Healthy Habits, Mental Health

Are You Tired of Being Tired? Me Too, Until I Started Doing This.

Tired of feeling tired? If you’re a woman over 40, the chances are, you’re busy. Add to that all the physical changes you go through as a woman, it’s not surprising that we can go through periods of time where we feel exhausted and overwhelmed.

It starts to get tricky when you want to improve your habits and get rid of unhealthy habits, as that’s easier said than done when you’re really tired. So, I want to cover in the short video below how to first of all fix the tired problem, so that you can go forth and take charge of any habits you want to improve on or get rid of.

My Free Goal and Vision Workbook may help you with habit setting. It’s totally free and all yours. Here you go

I hope you find this video below helpful, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Share them  with me in the comments box. 

Jessica 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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Healthy Habits

Are Your Habits and Actions in Line with Your Dream Life?

I want to ask you…

Are your habits in line with your dream life? 

I have spent so long with my habits not being in line with my dream life. I used to eat crap on the couch and be annoyed that I felt sluggish and tired.

I used to drink alcohol, so much alcohol at the weekends and be so annoyed that I didn’t feel good on a Sunday. And my actual action steps, they just were never in line with where I wanted to be and what I wanted to do. And I always saw myself as this fit person, that loved being in nature and loved getting up early in the morning and loved feeling good. And yet I was doing so many things that were making me not feel good, which didn’t really make sense, but it made sense back then. But now it doesn’t make sense anymore, which is kind of good.

Ask yourself… are your actual action steps in line with where you want to be and who you want to be?

We can get so easily led by Instagram and social media and advertising that we think it’s about losing weight, or calorie counting or dieting, or weighing ourselves. And we don’t actually remember to check in with what it is that we actually want to do and don’t want to do because we’re so busy and we’re just going around and around every day.

It can feel a little bit like Groundhog Day, like we’re on a hamster wheel. And it’s really difficult to find the time to actually sit down and say, “What do I want out of life? What would my life look like if I did all the action steps I really desired? What kind of a person do I want to be? Do I love being out with nature? Do I love being indoors all cozy? Do I love sea swimming? Do I hate sea swimming?” All these things that if you give yourself a little bit of time to ask yourself, it can really help you solve maybe all the weight loss and fitness issues that you may have going on.

And for me, that’s the case. I was always fluctuating with my weight. I was always gaining or losing weight. My clothes were always tight or getting looser. I was always dieting or not dieting. And yet I never really realised that if I had worked on the actual problems that were causing me to overeat, that I would’ve gotten to where I am now an awful lot quicker. And that’s my mission in life. To help women… to empower women to transform their lives through fitness because I believe you can change every single habit you have in your life through consistent exercise. Because consistent exercise, in my opinion, makes you mentally strong. And when you’re mentally strong, you can do anything. You can do anything you set your mind to.

I gave up alcohol the 1st of May, and I never in a million years thought that would’ve been possible, ever would’ve been possible. But I often say that the day you decide you want to change, you mightn’t change, but that day is so important because you’ve made the decision that something isn’t serving you or working well for you in your life. And that was me about two years ago. Two years ago, I decided that I didn’t want to drink alcohol anymore. It took me two years to stop, but I really am so proud of that day I decided to stop, yet hadn’t stopped, if that makes sense. I’m just as proud of that day as I am of the day that I actually stopped.

So if you have any habits that are holding you back, if you stay up really late at night, scrolling on your phone, or if you are comfort eating on the couch and you can’t seem to stop or you’re drinking too much at the weekends and you’re just coming into Monday going, “Here we go again,” which was me. I just couldn’t bear that loop feeling anymore; I just had to get out of it. If you’re feeling like that and you decide today that, “Yeah, actually that’s not suiting me anymore,” but you don’t crack it yet, you’re not failing.

You’ve just decided you want to change but it mightn’t be as simple as just stopping. It might take you listening to people, reading books about it, Googling people who have already done it, following people who have already done it, and over time it all being processed in your brain for the day that you’re going to finally stop.

So never get disheartened ever about the fact that you’re not immediately able to do something and think of it as a huge success that you’ve actually decided that you want to change, because that is as important as the day that you’ve fully changed. So go out there now and have a really great day and remember that you don’t need permission to have a laugh and relax and that nothing bad is going to happen if you let your shoulders down and have a good day. All you can do is your best. And once you do your best towards being kind to yourself, kind to others and working at doing your best in work and with your family and friends and loved ones, then you can let yourself off the hook and be happy.

All my love to you guys.

If you’ve any comments or thoughts on this, I would love to hear them

Jessica Cooke X

 

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Healthy Habits, Weight loss

How Do You Lose Weight Over The Age of 40?

