Let’s be honest, starting to live a healthy lifestyle can have its challenges.  The biggest one is mindset.  Unless you have decided this is what you want to do and are 100 percent committed it may only last a month or just a few weeks.

Once you start within the first few weeks you have more energy, you’re sleeping better, and you’re more passionate and organized with food.  You are glowing with the excitement of changing for the better and best of all you see results in measurements and clothes starting to feel more comfortable which gives you an additional boost in confidence.

So what happens next . . . there are two ways this usually goes.  1. People around you don’t support or take an interest in your new healthy lifestyle and mindset and/or are even negative about it.  It gets you down and you start to feel unmotivated which generally ends up with you stopping and although for a while you feel bad life goes back to the way things were before, lacking energy, feeling slightly down and just a tad blahhh. Or 2. Your friends and family see the amazing changes and hop on the healthy lifestyle bandwagon.  They want more energy and to feel and look healthy as well.

At Sweat and Inspire we have created a community where we praise and encourage each other to be the healthiest versions of ourselves.  Now let’s be clear here …. We are about making healthier choices, reducing salt and sugar but we do not count macros or focus completely on clean eating.  We talk about food that’s good for your soul and how moving will help through those tough days whether it’s that bully at work or illness.  If you only do one thing in your day MOVE!  I can’t stress this enough . . . it can be a mass gym session or a stroll around the block . . . just move!

I am a blessed personal trainer who can say all my clients are motivated and committed. They rock up and go hard.  They also engage with each other in our private TEAM SWEAT Facebook page, sharing ideas, encouraging words, sharing results and being the best support team to each other.  They all inspire and motivate me as well as each other.

Their healthy lifestyle mindset doesn’t end at the private Facebook page as often friends and family join as clients or I hear stories of partners/friends/family losing weight and joining in during home workouts.  As a personal trainer when I hear that family and friends are being encouraging or even stepping up and joining in the sense of relief that this person is now set up to succeed and excitement that this client has been such an inspiration that others now want the same feelings and results.

I encourage buddy sessions however there are negatives and positives to these. The negatives are you lose more workout time during weigh in days, the sessions aren’t all focused on you and sometimes compromises due to ability need to be made.  However the positives outweigh the negatives and these are you have a friend, a buddy who is going to inspire you, who will encourage you to go to each session and go your hardest, who will help you get back on track when you fall off and will quieten the sound of the haters.

I have many buddy sessions each week and there are some pictures below of family’s, couples, mothers and daughters, friends who work hard together to be the healthiest and happiest versions of themselves.  So if you want to do one thing this week for yourself.  Grab a friend and go for a walk, maybe lock it in for a weekly catch up.  You never know who you will inspire x

X Shelly