Fitness Tips, Weight loss

How I lost weight And Got Fit (Without Hating my Life)

For many years I struggled with comfort eating, weight fluctuation and too much drinking at the weekends. A kind of Jekyll and Hyde approach. Super healthy during the week, plenty of workouts, but a real all or nothing approach to food.

I used to be obsessed. Years ago, I was obsessed with calorie counting, food tracker apps and the weighing scales. When I realised that didn’t work, I moved on to just generally been obsessed about food. Restricting carbohydrates, having a tiny breakfast, eating very little during the day… I’ve truly done it all.

I’ve restricted and dieted for so many years but funnily enough, now, having giving all that up, I’m in the best shape I’ve ever been. I’m really proud to say I feel really fit and healthy but what got me here has been a complete revamp of my lifestyle.. and changing my whole approach.

It’s this new approach that I want to share with you with the hope, as always, that if you’re reading this or you follow me on social media that I can help you become. the fit and healthy person you truly want, to be if you’re not currently feeling that way now.

Too often we are looking at the wrong things to fix. We drink too much alcohol but focus on reducing or carbohydrates. We comfort eat at night time but ponder over the best breakfast choice to make. We don’t work out, but check the weighing scales every day. It hit me a few years ago that this is what I had been doing.

I’d been looking in the wrong places, I was trying to change habits that didn’t need to be changed and I wasn’t looking at the habits that did need to be changed.

For example, the habits that I did need to change were how I dealt with stress, how I spoke to myself, my inability to self soothe, my need for external validation, my lack of belief in myself, my tendency to drink too much at weekends to unwind, my tendency to eat big dinners for comfort… Moderation is something that I didn’t think I would ever achieve.

I’m really excited to tell you that calm, peace, fitness and health is there for you if you embrace change and are willing to go at it a new way.

Here are the things that have worked for me that may work for you too.

Nutrition

In order to move forward and to achieve true health, I believe you need to give up all forms of dieting and restriction. I believe you need to let go of everything you learned about weight loss and truly start to eat healthy. If you comfort eating or are overindulging, don’t let that affect what you’re eating in a day. Don’t let the fact that you comfort eight at night time make you restrict what you eat the next day. By that I mean focus on having a nourishing breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Focus on eating from all the food groups. Carbohydrates do not make you fat. If you’re overweight now, it’s not because of carbohydrates, it’s because you’re eating too much and that is what we need to address. Why are you eating too much. Which leads me onto my next tip.

Peace and calm

Finding peace and calm has been life changing for me. It has helped me embrace self soothing which means I no longer turn to food or anything outside of myself for comfort.

This has been huge and the effect of having peace and calm in my life has been one of the main reasons I have gotten so healthy. I do something with my clients called Thrive Time, which lasts between 10 to 15 minutes and we do it four days per week. It’s a combination of journalling, meditation, silence and affirmations and it’s through this thrive time that I have started to thrive.

If you’re over eating because of stress or anxiety or comfort, diet plans don’t fix that. You can’t fix comfort eating with a diet plan. You can’t be told what to eat, you know what to eat but we get scared of working on what we need to work on. Do you have the tools to manage stress, why are you stressed out, why do you feel anxiety? This is the stuff that takes longer to figure out, but once you have it figured out, you can learn to self soothe. Self soothing, for me,  is when you don’t need to look outside of yourself to feel better. When you crack this, comfort eating will no longer be needed in your life. You’ll realise it doesn’t serve you anymore and it doesn’t do anything for you anymore because you found a new way that makes you feel so good that doesn’t involve eating.

Strength training and water

Lifting weights three to four times per week will get you so fit and so healthy. Just working out four times per week for 30 minutes.  Lifting weights will get your metabolism nice and high, which means you’ll burn fat at rest, which means you’ll fit great in your clothes and feel fit and strong. Add in some walks for fresh air and stretching and you’ll be fit, strong and healthy.

A great bedtime and morning routine

When I figured out what kind of a bedtime and morning routine worked for me to enable me to grow and change as a person, I changed and I grew. Having a time in the evening time to go to bed at, the same time every night, doing small little rituals like putting your phone on Airplane Mode, getting into bed with a good book for 10 minutes, really bring about positive change to your life.

Realising that your bed is always going to be so tempting in the morning and that most of us  aren’t morning people, getting over that and then choosing to get up even when you’re not in the mood brings about real positive change.

I never want to get up when I get up, I always want to stay in bed. It’s a habit that I least like, but I do anyway. Being organised in the morning, getting up before you have to, having rituals like getting your workout in, your thrive time, drinking water, having a coffee, enjoying your shower will bring about so much positive change in your life. It’s difficult for me to describe just how much change these rituals will bring to your life because it’s so different for everybody but they’re all positive, that I can promise you.

