Fitness Tips, Mindset and Confidence

Uncovering the 5 Mindset Traps Keeping You Stuck.

Welcome. Today I want to talk to you about five common mindset traps and how to avoid them.

When it comes to your fitness and health, if you’re a woman over 40 and you want to be fit, be healthy, and feel terrific in your clothes and have that lovely calm and inner peace, then there’s one thing that you need, and that’s consistency.

Hi, I’m Jessica Cooke, the fitness coach for women over 40, and it is my absolute mission to help women all over the world over 40 get fit, feel great, and find their inner peace and calm. I know one thing’s for sure, that one thing that always gets in the way is mindset.

In my years of experience, 14 years coaching women and through my own personal transformation, for those of you that don’t know me, I had a complete nervous breakdown in my 20s. I was three stone overweight. I was so unhealthy, I smoked, I drank too much, and I did not know how to take care of myself. I was the opposite end of the scale when it came to peace and calm. I had so much anxiety, so many panic attacks. I used to feel so stressed out.

Read my story here

I was, what you would call, a stress head. I was just extremely stressed out all of the time. It took me a long, long, long time to find my inner peace and calm. And even though I’m always a work in progress, it is really important to me to help as many people as I can feel good as quickly as I can with all the things that I learned, which I wish I had known earlier. And I meet many women on this journey. I’ve been coaching women for many years now, and one of the biggest things I hear women say when they’re starting a program with me or they’re starting out in their journey is that they are lazy, that they’re just not motivated and they struggle to stay consistent.

What I want to chat to you today is one of the reasons why it might be difficult to stay consistent. And like with all my pieces of content, if there’s one thing that resonates with you, then my job is done. If there’s one piece of content that you can take away from this and go, wow, okay, that has totally changed my perspective on it in a good way, then I’m absolutely delighted because all it takes is one mindset shift, somebody to tell you something good that you didn’t know for you to go, wow, okay, I get it.

(Grab my free Mastery Habits Checklist here)

So five common mindset traps, number one is you find fault.

Have you ever noticed that when you start a program or a course or you try to get fit that you can sometimes start to find fault with it or yourself or everything? All of a sudden you’re just finding fault all over the place, and that is fear. So you can be really terrified of change or really scared of getting out of your comfort zone, or really just uncomfortable and fearful about doing this out of your comfort zone thing. That can lead you to find fault. It’s like you just automatically, subconsciously resisting it.

The lovely thing about this mindset trap is that once you know it, you can see it for what it is. So the next time you’re starting a fitness program, and I’ve been there before, and I’m like, “Jessica, this is it. This time you are going to be consistent. This is the time you’re going to be different.” And then it could be to do with anything, learning, studying, anything new that I have done, getting out into the big bad world and the big good world and trying to make connections with people, trying to form friendships, which would be something that I have to work on that I can struggle with. It’s allowing yourself to do these things, allowing that vulnerability out, acknowledging that you’re out of your comfort zone and that your brain is going to be looking for fault because it doesn’t want you doing this because it doesn’t feel safe.

And once you know that the next time you’re starting a program and you’re searching for consistency and you’re trying to be consistent, you can just say to yourself, “I’m finding fault. That’s because I’m scared. I’m scared of change. I’m scared of being vulnerable, and that’s okay.”

The second mindset trap is that you compare yourself to others.

Now, this can really bring you backwards, and the reason you may be comparing yourself to others is again, because you’re scared. You don’t like being vulnerable, you don’t like doing something that you’re, you’re not great at. So you start comparing yourself to everybody else who you think is way more ahead of you in this journey.

And sometimes you will be right that people are ahead of you on your journey. But rather than that, just be, yeah, great they started before me, you can really use that as a stick to beat yourself with. Now remember the subconscious mind when you’re doing something new doesn’t like you out of your comfort zone. So it’s trying to find anything to drag you back, to drag you back to where you were. So for example, a woman called Joan, she is three stone overweight. She feels really uncomfortable in her clothes. Now Joan wants to change so bad, but her default behavioural patterns are sitting on the couch after dinner, comfort eating and not getting any exercise in.

That’s where she feels comfortable. That’s what she knows because that’s what the habit that she’s built up. Now, if Joan decides she wants to lose weight and get fit because she wants to be healthy getting older and she starts working out and avoiding eating after dinner, she’s going to be out of her comfort zone because she’s just doing something new. Now all those feelings are going to try and drag her back because your brain is in survival mode the whole time. We have like a 4 million-year-old brain that is designed to look for threats.

So when you’re designed to look for threats, when you’re doing something new, of course out of your comfort zone is going to feel like such a threat. So Joan may experience those feelings of finding fault. She might think the workout is really annoying, or her walk route is really annoying, or the playlist didn’t work or it’s a crap playlist. She didn’t feel in the form, but she will try to find fault. And running alongside of that, she might start compare herself to others who are in the same group as her if it’s an online program and she sees somebody that she thinks is doing way better than her or people out in the road, and you just get into that really comparing mindset.

Now, the next time you start to do this, say to yourself, “It’s just because I’m out of my comfort zone. I am trying to drag myself back, be aware of it and keep up the good work.”

Now the third mindset trap is that you can tend to overcomplicate things, especially when you’re starting something new.

(Grab my free Mastery Habits Checklist here)

And I’ve recently learned that for some people that they overcomplicate it, it’s because of a past trauma that they may have experienced and that they find it difficult to keep things simple because their brain can get very overwhelmed and very stressed out.

Now, have you ever noticed that when you start something new, I have definitely done this so many times. In fact, all of the mindset traps that I am talking to you about, I could write the book on it with myself and it’s something that I have to work on every single day and be aware that I have these mindset traps the whole time. But over complicating something is something that I have always done.

I want to do something really simple. I want to take action on it. So I start to write lists and write it out, and then all of a sudden I’m writing it so much and I’m trying to make it so good that I’ve overcomplicate it and I don’t know what to do. Now, I have done that for most of my life and I’m only really learning that action is the only solution for me to get me out of that overcomplicated thing. Now, if you can relate to what I’m talking about, the best thing for you to do when that happens is to just go and take a bit of action. Whatever it is that’s on your list, just start and you’ll start to get more cam and relax.

Now, my fourth mindset trap that I want to talk about is resisting reality.

You say to yourself a lot, what if, if only. And when you do that, it means that you’re not living in the present and you are scared to live in the present and you are sacrificing the present and you’re living in the future. And you’re saying to yourself, “When I’m dress size lighter. If only I had this, my life would be easier. When I do this, I will do this.” And that’s an absolute trap. And again, it’s a trap that’s going to bring you back. It’s going to drag you down, and it’s going to stop you from being consistent.

(Grab my free Mastery Habits Checklist here)

My fifth and final mindset trap is that your expectations are too high.

Your expectations on yourself might be too high, what you can get done in a day and you’re not allowing yourself to be human and have off days and deal with the stuff that’s thrown at you every day. So when you feel like your expectations are too high, lower them a little bit. Be kinder to yourself, accept that you’re human. Do what you can do. Maybe take a little bit off of your plate.

Now there’s another little bit of a tip that worked for me when I overcomplicate things, and that is to journal, just to journal out a few things about how I feel and it helps get it out of your head and onto paper, and it can be so super helpful if you are overcomplicating things in your head. So to sum up five mindset traps to avoid that might be getting in the way of you being consistent.

Number one, you’re finding fault with everything once you get started. Now remember, that’s going to take you off course. Just be aware of it, accept it for what it is and keep doing what you’re doing. The second one, you compare yourself to others. Again, trying to drag you back. Remember that we’re all on different parts of the journey and just take it nice and slow and steady and call it for what it is. I’m comparing myself to others. Let’s stop doing that. Is it helpful? No. The third thing is that you overcomplicate things. If you’re overcomplicating things and it’s all in your head, get it down on paper. If you’re doing too much on paper or you’re, you’re writing too much lists, just start taking action. The fourth thing is you resist reality and you notice yourself saying, “If only I had this, what if I had that? ”

The best thing you can do for that is to practice living in the moment. And the last mindset trap is that your expectations are too high. Lowering your expectations with yourself and being a little bit kinder and a little bit more gentle with yourself and not striving for perfection may really, really help you. I hope you find this helpful. If you need help, setting goals, setting visions, I have a goal and visions workbook. If you just go to JessicaCook.ie/vision and you can get everything you need out onto paper, your goals for the year, your action steps, and that’ll help you keep it really clear and simple.

