Venus Index Workout

“A person with a clear purpose will make progress on even the roughest road. A person with no purpose will make no progress even on the smoothest road.” –Thomas Carlyle

Be Ambitious

Part of goal setting is deciding what you want and then having enough ambition to take steps to fulfill your purpose. People who avoid failure are more focused on protecting themselves from failure or the embarrassment of not completing the steps. On the other end of the spectrum is over ambition, setting unattainable or highly improbable goals, or trying to take risky short cuts to achieve over aggressive goals. In the middle are achievers who have a strong desire to accomplish things important or gain success from difficult tasks. Where do you fall in this spectrum?

In my last article I wrote about moving forward after mistakes. It’s hard right after making mistakes to keep going. Sometimes it requires a short period to reflect and regroup. Being fearful can cause you to procrastinate, give less effort, or even self-sabotage (FYI John Barban talks about self-sabotage in the Anything Goes Diet).

Have you ever found yourself in a diet yo-yo? If so, you probably have a sabotage point somewhere near the bottom of the yo-yo and this is important to recognize so you can move forward or as John says “instead of backing up go full steam ahead so that you never see that number again”. I like that. Full steam ahead!

Sometimes It Takes Longer

Just like anything else in life sometimes things take longer than you’d like. About 15 years ago I’d gone through the police academy with my husband and applied for a job with the Sheriff’s department the same time he did. The process to get hired in law enforcement is especially strict in California and only 1 out of 50 pass the full battery of tests.

During the evaluation process at the very end (after five months of testing and extensive background tests) right at the point before they hand you the acceptance letter I learned that I did not pass. This failure was devastating to me. I had to regroup and be happy for my husband who did pass and give him my full support for the career he was starting. I had to accept that the time was not right for me.

Life is not always fair.

As I motored on with my life and retired from my software engineering job I’d realized how far I’d come in dealing with some personal issues. I had a feeling I’d finally faced enough of the issues that I might pass the law enforcement hiring processes if I tried again.

But my academy certificates had expired and I had to start the police academy again from the very beginning. This was daunting because the academy is like a mini boot camp chalk full of tests. If you fail any one test you get one chance for remediation and then if you don’t pass you are kicked out. This happens even if it’s the last test on the last day of class; all is lost. Looming overhead after the academy graduation were another six months of hiring tests and still the one testing at the end that could be my sabotage point.

I moved forward, full steam ahead, and graduated from the academy with higher honors compared to the first time through. I faced the interview at the end with the very same doctor that failed me the first time. It was actually a fun interview and I had a feeling I would pass but I had to wait two weeks until I received the answer.

I passed!

It was a huge victory for me. It meant I had dealt with some serious issues in my life and won. I defeated the failure I’d carried around for ten years. I got the acceptance letter and the honor of wearing the badge and serving my community. To this day I’m extremely proud when I put on that uniform and strap on all that gear because I know how much I had to overcome to get to that point.

You Can View It as a Challenge

You might have a similar daunting road ahead of you with weight loss or a situation in your life that you want to change. You can view it as a challenge or a threat that leads to embarrassment of failure. You can associate effort on the demanding tasks with dedication, commitment, and involvement or view it as overloading and stressful. The choice for your mindset is yours.

What will you do?

On the other hand you can become over ambitious and set too high a goal or an unrealistic goal. You might then try to take short cuts to get there. Some of us do that with eating too low to try and make weight loss happen faster and it ends up backfiring. Sometimes all you really need to do is practice for a while until you have enough skill to know how to set an appropriate goal for yourself.

You Can Adjust Your Goals

You can always change your goals as you move along. I changed my goals several times after joining the Venus Index community. When I started my weight loss journey my only goal was to get down to a size 8 because that was the smallest I’d ever been as an adult. Then I changed my goals to match the Venus Index “Golden Ratio” metrics.

As I continued to lose weight I got down to a size 2-4 and got frustrated because I could not seem to get my waist down to the golden ideal.