Set up your own morning and bedtime routine what works for you you don’t need to follow anybody else’s. I used to try and follow other peoples and I never stuck with it because it was never my own. 

I hope you find this helpful. For me, life is great when I’m fit and healthy. I have spent too many years struggling with anxiety, stress, weight fluctuation and a deep sense of unhappiness. I love life now, I embrace life, I choose to surround myself with people who I trust and love.

Embrace YOUR journey, make a plan and decide how you are going to move forward. If I could recommend one thing is that it would be to take one action step right now to bring you closer to your goals. if you’ve never lifted weights before I put workouts for you to try out on my YouTube channel which you can subscribe to here and you can also enjoy my free healthy habits guide that I made for you as a gift to get you started on your journey.

All my love, Jessica Cooke

PS I’d love to hear your thoughts on this in the comment section below

 

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Weight loss

I Was Never Consistent Until I Implemented THIS! (Game-changer for Women Over 40)

 You don’t need to calorie count, diet or weigh your food or weigh yourself if you’re a woman over 40 who wants to get this, feel great in their clothes with tons of energy and positivity.

On this blog post, I’m going to share with you my five top tips to losing weight and feeling great in your clothes over the age of 40.

The biggest thing I want you to know is that you don’t need to go down the dieting route. You don’t need to do anything negative, like jumping up and down on the weighing scales, you don’t need to count your points, or use any source of tracker app to count or measure.

The key to feeling really good over the age of 40, is taking a look at the five pillars of your health and seeing where you can make small improvements every week, that will lead to big results for you.

So let’s take a look at those five pillars which are your sleep, your nutrition, your movement, your mental health and your water intake.

Let’s start with your movement.

I want to ask you a few questions.

How many workouts are you doing at the moment? How many walks are you getting at the moment? Are you lifting weights?

If the answer is yes to all of the above ,then you can do a big 10 out of 10 tick beside the movement part of your health.

If you’re not doing all of the above three, this may be the reason why you’re not seeing the results you wish to see.

Strength training is so important for you once you get over 40 and beyond.

Not only does it improve your bone density and increase your lean muscle mass, it also boosts your metabolism and helps you burn fat a rest, which in turn will get you feeling great in your clothes. Strength training/lifting weights is also really excellent for your mood and can really help give you that sense of achievement and fulfilment a few times per week.

If I was you, I would be doing strength training three times per week, along with a couple of walks and that would be your movement side of things taken care of.

If you don’t know where to start with the exercise, I’ve created a YouTube channel where I put up some of my workouts for free, for you, all you have to do is press play and get stuck in

Next up is the nutrition.

Again, a couple of questions for you. Do you eat breakfast lunch and dinner? Do you avoid refined sugar during the week? Are you over eating at mealtime? Are you over eating in general? Are you eating food after dinner? Are you drinking too much alcohol?. These are the questions you need to ask yourself. You don’t need to track your calories or use any form of tracker apps for you to know the answer to these questions.

The answer lies within you. Figure out where you could improve on the nutrition side of things, focus on one or two key actionable healthy habits to add to your week and focus on eliminating one habit that isn’t serving you and is causing you to gain weight. You have the answer to this yourself.

Now on to the water. It’s a really good idea for your mental health, and for your physical health to drink two litres of water every day.

On top of this looking at your sleep, or your rest as I prefer to say, so that doesn’t put any pressure on you getting to sleep, I recommend you take a look at your morning and your bedtime routine. Are you staying up very late? Are you struggling in the morning? These are two key areas I will take a look at. Don’t put pressure on the amount of hours sleep you are getting, look at it more of hours rest you were getting. 7-8 hours of rest at night time is ideal.

Last but definitely not least, feeling great in your clothes and getting fit all starts with a good mindset and taking care of your mental health. Sometimes it’s not that we need more advice on food, rather it is we need to give ourselves some space and time to do a little bit of journalling, or sitting in silence for a few minutes, or a little meditation in the day.

A diet plan or a tracker app won’t help you change your habits but journalling or simply sitting in silence for a few minutes every day will help change your habits.

Having a positive outlook on life, getting rid of negative people and influences in your life, loving yourself from the inside out, becoming grounded, centred and finding your inner peace will be so much more beneficial for you in the long run and help you feel great and fit great in your clothes, much more long-term than any diet plan will.

I hope you found this helpful, please share your thought s in the comments and before you go, have you figured out which Fitness Personality you are? You can do the quiz here!

To your success,

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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Fitness Tips, Weight loss

How To Start Getting Fit after 40.

