How to maintain your 21 Day Fix results!

So you just CRUSHED your first round of the 21 Day Fix.

Your sugar and junk food cravings are gone, you are FINALLY on a regular workout routine that gives you so much energy, you dropped a few pounds and feel lean and amazing in your favorite jeans, and you want to keep your momentum going but you're terrified of falling off the wagon, binging on pizza, spiraling back into your old habits and heading right back to square one.

Or maybe you really want to start incorporating more treats and balance back into your life so you can stop saying "pass the wine I'm out of yellows," but you aren't sure if that will completely de-rail you too.

Or maybe you haven't even tried the Fix yet but you've seen the cheesy yet weirdly addicting 21 Day Fix infomercials, or have been stalking my journey on social media and are curious about what the hype is all about.

Sound familiar?

Well, let's chat about what happens when you finish a round of the 21 Day Fix, because it IS possible to maintain your results, and continue to lose weight with subsequent rounds until you reach your goals. There's NOTHING standing in your way except your own mind, and you are never going back to the girl you were on Day 1. Or even yesterday. Once you make the decision to change your life, there's no going back!

I love love love this program for a billion reasons, and since I completed it myself back in March 2014 I've implemented the nutrition plan into my general daily life and pursuit of balance. I get asked all the time if this program is maintainable, and the answer is a big YES! If you are willing to do the work.

Why do I need the Fix?

Because you get to eat chocolate brownie pancakes and wine. Duh.

The 21 Day Fix is NOT necessarily a quick fix crash diet as the name implies, but rather a portion control system that emphasizes whole foods and a balanced approach to nutrition (plus the workouts are fast, fun, and unbelievably effective). The main reason why I love the program is because it does such an amazing job of providing structure and teaching you how to eat a healthy, balanced, whole-foods diet with room for flexibility and treats. You are in control of how many calories you eat so you don't have to restrict yourself.

(Read all my blog posts and reviews HERE!)

It’s not hard to learn how to eat right, but putting it into practice is a big challenge. How many times have you decided to “get back on track” or clean up your eating...only to return to the wine, and pizza the next time you have a draining day? (raises hand)

I’ve coached dozens of women through the 21 Day Fix in the last year and a half in my private accountability groups, and my mission is to first help them see and feel results fast, but then use those results as motivation to make deeper, lasting changes in their confidence and self worth so they can reach their healthy happy weight, stop dieting or obsessing about “fitness and nutrition plans” once and for all, and simply live their lives free from the emotional rollercoaster.

It’s impossible to fall off the wagon when the wagon is your LIFE.

I want to help women realize that healthy eating and working out are ways to honor your body and feel energized and vibrant, not means to an end. You aren’t a failure if you don’t lose X number of pounds, or if you made it through the 21 Day Fix perfectly...it’s more about how you feel about yourself on a day to day basis.

Even though the name of this program implies that it’s a quick fix, or that your lifestyle needs to be changed, I view it differently.

It's not about how many pounds or inches you can lose in three weeks. It's about taking 21 days to set HABITS you can maintain for the long haul, for long term results that will change your entire life, your confidence and self esteem from the inside out.

Chipotle + Wine .... #21DFapproved

How I use the 21 Day Fix as a lifestyle plan

I use the Fix plan as a guideline to give me some structure and keep me on track. I don't use the containers to measure my food anymore, but I mentally track the containers I've eaten for each meal to make sure I'm eating enough veggies and the proper balance of carbs/fat/protein. I've definitely increased my healthy fats and treats now that I’m at a happy weight for my body and activity level, and I follow a higher maintenance calorie bracket. Whenever I feel like I'm falling off track or starting to get into mindless snacking habits, I just pay closer attention to my containers for a week or 2.  

I've been able to maintain my results, gain MORE muscle, and I don't ever stress out about cheat meals or feel guilty about food anymore, it's amazing. Oh I also threw away my scale so that's helped too :)

I combine the portion control system with the Tone It Up nutrition plan guidelines, because it's a balanced way of eating that works for my body and makes me feel good!

(Yesterday morning...working on getting stronger!)

How to maintain your 21 Day Fix results

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1. IF YOU’RE STILL LOSING WEIGHT

Treat it like a LIFESTYLE, not a diet. This is the way you should be eating for the rest of your life! Focus on using it as a tool to make lifestyle shifts and establish healthy habits, not as a deprivation plan or competition to lose weight fast.

Strive for excellence, not perfection. Don’t beat yourself up if you don’t hit your containers perfectly, or fall off plan for a weekend. Just keep moving forward, and remember again, it’s not about how much weight you can lose in 3 weeks, it’s about how you can make sustainable lifestyle shifts.

