The No More Excuses Diet (56 page)

If you haven’t dabbled enough in strength training during your weight-loss phase, now is the time to start lifting, squatting, curling, and pressing! Design a new exercise regimen that focuses on building and maintaining muscle mass, challenging your heart through cardio training, and ultimately increasing your metabolism. Your maintenance program should include a continuous exercise routine complete with cardio, strength, and flexibility training. Strive for a minimum of three days a week of exercise, and focus on challenging yourself a little more each week.

You have succeeded at a goal that 70 percent of Americans attempt to reach. You will be celebrated, admired, maybe even scorned, for achieving your weight-loss mission. Identify and position yourself as the fitness friend, the one who’s maintained her weight loss and practices healthy habits. When you step out as a healthy role model among your community of family and friends, you will be held to higher expectations. Those social expectations will force and encourage you to stay on course when you want to have a large piece of pie or slack off on your runs. Instead, start giving back, providing tips and becoming a helpful friend to those who are still fixing their life vehicles.

In
Part 3
, you learned the S.T.R.I.V.E. principles, and you understand the importance of constantly seeking improvement. This journey to protect, strengthen, and maintain your body won’t end until the day you don’t need your physical functions anymore. You get the idea. So start your engines and drive to a new destination with S.P.E.E.D.

Set your eyes on new fitness goals. Plan your journey with new exercises and a 30/30/30/10 macronutrient profile that supports those new goals. Envision succeeding and overcoming the new hurdles you will face in the next three months, and then start executing your plan. Once you deliver the results and reflect on a weekly basis, try harder the next week. Don’t stop until you S.C.O.R.E.—but that’s the next chapter!

S.C.O.R.E.! You’ve made it. You’ve reached your short-term goal! You’ve lost weight, gained muscle, increased your endurance, enhanced your strength, and improved your flexibility. Not only have you built your confidence, but you have also mastered the ability to set goals, plan a strategy, envision success, execute day after day, and deliver results. Congratulations! Relish your success and reflect on your No More Excuses journey. While you may not be exactly where you want to be yet, you need to take a break from the hustle and celebrate how far you’ve come.

I can still distinctly remember the celebratory moments when I achieved a goal, whether it was competing on stage, fitting into my post-pregnancy jeans, or confidently wearing a bikini at the beach. Working in three-month increments reminded me always that there was an end to every effort and that I could rest once I achieved my goals before beginning the next stretch. Your body, mind, and spirit have worked harder, trained harder, and pushed harder than ever before. Now it’s time for a bit of rest. Your body
can’t keep running hard forever. Like the seasons, there are times when you exert and grow, and times when you rest. You may not be at your declared destination yet, but that doesn’t matter right now. You’ve S.C.O.R.E.D! Now it’s time to
S
peculate on what worked,
C
elebrate your new self,
O
perate from a position of strength,
R
ejuvenate from your journey, and
E
valuate where to go from here.

You’ve made it to the finish line, and you’re ready to sit down and enjoy your success. So let’s speculate about what helped you get to this point in your journey while the memory is still new. What made you successful? What steps did you take that moved you past your comfort zone and led you to the success you are realizing today? Think about these past twelve weeks and about the person you have become.

What are the differences in your habits between then and now? Recognize where you’ve come, because that gives you security for who you are today. Acknowledge the struggle and the success—most of all, acknowledge the dream. You set out to accomplish a task, and through mental, physical, and spiritual force, you made it happen. How impressive is that?

This is the moment you’ve been waiting for. Celebrate your efforts! Purchase your new outfit! Strut your stuff! It’s time to reward yourself and do something that you’ve been looking forward to these past few months of hard work and discipline. Your reward was that motivation dangling in front of you when you wanted to give up. So take some time and relish this moment. Celebrate and relax. Give yourself a pat on the back—you deserve it.

This is a friendly reminder to keep your healthy habits going. Just because you reached your goal, that doesn’t mean you can revert to your old routine. You can certainly splurge for a few days and take some time off from exercising, but I guarantee you, your tummy will ache after a few fat-laden, sugar-filled meals. Your body will crave movement, and your mind will miss the discipline. So continue operating; don’t stop and don’t think for one second that slacking off for an extended period is acceptable.

Remind yourself how hard you worked to lose 1 pound of fat, and remember how easy it is to gain that pound back—and then some. Most people who lose weight will gain their weight back because they overexercised and overdieted to exhaustion, then reverted to out-of-control habits. Avoid joining that statistic by continuing your healthy operations.

Before you start creating new goals, rejuvenate. This does not mean you go on an eating binge for two weeks. It means you mindfully eat and move for the next couple weeks without pressure to attain a certain goal, with a specific deadline. You have to give yourself a break because if you don’t, you will be driving on empty. So take this time to enjoy a few glasses of wine, an hour of extra sleep, and a spoonful of sugar in your coffee.

This is when the flexibility in your No More Excuses plan kicks in. You don’t always have to be “on”—you just have to be on most of the time. Now you rejuvenate and refresh before you tackle new goals ahead.

