journey to health and well-being

Does life feel heavy? Does it all come with a cost?

Last Saturday while teaching spin class I found myself talking about the price of life. The cost that we feel when life is a burden, when the road to travel is not clear, the path covered up and our days are filled with have tos' instead of want tos'. I remember those days, my heart, my head and my body all felt heavy. Everything was measured by what it cost me - perhaps the price was paid in energy, maybe heartbreak, failure, disappointment and no doubt I felt like I kept paying into the pot but was never able to take from it. Whatever life brought me I noticed the sacrifice. Live like that l long enough and the chip on your shoulder becomes more than you can bear. Fast forward 15 years from then to now and nothing in my life feels like a price being paid, I don't notice any sacrifice and I would describe my life as one filled with joy. It almost feels strange to write that as I know that I am coming out of what might be two of the hardest years of my life. I have paid through the nose, been hurt tremendously and have so much that I am responsible for that if I felt the heaviness of it I know it could crush me. But I don't feel its' weight. Instead I feel its' buoyancy. How can that be? I believe it is because I am living out my purpose. Earch one of us was born with certain strengths, characteristics, traits and talents. I was 30 before I began to discover what my strengths were and where they would be most useful. Today, at 42 the path is certainly more clear that 12 years ago, but I am not sure it has been fully revealed. And even though it is not fully clear where I am headed, the fact that I feel no weight from the responsibility of life tells me that I am on the right path. Don't get me wrong, life is HARD,it is fatiguing and there are many days where I feel like throwing in the towel. But for every hard day there are 10 days where I am filled with passion, desire and fortitude. Days where my feet hit the floor and the song "put me in coach I am ready to play" runs through my head. Days where a cement block could be dropped on my head and I would say "I'm okay!", and would keep plugging along. 

For me training clients, teaching classes and coaching people through a life transformation means way more than losing weight, way more than removing the barriers and moving through life a healthier version of you, it means finding you... weeding through the enormous garden of life to find  where your path begins, feeling strong and confident to take the first step and then teaching your body, mind and spirit to endure the journey. You must first  learn that it  YOU who creates the energy to fuel the passion, to dream the dream and to then follow through with that purpose.

Do not worry if your path is still covered up. Keep renewing your energy daily, striving for the healthiest version of you.  I know that what has been planned for you is big, so big that you will need the strongest version of you for the journey. Ready yourself, polish your coat of armor and your path will be revealed! 

anything (and everything) is possible

Okay... so someone has to win right? There are 6500 entries in the "Your own show" contest that Oprah is putting to select someone to host their own tv show. 1300 people are in the category that I submitted my audition tape for yesterday. It is the health and wellbeing category. SO I have a 1 in 1300 chance to have my own show!!

I figure I have better odds of winning this than the lottery... One of the questions they ask when you submit your audition is what is the biggest life lesson you have learned and my answer was that ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE!

13 years ago I thought NOTHING was possible... I heard that in my head over and over. But with years of practice I have quieted the voice of doubt and increased the decibel level of the voice that screams "everything is possible". 

It doesn't come easy, changing your beliefs, but is does happen. It happens step by step, pedal stroke by pedal stroke, heart beat by heart beat... What is your dream?

A tv show that allows me to help millions of people feel great is my dream-- but I need your help to make it happen. I need all the help I can get.. so if you don't mind-- VOTE- you can vote every 5 minutes if you'd like and I wouldn't mind at all...Mary Beth's Oprah's audition

Here's to a dream, and asking for help to get it...

proud moments

So I can't stop thinking about one of my clients, Jacqui. She is getting married this year and wanted to feel more confident, more comfortable in her own skin. She came to Revolution in Feb, began training with me in March and has lost 14.85 inches so far! She is doing great... but beyond the physical changes I can tell that Jacqui is making great strides in dealing with stress and in some difficulties that life has presented.

I look at Jacqui and I see a strikingly beautiful person, but I know she sees herself differently. Sometimes a person will make a comment about our looks and that comment will stay with us forever. Those words can ring louder in our heads than 1000 compliments, and sometimes we carry these comments with us for too long. I can tell Jaqui is quieting those words and that they are being replace with others.