It took me a long time to realize that I really don’t need to worry about it. I became fit and lean and I have a thick torso because of my years of heavy lifting. I needed to know that my waist wasn’t fat and the DEXA scan gave me that. The data showed that the bulk of my 11% body fat is in my arms and upper legs and that my abdominal area was 0% body fat. So I finally learned to accept the fact that this is how I am, this is the shape of my body, and it is okay. So I have learned to maintain my shape by looking in the mirror and how my clothes fit. It’s freedom to not have to rely on the scale or other metrics anymore.

Pick Realistic Goals

I would like to have a thinner waist but it would mean giving up heavy lifting and abdominal work which I love. For now I choose to maintain right where I am. At any time in the future I can change my goals again if I want to. First I would research to find out if it is a realistic goal and then I would take whatever steps are necessary to achieve it.

How Clear Is Your Purpose?

Tips for Goal Setting:

Decide what you want
Start small but keep going
Believe in yourself
Write down your goals
Set small goals and accomplish them
Do everything you can to stop procrastinating
Dream big
Set up your environment for success
Set long term goals and short term goals (with realistic time frames)
Don’t make a big deal out of each mistake
Research to find out if your goal is attainable
Adjust goals as needed
Get the right tools
Enjoy the journey
Plan ahead
Ask advice from people you respect (even if you don’t like them)
Give yourself rewards for achievements (not food)

Clarify your goals

It’s important to know where you operate in the ambition spectrum so you can make necessary changes. If you are over ambitious what steps do you need to take?

If you procrastinate or self-sabotage what steps do you need to take? Is your goal realistic? These are things you can think about as you move forward in your journey. You can adjust your goals as you move along.

Once you set your goals, determine the steps you need to take, have fun and enjoy the journey.

It is never too late to follow your dreams!

-Ro

Today we have an interview with Carrie Gleason. Carrie was third in the last Venus Index Contest in the Open Category.

Check out her photos:

This is how you take perfect pictures for the Venus Index Contest.

How to Work Out to Get an Ideal Body

When Carrie first saw her pictures she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. She literally asked herself whether that’s really her. And that happens to a lot of people after a transformation. Your body changes faster than your mind. It’ll actually take a while for you to accept and believe it’s really you, especially if you were used to something completely different for the past twenty years.

Carrie always felt confident in her clothes and felt like she looked good, but she wasn’t that comfortable in a bikini. This is a pretty big difference. Clothes can help you show your body, but also hide certain areas that would be exposed otherwise. You could say it feels ‘safe’ in clothes.

If you are not a Victoria’s Secret model who is used to spending her days in lingerie in front of a camera, you can go years wearing the same clothes not realizing you have gained some weight.

And like Carrie said, she wasn’t overweight, but she just didn’t have that slim waist and toned body she has now. The Venus Index finally gave her confidence to feel great and sexy in a bikini again.

She always focused on weight and didn’t think of specific measurements or exact measurable goals.

In her own words: “That’s what I love on the Venus Index, it’s not about the weight, it’s all about the proportions and shape of my body”. And that is the point, you can build a body that is ideal and attainable for your height, instead if trying to attain the body of a genetic freak fitness model.

Carrie loved the fact that she can basically design her body and use specific workout structures to reshape it. The Venus Index is about getting to a specific, measurable goal that comes from a mathematical formula that is based on your height NOT weight.

She always felt she needed to improve a bit, but thought that the best way to get in shape is by spending countless hours doing cardio and hundreds of crunches.

In high school she did sports like every other girl and since she wasn’t exceptional in any of them she decided to start exercising to keep her weight in a healthy range.

She started going to the gym, but really to do just running on a treadmill and stair-master. She thought that lifting weights would cause her to grow and become big and bulky.

There is this common misconception that lifting weights will somehow turn you into some freak and you will look like a female version of hulk or like some female steroid enhanced bodybuilder.

That is not what really happens. A woman’s body is different from a man’s and you can’t build the same muscle size as men even if you wanted. Female bodybuilders who desire the same muscular development as a man start taking drugs to take it to that level…and that is where it gets ugly.

