I have truly mellowed out in my old age.  Back in the day, I assure you, I was a much feistier gal.  I would like to say that that was a good thing, but alas…it wasn’t.  I have many a dead body behind me of those who entered into an argument with me and I wouldn’t say they “lost” but they lost something (i.e. limb, voice, money, life—who knows.  It wasn’t pretty.).  And those losses didn’t come because I knew something and was smarter than them—because that’s definitely not the case.  They came because I was ferocious at defending my end of the argument at all cost.  Whatever I knew to be true was true as far as I was concerned…and then I got older.

Getting older meant that I had to concede that I may know the truth or I may be “right”, but there could be a whole segment of information that I have never been exposed to that could stomp on whatever I am presenting as fact at that moment.  This doesn’t mean that I didn’t know what I was talking about; it means that I had limited knowledge in the topic being discussed.  This happens to all of us in some way, shape or form.  Think about how dumb we used to think our parents were when really, we were the dummies.  Or, say you are a trainer and a client tells you something that sounds odd to you and in your mind you call “bullcrap” because you think she just doesn’t want to diet or workout hard.  Then like a year later you find out that not only was she telling the truth, but now you have what she was talking about and you’re upset because now no one believes you.  Things like this happen all the time and I expect some of this to crop up during this series.  I need to debunk a lot of junk (wow, can I use that somewhere else?) that is floating around out there in the land of Greek Mythology, aka girl talk, surrounding our cycles and I expect some raised eyebrows.  There’s a ton of misinformation and we need to slog through the details to get to the truth.  Here are a few to start with:

1. Getting to the truth.

There’s no such thing.  There isn’t a central location of hormonal information that you will find that all of the medical community is going to agree upon.  There are two types of medicine that I am familiar with and I refer to them all the time:  Western medicine and naturopaths.  Western medicine is your traditional doctor who tells you what the insurance companies let them tell you.  They are not bad people, just limited by the system.   I will qualify this later so don’t get your underwear in knots if you don’t agree.  Hang tight.  Naturopaths are not exactly MD’s but they have a much more open view of tackling medical issues which is what you need when it comes to hormones.  The problem is, when you need a drug—you ain’t getting’ one there.

These two professions tend to be at odds with each other.  This is tough on us, the little guy, because we look to them for the answers and then find ourselves having to make a choice between the two without any real information to back up our decisions.  YUCK.

2. My cycle has always been messed up.  It’s just the way it is.

Umm…no it’s not.  And don’t accept that either.  Here is where I qualify my above statement.  Unfortunately for doctors, they do not have the resources to make you well.   They only have the capability to make you better.  That is not the same as being well.  Doctors look at the symptoms you present and make them go away.  They do not necessarily cure you.  And when it comes to a syndrome or chronic condition, they can only ask for so many things to be done that insurance will cover because after a while, they start getting vetoed.  Again, not their fault—it’s the system’s.  Hormonal issues require patience, lots of lab work and a good eye for detail.

3. My doctor diagnosed me with “fill in the blank” so that’s what I have.

Maybe so.  I have no right to argue that in any way.  I am not a doctor and do not profess to be.  But I am an advocate and I challenge you to get a second opinion.  Especially if what they told you that you had was a syndrome.  Things like PCOS, fibromyalgia and so on that do not have definitive tests (although PCOS does but few get the ultrasound done) but more like a list of things that you seem to have in common with them.  Syndromes are a great way to say, “I-have-no-idea-what’s-wrong-with-you-but-I-know-you-need-a-diagnosis-or-you-won’t-be-happy-so-I’m-going-to-tell-you-this-so-you’ll-leave-my-office.”  They have no true way to “fix” them but they give you something tangible to hang on to because it makes you feel better.  Not become well.  Just feel better.  And even then, you may not feel better, you may just be symptom free.

Why do I bring this entire subject up?  Why do I care so much?  I know some of you are thinking, “I was just fine before you started kicking up all this dirt.  Now you have my head spinning.”  (Or maybe that’s just Kas thinking that  I bring it up because if you are not optimal at normal body fat levels, you are REALLY not optimal when you get lean.  And for some of you, it’s what’s keeping you from getting the body that you desire.  Your cycle screams “I am not well” and to lose weight, change body composition or be the best you can be:  you need to be well.

Much more to come.  This is a big topic when it comes to changing your body for the better.  If you have any horror stories, you know I love them.  Hit me up below.  Woop woop!

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Is it me or does my littlest one look like he just saw something gross right before the shot was snapped?  These CIA agents have zero loyalty to their mother.

My kids are awesome.  Yes, I am biased in saying that, but truly, they really are awesome kids.  However, they tend to throw their mother under the bus on more than one occasion.  They say they don’t mean to, but the two older ones are worse than the town crier.  The main thing they tattle on me to their father about is the high flying antics stuff that happens when I drive them to school.  Now I am one of the most aggressive and psychotic cautious drivers there are out there so I’m not sure why they find it necessary to tell their dad that we were driving on two wheels to school but they do at times and it is very inconvenient.  Clearly they got to school by the hair of their chinny chin chins because they weren’t in my car when I got back home nor under the tires and the school didn’t call to say they were psychologically damaged absent so obviously they were fine.  So there are days I just want to hush the two town criers in my back seat by forcing them to listen to their father go on and on about it bopping them upside their heads—but I can’t.  But there is a town crier that we are silencing that we should not be and it is usually warning us of impending peril.  This would be our cycle.

