2-Week Workout Plan to Lose Inches

2-Week Workout Plan to Lose Inches
By Joe Vennare | For Active.com

You want to drop a few pounds and tighten up trouble areas, but you're not sure where to begin. How do you start your weight-loss journey?

It's simple, exercise. That's not to say that getting fit is easy, which would suggest it doesn't require any work. Exercise is work. You have to make the effort to select health foods and move more.

Lose inches and create a more active lifestyle with this two-week workout plan.

Laying the Groundwork
Let's be honest, lots of people plan to start an exercise program; but many give up. From the group that actually does start, only a portion of those individuals stick with their plan long enough to actually alter their lifestyle.

Why? There are two reasons. First, people never prepare themselves for a new exercise routine. What is the goal? How long will it take? People just show up at the gym without a plan. They go through the motions and a few weeks later give up because they don't see results. No plan, no goals, no progress, no results.

Second, people overestimate their abilities. Training twice a day sounds better than once. Training seven days each week is better than five. Right away people want to lift heavier weights, go on long runs, and bring more intensity to their workouts. This might sound great, but it's completely unrealistic and unsustainable. Going from relaxing to doing intense workouts is a recipe for disaster.

The trick to creating an effective routine is to be honest about your current fitness level. Ask yourself what are your goals, how long you will take to get there, and how much time you can commit to exercise? With those thoughts lingering in your mind, give this two-week exercise plan a try. Make these workouts work for you, on your schedule, and based on your fitness level.

More: 3 Steps to Accomplish Your Fitness Goals

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Overcoming Fear of Failure Facing Fears and Moving Forward

Overcoming Fear of Failure
Facing Fears and Moving Forward

Have you ever been so afraid of failing at something that you decided not to try it at all? Or has a fear of failure meant that, subconsciously, you undermined your own efforts to avoid the possibility of a larger failure?

Many of us have probably experienced this at one time or another. The fear of failing can be immobilizing – it can cause us to do nothing, and therefore resist moving forward. But when we allow fear to stop our forward progress in life, we're likely to miss some great opportunities along the way.

In this article, we'll examine fear of failure: what it means, what causes it, and how to overcome it to enjoy true success in work, and in life.

Causes of Fear of Failure

To find the causes of fear of failure, we first need to understand what "failure" actually means.

We all have different definitions of failure, simply because we all have different benchmarks, values, and belief systems. A failure to one person might simply be a great learning experience for someone else.

Many of us are afraid of failing, at least some of the time. But fear of failure (also called "atychiphobia") is when we allow that fear to stop us doing the things that can move us forward to achieve our goals.

Fear of failure can be linked to many causes. For instance, having critical or unsupportive parents is a cause for some people. Because they were routinely undermined or humiliated in childhood, they carry those negative feelings into adulthood.

Experiencing a traumatic event at some point in your life can also be a cause. For example, say that several years ago you gave an important presentation in front of a large group, and you did very poorly. The experience might have been so terrible that you became afraid of failing in other things. And you carry that fear even now, years later.

Signs of Fear of Failure

You might experience some of these symptoms if you have a fear of failure:

A reluctance to try new things or get involved in challenging projects.
Self-sabotage Add to My Personal Learning Plan – for example, procrastination, excessive anxiety Add to My Personal Learning Plan, or a failure to follow through with goals.
Low self-esteem or self-confidence Add to My Personal Learning Plan – commonly using negative statements such as "I'll never be good enough to get that promotion," or "I'm not smart enough to get on that team."
Perfectionism Add to My Personal Learning Plan – A willingness to try only those things that you know you'll finish perfectly and successfully.

Read full article here.

How to Take More Action: 9 Powerful Tips

How to Take More Action: 9 Powerful Tips
by HENRIK EDBERG

“It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.”
Leonardo Da Vinci

To get things done you need to take action. Things seldom happen on their own.

But taking action can be difficult and hard. And so it’s easy to wind up in Lazyville or Procrastinationland a lot. How can you break out of such behaviour and develop a behaviour of taking more action?

