When I saw this ad recently, I nearly hurled something at my laptop – a Nike running shoe no less. “Winning takes care of everything.” Bullcrap. It’s a stupid ad at best, at worst, it’s giving a horrible message to everyone that looks at it.

This is the sentiment I used to believe. I couldn’t win at anything. I was a loser. Therefore, things weren’t worth doing. Life wasn’t worth doing.

Well Mr Woods, you may be a champion golfer, but did that make you a better human being? Does that somehow make all the skankiness in your past okay? I have news for you — you are the same person inside whether you finished first or last.

Accomplishments and worth shouldn’t based on speed or score. It should be based on the finishing something that was hard! I know a man who can balance on one arm and put his legs over his head in a master yoga pose. It’s effortless for him. I have a yoga client that after a year, can do a downward facing dog. It’s work and it’s not perfect, but he does it anyway even though it’s hard. In my opinion, I think yoga man #2 has the greater accomplishment.

I strongly dislike the term winning. I tend to like to substitute it for finishing. While I won’t claim, “Finishing takes care of everything” – it does change an awful lot.

I believe every person who starts a race and crosses the finish is a winner. In fact I would give a special medal to the larger woman in the back that has to run three times as long to go the same distance. She’s the winner. She can do anything.

Valentine’s Day is tomorrow. Just what every Former Fat Person dreads, yet another foodcentric holiday, which is popularized and marketed by the joint evilness of the food and diet industries.

Think it’s a coincidence that both Thanksgiving and Christmas, where nearly everyone gains 5-10 pounds, is right before New Year’s, when everyone that is a pants size up is now trying desperately to find a quick way to get it off? Or that there’s a choco-holiday immediately after most of us have given up New Year’s goals? I’m not much of a conspiracy theorist, but I’m just sayin’ it’s a wee bit suspicious.

All that aside, I have no problem with indulging in a bit of caramel centered yum, but they tend to come in a ginormous heart shaped box that would bust anyone’s calorie budget. I know that I have never had one of those boxes last more than 2 days, the shortest being 2 hours.

One of my goals right now, is to focus on the meaning behind all the holidays instead of the food we are supposed to be eating during them. In particular, a challenge for Vday is to show our love when my household is comprised of the wife who is watching the calories and a husband who is diabetic. We decided we are going with service centered expressions of the holidays. It also helped that right now my husband, Jarom, has been unemployed for a year and we don’t really have the money for gifts this Valentine’s day.

As far as I’m concerned, Jarom’s going on the Today Show with me and agreeing to be raked over the coals, has filled his Valentine’s quota for the next five years. But I still needed to do something that showed I cared. For me that meant doing something that would mean something to him, but is not on the top of my to do list. Namely, cleaning out the family car.

The inside of our Ford Explorer looks like the garage dumpster from the kids daycare. Wet goldfish crackers are squished into the seat crevices, dollar store toys litter the floor with various discarded bits of trash and clothing. I’m pretty sure that if I let my daughter keep what was in her lunch pail, she would win the science fair.

All the book stuff has been taking up all my time, and I’ve let the car get to the point that it feels like the only way to save the car is to trade it in, or light a match. But more importantly, the state of grossness drives my germaphobe hubby nuts. So, I donned the HAZMAT suit, grabbed a chisel, then went outside in the subfreezing temperatures to make my Valentine to my best friend. 2 hours later, the car is clean and I might have nightmares for weeks. But that is what love and the real meaning of Valentine’s day is. Giving that special someone something that truly costs you. Not the $30 bucks for gourmet chocolates, but costs you something emotionally, physically, or hygienically. LOL

I have to admit, now that it’s done, I feel I’ve given myself a bit of a gift as well. I have another finish to add to my list, one that’s been bugging me for a while now. And my finisher’s medal will be the expression on his face when Jarom realizes there isn’t a crunch when he steps in the car.

Live in Utah? Come and drop in on my launch party. I will be selling and signing books at the American Fork Library from 2-5 on January 12th. Low cal treats, five minute fitness breaks, yoga, craft, and giveaways too.

Make this book the first thing you finish in 2013

Today marks the starting line for my blog tour. My book release is only a week away. I am so excited  in a might-throw-up-at-any-moment kind of way.

To start off the tour, I did a podcast with The Cultural Hall. It was a lot of fun, and a little terrifying all in one. The great thing about books and magazines — you can edit. Interviews are live. Tough for someone with chronic running shoe in the mouth disease.

All that aside, you can download the special episode on Itunes or at The Cultural Hall.

Here’s the schedule if you want to follow along my blog tour. There will be giveaways, reviews, guestposts, and did I mention giveaways?

The New Year is just around the corner and you’ve probably got a few resolutions on your mind. If weight loss or getting fit is on your agenda this year, here are some tips to get it done and never have it on the to-do list again. (You can apply these to other goals as well)

1. Set “active goals”
Goals often fall to the wayside because they are either to vague or way too narrow. Some bad examples: I want to lose weight. or the obverse, I want to lose 20 pounds by Valentines day. Try instead to set goals based solely on your actions. ie I am going to eat less and move more, sticking to calorie budget of x for 3 months. The point of this is to lay out actions you can follow, but not a specific set of results. Because we can’t control how fast our body lets go of fat and it’s easy to get frustrated and give up hope if we are not seeing the results we expected. But if you put in the work the results will come.