ACCOUNTABILITY. Share your new lifestyle with your “real life” support system! Make sure your partner, family, friends, and co-workers understand your goals and values so they can be supportive. Eliminate negativity from your life...YOU are in control of what you think, what you eat, and how you feel. If you are one of my coaching clients, you're welcome in my long term accountability groups and challenges for as long as you need the support!

Get creative with your meals, and allow room for treats! Now that you've got the basics down, you can start looking for new fun recipes to try! I love Pinterest and Autumn's new cookbook Fixate.

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2. ONCE YOU’VE REACHED YOUR GOAL WEIGHT

Use the maintenance plan in the nutrition guide to calculate how many calories you need to support your lifestyle. This is also great when you are training for a marathon or endurance event and want to make sure you’re properly fueling without over-eating or gaining weight!

Honor and respect your body and your energy. If you are doing intense workouts, make sure to bump up your calorie bracket so you’re giving your muscles enough fuel!

Learn how to eyeball the correct portion sizes, and use the containers a couple times a month to make sure you are not over-estimating :)

Keep drinking Shakeology everyday! It will ensure your body is not nutrient deficient, and supports a healthy digestive and immune system so you can nourish your body from the inside out. (Learn why I love it HERE!)

Here's my friend Melissa, who lost 50 pounds over the course of one year by implementing the 21 Day Fix portion control system into her normal life (with lots of wiggle room for treats, holidays, and  living life. It's not about being perfect or eating 100% "clean" foods, but rather about making small and lasting healthy shifts in your habits and lifestyle so your body can gradually reach its natural weight.

The accountability factor

It’s really hard to decide and commit to making long term changes in your health, especially when not all your friends, family, and co-workers are supportive or understand your motivation. That’s where I come in as a coach! I provide the motivation and emotional support via one on one emails and private group coaching to put you in a positive environment with other women who are working towards the same goals, who understand where you’re starting and will lift you up along the way and help you grow into the woman you’re meant to be.

I'll be there for you to cheer you on for as long as you need me.

You have to commit to doing it right and you have to do the work. I will help you believe in yourself, encourage you to dream bigger and take a chance on something that has the potential to change your entire life. I take your journey seriously because it takes serious guts to believe you're worth this investment, especially if nothing else has ever worked for you before, or if you feel like you have 80% of your nutrition down but can't seem to feel the way you want.

You don't have to diet, restrict, or deprive yourself to change your life. You just embrace the ups and downs, focus on your INNER transformation and the process more than the end physical results, surround yourself with a support system of other women who will encourage you, and never. give. up.

xoxo Anna

Want more info?

What is the 21 Day Fix?
How to combine the 21 Day Fix with Tone It Up
What's a Challenge Group?

Inspire Joy Success Story: Meet Laura!

I'm so excited to share another success story from my latest health and fitness coaching group! Laura and I connected via social media and this girl is a POWERHOUSE of inspiration and drive.

She's currently pursuing a degree in chemical engineering with plans to attend medical school in the near future. She's passionate about healthy living, travel, discovering her own "best self," and inspiring other early-20-something women by sharing her experiences on her blog!

Laura is one of the newest coaches on my team and is already establishing a strong foundation for her business. When I think of our values like authenticity, excellence, success, positivity, and courage, this girl comes to mind. I can't wait to introduce her to you!

You can read more Inspire Joy success stories HERE! 

Meet Laura!

How did you feel before you decided to commit to the Inspire Joy August Challenge?

I felt like the days were going by too quickly, and I wasn’t moving forward. I wasn’t making any progress towards my goals, health related or otherwise. I had put on a bit of extra weight, just enough that it was starting to show & affect my self confidence. I felt really down about so many things that were out of my control, and I didn’t have the motivation to change the things that I could control. I finally decided that it was time to take charge & own my life, starting with my health & fitness.

Why did you feel that way?

I think I felt that way because I wasn’t taking care of myself. I know it sounds so cliche, and some people might think it’s selfish to take care of yourself first, but I disagree. I think that showing up for the people I love as the best version of myself is far from selfish. Don’t my family & friends deserve a version of me that loves herself?

How do you feel now?

Now, I feel amazing. I have so much more confidence and it’s completely made over how I carry myself. I make sure that I have enough time in the day to put myself first, to workout, to drink my shakeology, to eat healthy. I think that by respecting myself and the boundaries I set, it’s helped other people to respect my boundaries as well. For instance: when I went on vacation with my family, they had no issues taking me to buy groceries, because they respected that I didn’t want to eat unhealthily. Honestly, I never could have expected how much focusing on my health & fitness would allow me to improve other areas of my life (my relationships, my focus, etc). I feel like I’m on top of the world.

