I don’t know most of the people in the group, it’s really helpful to have that daily check-in with a team of supporters.

How do you get through the boring middle parts of things you’ve started? Let me know in the comments – I’d love to hear from you.

AWESOME is doing work that’s meaningful.

It’s engaging in activities that make you come alive.

AWESOME is surrounding yourself with people that elevate you and having relationships that are fulfilling and loving.

AWESOME is loving how you look, loving how you feel and loving how you show up in life!

Have an area of your life that you’d like to improve?  Wish you could turn it around? Then join me for the 100 day challenge.

The challenge:

100 days. Yes. That’s a long time. But if you’re like me, you want sustainable change. Not a quick fix.

Chose ONE thing that you want to work on.  It could be to workout 3 days a week, eat a salad everyday, write a gratitude journal or take up a new hobby – anything that fits into your definition of AWESOME.

The key here is to pick one thing. It’s easy to get over eager and want to do a lot more. But set yourself up for success – don’t overwhelm yourself and risk failure. If anything, pick one goal for the first 30 days, then if you’re knocking it out of the park, add one more goal after.

Be specific. Please don’t tell me you want to eat healthier. What does that mean exactly? Veggies with every meal? Or, no more desserts? One cheat meal a week? Or one healthy meal a week?

S-t-r-e-t-c-h yourself. Yes I want you to succeed. But I also don’t want it to be super easy. Satisfaction comes from real growth. Don’t be afraid to pick something that takes work because that’s how you’ll get AWESOME.

Figure out your WHY. What are you doing this for? Are you looking to have more energy? Do you want to lose weight because you want to feel better? Want to try more activities to feel more engaged? As I tell my clients:

A big enough WHY can overcome any WHAT or HOW. 

It’s important you pick a goal that you want for the right reasons.

Prepare for stumbling blocks. What if you get sick? Or need to travel? Do you usually lose your willpower when you’re super tired? Or bored?

Create a plan to overcome the obstacles: Get an accountability partner, hire a coach, or employ the carrot and stick strategy.

If you do get off track, have a plan for that too. One bad day shouldn’t undo 4 AWESOME weeks!

Own the failure. Learn from it. And move on.

Celebrate the wins! Ate a salad everyday for a week? Woo hoo! Started a blog and are now writing 500 words a day? AWESOME! Set up a reward for yourself for every week that you comply. Get a manicure or go out to a celebratory dinner. Remind yourself why you are doing it, how great you feel and pump yourself up!

One word of caution here. Make sure the reward is something other than what you are choosing to give up. So for example, if your goal is to cut out soda, the reward cannot be soda!

Have FUN! Yes, there will be tough days and days when you’ll want to quit. Take a step back, smile, embrace the suck and have fun with it.

Stick with it, follow the principles and you will have a breakthrough.

AWESOME will happen.

I do this challenge every year. And this time, I’m inviting you to join me! Take action now and post your goal in the comments section.

Want some support to ensure success? Contact me and I’ll get you going.

What is your AWESOME?

:::

Pooja is a firm believer in the power of the human spirit. If you want it badly enough, there is no dream that’s too big to achieve with the right ATTITUDE, COMMITMENT and HARD WORK. As a life coach, she gets to work with clients and discover what’s truly important in their lives. Pooja creates CUSTOMIZED plans designed to help you achieve your GOALS. She helps you find and live your AWESOME!

Some nutritional camps really do think white rice is no better than eating a box of cookies.

Yet in some cultures (both modern and historical) that exhibit immaculate biomarkers of health, with low obesity and diabetes rates, it has been a dietary staple for centuries. Seems as if I have been discussing both sides of this argument in a variety of different virtual locations. Figured I’d put that all together into one comprehensive post for you.

Post Summary: This is a very controversial topic with no universal answer. Rice can be a good food choice for some and not for others — a stance I have been trying to explain for years — but many athletes don’t understand nutritional biochemistry and disease states (including “sedentary-itis”), and many scientists don’t understand exercise physiology and Sports Nutrition (jogging is not a sport). This article will includes 2 parts. (1) a clip from an upcoming nutritional video project. (2) An article that was published last week on my friend Adam Bornstein’s blog.