Cycles are very funny because we loathe having them but we hate missing one even more.  They possess an uncanny ability to show up the week you go on vacation no matter when you book it and they make every day activities uncomfortable and cumbersome.  They’re about as welcome as a tummy virus is after a Sunday dinner with the family.   But missing one, for some of us, is more traumatic than being robbed at gun point so let’s just be honest that it’s not like we’re rejoicing because we skipped a month.  And even if missing one doesn’t send you into cardiac arrest, it still makes you think in the back of your head, “What’s wrong here?”

If you hop on the web and start googling, you will find a ton of information regarding missed periods, or as the medical community refers to them:  irregular periods.  Some of it is inaccurate, not all because there is some good info out there on the more prominent websites, but almost all of it is inapplicable to the lean community.  We are a special breed that is incredibly underrepresented in medical studies and on the medical websites.  We are lumped in with the general public and when it comes to issues regarding our hormones or how our bodies react to dieting, we aren’t even close.  But contrary to popular belief of us clean eaters, we do not lose our periods because we are low body fat.  Very few of us ever get that low of body fat to say we lost our cycle for that reason.  I know I have mentioned this before, but we have a warped sense of what our true body fat is.  I have heard girls say they are 8/9% body fat at their leanest and that is a far from the truth.  They are most likely 11/12ish but highly unlikely they as low as 8 or 9%.  The thing that most of seem to miss is that the accuracy of the measurement tends to decrease as you move out to either extreme.  Super lean BF levels and super high BF levels are normally not accurate because they are out of the range of accuracy for that measuring tool.  This is another post for another time but just know that unless you have some ribs showing and your femur perfectly outlined, you are not 8% BF.

We lose our periods due to high levels of the stress hormone cortisol.  It is the grand interrupter.  Cutting your cals and beating your body into submission is a great way to raise your cortisol levels which in turn messes with your sex hormones.  (Of course, this beats the old fashioned way of fight or flight which just shows that we have become bored with more traditional ways of jacking ourselves up and moved on to more sophisticated methods.)  Once that balance is off kilter, so is your period and it can take an act of Nature to get it regular again.  But why the fuss and who really cares?  If I’m missing my period, why don’t I just take the pill and make it come back, right?  That’s up to you but your period is the best loud mouth you will ever have in your body.  It’s forever telling you how you are doing medically.  Silencing may not be the most prudent thing to do.

Hang on tight while we jump into what your period really tells you on a monthly basis and why the pill may not be the answer you expected it to be.  Can’t wait, ladies!  Woop woop!

Ahhh…there’s nothing like a fresh batch of peer pressure to make us do something completely uninformed and irrational.  Gotta love it.

Everybody loves a challenge—especially us.  We love them more than the average person does, to be honest with you.  We can seriously get a little sick with it by setting crazy goals like 5 marathons in 5 weeks and of course, at the time it sounds completely rational.  It even sounds doable.  However, about halfway through the goal we know we are in trouble but we keep on going for pride sake. How about we avoid this calamity by giving you some things to take into account as we head into another year of the obstacle course races?

Let me remind you of who you are.   If you are reading this blog, then you are someone who may or may not realize that you are an athlete but you definitely realize that your physique is part of your overall health and fitness goal.  So it’s not ‘by any means necessary’ to reach the finish line because none of us here would be willing to go up 10 pounds to make the goal happen.  Instead, we will rethink it when we realize that it could take weeks to get the 10 pounds off again and we’ll most likely move on to another goal.  It is what it is.  This gives you an idea of what this series is about because it is not about getting you ready for the Tough Mudder or any other killer race.  No, it is about getting you ready for them safely while taking into account that you will need to be smart about how you fuel for the training, actively recover from the training and psychologically deal with the training. This is not the same as just plain old running or bodybuilding type lifting and if you are not aware of that you may either blow your diet, go crazy or the worst of them all: get injured.

Over the next three days I want to tackle 4 things:

• Tough Guy syndrome
• Nutritional challenges (how to work the STarch thing)
• Active recovery
• Injuries and their ramifications

In less than a month I turn 42 years old.  WOW.  I don’t feel a day over 41 30 yo when I do things, but the next day I feel like I am 75.  I honestly remember the time when I could wake up, decide to run a 10K that day (even though I was not training for one and never ran more than the 10 feet it takes me to get into the shower) and then get up the next morning and do it all over again.  Crazy.  If I did that today someone would be peeling me off the asphalt—and that would be at registration!  Shame.  I need to warm up for my warm up and I know that’s from years of abuse brought on by Tough Guy syndrome.  This malady affects almost all trainers, some group fitness instructors, avid runners and nearly every single physique athlete out there.