While filming for Oprah I asked Jacqui to talk on tape about the changes she is making and it was one of my proudest moments as a trainer. She said, "Mary Beth isn't changing my life, she is teaching me to change my life"! This was the best thing I could have ever heard, because I now know that Jacqui will carry these changes with her for the rest of her life. If I was changing her then she would always need me, and once without me she would start to slide back in to her old habits and beliefs.  I am so glad that she realizes it is coming from within, that she always had it and always will!

Voices in your head

I am hoping today was a break through day for two of my clients/friends. We spent some time talking about the road(s) they are traveling. Both, in recent weeks, have listened to influencers in their lives and I think both would agree that those influencers persuaded them to try something different, for exercise that is.  Both had their doubts about taking a friends advice, but took it anyway. Sad to say that they both took some steps backwards in their lives and in their pursuit of a healthy weight and fit body.

Happens all the time, why? It all boils down to a trust issue, and I don't mean trusting a friend or family member, but trusting themselves. They both  had doubts, but didn't trust their own decision making abilities. Didn't trust that they knew themselves better than this friend, didn't trust that the path they were on was leading them in the right direction, basically didn't trust anything about themselves.

After a little review of the last two weeks both agreed that if they had trusted themselves they would not have taken a side-step, or a few steps back.

Rebuilding ourselves emotionally, physically and spiritually takes time, and a leap of faith. Down deep inside you do know what's best for you, it is just a matter of hearing that voice above voices that come from the outside. Down deep, you know you can and will be successful. IT is just a matter of letting your own voice be the one that guides you and your decisions, not the voice of others who have not lived in your shoes day after day after day. Listen to your voice and repeat it over and  over  in your head until  it is loud and clear!

The beginning

We are less than a week away from the beginning of the Fit Revolution 10 week weight loss program. We have another amazing group of participants. The start is always filled with mixed emotions, for them and for me. They are either filled with hope and excitement or have already convinced themselves that real change, sustainable change is not meant for them and they are stuck. But I know if they truly believed that they would not have signed up. Some are willing to be patient as change takes place over time, some feel desperate.
Their emotions are all over the place, as are mine. We are asking them to trust us, to give us their bodies, their minds and their spirits for 10 weeks. My emotions are always mixed at the beginning because I will never forget what it feels like to feel weighted down by my body and my spirit. Taking body measurements and performing vo2 and resting metabolic tests on the participants as well as reviewing their medical histories and reading over what they hope to achieve through the program is often like taking off a band aid for me. I feel a little lump in my throat, my eyes fill with tears and my mind goes back to my own beginning. Lucky for me I had no idea what body mass index was and what body fat percent was considered obese, If I had I might never had tried to change. If the mountain seems to big we can convince ourselves that staying on the bottom is best.Some may say I can let go of those memories, since I am no longer "that girl" I need to let them go. I on the other hand feel they serve a purpose. I don't live in the memory long, a moment here and there that remind me of where I was and where many of these wonderful participants are.  It not only guides me to move forward with compassion, for I have walked in the same shoes, but it also reminds me that without the kind words and motivation of one person, Barb, 13 years ago, I too would have stayed at the bottom of the mountain. And so we begin...stayed tuned for updates as well as the finale of the Biggest Loser competition- Revolution style!

Stroke? What stroke?

Tonight was a dream come true, one of my clients told me tonight that she had just received the greatest compliment ever... She had just come from her doctor who informed Amy that she had even strength in her right and left arms, shoulders, back and chest muscles. Now to the average person that might not mean a whole lot, but to Amy, it means ALOT! Amy is a stroke survivor, and most strokes attack one side of the body, often times rendering that side incapable of performing normal functions until years of therapy are under one's belt. For Amy to be told by her doctor that she was even in strength is amazing, but so is Amy!
The stroke wasn't the biggest set back Amy has had, there have been others, but she keeps on keeping on, taking it one bicep curl at a time, or one revolution of the spin bike pedal. Amy and I are here to tell you that you have far fewer limitations than you believe. And it's time to set them aside.

