I’m someone that is a fan of routine; especially routines that I know make me happy and feel good. So every night before I go to sleep there are a couple things I do to ensure I wake up feeling happy. One morning last week, despite my efforts I woke up feeling quite anxious. I was feeling bothered, tight in my chest, my breathing was shallow and I just wasn’t feeling good. I hopped in the shower not understanding this feeling. Nothing triggered me to feel this way. I pondered and as I listened carefully to the underlying thoughts in my head, I noticed I was focusing on all the things I didn’t want.

This is a natural response; our minds are programmed to find the negative. This is something that goes down into the early days of human development (think caveman times). Before modern civilization, before we worried about what to wear or what the person passing us was thinking, we were consumed by thoughts of survival. Is that thing over there a predator, is this safe to eat? We had to be very discerning and know how to suss out danger in a split second otherwise we would be toast. Luckily, this isn’t the case now.

Although it can feel like a curse at times, the negative brain is a gift. I believe there is value in the negative brain for crunch situations, for knowing when something feels right and when it isn’t. I also believe we can have anything we want. We can have the life we want and it doesn’t matter where we started from or our history. We can change our destiny whenever we want.

You may have heard an old adage about 2 wolves? If you haven’t it goes like this:

“An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life. “A fight is going on inside me," he said to the boy.
"It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil - he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego." He continued, "The other is good - he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you - and inside every other person, too."

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, "Which wolf will win?"

The old Cherokee simply replied, "The one you feed."”

Put simply, we all have these 2 voices in our heads…one of kindness and positivity, the other mean and negative. Getting what you want in life means focusing on the kind voice, the voice that I like to call the “White Wolf”. This white wolf will lick your wounds, carry you when you’re down and encourage you through the highs and lows. This is what keeps you moving towards the life you are creating for yourself while having and humility to be grateful for what you have now.
So how do you “feed” the white wolf?

The first thing is to decide what you want. For example, do you want to be happier, healthier or wealthier? You need to figure out what exactly it is that you want. We tend to over complicate this one. Keep it simple and listen to yourself. If I was in front of you right now to ask what you wanted, what is the first thing that came to your mind? That is that focus.

Secondly, keep what you want in the forefront of your mind so that you’re reminded to think about what you want and what makes you happy. Ways to do this are make a vision board. Write up what you want somewhere you look regularly as a reminder or simply write “focus on what you want” somewhere are a general reminder.

When training my girls, I am always telling them to focus on their goals, think about why they are doing this and what they want especially when the workout starts to get tough.

That’s all it takes. It is no huge task. When I was in the shower and remembered this, I made a decision right away. I focused on the fun I wanted to have while I ran my Bliss Fitness Bootcamp, on how I wanted to challenge my Personal Training girls, on the workout I wanted to do later and all the love and abundance I have in my life.

The more I work on my own health and fitness journey and work with other women on theirs, I realise that we all think we want to lose weight but really we want to feel happiness, peace within ourselves and confident in our own skin.

Yes we can eat right, workout right but is it coming from the perspective of the dark wolf or the white wolf? Depending which one you feed will determine how easily you achieve your results and how good you feel once you get there.

Imagine just a week down the track, a month or even a year how your life can change from just little changes in perspective on a consistent basis.

Warmest Ellisa.
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Ellisa Haddad as a Personal Trainer and Life Coach, servicing the Cranbourne, Narre Warren, Lynbrook, Clyde, Berwick and Pakenham Areas.  Ellisa focuses on obtaining balance between physical, emotional and mental health, for all her clients, and is particularly passionate about supporting women in achieving their goals.  
 
 
Ellisa Haddad
Bliss Fitness
www.blissfitness.org
e : inspire@blissfit.com.au

When working with women who want to lose weight, I hear all the time “I don’t have enough will power”. I can’t help but to notice that it is an undercover way to let ourselves off the hook or to beat up on ourselves. Will power isn’t the key to achieving a goal or losing weight because it is completely at the mercy of how stressed we are feeling. If you were feeling down or stuck because of not having enough will power, please let that be put to rest right now.  