Tough Guy syndrome (TGS) is a peculiar syndrome because it crosses the blood brain barrier and renders us dumb as dirt as to the workings of the body and metabolism even though we could school a client on it in a heartbeat.  Somehow, we’re impervious to this information.  We can dispense it, but we can’t use it and because of this, we tend to do some of the dumbest things known to mankind.  It’s unbelievable.

TGS’s power is exacted by finding the weak spot in our immune systems: our egos.  Once it finds that chink in the armor, it quickly spreads throughout the Central Nervous System causing awful symptoms like signing up for and completing the Tough Mudder without any training for it and then systematically bragging about it like you’re a hero or something.  Frightening.  Fevers and chills can result if it goes undetected as people are hot with jealously or cold with disdain around you because you decided to just “pop into” the race.  And because TGS is a syndrome, there is no “one-size-fits-all” cure and normally diagnosis comes only with the egregious symptoms coming to light such as injury or accidents.

But there is hope.  You can take preventative measures to keep from developing this syndrome by realizing a few things:

1)      If you are under 18% bodyfat, you are of the lean community.  You cannot, and should not, put your body to the ultimate test without properly preparing it and fueling it.  Do not eat the same diet you are used to now and then just “jump into” an obstacle course type race.

2)      If you are allergic to starchy carbohydrates because you think they make you gain weight and want to just eat starch the week of the event, you’re in for a big surprise.  We’ll talk about this tomorrow.  Just know that you need to eat them long before the week of the event if you want to use them to fuel your race.

3)      You do not recover the same when you are lean.  You have fewer reserves in the tank and you must keep that in mind.  If you deplete them now, they will not be available to you when go back to working on your physique or just even maintaining it.

4)      You run the risk of injury—major injury—when you are leaner.  This truth comes in handy when you feel the urge to bounce out of bed and conquer the world.  One day of heroism could cost you 10 weeks of working out.  There’s a sobering thought.

This will be a short series.  I am only going to yell at you a little bit (I’m really yelling at myself but I’m using you as the punching bag.  Sorry.) so meet me here for the next 2 days as we get ready for an obstacle race.  Cool?  Woop woop!

When I thought about this topic I envisioned going into detail about what it is like to diet for 12 weeks and to describe what you were going through week by week alongside the diet.  I will do something like that eventually but that’s not what this developed into.  Instead, I realized I was more interested in how we are affected by the act of dieting hard core for any length of time while laying out a 12 week program for you.  If you have never done one before, this will give you an idea of what one looks like.  If you have done one, this is a great refresher on the fundamentals.  Mixing both emotions with form and function is hard so please bear with me as we enter into this series together.  The emotion is not one-to-one with what’s going on in the diet because they overlap as the diet moves forward whereas the diet, itself, is a linear progression.

Before delving into the topic head on, it is imperative to discuss the use of the word “diet”.  Any time we set out on a journey to achieve something in regards to our body, whether it is to lose weight, lose body fat or change our appearance in any way through the consumption of food, I refer to that as dieting.  I use the word as a verb:  “I diet clients” or “we diet down toward a goal”.  I find that that terminology can really mess some folks up because we associate that word as a state of being that we are always in because we are typically depriving ourselves of something somewhere.  I call that living life and do not want you to confuse the two.

Dieting is personal.  Every aspect of it is an invasion into your personal space that exposes your private weaknesses, insecurities, deepest desires and biggest fears.  When we first embark on the diet all we care about is the outcome.  We are no more interested in how it may affect our mental health or any hidden pitfalls than we are in the current presidential debates.  We want to be down X amount of pounds or that much tighter at the end of the journey and we don’t think too much more about the process even though we are about to open ourselves up to endless scrutiny.  Once we start our program, our friends watch us, our co-workers watch us, our spouses watch us and we even watch us.  (There are those times, though, when we hope no one is watching such as when we dig the peanut butter jar out of the trash because we just have to have one more tablespoon since we threw it away for the same reason.  Did I just put that in print?)  Public examination is to be expected but it takes on a whole new meaning when we set out to make dramatic changes in how we look.

Weight Watchers, The Zone, South Beach and so on are what I call “general public” diets.  And here, they are a noun.  They make you smaller but they do not necessarily change the way you look.  I know at some point we have all dieted the standard way, made goal and then thought, “I look the exact same as I did before I started only I am just a little bit smaller.”  For lots of “general public” folk that’s a great outcome, for us, though—not so much.  As a result, we entered into the world of clean eating not knowing what to expect or whether it would really change the way we look but we knew it was worth the shot.  Well, it not only changed the way we look, it drew more attention to ourselves than if we walked naked down the street covered only by a fig leaf and a ferret.   Moreover, we began drawing women to us like flies to fly paper armed with more questions than those annoying questionnaires you get at first time doctor visits.

