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You’ve two different ways to go through this life, both are choices you make.

You’ve two different ways to go through this life, both are choices you make.

You can go through life taking care of yourself, being fit and healthy, or being unhealthy and unfit.

It’s as simple as that.

When you get rid of all the excuses it simply comes down to this:

You’re either:

  • working out or you’re not;
  • eating healthy or you’re not;
  • taking care of yourself or you’re not.

A lack of time, ‘laziness’, or a lack of motivation, as harsh as it sounds are still all just excuses. I know because I used to be the excuse Queen. If you WANT IT, you’ll find a way… FACT. Say that to yourself when you hear yourself making excuses, it helps.

Stop thinking of your excuses and instead think about your action steps.

If you’re not happy with your current situation, make changes. Change ONLY comes about when you make changes.

The timing will never be perfect, something will always get in the way, the key is you just GET ON WITH IT.

Big love to you, 

Jessica 

P.S. Say Hi in the comments!

P.P.S. You can download me Free 5 Day Strength Workout Series here

P.P.P.S. You can subscribe to my Newsletter here

 

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Be healthy & Happy or Diet and Restrict your way through life…?

Sometimes it’s a really good idea to ask yourself ‘Do those extra few pounds matter?’

Why are we so super critical and harsh on ourselves?

Do you ever find yourself wanting a flat stomach and to be as trim as possible while also wanting to enjoy your weekends and living life to the max?

It can be a really helpful exercise to every so often, stop and evaluate what YOU want, not just what you’ve be conditioned to want or what you THINK you want.

Dieting to get to a certain weight for a short period of time is so pointless. To be that weight for an event and then go up the second it’s over, what’s that about. It feels like the normal thing to do until you actually logically think about it. Get to a certain weight for an event, but then in your day to day life when you’re out and about, it doesn’t matter so much?

If you constantly find yourself gaining and losing weight, I would have a really good think about what you actually want.

How many times per week do you want to work out? What are your guidelines on your nutrition? What dress size would you love to be ALL of the time? Can you accept that if you eat out and enjoy nice treats that you won’t ever achieve a flat stomach, or the smallest dress size you can be?

When you start to get real with yourself, life becomes A LOT more fun.

Rather than have unrealistic goals and then be constantly  beating yourself up when you don’t hit them, you’ll actually have real workable goals, and it becomes so much more fun!

On top of that, you’ll start to really enjoy being fit and healthy WHILE enjoying your treats GUILT free as you will now know that you can of course eat treats AND still be fit and healthy MAYBE NOT having a flat STOMACH but that’s the small price to pay to not turning into a restrictive diet-y crazy person. 🙂

LOL! I hope you found this helpful.

You can download my FREE 5 Day Workout series here,

Jessica Cooke X

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20 Amazing Benefits of Exercise for Women over 40.

We spend so much time thinking, and over-thinking and complaining about the workout we have to do. If only we could somehow switch that part off and train our brains to GET ON WITH IT.

You know what though? You can. 

You can literally block out any thoughts of your workout until 5 minutes before you start. To do that though, you need to have your three workouts per week scheduled in, and an alarm set to remind you. This won’t work if you’re not ridiculously scheduled within a minute of your workout time. You need to plan and schedule them and don’t move them unless you really have to.

You know what happens then? 

You become CONSISTENT! 

And you know what you get for your efforts? 

You feel brilliant in your clothes;

You feel fit;

You’re happier;

You’re calmer;

You think better;

You reduce your risk of health problems;

You get great skin, nails and hair;

You can hike mountains;

You can climb the stairs;

Your metabolism gets high;

You burn lots of calories at rest;

You get strong muscles and strong bones;

You build lean muscle mass;

You reduce the risk of heart problems;

You don’t feel as achey and stiff;

You become a fit and healthier version of yourself;

You sleep better and feel more naturally tired in the evening;

You reduce your blood pressure;

You more burn fat at rest;

You feel more positive about life

Three workouts, three times per week gives you all that and more. Work at not over-thinking it, get on with it and reap all the rewards. The sooner you do it, the quicker it’ll become less of a big deal and the more integrated into your life it’ll become.

Do strength training, interval training and core work.

Jessica Cooke X

P.S I post every day on my Facebook & Instagram page. You can follow me here:

 

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14 Lessons I’ve Learned That May Empower You Too

Working on your mindset and learning things that make your life easier, can have such a profound, positive effect on your life.

Discovering why you do certain things that hold you back, can be really helpful when you want to change a behaviour for good.

This is your life now and it’s happening for you now. You’re never going to get these years back and you’re never going to be as young as you are now… so with that in mind, how are you doing? What’s going well for you? What would you like to change? How can you make that change? What plan are you working towards in this new chapter of your life? How can you do more of what makes you happy?

Here are 14 lessons I’ve learned recently that I’m loving.

