Health Coach | Speaker | Writer | Welcome to my digital diary! I'm here to help you blend life & fitness to find your health & happy! Thank you for being part of my family & allowing me to add value to your journey!
I was staring at a terribly unflattering close-up of my face on my iPhone screen. Kinda like the terribly unflattering videos in the Target checkout line.
Staring at my iPhone, I was waiting for a client to accept our FaceTime call.
“Why the hell do reflections trigger us?” I thought.
I should have used those 10 seconds of wait time to express gratitude for this technology that allows us to connect from all over the world!
And yet all I could focus on was this red sun spot I have in the middle of my forehead & the fact my eyes looked tired af.
I moved the phone to a different angle to see if I could get a “better view.” I pulled at my eyes for an instant eye lift. I immediately started brainstorming solutions to these “imperfections.”
Was this something Botox could solve? Would I need to invest in some kind of fancy cream or treatment?
I’m disappointed to say that all of this flashed through my mind in those 10 seconds, but I keep things on the real reel here & I’m just like you.
“Only from a place of self love do you have permission to change yourself,” I kept telling myself. And that is what I remind myself every time the criticism Gremlin creeps in.
I understand it’s hard to break this cycle of self-critique. Especially when you’ve experienced trauma like being made fun of as a kid or raised in an environment where achieving & people pleasing were the only ways you felt you could receive love.
I realized years ago I needed to break these bad habits & started practicing daily gratitude & being present in my body as it was.
If you ask me today what my top beauty advice would be, I would say this…
Look in the mirror less, obsess less about things that don’t add true value to your life & look at the rest of the world to see what you could be using your time for instead.
I now use my extra time for growth & nourishment in the forms of education, service, money, personal development, health, self care, & making memories with loved ones.
I decided 2023 would be the year I give up. The year I nourish.
I owe it to myself, to you, to my dreams, & to the legacy I want to leave here that doesn’t have a damn thing to do with a red sunspot on my forehead.
I listened to a podcast by Jay Shetty last week that invoked the most enriching reflection on my year I’ve ever had. Every year I spend time getting a clear insight of how this year went, the ups & downs, the special moments, & the things I might want to do away or restart next year. This year I asked myself 7 questions suggested on that podcast. I included them on the last slide for you! These would be a great idea for a date night, community group, or a night out with friends! And here’s a challenge for you, REALLY get to know people this next year. I feel we get so wrapped up in superficial 2 second reels & TikTok’s that we’ve forgotten about depth & real life sh*t. I’m over the swipe right or left society we got goin on here. How bout you? 🙄 Anywhoodle…to help you start somewhere, here is a synopsis of the success formula I’m using to make 2023 my best yet! Lots of life lesson gems 💎 in the one! Gimme a 🔥 of you’re ready to have your best year! Oxox Coach K
You know it’s true, we all wanna look good naked. Yes, health should always be at the forefront & I stand firm in my belief if you focus on health everything else will fall into line.
You may have resolved to make this the year you finally start, & hopefully stick with an exercise program or nutrition approach, but you’re fighting an uphill battle if you don’t shift your vow into truly making a LIFESTYLE change.
It’s all too easy to give up after a few weeks & lookin around the gyms after the January rush, come February you see the same people there as before & most newbies drop off. The OG’s know what’s up!
So how to turn your determination into action you can sustain for more than 30 days? There are no secrets. In Beth Dutton fashion, to be blunt, at some point, you must get off your tush & take action. No one can do it for you.
Write down your ultimate physique &/or health goal & how you’d like to look/feel. Include weight, body fat, any mental or physical improvements you’d like to see. Anything goes here.
2. Make Time
Work up to 60 minutes of physical activity each day. That doesn’t mean beating the crap out of your body 7d/wk, but strive to get some kind of activity & routine down — even if it’s a walk with your dog, walking after meals, working out 3 days a week, etc. If you’re new to fitness, start with a 20 minute session 5-6 d/wk, two 15-minute sessions or three 10-minute sessions to help you become acclimated. Work your steps up to 10k/day.
