Tag Archives: lose weight

How to find time to workout regularly?

March 10, 2015Motivation to stay fitafter weight loss, healthy life mindset, lose weight, motivation, no excuse, successful weight lossChristina Marky

Can't find time in your busy schedule to workout? I was like you once, but managed to develop a way to workout 5 times a week for an hour or more! Want to know how I did it? I share my 5 secrets on how to find time to workout in your everyday busy life for a healthy life!

Just think of your workout time as a start towards a new healthy life. Here are 5 tips to get you started on your journey towards living a healthy life and workout regularly:

1. Limit your time spent online and on social media

Chances are that you are spending your free time online browsing the internet and/or checking Facebook. My excuse was that after a long and hard day at work I am too tired mentally and physically to do anything else but stare blindly at the TV screen or Facebook. If you still believe this, then I have news for you: schedule a workout session instead of turning on the TV or your laptop.

By the time you finish your workout, you will feel positive about yourself, and the thought that you did something for creating a healthy life in the long run fulfills you much more than looking at pictures of your coworker’s best friend’s summer holiday in Dubai from 2010.

Remember my words the next time you are about to turn on the TV or open a tab to start typing “fac…” and stop right there. Instead go to YouTube and type in the search bar “yoga at home” and click on that 30 minute workout video and follow the instructions! Daily workout done! Welcome healthy life!

2. Spend time with friends while doing a workout

How to find time to workout regularly? — This could be you and your friends jumping happily instead of sitting and sipping coffee while complaining about your day at work.

As being a very social person who enjoys spending time with her friends, I found really challenging to say no to my friends when they asked me to grab a cup of coffee with them after work. But because I scheduled my workout right after work, I had to say no many times. And I felt awful about it, because I didn’t want my friends to think that I don’t like spending time with them.

So I came up with this thing: whenever one of my friends asked me if I want to grab a cup of coffee with them, I immediately asked if they want to join me at the gym or take a Zumba class with me instead. At first they were really surprised, but there were friends who happily said yes to a workout opportunity. And there were friends who later asked me if they could join me to workout on one of my Zumba classes.

3. Try out different workouts to find the one you truly enjoy

It wasn’t a fast journey to find the right workout type that I enjoy and love. It took years to develop my current workout routine that is challenging enough so I don’t get bored. So take it slow, try out different workout types: Pilates, yoga, aerobics, running, gym workout, Zumba, weight lifting and many more. There are plenty workouts you can choose from! You can workout at home by searching for workout videos on YouTube or you can join a class to be around other people to motivate you. Try out anything that could take you closer towards living a healthy life you always wanted!

4. Schedule your workout in advance

The trick to sticking with a workout routine is to treat it as an appointment. So put your workout hours in your calendar. You wouldn’t miss an appointment with your dentist would you? So treat your workout session as that appointment: set your mind in that mode. Workout is equally important as your dentist appointments.

At first this will be hard, because everything around you will try to make you miss that appointment: family will ask you to do something important, friends will want to meet you for coffee and chitchat at that time, your phone won’t stop ringing. But you need to make it clear to yourself and to others: everything can wait an hour until you finish your scheduled workout session. This is the only way to get closer to living a healthy life.

Family and friends won’t respect your workout hours if you are not treating it as something you need to do whatever happens. You need to make that yoga class on Wednesday at 8 p.m. and everything else can wait for you to finish your scheduled relaxation.

5. Re-think your priorities

If you’ve read through this list and still think that you wouldn’t be able to fit a workout into your busy schedule, then you seriously need to re-think your priorities in life.

Just think about it: you believe in a healthy life mindset, and you would like to change your current lifestyle for it to be more healthy.

In order for you to make time for workout and live a healthy life you need to make it a priority in your life.

If it is important enough for you to live a healthy life, then you will find a way to make time for workout. [Tweet this!]

If workout and healthy life are not important enough to you, then you’ll find excuses. If you can’t fit workout into your schedule, then it means that you have other priorities in life which are currently more important to you than living a healthy life.

Take a time to re-think your priorities in life: what are the things that are more important to you currently than living a healthy life?

There is nothing wrong with that, just make it clear to yourself that you are not living a healthy life because you don’t want to. If you’d really want to, you’d find a way to make it happen.