Keep up the good work. Make sure to Join me over on TikTok and say Hi

Like with all my pieces of content, let me know what you thought in the comments.

All my love, Jessica Cooke X

 

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Healthy Habits, Mindset and Confidence

Motivation Is Overrated! I Gave It Up & Then This Happened!

The key to being fit, healthy and feeling good in your clothes is consistency. It’s working out and eating healthily consistently over time. This repetitive action of healthy action steps will get you exactly where you want to be, in terms of feeling good in your clothes and feeling fit and healthy.

To be consistent, you need to be motivated. You need to stay motivated to workout and you need to stay motivated to eat healthy.

How do you do this?

Watch this short video below in which I detail and give you the exact tips to help you stay motivated to work out at home.

A gentle reminder that you don’t need diet plans, the weighing scales, calorie counting or any sort of extreme or restrictive dieting, or extreme or too much exercise, to get into great shape.

The key to success is to follow small, healthy, action steps consistently and overtime the small healthy action steps lead to huge results.

I hope you enjoy this video, let me know in the comments your thoughts or if you just want to just say hello.

Have you grabbed my free habits mastery checklist yet? It’s all yours, you can get it using this link.

All my love, Jessica Cooke

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Mindset and Confidence, Weight loss

Do You Often Feel Bad on a Monday? Like You’re Going Around in a Never Ending loop?

 I used to wake up on a Monday morning and feel so bad about myself. I was sick and tired of yo-yo-ing with my weight, I was sick and tired of feeling unfit and unhealthy, and it used to just drive me crazy. You know that circular feeling, Friday, you feel okay, Monday, you feel so bad. Well, if you haven’t experienced it, it’s really horrible, and that was me for such a long time. So I wanted to talk to you today about your habits, goal setting and you getting set up for feeling really good before the holidays, because you’ve still got time.

(I created a Free Mastery Habits Checklist for you which you can grab here)

If you’re not exactly where you want to be, you still have time before Christmas comes along. I think there’s something like 40 days or 39 days till Christmas now, so if there’s anything that’s bothering you, or you had a goal in 2022 that you want to get fit and feel good in your clothes and you’re not quite there yet, then let’s get cracking with that.

So the very first thing to think about switching is switching your focus from that awful goal of weight loss to instead asking yourself what habits could you change, because you are your habits, and if you’re overweight, it just means that you’ve got some little habit going on there that’s making you gain weight or you’re not doing a habit. So take the pressure off and rather than ask yourself, “How much weight can I lose? Have I lost weight today?”

Say, “you know what actually? I’m going to focus on being a fit and healthy person, and I’m going to focus on somebody that has fit and healthy action steps.”

So what could I do this week, starting Monday, to make me feel good and fit and healthy? And start from there. It might be as simple as, depending on where you’re at now, let’s say you do nothing, you could say to yourself, “well, I’m going to walk most days this week, I’m not going to have any shyte after dinner and I’m going to drink two litres of water”.

I absolutely promise you, by the time you get to Friday, you will be feeling a whole lot different to what you’re feeling now, if you’re not feeling good about it now… and the lovely thing about it is, if you don’t get on the weighing scales and you don’t get obsessive about weight loss and you don’t weigh yourself on Friday, you’re going to feel that lovely win, you’re going to feel so proud of yourself.

And from that feeling, you’re going to gain a little bit of momentum that you don’t get when you’re hopping on and off the scales, because that’s just awful, it makes you feel bad, feel good, feel bad, feel good.

There’s no sense of control or feeling good with the weighing scales, but there is when you just focus on your action steps. So ask yourself this morning, if you’re feeling sluggish, if you’re feeling tired, if you overdid it at the weekend, if your clothes are tight, if you’re not where you want to be, instead of giving out about it or thinking really negatively about yourself, just say, “right, it’s Monday, it’s only another day of the week. What can I do today to make myself feel good?”

(I created a Free Mastery Habits Checklist for you which you can grab here)

 

I’m telling you guys, if you’ve had a big weekend or you’ve been out and you’ve had drinks, just get the water into you and do some exercise and bonus, stay off anything crap, food-wise today, and you wake up tomorrow and you’ll just feel like you are on that success train, and that’s it.

Focus on your healthy action steps, work at being healthy and consistent most of the time, don’t be annoyed with yourself if you have nights out, that’s not you being off, that’s you living your life, and I promise you, you’ll feel so good. And going into winter with the rain and the cold nights and the dark nights, you’re just setting yourself up like a superhero, ready for battle, ready to face setbacks, challenges, difficulties that come your way.

That’s something that I never used to think about before, it was all physical for me, I worked out and I tried to eat healthy because I wanted to feel good in my clothes, and that was for me, a massive importance, and now it’s like, no, you want to be like a superhero, you want to go into every day feeling like you’ve got muscles on your body, that you’re eating healthy, priming yourself for successes, for challenges, for making you the best version of you so you can enjoy this wonderful life.

(I created a Free Mastery Habits Checklist for you which you can grab here)

 

And I’ve been really unhealthy, and being really unhealthy is tough going, and I have such massive empathy for people that feel really unhealthy because you’re tired, you’re sluggish, you walk around just literally thinking you look like shite, you’re constantly feeling how uncomfortable your clothes are, it’s a 24/7 thing in your mind.

I find, it’s actually easier to dedicate 30 minutes a few times a week to working out, drinking water and working on not getting the instant gratification that overeating gives you, which took me a long time to do that one because, as I’ve shared here before, I’ve been a massive comfort eater, any emotion, celebration, sadness, happiness, that was me…I’d eat.

I just used to always overeat, but thankfully now, because I worked on it, it’s done. So this is to you, if you’re not feeling so great this morning, if you overdid it at the weekend, or if you feel like you’re back to square one or you’re just feeling sluggish and tired and uncomfortable in your clothes, take the pressure off, go and have a great day, and while you’re having a great day, ask yourself, “what are the healthy action steps I can do today?” And forget about the rest, and I promise you, come Friday, you’ll be feeling absolutely terrific.

 I’ve actually created for you all a healthy habits checklist. I spent a good bit of time on it, so you must let me know what you think about it, it’s every single healthy action step I take in my life to feel really good.

Have a wonderful morning and let’s get out and smash this day, because we don’t need permission to go and have a great day, or we don’t need to go into it feeling overwhelmed and stressed out, no, we can just do our best, take breaks when we want them, maybe plan a lovely evening tonight so you have something to look forward to, like a movie night or a board game night, have a bit of fun.

Give yourself permission to take extra breaks today because you can still be super productive while still living your best life. 

Big love to you today,

jessica Cooke X

P.S. Are you on Insta? Say hi!

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Mental Health, Mindset and Confidence

Are Your Perfectionist Tendencies Holding You Back?

I want to talk to you in this blog post about perfectionism and how much it can hold you back… and how, as women, we are so hard on ourselves and because of this we can sometimes stop progressing forward and we can be our own worst enemy. 

And I am such a culprit. I have been such a culprit of perfectionism in the past and not even understanding or knowing that it was perfectionism that was holding me back. You see, that’s the thing with perfectionism, you sometimes don’t even know what it is. And I had a really outdated opinion of what I thought perfectionism was. I always thought perfectionism was somebody who was so into the detail of something and they didn’t finish it or hand it up until it was done.

That was what I thought perfectionism was, and it is a little bit, for some people, but because I thought that’s what it was, I never realised how much perfectionism was showing up in my life.

(Are you receiving my Newsletter every week? Get my motivational tips straight to your inbox , I pack a much as I can into this! Yes, please add me!)