3. Do What You Enjoy Weights & lifting are one of the best ways to make significant physical changes to your body. Unfortunately, not everyone enjoys lifting. The most important determinant of long-term success with fitness is how much you enjoy an activity. Choose something that makes fitness fun & keeps you consistent! Explore new exercise classes and activities to determine which you prefer. As a beginner, almost anything you choose will be challenging, but gains will be made starting your very first week.
4. Surround Yourself With a Supportive Community & Accountability
Train with a friend who has similar goals. Join a group class at your gym. Try CrossFit, F45, Orange Theory, Spin, etc. You’ll be far less likely to skip your workout & it’s also more motivating when you workout with a group & push each other. You’re also less likely to cut your sessions short. People who choose healthy lifestyles will engage in behaviors that will impact you. Similarly, if your friends are just the opposite, they’ll likely reinforce the wrong kinds of behaviors.
5. Avoid Comparison to Others
Instead, compare yourself to YOU. If you make every week better in some way than the preceding week, you’re moving forward & making progress. Aim to improve yourself vs last year’s version of you. It’s hard for any of us to feel good about ourselves when we try to measure up to more advanced athletes who may have been training for a decade or more. What makes these people champions is they focus on what they need to do & who they need to be to get what they want every single day. They stayed consistent, created a lifestyle they love, & kept going.
6. Make Mistakes & Be A Forever Student
Experiment! It’s the only way to figure out what works, what doesn’t, what you like & what you don’t like. Try different classes, different diets, track your food, get a mentor, get a coach, invest in a trainer or nutritionist. An easy way to get inspired & increase your knowledge of fitness, training, & nutrition is to commit to researching each day. There are tons of free resources via the web, YouTube, Podcasts, Social Media, etc.
7. Learn to Be Patient AF
Many individuals will drop out of their training or nutrition program because they’re not seeing results fast enough. However, physiological adaptations occur incrementally. You most likely won’t see much, if any, improvement from one week to the next, but you surely will over 90 days. That’s why you should make a commitment of at least 3 months when starting any diet or exercise program.
8. Rise, Grind, Then Shine
Work out in the morning before the rest of the day gets in your way. Bonus: morning workouts boost your energy & confidence for the rest of the day! Get up 20 minutes earlier & knock out some of those steps. Sleep in your gym clothes or set your clothes out in the morning to make it easier. Set your coffee on auto brew so it’s fresh & ready. Caffeine helps!
9. Get Up & Move During the Day
Sedentary jobs are associated with greater risk for cardiovascular disease, not to mention weight gain. Incorporate some kind of movement every 30 minutes or so at work. Set a reminder on your phone, walk after meals, park further away, walk to lunch, take the stairs, walk on calls, just keep moving.
* Reduces oxidative stress * Reduces inflammation & joint pain * Increases muscle recovery * Increases collagen production & tightens skin * Reduces fine lines & wrinkles * Increases hair growth * Increases overall energy & vitality * Increases wound healing, great for skin conditions * Improves memory & vision quality * Increases testosterone production * Improves sleep & can aid in fat/weight loss
11. Reduce Eating Out & Alcohol
You consume more total calories when you eat out, & many of those calories will be empty, in the form of sugary beverages like pop & alcohol, & desserts. You won’t be tempted to indulge during a weak moment if you’re eating at home & no junk food or temptations are present.
12. Make Protein the Focus of All Meals
Undereating + over exercising = bone loss, muscle loss, & a hot metabolic & hormonal mess for women especially. We underestimate the protein we need, especially if we’re active. It’s all about that repair & regrowth of muscle mass & recovery that build a healthy, lean physique. We need protein for “tone” & if we’re not careful when we lose weight, we’re actually losing muscle instead of fat. For most, .8-1.2g of protein/lb of body weight or goal weight if you have more to lose (or even 1.5g/lb for some more petite, leaner, active women) is appropriate. Choose what’s right for you. Try to get at least 30-50g of protein per meal.