Want to start going to the gym but you have no one to go with? You can go alone! Fear not! Here are 4 hacks to get you to the gym if you are afraid of going to the gym alone as a girl >>>

Want more tips on living a healthy life? Click here for my weekly updates>>>

3 myths you need to know about weight loss before you start

February 19, 2015Motivation to stay fitafter weight loss, Body Image during and after weight loss, fit body, healthy life mindset, lose weight, losing fat, motivation, overcoming obesity, successful weight loss, weight loss problems, weight loss strugglesChristina Marky

Starting a weight loss journey is challenging. Check out what are the noob mistakes that you make after beginning  a weight loss program.

When you start thinking about weight loss while being overweight, you start with an idea in your head about weight loss. You believe that you know exactly what you need to do in order to achieve weight loss. You believe your only problem is starting and sticking to a weight loss program.

So what are the myths that every noob believes at the start of their weight loss program?

Myth #1:

I have to do an hour or more cardio per day for helping my weight loss

Noobs believe that doing hours cardio will burn off that extra pizza slice they had for snack. If you still believe that you can burn off extra calories you’ve eaten, you’re wrong. Here, let me prove this by giving you an example of how many calories you burn with cardio and how many pizza slices you’ve burned off*:

[table caption=”Burn off that pizza slice” width=”500″ colwidth=”20|100|50″ colalign=”left|left|center”]
Exercise type,Calories burned/hour,Pizza slice burned off
yoga,148 kcal,50% of a pizza slice
pilates,148 kcal,50% of a pizza slice
walking,177 kcal,60% of a pizza slice
belly dancing,266 kcal,93% of a pizza slice
aerobics,384 kcal,134% of a pizza slice
spinning,413 kcal,145% of a pizza slice
swimming,413 kcal,145% of a pizza slice
running,472 kcal,166% of a pizza slice
zumba,519 kcal,182% of a pizza slice
elliptical trainer,531 kcal,186% of a pizza slice
[/table]

* used MyFitnessPal’s calculator based on: a pizza slice has 285 kcal, a person has 59kg/130pounds.

So basically you can see that doing belly dancing for an hour will burn off that pizza slice that you had for a snack, but it won’t make you lose weight. Doing hours of cardio won’t help your weight loss.

Don’t get me wrong, cardio is beneficial for you because it can help you build endurance. It has many other benefits as well, as it can stronger your heart and lungs, reduce stress, make you feel more energized, help you increase bone density, reduce the risk of heart attack, make you sleep better and so on.

But relying solely on cardio for weight loss is naive.

Here comes the second myth:

Myth #2:

I must exercise to lose weight.

3 myths you need to know about weight loss before you start — You can sit on that machine for hours and it won’t make you lose a single pound

This is a lie. In reality: weight loss is only 20% gym and 80% kitchen. It means that you can lose weight by changing eating habits, you won’t need to step into a gym at all. However, everyone knows that exercising has many health benefits, so it is always a good idea to exercise. I am the spokesperson of healthy eating, but if your single goal is weight loss, you can always achieve it by eating less calories than you are currently eating.

I am not a fan of different crash-diets, detoxes, cleanses, but these also work for weight loss (even if they are unhealthy and bad for you in the long run) because the require you to eat at a caloric deficit.

You don’t see fat kids starving in Africa. So chances are, if you are twice as heavy as your healthy weight, then you are eating for 2 people. No matter how much you exercise, you can’t outrun your bad diet.

Myth #3:

Doing a bunch of ab exercises will give me defined six pack abs

No amount of ab exercises will give you great six pack abs. I learned this lesson by doing tons of ab exercises daily to loose my belly fat. It was successful until a point, where I could not lose the leftover belly fat from my bottom half no matter how hard I tried.

I had abs of steel, but they were invisible under that layer of body fat. So I seriously considered the truthfulness of the following statement:

Abs are formed in the gym but revealed at the kitchen. [Tweet this!]

So I’ve tweaked my nutrition, and bamm, visible abs! I considered myself a fool for not making the connection between body fat and visible abs, as well as for not thinking about the importance of nutrition as a component of having abs of steel.

Once I made a mistake of telling the girls at my Zumba Fitness Core class that they won’t get abs of steel by attending these classes once a week, but they looked at me in disbelief, like I was crazy.

