We are in the home  s-t-r-e-t-c-h! Only one week left. While finishing sometimes requires outside encouragement that I hope the Challenge has delivered these in past weeks, I’m scrutinizing myself over how the Challenge could have been even better. ((sigh))

Welp, all that aside, I hope you’ll finish out this final week strong as you look to what lies ahead for you. It’s so dang important that you don’t drop the ball on your goals. There can be all kinds of the challenges and motivation and personalized cheerpeople coming at you from every direction, but the fact remain that it’s still all up to YOU.

Today I’m headed to New York City for that Glamour Magazine photoshoot I told you about. I’ve done this kinda thing before, so why the heck am I so nervous? Eh, I dunno. But I’m sure it’ll be awesome. See you when I get back!

prune

1. trim or weed out unwanted or unnecessary things

2. cut off or cut out for the purpose of improving growth

3. do away with, terminate or eliminate

You gotta prune away the things that don’t matter; the things that waste time and get in the way of you achieving your goals. Those time wasting activities and bad habits. The things that don’t contribute to your growth, but instead, hold you back, keep you down and prevent you from getting what you want; the things ‘n stuff that distract and prevent you from making consistent, goal oriented moves.

Don’t cleave to the unfruitful things in your life. It’s holding you back. So get rid of it.

Josie’s “to prune away” List

• Up late, past 11:30pm. Because it causes me to have a sub-par, next day workout.
• Wasting way too much time on celebrity gossip websites (yeah, I do that). It’s a distraction. My time could be better spent.
• B!tching and whining about stuff completely out of my control (like dealing with incompetent people and situations that “aren’t fair”). It’s a waste of time to keep complaining; a distraction that drains my positive spirit and makes me to lose focus.

Now it’s your turn.

But don’t just write a list and forget about it. Make like a gardener and start pruning away the “dead” things in your life right now.

To all of my Finish What You Started Challengers: You earn one bonus star for every dead ‘n idle activity you successfully keep pruned all week long. Stay in it, guys! This Challenge is NOT over yet. You’ve got things to accomplish. If you’ve allowed your challenge goals to fall by the wayside, jump back in right now. Re-starts, do-overs and picking up where you left off is totally encourage. But quitting is NEVER allowed.

(photo credit)

I had to learn the long and drawn-out way, but there’s no reason why YOU should have to take the long route, too.

It took me more than two years to realize that clean eating would contribute to faster fitness progress. If you’ve been doing a great job at keeping your daily calorie chewing within a decent range, but your food choices still primarily consist of processed/packaged foods, highly refined foods and empty calories, it’s time to make some changes right away.

You want that progress faster, don’t you?

Sorry to bust your ballz, but please don’t get too comfortable patting yourself on the back for the healthy habits you’ve mastered so far. There’s more work to be done. Aim for more improvement. More progress! Especially where your eating is concerned. If you’re NOT totally brand new to fitness, but you still haven’t pushed yourself to move beyond the bare bones of healthy eating that you started with…why not?

Clean Eating is one helluva powerful twist to break out of a newbie fitness routine and take it to the next level to come closer to your goals.

Clean Eating is what our bodies are designed for. Here are some questions to ask yourself to know if you’re in the clean eating zone:

• Can I pronounce the ingredients on the label and are there as few ingredients as possible?
• Is this food made from whole ingredients, or is it highly refined and stripped of its nutrients?
• Do I try to avoid meals that come out of a box or package, including eating out?
• Am I eating fresh fruits and vegetables everyday?
• Am I eating lean cuts of meat?

If most of your answers are a resounding “no”, then excuse me, but you are NOT in the clean eating zone. Packaged food is easy and convenient. Highly refined and processed food can be tasty and fun. But none of these foods will contribute to the best you that you can be.

My Own Clean Eating Story

It’s cool that I lost my first 20 pounds simply by counting calories while staying in the process/packaged/refined foods zone. But then my progress stalled and my body still looked “soft” and undefined despite a faithful weightlifting regimen.