I was thinking, ‘Jessica, there’s no way you’re a perfectionist. You wouldn’t spend hours and hours and hours on one essay trying to get it absolutely perfectly right and then hand it up. That’s not me at all. I, in that situation, aim at doing as good as I can, and then just hand it up.’ 

But perfectionism can show up in ways that you don’t expect until you truly reflect on your behaviour. Let’s take your fitness health for an example. You’re working at losing weight and you’re working out, you’re drinking water and you’re eating healthy. And let’s say you’re also comfort eating on the couch at nighttime. Now, for some people, perfectionism can show up there when they say to themselves, “I am so down and so bothered about my food. What is the point of exercise? What’s the point of doing anything, if not everything is perfect?”

That’s perfectionism showing up in your life and preventing you from getting really good benefits from your workouts, drinking water, eating healthy, because you think everything has to be all going right, all at the same time. Now, many, many women do that. That’s why that expression, all or nothing, is so popular.

So many people describe themselves as that. Actually, it’s you not thinking that that’s good enough for now, that every single thing has to be absolutely correct. When actually, the person that’s getting on with their exercise, drinking water and allowing themselves to still be comfort eating, while they’re exercising and doing all the other healthy stuff, is the person that’s going to progress much faster. Yet the person that has been comfort eating and has stopped exercising because of that, is probably looking at that other person going, “What are you doing? Why are you exercising when you don’t even have the food in order?”

And that is where the problem lies. And that is where, as women, we can hold ourselves back so much from progressing. Have you ever looked back on your life and you’re doing a project or something and you just go, “No, no, no, no, not now. I need to study more. I need to get another course under my belt. I need to have all this correct.” That’s perfectionism showing up. Once you become aware of it… Well, I can only say what helped me. Once I became aware of it, I started to do things that I didn’t really think I was good enough at doing because I hadn’t A, B, C, D, sorted yet. But then I realised there’s two versions of me competing in a race. One, the me who lives in my head, thinking, ruminating.. and the other me, the action taker… who’s going to win?

What I found really helpful too, when I was dealing with perfectionism and working at getting rid of it, was, look at it from somebody that doesn’t know you’s point of view, that they’re looking at you and all they’re seeing is you doing nothing because the rest of it is in your head. And once I thought of it like that, it blew my mind, “Oh my God, I look like I’m doing nothing, when actually in my head I’m really caring so much, but that’s not coming across. It looks like I’m doing absolutely nothing.” So once you know this, for me anyway, I couldn’t unknow it. So you start to go, “Oh my God, I’m doing nothing. If it’s to do with perfectionism, that means I’m waiting for all these things to happen. God, I’m doing nothing.” So I hope you found that helpful.

One simple tip to take away the next time you are wondering if your perfectionism is showing up. is to imagine you’re a stranger, watching you. What do they see? Do they see someone taking loads of action or doing nothing? Do they see someone writing down loads of plans but not acting on any of it?

Are you literally doing nothing, and living in your head? Do you think you’re doing nothing but actually you’re just over-thinking?

Remember that all progress is good.  Taking action is better than doing nothing.

I used to exercise, drink water and eat healthy. I also used to comfort eat. I would comfort eat if I was happy, if I was celebrating, if I felt stressed, if I felt sad.

And that always made my weight fluctuate. And it wouldn’t matter how many workouts I did or the healthy eating plan that I would be on, that I would be eating or the water that I drank, it didn’t make a difference. My weight was constantly fluctuating. I was always gaining or losing weight, but throughout that time I was still healthy and I was fit. So just in terms of your fitness and your health, and if you’re working at losing weight, remember that you don’t need to be doing everything really well, that you can work out and have bad food or food that you’re not happy with, and you can be eating great and skipping your workouts.

But you know what? If you workout through that time, through the unhealthy thing that you’re doing, then when you have that cracked, all your lovely other healthy stuff will be lovely and in alignment.

I hope you enjoyed it, let me know your thoughts below.

(Are you receiving my Newsletter every week? Get my motivational tips straight to your inbox , I pack a much as I can into this! Yes, please add me!)

Jessica Cooke X

P.S. Take action and move forward X

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Mental Health, Mindset and Confidence

Do You Have An All or Nothing Approach?

I wanted to talk to you in this blog post about the all or nothing mindset.

We’ve been speaking a lot recently about roadblocks and setbacks and things that are in your way and that are holding you back from your true potential, the even more potential than you think you have now. And untapping that, getting to that, tapping that side of you that has yet to be cracked maybe.

That side of you that we all have, that we fear so much that it takes us out of our comfort zones. And a lot of getting out of our comfort zones, for me, what works for me isn’t trying to do more. It’s actually trying to unblock my old beliefs and move forward having unblocked it.

For example, if you’ve got perfectionist tendencies, if you’ve got all or nothing tendencies, if you never have a plan, if you never have goals and action steps to follow, it’s kind of figuring out how you are getting in your own way so you can move forward. Because sometimes that’s what really works for people.

Sometimes people don’t need to learn more, do more, study more. It’s more about setting themselves free from the things that they might even be subconsciously doing now that’s holding them back. So the all or nothing mindset is definitely a mindset that has held me back in the past and prevented me from getting further along when I wanted to.

An all or nothing mindset can come into your life in so many ways. If you take fitness and health for example, it can be that you don’t want to exercise because your food’s not as healthy as you’d like it to be, or you feel like you can’t do any healthy action steps because you have some unhealthy habits.

Or you might be trying to study or do a course and you feel that you need to have all your papers and pens ready to go along with three hours of quiet time, in a quiet house. And all these kind of little obstacles that we put in front of ourselves when we have the all or nothing mindset.

And it can really prevent us from getting ahead. Because as far as I can see with myself and all my studies of successful people and people I admire and follow, it’s that same old thing of a little bit of progress week in, week out that compounds over time is what gets you to success.

It’s going back to the consistently good is so far better than just this sporadically great.

And sporadically great is just no good. Trying to be so  super excellent. For example, bringing it to your fitness, your weight loss, not eating any junk food, doing so many workouts, putting other things in your life to the back burner for a little bit, doing things that you can’t keep up and can’t sustain.

And we fall into this trap when we start things that we think we can sustain, we trick ourselves. And we normally try to do more rather than a little bit less. Whereas for some people, and you see it in social media all the time, especially when you follow motivational people or business people, that there’s always, for a lot of the time there’s this more, more, more mentality, how can I be better?

How can I do more? How can I study more? But for some of you out there, you actually need to be told that a little bit less is good. And we spoke about this on Wednesday on our  LIVE chat, about allowing yourself to lower your standards a little bit, lower the bar a little bit and relaxing your standards.

 I think it’s important that I say relax your standards, not lower your standards. But for some of you out there, some of you listening to this now, that’s actually what you need to do. And I think that when you hear people talking about doing more, adding more, it just stresses you out and just makes you feel so overwhelmed and you’re more inclined to get back to that all or nothing approach. It can trigger you to stop doing anything at all.

And that’s me too. If there’s people around me stressing me out, or if I’m following somebody and they’re like, “And then do this, and then do this and then do this,” you’re just like, “Oh my God.” And for some of you that are perfectionists that want to do things really well, and for some of you that have all or nothing tendencies, that’s the last message you need.

The best message for you to get the best out of you, the most out of yourself is actually to just do a little bit, do a little bit. And I’m going to bring it back to the fitness analogy because it’s just the simplest one. If you say to me, if you start with me on Monday, and you say, “Jessica, I’m going to do five workouts and I’m going to do five walks.”

I would probably say to you, “You know what? I want you to do three workouts and I want you to get two little walks if you have the time. But the most important thing is for you is just to get three workouts done.” And if you approach it like that, you’re going to feel so successful.

You’re going to be so consistent. You’re going to get so fit and healthy without all the, all or nothing pressure, without heaping on pressure and pressure. And you’re going to want to, if you have tendencies like this, you’re going to want to do more, more, more. But then you start to recognise that yes, you do have all or nothing tendencies.

