How to Lose Weight While Working Full-Time - 90 Days 29 Lbs and 21 Inches Lost

How to lose weight while working full-time.  Well, it has been 90 days, and I successfully lost 29 lbs and 21 inches!!!  Woot woot!  Normally I would not toot my own horn, but I worked my butt off...LITERALLY.  And now I am here to share and reflect on my Weight Loss Journey.  I hope my lessons learned will inspire and help you in your own journey, and that you will share your own experiences with others to help us all achieve a happier and healthier life.

In case you missed my first 60 days of weight loss while working full-time, please feel free to catch up here The First 30 Days and The Second 30 Days.

Okay, let us jump into My Tips For Losing Weight While Working Full-Time:

1.  Pack Your Lunch - I am not a pack your lunch girl, but eating out will result in over-consumption and a lot more calories than you think.  One of my main reasons for not doing this sooner was the belief that I would be missing out on precious bonding time with friends, family, and work colleagues.  Well, I got over it.  I started packing myself healthy lunch options and still met my friends for lunch.  The ideal option is to find a great food court outside, so your friend or colleague can still order what they want, but you can save money and calories PLUS hang out and not miss out on the lunch date.

2.  Celebrate the Small Wins - Being healthy and fit is a 24/7 mindset.  I had to get in the habit of celebrating all the small victories.  For example, on my mom's birthday, I had to really test my will power.  We went to a pizza place for lunch, and boy did I really want some pizza, but instead I ended up ordering some mushroom lettuce wraps.  Small win!  For dinner, we went out to a nice Chinese restaurant.  I had a couple bowls of sizzling rice soup and mainly stuck to vegetable dishes.  Another small win!  And finally for dessert, we had a Strawberry pie with whipped cream.  I cut my husband an extra large piece and ate a couple of his strawberries.  Triple win for the day!  Keeping track of all those little victories will make you feel good.  Share those victories with others, and you will not regret your decisions.

3.  Surround Yourself with Positive People - This one is a big one.  You have to surround yourself with people who make you feel good and who want to see you succeed.  I belong to an Accountability Group and have some great Accountability Partners who cheer me on and celebrate my small wins.  Without their daily inspiration and support, I do not think I would have made it as far.  Be purposeful about the people you choose to have in your life.  You will be as successful as those you surround yourself with, so ask yourself, do I aspire to be like my circle of friends?  Are they challenging and inspiring me to fulfill my life goals?  Speaking of...[Spoiler Alert] my husband surprised me with these congratulatory flowers at work.  Aren't they gorgeous?!  He truly is my best friend and partner in life.  He supports me so wholeheartedly and loves me unconditionally.  I would not be where I am today without him.  I am so blessed and thankful for our relationship.

4.  Enjoy the Lifestyle - Weight loss and dieting is a journey and a roller coaster.  You must make choices that will fit a future lifestyle as opposed to short-term options you view as temporary and even painful.  It is actually funny how these choices might even start as painful but slowly grow on you.  After 90 days, I have pleasantly realized how much I enjoy eating vegetables and exercising regularly.  I indulged shortly after achieving my goal weight and felt horrible afterwards and not even from a guilt perspective.  My body felt bloated and heavy.  My stomach was mad, and I physically did not feel good.  This is when I realized I had successfully made the leap.  I do not have a label for having arrived but I no longer feel like eating healthy is a diet.  It is my happy choice and I LOVE being fit and treating my body the way it deserves to be treated.

5.  Inspire Others - Throughout my journey, I have blogged and posted my workout pics on Facebook.  At first, I was doing it for sheer accountability, but I have learned along the way that I have inspired my friends.  It was really rewarding to hear how sharing my story was helping others, so to take it a step further I decided to become an Online Fitness Coach.  As an Online Firness Coach, not only do I get to help people achieve their health and fitness goals, but I get re-inspired to stay true to my own.  Knowing that I am setting an example for them and for my baby girl keeps me consistent.

My Biggest Takeaway

I think my biggest takeaway was realizing that My Body is a Car I cannot trade in.  This may seem like a weird metaphor but it finally made things click for me.  I only get one body, and it is for life.  How I treat it now, and how I take care of it, will affect its condition 20, 30, 40 years from now.  It needs regular maintenance and care.  If I ignore that and treat it with disrespect, I will do irreparable damage.  I need to treat my body like a car I cannot trade in.  If you knew your first car was going to be your last and only car, how would you treat it?  Would you give it regular oil changes?  Would you make sure you did the regular check ups?  What would you do differently?

