Now is the perfect time to start

Two weeks ago, I was fortunate to be featured in Louise Green’s Huffington Post article “This is what an athlete looks like” that also includes 2 other accomplished plus size athletes.  I’ve been friends with Louise for over 5 years and we are both from Canada but live on opposite sides of the country.  We both started our respective plus size fitness businesses roughly around the same time - Louise is the owner of an outdoor bootcamp called Body Exchange (I would love one in my neighbourhood) in beautiful British Columbia, and I started teaching spin classes in Toronto and offering online coaching.  Over the years we’ve exchanged emails, had phone conversations and have seen changes in each others respective business ventures, but we’ve never met.  Until this past Thursday when I was travelling for work.

Which leads me to today’s #MotivationalMonday “Right now is the perfect time to start. No matter what.”  Unlike in business where decisions and actions are timely and based on multiple pieces of data from market conditions, SWOT analysis etc. making healthy choices doesn’t require the same analysis, which means that right now is the perfect time to start.  Not “someday” which we all know isn’t a day of the week.

When I was at the Can-Fit Pro conference, in mid-August I heard 2 pieces of great advice, that are complimentary.  The first is from Dr. Len Kravitz, an academic professor and researcher from the University of New Mexico, who teaches and studies exercise physiology.  When he spoke about people making healthy changes his motto was “inch by inch it’s a cinch, yard by yard, its too hard”.  Pair that up with Vega-owner Brenda Brazier’s advice for changing your nutrition for maximum athletic performance (by the way, he became vegan to help recover from his workouts.  He was training 35-40 hours a week and gaining fat, from too much stress or as his doctor called it being “hormonally injured”, a great topic for another post), he advises adding in new foods and letting the benefits of them take over, because soon the foods that leave you sluggish or have little nutritional value will soon start to fade out of your daily eating regime.

This may all seem pretty simple, but since the conference, I’ve but a few new things into practice such as increasing my greens and veggies at lunch.  I do love sweet things and when I do indulge, I make sure it’s treat worthy.  However, I do so with the concern that when I have something sweet that it may trigger me to chemically crave more.  If you haven’t read Salt Sugar Fat, it’s an excellent read, a corporate expose on the processed food companies creating food so tasty, it’s chemically hard to resist.    But the increased veggies have left me craving more veggies, and I have no interest in sweets.  I like this feeling, physically and mentally.

So, with all the new people who have started to follow this blog or me on one of the social platforms, based on your messages, I know that some of you are new to “athletic lifestyle” thinking.   Let me share this with you, please don’t feel like you have to change everything at once, one small change can make a significant difference.  Then you can add another, then another.    It doesn’t have to be an all or nothing approach.  Whatever reason you are telling yourself to delay is fear.  And the best way to get over that is conquer it one small step at a time, which is why now is the right time to start.