You do have the perfectionism tendencies. Because you’ve said to me ‘I’m going to do five workouts’, I say, “No, you do three.” And if you’re getting itchy feet all week and you’re like, “Oh my God, I really just feel like I’m not doing enough,” that can really help you get to know yourself and go, “Oh my God. Yeah, this is one of those times where I was going to race right in, do everything.”

Three weeks later, crash and burn. So let that be our message, you and me. My message for me, my message for you, your message for yourself today. That heading into the weekend, which I always love for reflecting and thinking, what are the things that you can take out and subtract from your life? Maybe you’re the type of person that doesn’t need more stuff added at this point, but stuff taken away.

And maybe for you, it’s not about getting your journal on Sunday and saying, “And then this, and then this.” Maybe it’s about you recognising that you say, “I’ll do this, I’ll do five.” And then catch yourself and say, “You know what? I am actually going to do less than I want to. I am going to do, I want to do five workouts, so I’m going to do three.

I want to say I’m going to do five walks, so I’m going to do two. I want to eat no sugar next week so I’m going to allow myself to have two evenings of treats. I’m going to say three litres of water a day, so I’m going to do two.” And just remember, take everything out there with a pinch of salt. Make it your own, suited to what best suits YOUR needs.

And include, when you’re listening to people, especially kind of stressy, “Do this, do this” people. Listen to it to what they have to say, but only take from it, what you need that works best for your personality. Edit it a little bit if needed and then go for it.

I hope you enjoyed our chat. And if you did, I would love to hear from you. Just write a little comment below, tell me what you think. All my love and take care.

Jessica Cooke

 

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Fitness Tips, Mindset and Confidence

How To Get & Stay Motivated To Exercise

Motivation is a little bit like your mood. If you’re chasing motivation it’s a little bit like chasing a good mood. You can’t be guaranteed to be in a good mood and you can’t always be guaranteed to be motivated. For some people they feel motivated when they hit actual rock bottom. 

When all your habits go out the window, and you’ve gained weight, and you feel rotten, and you feel really unfit, and you find climbing up the stairs tough, that’s when a lot of people can go ‘right, Ok,  I better get to work. I better get to do something about this’. And they get motivated for a couple of weeks, feel a little bit better, and go right back down.

Have you ever wondered why you do that? 

If you ever wonder why you feel like you’re circling and circling… that you’re motivated, you do a good spurt and you pull back, it may be because you are relying on motivation and you are using motivation as your tool to get fit, lose weight and improve your quality of life. And I don’t blame you. It’s pushed out there so much. ‘Get motivated’. ‘How to stay motivated’. ‘Once you’re motivated you’re all good’.

 You can keep going. But what I ask  you to possibly reframe in your mind and maybe think about it a bit differently is rather than ask yourself how can I stay motivated, ask yourself instead how can I become consistent? 

How can I become consistent with exercise? And anytime you hear somebody talking about motivation just switch that word out for consistency.

There’s five steps.

 Five steps to becoming consistent in exercise in your life, but you can imply them to absolutely everything in your life. 

The first one is to create a really good morning routine. 

Now you don’t have to go absolutely crazy with the morning routine and start straight off meditating and doing affirmations and all that good stuff. You can simply start by getting up 10 minutes earlier than you need to, with a cup of coffee, sitting for five minutes, and just being a little bit ahead of yourself. It is absolutely mind blowing the power of being ahead of yourself first thing in the morning, rather than get up and scramble around and then by about one o’clock feel like, okay, now I’m in the zone.So the first one is to create a good morning routine.

 The second one is to create a good bedtime routine. 

To be consistent with everything in your life you need to think of yourself as an athlete. You need to be taking care of yourself in small ways to make sure that you are prepping yourself and priming yourself up for the good stuff. So if you want to become consistent with exercise, not only do you need to have a good morning routine, but you’ve got to have a good bedtime routine. 

And that can simply mean getting to bed by 10:30 at night, putting your phone on airplane mode and having a good page turning book, something that you know that’s so simple to read that you can just pick it up, like a Marian Keyes book that sucs you right in…you’re straight in.

The third thing I would do is plan your workouts. 

So how to get and stay consistent in your exercise, plan your workouts to an absolute tee. Make sure that you have your exact times, your exact days and leave it alone. Follow your plan. Set an alarm clock in your phone 10 minutes before you have to workout. And every single time your workout comes into your brain and you start to think, oh my God, I’ve got my workout in four hours, just go, no, I’m not doing that. 

I’m going to think about my workout five minutes before, because my workout’s only 30 minutes long and I’m not turning that workout into a four hour workout because if I do I know what will happen. I’ll start to get really demotivated and not in the mood. So really try to put your workout time into your workout times and leave it alone. And you’ll find your mind wandering, your mind always looking for the negative thing to focus on, go, no, I’m not doing that. I’m focusing on something else

The fourth thing is to not overstretch everything, and we as women have a tendency to do that. 

OK, you’re right, Jessica, I’m going to get into the groove of workouts. I’m going to stay consistent. I’m going to do five. And I really, really think that three workouts per week done consistently over time would give you so much better results than being sporadic and getting five, and then getting zero, and then getting five. So you’re giving yourself all these gold stars one week and then beating yourself with a stick the next week. So if you’re consistent you’ll focus on doing that little bit less, little bit less than what you think you can totally fit in, and you’ll feel so much better. And you’ll start to build up your confidence too around the consistency issue.

And my last one is to journal.

And journaling simply means getting out a pen and paper. And in this instance, every day writing out what your plan of attack is for the day. Three things that you’re going to get done this day. And then in the evening time, or at some point later on in the week, reflecting how it’s going and tweaking if you need to. So think of your goals and your action steps like an airplane, course correcting the whole time it’s in flight, and it gets to its destination.

Think of you not as failing or succeeding or winning or losing. Think of yourself as just consistently course correcting. 

You do a little bit. You get a bit of feedback. That feedback is either, yeah, Jessica, you’re going great guns here. You’re going well. You keep on going. You go to something else. Or it’s like, oh no, that’s not working out so well for me and you do a little bit of course correction. Just think of your health and fitness and your weight loss and fitting good in your clothes, just like that. And that’s why I hate those weighing scales and tracker apps because they’re giving you all this immediate feedback, whereas life isn’t like that. You go, you go, you take action. Over time you see how you’re going. You go a little bit this way. You correct a little bit that way. You take the pressure off.

I hope you enjoyed this blog post! You can subscribe to my Newsletter to get my posts straight into your inbox

Say Hi on my social media channels 🙂 You can follow me on Instagram here and Facebook here

Jessica Cooke X

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Mindset and Confidence

My Favourite Tips For Tips For Living A Healthier, Happier Life.

In this blog post, I have put together just some of my favourite tips for living a healthier, happier life. And we’re going to get stuck straight in!

Number one, consistency is the key to happiness.

This is absolutely the most life changing lesson I have ever learned, and I never used to be consistent. I mean, I studied well in school and I was able to put the head down and work hard.

But for things I truly desired, if I really reflect, I kind of expected results and I’d be upset if they didn’t come. And that would be to do with anything. When I was first starting out my business, when I was trying to lose weight myself and get fit myself. If I’m honest, I really, really felt that I was obliged to get them. I expected them. So the biggest life changing lesson for me really was consistency. When I started showing up in my business consistently every day, every single day. And I consistently put in the work and consistently worked out and consistently drank water and my life just momentum started again. And it’s the coolest thing in the world. And I feel like shouting about consistency from the top of the rooftops, because I can see other people where I was, and I want to help them so much and you just have to be consistent. And I meet so many people and they’re so disappointed that they’re not getting results in the first two weeks or the first week and whatever it is. Their business or their exercise or their body and it’s just about putting in the work and being consistency and focusing on your action steps and trusting the process.

Doing something gung-ho and then not doing it at all is just so bad for you. Like, for example, just with exercise, like doing five workouts a week and then doing none the next week is literally like taking two steps forward and one step back yet. So many people do that. So many people have a good week, have a bad week. And it’s really about having a good week rather than a terrific week, one week. And if you could just consistently put in good weeks and get rid of inconsistency, you’re going to go places. You are absolutely going to win. You’re going to succeed.