If you think about times when you were stressed or under a lot of pressure, how much more likely were you to go through drive through, reach for that packet of chips or skip the gym? So I want to talk about stress and the impact it has on our lives because I don’t think we acknowledge properly the effect it has on us and the results it produces. It is only through the awareness that we are able to be empowered to overcome it.

Stress is a natural reaction, as the body tries to deal with any negative pressures placed on it.

Sometimes it’s good. It can make us more productive and get us through tough situations (like when that assignment is left to the­­ last minute :P). Other times, it’s not so good. It is a pressure that builds up and feels almost overwhelming.

When I work with someone, I don’t just want them to lose weight. I want them to be happier. Stress has a big impact on your mental, emotional wellbeing and your weight loss efforts. I know there is nothing worse than putting your all into something and feeling like you’re not getting results, so here is how stress is affecting you and your weight loss efforts.

Your Behaviour:
Not having enough will power is not true. Will power is like a battery. If we have proper rest, we start the day with a full battery. Throughout the day the battery starts to drain. Dealing with stress drains the battery quicker, just like your phone battery if you were scrolling through social media all day. A lower battery means you are more susceptible to binge eating, drinking, smoking and a sedentary lifestyle.

Your Body:
When you are stressed, the liver produces extra blood sugar to give you a boost of energy. Any unused blood sugar is absorbed back into the body in a very similar way as if you had a chocolate bar. All this sugar is commonly stored around the tummy area. This is why this area is measured to see if you are at risk for diabetes.
Stress also affects the way food moves through the body meaning it can cause constipation (not clearing out the waste) or diarrhoea (not absorbing nutrients properly).
The muscles are also affected during times of stress. Muscles tense up to prevent injury. Once stress is gone, the muscles relax. If you are under stress for a prolonged period of time, the muscles never get a chance to relax. This can lead to head aches, back pain, shoulder pain or simply an aching body. Usually in these situations, motivation for exercising is decreased.
Now we come to the immune system. Stress actually stimulates immune system which is great in the short term. In the long term, cortisol starts to take over. The immune system becomes weakened and you become more susceptible to contagious viruses like the common cold.
 
Your Mind:
Our mind only holds 5 plus or minus 2 chunks of information. If you are feeling stressed this will take up many of these spaces. This commonly causes feelings of anxiety, lack of motivation or focus, feeling overwhelmed, irritability or anger, sadness or depression. To put it simply, if you are stressed, you literally do not have the mental capacity to try and focus on all the things it takes to remove the problem, work, relationships, family, working out, eating right etc. Something has got to give, usually this means skipping the workout and reaching for the most convenient food.

How To Relieve Stress
As you guessed, the solution is to de-stress. But how do you do that?
This relates a lot to what I wrote about last week by, taking extra time for self-care. I recommend reading that blog right here.
Other things that are really helpful are:

• Systemize your health and fitness.
  The less you have to think about the easier it is to maintain.
• Keep focused on what is important.
  I know how easy it is for the stress to get the better of us. In these times, it is crucial to take some time to remember what you have to be grateful for.
• Make time to breathe.
  This will help reduce the tension in the body, therefore also relaxing the mind.
• Get support.
  In stressful times, even having someone to talk to or seeing if there is help available relieves stress by knowing you’re not alone. And you never know what solutions can come out of these chats too.

It is inevitable that stress will cross our paths, but it does not have to derail out efforts towards our goals. I trust this helps when those times occur.
Warmest Ellisa
__________________________________________________________________________
 
Ellisa Haddad as a Personal Trainer and Life Coach, servicing the Cranbourne, Narre Warren, Lynbrook, Clyde, Berwick and Pakenham Areas.  Ellisa focuses on obtaining balance between physical, emotional and mental health, for all her clients, and is particularly passionate about supporting women in achieving their goals.  
 
 
Ellisa Haddad
Bliss Fitness
www.blissfitness.org
e : inspire@blissfit.com.au