If you were seeking to draw a lot of attention to yourself, guess what—it worked.  But for most of us, that’s not what we wanted.  Somehow we wanted to look really good in a ‘don’t look at me’ sort of way.  What we initially wanted was to just feel good in our clothes by having tight abs and a bum that could support our jeans.  We were a little tired of moving the pooch out of the way to button our pants or finding our bums still touching the chair when we stood up.  We also wanted a goal worth shooting for.  Something that said we did more than just the average dieter as well as prove to ourselves that we could put our minds to something and stick with it.  We weren’t asking for the world and we certainly didn’t sign up to be instant celebrities at our workplace although that is what we became.  So what didn’t we take into consideration when we first started this journey?  Adoration, pressure, competition, unwarranted comments and fear.

As the diet unfolds, so will the emotional drama.  I hope you will stay connected for the next few days as we set out what a 12 week diet entails and discuss the emotional impact of all of our changes.  I’ll brush you up on the guidelines if you are rusty and firmly establish them if you are new.

I’m looking forward to hearing from you all.  If you have any thoughts already or are looking for me to cover something in particular, let me know.  Either leave me a comment below or hit me up via email at Jodi@trans4mationstation.com.  Cool?  Woop woop!

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We all have our things.  Heather loves the outdoors, animals, Oregon… Kas is all about her Soaps, NCIS, working out and being a top notch lawyer…Seanna is all about her kids, make up, God (I’m so with her on all 3 of those)…Nicole is all about learning and then teaching anything she has a passion for…me, though…I’m about Math.  

Yes.  I love make up (obsessively so).  Yes.  I love what I do for a living (which is nutrition and training).  Yes.  I love my family and my most definitely love my God.  BUT…I would know nothing about anything that I love without math.  If you are a mathematician or engineer in any way, you’ll understand fully what i am about to say:  the world is defined by math.  Period.  All seasons, weather patterns, earthquakes, mood swings, cravings, illnesses and so on are defined by math.  Here, let me say what you’re thinking right now:  “Huh?”

I know, it’s hard for you to see if you do not love math but it’s true.  What happens, though, when you do understand this fact is that the world looks completely different to you than everybody else.  In a way that sounds like a silly statement because doesn’t everybody see the world differently from each other?  No, they see it the same but from different viewpoints.  Mathematicians see the world completely different.  We see patterns.  We see orderly solutions to things others didn’t even realize needed a solution.  We see commonalities between symptoms, regions, causes and so on that no one else picks up.  The upside=we’re ahead of the curve.  The downside=we’re typically missing an emotional gene that makes us a bit more human (I’m working on it.)

Why do I tell you all of this?  (If you weren’t thinking that, I certainly was after proofing the initial paragraphs! OY!)  Because of last week’s post–which by the way prompted a few of you to curse me and one of you to actually call me and say you hated me.  Um…sorry about that.  Anyway, last week’s post was about playing food games and why, as much as you would like to think you are ahead of the game, you are not.  I do not want to go on and on chatting about this.  I want to cut right to the chase and show you why you are wasting your time:

Weekly caloric intake= 7000 cals (totally made up number here for the sake of even numbers.  please eat more than 1000 cals/day.  sigh)
Cheat meal=900 cals (let’s say you went buck wild)
Normal caloric intake for your meal would be 200 cals (1000 cals/day, 5 meals/day gives you 200 cals/meal) 
This means you had a surplus that day of 700 cals (900 cal cheat meal-200 cals you would have normally eaten gives you an extra 700 cals).

Here is something that is hard to explain but the body does not reconcile cals daily.  It’s more like weekly.  This is how you can go 3 to 4 days and then *suddenly* a few pounds pop up out of nowhere or vice versa on the loss.  So a 700 cal surplus can really be represented by an extra 100 cals/day for 7 days.  Sit on that for a minute.  So the cheat meal that you think “set you back” 5 months barely made you have an extra 100 cals/day.  And that’s assuming you went buck wild in that meal and caused a scene in a restaurant by eating the back room.  But mentally you feel as if you just ate a whole buffet in one sitting with no hands.  CRAZY. 

What about extra cardio, Jodi?  Even sillier.

First, what you see on the machine is not what you burn.  Wait…that bears repeating.  WHAT YOU SEE ON THE MACHINE IS NOT WHAT YOU BURN.  “But I have a body bugg, HR monitor, RMR test from a gym, little man who follows me around with a calculator…that’s accurate right?”  NOPE.  There is the law of diminishing returns and you need to understand this.  The better you get at cardio, running, lifting and so on, the less you burn.  Period.  Why?  Because your body doesn’t trust you.  It knows you will try to kill it to look good.  You have no sense and it knows that.  So it works overtime to be incredibly efficient and begins to learn all that you do so that it no longer burns that many cals when you work out.  “But my monitor says…” I don’t care if your monitor told you that you won Power Ball on mile 20, the more you move, the less you burn which is how you can run a marathon.  If you burned cals at the same rate at then end of the training that you do at the beginning of the training, you’d be a waif by the end.  But most of you know that that’s not the case.  Instead, you *gained* weight while training for a marathon….but your bugg told you you burned more cals than a full cheer-leading squad at half time.  Why?  Because it’s calculating your caloric expenditure on a linear curve and it is not linear at all.  As time goes on, you burn less and less.