It wasn’t until I became open to the idea of clean eating and started to put it into practice that my weight loss revived itself and I got leaner. Yes, I still enjoy my sweets, carbs and  fats, but those foods are the exception now – not the rule. I also still enjoy packaged foods, but I swapped them out for healthier packaged options, like Larabar instead of cereal bars and Fage Greek Yogurt instead of popular mainstream yogurts, like Yoplait and Dannon.

So what can you do today to start eating cleaner?

You might think muffins, cereal bars and burgers can remain standard and acceptable so long as you stay within your calorie range, but you’ve got it all wrong. You’re not doing yourself any favors. Go with clean eating instead. It’s actually pretty simple. It’s not complicated and it’s not a hassle. You just have to change the way you shop and understand that planning is key. It doesn’t have to be an “all or nothing” approach either. Start out slow. Get the hang of it, build on your clean eating ways, and I bet you’ll see better, faster fitness results.

Livestrong’s 5 Simple Steps to Clean Eating.

The Gracious Pantry’s 6 Tips To Get Started With Clean Eating.

I’m calling on all of my Finish What You Started Challengers to earn their bonus star this week by ditching one processing/packaged/refined food and replacing it with a cleaner option. If you’re already a clean-eating pro, your bonus star challenge is to expand your clean eating horizons: try a new food or new clean eating recipe! (and by all means, share that recipe with me)   

If it were all up to me, you would all be finishers. You would all be on track and you would all get it done. There’s over 100 peeps who committed to the Finish What You Started Challenge, but as we creep into the final weeks of the Challenge, the cold hard truth is that not all of you will finish with flying colors.

I am not a psychic nor do a practice crystal-balling in my spare time, but I do have some end of challenge predictions: When the Challenge is over on October 31st you will fall into 1 of 3 categories:

Category #1: You committed, but it wasn’t sincere. Why? Because you barely followed through (if at all?) with the disciplines and actions necessary to get the results you want. There is no evidence of real change or progress in your life.

Category #2: You committed, and despite your occasional need for some do-overs that caused a few set backs, you pushed through to finish in a better place than when you started. Your goals are not yet met, but you’ve created solid habits that are constantly moving you closer to where you want to be. Although you are still working to pave out those bumps in the round, your desire is like a bulldozer and you won’t stop plowing through until you get what you want.

Category #3: You committed and you got it done (woo-haaa!), but you also understand that “finishing” also requires a lifestyle of consistency to hold onto what you’ve achieved. Your bad ass ways are a lifestyle now.

Whatever category you fall into, it’s by your own design. No one can get this thing done but YOU.

I want to hear about your fitness plans for this week, so sound off in the comments. Be sure to give yourself one bonus star for salad-chewing AND a 2nd bonus star for at least 4 days of planking.

Yep. It’s time to plank it out! Hold in the static position pictured above. Body straight and in line. Don’t bow your back so your hips drop down or poke your booty up.

Let’s see how your plank hold times increase by the end of the week! When I did my very first plank over a year ago, it held it for 18 seconds. With consistent practice, I progressed to my best plank time of 3:20 minutes. I didn’t plank much after that, so my recent best time is down to 2:04 minutes. I’ll report in next week with my latest planking times. You go for it, too!

I earned 26 stars last week. Download your Star Chart and keep it movin’ and have a great week!

Sooner or later we all feel the flames of fitness burn out. Unfortunately, that time for me has arrived. Like right now. Yep, I’m a little burned from being on the consistent grind with my fitness goals (it’s hard work!), and I’m feeling it quadruplefied from also tending to the Greedy Family. You know, being a mom ‘n stuff.  There’s ALWAYS so much to do.

So here’s my vlog to explain how I’m dealing with the very real issue of burn out. What’s a flaming woman to do? Does she shut down completely to fan the fire, or handle it another way…

So how about YOU? Anybody else feel the fitness flames sometimes?

How To Earn Your Bonus Star This Week (your assignment)

Shall we talk about D-word? …DOING! It doesn’t matter if you’re “doing” at 100 mph, or for whatever reason, you have to turn down the throttle to 35 mph for awhile: JUST DON’T STOP DOING. There is absolutely no way you can Finish What You Started if you don’t “do”.

