Life wasn’t meant to be easy

No it wasn’t.  Do you ever wonder how some people make it?  They make it to the big time, to where ever it is that they want to go.  They smash all their goals and their dreams become their reality.  It’s easy to watch from the sidelines and say that they are just naturally gifted in their particular field, or that things were handed to them on a silver plate, but the reality for the most part is that they weren’t.  It is these successful people who know a thing or two about hard work.  Elite athletes who have put themselves through years of grueling training, restrictions on their diet and social lives to succeed, to reach that goal.  They have the determination and drive, they want to succeed badly enough that the pay offs are greater than the costs.

Anyone who knows me knows that I have a major girl crush on Michelle Bridges, she’s my idol.  Yep, not afraid to admit it, to me she’s a legend.  So, how is this relevant?  She has had to work her backside off to create the profile she has today.  I watched an interview with her once where she said that nothing was handed to her.  She would spend every night at the computer, writing articles and submitting them wherever she could.  In the beginning, Mish appeared for free on television, until her segment became popular, so it was made a regular thing, and she was back paid.  Mish shopped her first book around to seven publishers before one took a chance on her, now she has written 10 books, with 9 being best sellers.  Yeah, I think she knows a thing or two about consistent hard work, and that is an important lesson.

Michael Jordan is a legend.  He has become a household name with countless books and movies released.  However according to his long-term coach Phil Jackson, it was hard work that made him a legend.  When Jordan first entered the league, his jump shot wasn’t good enough.  He spent his off-season taking hundreds of jump shots a day until it was perfect.  He later wrote that Jordan’s defining characteristic wasn’t his talent, but having the humility to know he had to work constantly to be the best. 

Now I’m not saying we should all be aiming to be the next MB or MJ.  But we should be aiming to be the best that we can possibly be.  What does this mean?  Recognising what you want and then putting in the HARD WORK and CONSISTENCY to get it.  This means a lot of different things to different people, and can mean something totally different to you in ten years time than it does right now.  Seven years ago in year 11, I took physics…uhhhh, yeah that’s right…me…physics.  However my goal was just to pass it, I didn’t care what result I got as long as I passed, I put in some extra work and I did!  Just, with 55%!!  Six years ago, I was an artist.  Well…kinda.  I worked incredibly hard through my final years at school to learn as much as I could and be the best I could be, to create my own style.  I wanted a 20 for my final piece in year 12, so I did the work that got me there.  Three years ago, all I wanted to do was to travel, anywhere and everywhere.  I worked my butt off, earned the money and went...multiple times!  Last year I decided my health and fitness was next.  That was what I wanted to do, get ‘skinny’.  Oh yeah Liz…that goal quickly changed to something healthier and actually achievable (what even is ‘skinny’?!).  I’ve set countless goals around health and fitness, my latest ones being able to do ring dips and unassisted pull ups.   I am now focused on my final years at university, focused on learning everything I can about teaching so that I can be the best teacher that I can possibly be.  My goals… I did achieve them; I still am achieving them, I keep setting new ones. How?  I am focused.  Slowly but surely I have achieved my goals and I have been doing this all my life.  Every goal I have set for myself, I have had to strive for and be totally determined to reach it.  To me, failure just isn’t an option.  

Don’t get me wrong, I have had to dig myself out of some pretty dark and deep holes.  But I did.  At some point, in my mind something clicked.  I realised that I was responsible for my own life.  My future could or could not include all of these things and I know that it is up to me to go out and get them!  Those dark holes you find yourself in, they’re your tests.  The difficult times when you learn just how strong you are, and how badly you do actually want something.  Are you going to pack it all in just because it seems like your whole world is caving in?  Hell no!  It will only cave in if you let it. 

The moral of this story?  Life wasn’t meant to be easy.  Nothing worth having is handed to you on a silver plate.  I think that when you have had to consistently and truly work hard for something, you are able to genuinely and truly appreciate it.

Liz Xox

It's called...ORGANISATION!