(Side note from Anna: Laura lost 10 pounds and 11.5 inches in her first round of the 21 Day Fix...you can read her full review on her blog!)

I finally have a sense of confidence that I can’t shake. I feel so good about my body, and I know it’s because I’m treating it better. I’m saying to myself: you are worth it, the time, the effort, the burpees, the meal prep.. you are worth every bit of it.

What struggles or challenges have you overcome?

As someone who works full time at restauraunt, I had to learn to overcome temptation REALLLLLL quick. It was quite a habit for all of us to crowd around a dessert that one of us had ordered at the end of the night, or get an order of fries to munch on while we cleaned up. It was hard to resist a lot of the time, but I decided that I needed to talk to the kitchen staff to figure out what I could eat that was healthy. I was very lucky that they were willing to accommodate my strange requests & mixed plates.

I also had quite a mental block in place, that I just couldn’t really ever lose weight. I just ran heavy.. as long as I didn’t look like I was overweight, did it matter that my BMI said I was? Correct answer: yes & no. I’m back to a healthy weight according to BMI (although I don’t think that BMI is the end all be all). What was wrong was allowing my mindset to dictate whether or not I could lose weight & tone up.

Why did you decide to become a coach?

I decided to become a coach because I was so amazed with the progress that I saw from the 21 Day Fix. I had always been one of those people who knew what eating healthy & working out looked like, but I held myself back from losing the weight. I knew that there were too many people like me out there who would want to know what I had done, and I couldn’t wait to share it with them! I wanted to help people who had been struggling FINALLY achieve their health & fitness goals!

How do you keep yourself motivated on your own health and fitness journey?

I think one thing that really motivates me is the confidence that I have when I’m taking care of myself. I never want to come down off of that kick! I also love being in accountability groups! The support that we all can give each other is awesome. Seeing the progress in the mirror never hurts either ;)

Favorite workout?

I love Lower Fix from the 21 Day Fix, and after just starting Cize, I can already tell that all of these are going to be so much fun!

Favorite healthy food?

I love a spinach, strawberry & goat cheese salad with balsamic glaze! I also just made a healthy beef & broccoli with brown rice & I’m loving it! :)

What advice would you give someone who’s just starting out on her health and fitness journey?

• Don’t give up just because you’ve had one setback. Bad days happen to all of us.
• Drink your water. You’ll have to pee all the time. That’s okay too.
• Take pictures. Sometimes you can’t see how far you’ve come until you put where you are side by side with where you’ve been.
• Stick to your guns. If someone is trying to make you feel bad about not ordering a glass of wine or dessert with them, it probably means that your choices are making them feel uncomfortable about the choices that they’re making.

What advice would you give someone who is thinking about coaching?

Go for it! What’s the worst thing that could happen? You get a discount on your Shakeology & extra accountability to workout and eat healthy? That sounds like a pretty great worst case scenario to me. Becoming a coach has been the extra boost I needed to get to this happiness level. Trust me, you won’t regret it! :)

Where to find Laura online:

BLOG
FACEBOOK
INSTAGRAM
TWITTER

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• Curious about coaching? Learn more about our team HERE.
• Interested in joining my next health and fitness challenge group? Click HERE to apply, and I'll be in touch to chat about your goals!

August Favorites

It's the last day of August. Ben is back to school, and I'm sitting in my little home office room with the window open, listening to the cicadas and the airplanes in the background. A strange yet comforting country/city blend of sounds.

I've been quiet this month on the blog, and as I scroll through my iPhoto feed I understand why: I was out living LIFE! August was super crazycray. I'm kind of relieved it's over, because I'm craving a little more stillness and quiet and peace and creative space after the hustle and change and expanding.

If July was the month of calm before the chaos, August has been the month of embracing the chaos with open arms!

Here are some of my favorite memories, experiences, books, recipes, and things I learned this month.

Favorite Change

MOVING!!!! The most exhausting weekend ever, but we did it!

Out with the old, in with the new. I am so in love with our new apartment and I promise to share more pictures now we've had a chance to settle in! I'm still working on my office and our bedroom, and we still need to find a smaller kitchen table that fits into our space, but overall I've been blown away at the effect this new home is having on me. We lived in our old apartment for three years, so the change was welcome. 

I read all the time about "how to manifest your dreams into reality" or "project positivity into the universe and you will attract abundance" and all that mystical feel-good stuff, and it's easy to blow it off but IT WORKS!

I'm constantly writing down my big life goals and dreams all the time, because I know for certain that when you put something on paper it has an 80% chance of happening within the next 6-12 months, no matter how crazy it sounds. Like, seriously, it's almost scary. And the remaining 20% will happen with a little more time.