Doing takes you places. Doing moves you forward. Doing gets you progress. Doing leads to finishing.

Your assignment this week is to  “do” on those days that you’ve planned to “do”, yet the urge to “not do” creeps up as a better option. (I hate when that happens!) And just like I yapped about in the vlog, if you’re forced to adjust your doing because of overwhelming irritations like burn out, injury, other unforeseen crap, etc., then please go on then. So long as you’re doing something! Because something is waaaay better than nothing.

Have a great week!

(photo credit)

So you know how last week I didn’t offer you any bonus stars? What a party pooper I was, huh? Welp, the goal of me party-pooping was for you to become more aware of your own motivation in the absence of outside motivation (aka, earning stars). But you know what?

I promise not to party-poop this week.

…and please, definitely don’t party-poop on yourself (aka, take a sh!t on your goals) by not following through with finishing what you started. The only thing goal-sh!tting does is flush your progress, and any hope for achieving the end result, down the toilet. Just like this:

Don’t do this to your goals.

Salad-chewing and push-ups stars are back! You earn one for each activity. So yeah, get on that. But wait! There’s a really important 3rd bonus star for this week that I want to force encourage you to take part in: the Wild Card Bonus Star. This is how it works:

Wild Card Bonus Star

Think back to last week… are you thinking yet? Sure, go on and bask in your healthy victories, but that’s actually not the point of this assignment right now. Instead, think with fervent thought about the bad, semi-decent, half-assed, or any totally flucked-up moments you experienced in last week’s quest for healthy living. Maybe it was too much bacon? Or perhaps an overactive lazy bone?

Whatever it might have been, the Wild Card Bonus Star is gonna give you a do-over. Your mission this week is to make improvements over last week in any area(s) where you personally feel you could have done better. If at the end of this week your Wild Card efforts led to better, healthier moments compared to last week, then give yourself that star!

I intend to earn my own Wild Card Star this week by drinking more water AND getting to bed on time, because I overslept twice last week and it caused my workouts to suffer.

You should be giving yourself do-overs ALL the time, because this finishing road your on is not 100% smooth, straight, or without incident. The finishing path has everything from bumps, potholes, wrong turns, hidden ditches, unexpected detours, and goal-eating zombies.

Download the Week #7 Star Chart.

Last week I earned 24 out of 28 stars. Shout yours out in the comments. Have a great week, everybody! xo

I’ll make this short and sweetened because I know you have Labor Day-ing to do. This week’s Start Chart announces the winner of Insanity so go see who won and download your chart for the week!

I lost some stars last week due to a calf injury that took 4 days to feel better. It happene
d this past Wednesday – the day of my virtual workout with Family Fitness Files. I got through the 6-round interval circuit just fine (it was awesome!), but a lame warm-up and barely any stretching after the workout left me injured and unable to do anything beyond Yoga for the rest of the week. I was even limping at one point. This is a case of how rushing through a workout and just being a plain ‘ole blockhead can slow down your progress. Lesson learned. I give myself 17 stars.

Your Bonus Stars For This Week

I hate to be an Indian giver, but I’m purposely depriving you of your salad and push-up bonus stars for this week. Why? Because I want YOU to gauge your self-motivation to continue in these areas in the absence of outside motivation (aka, bonus stars). What will you do? This will give you the opportunity to discern if your salad chewing and push ups have become habit yet, or if you’re operating purely on star motivation.

But do NOT fret! Bonus stars will be back next week, including brand new ways to earn them stars, baby!

I hope you’re continuing with the commitment you’ve made to yourself to follow through and take daily actions towards Finishing. If you feel yourself dwindling into drop out mode, do NOT quit on yourself! Not this time. Not anymore.

Enjoy your holiday, my friends.

Me, after Insanity. Not sure how I was able to crack a smile. LOL!

Depending on when you started with us, you are now either one month into the Finish What You Started Challenge, or you’re just now joining in and ready to ROAR! (and a big ‘ole hello to all of our newest participants!)