So this happened, and I’m still a little shocked by it, hence I feel the need to write about it.  It happened on the first day back at Uni, Monday morning 9am – 11am tute.  Nice and easy.  We got to the end of the class and the tutor congratulated us for surviving our first day back, and proceeded to ask what we were doing for the rest of the day.  As he asked this question he handed a booklet to me, so I’ve replied, “oh, I’m heading to work now”.  Bad move Liz, bad move.  He continued to hand out the booklets and move around the room whilst addressing me.  “So Liz, do you feel like you get the support you need from the university, to cope with your work commitments?”  This caught me totally off guard…I mean, this is my fifth year at Uni, I’ve pretty much got ‘organised’ down!  So I told him that I did not feel like I need the extra support because I have learned to organise myself over the years.  “That’s not what I asked you Liz, I want to know if you feel like you receive the right support at university”…by this point the entire class was listening intently to the conversation and I was starting to feel oh so awkward!  So I replied with a very similar response about being organised.  This went back and forth a few more times, me becoming even more confused by his constant questions…he really just wanted an excuse to let us know he was s tutor who was there to support us, “a tutor who genuinely cares.” Yeah…ok.  I wasn’t going to let him have that satisfaction (he’s a bit of an odd guy)…I think he half expected me to blurt out that it was all too much and that I would need multiple extensions and counseling sessions to make it through the semester.  Eventually he dropped it laughing; “ok, I’ll lay off Liz for awhile.” 

This encounter got me really thinking.  I know I’m busy.  But we are all busy.  I am no busier than anyone else who works a thirty plus hour week while studying full time.  What about the single mother who studies and works full time, only to come home to her kids?  The young girl who works two jobs to pay the rent while studying full time and saving for her wedding, oh and chuck on an hour plus commute!  I am busy in that I couldn’t live without my diary, I can cope with balancing thirty hours of work and full time Uni AND fit in daily training sessions, weekly cook ups, socialising etc etc, because I know how to organise myself. 

So organisation.  Essentially, you have to sit down with your diary and write down EVERYTHING.  Start with those things that are locked in, work shifts and Uni classes.  Next comes the social events, every coffee, every dinner, every party…Yep, no skipping ANYTHING!  I even write in when I am going to train.  If it is in the diary, it becomes a meeting with myself and bosses don’t cancel!!  I also find that colour coding works wonders…yeah I know, it’s a little extreme.  

My coming week...Which I will continue to scribble on until it looks like...

This!

Take my Monday for example…yes this is my “gross” day for the week, but it demonstrates how I fit everything into my week. 

5:30am: Alarm goes off.  I just get up, chuck my clothes on and get out the door before I can talk myself out of it.

6:00am: Gym.  Monday I generally start with half an hour of various cardio exercises to wake me up, and then move into weight training.

7:30am: Home.  Shower.  Breakfast.  Make-up.  Get dressed.  Get out the door.  Drive to Uni.

9:00am: Uni.

11:00am: Finish Uni.  Drive to work.  Change into uniform.  Eat.

12:00pm: Start work.  Work.  Work.  Work.  Work…oh and did I mention work?  Maybe do some Uni work on my dinner break, maybe not.  Eat.  Work, work and work some more.

9:00pm: Finish work.  Drive home.  Carry everything inside…laptop, books, lunch boxes, bags of clothes etc.  Unpack everything.

9:30/10pm: Me time…relax in anyway I like for an hour or so before bed.

Ok, so I’m not trying to gloat here and this crazy day does only roll around once a week, and I do generally take Monday as my training rest day if I’m not going to get to bed early enough Sunday night.  Regardless it represents days when I know I need to push myself, a day that when it’s over I can give myself a well deserved pat on the back because I made my plan and I stuck to it.  So, why do I push myself so hard?  Because I want to achieve big things fast, I pretty ambitious!  I want to be fit and healthy.  I want to finish Uni and become a teacher.  I want to be self-sufficient and earn my own income, pay my own bills and still have enough money and time to travel, because that is what I do for myself.  I like being busy and find that working hard is so rewarding because nobody else can do it for you. I tend to bite off more than I can chew…but you know what?  I am prepared to chew damn hard!  Believe you can and you will!  You can have what you want, you just have to be organised and work for it!

