Women Who Inspire

In any undertaking, it is beneficial to find role models - people who have achieved what you would like achieve. You can learn a lot from their behaviour, their way of thinking and the decisions they make.

I would like to introduce you to one of my role models - a woman who inspires me.

Meet Skwigg (Renee) who has the most refreshing approach to how she eats. Anyone who has pizza for breakfast is a champion in my book. She has tried every approach to fat loss and fitness from BFL to Precision Nutrition. She has settled on an intuitive eating approach that is completely beyond my comprehension, but I love the idea of it.

Some of my favourite stuff:

Confidence, Flexibility and Nutrition
When you fall into a pattern of either dieting or bingeing, a lot of times it means that your "diet" is too strict, too bland, too low in calories and completely unrealistic. To be successful, you have to enjoy your meals. You need the flexibility to eat out and to socialize. You need to include your favorite foods. You can't be a treat-deprived, clock-watching, tupperware-toting robot indefinitely. A lot of people can do that for a few days or weeks but when they lose it they really lose it.

Think of it as an ongoing experiment. Sometimes you'll do better or worse, be more or less motivated, have more or less success. But you never just chuck it and say, "Well, that didn't work. I'm done." Somebody smart said, "There is no failure, only feedback." So, if you try something and it's a disaster or you don't get the results you want, that doesn't mean you've failed. It means you've identified something that doesn't work and now you can change it.

Misery Isn't a Good Goal
A big part of it is setting goals totally in line with your soul. What do you really want? For most people, obsessing over food every minute of the day isn't what they really want, and so they feel terrible if they do it.

You may set goals based on what you think you want - to look like the girl in the magazine, to wow your internet fitness group, to buy a certain clothing size, to see a certain number on the scale. And then you do whatever miserable thing you think it will take to get there. The problem is that your goals aren't what you really want. You're craving the way you think those things WILL MAKE YOU FEEL.

You tell yourself that if you're smaller, or you have great arms, or you're light as a feather, then finally you'll be happy, have confidence and be able to enjoy life. It works better if you skip the cliché weight loss gobbledygoo and make being happy and feeling incredible your top priorities right from the start. And no, that doesn't mean you have to accept being unhealthy or out of shape. You can change anything you want to change, but do it from your heart and do it with joy. When your heart and your goals join hands everything becomes a fun puzzle instead of a war.

Why the Scales Lie
I continue to warn everyone that the scale is a springy, beady-eyed, lying menace.

We've been told over and over again that daily weighing is unnecessary, yet many of us can't resist peeking at that number every morning. If you just can't bring yourself to toss the scale in the trash, you should definitely familiarize yourself with the factors that influence its readings. From water retention to glycogen storage and changes in lean body mass, daily weight fluctuations are normal. They are not indicators of your success or failure. Once you understand how these mechanisms work, you can free yourself from the daily battle with the bathroom scale.