Here are 10 tips that you’ll hopefully find useful.

1. Reconnect with the present moment.

This will help you snap out of over thinking and just go and do whatever you want to get done.

This is probably the best tip I have found so far for taking more action since it puts you in a state where you feel little emotional resistance to the work you’ll do. And it puts you in state where the right actions often just seem to flow out of you in a focused but relaxed way and without much effort.

One of the simplest ways to connect with the present moment is just to keep your focus on you breathing for a minute or two. Check out 7 more tips in 8 Ways to Return to the Present Moment.

2. Be accountable to others.

If you tell a bunch of people that you are going to do something then it will be hard to not do it. You don’t want to disappoint them. Or have to face up to them the next time you meet.

If you have a hard time getting going with something get some support. If you for instance workout, do it with a friend to motivate each other to take action – and actually go to the gym – when motivation runs low. Motivating each other and bringing enthusiasm when one of you is feeling low can really help to develop consistency and useful habits.

Think about how you can involve others to help all of you to take more action.

This tip works well. But it can put you in situation where you take action to avoid pain, to avoid judgement. And it can help you create pressure within yourself. Such a state may not always be the best one to be in to take action and perform well. One way to lessen such problems is to use this tip and then when you are about to take action you reconnect with the present moment to quiet negativity within yourself.

3. Be accountable to yourself.

In the long run a more consistent and perhaps healthier way to develop a habit of taking more action is to answer to yourself instead of others. To set your own standards and principles for how you will behave.

The problem with this one is that you are likely to cheat on yourself and rationalize how you don’t need to take action or follow your principles. When the social pressure of having to answer to others isn’t there it’s easy to slip and fall into laziness or procrastination.

But over time you can become more and more consistent with acting according to your own standards. I believe that one of the keys to develop this kind of thinking is to get off a dependence on external validation and be more internally validated. You can read more about that at # 8 in 9 Great Ways to Make Yourself Absolutely Miserable.

If you can develop accountability to your own standards then it can be more consistent than the one you get from relying on being accountable to others. It comes from within so it doesn’t have to rely on other, outer circumstances that may fluctuate.

It is also very useful to help you feel good about yourself and to help you grow. If you rely on being accountable to others and their validation then you may grow but also feel confined by what others expect from you. If you are accountable to yourself then you set your limits wherever you want them.

4. Lighten up.

One way to dissuade yourself from taking action is to take whatever you are about to do too seriously. That makes it feel too big, too difficult and too scary. If you on the other hand relax a bit and lighten up you often realize that those problems and negative feelings are just something you are creating in your own mind. With a lighter state of mind your tasks seems lighter and becomes easier to get started with. Have a look at Lighten Up! for more on this topic.

Read the full article here:

Overcome the Fear of Failure With These 6 Questions

Overcome the Fear of Failure With These 6 Questions
In his book, A More Beautiful Question, Warren Berger interviews serial entrepreneur and writer Jonathan Fields, who tells us that asking ourselves: “What would I do if I knew I couldn’t fail?” is the type of question that makes us powerless. Instead, Fields says, we should ask these alternate questions. From Fast Company:

What if I fail–how will I recover? Often when we think about failure, Fields says, “we do so in a vague, exaggerated way–we’re afraid to even think about it clearly.” But if before embarking on a high-risk challenge, you visualize what would actually happen if it failed–and what you’d likely have to do to pick up the pieces from that failure–this can help you realize that.

…

What if I do nothing? The point being, when we take on a major challenge it’s often because we really need to change–and if we don’t go ahead with it, we’re likely to be unhappy staying put. Whatever problem or restlessness already exists may, in fact, get worse. “There is no sideways,” Fields says; if you’re not moving forward, you’re moving back.

The other questions Fields says we should be asking include: What if I succeed? What’s truly worth doing, whether I fail or succeed? And: in this failure, what went right? If you’re faced with a frightening decision today, you need to ask (and answer) these questions.