So the topic I’m going cover today is how do you lose weight over the age of 40?

That must be one of the most common questions that I get because it can be really frustrating if you’re a woman and you’ve hit 40 or 50 and you’re gaining weight and you don’t know why, it could be really, really, really annoying, especially if you’re not doing anything differently. And you’ve always managed to feel good in your clothes and you’ve eaten healthy and you’ve walked or you’ve just moved your body.

And you’ve always felt very healthy. And then all of a sudden, you start to gain weight, really, really annoying, gaining weight around the middle…your clothes feeling tight, and it can sometimes feel like you’re not very much in control of your body. Well, I am here to get you feeling back in control of your body again, it is so, so important that you feel nice in your clothes because it has a huge effect on your confidence.

And if you don’t have confidence, how are you supposed to believe in yourself and have that really strong inner strength that you need to go and achieve your goals? And I meet so many women at the start, when they start program with me and they’re, sometimes some of them almost embarrassed to say that one of their biggest goals is to feel nicer in their clothes because they think that might sound a bit like just thinking of the outwardly stuff.

But it’s so important because feeling good in your clothes really affects the inwardly stuff. And if you are feeling like crap and you don’t feel like you’re putting your best foot forward and you’re walking around feeling like your clothes are just really wrecking your head, then you’re not going to be able to achieve the goals you want to set out, put your best foot forward and feel amazing. So that’s what this topic is on this morning

How do you lose weight over the age of 40? A couple of things are going on when you hit 40 plus.. peri-menopause, menopause, hormone fluctuations, which lead to weight gain.

They lead to weight gain around your middle and you don’t even have to do anything wrong or different for you to gain weight.It’s just an absolute fact, forties, fifties and it’s really, really frustrating.

 So what’s happening is that the you’ve got hormone fluctuations. You’re gain weight around your middle. Your lean muscle mass is declining.Your oestrogen levels are declining.

You have a lower metabolism, you’re burning less fat at rest.

So just all of that combined means you start to gain weight. So all you’ve got to say to yourself is right, okay, so I have to change things if what I have been doing up to this point is working and now it’s stopped working. Okay, I need to change these.

And there’s a few things that you can do, starting off with your nutrition.So you can start to get a little bit more brushed up let’s say on the food. and there’s a couple of quick wins that you can do.

 First off, ask yourself the following few questions.

Are you drinking too much alcohol? That’s an easy win, if you are and you can go back on that, deadly, brilliant. Are you eating too much junk food, because of the different changes that are going in your life are you kind of sitting down on the couch more of the nighttime and eating shite food?

That’s a huge killer of feeling good in your clothes. Honestly, you can eat healthy all day long. Do a workout, drink water, feel brilliant. But that 20 minutes where you’re on the couch where you’re having like biscuits or sweets or scones, if you got rid of that during the week five days a week, you’d lose weight. If you’re doing it now, you’d lose weight. So you’re not drinking much alcohol. not eating crap during the week.If you’re that done, that sorted and you still want to lose weight, then you have to look at your meals.

First quick win, are you eating too much starchy carbs? Pasta, rice, bread, potatoes. Are you finding that you’re snacking on that in the day and that you’re also having those at every single meal? Another quick win, reduce that, have one meal in the day that’s carbohydrates, starchy carbohydrate free, don’t snack on starchy carbohydrates during the day, snack on protein or fruit. That’s another quick win. Another one is to have a smaller dinner. You can load up your plate with veg, have protein but smaller in terms of your starchy carbs.

That’s another win. So if you do all that, you cut out the shite during the week, You’re not drinking alcohol during the week. You’ve looked at that, then you’re like, okay, I need to look at my meals. Am I eating too many starchy carbs? Okay, do I need to have a smaller meal at dinner?

Another good win is dinner being your last meal and wrapping up, like, let’s say you go to bed a half 10. So ideally, and this is if you’re trying to lose weight and it’s not working for you, having your dinner at around half six, latest if you can, if you have to push it back later, it’s fine. But having it at half six, last meal, done and dusted, being in bed at 10, drinking two litres of water every single day.

And my last thing is just the movement that you’ve got to be doing strength training, nice and simple, strength training. Get your metabolism up, makes you burn fat at rest,  turns you into a calorie burning machine.

So you are effectively burning way more fat at rest than you’re doing now

if you’re not doing strength training if you do all that stuff,

you’ll get back to feeling into really good shape again, your clothes will feel really good and you won’t be noticing so much that weight gain

menopause, perimenopause, you’ll actually feel really, really good.