Liz Xox

Lofty oh Lofty!!

The day I started thinking about Lofty

 After almost a year of procrastination, I finally did it!! Last Sunday, I finally made it up the mountain to the Mt. Lofty summit!

The idea came to mind in April last year.  My mate Claire had just done it for the first time and it was quickly becoming ‘THE’ thing to do in Radelaide.  She was telling me all about her severe case of DOMS as we drove to TTP to meet Michelle Bridges and Commando Steve Willis, this was also the day I reached my 10kg weight loss goal and I was starting to feel really good about myself.    After being put through our paces by Mish and the sexy beast (you all know who I’m talking about!), there was the standard Q&A time for the public.  A sweet young child asked, “Have you done Lofty? My best time is fifty five minutes.”  I remember Commando asking “what is Lofty?” and Mish replying, “oh it’s like ‘THE’ thing to do here in Adelaide apparently”… Somehow, having my good mate and fitness idols talk about it, on the same day made me determined to give it a go. 

Then came ten months of excuses… “I’m too unfit”, “I’m in too much pain from yesterday’s training session”, “I don’t have enough time”, “it’ll be too busy”…yep… ten months of excuses whizzed by and I still hadn’t done it…So last weekend, I decided that I had to do it.  No more excuses, just JFDI and put a big tick next to “Climb Mt. Lofty”.  I gathered another good mate and gym buddy, Kat to do it with me…So we set off, a nice cool Sunday morning fighting the masses for a car park and then setting off up the mountain.  It was a 3.8km trek…UP… the summit which rises 710m above sea level.

 So we got a great park and started walking…I was quite nervous, but really excited at the same time!  It was finally happening, and in such a great location, with Katty by my side.  At the first steep bit I wondered what on earth I had gotten myself into…crap! My heart rate had hit 170bpm pretty quickly! But there was no turning back, I had started, I was damn well going to finish!  There were some nice gentle parts and then some real shockers where it took all my mental and physical strength to keep myself on my feet and moving up.  The scenery was stunning and I soon got into a rhythm, just one foot in front of the other, and crazily I actually loved it! I didn’t want it to end!  I felt so alive, the cool wind and drops of rain…the dirt and gravel under foot, hundreds of other locals running and walking up and down, it was just great, so relaxing and just what I needed!  Surely this is how Sunday mornings should be spent!! 

 

Getting pretty steep!

Anyway, the final stretch was tough…yep gross, horrendous, disgusting and I almost let the negative thoughts back in… “I can’t do this, it’s too hard,” but I quickly realised what was about to happen, reversed it and told myself to “believe I could”… and I did!  Katty and I made it to the summit within fifty five minutes!  Under an hour, we were stoked! The views were amazing.  At the top, it occurred to me that I had never seen Adelaide from a look out point before.  I mean, I’ve looked out over cities like, London, Rome, Florence, Iguazu, Queenstown and many more, but never my own city.  It was a stunning view, and nice to stop, sit and stretch a bit before heading back down.  Well it is safe to say that going back down was not necessarily easier.  It took a lot of muscles working hard to keep us upright and not topple over…that’s how steep some parts were!  But it was fun, and we ended up running part way down, almost got run over by cyclist crossing the road and then it started to rain…oh well I thought, better on our way down, than on the way up.  Seeings we were chatting the whole way down (probably because we could actually breathe) we reached the bottom before we knew it.  I actually could not believe I had done it, like seriously!  It was a huge tick and fitness goal smashed for me!  Next time, we smash under the fifty minute zone! 

At the summit!!

Kat and I at the summit! 