Three workouts per week is so much better than five and none.

And three workouts per week with maybe one of them being brilliant, another one you’re not putting in great effort, and another one being average is still way better than inconsistency. So consistency is key and really put that in every area of your life. And question yourself, ask yourself in the areas of your life that you’re disappointed in. Like, am I being consistent? With relationships, your husband or your partner, your children, you want to spend more family time with them. Do you do it for a week and then revert to old habits?

It’s really difficult to be consistent. You have to be constantly questioning your behaviour, but it’s really, really cool when you do that. So I recommend that you do constantly question your behaviour and do ask yourself if you’re not getting the results you want, well, have I been consistent enough? Have I put in the work every weekday for six months, like one year. And when it comes to a business or something like that, like three years, four years, five years, day in, day out. Showing up when you think you’ll be better off quitting.

Number two, ask yourself open, positive, happy questions. If you ask yourself a question, your brain is going to find a way to answer it.

So think of it this way. If you ask yourself why you’re really stupid and inconsistent, you are going to find an answer for that. Your brain is going to find an answer for that. So it might think, why am I stupid and inconsistent? Maybe it’s because I was born that way or because I’m never good at sticking to things. Or picture this, you ask yourself from now on only positive open-ended questions. So you ask yourself, in what way can I improve upon this?

How can I make this better? And your brain, again, will look for answers. Like, well, I can start putting an alarm clock in my phone every time I’m due to go a workout. Well, and it’ll come up with really, really positive solutions. And I just think that’s terrific. And on top of consistency being key, asking yourself only open ended questions is key too. I’ve only discovered this over the past few years. I would just only ever walk around asking myself negative questions, negative questions that only could have negative outcomes. And it started from the moment I woke up out of bed, why is this? Why is this? Why does it have to be like this? Sure, how an earth? That’s torture. But you know what? You don’t have to wait to get out of this. You can literally just after this reading this blog post, no, actually right now you can just go, do you know what? I’m actually going to only start asking myself questions and just like consistency, listen to yourself. Ask yourself, how am I asking my questions? Is it positive or is it negative?

Eat less starchy carbs and get off the junk food if you want to lose weight. No need to calorie count, no need to track your macros, no need to go mad restrictive, no need to go mental on the new recipes. Get off the junk food and eat less starchy carbs. Starchy carbs being potatoes, pastas, bread, and rice if you are not happy with how you’re fitting in your clothes.

Definitely get off the weighing scales, they’re pointless. The weighing scales can’t tell the difference between muscle gain and fat. So it’s not really a great tool unless you’re very heavy. Of course, you’re going to see the weight loss on the scales. But if you’re not particularly heavy, if you’ve only got a couple of stone to lose and you’re exercising, you’d be much better off measuring yourself using your clothes and just getting off the junk food.

Maybe it just suits you to not have junk food and not just for the first while, while you get results. And definitely if you’re having starchy carbs at every single meal, like a sandwich at lunch, loads of pasta and rice at dinner and eggs with toast or muesli, granola at breakfast, that’s the problem. Make it simple for yourself, reduce the starchy carbs. Only reduce them, get off the junk food. And you’re going to start losing weight.

Number four, learn to dislike junk food, learn to dislike it.

Too many people say, I’m going to try and not eat chocolate tonight. Oh my God. The word chocolate makes it sound so good. But unless you’re going and buying the 70% chocolate, and you’re just having like the chocolate that we get in shops and the big bumper packs of crisps, they’re designed and made so that we want more and more and more.

They’re not going to fill us. So they’re really designed for binge eating. And I’m not talking to you, if you’re one of those people that can just have a small little fun size bar and that does you. I’m talking to the majority of you, including myself, that having a packet of biscuits, you’re having half a packet, you’re having a packet. Especially if you don’t eat it during the week, often. You tend to kind of have four or five or six, much more so than having the one. And deadly if you are the type of person that’s having the one, but in this, I’m not talking to you. So really try to learn to dislike it and start to go, oh my God, junk food is actually gross, because it is. And it’s really fattening, it’s really bad for you. It’s full of trans fats.

Now, I’m not saying like it’s not really tasty and I haven’t given it up, but try to make life easier on yourself. And don’t be saying, oh my God, wonderful milk chocolate. Try to say the words that are negative and associate junk food with how gross it is and how bad you’ll feel the next day. And I promise you, it will help.

Enjoy your weekends and stop worrying about enjoying yourself. Life is for a living. If you’re healthy, if you’re fit, if you’re feeling good in your clothes, if you’re working out, if you eat healthy during the week, most of the time, enjoy your weekends. And please don’t start picking them apart like, oh, I’m going to go for a meal, but I’ll be super careful. That’s not living. That’s dieting. Get out there, enjoy your meals. Starter, main course, enjoy yourself and say yes to the invite, say yes to brunch and have a really nice time.

Enjoying yourself at weekends isn’t binge eating, binge eating is binge eating. Binge eating is sitting down and having way too much than you need because you’re eating your emotions. Enjoying your weekends and going out to a restaurant on a Friday, Saturday night is you living your life. So just be very careful that you’re not being, ah, just really hard in yourself and you’re waking up on a Monday and you’re feeling guilty. Sure, what the heck do you to feel guilty about? You’re working hard, you’re working out, you’re eating well, you’re fitting healthy, enjoy your bleeding weekends.

Number six, make sure all of your habits and thoughts are still relevant to where you’re at now. It’s very freeing when you shake off the shackles from your past and sometimes you can grow and change and realise that the belief systems that you’ve learned over time, mightn’t be the same belief systems that you have now. And that’s cool because you’re your own person. And if you feel now that you’ve become fit and healthy or new good stuff has come into your life in terms of growth or maybe your kinder.

And you’re still seeing yourself with your old identity and some of your behavioural patterns are still the old you, well, it’s time to let them go. And if you are this new person who’s grown and developed through a trauma or through learning or coaching, then allow yourself to be that person and have the confidence to develop new belief systems and new ways of new core values and allow yourself to have new belief systems.

Number seven, take personal responsibility for your life and you’ll feel so much more happier. Just take personal responsibility for everything. Don’t blame your husband, your family, anybody for what’s happened. If you really try to let that go, you’ll really start to enjoy your life and feel your shoulders drop and get calm and become at peace. And although it’s very difficult to forgive people that have hurt us or that might be hurting us presently, it’s really important that you don’t ruin this present life that you have.

You’re never going to be younger than you are now. So figure out a way to take personal responsibility for everything. Let go of blame and by personal responsibility, I just mean if you are not happy now, figure out how to fix it. And you figure out how to fix it and don’t put it on somebody else. Hold yourself accountable, raise your standards of yourself in all areas of your life.

Number eight, get really routined. Daily habits and rituals means you don’t need motivation and successful people don’t actually rely on motivation. And it’s this kind of really cool insider knowledge that you learn when you’re just really consistent over a very long period of time that you really understand successful people have set up their days so that they don’t have to rely on motivation. Whether that’s having really repetitive action steps that keeps them grounded, like drinking two litres of water, having three meals and two snacks, working out at set times on certain weekdays, booking workouts in advance, journaling every weekday to keep them on their goals.

Always having work goals, always having deadlines. These little rituals throughout the day, make you very routine and very structured. So sooner or later, the want of motivation tends to go. And you, for example, approach workouts, not going, I don’t know how I’m going to do it. You know you’re going to do it. Now, you don’t want to still, the pre-workouts feelings never go away, but you know you’re doing it. So the battle of that is gone. Whereas when you’re at the start and you’re not quite consistent yet, you’re waiting for the motivation to go and do your workout. And that’s a dangerous place to be in because you can’t always rely on yourself for doing it. So as many habits and rituals as you can have throughout the weekday, do that.