 And you can spend your time focusing on the other challenges that cropped up.I hope you found this helpful. If you have any questions about it, you can write below or send an email to jessica@jessica-cooke.ie

Jessica Cooke X

 

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Fitness Tips, Healthy Habits

How Can you Squeeze in a Workout When Life is So Busy?

When life gets busy, it’s really easy to let the self-care drop. Yet this is exactly the times that we need to be upping, or at least staying consistent, with the self-care.

Trying to fit everything into one day can be really tricky, but almost impossible if you don’t plan. When you don’t plan, you can end up spending your day in re-action mode, rather than action mode. Everything that makes the most noise gets your attention first, rather than the things that need to get done.

When you workout you feel great, and when you feel great, you’re your best self. And when you’re your best self, life is a happier experience, and you get more out of it.

So here are my top tips to squeeze in a workout when life is so busy, so you can stay consistent:

  1. Do your workout first thing in the morning. That way, nothing can get in the way. Yes it can be so tough to get up and do a workout straight away, but sometimes, it’s the only way to fit it in. Alarm goes off, you throw on your gear, and get stuck in. 30 minutes later, before you’re even aware what you’ve done, it’s over and you’ve your whole day ahead.
  2. Plan the days you’re going to workout, the times, every single detail. I highly recommend you do a workout either first thing, or while you’re still moving. For example, the second you come home from work is better than after you’ve sat down to relax. On your lunch break is better than after dinner, when you’re tired. If you do have to do it after dinner, make sure you do it straight after the clean up, rather than sitting down first.
  3. Treat it like a 30 minute session, which it is! Don’t let it occupy headspace for any time beforehand. Five minutes before your workout, throw your trainers on and get it done. Have all your equipment ready, gear ready, and off you go. When you spend hours thinking about it, you put yourself off.
  4. Do the right type of training for maximum results. Strength training, interval training and core work for 30 minutes, 4-5 times per week will get you in the best shape of your life. You’ll fit great in your clothes, have tons of energy and feel really good.
  5. Remind yourself frequently, of all the reasons why you workout, and what happens when you don’t workout. Consistent, powerful reminders really help to keep you on track. There is nothing more frustrating than working out for a while, feeling brilliant, then stopping exercise, gaining weight and feeling like crap again. Stop the vicious cycle and stay consistent.

You can download recipes, my 7 day workout series and my 30 day Fast-Track to #FEELGOOD Program in the free tools section of my website here

To your success,
Jessica Cooke
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Healthy Habits

The 5 Most Essential Fitness Tips For Women Who Have No Time

It can feel really overwhelming when you’re very busy, but you want to be fit and healthy. So I wanted to put together my top 5 essential tips to follow when you feel like you have no time. It’ll help you feel more in control and also will get you all the results you want. (When I say results I always mean feeling fit, healthy, fitting great in your clothes, with loads of energy. Not to mention strong muscles, strong bones and a high metabolism!)

When you’re time poor, but you’re trying to lose weight, women can often skip meals, eat too little at certain times, eat too much in the evening, and be sporadic with exercise. I want to help you get rid of all that and get a good structure to your day.

  1.  Have a good structured exercise routine. Exercise at the same times every week, and dedicate 30 minutes to yourself. Rather than try to cram it in in the evening, can you set the alarm and do your workout first thing? That way nothing can ever get in the way, the only thing that can get in the way is the snooze button. A good combination of interval training, resistance training and core work will get you burning fat, building lean muscle and turning into a calorie burning machine.
  2. Eat 3 meals and 2 snacks. Breakfast, lunch and dinner, with two snacks in the middle. Long gaps between meals will bring your metabolism right down, and you don’t want that.
  3.  Get off the sugar. Eat sugar, gain weight. Get off sugar, lose weight. Sugar = junk food in my view. Treat nights at the weekend are perfect.
  4. Drink loads of water every day. 2 litres. The more water the better. Water is so so good for you. It’s great for your mood, skin, nails, hair. It helps with cravings and you need it for your insides! We are made up of 60% water.
  5. Reduce starchy carbs. White bread, pasta, white rice, can leave you with a big spike in your blood sugars which can lead to cravings and more hunger! Stick to wholegrains, beans and pulses.

You can download recipes, my 7 day workout series and my 30 day Fast-Track to #FEELGOOD Program in the free tools section of my website here

To your success,

Jessica Cooke X

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Healthy Habits, Mindset and Confidence

The Six Biggest Challenges Women Face When It Comes To Their Fitness And Health

I’ve been working with women for the past 14 years now, and over that course of time you definitely notice patterns. The same issues come up, time and again, so what I want to do with this blog post, is to discuss the most common challenges I see that women face when it comes to keeping fit and healthy.