Why you should first assess whether or not you even need starch in your diet. Sedentary or insulin resistant, not so much, and the majority of your “carbs” should come from non-starchy vegetables and whole fruit (roughly 100-125g a day). No rice, white or other, necessary.

Why the depletion of muscle glycogen reserves through intense training places extra carbohydrate demands on the athlete — ANAEROBIC metabolism and muscular contractions run on glucose/glycogen stores. This is a different physiological condition than from those who are inactive, or even from those who only perform low-intensity, aerobic activity.

Why athletes should get the majority of their essential amino acids and essential fatty acids from animal proteins, and fiber and micros from plant foods. The primary reason to eat starch, then, is simply for the glucose chains that fuel anaerobic activity/exercise.

Why it is important to obtain those glucose chains with as little toxic compounds or “anti-nutrients” as possible.

Why that all sounds complicated, but it’s really not. In terms of practical application, it’s simple and straightforward — if Paleo/Caveman nutrition is the best baseline template for sedentary populations, WHITE RICE and ROOT VEGETABLES are the best starchy carb choices for anaerobic exercisers to add back in to support their training.

Some of this material overlaps, but it’s good to hear it more than once to break free from the dogmatic approaches to nutrition that dominate the industry (if you are going to sell to the masses there can only be One Way), and move closer towards the “you got to fit the plan to the person” Truth. It took me over a decade to learn that.  Maybe I can help shorten your learning curve.

PART I — THE VIDEO: CARB CONFUSION & WHITE RICE

Click here to view the embedded video.

Author | Commit to Fit 2013 Winner, Judith Zissman

This week, blueberries appeared at the Castro Farmers Market. They were stunning and juicy, and since I know that a “serving” of blueberries is pretty substantial (3/4 cup), I bought a large bag to have on hand for snacking. My son is just starting to try solid foods, and I thought he might like a blueberry, so I crushed one a bit and offered it to him. As he rolled it around in his tiny mouth, his face lit up with unmistakable joy. He clearly had never tasted anything as delicious, and was eager for more.

Watching him heightened my own joy in eating the blueberries – it was no longer about making a good food choice to reach my health goals, but rather an opportunity for me to share this incredibly happy moment with my son.

We often hear the phrase “emotional eating” as a negative – people make poor food choices when they’re trying to deal with uncomfortable emotions like loneliness, boredom or fear – but the flip side is that food can fill us with wonderful emotions too, and eating in healthy ways should encourage all of that joy and celebration, not make us feel deprived or unable to enjoy food. Eating blueberries with my son this week was a great reminder for me.

I also had an opportunity come up this week to cook a meal for a stranger. As someone who started a family on my own, I’ve really benefitted from the supportive community of Single Mothers by Choice, and when a message came across the email list that there was a new single mother who was struggling, I offered to help.

Thinking about what I might cook to bring for her brought back the beautiful memories of the first few weeks of my son’s life, eight months ago. My friends showed up with amazing dishes: lasagnas and roast chickens, muffins and fruit for breakfasts, everything fresh and organic and made with love. Everyone who came by wanted to celebrate and nurture us, and they did so by feeding me when I was exhausted in the all-consuming fog of new motherhood.

In the end, though, I chose to make a dish my mother made for me in the week after my son was born. Because my iron was low, my mom wanted to make me iron-rich foods, meat and greens and other things designed to boost this crucial mineral. Red lentils are especially high in iron, and my mom made a simple soup that is a great option for new moms.

When you read about dieting and food issues, there’s so much complicated stuff that comes up, especially for women, about the tensions around food and love and mothers, but it was just so beautiful to have my mother nurture me with healthy food in this moment where I was becoming a mother myself. I wanted to share that by cooking that way for the new mom I met this week.a

The recipe below is for the most simple vegan and gluten-free version of the soup, which is great when you don’t know someone’s dietary restrictions or they’re trying to figure out what foods work for them as their body heals from the birth (or any other medical procedure). I’ve also suggested places you can make the soup more interesting for an everyday meal.