13. If You Consume Carbs, Choose Slower-Digesting Carbs Over Fast-Digesting
Slower-digesting carbs such as veggies, brown rice, whole grains, oats, sweet potatoes, & quinoa provide more sustained energy throughout the day & don’t spike your insulin as much. Fast-digesting carbs like sugar, white bread, candy, crackers, pancakes, bars, juices, baked goods, & most prepackaged stuff can spike blood sugar levels & increase the insulin response. Save these for your post-workout meal, when your body can use the extra carbs to replenish fuel stores if you must have them. And don’t forget to keep sugary juices & drinks in check!
14. Set Eating Windows & Routine Meal Times
Routine meal times & some kind of food boundaries are helpful for most. Try fasting, which isn’t a dirty word. It simply means periods of not eating. Fasting 12-16hrs overnight would suffice for most. Nix late night eating & snacking in front of the tv. Set routine meal times. We should not be snacking in between meals. If you find you’re hungry in between meals, you’re most likely not eating enough food, especially protein &/or fat. Meals should keep us satiated for at least 3+ hours. Track your food if you don’t know. I use MyFitnessPal. Awareness is a super power!
15. Realize Huge Muscles & Ripped Abs Don’t Equate To Being Fit & Healthy
Fitness is about more than big muscles & ripped abs. Flexibility, cardiovascular fitness, muscular strength & endurance, & body composition are elements in determining how fit & healthy you really are. Realize there are specific activity & exercise regimens for each one of them. This goes back to tip number one, define your goals, create a system & plan accordingly.
16. Start With Simple Total Body Workouts
One of the simplest ways to ease into a weight workout is to do a total body workout 3x/week with a day of rest in between for recovery. A total body workout hits these major muscle groups: glutes, quads, hamstrings, chest, back, shoulders, triceps, biceps, & core. Choose one exercise for each muscle group (multi joint exercises hit multiple body parts), training every other day. Examples: bench press, shoulder press, squat, deadlift, rows, pull-ups, push-ups.
17. Build Upon Your Workout Routine As You Gain Experience
As you gain experience in the gym, start adding more exercises and sets (volume) for each body part for better overall development. Rather than just doing longer workouts, start dividing your training into a split, such as push muscles (chest, shoulders, triceps) one day, pull muscles (back, biceps) on another, and legs on a third. Given the greater overall volume you do each session for those individual muscle groups, you’ll also need a longer recovery session before repeating that workout again.
18. Prioritize Strength Training & Use Cardio As A Lever For Fat Loss
To lose body fat, you need to burn more calories than you consume. Doing cardio is one way to widen the caloric deficit. But not all cardio strategies are created equal & more is not always better. Weight training is an essential component of weight loss. Muscle is a metabolically active tissue, meaning it burns off loads of calories all day long, even when you’re at rest. To build as much muscle tissue as possible, or even to keep it when dieting, train with moderately heavy weights in the 6-12-rep range. And stick with the multi joint exercises for the majority of your movements.
Studies have also shown that intense, moderately heavy lifting of this sort has the greatest effect on keeping your metabolism elevated for as long as 24 hours after your workout has ended. That significantly adds to the total number of calories burned!
Hailing from Fishers, Indiana, Katie is an aficionado of health, mindset, human connection, & entrepreneurship. Motivational writer, speaker, doer of many things, she grew up on her family’s beef cattle & crop farm where agriculture was her first love. She is a Purdue University graduate well known for her storytelling of life lessons & personal transformation through her own relationships, financial struggles, Crohn’s Disease, disordered eating, CrossFit, & adapting a carnivore diet lifestyle.
Katie also has over 17 years experience as a Registered Radiologic Technologist, Nutritionist, & Sales Consultant. She works with people of all walks of life as a nutritionist & personal life coach to help them authentically optimize their lives to find health, wealth, & happy!