Amy -- not only do you have even strength as noted by your doctor, but I sometimes can't tell what side your stroke affected!  You are amazing, thanks for being a source of constant inspiration!

Life is hard

No matter who you are, where you live, how much money you make or size you wear there is one thing for certain, life is hard and it doesn't get any easier. Yes, somethings get easier, but others become more difficult, so we are right back there where we started, life is hard.  No one said it was going to be easy, check your birth certificate and if by chance yours has "EASY LIFE" stamped on it then head to the nearest lottery retailer and load up on powerball tickets, cause the big one is coming your way. But the other 99.9999999999999% of us sharing this earth, pull up your big girl or big boy underwear, cause it ain't getting any easier.
So now what, hide from the challenge? Quiver at the thought of hard work? Start to retreat from the goals that you set but didn't realize that it would take effort, day in and day out to get there. HELL NO! Find some gusto and get to it!
Every day that you further your own health and well being (meaning you eat right and exercise) you are making your old life easier, so why doesn't life seem easier then? Because in your new life you demand more... You give more, you expect more, the return is greater, the investment bigger.
I would be embarrassed to tell you what my goals were 15 years ago--- and if you know me you know that I am willing to share almost everything... and not much makes me blush. But I wouldn't tell you what my goals were back then... mostly because today they don't seem like they were really goals. I just got up everyday when I had too I waited to the very last moment) and shuffled through life, pretty sure you could actually hear my feet dragging everywhere I went. I opted out of many things that others were doing, mostly because it just seemed too hard, or  I was too afraid.  

And life was hard then, and its hard now. But its hard now because I actually have BIG goals, that require BIG energy and BIG dreams and BIG thoughts.  When I was BIG being BIG took my energy and allowed nothing else to be BIG except for fear and doubt. Once I freed myself of the weight and got a grip on my health, BIG things happened. I am not saying that one's size determines their ability to reach goals, I am saying that for me the way I felt about myself and my weight did not allow me to even set real goals, take risks or try new things. Because I wasn't comfortable in my own skin I couldn't step outside of my comfort zones and I often shot things done BEFORE even trying them.Life is hard now, even with the physical endurance and strength that proper exercise and nutrition give me. But it is hard because I do 100 more things a day now than I used to.

It is sort of like this, when you first start weight  training bicep curls might seem really hard with 5lbs weights in each hand. To get stronger you keep upping the weight you are using, and maybe today you are curling 15lb weights instead of 5lb weights. And today, just as yesterday, it is hard. Want to see what easy would be like, go back and pick up those 5lb weights, do a set of 12 curls and you won't notice the weight at all. As a matter of fact within a few reps you realize that easy isn't always better, in fact there was no real sense of accomplishment with the easier weights and you may even realize that you wasted a little time with the easy weights.  You may come to realize that after lifting 15lbs weights 5 lbs weights do nothing for you,  you may realize that setting a goal to move those light weights 36 times was boring and perhaps not even a real goal. After a few reps you might notice that there was no purpose to lifting the 5lb weights when you can do 15 and that you gave very little and  in return received almost nothing...  perhaps it was a meaningless way to spend your time. So what's better, doing nothing, changing nothing and having 5 pounds wipe you out, or progressing our way up to 15lbs and having that be hard?

You know my answer is the latter of the two, want to know why? Pick up some weights and you'll find out...

Life's hard... let's move on, no holding back, no fear, no taking yourself out of the came the night before it starts. Show up for the start, step out of your comfort zone and you may just find yourself comfortable in your own skin and in a hard but great life!

Rejection

I don't think I am wrong in assuming that most of us (if not all of us) fear rejection. On some level, somehow, somewhere the fear of having our thoughts, our love, our efforts and our talents handed back to us with a "no thanks, you are not needed here" stamp resides within. I believe it is a very natural feeling, one that is oh so human and since I am oh too human, this fear seems to be part of my genetic code.