Full article here:

Get fit, not fat, this Christmas

Get fit, not fat, this Christmas

The festive season is upon us, and that can only mean diet debauchery, abandoned fitness regimes and six-hour TV marathons. But it doesn't have to be this way. With a little forward planning and a smidgeon of self-discipline, it is perfectly possible to enjoy a happy Christmas and enter the New Year feeling fit, not fat.

"Many people fall off the exercise bandwagon at Christmas, or rule out the idea of getting into shape during the festive period, assuming there is no point in starting until the New Year," says award-winning fitness consultant Dean Hodgkin. "But given that one of the biggest barriers to exercise is lack of time, a break from the usual routine can provide the ideal opportunity to begin or maintain physical activity." Staying active over Christmas not only reduces your chances of gaining weight, it also helps energise you, reduces stress and gives you a break.

Exercising first thing may entail getting up a little earlier than normal, but it does ensure that you get your workout done before other commitments and crises get in the way - and it will kickstart your metabolism for the rest of the day.

Workouts don't need to be long to be beneficial. "If you're prepared to work hard, you can fit a super workout into just a 30-minute window," says Hodgkin. It's a trade-off between duration and intensity: recent Australian research found that 20 minutes of high-intensity interval training burned more calories than 40 minutes at a steady state. And if time is of the essence, you can even break down your daily exercise into short bouts rather than opt for one single prolonged session (research shows that activity bouts as short as 10 minutes are effective).

If an influx of family and visitors make it difficult to do your usual workout (say, a gym visit or a solitary run or bike ride), try to get everyone involved in something seasonal, like ice skating (click here for a link to the UK's top ten seasonal ice rinks) or a winter walk. The Ramblers' Association Festival of Winter Walks has a programme of more than 300 walks nationwide between Boxing Day and 3 January, open to all and ranging in length and difficulty.

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You can rig the odds of getting guests outside in your favour by buying gifts that are just begging to be roadtested. "Bikes, scooters, in-line skates, footballs and Frisbees are all good options," says Hodgkin.

If you can't drag yourself - or anyone else - outdoors, look for indoor alternatives to slumping on the sofa. The ubiquitous Wii-Fit Plus - currently at the top of the UK gaming charts - offers a realm of opportunities for hitting virtual tennis balls and punching invisible targets without leaving the living room, or try one of the latest exercise DVDs (this year's seasonal batch of celeb-endorsed releases includes Davina McCall's Davina Fit and EastEnder Jessie Wallace's Look at me now). Or there's always good old-fashioned Twister.

As far as timing is concerned, it's better to schedule activity in after eating, rather than before. Research from Old Dominion University shows that post-prandial exercise attenuates the glycaemic effect of food, minimising blood sugar spikes and dips and reducing the likelihood of further snacking later on. Gentle after-dinner activity also helps to support digestion a lot more than nodding off in an armchair does …

Full article here:
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2009/dec/11/get-fit-not-fat-christmas

How to change my POV about getting out of my comfort zone

Shopping and yard work are quite the workout.  Last night I spent at least 3 hours, shopping, pushing, walking, climbing stairs, and lifting heavy bags.  I have no idea how many calories I have burned, but I know that I have burned more than enough to exercise.  Tomorrow I will be doing even more exercise.  Doing at least 2 hours of yard work.  Going out back and doing yard work will burn at least 400 calories an hour.  I may be off, but any amount of calories will be good enough for me.  Maybe instead of seeing things as chores, I should finally see shopping and yard work, especially, as opportunities to do something outside of my comfort zone.  Also, a little movement doesn't hurt, either.

It can and will be done

As I was reading yesterday's post, I come to the conclusion that I have little to no confidence in myself.  I am severely lacking in that department.  I could not at one time find something to do. My nutrition counselor is right.  It is up to me.  I have to learn how to take initiative and I have not.  I have not made any plans to exercise even.  It will be in another blog.  What do I like to do?  Well, I do like to walk, use gym equipment, and at least try to learn about dancing.  Zumba is not easy, but it was quite fun.  Maybe having a little bit of fun does not hurt. Maybe I am being a stick in the mud. Whatever the reason or key may be, I admit that I have a lot of work, and a lot of learning to do.