Biggest Loser Results

And finally, in case you have been following my journey all along, I give you my work's Biggest Loser Results.  After 90 days, between 8 people, we lost 132.6 lbs!

I lost 29 lbs and 21 inches total which was enough to win it all.  The title of Champion and $800 cash :)

Are you INTERESTED IN GETTING SIMILAR RESULTS?
To participate in one of my EXCLUSIVE GROUPS and make me your Coach, APPLY HERE.

I am here to help and cheer you on in your journey.  Cheers!

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How We Created Our Own Google-Like Workspace

Everyone wants to work at Google right?  They have the coolest work environment around.  So how do you create a Google-like workplace?

And how do you incorporate it in a way that actually changes and enhances your employee culture in a positive way?

Well, we set out to do just that.  The planning took a total of 5 months but the culmination and results have been almost instant and amazing.

Here's our story:

1.  Plan - We are very lucky that it was actually our CEO who wanted to do this and really championed this project.  He gave us (a select few - 3 people) ownership and freedom to make decisions within a set budget, and we planned every last detail.  I originally got quotes from some professional designers, but in the end, we decided that we could save a lot of money and do it ourselves.

2.  My Happiness Project - We wanted the space to truly reflect our employees and make it feel like it was theirs instantly.  I had to do this in a way that would not ruin the ultimate surprise, so I came up with My Happiness Project.  I started a discussion on our intranet.  I did not make it complicated.  I just stated that I was looking for inspiration and knew that many of our employees did wonderful things outside our company walls AND I wanted to hear about all those great passions and hobbies.  So I asked them to share with me what makes them happy and encouraged them to post pictures on my discussion thread.  I let them know that my goal was to collect 50 project pieces by the end of the month.  And it worked.  The request really resonated with people and reading about what makes them happy did, in fact, make me really happy :)  Plus, I received a ton of pictures that I was able to go get printed and some even blown up to be put on canvas.  This was a really nice touch that we received a lot of compliments on later.  The employees loved seeing photos of themselves on the wall.  It made it really special.

3.  Integrating It With Our Culture -  We had to make sure that the space was going to be used and that the managers would actually support their employees' usage of it.  It would do no good to change the space and not the culture.  So we planned a surprise event for the grand unveiling.  No one but the CEO, HR and a couple others knew about the whole thing.  Three of us spent the weekend transforming the space.  Even our CEO stopped by, bought us lunch, and put himself to work for 3-4 hours.  On Monday morning, I sent out a meeting request to headquarters for a "Record Year Celebration in Williams' Hall."  We had blocked off the entire area so no one could see it.  We had also hired Picnic People to help us transform the space even further.  We had carnival games with raffle tickets for prizes, a caricaturist, a tarot card reader, two massage therapists, cotton candy, popcorn machine, cookie decorating, a lunch buffet, AND of course, the AMAZING NEW SPACE which included a flat screen TV, couch, giant bean bag, framed photos, a board of employee pictures (from the Happiness project), ping pong table, foosball table, Xbox, and the Wii among other fun items.  The icing on the cake came when our CEO announced that everyone was also going to receive 2 Disneyland tickets for having such a great fiscal year!  Who does this?!  It was amazing, and for our remote employees, we sent them carnival-themed baskets of gourmet treats, as well as a $200 American Express Gift Card to spend on something fun.  We wanted them to feel included so we brought a mini-celebration to them.

Fast-forward less than a week, and it is almost like a dream come true.  I walk by there at least a couple times a day, and every time there is at least one or two people using the space.  It always makes me feel good inside to see that the space is being used.  The executives are leading by example and challenging employees to ping pong tournaments and having their team meetings in the space.  People are bringing up their laptops and just chilling while getting work done.  It is truly wonderful and so rewarding to see.

Do you wish you had a Google-like workspace?  How do you make your employee culture fun?  I know not everyone can do this on such a large scale, but you can always make someone feel special.  And even with the just the happiness project, I received a lot of compliments.  Anybody can start one of those.  Why not you?  I challenge you to go out and make someone smile today and everyday that you can :)

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