The fact that I have this fear is not important, what role this fear plays in my life is. Yesterday I reflected on the fact that life is hard, and that sometimes we shy away from dreams, goals, realities and limit our exposure because of the difficulty that comes with them.  But I am also aware that at times we are not held back by the work, or the difficulty, but by the fear of rejection.

Rejection is never easy... but I find myself able to recover from it faster these days. Not because I am fitter than I was 13 years ago, not because I resist fatigue better, but because physical strength has given me the energy to try more things. And the more things you try the more rejection you open yourself up to. For me the more times I am rejected the more I learn to talk and walk myself out of that rejection and can honestly say I believe that the rejection has brought me closer to my true path in life,  closer to using the gifts I have been given in the way they were meant to be used.

I try to not even take it as rejection, just as a redirection. If I was rejected I know that I was not on path... that was not the place or the time for what I have to offer.

Yes, it is easier said than done and I am the first to admit that the re-direction comes with tears at times, and often with confusion and sadness. But that passes and within moments I am back seeking out the place, the time and the people with whom I was meant to share myself. And I know when I get there, it will have been worth every single re-direction!

My latest attempt at sharing my passion and my gifts was handed back to me in the form of silence... UGH that is horrible! I entered a video into Oprah's contest in which one person will win their very own tv show. I worked hard on the submission, and thanks to the talents and help of a dear friend, the video turned out great! One week after submitting it I got a call from Oprah's people! They said my video was an absolute standout, they loved it and wanted to learn more about me. They were selecting 40 people from the 10,000 videos submitted to fly to LA for auditions and I was "on their radar". They asked for pictures and my bio... and reasons why I thought they should pick me. I sent it all to them and was told " we only call back with good news". I barely slept for a week! My head did flip flops from the anticipation and excitement.

Six days of waiting and the phone wasn't ringing... Why does a phone NOT ringing sound louder that a phone that IS ringing? I commented to my mom that this felt like the week before prom when no one called to ask me to go with them! But I was wrong... This was nothing like that... At 16 I needed the phone to ring to feel approved of, today I don't, Can't say that I didn't cry when I knew that the contest was over and they didn't pick me, I did. As a matter of fact, I am still a little sad... but in the end I recognize that I wasn't participating in the contest to gain the approval of OPRAH and her gang... but to help people.  I don't need  a team of TV people to help me do it, not this week anyway. So as I redirect my thoughts from what could have been to what is, I realize that I was not rejected and I feel no fear - I am doing what I am supposed to do and that just wasn't the best outlet for it.

Onward I go, rejection and all! Thinking too much about it will only feed the fear... so here is to starving the fear and feeding personal and professional growth!

My first pair of running shoes

The other day my mind drifted back some 13 years to my first pair of running shoes. I had just quit smoking and wanted to run... Actually I wanted to be an athlete. Funny thought for a smoker, huh? Truth is I had been chasing that dream (from the couch) my whole life. I grew up in a family full of boys, very athletic boys and strong, but slim boys... Then there as me, pudgy and slow. I am pretty sure that most of my "athletic career" (grade school sports) was due in part to my extremely generous father who made sure each of my teams had new uniforms and a gym bag to match. My dad has always gone all out, making sure none of his kids missed out on anything and doing everything in his power to make our dreams come true.

While I made sports teams, I rarely played. I sat on the bench day dreaming about the game in which I was called into action and in my head I always made the winning basket. But in reality it was my athletically gifted brothers who made those shots and while I cheered as loud as I could for them, I secretly wondered why I was not so gifted.

Fast forward to 1998 and my first pair of running shoes. (I knew so little about exercise back then that all my decisions on athletic apparel were based solely on color and style.) They were royal blue adidas and I loved them because they did not make my feet look fat. I had no idea that they were trail running shoes, and it didn't really matter. All that mattered is that when I looked at them, they looked fast. I was slow, but they were fast!