  1. Consistency is everything.
  2. Consistently good is better than sporadically great.
  3. Having a plan is one of the most important keys to success.
  4. Following that plan and not veering off into another project is key.
  5. The goal might stay the same but the strategy will change and that’s good. Go with that!
  6. Tweaking as you go is everything.
  7. Working at enjoying every day of your life is the only way to live.
  8. Excess alcohol consumption ruins everything.
  9. Designing your dream lifestyle, right down to what time you have breakfast, is the best way to take control of the life you want.
  10. Take charge of what you CAN take charge of.
  11. Let go. Nothing bad is going to happen because you loosen your grip a bit.
  12. Have a laugh. Plan to laugh. Have ‘laughing’ as a daily goal.
  13. Drop your shoulders, take deep breaths and relax.
  14. Stand tall.

If you’re on Instagram Follow me here : https://bit.ly/3L7ekSf

Drop a <3 in the comments if you agree, would love to hear from you!

Love, Jessica Cooke X

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Struggling To Feel Good, Post-Holiday? Get Back on Track Quickly With These 5 Simple Steps

You head off on holidays, have a great time, let your hair down, come back and feel sluggish, fed up and uncomfortable in your clothes. Does this sound familiar? If yes, well lets break that cycle.

As women, we tend to be very, very hard on ourselves. So it makes sense that when we come back from our holidays, a few pounds up and not feeling as fit, that we start to beat ourselves up. But if you can’t indulge on holidays and let loose, when can you.  Rather than beat yourself up, a better idea would be to enjoy yourself, come home, make a health plan and execute that plan without emotion.

Most women post-holiday have similar goals. You want to:

Fit great in your clothes;

Get back to good sleep:

Get back to feeling fit and healthy:

Feel really good:

Have lots of energy.

So based on those goals, here are 5 simple steps to get you achieving those goals quickly.

  1. Map out a workout plan. The times and days you’re going to workout for one month ahead.
  2. Plan your food for the week. Your breakfasts, lunches, dinners and healthy snacks. When you make dinner, make enough for two or three nights and freeze the rest.
  3. Drink 2 litres of water every day.
  4. Get to bed at 10:30pm latest, even if you can’t get to sleep
  5. Get lots of fresh air. Little pockets of time during the day, or long walks.

Once you hit 30, definitely 40, you need to be doing resistance training. You’ll re-build the lean muscle mass you naturally lose, which will get your metabolism high and you’ll burn lots of calories at rest. Interval training is also brilliant for burning fat efficiently and for a high metabolism. If you do a mix of this, for 30 minutes, 3-5 times per week you will feel great and GET RESULTS. Working out is great but isn’t it so much better if you actually get results from the workouts you do? So be efficient in your training and do the right kind of stuff. Lift weights, do cardio, do HIIT and work on your core.

On to the food. Lots of fresh fruit and vegetables. Less meat, lots of protein, a little less starchy carbs and you will feel so good. Don’t get tempted to leave out any food group and quit the mid-week sugar and alcohol. Eat regularly and enjoy your meals.

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

Jessica Cooke X

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How Do You Reduce Belly Fat?

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There are so many reasons why we gain weight around the middle. With our lean muscle mass decreasing as we get older, your metabolism slows down. You burn less calories at rest. You start to decline in oestrogen in peri-menopause. Your hormone changes bring about weight gain. You may be moving less and eating more.

Your clothes are now tight. You’re fed up, your stomach has gained a lot of weight and it’s making you unhappy.

I’m excited to tell you that with the right strategy you can get back into feeling good in your clothes again, but the first thing you need to do is to acknowledge that you need to change what you’re doing. If you keep doing the same thing over and over, you’ll keep having the same problem.

When clients come to me with a weight problem, they want to drop 7lbs or 10lbs or reduce fat on their stomach, I love it because it’s all so attainable with the right strategy and with the fabulous attitude they have, of going with the tweaks. And that’s what I love about my clients, they’re open to change, therefore open to results.

 

Here are my tops tips to reducing belly fat:

Do the right type of exercise for your age:

You can’t spot reduce. You can’t say to your body, ‘hey lose weight off my stomach first please’, that’s all genetics, but with the right type of training, fat will come off everywhere you have it.

What is the right type once you get past the age of 40? Interval training, strength training and core work. You want to burn fat, build lean muscle, get a high metabolism, flatten and strengthen your core and you’re doing this all the while strengthening your bones and improving your mental health. 30 minutes, 5 days per week will get you in the best shape of your life.

Have dinner at 6pm and don’t eat again until breakfast:

I gained three stone from late night snacking after I had Emily. Ladies, it doesn’t matter how good your days are, if you sit on the couch eating after dinner, you’ll gain weight. Not eating after dinner will reduce your belly fat.