Number nine, stop being hard on yourself. I remember my coach said to me a few years ago, oh my God, I’ve never met anybody as hard on yourself as you. Actually, it was much more than three years ago. God, it must have been, what? 2013. So Jesus, near nine years ago now. And I remember almost being proud of that and kind of accepting it as this really cool badge of honour. Whereas now, I understand that it’s boring and it holds you back and you know, oh, you’re so hard on yourself. I’m so hard on myself. Great. I don’t have a badge for you. Like what are you trying to achieve by being hard on yourself? Nobody gives you a medal. You don’t get more out of life. And I think if I try to unravel why I was hard on myself, it was potentially because I didn’t want anyone to think that I was getting ahead of myself or that I was confident or that, don’t worry, I know exactly all the flaws that are wrong with me.

Don’t worry, that kind of a mindset, that kind of a… ‘Don’t worry, nobody can be harder on me that I am myself.’ Oh, fuck that. Fuck that. Confidence is a good thing. A real sense of certainty in yourself is a good thing. And going through that, going from very low confidence, people pleasing to actually put your shoulders back a little bit is uncomfortable, but you have to not worry about feeling uncomfortable. And I used to worry about feeling uncomfortable. I used to worry that I would blush or that I would stutter a small bit. I mean, I don’t have a stammer, but I would worry that I couldn’t get the words out or I would worry that I felt confident, but I wouldn’t look confident because I’d feel uncomfortable acting and feeling certain.

Does that make sense? So instead of doing that, I would just revert to people pleasing. So yeah, I’m still uncomfortable sometimes being assertive and acting, feeling certain. Feeling certain, but in a way, when you are certain inside and you’re meeting people that have known you for a long time, physically, the physical way you hold yourself isn’t always natural. So it feels like really uncomfortable. So what I’m really trying to say to you is just let go of being hard on yourself now.

Number 10, don’t let people make you feel guilty or bad for your actions in that real subliminal silent way that people do. And if you’re a people pleaser, like you’re going to really respond to that by just going, oh my God, how can I make this better? How can I be a better person?

‘How can I fix this?’You have nothing to apologise for, defend yourself for, they are no better than you. They may be judgmental, they may want something from you, they may not respect your boundaries because you haven’t respected your boundaries in the past. So they’re used to you not respecting your boundaries and you’re respecting yourself. That’s all on them. That is all on them.

Number 11, drink lots of water. So important to drink lots of water. I mean just drink water every day. Two litres every day, get lots of fresh air, journal every weekday. I can’t tell you how important it is to journal. It’s just so important to journal if you want to achieve goals. Every day, don’t set goals with your coach once a month. And like, they’re going to fall by the wayside because life gets in the way. But if you journal every day, you’re constantly reminded regardless of what’s going on in your life and what you want.

Number 14 have work goals, have life goals, have health goals have during the week fun goals. Absolutely. Don’t just have boring goals. Have during the week fun goals, movie night Monday, movie night Thursday, running club with the family Wednesday. Whatever it is, have fun, happy, shoulder dropping goals in there, along with your serious goals. But in my opinion, goal setting is the coolest thing in the world. And so many women when they start with me say, but I don’t have life goals. That’s okay, take your time and find out what they are.

Give up complaining is number 16. Complaining just holds you back because it means your problem focused. And if you got rid of complaining and you spent 5% of your time on your problems, i.e. you acknowledged them.

And then you switched into solution mode and spent the 95% of your time on your solutions. You’d be an awful lot happier and you’d get an awful lot answers to problems quicker. So complaining, bitching, gossiping gets you nowhere. Giving out about people gives you nowhere. Become solution focused and try to not get sucked in to people giving out about people.

Number 17, everything good comes from exercise. You feel calm, in control, more productive, happy, fit, and healthy. All these things come from exercise. You don’t get that from eating healthy, you don’t get it from dieting, you don’t get it just from meditation. Exercise, everything starts with moving your body. You feel good. You get into a good mood. You feel certain, you feel calm, in control. It’s good for your internals, it’s good for your externals and from there you can eat healthy, drink water, meditate.

But in my opinion, it all starts working out in a sweaty way, at least three times a week. Forget everything else until you’ve got that nailed.

My last one, accept the temporary pain of everything that’s in the way of you getting your goals. Everything that you want is on the other side of pain, discomfort, out of comfort zone, not in the mood, couldn’t be bothered today. All, everything you want is the other side of that. The other side of that, get up, get it done regardless of how you feel and you’ll achieve everything that you want. Get up, get it done, get on with it. Get on with us. Get on with it. Get on with your life. Get on with your goals. Get on with your workout. Get on with your healthy eating. Get off the shyte. Get on with discovering why you eat shyte.

Get on with discovering why your comfort eat. Get on with it. In whatever is holding you back, get on with not doing it or get on with figuring out why you do it so then you can get on with not doing it. But everything just, you have to just get on with things and not dwell.

Again, take it from the person that used to dwell the most. The most, I could write the book in it. You have to get up and get on with things.

I really hope you enjoyed this. I really hope you got something out of it. All might love to you.  If you enjoyed this, will you let me know, comment below or just drop a <3

Jessica Cooke X

 

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Mindset and Confidence

Allow me to re-introduce myself to all of you Legends.

Allow me to re-introduce myself to all of you legends.

If you’re new here (or if we never got properly introduced!), I wanted to let you know who I am and what mission I am on… and to say Hi!, I see you, I feel you and I hear you!

I’m Jessica Cooke and I’ve been coaching women for over 14 years now. I’ve recovered from a complete nervous breakdown. I love drinking coffee, and my favourite thing in life (apart from my family: husband, Joe and two kids Arthur & Emily) is to empower women to lead fitter, healthier, happier lives. Oh, and also I love playing with my two Miniature Schnauzers, Buster and Ozzy, who are both so different in so many ways, and sometimes I can’t deal with how cute they are.

I’ve been helping women feel good about themselves again, ever since I re-trained to become a Personal Trainer, after I had a breakdown in 2005.

I’ve been at rock bottom. I was overweight, unfit, and had very unhealthy habits, but the worst part of it all was going through such a low time mentally, which is hard to describe in words. I also felt so unhappy in my own skin, I had such low self-esteem, no confidence, and I didn’t know what to do or how to help myself.

Cutting a long story short so I don’t completely bore you, having embraced all the tools and techniques I’ve learned, I am so very happy in every way. It’s amazing what exercise, good food, routine, structure, healthy habits, and a good mindset will do for you and just how it will change your life, from the inside out. And that’s what I love to do!

Help you live your best life, every day. To feel good, to fit terrific in your clothes, to have tons of energy, to feel amazing, with ease and flow. That’s what I love!

What I’d love to mention is what I hate!

Calorie counting, weighing yourself or your food, restriction, diets of any kind, they are only more sticks to beat yourself with!

Hating on yourself, being hard on yourself, not being authentic to who you are, yes they all have to go.

You can be healthy, happy, mentally so strong, and feel terrific in your clothes without all that stuff. You can be strong, fit and healthy while living your life.

You CAN fit it all in.

You CAN be fit and healthy with the time in the day that you have and you can still enjoy all the foods you love and meals out, and have so much fun!

Pre-Pandemic, Inspire Fitness was a gym, now I operate my online coaching program… and it’s the BEST thing that has ever happened to me, and I truly feel, my clients.

I feel like I am only getting started on my mission to empower women to lead fitter, healthier and happier lives. Now it’s your turn, say hello, or leave a comment below! All my love, Jessica Cooke X

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Mindset and Confidence

How To Get Out Of The Rut You’re in Now And Become Fit, Healthy & Feel Great Again

I’m super excited about this topic. I want to talk to you about how to get out of a rut, burn fat, get fit, and feel really, really good and healthy. This is a really passionate topic of mine because having gained three stone, gone through a complete breakdown, I feel like I am knowledgeable in this topic in the sense that I can help you if you currently are feeling bad and in a rut. I’ve been through it. I know what it takes, and I have coached 1,000s of women at this stage in the 15 years of helping women feel good. So it is my most favorite, most passionate topic to talk about, and I hope you get just one thing out of it. Just one thing out of this post is all you need to potentially make the change that’s going to propel you forward and help you progress.