I wish I still had those shoes- as smelly and dirty as they were. They hold a special place in my heart for it was in them that I felt free. I slipped on those shoes and started running from all the pain and the hurt that had built up inside of me for decades. I realize now that I also tried to run from the shame. At the age of 30 I hadn't amounted to much, starting my life over after a horrible first marriage, I was at ground zero. I was trapped in the feeling the shame of a failed marriage, the shame of my obese body and the shame of "not measuring up".  But when put on those shoes and headed out the door, all of the pain and shame slipped away.

For a year I ran from it all, most of the time with tears welling up in my eyes as my feelings rose to the surface and were lifted from my heart.  I can honestly say I felt better after each and every run.

It was hard, the running, but it was freeing, well worth the sweat and the tears. Somewhere in the midst of the  miles I stopped running from the life I didn't want to the one I did. I  have been running for 13 years now - and for 12 of them I have been running towards something instead of away from it. And while some days I still have tears well up in my eyes as one foot and then another strike the pavement, I know that I am the athlete I dreamed of being.

Races, games, competition, scores, playing time, winning baskets and goals are not what athlete's are made of, not in my book anyway.  I believe we are all athletes and we are all gifted. As long as we are putting one foot in front of the other asking our body, our mind and our spirit to grow stronger, then we are winning the game.

Other 42 year olds might find immense satisfaction and joy in a new car, a new house, a raise, promotion, etc... I get the thrill of a lifetime every 4 months when I buy a new pair of running shoes. It is a gratifying moment each and every time. I buy new shoes because I wore out the last ones. I know each worn out pair has around 200 miles in them and I as recycle the old pairs my mind drifts back over the successes brought about by those shoes. I would keep all of my retired running shoes if I had the space, I am proud of how worn out the treads are and how dirty the miles made them. And as I pull out of the box the new pair I don't think about how they make me look, but how great they are going to make me feel. Fast or slow still to be determined in these new shoes, but inside of them lies miles and miles of possibilities!

Relying on the spirit of others to find your own

In the midst of building a new website about my journey to a healthy life I came across a number of pictures like this one

This is me back in 1999 at my first triathlon. I have many other pictures of myself at either the start or finish line of an event that I completed in honor of someone who was suffering. Most of those I ran in honor of had/have cancer and were/are fighting with grace and determination to overcome the hurdles that life has placed in front of them.

I have had my own hurdles, and they dampened my spirit, buried my self-esteem and left me feeling as if my life wasn't going to be a great one. When I first started running, cycling and swimming I know that I was trying to leave something behind, my suffering and I think sometimes I was trying to run fast enough to leave myself behind. I was like Forrest Gump, the more mileage I covered the better I felt. Mileage adds up, sometimes in the form of fatigue, soreness and even in the form of blisters. Back then I wanted reasons for my suffering, in life and in exercise- so I began to run for others.  I ran holding signs, wearing their names on my clothing and letting their spirit fill my eyes with tears as each step brought me closer to the finish line. I can not think of one finish line that has not filled my eyes with tears and filled my heart with joy. Although the events  were all seperate it is easy for me to see that if you tie them all together they will lead you right to the present day me. 

Somewhere between that first triathlon and the finish line at Ironman I  started running for me. I still do the best I can to support others,  raise money for charity and carry the memory of others with me in every mile, but now I run for me. I am not sure I would have made it through 10 months of grueling training if it wasn't somehow making me whole and lifting my spirit. While others can inspire you, cheer you on, support you, push you and thank you for your efforts, they can not make you whole. Only you can!

Exercising for an event (wedding, high school reunion, charity, etc)  can and will help you meet short term goals, but typically they do not keep you in it for the long  haul. That is where honoring your own spirit and doing it for your own self is a must.  You do not need a reason other than yourself to take time for exercise daily. You are the only reason that you need and you are worth every bit of fitness and well being that you stand to gain from the minutes you spend on you. Keep helping others, but don't ever be afraid to help yourself or honor yourself, short term and long term. Run, ride , swim, lift weights etc. for you... that is how you will keep with it long past that high school reunion , long after that charity event. Move for health, move for happiness and move with purpose-- you! You will find what you are looking for