Today is my day for a swim.  I love swimming because it allows me the time and space to turn everything off.  There are no ringing phones, no babies needing attention and my husband isn’t talking to me.  It’s just me in peace.

If I had that quiet all the time, I would find that horrible, but for my weekly swim, I love it.  In that space, I always get clarity.  I have come back from swims with phenomenal clarity around something that has been on my mind and usually incredible focus.

Is there something in your life that allows you to do the same?  If there is… make sure you are doing it.

As far as exercise is concerned, in general.  Make sure that you are doing things you love.  If you are struggling to get started with exercise, then pick an activity you love to do and just get started.  If there is something that you have always wanted to learn, then go and do it.  Get lessons, hire a personal trainer, go to dance classes, whatever it is… get off your bum and move.

When it comes to going to the gym, I have heard the excuse used over and over again that you don’t know what you are doing.  Or it’s been awhile and I don’t want to start back up at the light weights again.  Get over yourself!

If you truly want to get rid of your flabby arms, love handles, fat belly or thunder thighs, you absolutely must exercise.  No better time than today to start!

Today, I’m celebrating my measurements being taken and having released 9.5 cms from my waist!  YEAH!

What becomes even more clear everytime I do my measurements is that reducing stress is a HUGE component to weight loss.  You see, this week I have been working on getting Robbie to sleep through the night.  I woke up one day so incredibly exhausted and frustrated from major sleep deprivation that I committed to doing something about it.

Robbie sleeping is still an ongoing journey, but I have managed more continuous sleep in the past week than I have in months.  This is a massive way to reduce my stress and it shows as the numbers go down.

Remember stress isn’t just about work or financial stress.  Stress also comes from imbalance in the body.  The lack of sleep for example.  Other stresses in the body can be things like too much or not enough exercise or your digestive system not working.

Take a moment right now and think about stresses in your life and how you can start to reduce them.  Reduce the stress and get rid of the belly fat and lose the love handles fast!

I’m sure you know that nutrition and exercise are a big component to fat loss.  I think your mind plays the most crucial role of all.  If you have been on diets and exercised and still been left with flabby arms, thunder thighs, a fat belly, double chin, love handles, or man boobs then I ask what you did for your mind?

In order to begin to get your mind on track with your goal, start visualizing your self thin.  If you have pictures of yourself at your ideal body size, then go get those out and place them around your house.

If you don’t have pictures of yourself that you want to use, cut them out of a magazine, or use ones of friends or family.  If you are struggling to find a “normal” sized person in a magazine that hasn’t been air-brushed, look in clothing catalogues.  Remember the plus size catalogues.  You can also find plenty of photos online.  Use Google photos! If you use other people’s photos, make sure that you put your own head on the picture.

Make sure the picture that you use is of someone the size that you desire to be.  If you have a lot of weight to lose, it may be easier to start visualizing yourself at a halfway mark.  So if you are a size 18 and want to get to a 10, maybe you can find a picture of someone at a size 14 first.  Work to there and then keep going from there.  Start with something you can believe in.

Wake up every morning and look at the picture of your ideal self, imagine how you look, feel, and act when you are your ideal size.  What do you say to yourself when you are your ideal size?

Do the same thing when you go to bed at night.  If at any point in the day, you have doubts or negativity about your body creep in, imagine yourself in your ideal body.

The more you imagine it, the more you believe it.  The more you believe it, the quicker you will get rid of your belly fat, your flabby arms, love handles, and thunder thighs, and/or man boobs.

At Targeted Fat Loss, we teach you how to lose fat in specific areas of the body, aka spot reduce.  The key to this is balancing your hormones.

For example, when you are stressed you release certain hormones into your body.  These hormones actually prevent your body from doing what it naturally does to recover and keep your body functioning optimally.

Stress prevents recovery from exercise… This prevents you from muscle growth, which burns the fat.  And ultimately, that’s what you want, right?  To burn the fat?

So, yes… stress can be a reason that you have a fat belly and no matter what you do, you struggle to get rid of it.

Let’s be honest, you have probably tried doing 100’s of crunches and other ab related exercises and have still found the stubborn fat not budging.

Well, it’s time to look at the stress in your life.  Stress can come in many forms, such as your work environment, family, financial, your health and so much more.  If you look at all the areas of your life, see which ones are causing you the most amount of stress and do something to reduce it.