When you know you’re not alone, when you know everyone faces the same issues you do, it can help. It can help to know you’re not alone, to acknowledge the issue, but then to find a way around it. Finding a way around it is what my amazing clients do, I’m truly blessed to coach people like them. They have such a can do attitude and I love it. Their lives are no different to anyone else yet they’re consistent and they show up every week.

Figuring out your issues and finding a way around it, rather than dwelling it on it is the key to a healthy life. And when you’re healthy, you’ll live longer, you’ll fit well in your clothes and you’ll have great mental health.

Many women I speak to in the consultation phase either see massive barriers they can’t get past, or they’re great fits to our Tribe as they know they can and need to get past these challenges. That it’s a black and white approach. You get it done or you don’t. You do what needs to be done or you don’t.

Here are the top six challenges I see women face when it comes to their overall health:

1 . A Lack of Motivation

Many people think this is a big problem and I hear it all the time. Too many people let feelings get in the way of working out. I don’t think it would be normal to be motivated to workout. Why would you? I have rarely said’ Wuhoo, it’s time to get the trainers, on happy days!’ It’s about mind over matter, action over thoughts.

Enjoy the post workout feelings but ignore the pre-workout feelings. If you wait to be motivated to workout, you’ll be dead in the ground waiting. Get it done. It’s about your commitment to your health. Do you want to be healthy? COMMIT to working out. Do you want to be unhealthy? Wait to be motivated.  If you’re busy, or find it tough to take action on exercise, I could not recommend enough the power of a coach. An absolute game changer if you struggle with motivation. They’ll have your back, motivate you and keep you on the straight and narrow.

2. A lack of time

Who doesn’t have a lack of time? You’re not alone on this. You either get around this issue to be healthy or you complain about no time. It’s really as simple as that. For a lot of women their 40’s and 50’s are particularly busy, so this is when you need to plan like a legend. Your workouts need to be planned down to the day and exact time or you won’t fit it in. Scheduling sessions in, working with a coach, doing 30 minute workouts can all help. Getting it done first thing in the morning. The benefits exercise will give you to actually becoming more productive are unreal. You’ll sleep better, perform better and feel really good. Make the time.

3. Sugar

Eating sugar during the week can lead to poor sleep, weight gain, a lack of structure and you feeling tired and sluggish. Having no structure to the treats brings so much pain. A lack of progress, your clothes feeling tight, feeling bad in yourself, eugh I have been there. I hate it, I know what it feels like, I really feel for you if you’re in that place. It’s horrible and you feel like you’re going around in circles. Get off the mid-week sugar.

4. Alcohol

Alcohol and health are on the opposite ends of the spectrum. There’s no point me even going into this as you know the story. It’s just so bad for you all the time. Keep it to the weekends and you during the week you’ll sleep well, feel good, be healthy and fit good in your clothes.

5. A lack of consistency

Progress is one of the biggest things humans need to feel to make them happy. When you’re not consistent, you never get anywhere. So on top of the frustration of a lack of progress, you’ll also feel unhappy with yourself for stopping and starting the whole time. It’s an absolute vicious cycle. What I always say to my clients is through the good and bad, through the bad cycles of food and good, workout.  Let that be the number one consistent thing in your life.

6. Not prioritising yourself

Skipping a workout, or not doing something for yourself to make way for someone else is not good, and it’s something I see ALL THE TIME. Drop the guilty feelings. Workout, walk whatever it is you need to do for yourself to feel good, you absolutely have to prioritise it. You need to remember that focusing on your health is not selfish, it’s an absolute necessity to feeling good, to be around for others and to be the best version of you.

I hope you found this helpful, leave a comment and let me know your thoughts. You can download recipes, my 7 day workout series and my 30 day Fast-Track to #FEELGOOD Program in the free tools section of my website here

To your success,

Jessica Cooke

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Healthy Habits, Mindset and Confidence

5 Things To Know about The Menopause And You

I want to discuss the changes that happen to your body during the Menopause and Perimenopause so you can continue to feel good in your clothes, have lots of energy and feel good, throughout this time and beyond.

What’s the Menopause?

Most women experience the Menopause in their late forties or early fifties. Menopause is defined as having no menstrual period for a year. Perimenopause refers to the period of time right before menopause begins.What’s happens to your body when you go through the menopause?

Lots of hormonal changes happen, in particular, a big decrease of estrogen and progesterone. Because of this, you may experience weight gain, particularly around your middle, hot flushes and you become more prone to osteoporosis, high cholesterol, high blood pressure and Type 2 Diabetes.

What happens during Perimenopause?