“Why are you telling me this?”  Mainly so you can stop thinking that your extra 30-60 min of cardio somehow magically burned an extra 700 cals to make up for the cheat meal that you had.  It didn’t do a thing actually.  Maybe you burned an extra 200 cals, but that’s about it.  You still have 500 looming around that aren’t accounted for.  Do I tell you that to stress you out?  No…I tell you that to say:

1. the meal didn’t do 1/3 the damage you thought it did
2. you didn’t make up for it as much as you thought you did
3. your ends do not justify your means so…STOP!

Need I say more?

Here at Jodiojo we want you to have more than a hot body.  We want you to have true health.  Mental, as well as physical.  This is imperative to maintain your physique.  Stop the game playing.  Stop the deception.  Reach out if you need some help with this.  We love you.  Have a good week.  Ciao for now.

Honest to goodness, if I could put “change” the verb—not the noun–into a portable package and take it with me everywhere I go, I could wield it as a lethal weapon to get people to do what I wanted them to do. “Move it lady! Or I’m going to throw this can of “change” at you and you will have no idea what you are doing with your life, your schedule, your job or anything next week!” You can hear her sobbing as she runs to conform to my demands while under her breath she whimpers, “Take my money, my car—whatever you want! You can have anything , but please don’t make me change.”

A bit dramatic–but that’s me. ? Seriously… I am a 41 year old happily married mom of 2 precious kids and 1 soon-to-be-famous comedian (Me: “Jalen, it’s your turn to do empty the dishwasher.” Jalen—my 13 year old—“I have to do my math homework.” Me: “Give me a break with the excuses, it takes 2 min., get to it.” Jalen, “It’s because I’m black isn’t it?” Said with the straightest face, most deadpan tone. It took me an hour to stop laughing my head off.) that owns a business who has been in the middle of a MAJOR life change now for that past 2 years and it’s becoming old hat for me now: What I do for a living, although still the same nutrition and training, is done in a very different manner than I have done it in years past. My business platform is changing. My childhood home of 41 years is being packed up and put on the market. Our vacation spot that we went to as a family since I was 5 years old has been sold. My kids are getting older and we’re looking at high schools. My schedule is CRAZY! All the things that I depended on in my life for the past 10 to 15 years are going away. And I am not going to the Boston Marathon this Monday for the first time in like 15 years. What the heck is going on?

Change. And lots of it.

I consider myself lucky because I have the most fabulous women in my life that provide me with a voice of sanity in my insane world. The team at Jodiojo plus my lifeline Kris, keep me from jumping off the Tobin every-so-often when life starts to press in from every side. They keep me from doing those things that we all want to do when life begins to turn upside down:

Food: When life is crazy, food must be easy. However, food being easy tends to be less than healthy for us women. We are looking for quick and comfort all at the same time. Things like pb and toast, greek yogurt and shakes become mainstays in the diet. In and of themselves they are not bad but when they mark your breakfast, lunch and dinner respectively, there’s a problem. I have had to go to 3 meals a day, though, to make this crazy life happen. Not a heinously bad thing in the world of nutrition, but I would not recommend it long term. It beats my old method of handling of stress, though: starvation. If you are a starver—knock it off! Almost all of you are. This comes in the form of nothing all day and nibbles all night. Back away from the almonds and go to the 3 meal a day plan now!

Exercise: My creativity for myself is out the window during times like this so I have had to bug Kas to set me straight in the gym. If you haven’t noticed, she’s a bit of a slave driver and has this certain militant tone to her that makes you want to yield to her unrealistic workout demands. I have a few sore muscles to blame on her. I need this, though, because my normal response to drama pressing down and workouts is to become a “tire kicker” in the gym. This is the person you see ‘lifting’ but not *really* lifting while drifting through the weight floor like a nomad in the desert. If you ever see me in the gym doing this, throw some water on my face and push me into the nearest squat rack because I need an intervention! I refused to go that route so I had Kas do a timed set workout for me and I no longer like her nor call her my friend. Just sayin.

Appearance: I refuse to look homeless although that is my normal M.O. Luckily, Seanna is here to save the day by getting me in a head lock and making me keep up with the week to week stuff. Eyebrows, make up, shoes and showers (haha) have gone onto a check list so that I may keep up with them during this crazy time of change because if I didn’t…umm…yeah. I always want to look as young as I can look but I do not need to look presentable. I’m not kidding. She’s working that out of me because honestly, it matters. So even though I want to do my normal nomad look to go along with my drifting in the weight room, that’s not happening this time.

My question for you is this: Are you ready for some significant change in your life? If something came along tomorrow and pulled the rug right out from underneath you, would you be ready? Think about what you do and how you do it and ask yourself if it is sustainable. My life is changing rapidly but it has been changing for the better this whole time. I love where I am at and what I am doing but it is still *different* from what I used to do before and that can be hard to adjust to. Getting to know my dad all over again (see MP4 for explanation), expanding the business, adjusting to my kids getting older and so on has been challenging but this time around I thought it through far more than I ever have before and it feels good to see it come together. Don’t get me wrong—change is scary. But with an awesome team and an even better family, life seems to be rolling along just fine right now. Have a great week y’alls! Woop woop!