 I’m talking to you, if you are currently sitting on the couch late at night, you’re eating shyte, your clothes are tight, you’re feeling uncomfortable in your clothes, you’ve done diets before and you don’t know what to do.

You’re stuck. You don’t know where to start, you’re feeling overwhelmed.

Life is busy, you might be going through a setback, and you just don’t know where to start. But what you do know is that you want to lose weight and you want to feel good in your clothes, and I don’t even want to say the December word, but you want to feel good for that period of the year, and you’re concerned now that you’ve left it too late. So I’m talking to you, if this is you.

The absolute first place to start is the exercise. Everything good comes from exercise. Everything. Better food choices, you’re more likely to be sleepy at nighttime, which is really good. You’re more likely to get to bed earlier, you’re more likely to wake up earlier. Not to mention the fact that, okay, the proper exercise if you’re a woman over 40 is low impact interval training, strength training, core work. We know that. That’s really good from a physical perspective because it builds lean muscle, it boosts your metabolism.

But if you’re overweight now or you’re feeling uncomfortable in your clothes, it’s not that you’re going to, in my opinion, start the workouts for those reasons, even though that’s absolutely brilliant. It’s that if you start with the workouts, everything else will naturally improve. It’s Joan versus Lisa. Lisa is  like, “No, no, no, no. I’m just going to really focus on restricting my food, and calorie counting, and I’m going to just focus on not eating bad food. I’m only going to eat good food.”

So she wakes up and she tries to eat healthy all day long, but she hasn’t changed her mindset at all. She hasn’t gotten any feel good release of endorphins out. She hasn’t changed her state from exercise. So she’s relying on willpower alone, and motivation alone, and focusing on the food so much. And you know what happens when you solely focus on the food. All you can think about is more food. And soon you start to go it, “Feck it.” And you either go way too restrict-ey, which means then you start to overeat, or you just pack the whole thing in.

Whereas if you start with the exercise and say to yourself, “Do you know what? The way I’m eating now, ”I’m not going to really analyse it too much. I’m just going to add in the workouts to my life.” Every single thing will change in your life for the better. Now, I know that’s a massive statement, but if you are doing the right type of exercise, not too hard, not too easy, and you’re feeling really good after your 30 minute workout, and you’re like, “I’m on fire, I can face any setback or challenge that comes my way,” you’re not going to go straight to the couch and eat a packet of crisps. You’re much less likely after your lunch to go and have biscuits with your cup of tea. You’re not going to want to, most of the time, ruin the buzz, ruin the feel good feeling of how amazing it feels to be healthy.

So that’s where I would start, and that’s where I tell everybody that ever asks me to start.

You start with the exercise and you let the exercise do its lovely work. And then when you’re in that lovely, consistent place of working out three times per week, just for 30 minutes, and you’re doing a couple of walks, 30 minute walks, and that’s a 10 out of 10 ticked on your movement, you can say to yourself, “Okay, what do I actually need to tackle”?

Am I eating too much at dinner? Am I eating after dinner? Am I leaving long gaps in the day, and then eating like a mofo at nighttime?” And you can say to yourself, “Yeah actually, I’m eating too much after dinner. So I wonder what would happen if I exercised and just for the time being cut out eating after dinner.” You know what? I’m telling you, you get brilliant results and you get them in a really non stressy, restrictive, diet-ey way.

You’d be living your life, having the craic with your family, going out for meals at the weekend, having drinks or whatever it is that you like to do. But you’d be working out consistently getting a couple of walks in, building lean muscle mass, getting your metabolism high, burning fat at rest, feeling amazing from your exercise, feeling like a successful person because you are, you’re being successful with exercise, and not eating after dinner.

And then, after a couple of weeks when the exercise is still making you feel amazing, you go, ” Do you know what? I am loving this. I’m loving not eating after dinner. Is there anything else that I can do? I’ll do one more thing.” And then you can say, “You know what? I actually leave long gaps between meals. So I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to not eat after dinner for most days of the week, during the week. The weekdays. Work out consistently, and I’m going to focus on having a really good breakfast, lunch, and dinner.” And guys, before you know it, you’re in brilliant shape, and you’ve done it the kind way to yourself, and you’ve done it through fitness. And that’s actually my mission statement. It’s to empower you to transform your life through fitness.

I hope you found this blog post helpful. If you did, I would love you to share it with a friend If you would like to try some of my free workouts, download my free fat burning workout series, and I’m telling you, you may just really enjoy them, or else you can subscribe to my free newsletter that goes straight into your inbox. All you have to do is click this link and don’t forget to say hi. Have a really great day.

Go out and smash the day. All my love.

 Jessica Cooke 

 

 

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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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