For you weight lifting is just a chance to tone your body into its natural and most attractive and healthy shape. This is where the Venus Index comes into play.

The most attractive look is the hourglass shape. This realization probably doesn’t come as anything new to you.

Well, the best advice is usually the one you already know.

Take a look at your training, do you train in way that supports this fact?

When Carrie got over her disbelief that “weights equal big muscles”, she approached it from the wrong starting point. She did what all the magazines told her to do, training one muscle group per day the way advanced male bodybuilders would train.

Your Workout is really a tool for you to tone and shape your body, if you want to achieve the ideal, you need to pursue the hourglass shape and this requires a specific workout structure.

Like Carrie said, now she is lifting weights for a reason, not just randomly throwing them in however she likes. The workout suddenly has a purpose!

The next thing she had to get over was the ab training. In the past her belief was always “train your abs, make them bigger” and the fat will suddenly melt away and you will slim down. This is common fallacy, think of it this way, would you make your biceps bigger to make them leaner?

Doubt that, so why would abs be any different?

In order to have slim feminine abs, you need to look at your diet, uncover the challenges and find a way to lose fat.

How to Approach Diet to Get the Best Body Possible

In the past Carrie could be diagnosed with Orthorexia. She tried the Atkin’s Diet, she was a vegetarian for a while, then she went vegan, and then she ended up eating only raw and organic food.

When she found Venus Index and its diet protocols, her husband went literally into “Oh God, what next” mode. But this time she didn’t go to extremes.

There is really only so much stress you can handle at once and with starting a contest and doing strength training, restricting yourself from food choices and what your body craves could leave you in a bad place.

This is the beauty of the calories in and calories out idea of Venus Index.

You can have anything you want, you just limit the amount and take what you crave.

Carrie followed the Eat Stop Eat protocol and fasted two times a week for 24 hours. She basically stopped eating one day at 6 pm and started eating again at 6 pm the next day. She would fast at work and keeping herself occupied with several tasks, not thinking about food and not being in close range to a fridge. On the days she wouldn’t fast she would follow the Anything Goes Diet approach and basically ate what she wanted, but kept the calories low.

As far as the food choices goes, nothing special here, Carrie enjoyed tuna with eggs, coffee with cream, chocolate and other usual foods like anyone else. She didn’t even pay much attention to protein.

The biggest realization was that she can just walk away form food and not harm her metabolism, but quite the opposite and not feel guilty after eating chocolate, because she no longer viewed certain foods as bad.

Now she feels confident and more attractive and her new challenge is figuring out how to stay at maintenance and keep the perfect Venus body all year round.

This when you want to keep the pendulum swinging as little as possible and use stuff like nano diets (fasting) and mini diets (dieting hard one week of the month) to keep your waist slim, weight down and hourglass shape most defined.

Take Home Message from Carrie:

Everybody should enter the contest. It motivates you and gives you focus for 12 weeks, you have a start and a finish
You can go totally covert, only her husband knew what she was doing and even he didn’t know about everything
Get involved in the community, that is what Carrie relied on the most, she even read through the past winners’ blogs to get more inspiration and motivation
Don’t tell people what you are “going to do”, but rather tell them “what you did” instead
Be aware of maintenance and that it requires a different kind of effort
Pictures give you more objectivity than a mirror
It’s about body re-composition not about how much you weigh
Don’t expect to gain pounds of muscle quickly, it takes time to build muscle and shape your body

Words & phrases mentioned in the interview:

Alisha’s interview – From her first contest and from her second contest
VT – Venus Transformation – Stands for the contest that is held at VenusIndex.com three times a year
Venus Index Workout – Workout that Carrie followed to get to the contest shape
Podcast archive – Podcasts that helped Carrie with getting in shape and staying motivated all the way to the end of the contest
ESE – Eat Stop Eat – Diet and lifestyle protocol that will help you stay on track with your weight loss while enjoying social eating events at a same time
AGD – Anything Goes Diet – Diet protocol to help you gradually lose weight week after week
Venus Index Community – You will never find a more outgoing and friendly community then this one

Listen to the interview here:

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