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These two Fitmates from Moonee Ponds Boot Camp have a fantastic attitude towards their exercise.

Since joining in early 2011, Jenny and Wayne T have not missed one single session (except when  they went away on holiday).

By way of explanation, they said that while people quite often make excuses about not having the time to exercise, their attitude is more about making time.

Jenny and Wayne T received our award for the highest attendance for 2011, an awesome achievement.

Their attitude towards training focuses more on  the benefits they receive along the way to achieving their ultimate fitness goal. They see reaching their goal as an added bonus to the many benefits they experience attending a regular exercise program. Their greatest impetus is feeling more energized, refreshed and healthier every day.

Jenny and Wayne remind us that while it’s great to have a goal, it’s also important to focus on the journey towards achieving that goal. No matter how focused you are on outcomes, if the journey brings you misery and unhappiness your road to success will be full of huge potholes and detours.

When commencing any regular exercise regime you need to first prepare yourself both physically and mentally. The biggest challenge faced during the initial stages is the shock to your system as your body adapts to a different type of stimulus. It’s during this stage that your focus and commitment may wane.  Your enthusiasm level drops as your desired goal seems like a distant reality.

But there’s a well known saying that holds true here: to climb a mountain you must start by taking small steps.

By having a great mental focus at the beginning, your goal can be broken down into more achievable bite size pieces – and this makes it much easier to succeed. Begin every new endeavour with a solid foundation of mental preparation, commitment and belief that you will ultimately achieve the goal.

Written by Andrew Talati

So if you’re feeling that your excuses are outweighing your commitment, think of Jenny and Wayne T.  They’re just two ordinary people demonstrating how true commitment is a necessary step towards achieving your goals.

Written by Andrew Talati

Given the crazy, hectic lives most of us now lead, we all need some strategies to make life more enjoyable and less stressful.

Here’s some ideas to keep you on track:

1. Write a to list and prioritise
With so many tasks to do in our everyday lives, it’s easy to become overwhelmed.

A great way to manage this ever expanding list is to write it down and prioritise from 1 to 4 – where one is very urgent and very important and 4 is non-urgent and not important.

If you’re having difficulty trying to pigeonhole a particular task or everything seems very important and very urgent, then ask yourself, ” If I only had one day to achieve everything, what would really need to be done first?”  Then put those top priorities on your level 1 list.

2.Identify the noise
Quite often we get easily distracted  by things that seem important in our lives but can easily be downgraded to remove stress and anxiety.

This includes constantly checking e-mails, updating our social media status or other trivial tasks that consume a lot of our time but make little difference to our quality of life.

Try turning off the computer, phone or iPad for a while.  Use your extra time to relax by reading a book or listening to music.

Alternatively, if you’re at work, try to resist the temptation to hit the send and receive button on your e-mails. Multitasking has been scientifically proven to be less productive so concentrate on the task at hand instead and extra minutes will magically appear in your day.

3.Use the 80/20 rule
The universal concept that 80% of what you achieve comes from only 20% of what you are doing seems to hold well for both work and personal tasks.

Basically that means most of us spend 80% of our time on stuff that really doesn’t matter.

Relating it back to our 1 – 4 task list, we spend most of our time on tasks we think are of low importance but urgent.

4. Take time out
We’ve become working machines.

We rarely down tools during the day, work through our lunch break or, even worse, eat our lunch in front of our computers.

It appears as if we’re being more productive, but we’re not.  Taking a break every hour – whether it’s getting up to grab a glass of water from the kitchen or going for a lunchtime walk – gives our brains an opportunity to relax and recharge.

In the long-term, high-volume working is far less productive. We become mentally fatigued, lose concentration and become more easily distracted. There’s even even a growing body of evidence that suggests that working in excess of 8 to 10 hours per day causes our level of coherence, concentration and focus to deteriorate proportionately for each additional hour we spend at work.  Overwork impairs our behaviour. The resulting mental fatigue can be likened to the effects of alcohol consumption.

5. Work to live not live to work
No matter how fantastic your job may be, never forget it only represents one part of your life.

Humans are social beings. We need to regularly interact in a social environment and develop nurturing relationships with our friends and family.

Set aside time to catch up with friends and family every week. You rarely hear of people on their deathbed expressing regret at not having spent more time at work.