Of course an awesome lamb salad at Argo’s on the Parade followed this epic morning hike…the perfect start to a Sunday! 

Liz Xox 

Recognising and Combating the Mind Games

Mind games?  Yes, that little voice inside your head, the one that accompanies you in your day-to-day life.  That voice I bet is reading to you right now. Yep, that one.  It can either be a positive power house, or completely destructive.  On one hand you can train it to work with you, moving you through the day with a positive, happy mindset.  Or you can swing the other way; by putting yourself down internally you are allowing that voice to take over.  Enough of these negative messages will eventually break you down, and soon enough you find yourself believing that voice inside your head.  I know all too well the mind games people play…how?  Because at some point in the past I’ve played all of them myself!

You know the games.  There is the comparison game, the quick once over when you meet someone new “oh damn, she’s prettier than me” or “it’s ok, I’m slimmer than her” or “it’s not fair, if she can eat that block of chocolate, why can’t I?” Then there are the games you play on yourself when you simply ‘want’ something, “I deserve that chocolate because I’ve had a rough day!” that one is a justification, an excuse.  How about the truly destructive thoughts or games, “You don’t deserve to be happy, you fat cow!”  Or, “How could anyone possibly like a fat reject like yourself?”  “Everyone hates you, you’re no good at that.”  You see what I mean?  Those down trodden, nasty comments you make to yourself…they hurt.  Realistically, think about it…would you speak to your mother like that?  How about your brother, best friend or neighbour?  No?  I didn’t think so.  So why then are we then more than willing to talk to ourselves like this? 

For me it started with being bullied in primary school.  A young child is no match for the harsh words of bullies, and like many others I started to believe those bullies.  I started to truly believe their harsh words and take them on board, stew over them all day, and then fall asleep at night, their words still ringing in my ears.  I think the old sticks and stones mantra is a load of BS!  Bones heal within weeks, enough harsh words and down trodden comments can break a person emotionally…that sort of pain can take years to overcome. 

Anyway, I recognise being bullied at school as the start of my destructive mind games.  The longer this continued, the worse I felt about myself and the more I believed what was being said about me, to me.   Whenever other children would tell me I was bad at something, I believed them.  I have horrific memories especially of sport at school.  It wasn’t like Maths where I could hide my “failures”, no.  Sport was out in the open for everyone to see.  So now that I believed I was crap, I told myself that I was crap and therefore worthless.  Can you see how the vicious cycle started?  So from there it just snowballed, the mind games continued through high school, and then followed me to university and my new post school life.  It was here that I slowly learned who to surround myself with, those who lifted me up rather than those who put me down.  At school I was stuck with the same people everyday day, there was no escaping.  In the real world, I realised that it was my responsibility to choose happy or choose unhappy.  I love this word, RESPONSIBILITY. Essentially, I see it to mean that I have the ABILITY TO RESPOND to any situation in any way that I like.  I know that I am responsible for looking after myself, emotionally and physically.

So that’s how the vicious cycle of mind games started for me.  That little voice inside your head ain’t going anywhere…so here is what I have learned about whipping that voice into shape. You have to really want to change and be willing to work hard at it every day.  You need to be able to identify where and when the negativity started and deal with those emotions. I’ve fought a war with my mind to turn it around.  It is a battle that continues today and will continue probably for the rest of my life, that’s just how it is, no point complaining about it!

I think it is natural to play mind games with ourselves…I mean, that little voice it is there for good! So why not use it for good?  I try now to play positive mind games.  Whether it is waking up and smiling as I jump out of bed, rather than rolling over groaning screaming “it’s not fair!” and drifting back to sleep.  In training, it is those that push you to your limits that I tend to play.  For example here is a game I play with my heart rate monitor, I’ll push my heart rate to 170+bpm, hold it for a period of time and then engage in  “active recovery” where I drop my intensity and let my heart rate drop down to 140bpm, before raising it again.  I believe in myself and trust that my body will do what my mind tells it to.  Every day I try to focus on the positives, it isn’t always easy but it’s like anything else, the more you do it, the easier it gets.  When I meet someone new, I focus on their personality rather than their appearance.  I try really hard to no judge anyone and to never speak negatively about someone’s appearance.  I know all too well how this can destroy the person.  Essentially I try to live every day as the best version of myself, that person doesn’t actively hurt others.