This is where the fun begins again. Where do you want to go from here? Do you want to lose additional weight? Do you want to increase your running distance to a half-marathon? Do you want to get abdominal definition or compete in a fitness contest? What do you want to do? Think about your next physical goal, because if you don’t continue to strive for something bigger, better, or longer, complacency will set in and you will slowly return to your old habits.

At this point you should be feeling empowered by the No More Excuses program and have mastered your S.P.E.E.D., your S.T.R.I.V.E., and now your S.C.O.R.E.

Your future is in your hands.

It’s up to you to utilize the knowledge in this book and apply it in your daily life. No one is going to write down your goals, create your plan, and hang your action calendar. No one is going to cook your meals, organize your schedule, perform your workouts, or force you to do anything you don’t want to do.

It’s all up to you.

I’ve always believed in the power of choice and the immeasurable strength found in the faith to achieve intended goals. You must believe in your abilities before you become what you seek to accomplish. As I’ve repeated several times throughout this book, thoughts always turn into things. It’s not easy to keep one’s faith, after all, so many of us have become frustrated by the endless weight-loss cycle and are quietly convinced that we failed before we began!

I hope after reading this book you believe you can do it. You can be healthy without sacrificing your professional and personal life. You don’t have to starve yourself or follow an unrealistic lifestyle. You don’t have to give up your favorite foods or banish carbohydrates,
abolish alcohol, or eliminate sugar from your life. All you have to do is be balanced but flexible. Challenge yourself by changing your habits slowly. Work in increments of three days, three weeks, and three months and give yourself time to transform. There is no greater gift than realizing your power to change your destiny simply by changing the way you see the world. You can either live passively behind your past failures and present excuses, or you can live aggressively by speeding, striving, and scoring toward a meaningful goal! It’s not easy, but I promise you, it is worth it.

This book could not have been written without the continuous support and encouragement of my husband, David Casler. Not only did he patiently help coparent our three young sons (ages 5, 4, and 2 at the time of this writing), but he always believed in me and my passion for health and fitness.

To my parents, Francis and Caroline Kang, who taught me about hard work, perseverance, love, compassion, and faith. Thank you for your positive example and unconditional belief in me. To my ever-supportive grandparents, George and Caridad Aducayen, and my family members, Eddie and Kristine Aducayen, Dominic Kang, Christine Enero, and Angeline Houston: You have all played an integral role in nourishing my passion and putting up with my birthday parties at the gym. Special thanks to my closest friends, Dave Slagle, Brian Woo, Borina Mak, Ana Sneed, and Araceli Wedderburn: If I ever need motivation, an understanding voice, or a good vent, all of you are on speed dial! To my Fitness Without Borders directors, especially our original team comprised of Stephanie
Quok, Dan Thompson, McCain Crow, Rodney Black, Hilary Herndon, Joseph Freschi, and Joe Ynostronza: Thank you for helping me build a nonprofit from passion and persistence. Thank you to all my artistic friends who helped put this book together, including clothing designer Elisabetta Rogiani, photographers James Patrick, Mike Byerly, and Jaymi Britten and illustrator Louis Dorman. Lastly, to my children, Christian, Nicholas, and Gabriel, as well as my stepchildren, Sydney, Piper, and Teddy: I thank God each day for giving me the gift of your presence in my life.

To my No Excuse Mom (NEM) family, including my long-time friend Lori Hare who cofounded the online group page. To our original NEM group page administrators: Shannon Link, Stephanie Stafford, Lorna Pope, Ashley Avila Aquino, Ay Carter, Gioia Aw, and Jaylene Lawrence. It’s not easy managing thousands of women, but you do it freely and we are so thankful for your efforts. To our original hardworking regional managers: Jennifer Dillon, Barbie Caulder, Sherilyn Taylor, Nikeda Skanes, Katie Myers, Veronica Davila, Jessica Cordova, Jennifer Rowell, Juanita Verdin, Sarah Floyd, Leslee-Ann Martell, and Paulette Go. You are incredible leaders who are showing our next generation what passion and purpose look like. To our enthusiastic local leaders—there are definitely too many to list!—thank you for hosting free workouts and making a positive difference in your communities. To our helpful advisory board, our national fitness pros Vanessa Campos and Jules Rosenthal, and our nutritionists Diane Kazer and Felicia Newell, thank you for sharing your expertise, knowledge, and most of all your incredible, never-ending energy. Thousands of women are benefiting throughout the world because of the personal efforts of our NEM family. We are showing the world that health starts at home and comes in various shapes, sizes, and ages.

To my incredible team, including book agent Brandi Bowles, editor Leah Miller, marketing manager Christina Foxley, publicist
Lauren Cook, and my manager, Antranig Balian: Thank you for all the guidance and encouragement you’ve given this first-time author! I’ve always envisioned publishing a book, but I never imagined partnering with Crown, Foundry, and Mortar Media in writing a program I am truly proud of.

It is rare to find someone who has perfect posture. But bad posture is a hard habit to break; you need to be conscious of all your actions, especially involuntary ones that are enforced by surrounding muscles. Yet poor posture can lead to lower back pain, among other problems. When you suffer from lower back pain, as nearly 80 percent of the U.S. population does, it can prevent you from living a fulfilling and active life.