The Challenge ends on October 31st, so you’ve got two more months to reach your goal, or, for you long term goal peeps, the Challenge is for you to remain consistent and end the cycle of stopping and re-starting with what you intend to Finish. Right?

(Download and view Week #5′s message on the Star System Tracking Chart.)

This is your assignment for this week to earn 3 bonus stars for a total of 31 maximum for the week! 28 stars + 3 bonus stars = 31

• Earn one bonus star gnawing on 3 or more salads.
• Earn 2nd bonus star for continuing with your pushups. I really wanna see you guys be able to celebrate some big time push ups progress when this is all over!
• Earn 3rd bonus star by evaluating what you’ve done since the Challenge began – a positive, honest critique of yourself (not self-judgement that brings guilt) – and then make any tweaks to your fitness and eating routines as necessary.

More On Evaluating Your Current Progress And Taking An Honest Look At What You’ve Done So Far

Okay, okay, I’ll go first so you can see how this is done….

Fitness: You probably already know I’m doing Insanity (it’s in my Beachbody shop), but the workout calendar is very rigorous. Maybe a bit too rigorous sometimes. It’s delivering quick results as promised (big time results!), but it can also be physically and mentally challenge to the point where the urge to quit pop ups in my brain a little too often. Noooo!!! So in order to prevent those urges to quit completely, I recently decided to do Insanity every other day (with a different workout in between) instead of two Insanity days back to back. This fitness critique/tweak means it will take me longer to complete the entire program (boo), BUT it’s working out better for me, because it’s eliminated my urge to quit completely, AND I discovered that a rest day in between Insane workouts actually enables me to perform at a high level and push harder on my Insanity days.

Eating: It sucks sometimes. Usually when I’m bored. I don’t get bored that often because of my happy-crazy-busy life, but when boredom does creep up, I’m capable of downing a whole day’s worth of calories before noon. Oh, hell no! So how do I fix this? I’ve decided to plan/pack food even when I’m home from work on the weekends. WeekDAY food planning has always worked for me at about a 95% success rate, so why do I abandon this concept on the weekends? No more weekend self-sabotage for me. The majority of my weekend eating will be planned ahead of time from now on, as much as possible. If I get bored and want to chew, my food selections will already be pre-determined.

These self-critiques did not reveal that I’m a loser. They do not prove that I can’t stick to a plan. It does not mean that I have to abandon all. It simply reveals that my plan needed tweaking.

So do you see how this works? Now it’s your turn. Go grabs your stars and make it a great week!

Click on image to view/print Week #3 Chart

I trust that you’ve put on your big girl panties by now (or your big boy jock strap?) and are settling into some improved food and fitness habits. You are officially in week #3 of the Finish What You Started Challenge (yay-zers!) are you’re on your way to the October 31st finish line!

I know some of you have been enjoying your vacations and this caused your Star System to somewhat collapse. I was on Staycation all of last week, complete with food indulgence (Oooo!) and a bit of lazy dazing (Ahhh!) so there was definitely some star implosion going on over here. I earned 23 out of 30 possible stars. Darn. But thank God its a new week with a clean slate!

EatSmart Joins Our Crew!

Go on and print out the pimped-out Star System Chart for this week. I revamped it to be real fancy for your eyeballs, and you can see that EatSmart Products has joined us as a Challenge sponsor! They’ve empowered me to spread the love onto you with some fabulous giveaways coming soon, so be sure to browse the land of food, bathroom and kitchen scales at EatSmartProducts.com.

Close to one year ago now, I surrendered my former bathroom scale in favor of an EatSmart. Best decision ever. It’s sleek, lightweight and easy to use. Not only that, but EatSmart stands behind their scales with a 100% Satisfaction Guarantee pledge AND they have fantastic customer service.

Follow @EatSmartScales on Twitter and Like them on Facebook.

This Week’s Bonus Stars Challenge

This and every week you have the chance to earn a perfect count of 28 stars for consistency with your food and fitness activities. So what’s this week’s challenge to earn 2 bonus stars?