It isn’t necessary to tackle of every area at one time, as that may cause stress too.  Just slowly ease your way into a more balanced life.

Let me give you an example of the power of this… I was in the US on holiday for two weeks recently.  I was eating lots more junk than I usually do.  I was totally expecting to have put fat on when I was there.  I was SHOCKED to see that I had actually lost fat on my belly by quite a bit upon my return.

When I asked my husband how that was possible, he responded with the fact that I had a lack of stress.  While I was there, I was totally looked after by my mom.  She cooked, did the shopping and has a housekeeper to do all the cleaning.  I truly didn’t have to worry or stress about anything.  I got to relax, exercise and play with my baby and the rest of my family.

If you really want to get rid of belly fat, than start by reducing the stress in your life.  Do one thing every day to de-stress yourself.

This is the very simple explanation of this concept.  To learn the ins and outs of how stress can be a major factor in getting rid of belly fat, check out our course on www.targetedfatloss.com.au.

I am just back from a 2 week trip to California, where I was visiting family.  (I live in Sydney now, although I am originally from Chicago).  Usually when we go to the US, we come back kilos heavier and our clothes don’t fit.

We tend to eat foods that aren’t good for us and that are loaded with unnecessary additives and generally speaking… eat too much crap.  Unfortunately a very American way of life, that is becoming all too common in Australia as well.

In any case… I was shocked to learn that I had mostly maintained my size and even dropped a bit of fat around my belly.  Complete shock, as I was totally convinced that I had gained fat.  My point here… it’s amazing what the mind can do.  We can think ourselves thin and we can think ourselves fat.  I honestly looked in the mirror and saw a fatter person and also, thought that my clothes weren’t fitting as well.

I teach my clients all the time that the biggest thing to overcome in your mission of creating your ideal body, is your mind.  Trust me when I tell you, I got into this field and wanted to solve my own problems with yo-yo diets and have done a lot of work on my nutrition, exercise and mindset, but yes.. i still have some skeletons in the closet that come out every so often.

Let me preface this mission with the fact that I have already started working on losing fat that I had gained during my pregnancy.  I have been working on this the past few months.

My husband, Hugh, did a phenomenal course teaching him to actually spot reduce fat.  In other words… get rid of fat in those areas of your body that you struggle to get rid of, no matter how hard you try.  Things like love handles, flabby arms, your butt, hips, thighs, man boobs, etc.  It is all based on balancing the hormones in your body and works AMAZINGLY well.

Here has been the problem with it… when we first started, our protocol was to go on a very high protein diet.  We eliminated everything but meat and some veggies, (a minimal amount of the veggies).  I LOVE veggies, fruit and yes chocolate.  So what happened, I believed i had no variation of food, got bored of meat, my body struggled to break all the meat down and in my mind… I felt so restricted.

So… I started to hide eating sweets from Hugh.  (How many of you have done this?)  Even hid eating fruit!  The funny things was, I was still dropping the cms/inches.  The problem with this was massive…  I started to feel guilty about my eating and hiding it from Hugh, so I started eating more of it.  Yes, even though I teach how to stop this horrible spiral, I too became a victim of it.  Yikes!

It hasn’t lasted long (only a few weeks), and here I am telling you the tale, so that hopefully it will help you get out of any vicious spirals downwards that you are creating for yourself.

Once I started feeling guilty and binging more, I started to put fat on, only small amounts, but the past few weeks that is what happened.  I got more stressed and my body stored the fat.  Again… I’m showing you the power of the mind.

So… I have taken control back.  The first step for me was admiiting this problem to Hugh, so yesterday we talked about everything that happening for me.  I told him everything.  We talked about what was happening in my mind, uncovered a few more things and I’m getting back on track now, in my own way.

The one thing I tell all my clients when they want to lose weight is that what you eat, must be sustainable long term.  Don’t worry about diets, just eat whole foods.  If you don’t know about whole foods, check out our site, www.targetedfatloss.com.au to get our course and learn more.

So this is my commitment… Go back to basics, eat whole foods, if I chose to eat anything outside of that, I will and know it’s a choice I make and feel ok about that.

This is the mission… to show you that eating a balanced diet, combined with exercise, some supplementation and the right mindset will get you the results you desire.