So I’m talking to you right now and you might be going through the menopause or noticing changes in yourself because you’re getting older, or maybe you’re going through a very tough time in your life and you’re feeling really, really bad and that’s making you have bad habits that aren’t helping you, or you’re just so busy and because of that busyness, you’re also feeling really bad.

I’m talking to you now if you’re feeling bad and stuck in a rut. We can all feel bad regardless of each individual person and what they’re going through. So if you’ve gained weight or you’re feeling just really unfit or you’re feeling really bad about yourself, I find that these things come from us going through a tough time.

Generally speaking, when you’re going through a tough time, it’s the time that it’s really difficult to have healthy habits. Many of us turn to wine or alcohol, sugary foods and we’ve bad habits and it’s very difficult to get out of that rut.

Or maybe you aren’t particularly going through a bad time, but you’ve just noticed that your body is changing and you’re gaining weight and you literally are not doing anything differently and you don’t know what to do and you’re just looking in the mirror going, “Help! I don’t know what to do.

I’m gaining weight, and this is not how I want to look and it’s not how I want to feel.” Well, this blog post is going to help you take back control again of your narrative.

So let’s just say now that you’re feeling bad and you’ve gained weight and you’re feeling unfit. What’s going to make you worse, and these are the things that I want you to now cut out of your life, is dieting, calorie counting. The problem with calorie counting is it doesn’t work and it leads to you eating bad foods.

So for example, if you are calorie counting, that potentially means that you’re looking at the backs of pockets of so-called health bars and protein bars and thinking to yourself, “Oh my God, that’s only 200 calories. That’s fine. I can eat that.” The problem with that is you could still be eating sugary, high-fat content, foods that aren’t good for you, and that aren’t healthy for you, and that don’t make you feel good.

Calorie counting is really bad. A 200-calorie chocolate bar is not the equivalent of 200 calories of vegetables. Calorie counting will lead you down an obsessive route that doesn’t work, and you’re only going to open yourself up to the opportunity of eating processed, unhealthy foods because your focus is going to be on calories rather than on healthy food. It’s also going to make you feel trapped in a cycle of calorie counting, and my goal is to get you out of the trap you’re feeling in, and for you to take control and not have the weight loss industry controlling you by their marketing.

Weighing yourself has got to stop now if you want to get out of this rut. Weighing yourself is the most ridiculous thing to do in 2022. Why do you care what you weigh? It makes you feel down about yourself. It’s very demotivating after say, a couple of days of good action steps, you jump on the weighing scale, you don’t see results and it can potentially lead you to wanting to binge eat or give up or not work out. Absolute crazy stuff. Weighing yourself is, for me, a constant and consistent thing in your life, a way for you to beat yourself up every few days.

Only walking is another problem because you’re not building any lean muscle mass when you are walking and you’re not getting any upper body strength and you’re not raising your metabolism. You’re just pounding those pavements, wondering why the weight isn’t coming off. You’re going to have to get rid of thinking about it all the time. When you’re on your fat-loss journey or getting fit, if you’re thinking about it 24/7, I pretty much guarantee you that you’re going to end up quitting.

Trying new recipes, trying more recipes, and trying more food isn’t going to help you lose weight. But the weight loss industry is so clever that it has us believing that if we eat this thing, we’ll lose weight. Think about it. So by eating this, I’m going to lose weight, and I know it sounds cracked saying that now, but actually, subconsciously, that’s what we do. Well, I’ll eat this because this recipe book said eat this and that’ll help me lose weight when actually, you have all the recipes you need in your brain now to lose weight, and trying new recipes, only masks the problem.

The same as following a diet plan, that’s got to stop. You have to take control of your health and your fitness, and you’re not going to take control by following somebody else’s diet plan based on their life. Also using MyFitnessPal. Tracking and tracking and tracking and tracking your macronutrients and your fats and your proteins. The chances are you’re not an athlete, nor do you need to be. I get that athletes with their coaches need to be tracking their macros, but if you are a woman and you are over 40, and you want to lose weight and get fit and healthy, the macros can go.

So I want to help you now go from acknowledging that you’re in a bad place, and knowing why you’re in a bad place, and now I want you to realize all the things that are making you feel worse that I’ve just gone through, that I want you to let go of now.

Now I want you to draw an imaginary line in the air, draw sand in the air of all of the stuff I’ve just mentioned that doesn’t work for you, that makes you feel bad.

Now, next step, I want you to start framing the whole health, fitness, and fat loss journey differently.

I want you to stop doing what you hate and for the rest of your life now, stop thinking about weight loss and health and fitness from a negative point of view, and from now on, decide you’re only going to see it in a positive light.

Now that sounds really simple, but that is huge because Weight Watchers and Slimming World and all these, jump up, have you lost a pound, or are you up a pound? We’re so conditioned to see health and fitness from a negative restriction point of view that we’re driving ourself mad.

I have met so many women that the fit and healthy person is bursting to come out of them and they love workouts. The pre-workout feeling might be tough, but they really enjoy exercise, and they know they do, and they really want to be fit and healthy. But the things that I mentioned hold them back so much because we’re so conditioned to think that we have to think of it negatively in order to succeed and that something bad might happen if we actually go,

If you are exercising at the minute now and working and eating healthy, but your mindset is wrong, you’re not going to get very far.

You might for a few weeks or a few months, but I promise you, your mindset will drag you right back, and you’ll just be yo-yoing and cycling and going from all or nothing. So know where you’re at now. Know why where you’re at now. Identify the stuff that’s making you feel worse, like weighing yourself and counting calories and thinking about it all the time and thinking you need to try new recipes and following a diet plan and using MyFitnessPal and jumping on the weighing scales, draw a line under all that now. Focus on this new mindset that you are deciding to adopt, and it doesn’t have to take months to adopt.

You can choose to change now in an instant with the click of a finger. That’s an absolute fact.

I learned that from Tony Robbins and it was one of the most powerful things he taught me, that people think it takes years to create a habit when actually, it’s taken years to lead up to that point where they instantly change. And I just thought that was, wow, so powerful. Because if you look back on the times you’ve changed, it generally speaking has been because you’ve had a revelation because of what somebody has said, or you’ve read something in a book and it’s changed your mind in an instant. It’s really cool when you think about it.

So the mindset shift has changed and you are deciding right now, on this date, that you are going to focus on all the good stuff. So we’ve got to talk about your nutrition and your sleep and your water intake and your exercise and the happiness levels in your life.

I want to talk to you about the food first.

So you’ve committed to me today now to get rid of calorie counting and weighing or measuring and all that kind of stuff with your food and you’ve drawn a line under that. And you’re like, “Okay, Jessica, you tell me what to do.” So I’m going to recommend that you focus on eating healthy during the week. Eat normal, healthy food. Have a breakfast, have a lunch, and have a dinner, and have two very small snacks, one between breakfast and lunch, and one between lunch and dinner. Then I want to recommend to you that after dinner, you don’t eat any food. I also want to recommend that you don’t eat junk food, and I call junk food biscuits, cakes, sweets, chocolate, crisps, junk food.

And it’s helpful to call it junk food because it puts a bad association on the food. Rather than saying, “Oh, chocolate,” you say, “Junk food,” and you get rid of all that during the week. You eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner at the same time. Now what you eat in those meals, the brief for you is healthy, just healthy.

I often find women that struggle a lot with their food, they struggle with eating the same stuff repetitively. I’d love to say to you if you’re that woman, that if you’re constantly looking to change your breakfasts around and change your lunches around, there may be something else at play because ideally, breakfast is just your fuel to start the day and porridge five days a week, or eggs, or an omelette five days a week is what you’re looking for. If you’re getting stressed out by needing to change it up all the time, then you have to ask yourself, why? Why is that? Why are you needing to change up your food the whole time? What’s at play there? Because that’s holding you back. So I say to you to just have a healthy breakfast, have a healthy lunch, and a healthy dinner.