It’s a double-doozie, my people.

• Earn one bonus star for continuing with your minimum of 3 salads for the week.
• Earn a second bonus star for working on your push-up activities.

**More about the push-up activities: I keep hearing people say, “I wish I could do push-ups”. Well it’s time to stop wishing!! By the time October 31st rolls around, you’re going to be a BEAST at push-ups. When I started out doing push-ups, I could only do one. O-N-E. It really sucked and I was very discouraged. But I worked at it…consistently, and experienced fast gains in my progress. I can now do 75-100 in a workout circuit.

You’re going to experience fast gains, too.

Work on your push-ups 3-4 times this week, but definitely no less than 3 times. Whether you’re doing the girlie ones your knees or the full body version (my tutorial is here), earn the push-ups bonus star by doing this:

1) Make time to actually do the push-ups, and

2) By the end of the week, attempt achieve 1 or more reps than you did on your first day of push-ups. Do you feel the burn, baby!?

Have a great week everybody. And don’t forget to shout out your earned stars for last week in the comments section and link up to your blog posts!

…and in case you don’t know it, that “object” is YOU.

There’s a popular fitness instructor that always encourages you to “do only what you can”. For a long time I thought that was a good, comfortable philosophy to live by, but I beg to differ now. You’ve got to do MORE than you think you can. Why? Because there’s more in your ability-tank than you think you have. There is always more – and that is the realm where the breakthroughs come from.

Welcome to week #2 of the Finish What You Started Challenge.

No matter your current state of fitness, you are stronger than you appear with the ability to do more than you believe to get what you want. This realm of extra strength is not drawn from your muscles or cardio power. It’s a mental thing. I have literally pushed myself into doing more (like finishing a hard workout when every fiber of my being wants to quit) by pushing myself mentally. I’ve literally talk myself into finishing, as in, “C’mon Josie! You can do this!” …or, “Keep going. You’re almost done. You can’t quit now.”

Ugh. It’s hard. But we’re all stronger.

Even though it might cause you discomfort – more sweat, more discipline, the pain of refusing your favorite snacks (yes, that is painful), getting up at the butt crack of dawn to ensure your workout, etc. – I encourage you to get used to being uncomfortable while you draw out that strength.

If it’s not uncomfortable, it’s not a Challenge. But don’t worry. The discomfort doesn’t last forever, because those beneficial-uncomfortable things you’re doing will become habit. You’ll go from hating it to craving it. So go on – get uncomfortable for awhile.

Show Me Your Stars!

So how’d you do? Last week you had the opportunity to earn 29 stars in the Challenge. Me? I earned 25 stars. My week of fitness was stellar, but I ran into a shallow ditch with my eating due to a family beach barbecue over the weekend. Daaang. Although 25 stars ain’t too shabby, the expectation I’ve placed on myself is to grab the max number of stars each and every week. Have you placed expectations on yourself?

Sound off in the comments section and show me your stars! This is all about accountability, so share with us how many stars you earned last week. 

Download your Star System Tracking Chart and log daily your progress.

Your Homework For This Week

Last week I introduced you to Team Gorgonzola and talked about the mysteries to unlocking a delicious salad.  But we’re not just talkers ’round here. We’re doers. Right? We take action and get stuff done to move forward. Yes? Salad-chewing is one of those things that will help you reach you goals, so while you’re shooting for your 28 stars on the Tracking Chart, give yourself 2 extra bonus stars in the “other category” when you complete your homework by eating 3 or more salad entrees this week. Meaning, instead of eating a lunch or dinner that looks like takeout, a frozen diet meal, cheeseburgers, or some other salad-inferior meal, you reach for the the lettuce with all the trimmings instead.

So there you have it – shoot for max number of stars this week, eat your minimum of 3 salads to snag bonus stars, and get uncomfortable! If you haven’t joined the Finished what You Started Challenge yet, here’s how.

I also want to hear about how your past week of fitness has been, so tell me all about it in the comments. And if you blogged about it, be sure to leave your link so I can read your post!

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