You can catch her via Instagram @lil_bit_of_fit & blog, Lilbitoffit.com
I’ve talked about how I choose a word every year. I choose a word I desire to embrace & embody. This year, & it also, now, being the start of #worldcarnivoremonth – I feel maybe it should be BEEF 🥩🐮🦾😜
2 years “carnivore” & a lifetime to go. #bodybybeef #Merica
The word I choose helps me to make decisions, to think, to feel, to BE the essence of that word in every facet of my life. I have learned over 39 trips around the sun in this lifetime to be my own accountability partner, my own best friend, my own favorite – my most important love.
I learned to love my body because it is the longest commitment & only forever home I’ll ever have.
I learned to love my weirdness, my mind, my heart, & my spirit because it makes me, ME. And nobody else can look like me or BE ME. Same for you.
I can’t believe I’ll be 40 this year, I remember when I thought 25 was old, then 30 was old, & now it seems 40 is the new 20. I can tell ya I feel a whole helluva lot better as an almost 40 something than my 20 year old self.
My journey has been both pleasure & pain. I’m sure yours has been too. I understand.
I hear you, see you, support you.
I’m right beside you unpacking & packing those bags sippin on that cup of coffee or cocktail, pick your poison.
I’m not writing this post today, on 1-1-2022, to tell you what to do, or to tell you I have all the answers to whatever you want to change or troubles you, but I am writing this to tell you that you can do it. I’m writing this to tell you that I believe in you.
I used to pick 5-10 new goals each year. I realized a singular day on the 1st of the year, setting goals like I was “supposed to” never turned me magically into Superwoman. It didn’t magically give me the health I wanted, the body, the career, the money, the friends, the love I desired.
I was still the same ole weird lil creature that I am, still overwhelmed with trying to change too much all at once, still “shoulding” all over myself. Still lost in all the information & society’s expectations.
Within a month or so, I failed or fell off the wagon & had to start over.
Smaller.
With lower expectations.
Shrinking myself.
F*ck that sh*t.
I’ve told y’all before, you can’t live a BIG, full, ABUNDANT life on an empty tank.
For a few years, I gave up on resolutions entirely. Then, I discovered the book, “One Word” & it changed my perspective. Instead of a sh*t ton of goals, I set intentions to embody 1 goal, 1 word, & that worked a lot better.
That concept is using your word as a theme for your year.
My word for this year is ‘Abundance.’ My word for last year was ‘Joy.’ Other words I’ve used were peace, growth, & grace.
I challenge you to simply glance at the year ahead & choose a word you’d like to embody as a pillar & map of growth.
Quick annoucement to my baby carnivores & people wanting to try a meat-based diet, my group coaching is open & ready to welcome you with open arms. Coaching FAQ’s in link in IG bio and HERE
You can always dm me and don’t forget to sign up for our email list HERE
➡️I slept until almost 7. Our patient numbers in the ER are insane. Grateful for a day off right meow.🐱
➡️I Googled #fengshui for the new year yesterday & they said to wear red or yellow underwear for good luck 🤷♀️🍀🩲 contemplating buying some😄 although I really hate wearing underwear. Jus sayin. I know I’m not the only one, don’t lie.
➡️Set routines not resolutions for the new year. You have to BE the lifestyle & the person you want. Routines will get you there, vapid resolutions with no true intention or action will not.
➡️Figured out how to keep Pete from waking me up when I don’t have to get up early. Set my auto brew on the coffee pot maker till later. ☕️ 🐈⬛ He hates it when I work on my computer in the mornings. He’s a Snuggle bug.
He wants to sit on my lap!
Holy sh*t tomorrow is a new year. I know they say as you get older time flies by, they ain’t kiddin. We’re only here for a short blip.
Simply sharing things on my mind & heart this mornin. Swipe through for lessons I wished I’d learned earlier & “That Girl” habits to bring into 2022.
Click for full post on IG!
I just want to thank y’all for your love, your kindness, your dedication to yourselves to learn & grow & do that with me, here.