Reduce starchy carbs:

Big bowls of pasta and rice and snacking on toast will not help your stomach. All that food is perfectly fine if you’re where you want to be. Cut down on it, mid-week, if you’re not where you want to be.

Two biscuits with your tea:

You need to choose. The biscuits or a flat stomach. It is dedication to the cause that gives my clients a flatter stomach, nothing else. No secret. A daily choice to lay off the sugar.

Lots of water, healthy food and fresh air:

Getting out in the fresh air and moving your body, drinking lots of water and eating fresh food all reduce belly fat. A healthy balanced diet. People are too quick not to bother with the basics and think it’s about going from eating crap to eating hardly anything. It’s not! Healthy food, tweak as you go, in accordance to your results you’re getting.

I hope this helps you!

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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3 Reasons It’s Harder to Lose Weight With Age And 4 Things You Can Do About It

Have you noticed that as you get older, you gain weight easier and it becomes harder to get rid of it? Do you feel frustrated with your efforts and feel like you are going around in circles?

Do you feel that the effort you’re putting in should show you more results than you’re currently getting? If the answer is yes, then this post is for you!

There are scientific reasons why you’re finding it harder to gain weight, and once you know, you’ll be able to tweak your current health plan and start to get results again.

Weight Gain and Age: What is happening?

  1. You’re experiencing age-related muscle loss

As you get older, your body loses lean muscle mass, roughly about 3-8% per decade. What does this mean for you?

Lean muscle mass uses more calories than fat, so as you’re losing muscle mass, you’re gaining weight, as your body is burning fewer calories than it used to. So your diet may not have changed, but you’re gaining weight, because your body is burning less calories.

So weight gain likely if you continue to consume the same number of calories as you did when you were younger.

You’re Undergoing Hormonal Changes

Menopause, which occurs in women between then ages of 45-55, cause huge hormonal changes in women. Levels of oestrogen drop a lot, leading to weight gain, particularly around the waistline.  This is the time when your chances of higher blodd pressure, higher cholesterol and Type-2 diabetes significantly increase.

In perimenopause, fluctuations in oestrogen can cause mood swings, making it more difficult to stick to a healthy diet, which can also lead to weight gain.

It’s a tough ti and has a snowball effect. You lose lean muscle, you start accumulating more fat, you burn less calories.

You’re more sedentary

You’re much more likely to be more sedentary at this point in your life than you used to be. This leads to weight gain as you are burning much less calories throughout the day. Chances are you’re sitting so much more than you ever did.

You may also be much busier, meaning grabbing food on the go, longer gaps between meals and over-eating when you do sit down in the evening.

Science-Backed Ways To Lose Weight and Fit Well in Your Clothes At Mid-Life and Beyond

Give your major muscle groups a workout.

Build lean muscle while at the same time strengthen your bones. Body weight exercises and lifting weights will build lean muscle in your body. That will bring your metabolism right back up again, you’ll burn so much more calories at rest, and you’ll fit back into your clothes again.

Focus on Healthy Foods

Get rid of any processed foods you may eat, and focus in instead on a good mix of protein, vegetables, complex carbohydrates, fruit and good fats. Get rid of mid-week junk food and alcohol. Eat the high volume foods that fill you up but are no laden with calories like vegetables, beans, nuts, and fruit. Drink 2 litres of water every day.

Downsize your Portions

Slightly less on your plate can make a huge difference. Not as many carbohydrates at dinner, but filling your plate with more vegetables can really help, while eating dinner as close to 6pm as you can.

Move more

Exercise helps manage your weight so much. You build lean muscle, while burning fat, while it also being great for your mood too.

You’ll find it easier to lose weight when you exercise, and it’ll help counter act the fact that you’re moving less in the day. Brisk 30 minute walks or cycles throughout the week, along with some resistance training workout sessions would be absolutely terrific. You’ll feel much more in control and your weight will feel much more manageable.

I hope you enjoyed this article. You can read here my My Top 5 Tips To Staying Healthy and Feeling Good

To your success,

Jessica Cooke

P.S. You can download my free 30 day Fast-Track to #FEELGOOD Program here

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Why You Should Never Weigh Yourself Again

Are you sick and tired of letting your weight consume you every waking thought? Does it consume a lot of your thoughts? Do you feel really uncomfortable in your clothes? Do you spend a lot of your time thinking about what you can and can’t eat?  Do you calorie count, follow diets and feel sick and tired of it all? Do you weigh yourself?

Aren’t you just sick and tired of it? Can I ask you a question?

Do you know when you are eating healthy? Do you know when you feel good? Do you know when you are a healthy weight? I bet you the answer is YES. I bet you know how to eat healthy. I bet you know when you’re over-eating. I bet you know when you’re living healthily, taking care of yourself and feeling good.