On the contrary, when we reflect on our quality of life we reflect on our relationships and how they enrich us. We spend less time reflecting on how great we feel about a hard-earned promotion for extra income or a new job title.

Written by Andrew Talati

Cadel Evans Tour de France win was an amazing effort from a truly inspirational person. It’s also a great story that highlights the importance of never losing sight of your goals.

After coming overall second in the 2007 and 2008 Tour de France by tiny margins (23 seconds and 58 seconds respectively), even Cadel admits most people had written him off.

Yet his refusal to give up, no matter how extreme the situation, shows us all that we, too, can be triumphant when we focus on our goals. I like the saying:
perserverance overides resistancee.

It was a do or die moment. Cadel faced a seemingly insurmountable task that could have lost him the race. After three failed attempts at the Tour de France, and with only the narrowest of losing margins, it would have been quite easy to give up.

But this was moment that Cadel’s fighting spirit, self belief and extraordinarily strong-minded determination allowed him to overcome a very desperate situation and excel.

We all have our personal battles, small or large. However, we can climb those personal mountains if we truly believe in our abilities and the possibility of success.

Too often our limiting beliefs stop us from achieving levels of greatness, even if the challenge is as small as making simple changes to our diet to reduce the chances of diabetes or cardio vascular disease.

I really like the idea of using Cadel’s “never give up” philosophy as a tool to believing in ourselves.

Life can be as wonderful and awesome as you make it. Cadel’s win is testimony to the fact that years of heartache, anguish, frustration and anxiety can lead to a wonderful crescendo of happiness and fulfilment.

Written by Andrew Talati

When people say it’s too difficult to quit smoking, I often wonder whether the person is consciously and more importantly unconsciously ready to take the next step. After talking to the owner of a local restaurant, she decided to quit smoking after 25 years of smoking one packet a day.

So the restaurant owner, lets call her “H” commented that the first 24 hours were extremely difficult with the regular withdrawal symptoms being experienced however once the discomfort passed she managed quite comfortably to maintain being smoke free. Whenever we set ourselves goals, be it giving up cigarettes or weight loss, we really need to be happy within our own life both emotionally and physically to undertake the change.

People trying to achieve the goals with everything in life is moving in the right direction, life is good, they find it easy, nothing is too hard and everything is very positive and bright. However once the situation around and the person is stressed, suffering from anxiety or the pressures of life, suddenly achieving the goal is impossible. Suddenly everything becomes too difficult, too hard and the energy and time involved to achieve a specific goal becomes unattainable.

The amazing thing is that since quitting smoking, H is looking fantastic and has become more physically active, she sold her motorbike and purchased a bicycle that she commutes with up to 30km per day. H looks a lot healthier and her complexion is noticeably improved with more vibrancy and energy.

The single most important factor in achieving this goal was that H was ready and everything in her life was aligned in a more positive light.

But often we will set goals for the wrong reason, in many cases people make peacemaking due to convenience their partner pressure from friends and family while really the person accepts the risk of cancer and is perfectly happy to continue knowing the risks.

So when you are really at a conscious/subconscious level then anything is possible

Any goal we may have, such as reaching an ideal weight, requires commitment and dedication to achieve.

There is an old saying that if you aim at nothing, you will hit it with amazing accuracy.

Unfortunately, there is no silver bullet to successful weight loss, but it does help to have key indicators that will track and measure how you are doing and the S.M.A.R.T system is a great way to do this.

S: Is the goal Specific to what you are trying to achieve

M: Is it Measurable? Can you determine if there’s any improvement i.e. clothes are looser, actual weight loss according to the the bathroom scales

A: Is it Achievable? Is there a high possibility that you will attain your given weight loss goal?

R: Is it Realistic? Like anything your goals have to be something that is within the realms of possibility. Having unrealistic goals will lead to failure, disillusionment and ultimately a lack of confidence in trying to achieve this goal again in the future

T: Have you given yourself the Time frame in which to achieve your weight loss goal? This can be be a specific date on the calendar, or a countdown of days i.e. 100 days to lose 5 kg.

However, always remember when setting you goals that there’ll always be externalities. These are factors that are outside your field of control that can have an impact on your ability to achieve your goals.

A big part of achieving your weight loss goals is to realise that subconsciously you may try to sabotage yourself and distract you and from your course of action to success.

Lastly like any goal your really need to be ready for the commitment to carry through all five steps of the S.M.A.R.T program.