Sure, they will strengthen their core and sculpt their abs, but they are expecting flat tummies and six pack abs at the end of the 4th week. Well, reality check: if you keep eating that pizza slice for breakfast every morning, no abs of steel for you lady.

So remember: in order to lose weight, start eating healthy, pick up healthy habits such as regular exercise. You’ll lose that fat in a healthy way for good!

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Reasons a woman needs to start lifting weights

October 14, 2014Motivation to stay fitlifting weights, lose weight, muscleChristina Marky

Lifting weights is not for women. You’ll look bulky with big muscles! It’s not womanly! These are just some of the bullsh!t women say when I mention that I started lifting weights. Me, a woman. Shame on me. It makes me scream at them that lifting weights won’t make a woman huge, because you are in fact a woman. But mostly I just say yeah, I look huge, right? When in fact I look fit and curvy in all the right places just like a woman should look, and I feel strong from lifting weights. I discovered that lifting weights as a woman can be fun and awesome! So why are women afraid of lifting weights?

While I was obese my goal was to lose weight to look healthy. Getting rid of fat and losing weight was a priority as a woman. I managed to go to overweight from obese and then lost more weight to finally hit the normal weight range for a woman. Achieving weight loss in a healthy way was also a priority and I noticed that I’ve not just lost weight and became thin from overweight but also thanks to regular exercising became a fit woman as well!

Overexercising is not good for consistent, healthy weight loss! [Tweet this!]

So I’ve changed my weight goals going lower and lower. The priority also shifted: it is not so much about losing weight anymore; it’s more about building muscle and paying attention so I don’t lose muscle mass while losing weight; but loose the remaining fat.

Now I am considered more muscular than the average woman out there. I never would have imagined that building muscle will be on my to do list! But having womanly muscles is awesome! And turns out I really enjoy having muscles: I love how carrying heavy grocery bags is not challenging anymore – I can carry them from the market to home easily! Getting six pack drinks and carrying them is also easy! And these are just the everyday benefits of being a muscular woman. I must admit that I secretly enjoy being the only woman in the weights sections of the gym. I let the others do cardio for hours and hours while I lift weights with men.

So why should every woman start lifting weights?

1. Get curvy body figure faster

You can have a fit body way faster with lifting weights than with doing cardio for hours and hours. Plus heavy cardio for more than 1 hour a day is not so healthy for you in the long run. You can easily achieve that desired womanly curvy body / six packs with lifting weights 3 times for an hour a week! So I switched from doing cardio 3 times a week to going to the gym lifting weights 3 times a week. Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoy the zumba classes, and attend them once or twice a week – but I don’t overdo it like some of the women by combining 2 or 3 hours of exercise a day for looking good. It’s pointless to tire yourself that much. And who the hell has time to exercise for 2-3 hours every day in the long run??? (Lonely women, that’s who.)

2. Being a beast without looking like a beast

Lifting weights will tone your womanly body making it visually pleasing. Muscles only show when you flex them, so you will not look like a beast, trust me. It is a common misconception that lifting weights will make women look big and bulky.

In order to look like big men with bulky muscles, a woman would need to produce testosterone, eat the right things and take supplements. So it is a hard work to look like The Rock, it won’t happen if you don’t make an effort. Besides, women’s bodies do not produce testosterone required to get bulky, so you won’t have to be afraid that you’ll get big by lifting weights.

3. Eat more and still look good

Good news for all you women out there who like to eat: with lifting weights, you can still look good and eat! Of course you have to eat healthy, but using your muscles uses up strength, so you will need to eat after lifting weights. You will need to eat real food, and eat enough of it. Your muscles will need protein!

Lifting weights as a woman has made me looking sexier than ever! Curves all around! You don’t have to be afraid that lifting weights will make you look like a pro body builder with huge muscles – in order to look like a pro body builder, you really have to want to look like that, eat like a beast with a specific diet in order to build that unnatural muscle mass.

Remember: it’s not how much you exercise; the secret is to do it smart! [Tweet this!]

So, you want to look damn good and still be strong? Start lifting weights, woman! Get inspired on your fitness journey by clicking here >>>

From Fat to Fit Girl

coping with changes after weight loss