A Healthy Lifestyle Works

Archive for the ‘Healthy Exercise’ Category

I’m pleased to announce the New You 2010 Healthy Lifestyle Contest for Greater Newburyport – a group of towns along the Northshore coast of Massachusetts. This contest is designed for people who want to finally become a health, fitness or weight loss success story like you read about in magazines. This isn’t a weight loss contest but a contest for greatest improvements in health, fitness and healthy lifestyle behaviors which is the key to sustainable weight loss and finally being free of worrying about weight gain.

I know, because that is how I became a success story. Nine years ago on January 1, 2001, I began exercising and eating better in a way that changed my whole attitude and mindset about fitness and taking care of myself. For the first time in my life I didn’t quit and give up. Instead I stuck with it, and two years later I had dropped from a size 16 to a size 4. It took longer than if I had done a quick weight loss diet or extreme fitness program, but I had succeeded to stick with my new healthy and active lifestyle. More importantly I was discovering a love for fitness and wanting to be even more fit. For a gal who hated exercise and had a long history of yo-yo exercise and dieting, this was miraculous. Yet I discovered a way to get and stay fit that was motivating, so I no longer had to worry I would get off track or gain all the weight back. Nine years later, after going through menopause, I am still fit and wearing size 4s or 6s.

My discovery led to a shift in careers and a passion for helping others create and maintain a healthy lifestyle that feels so good they too can succeed for the long-term. I’ve since become an expert in overcoming the sabotage that keeps us from meeting our goals, staying on track and feeling motivated to exercise, eat well and make ourselves the priority. While I’ve helped hundreds of people individually make changes for long-term success, I realized recently that I could do more by creating a contest here in the Newburyport area where I live.

There are eight contestants who are committed to successfully creating and maintaining a healthy and active lifestyle so they can be in control of their weight and be free of their issues with food and exercise. During the next two years, they will be sharing their experience of creating and then maintaining their new healthy lifestyles on a Newburyport community blog, http://www.newburyport-today.com/ .

At the same time, three other groups will start the same two-year program, and they will be sharing their experience here on this blog, by commenting on my weekly New You 2010 post about the program theme for the week.

Follow the contestants each week on this blog.

You can also participate in the program on your own or in a group with the guidelines I post each week on the contest site at www.aHealthyLifestyleWorks.com/contest.

Here’s to a healthy and active new you!

I just discovered Zumba. It’s the Latin dance fitness program, created by a Miami-based dancer and choreographer a few years ago. You can get DVDs for it or you can probably find a local class. There are more than 25,000 instructors around the world, and a friend of mine found one in my own town.

Even though I am not a dancer and usually struggle to catch on or keep up with any choreography, I surprised myself and was able to follow along fairly well my first time there. I’ve been back a few times since, and even though the dances change a lot, I am finding there are a base series of steps used in each class. I’m now starting to get it.

What has been the bigger adjustment is wearing the recommended dance sneakers, which have a plastic sole instead of a rubber one. The plastic makes it easier to turn and twist on the balls of your feet, yet that can also make it harder to keep your feet from slipping a little too much. Of course that is what your core is for. Needless to say, this is fabulous cardio and core exercise that feels a lot more like great fun.