So how do you combat those negative mind games yourself?  It’s simple, but not easy.  You have to recognise the games you play with yourself and why. You must recognise and deal with those emotions and then start to flip them from the negative to the positive.  So instead of “I can’t” it has to become “I can”.  Or “I’m no good at that” to “I am damn well good enough and I’m gonna prove it!”  It does take time.  The mind takes along time to change.  I am still changing mine over a year later and I still struggle with this on a daily basis.  But patience and consistency is the key.  Believe you can and you will.

Liz Xox 

It’s time to let go and just be a child

Leaving work behind for my epic 

"Fitness Fun Friday in Fluro"

I think that sometimes we can take life a little too seriously.  Well I know I can!  “Nah that’s for kids”, “I don’t have the time for that” etc, etc…these excuses sound familiar?  Maybe, maybe not.  Perhaps people like me should take a little time out of our busy schedules to let go, relax, and just have some fun, embrace our inner child and just go play. This is something I am learning to embrace rather than avoid, from running around the park, playing with my dog, and mucking around at work, my laugh echoing loudly.  Last week this even progressed to racing through the corridors at Uni…yes, racing through the corridors at Uni.  My friend Jess can attest to that one!  

Last week the 30+ crew had “Fitness Fun Friday”, a day where we all wear fluro whilst training and have fun at the same time.  So I went at this training session alone, running along the river and putting together a bit of a circuit for myself, think sumo squats, sumo squat pulses and burpees…not exactly “fun” especially on my own!  So on my way home I came across a great playground built on a hill, one I would have run (well, walked really, really fast!) screaming from in the past! I mean really, it involved climbing the hill first…but I decided to go for it.  “What the hell?  Why not?  There was hardly anyone around, Liz, just go have some fun!”  So I sprinted up that hill pushing my heart rate to 170bpm and started to play. Training is my “me” time, it’s the 4% of my day that is devoted to me, no work, no Uni, no relationships, no stress…So why not?

It was exhilarating!  I had so much fun being a child, sliding down that tall slippery dip, jumping up and down and scaling up and down boards, ladders and random twisty things.  I then got to the flying fox…well that’s not something I have done since I was 10!  Crazily I was able to completely hold my body weight for the whole distance!  Yep! Awkwardly holding a tiny child sized handle I held my body weight on the flying fox, mostly with one had I might add.  Winning!  There was also quite a high shaky plank bridge… a year ago, never in a million years would I have ever walked this…and yet I did. I faced a fear and I JUST DID IT!  A couple of years ago I was in New Zealand, and for some reason I thought it would be a brilliant idea to attempt a high ropes course…yes Liz…perfectly logical being scared of heights, scared that the rope wouldn’t hold me, the wire I was standing on would snap etc etc.  The same old mind games started running through my head, "your'e too big for this," "Your'e not good enough" etc etc.  

Needless to say I didn’t complete the first obstacle and ended up in tears, the fear paralyzing me.  However, this experience and doing the canyon swing (109m high, 60m free fall, 200m swing) in Queenstown, were definitely defining moments in me accepting my fear of heights and slowly overcoming them.  So even though this plank bridge wasn’t 10 meters high, and didn’t require the use of a safety harness, I DID IT!  And it felt great! I came away from that training session a total rock star! Well in my own mind that is, I had a huge grin on my face for the rest of the day.  

So moral of the story, sometimes it is good to embrace our inner child, and simply forget everything else, and just go and play.  Why not?  Life is too short to live so seriously, you never know, you might even surprise yourself with what you can do along the way!

In New Zealand, attempting the high ropes course

Liz Xox

It won’t be easy, but it will be worth it!!