2. Outline the plan – own the budget
If you are training for a race, you need a schedule of miles to run. If you are trying to lose weight, you need a calorie budget to stick to. Within the next week, I will have a free budget calculator integrated into the site so you can figure out just how much your body needs to maintain its current weight or lose. But once you have that number, decide to stick to it. Chart your food intake everyday to stay under the budgets allowance. If you need more, go out an earn it. Go for a walk, do zumba, hit the elliptical or whatever floats your boat.

3. Take the no quit pledge and close the escape hatches
Quit being a quitter. Even on the little stuff. I was chronically promising to go to the gym for an hour, but leaving at 45 minutes. It was only a little bit early, but it set up a habit of taking the easy way out and giving myself excuses. I really had to learn to do what I said I was going to do. If I said i was going a mile, I would crawl those last few feet if I had to. It seems like such a small little thing, but what you are really doing is building self esteem and trust in yourself that you can do hard things and succeed at whatever you choose. This helps with the next step.

4. Shutting up the voice in the back of your head.
One of the biggest obstacles that kept me from succeeding, was me. More specifically that little voice in the back of my head that said “You suck” “The weight will come back, it always does”. This parade of negativity ran 24/7 through my mind. I could believe in myself. You’ve got to kill off the little voice. Early on, I would just sing over it. It’s hard to think bad thought when you are belting out Kelly Clarkson. But little by little, as I lived up to my commitments: following my daily calorie budget, staying at the gym the whole time I said I would (even though I really wanted to go home), I found that it became easier. I would tell myself “You’re awesome. You can do this. You never give up” and though for weeks I would just offer myself sarcastic eyerolls in response, soon I found it to be the gospel truth.

5. Pick the nuts out of the peanut gallery
Chances are, you have been on this ride before. I know over the course of my life I have lost hundreds of pounds and gained that and about 20%more back. And all my friends and family have watched me do it. I found some of my loved ones were really supportive, but even some of my closest family was skeptical that this time, the weight would stay off. Just like you did with you own little voice, tune them out. They can’t see inside you, where the bigger changes are taking place. They see you pants size decreasing, but they can’t see the confidence you building in your own head as you learn to finish and follow through. In time, they will come to believe  but you don’t need them to. All you need is the secure knowledge that you never quit, never give up, and you will do whatever it takes to reach your goals.

6. Become a collector of finishers medals
When I ran my first race (after 30 years of not being able to run to the mailbox) I got a finishers medal. It was a tangible bit of evidence that I could look at and prove to myself and the world that I had done something that I once thought was impossible. You don’t have to run a marathon to get your own. Finish something everyday and make your own. It can be real things or imaginary. The look on your spouses face when you make a dinner that’s not poisonous for the first time. That degree on the wall after going back to college on weekends. Build up a mountain of finishes to stand on. Something to give you the height to look over the walls we build around ourselves telling us that we can’t. We absolutely can.

I learned these things and more, which are all chronicled in the book, Finished being Fat. As a reader you can count on being entertained for a few hours, but hopefully you’ll walk away with more than sore abs from giggling. Maybe, you can leave the pages with a new outlook on life and become a member of the “Fat Pack” and follow the Philosophy of Finishing.

“Not everyone can win the race, but everyone can finish it.”

Today I filmed a yoga workout routine to put on my website in January, to coincide with the book launch.

I had a budget of zero, and used a Sony handycam. I learned a few things, the main one being that it is painful to watch yourself on screen at any size.

Teaching my regular clients is one thing, but trying to coach a camera through downward facing dog is just awkward. The more I watch the clip, the more I notice what isn’t just perfect. We tend to be our worst critics. I know what I am most concerned about, trouble areas, chin wobbles, etc. So of course those are the things I focus on when rewatching the 45 minute routine. The experience is fairly excruciating.

I suppose it’s time I took my own lesson from the book. You don’t have to be perfect, you just have to finish. I made a yoga video that people can download starting Jan. 8th.  It’s not the most professional quality and I certainly don’t look like one of those Cirque De Soleil performers, sniffing my toes as they arc past my head. I’m just an average woman, mom of two, trying to stay fit and share my love of yoga with people. I think I’m the only person who was hoping it would magically transform into p90x yoga or some other workout dvd.

So my word of advice for the day would be to recognize what thoughts are coming from our own insecurities, and what fears we project onto other people. I’m sure my own fear of dorkiness and being mocked are mostly in my own head. But even if one or two nuts in the peanut gallery feel the same way, the most important thing is to reach my goals. And today that was filming a beginning yoga routine to share with the masses.

Goal achieved.

Tis the season, let all something or others be forgot, and all that jazz.

Sometimes it can be tough to move past the sticks and stones. But you have to remember, even good people say stupid things, so let it go.

Last Saturday, I had a boatload of these people talking to me. My father in-law got remarried. At the reception, there were people I haven’t seen in a good long while. As in 75 pounds ago.

One relative actually went up to my husband and said, “So how do like it having a beautiful wife now.” My hubby, bless his heart, said, “I’ve always had a beautiful wife.”

A friend of the family came up to me, “I had to do a double take. You look so good that I didn’t recognize you.” I thanked her during the rather awkward hug, then hit the punch table.

Some people mean well, but they don’t have an anti-idiot filter from brain to mouth. Though annoyed, I can’t let it get to me.

I want to share my rule of thumb. You should spend no more time worrying about what was said, than it took for the person to consider saying it.

That being said, take this season to let go of old wounds and start to feel lighter emotionally and that can help you be lighter physically.