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Transformation Fitness & Wellness

Plan B

I know this may seem simple, but it truly is not.

Always have plan B.

Now I am referring to your health and wellness and specifically exercise.

I believe it is important to always have a backup plan. Sure, I can set the best intention to wake up and get that workout in first thing, but life doesn’t always go exactly as we planned.

Now the old Arin would get frustrated, derailed because things didn’t go perfectly…

Does anyone feel this way?

Instead, I have learned we need to have plan B and sometimes C and D. 😉

You may not sleep well the night before.

Your mind was racing or a certain 4-year-old just wasn’t feeling like sleeping…right?

I believe the best way to handle situations like this is to chalk it up that things did not go as planned and find an alternate time.

This is no different from nutrition. If you plan on meal prepping and it didn’t get done, ok when else can we carve time.

Or can we break it down throughout the week.

I have found listing out the meals on a marker board helps us know what the week’s options are and then we decide when to cook.

The most important thing I want you to take away is to create a plan with some flexibility. If things don’t go as planned, you have options.

“It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

Arin

Spot, Stop, Swap

What we know from research around the negative bias is that our brains give more psychological weight to the negative than the positive.

This is a product of our evolution. If you didn’t attend to negative risks such as the snake or tiger then your survival was at risk.

Negative things could kill you more than positive things.

Positive emotions are like teflon they tend to slip off and negative emotions are like velcro they stick like glue.

Jay Shetty, helps us with a tool to reframe these negative thoughts:

Spot – notice and recognize the negative thought as it appears (develops awareness)

Stop – what are the environmental cues that triggers these thoughts? Is there a pattern of time, place and people that bring these negative thoughts on?

Swap – once you have spotted the negative thought, stop it and swap it with an empowering and uplifting alternative.

Being positive doesn’t mean you don’t ever have negative thoughts. It just means you don’t let those thoughts control your life.

So much of what we do is exercise and nutrition, but what success always boils down to is your daily thoughts.

Let me know if this is helpful,

Arin

Triple Protein Burgers

Ingredients

1 lb. grass-fed ground beef

 ¼ tsp. Cayenne pepper

½ tsp. Smoked paprika

Fresh Grilled Paleo Hamburger with Veggies and Bacon

¼ tsp. Garlic powder

¼ tsp. Onion powder

Sea Salt & Black Pepper to taste

8 strips of bacon (I use Beelers)

4 hot dogs (nitrate and filler-free – I use Thousand Hills)

½ white onion, sliced

5-6 Tablespoons mayo (I use Primal Kitchen or Sir Kensington’s)

Head of romaine lettuce

Optional toppings:  Bubbie’s pickles and tomato

Directions

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Place bacon on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and cook for about 15 minutes or until slightly crispy.

In a large bowl, mix together ground beef, cayenne pepper, smoked paprika, garlic powder, onion powder, and a little salt and pepper.  Then form 4 patties of equal size.

Cut hot dog down the middle to butterfly the hot dog.  Place beef patties on the grill and cook on both sides to the desired doneness.  4-5 minutes on each side will yield medium-rare.  You can also pan-fry your burgers in a cast-iron skillet. 

When you flip the beef patties, place the butterflied hot dogs on the grill and flip for about 2 minutes.  You can also heat your hot dogs up by placing them in a toaster oven or in boiling water.

When all meat is done cooking, place a beef patty in a lettuce leaf, top it with mayo, then a hot dog, then bacon, and all of the fixings you like.  Then top with one more piece of lettuce.

Enjoy!!!

Do Zone 1 Daily – Step by Step Instructions

Thought this could be helpful today. I have been talking a lot about breathing and I’ve shared a few times how our warm-up in our facility is different.

Some may say it’s a bit voodoo.

What we do is called RPR which stands for Reflexive Performance Reset.

With all the stress we encounter on a daily basis it makes it super hard to perform your best in your daily life let alone the gym.

We always start our warm-up with 10 belly breaths.

Now as simple as this task may seem, I watch time and time again people struggle to truly belly breathe.

It may be first thing in the morning you raced out of bed, your mind started going with the list of things you had to get done. (First, step knockout this workout!)

Or they come in after a long day and for the most part, you see people breathe from the chest.

Take note, when you are speaking with someone, are they flying 100 miles a minute, notice their breathing.

So, what do you do when you can’t seem to belly breathe?

Start with what we call Zone 1.

You take your thumb or knuckles and rub 1-inch spots down your sternum, then we call it an upside-down Y, rub along the bottom of your rib cage. Take note of how this is feeling.