Seanna is wrapping up her R & R this week so I thought re-posting her thoughts on balance from MP4 might be especially relevant this week.  Enjoy!–Jodi

I know someone who has struggled his whole life with psoriasis. This someone went to the dermatologist (again) for help treating a mean outbreak of the itchy, red spots. I was sharing with Jodi and she mentioned that this person is more than likely, due to the inflammatory nature of psoriasis and his typical, albeit fancy, western diet, chronically heavy in omega 6 and deficient in omega 3, ie. his omega 3-6 ratio is way out of balance, and that daily doses of omega-3 will in time help keep the psoriasis under control. (I’m giving my dog omega-3 every other day for a similar reason.)

This got me thinking about equilibrium in all areas of life. When things are out of whack, man do we know it. I’m convinced that our minds and bodies want to exist in a peaceful stability. For me, the keys to staying in balance are enough physical activity, clean eating, lots of sleep and a peaceful day-to-day outlook.

Physical

Take training for example. The MP4 call last week was about recovery. Heather does this and Amy likes that, and then there’s me. I was the “control” group because I always feel pretty good. Recovery for me isn’t so much of a thought out thing, but obviously I do recover because for the most part I always feel pretty great. I feel like this is due to me not pushing myself as hard as they do in the training ring because I know myself. I exert myself as much as I need to for my purposes (health and physique maintenance), and that’s all. Mostly because I don’t want to do more, I don’t need to do more, but also, who has time? In other words, I know my personal limits and myself. I’m meeting my needs and so feel good physically most of the time. When I up the ante and take on more (for a specific purpose and stated time frame), I feel it, and so have to plan around this so that the rest of my life isn’t sacrificed to the increased physical demands from a new goal.

Nutrition

A very big piece to being able to stay well, recovered, and in balance is a great diet. We’ve all talked about this to death but it bears repeating, you won’t feel or look your best, let alone be able to really get it done for your sport if you eat like crap, not enough, too much, etc. You’ve also got to know what you need. What sits well in your tummy, what doesn’t? What weighs you down or makes you feel alive? Knowing yourself and what you thrive on is important with eating too. I’ve walked this clean eating walk for a long time (at MP4 we all have) and could probably plan meals in my sleep. I know what I need and what I can get away with adding in or leaving out. But clean eating, with a few treats sprinkled in as life offers, is key to my steady state of being recovered and feeling great.

This is a classic!

Sleep

Oh man, I love to sleep! I love when I can go to bed early, like by an hour, even if I’m not tired, because I’ll fall right to sleep. Can I just add that after sleeping a solid 9 hrs or so, your skin glows and your eyes sparkle. Well, mine do, but then I thrive on lots of sleep. You may not need as much and glow and sparkle with 7 hrs. Like eating, sleep is one of the areas that I’ll have to plan to tweak due to increased activity demands. I can’t increase my activity output and not also compensate with a bit more sleep. When that’s impossible, the sleep I do get must be quality. I’m not a frequent nap taker, but occasionally my body will force one out of me. That’s my rather obvious clue that I’m getting out of balance.

If you’re like me you may have thought she was blowing her nose in her hand, but she’s not.  She’s crying.  Hope that helps you out in your travels today.

Emotional

I won’t get into this too much, except to say that emotional balance is precious to me. All of us that have lived through a season of emotional upheaval know what I’m talking about. I’m convinced that emotional and physical health go hand in hand, one greatly enhancing the other. For me and mine, a peaceful existence is a priority.

So the take home message from today’s post is this … stay in balance – know yourself and give your body and mind what it needs – activity, nourishment, rest, peace.

What are some of the ways you keep your life in balance? What activities specifically address this for you? Thanks ya’ll. Have a great day!

…because you just might get it.

Do you remember that saying? Has your mother or father ever said that to you? And whenever they said it a feeling rose up in you like, ‘Why wouldn’t I want it? And you just want to keep me from enjoying life,’ and so on. But now as we experience life and all that it has to offer, does this not make complete sense?

Reaching Goal
Just the sound of that title is exciting. Guess what? You’ve made your goal! YAY! Some of us half expect either a parade or a hot man to show up in the mail—or both. But what we really realize is we have to walk this out and that it is not as fun as we thought it would be.

Let me give you a scenario and tell me if any of it resonates with you:

Jane spent a good amount of her life heavy. She was always the chubby kid in lower school, the first to go through puberty in middle school and invisible in high school because of an extra 40 pounds on her. Some time in her mid to late 20’s she said enough is enough and lost a sizable amount of weight. Now for all intents and purposes, Jane was hot. You would think she would be ecstatic but quite the contrary. Here are some things that she may or may not deal with now:

• Deep, paralyzing fear of gaining the weight again. Jane is now in full bondage to her diet. Wherever she goes her meals are planned and regulated to the morsel. She never misses gym time no matter what. She does not drink, smoke, eat junk, eat on the fly, mix, mingle or laugh. For heaven’s sake, Jane is a social eunuch. If it isn’t weighed out first, it isn’t eaten.
• Intense fear of public places. Jane has been invisible for so long that she became accustomed to people not acknowledging her. Now, though, she can’t walk ten feet without someone commenting on how great she looks. Although that sounds fabulous, it’s not. “Why are they talking to me now? I am the same person I was before”, is what goes through her head and it brings out an intense sense of resentment, fear, mistrust, paranoia and sorrow.
• Mean girl-itis. Jane has been persecuted so long, now it’s someone else’s turn. Mean comments about those she may know who are still heavy or cutting off girlfriends who have not made the journey to the other side. Ganging up on people at social events with off color jokes about heavy folk has become a common place for her. Jane’s on a mission and someone has to pay for those years of ridicule and she wants in on what she has always been on the other side of for so long.
• A bad and annoying case of nutritionism. This is a scary disease I see cropping up a lot now even if you aren’t a Jane: Because I lost weight I am an expert on weight loss so I can now work with anyone by giving them what I did. I know nothing other than this worked for me so I am now qualified to work with everyone. Jane is busy micromanaging everyone in her office. She is the diet-nazi ready to terrorize everyone with her Tupperware (Ok, who heated up the white fish and broccoli this morning in the microwave? Gross!)  and judgmental stare. She’s so good at it that she has successfully been uninvited to at least 3 events at her office. Way to go, Jane!
• Shares an interest with Dwight Howard. Jane never dealt with what brought her to both the heaviness and the intense desire to lose weight. So when she lost the weight, she never lost the problem. Food is still a way to cope, self loathing still abounds and now she has become the rebounding queen of all time. She wishes she never lost the weight because now she feels like a failure and although she’s not back to where she started, in her heart she feels she might as well be.

What’s this have to do with me?
Jane is an extreme example in terms of having to lose a large amount of weight and the things that can crop up from it but her issues are very common to us clean eating gals.

1. First, none of us want to ever gain any weight whatsoever, lose our lines or mess with our shape/muscle. Once we get to that sweet spot, we’re like psychotic psychos on a mission. Wake, eat, gym, work, eat, gym, bed, ding. Start over the next day.
2. Second, if we gain more than 5 pounds back from any goal, we hibernate in our little coves until we can get the scale to read anything close to what it did before then. No one can see me like this. I’m up {insert however many pounds here}. What will they think?
3. Third, all of us have a little touch of the health and fitness self righteousness bug. Not necessarily to Jane’s degree, but it’s there. Go to any individual blog right now of someone who has gotten themselves “into the best shape of their lives” and watch how bad they make anybody who hasn’t done that feel. The overreaching message of the site is, ‘What’s wrong with you? I’ve done this. So can’t you. Now get off your duff and diet.’ And then it loops right in to nutritionism because your problem is just that you…blah, blah, blah…
4. And lastly, which one of us hasn’t yo-yo’ed? If we are not yoked to our diets like Harriet Tubman on the Freedom Trail then we are free falling into a tub of ice cream screaming “Geronimo” the whole way down. The word maintenance gives us a rash and rightly so. The only thing we know how to maintain is insanity and even that becomes challenging after a while as we settle into the inevitable weight gain conundrum.

Thanks, Debbie Downer
Ok…you got me there. But this really isn’t meant to make you feel bad, it is meant to make you diet smarter. The number one problem Jane had in her life was not knowing ‘why’ she was doing what she was doing. Jumping into her weight loss head first fueled by anger and resentment was not the best way to handle that situation. And honestly, I am not looking down on Jane, I am looking up to my situation. How can we apply what she didn’t know so that we can avoid all that she went through?

Know. Why. You. Want. It.

And whatever you do, don’t tell me it’s because you want to be healthy. Riiiiiiight. Mmmm, yeah…no. I see through that like water in the Caribbean, crystal clear. You want to be healthy like I want to be on a plane flying 22 hours to Africa. I’d rather remove a layer of skin with a knife, dry it and use it as a book mark before getting in a plane (I want you to know it is a hobby of mine to find gruesome and gross versions of “I’d rather”. You’ll notice this if you read a lot of my stuff) so I know you are not abstaining from ice cream to “be healthy”. No. Stop fighting it. Know why you want to go through this much trouble to look good and you will avoid a good amount of this craziness. There’s other craziness you may pick up, but that’s another post for another time.

In the mean time, I am back to sending out the series and you should see an extension of this very soon. If you missed it, I also blogged yesterday for Seanna.  Check it out here.  Thank you for stopping by and thank you for so many of you subscribing via email and via google reader. WOW!

Well sort of…

See I am up to my eyeballs in “renovations”.  No, not the kind of renovations that had Heather running around like a chicken with her head cut off last November/December… Site renovations. 

First, our homepage is changing:

because it needs to reflect all of our product lines.  That’s been a fun thing to work on because Jodiojo is quite eclectic and we’ve had some good laughs in the process of having this designed. 

The overarching concept of our company is very simple:  clean eating done beautifully.  Why are we focusing on that?  Because you wouldn’t do all that you are doing to look like a weathered hag at the end.  Yes, I said hag.  But if you just “eat clean” and pound away at cardio for the next 2 years, you will find out why it is important to be intentional about balance, beauty and body all at the same time.