It’s hard to admit this. The weight loss industry want you to buy into the idea that weight loss is a complicated thing. That you must study, count, track and weigh yourself to success.

That is a big problem for me and why I HATE THOSE COMPANIES.

Nobody can spend their time counting, weighing and tracking their way to success long term. It’s too boring and unsustainable. There will come a point that you will crack up, and Jeepers, thank God you did. What a horrific way to live your life.

You know what makes me feel ill? Thinking of people sitting in a room, talking about how they are a pound up or a pound down since last week. I could not work with these people. That would drive me up the walls.

My life long  passion as a coach is to help women all over the world, feel good, get fit and healthy, enjoy the process and live their life! And it’s so easily done! You follow some simple guidelines, you get into the exercise, and voila, you are winning at health! You’re feeling good in your clothes! You’re focused on simple action steps and NOT RESULTS. It doesn’t matter anymore what you weigh. You workout, you eat healthy food, you relax at weekends and you fit great in your clothes! Simple!

Throw out the weighing scales and get rid of your food tracker. The time has passed for all that. You are NOT what you weigh. You’re a result of the actions you take. Your actions that you take every day.

Move away from the half starts, the yo-yo, the non-committal. Do you want to be healthy? Do you want to be fit?

If the answer is yes, then workout, eat healthy and start to focus on why you find that a struggle, rather than searching for the next thing that keeps it complicated for you.

Download my free 30 day FAST-Track to #FEELGOOD Program here

To your success,

Jessica Cooke

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How To Feel Good and Feel Great In Your Clothes, At Any Age.

I hear a lot, at the consultation phase from many women, that they feel they have the ‘middle age spread’, and they often ponder out loud, whether this is just a fact of getting older they need to deal with. I love this for many reasons. It makes me excited at the thought of them in the not too distant future, absolutely loving how they fit in their clothes, having thought it wasn’t that possible at their age. I also love being able to help them realise it’s what they’re doing, not their age, that is leading them to gain weight. Because that’s when the revelation happens, and I love a good revelation, having had so many myself with my past mentors and in all the occasions that I went to a Tony Robbins seminar.

It definitely takes longer to lose weight as you get older, but you just need to do the right things and be patient, and it’ll come. The good news is that all the ‘right things’ that you need to do to lose weight and feel good in your clothes, all leave you feeling really good, happy and relaxed.

If you’re currently doing something now or following a weight loss program that is making you miserable and it’s about deprivation, counting, weighing and leaving out food groups, you can give that up now. There’s another way, and it’s called healthy eating. Yes you may need support and accountability around that, and that’s great! But what you don’t need is a diet plan.

You don’t need to be told what to eat and when. What you really need is a good solid health plan that covers all angles. Fitness, nutrition, mental health etc.

Work out the right way and you wont find it hard to lose weight. It’ll take a bit of time to come off, but once it’s off, it’s much easier to maintain. Interval training, resistance training, and core work are the three best things you can do if you’re a woman over 35 year of age. Why?

High metabolism, you’ll burn loads of calories at rest, you’ll gain lean muscle, you’ll turn into a calorie burning machine. You’ll get fit, you’ll feel amazing.

You’ll feel so, so good. You get such a huge endorphin hit when you do 30 minutes of interval training. Me and my clients laugh so much at the difference between pre and post workout feelings. It’s like night and day. Me pre-session ‘I’m tired, cranky and not in the mood’. Me post session ‘I love everything about life and I’m excited for the day.’ Too funny and it happens to all of us.

Ditch the mid-week wine and crap food if you want to feel good and fit well in your clothes. Don’t let that stuff control you. If it has a grip on you, you might want to do something about it. When I struggled with this stuff, I listened to a lot of Podcasts about it and followed people on Instagram who had reduced or given up their alcohol intake/sugar intake. Anyway, that’s only if you struggle. If you don’t struggle with cutting it out during the week, great. Keep boundaries in your life, or it can be a slippery slope. Leave alcohol to the weekends and your waistline and mental health will thank you for it.

Drink lots of water, eat healthy, get a good solid health plan. Enjoy your life and get on with it then. No need for the endless food tracking, or calorie counting. A 300 calorie bar of chocolate every day will make you fat. A 300 calorie plate of raw vegetables will not. Calorie counting is a load of BS. Healthy, wholesome food and work on your cravings, addictions, and WHY you over-eat or eat bad food. Honest to God in all my years of doing this, it is NEVER about giving someone a food plan. People don’t need  food plans. You don’t need another boring, awful food plan, the internet is heaving with them. You also don’t need to know what someone else is eating in a day. You just need to eat healthy, and figure out WHY you are not. And then address those feelings, rather than the food.

I hope this helps, sorry for the rant, I just feel so passionate about it and it annoys me such much when I see people promote high fats, high proteins, low carbs etc.

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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