Note that the recipe is easily multiplied if you’d like to make enough for yourself and a friend, and that you can increase or decrease both ingredients and cook time here and have things turn out just fine.

Ingredients

1 cup red lentils

4 cups water (*you can use any broth you wish for more flavor here)

3 carrots, diced

1 shallot, diced

3 cups dark leafy greens of your choice (chard, spinach, kale, etc.), chopped roughly as needed

Salt and pepper to taste

Optional mild enhancements:

1 tablespoon homemade bouillon (I use this in everything. It’s amazing.)

¼ teaspoon each of the following anti-inflammatory spices: cinnamon, cayenne, turmeric, ginger

1 bay leaf (remove after cooking)

Optional hearty enhancements for more of a full meal:

2 chicken sausages, sliced

hot sauce to taste

Directions

1. Bring water to a boil in a large stockpot.

2. Add lentils and cook for one minute, stirring well.

3. Reduce heat to a simmer, add additional vegetables (except greens) and spices.

4. Simmer for at least an hour, preferably two or three. The lentils will disintegrate and form a thick soup.

5. Add greens (and chicken sausages, if you’re including those) and simmer for another 20 minutes.

6. Enjoy!

A client recently wrote me a text after our session that read, “I hate running, but after exercise, the whole world opens up. I have a window of time where I’m insanely mentally, emotionally and physically on fire.”

A Christmas card from another client read, “If some had told me a year ago that exercise would be the path back to my writing, I never would have believed them.”

I share all of this because I believe that exercise can be a powerful path to self-transformation—to living the lives we dream of. In our culture, we are bombarded with messages that exercise is something that is ‘hard,’ takes a lot of discipline and will power, that we are somehow failing if we are not doing it, and perhaps most dangerously, that we will only be happy when we have six pack abs and the body we dream of.

I want to invite you to re-frame this belief. To stop seeing exercise as drudgery that must done so that ‘one day’ we can be happy when the weight has been lost; but, instead understand exercise as an access to direct happiness in the here and now.

My own re-framing with exercise began seven years ago, in my junior year of college when I found myself in a period of lethargy and depression, unable to get back to my usual upbeat, vibrant self. I went to therapy, talked to friends, did activities I loved—but nothing seemed to help.

This all changed one afternoon when I decided to go for a run.  I hadn’t run in years and, literally, a week before had said to a friend, “you’re crazy” when he explained that he wanted to start running every day.

But now, with what I can only attribute as an act of grace, I got the impulse to go for run and felt the cloud of lethargy, fatigue and sadness lift as I ran. The next day I went for a run again—for no other reason than it felt so darn good. Pretty soon, I was running every day, getting up to 12 miles without ever consciously meaning to. People started commenting how happy I seemed, how great I looked– I lost weight and got toned without consciously meaning to and gained the confidence to take on projects that before felt impossible.

When we discover the joy of exercise—the pounds will naturally drop– but more importantly, we will have a tool that can give us direct access to happiness, energy and a new perspective at any given moment.   When we begin to exercise regularly–our whole lives begin to change–we gain confidence, let go of anxieties and long held dis-empowering beliefs. Our bodies change on the inside and out as we gain access to new levels of energy, inspiration and tap into the parts of ourselves that have been lying dormant for too long. Often, I have seen clients transition careers or get promotions, re-discover passions that have been untouched for years, tap into their creativity and take their relationships to new levels, all while learning to love to run and do push-ups.

Anti-depressants are the most widely prescribed pharmaceuticals in this country– isn’t it time we found another way of accessing our happiness?

***

Logically–the million dollar follow up questions is, “How do we learn to love to exercise?” Like so many aspects of life–the path for everyone is different—but I encourage you to try a form of exercise you’ve been intrigued by—whether it be yoga, zumba, kick boxing or pilates. Go for a workout with a friend or seek support from a trainer. And most importantly, keep tuning into how you feel from exercise rather than how you look. If you feel even a bit of a positive difference—great, keep doing it! But If you feel agitated and are hating every moment, try another style of exercise until you discover something that lights something up inside of you—the process is so worth it, I promise.