Hormone production starts to decline, you may experience hot flushes and your menstrual cycle will start to become irregular.

What does all this mean for your health and feeling good?

If you want to stay healthy, feel good and fit good in your clothes, you need to give more thought to your strategy. What worked for you up until now, may not work anymore. A decline in lean muscle mass and a decline in estrogen, means you’ll probably find you’re gaining weight. You can turn this around with a bit of thought, and I’ve seen this time and again with my clients. The right type of training with the right type of food plan and you’ll back to feeling great again.

You’re more prone to getting osteoporosis:

You’ll may wantto start giving more thought to your exercise plan. If you’ve been walking and doing aerobic based stuff up until now, now is the time to change the way you train, to incorporate strength training, with interval training, with core work.

Honestly, it is a game changer. You’ll get strong bones, lean muscle mass, a high metabolism, you’ll burn loads of fat at rest, and you’ll feel great. I see this change happen all the time with my clients. Menopause associated weight gain to feeling great again and fitting into their clothes, with the tweaks and changes to their diet and exercise.

What can I do to get back to feeling healthy, with loads of energy and fitting great in my clothes?

Do the right type of workouts. 30 minutes, 5 days per week doing a combination of resistance training, interval training and core work. You’ll lose weight, get fit, burn fat at rest, turn into a calorie burning machine and get strong bones and muscles. You’ll also feel amazing. Honestly, I couldn’t recommend this style of training enough for you.

Eat healthy, balanced meals from all food groups. Eat 3 meals and 2 small healthy snacks.

Give up dieting and the weighing scales. You don’t need that in your life.

Drink 2 litres of water every day.

Get fresh air and be out with nature. A good 20-30 minute walk as well as your workout would be amazing.

Give up mid-week alcohol and sugar. Enjoy these things at the weekends instead.

Look after your mental health. Read books, journal, do affirmations, sit in silence during the day for a few minutes. Feed and nourish your mind and take care of yourself.

Speak to your Doctor about what options there is for you, whether it’s supplements or HRT. Get the knowledge from someone who knows you and decide the option that’s best for you.

I hope you enjoyed this article. You can download lots of my free tools here

To your success,

Jessica Cooke

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Healthy Habits, Mindset and Confidence

How To Go From Feeling Bad, To Feeling Good, During Lockdown #3

When I first closed down the gym way back in March, I admit I spent the first 6 nights drinking. I had an excuse to, and I thought I would seek comfort from the alcohol and the drunken chats you have that you think have meaning but they don’t really, not when it comes to serious stuff

So on day 6 I turned around to Joe (my husband and Inspire colleague) and said to him, ‘Joe I am at a crossroads here. I can stand up and be a leader or I can get drunk and watch this pass’. I get emotional as I write this as I am happy to say I chose the path right for me, and here I am with a thriving online business, getting to serve clients who are now so dear to me. That is not to say the path has not been tough with bumps along the way.

I’m telling you this story to talk to you directly, if you are someone who is now at those crossroads. Feeling awful, eating and drinking and knowing, secretly, you don’t really want to. That there is a better, more calm and steady path out there for you.

The actions you are taking now are all going to add up to the person who emerges out of lockdown. When this all ends, who do you want to be? Are you going to have a serious drinking problem? Health issues? An addiction to comfort food?

Do you want to feel good if you decide to go on holiday? Are you slowly but surely turning into a stressball, with high blood pressure and heart palpitations?

I had a complete nervous breakdown in my twenties, and when you go through hell and back, you never want to go back there. And all those lessons that I learned, I’ve now turned into my life mission, to help women feel good, from the inside out.

If you are currently doing things now that are making you unhappy, here’s how I would approach it, to slowly but surely start to feel good.

Start off with having a set time to go to bed and to wake up. I recommend bed at 10:30pm and getting up no later than 8am;

Go for a 30 minute walk every day;

Drink 2 litres of water every day;

Eat breakfast, lunch and dinner.

When you have done one week of the above here’s what I would add:

Workout for 30 minutes 3-5 times per week;

Give up mid-week alcohol and junk food.

After one week of that, you will start to feel good. That is two weeks in total. You’ll feel bad the first couple of weeks. you will suffer withdrawal symptoms. Many people think they will start sleeping really well. In fact, you’ll sleep really badly, sweat a lot and have nightmares.

Do the above, go through the bad sleep and the feeling utterly awful and after two weeks, you will start to feel really, really good.

Like always, I hope this helps. I love to help women feel really good from the inside out. It is my life’s mission. Comment below if you’ve any questions or just want to say hi. Go to the free tools section of my website to grab lots of free stuff by clicking here.

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