Before and after pics! January 2013 and September 2013: 30 kilos difference.  I haven't lost any "weight" since september, yet i've dropped a whole dress size! Goes to show that muscle weighs more than fat!

I have had a brilliant response from many people about changing their lives so they become the best versions of themselves, and here is a message for those amazing people as well as everyone else out there.  It won’t be easy, but it will be worth it!  Before and after photos can be amazing to see, fill you with a sense of awe and wonder whilst inspiring you to get moving, but most importantly, they show you that it can be done.  I am about to fill you in on a little secret.  Nothing happens over night.  Nothing changes in a week or even two weeks.  Lasting change takes time and it is something you must be willing to accept and work hard for. 

What you don’t see in before and after photos are all the slip ups. Countless slip ups, binges and promises to myself that I will start again tomorrow.  Treat meals that turned into treat days and rest days that turned into a rest week.  Embarrassment and all my social awkwardness, oh and the mind games that go with that.  I can not even count the amount of times that I was curled up in a ball crying my eyes out because I was emotional and all I wanted was chocolate, toast, anything I could get my hands on!  My inner child would scream at me to give in and eat that entire block of chocolate, that bag of chips or start on the “toast conveyor belt”.  The stronger I got, the more I was able to say, “No, I am in control, I will not let my inner child win!”  So many times, I felt like my muscles were on fire from a really tough training session that again, I have wanted to burst into tears and scream “it’s not fair!” but slowly it becomes a pain you love.  You learn how to combat that inner child and stop playing mind games with yourself (“well…I skipped breakfast this morning, therefore I can have the cake”…sound familiar?).  This is an incredibly hard emotional journey but I promise you, it will all be worth it!! Seriously!  You will get there, not over night and definitely not without a great amount of tears and tantrums, but you will and you will need people to lean on.  By undertaking this journey you will learn who are your true supporters.  They’re the ones who are there for you every step of the journey, celebrating your wins, and supporting you when you don’t think you can do it any more.  Unfortunately, there is a flip side and there will also be those who either don’t understand, or don’t want to.  Let them go, it’s tough but if they can’t be there to support you, they aren’t really your friends.  If this happens to you, remember that you deserve to be happy and healthy and you deserve to be surrounded by people who love, support and lift you up.

I am not going to pretend I have perfect nutrition and training, because I don’t.  I eat chocolate. Yes that’s right, I EAT CHOCOLATE!  I go by the 80/20 rule.  If I eat squeaky clean 80% of the time, I can afford to relax the other 20% of the time.  Remember that this is a lifestyle change and not a diet.  Diets are not sustainable!  I try not to eat out too often, however eating out is a big part of our culture and can’t be avoided.  So when I do eat out, I am careful with what I consume, and I truly enjoy what ever it is I am eating.  I aim to train 6 days a week, but some weeks I only make 5, occasionally I’ve only made 3 or 4, as I said earlier, sometimes my rest day turned into a rest week!  Some days I light the gym on fire, have an amazing calorie burn and walk out a rock star!  Other days I count as a win simply because I dragged my sorry ass out to train.  I didn’t lose 30 kilos and all of a sudden, everything fell into place.  That just isn’t how life works, I still struggle with everything I said earlier, emotions, eating and training.  I probably will forever, but I can make life easier for myself.  I choose to wake up each morning and make good choices.  For me it has become a habit.

So what is the point of me telling you this?  What is the key to making this new lifestyle habitual?  Consistency.  That’s right, consistency.  JFDI – Just freaking do it!! By making the same good decisions every day you are creating habits, once these habits are ingrained, it becomes a lot easier to say no to another piece of chocolate, training becomes just another part of your day (it is a part I have learned to cherish and really enjoy).  It all becomes simply, what you do.  This is what I do, I eat clean and train often.  I actively choose to be happy and work hard, because nothing in life comes free, you have to work for what you want, and I want to be happy and healthy!  

Liz Xox