Some of the things that have happened in the past year after I wrote them down:

- We discovered and joined an amazing church community
- I quit my job
- I am attracting the most ridonkulously inspiring team of coaches who are taking on the world
- Ben landed a job that fills him up more than his last one
- We bought a newer used car with cash
- We traveled to Europe together for the first time
- We are making more "couple friends"
- I put printable watercolors in my Etsy shop
- I am traveling more (a. lot. more....should have been more specific with that one haha)

It's scary to write down something specific that you may or may not have control over, but you can never predict the crazy things that start to fall into place once you put your vision out there! Be intentional with what you want, and opportunities will happen.

So anyway, one of my TOP goals this past year has been to find a cozy apartment that feels like home, with a deck or outdoor space, updated kitchen, space for home office, in our budget, in Lincoln Square. Yup, super specific, but I figured why not??

Our lease ended in July and after looking at 5 crap-tastic apartments, and I was starting to give up, but then we walked into this place and I think I literally heard angels singing. BOOM. I could cry.

So anyway, the moral of the story is DON'T SELL YOURSELF SHORT, don't settle, and don't be afraid to dream big! You never know...

Favorite Breakfast Obsession

Kodiak Cakes Power Cakes protein pancake mix.

I've been seeing this mix all over my health and fitness Instagram account and wrote it off for months as just another gimmick (and even made my own homemade protein pancake mix recipe, which is good too!) but I finally caved and there's no going back.

SO. GOOD. I find it at Target or Mariano's (our "nice" grocery store). It's a just add water pancake mix that meets my healthy standards, has extra protein to keep you full, and tastes so so so so so delicious. 

Favorite Experiences

So much happened this month! No wonder I'm kind of exhausted haha. Some of my fave experiences...

+ Blueberry picking in Michigan!
+ An impromptu mid-week trip to the zoo and the beach to soak up the last bit of Ben's summer break
+ A mind-bogglingly incredible trip to Orlando, Florida for a leadership retreat with my coaching mentors!
+ Throwing impromptu dinner parties on our new deck
+ Hosting my first ever live Google On Air webinar to share my story and explain the Beachbody coaching opportunity (you can watch the recording here!) THIS WAS SO FUN. I can't wait to make more videos!

Favorite Books

I'm currently working my way through the beast of Awaken the Giant Within by Tony Robbins. This is the most intense and impactful personal development book I've read (aaaand I have a collection two shelves deep). I'm planning to blog my way through it, so stay tuned!

I'm also making an effort to read more fiction books "for fun" :) I try to keep my TAKE ON THE WORRRLD empowerment books to the daytime and wind down at the end of the night with something fun and fluffy. Go Set a Watchman wasn't fun or fluffy, but I thought it was really good and I highly recommend! It was our book club pick for this month, and my amazing sister in law hosted us with the most delicious homemade strawberry basil ice cream, brownies, and a signature cocktail. So that made the book really good too...

Fave Shakeology Recipes

I've been drinking Shakeology every single day for 18 months now, so i guess you could say I'm a fan. You can read my official review here! It has boosted my immune system so much that the only time I've been sick is when we got back from Holland, where I wasn't drinking it. I've also officially been converted by my friend Katie to the Vegan Chocolate formula...for some reason it's just better than the regular chocolate (which has dairy protein). However, I've been getting a little crazy recently with the Greenberry flavor, which is really refreshing in this late summer heat wave.

Here are my current go-to recipes...I have it either as soon as I wake up (if I'm too lazy to work out), or as a mid-morning boost.

The Anna Special

+ 1 scoop vegan chocolate Shakeology
+ 1 cup unsweetened almond milk
+ 1/2 banana, frozen
+ Handful spinach
+ 5 ice cubes
+ (optional: 1/3 c Greek yogurt if you are in a chocolate cheesecake mood!)
Blend blend blend!

Tropical Green Smoothie

+ 1 scoop Greenberry Shakeology
+ 1.5 cups water
+ 1/2 frozen banana
+ 1/2 cup frozen pineapple
+ Handful spinach
+ 5 ice cubes

I have a third and secret non-smoothie Shakeo recipe that deserves its own post...stay tuned ;)

So that's a snapshot of my life lately! It's been a lot of hustle and a lot of change and growth. In September I'm looking forward to re-connecting with my creative side (oh hiiiiii scarf season!!!), BLOGGING MORE, and continuing to grow and develop my coaching biz!

I don't like when life gets too whirl-windy. It distracts me from the reason I'm here: to create a life that gives me the maximum amount of joy and pass the good vibes on to you!

xo Anna