Next, we have to redo MP4.  It’s an awesome site but it doesn’t reflect what we do so sending you there right now doesn’t make sense.  There is so much coming to that site that I need a nap just to get enough energy to explain it all to you.   The first thing we are remodeling, though, is the services page.  We have a few hot programs on the way that are highly effective and incredibly affordable.  If you plan on running anything this year and you are fanatical about your body and how much work you have put into it, keep checking for the updates to this site.  I’ll let you know when they go live, but they will be here soon so get ready.  Here is the proposed layout of the services page, and this is in the early stages so I know this is going to change some but it’s enough for you to get the idea…

The initital design phase takes the longest time and then the rest is easy so I am super excited that they will be going live soon!  Also, all of our products are on their way, too.  We have workouts and plans that are designed to keep your gym time fun and the focus on your bum while giving you a solid, well researched nutrition plan to get you to your goal.  Ok…so not just your bum–the rest of you, too.  But tell me that isn’t worth at least a mention.  Here is a snapshot of our new glossary that is on the way:

And last but not least…Trans4mation Station.  Our flagship product line.  Hands down the most requested service of Jodiojo & Co. and growing at a rapid pace right now.  This site is in the wee early stages of development so i don’t have a screen shot, yet.  But do know that there is only a custom option available now but a scaled down version of all that grandiosity is on the way soon.

So there you have it.  Why I am stumped this week for stuff to yap about with you.  As soon as I can see the bottom of my desk again, I will have something more for you.  Or maybe, just maybe…this is what you wanted to know in the first place. 

Looking forward to meeting you all through comments, emails and just plain old working with you.  Until next week…woop woop!!:o)

Seeing as Jodi picked the pics for this blog and added the captions, I had no idea she would use me for the lead photo.  Trust me…I’ll get her back somehow. hehe

Being the aesthetics chick here at MP4, I have thoroughly enjoyed myself during the make up mini series.  What a kick it has been rambling about make up!  Seriously, you’d think I was talking about my children!  I truly hope you’ve learned something that proves helpful.  Thanks for the push, Jodi!

So, I was thinking about the next post in the series, and I do believe that it’s finished.  I’ve done the big brain dump.  You now know all I know of make up, all that I’ve used, have an opinion of, a recommendation or at the least, something to say.

Today’s post will be a wrap up for anyone who hasn’t read all the others.  And if you haven’t, really, I don’t blame you.  I know I went on and on.  Seriously, I look back and could swear the posts are regenerating.  Plus a wrap up is a way to drive home my very best advice.

And you truly want advice from me, I’m gorgeous.  Ok, I wrote that (Jodi) but don’t tell Seanna.  Shhhh.  She’s stunning, lives the clean life and loves like a pooh bear!

First!  Love is what makes you beautiful.  Love boldly with a wide open heart, be at peace, and you will always be your most attractive, with or without make up.

Second, any rules or guidelines are all subject to YOUR approval.  Reject anything you don’t love or doesn’t work on you.  Period.  You must FEEL beautiful too.

This is the obligatory “beautiful” pic I am adding in to make up for the fact I (Jodi) had two of Seanna in here and she’s going to kill me.;)  Indulge me, please:  Ooooo, ahhhh, it’s gorgeous.

Ok, it’s time for the nitty gritty of getting ready to “face” (haha, get it!?) the world.  Below are my top ten dos and don’ts of make up:

• Do your eyebrows!  Whatever you need, do it.  Have them shaped and maintain em.  Use powder or pencil make up to darken your brows or fill in any thin spots.  Please don’t over tweeze.
• Curl you lashes and wear mascara.
• Use concealer under and around the eye area to brighten up your pretty face.  Gently pat a touch of concealer a tad lighter than your facial skin only where you need it to cover darkness.
• For the very best application, use a make up brush, preferably the proper brush for the job.
• If you use foundation, make sure it is a perfect match for your skin color and is the right formulation for your skin type.  Once it’s applied, blend, blend, and blend again.  Hard lines and streaks are not beautiful.
• Don’t rely on foundation as the exclusive source of your facial sunscreen.
• Apply blush in a flattering, natural color on the apples of your cheeks and cheekbones.  Save the crazy brights for dramatic nighttime looks.
• Use bronzer lightly on your cheeks, temples, chin, bridge of nose, and forehead (where your would tan from the sun) to warm up your facial skin and bring a “tan” to a summer time make up look.
• Eyeliner is your friend, whether it’s a pencil, gel, liquid or powder.  Line at least your top lash line to make your eyes pop.
• Colored eyeliner is an easy way to add subtle color.  Use a powder shadow and liner brush to line the eye (all the way around, upper only, lower only, part of lower and upper, whatever works for your eyes).  Apply dark mascara and voila, gorgeous!
• Beware shimmer and frosty eye shadow.  Sadly, it makes mature eyes look more wrinkled.
• Use a shadow primer for eye make up that will love you long time.  It’s especially good for oily lids.
• Neutral, natural lips with a touch of color and shine is always classic and pretty.

That was more than ten, I know.  Sorry ladies.

And that’s all!  Yay!