Now I am not talking light rubbing, you want to get into the fascia.

Then from your belly button measure about 1.5 to each side and 1.5 down and press in rubbing the psoas.

Lastly, find the ridge on the base of your skull (back of your head) rub starting in the center, use both hands and work your way out. Then find your jaw right below your earlobe and apply pressure rubbing working 1inch spots.

Retest your belly breathing.

During the day when I feel stressed, I do these drills and it helps bring me back centered. I struggle often to breathe and working through zone 1 has helped significantly.

Let me know your thoughts.

Super weird stuff, but the research they are doing on athletes is proofing significantly less soft tissue injuries from adding RPR.

It has been really cool to see how it affects performance in the gym and in people’s lives!

Happy Breathing!

Arin

Breaking Patterns

Hope you are having a great day today!

Ever try to eat better, only to see yourself go right back to the same things you know you need to eliminate?

One of the hardest things to do is break a pattern.

Take for example driving to work…we drive the same route, driving a different route would feel weird. But there a most likely a few different ways to get to the same destination.

We are wired to do things the same way because we have always done it that way.

When it comes to health and wellness goals, we see people be successful when they can break patterns.

The first pattern might be not exercising, they add in workouts 2 or 3 workouts per week.

Now those workouts are part of their week. We become wired to do those workouts each week otherwise we feel off.

Nutrition, is more complex, but then again it isn’t.

We have attachments and feel good sensors that go off when we eat something.

Rewiring your brain to stop having a sweet after dinner is hard, and the longer you have done this the harder it is.

BUT it can be done.

Its important to understand why you would want to make the change.

Then we need to align our actions to our goals.

We can say we want to lose weight, but if you keep doing all the things that are keeping the weight on, do you really want to lose weight.

I know this is a tough conversation.

Its important to understand what we want, then align the actions it will take to get to the desired results.

Then the magic question, are you willing to do that.

Our brain is an amazing machine and when you take control, you can do anything. What do you need to rewire? For some of us this is deeper, we need to rewire how we feel about ourselves, the self-talk we have.

Instead of thinking, “I’ll only have one cookie.” “or why bother, I won’t see results and ways…” we have to rewrite how we think and view ourselves.

“I deserve to lose weight.”

“I am stronger than my desires.”

“I love how I feel when I fuel my body.”

I could go on.

You deserve anything you want and more.

We need to align our actions with your goals – daily…kinda like taking a bath. 😉

Arin

Wolves…

I wanted to share another story from, Think Like a Monk, then a couple of personal stories…

A senior monk once told me an old Cherokee story about these dilemmas which all of us agonize over:

“An elder tells his grandson, ‘Every choice in life is a battle between two wolves inside us. One represents anger, envy, greed, fear, lies, insecurity, and ego. The other represents peace, love, compassion, kindness, humility, and positivity. They are competing for supremacy.’

“‘Which wolf wins?’ the grandson asks. ‘The one you feed,’ the elder replies.”

“But how do we feed them?” I asked my teacher.

The monk said, “By what we read and hear. By who we spend time with. By what we do with our time. By where we focus our energy and attention.”

Which wolf are you feeding?

Controlling our mental dialogue is one of the greatest battles we can win. We can become our own worst enemy if we allow it.

Just like we track what we put in our body from a nutrition standpoint. Take note of what is going into your mind.

Is it all negative from media sources or negative people around you? Try to reduce your exposure.

Find positive people to surround yourself with, people who are doing what you want to do, or achieving things you have only dreamed of.

One of the best tools I was taught years ago was talk to yourself vs listen to yourself.

When I was running my second marathon, I kept listening to myself and did not perform the way I would have preferred. “You are in pain.” “You missed your mile time to qualify for Boston, give up.” And so on…it was defeating. I struggled to even finish that race.

When I was getting ready to speak on a national stage in front of thousands, I talked to myself behind the stage. “You have prepared for this moment.” “You have a powerful message.” “You are a strong and confident woman.” I nailed that presentation and inspired so many people.

Two times in my life. One where I fed my mind negative self-talk, listening to all the negative thoughts, and another time where I intentionally put positive uplifting talk into my mind. I am sure I looked silly behind the stage, but it was affirmations I had been telling myself over and over in preparation.

Feed the positive wolf.

Read the information that will encourage you. Put yourself around positive people who are achieving things you desire. Focus on the good in our world today…it does exist.

Peace,

Arin