I feel very passionate about not telling you what to eat, because again, that’s negative, it’s falling down a rabbit hole, and it’s leading you to think that I have the perfect magic secret, that the second I tell you what to have for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, that’s it. And you know that that’s not the case.

You know what healthy food is and you know what to eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Now the tough stuff with the food comes from getting rid of the bad habits. Not trying new recipes out for dinner, but doing things like having a healthy dinner, but eating somebody else’s chips is going to stop you from burning fat. Also, if you’re preparing the kids’ lunches or somebody else’s food and you’re snacking as you’re eating, that’s going to hold you back. Also, if you open the fridge door and just start eating stuff in between meals and not really counting it as food, that’s going to hold you back. So it sounds really simple what I’m saying, but there’s lots of habits that you have to omit.

That’s really what I love to do with my clients, work on omitting the bad stuff, because I often find with people, they’re too focused on working on the healthy stuff and trying to fit in all their macros and trying to make this perfect stew when actually, all they needed to do was not eat shite that day and they did. So there’s no point getting super-focused on a perfect stew and then having five packets of crisps. A potato, a bit of veg, and some meat or fish would’ve been better, than this low-calorie, low-GI stew, and then eating shite after it. So you have to just be really truthful and really honest with yourself about where you’re at, and once you do that, you’re going to start to see massive progress and massive changes to your waistline, and your clothes are going to start to feel really, really good. I absolutely promise you that, but you have got to get the food correct in your head.

So let’s move on to the exercise, and the exercise part is a really, really, really important part of you losing weight and getting fit and being healthy and feeling fit and feeling strong. A lot of people, what they’re doing now at the minute is, as we get older, once we hit 40 plus we start to lose a lot of muscle mass and muscle mass is what makes us burn calories at rest. So if you’re doing lots of walking and let’s say for example, and I hate to talk about calories burned in a workout, but you burn 300 calories in a walk for 30 minutes, and then another person burns 300 calories in an interval training session or a strength training session.

So the person that just walks burns a couple of calories in their walks, but the person that does strength training and builds lean muscle mass on their body burns calories at rest. All of our calories burned, most of our calories burned, comes from when we’re actually resting, not from the actual workout, whereas a lot of people think differently. They think maximum calories are burned during workout, nothing during the day when actually, we’re burning calories all day long. So if you’re building lean muscle on your body, you’re going to be burning so many more calories at rest.

Then if you were somebody that just did walking, not only is strength training and interval training extremely good for building lean muscle mass, it’s also really, really good for you to move your body and move your muscles in all different sorts of ways. Putting weights over your head, doing a plank, working on your core, getting strong, balanced stability, being able to squat, being able to get up and down off a chair, and being able to lift something over your head, being able to push something away from your body. We need to be moving our bodies like this in order for you to be healthy and fit into older age and old age and for you to be doing the absolute best thing you could be doing for yourself.

So exercise, I absolutely love the idea of five days of movement for 30 minutes. So getting in three to five, really good 30-minute workouts per week, and also adding in walks, and if you don’t have time for that, getting in three solid 30-minute workouts of strength training, interval training, and then two walks. Walking is amazing and it compliments strength training and 30-minute interval training sessions so well. It stretches out your muscles, it helps you move more and it’s just adding more movement into your day. Walking is absolutely, absolutely terrific, don’t get me wrong, but if you want to burn fat and build strength, walking just won’t cut it.

Sleep is really, really important and you are fighting an uphill battle if you are going to bed way too late, not winding down, and getting up in the morning wrecked because you’re going to have sugar cravings, you’re going to be cranky and you’re not going to work out.

How can you survive on too little sleep and be motivated to work out? You can’t. So it all starts with sleep. Jeepers, if you’re not sleeping well, well no, forget that because you might not be sleeping well because you’re going through the menopause. But if you’re not going to bed by 10:30 every night and reading a book for five minutes, that is the problem. And I know many people think that they’re demotivated or they’re lacking in energy, but take a look at your sleep patterns, and if there’s a win there, if you can improve that, take it, absolutely take it.

Water, drinking enough water. We’re made up of 70% water. So it makes sense that we need to hydrate ourselves the whole time. So two liters of water is absolutely critical. Remember that if you’re in bad form and you’re lethargic and you’re dehydrated, it has a knock-on effect to you wanting to exercise and eat healthy. So this all combines together. When you think it’s just exercise and food and that’s it, and then you’re not really caring about your sleep or your water, well, then you’re not going to eventually want to work out and eat well. So you have to remember it. You have to take such a holistic view and look at all the bigger picture of your health. Sleep well, drink water, eat healthy food, work out.

And then the final bit is your clothes. The best measurement you can use to see where you’re at is to use your clothes as measurements. Skinny jeans, a top, a dress, whatever it is, your clothes don’t lie. I really, really recommend, if you were to take one thing from this episode, it is to get rid of the weighing scales and all things measury, and go and find that pair of skinny jeans that is not fitting you or that you feel uncomfortable, and focus on that. I don’t recommend that you go and, what was I going to say there? I thought my MacBook switched off, so it threw me.

So don’t weigh yourself. Don’t measure yourself. Use your clothes to measure yourself, and also, that’s what I wanted to say, make sure you’re not just constantly walking around in stretchy clothes. So take the emotion out of it. Because if you have three really good days and you’re wearing leggings, you’re going to feel really skinny and trim. It’s so funny what leggings do, and I’m laughing because that’s what I do. I’m like, “Oh my God, I feel so good.” And then you go and try on your jeans and you realize, okay, they’re just a tiny bit tighter. So you’re going to stay in that emotional place if you’re just constantly wearing stretchy clothes, hoping to make changes.

My recommendation absolutely is to stop wearing stretchy clothes, even if you have to temporarily go and buy a dress size bigger, a jean size bigger and buy a pair of jeans that fit you now and start to face up to where you’re at with your clothes, rather than wait until you fit in your clothes. I truly believe the journey is going to take you longer if you wear stretchy clothes because you’re going to have more emotional days than non-emotional days, and the skinny jeans don’t lie and they don’t make you feel emotional.

I really hope you enjoyed this blog post, and I really hope that it helps you get out of a rut if you’re feeling in a rut or if you’re feeling stuck. And if you’re feeling super, super, super stuck, and really, really bad, then my recommendation to you is to only focus on the exercise.

Only focus on that one goal of moving five days a week, and even if you’re doing nothing now and you’re feeling so bad and you’re drinking too much wine and eating too much, just go for a walk, five days a week, and only do that. I promise you because motion creates emotion, you’re going to feel progress, and progress is going to help you feel really, really good.

All my love. I hope you enjoyed this, Let me know in the comments if you did,

Jessica Cooke

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Mindset and Confidence

Are you feeling bad in your skin right now?

I see you and I understand what you may be going through. 

When we go through bad periods in our life, when we may be feeling lonely, or overwhelmed, or stressed out, these are the times we may be at our unhealthiest.

When I had my breakdown, I smoked and drank way too much alcohol. I also over-ate and had extremely low self-esteem at that time.

Going through a very tough time, or having very low self esteem are both big triggers for not taking care of yourself.

I really get when you’re feeling bad, that the last thing you have time or effort for, is to change all your unhealthy habits at once.

But what I would like to say to you my friend, is that life is very short. And you deserve to take care of yourself. And if you’re not taking care of yourself now, ask yourself WHY? Why do you not take care of yourself? And when you have that answer, from that answer you can decide the best course of action. 

If you were to ask me what I think the best course of action would be from rock bottom, it would be to work out. 

Move your body in some form for five days per week, for 30 minutes. Don’t get bogged down with the detail, even a 30 minute walk would be brilliant. And make that your ONLY goal. If you come back from the walk and still drink alcohol that night, or eat too much, don’t worry about it. Just continue with your ONE goal of 30 minutes of movement, 5 days per week. 

I promise you good things will come to you if you do just that. Motion creates emotion, you’ll start to make progress and progress is what motivates us to move forward.

You might enjoy this podcast episode: Episode 24: How To Go From Feeling Bad To Feeling Good After A Few Tough Years

All my love, 

Jessica Cooke X

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