Do you sometimes feel insecure about your body? Do you see all those tight fitness girls passing by on your Instagram feed and do you think every Sunday ’tomorrow I’ll pick myself up’? Well then you are certainly not alone. But that is precisely the aspect that can motivate you to think again, to put yourself first again and to slowly but surely adapt your lifestyle to a healthier way of life. Columnist Julie is ready to help you with this!
A lifetime of dieting
Until a year back, I was always on a diet (I even hate the word diet so much now!). Every weekend the same scenario:
– Yeah, it’s weekend . A little cheat meal doesn’t hurt, right?
– Oops, maybe those fries yesterday and pizza today were a bit much.
– Bah, I’m disgusted with myself. What a loser I am to always let myself go like that.
– Monday is a new week. A new start and thus a new diet. This time I will succeed!
And this pattern kept repeating itself over and over again. With as a result that instead of being at my desired weight after all those years of ‘dieting’, a year ago I was at 67kg. As I’m only 1m53, you can imagine that this was not my healthy weight. With every extra gram I started to feel worse and worse and was plodding along in a vicious circle.
Your mind is your greatest enemy
Keeping up a bad routine leads to you telling yourself things like “It’s in my genes, so no matter what I do, I’ll always be too fat” or “I don’t have enough time to cook healthy food” and “I cannot exercise and maintain a social life, raise the kids, take my career to the next level”, etc. So I put this at the bottom of my ‘priority list’. Deep inside we know well enough that these are lame excuses and we are just not mentally ready to change our lifestyle.
Statements like ‘summer bodies are made in winter’ are very annoying (and bullshit). Because, A: what is the definition of a perfect summer body? (be sure to check out my clothing line “No [BODY] is perfect”) and B: do we suddenly have the time and desire to give everything in the winter so we can parade in our bikini during the summer? Because oh yes, that is the reason why we work on our bodies, to look slim and slender in bikini pictures… That is why my slogan has become ‘healthy bodies are made whenever the fuck we are mentally ready and motivated’. May sound less sexy but it’s a truism. If the mind won’t cooperate, you can restart as many times as you want on Monday, it won’t succeed in persevering.
How to change it around?
The secret is awareness. Take some time to reflect on what is important to you in life and I really mean to you personally. We all know the phrase “who does not take care of himself first, cannot possibly take care of another. This is a fact, if you ignore yourself and your own needs. At some point you are going to suffer a blow from the hammer and therefore you will not be able to take care of your loved ones either. So it is extremely important to learn to put yourself first. Let that be the slogan of my company ‘Time For You Consulting’.
Once you realize how important it is to take care of yourself, both physically and mentally, that click often starts to follow automatically. You need a deep, inner drive that fuels that motivation and commitment. Who doesn’t want to step through life healthy, fit enough to run around the garden with the kids and fit back into favorite jeans.
Done with excuses, time to do something about it. Whether you want to live a healthier life, lose weight or build muscle, the combination of a healthy diet and enough exercise is a must.
But we don’t like to hear ‘have to’ so we make this online sport-moment a fun and relaxing me-time moment so you’ll be happy to sign up for the next class.
Time is money
You may think “But when am I going to find the time to exercise between all the daily tasks?”.
I completely understand that this is the biggest challenge for many people today. Especially for the average career woman who works late into the night and for moms who have to take care of the kids, feed them, put them to bed, have jobs etc. This led me to the idea of offering online fitness classes for women of all ages. After all, this is the way to get busy women among us to exercise, I’ll list some benefits;
– Online means no travel to and from the gym – No extra travel means, saving time.
– You have the comfort of your own ‘fitness area’. This so it can be in the comfort of your own living room, in a meeting room during your lunch break, on the beach during your business trip or family trip, etc.
– Because you can participate at home, you don’t have to find a solution for the children. For example, you can join while they are doing their homework or are playing a game on the iPad next to you.
“I never felt comfortable enough to participate in group classes.
I was always thinking that it would be noticeable that I was a newcomer.”
With my online classes I want to make the experience fun and relatable. It’s not just about the results, but more about learning how to move. I focus on how to make time for ourselves. How to perform a squat, how to relieve our backs by using the abs, etc. We do all this during an online class to get or stay fit.
The class consists of a combination of cardio routines and shaping exercises such as variations of the crunch, lunges, squats, working out with resistance bands etc. All of this to up-tempo beats and in a group of motivated women with a positive attitude. What more does a person need to include that me-time moment each week?
The online fitness classes are just for women. You can choose whether to leave the camera on or off. No judging looks from others, just people with the same goal in mind. Be sure to try out a class and book your first session today, through this link.
