Welcome to the first annual A Better Me Challenge!

First of all this challenge is 100% FREE! Because it’s free, I’d like to ask you to do 3 simple things:

1. Download the Pledge & the From Fat to Fabulous e-book. In order to get the most out of this challenge download the EASY Fit Moms Fit Kids Club pledge on the right side bar.  There is no big commitment here, just fill in your name and email address and you’ll instantly get a FREE e-book called  From Fat to Fabulous!  This little ebook has a ton of easy recipes for your busy mom days.  On the download page there is an exercise plan you can use while doing the “A Better Me” challenge if you like. So please download the pledge and free exercise plan separately!  If you’ve lost your eBook, or copied it awhile back email me annett (at) fitmomsfitkidsclub (dot) com and I’ll send you a link to get it again.  FYI, there was a mistake in the eBook with the workout, so if you didn’t download the separate pdf on the download page titled 12 week beginner workout or intermediate workout please email me and I’ll send you the link.
2. Subscribe to the blog! Why?  So, that you will not miss a day of the challenge.  Every time a new post goes up on our site about the challenge or otherwise, it will go straight to your email!  You won’t have the excuse of I forgot to go to the site today.  The challenge will come to YOU.  Click here to subscribe to your email. Or, there’s a subscribe box in the right side bar you can use.
3. Tell a friend. Please help us spread the word by posting the link to this challenge on Facebook, twitter, email your friends, or blog about it.  It’s NEVER to late to start!

Alright here we go!!!

This will be the longest post that you will get during the challenge because it’s Day 1, and I have a lot to tell you.

First off there will be two tracks you can choose from. Track one is called “Baby Steps”.  This track is for those of you who are just getting their feet wet.  You want to make some changes, and you will through this challenge, but you want to take it slow.  Track two is called “Big Steps“.  This is for those of you who are sick and tired of being sick and tired, and want to make some major healthy changes in your life right now.

Each day there will be two posts.  One for those taking Baby Steps, and an additional post for those of you who want to take Big Steps.  Those of you who are taking the Baby Steps just read that initial post.  Ladies who are on the Big Step track will read both posts daily.

I know some of you aren’t sure if you want to take Baby Steps or Big Steps, you are sort of the tweeners.  If this is the case, just read both posts and decide what you’ll do that day.

It’s ALL about choices ladies. You are committing to make daily choices regarding your physical, spiritual, and mental health.  Why all 3 aspects?  As human beings, to be healthy and whole we must not neglect the mind, body, and spirit.  If we were to leave one out, we’d be compartmentalizing ourselves, and we need to be Whole Women.  Happy and healthy,  on the inside and the outside.

Each day you will have simple action steps that will tell you what to do, why you are doing it, and how to make it a regular part of your everyday life.  I’ll also give you resources to help you achieve it.  Your steps will be basic, simple, and effective.

Final word before we begin…This may be the most important thing I say about this challenge.  We are all in this together. I know some of your are extremely passionate about some of the topics we will be covering in this challenge.  Express your opinions with a smile on your face, and love in your heart.  This blog is a place of no condemnation.  We help, love, and support one another.  None of us have arrived.  Let’s do our best to encourage one another on our journey.  We are ALL learning and growing.  I reserve the right to delete or not post any comment that does not line up with the spirit of A Better Me Challenge.

Now It’s Time To Get To Work!

Baby Step 1:

Mental

I thought long and hard about what should be our first step in this challenge.  It wasn’t easy.  But, as I sat and thought about what we need to do in order to be successful in, not just A Better Me Challenge, but in life, I decided that we needed to start with a mental challenge.

You see many of us have gone through the same things over and over again.  We’ve been on the diet roller coaster.  You may have had a resolution last year to lose 5 or even 100 pounds.   Yet here it is January again and the weight is still there. Or, you are not any fitter, healthier, nor spiritually or mentally stronger than you were a year ago.

Today I want you to grab your journal or a notebook that you will be using for A Better Me Challenge. You are going to take a look in the mirror and examine what’s going on inside.

• Write out all of the negative thoughts that come to your mind today. Throughout the day, keep your notebook handy and as negative thoughts scroll across your mind take note of them.  Don’t examine them, or justify them.  Just write down what negative thoughts that have stopped you in the past from reaching your goals, and what stumps you today.  Write down your FEARS.  If you want, start off the day by sitting down for 5 minutes or so, and make a list. I learned long ago that fear is nothing but False Evidence Appearing Real.  This false evidence appearing real tends to stop us in our tracks throughout our lifetime.

The last couple of years I had to make sure I realized the times I was telling myself a lie, or believing a lie. I had to teach myself to catch myself so that I could replace it with the truth.  I’ll give you a recent example.  I watched the movie Sick, Fat, and Nearly Dead and I said several times during the movie that I could not do a 7 day juice fast.  After about the 4th time my husband snapped back, “Stop saying that! Yes, you can!”  I was a little surprised at his tone, but I got it.  He was right.  There is NO reason in the world that I could not do a 7 day juice fast.  I had been saying a lie to myself, and by saying it I was getting myself to believe the lie.  There was not one fact to it.  What my husband was trying to get me to realize was the truth, which was I could do a juice fast, IF I wanted to.  The choice was mine.  Many of us stop ourselves before we even begin making positive changes in our lives, because we tell ourselves lies. Just like I did with the juice fast.  Some of you may be stopping yourself right now, before you give this 28 day challenge a try.  Don’t listen to your negative thoughts (lies).  Press on!

What negative thoughts have stopped you in the past?

Maybe you’ve said to yourself I can never eat veggies every day.  Or, I hate to exercise so I can never lose this weight.  I don’t have time to read, or to workout.  I can’t wake up 30 minutes earlier to have a quiet time or me time (I’m not a morning person).   My husband will never eat this stuff, and neither will my kids.   A negative thought could be, if she asks me to stop eating fast food this challenge is over.  Have you told yourself I can’t get back to my pre-pregnancy weight? 

Whatever the negative thought is that you’ve had concerning your mental, physical, or spiritual lives I want you to write it down. Make a column for each of our 3 categories. Your goal is to capture a list of them.  Call them out.  Stop letting them sound off without you calling them to the carpet.  Let’s get all our negative thoughts and criticisms out of our system.

Why are we doing this?  First of all, I think you will be amazed to see how many negative thoughts go through your own mind.   Our negativity tends to stop us from moving forward.  If we don’t get this stuff out now, today, then 28 days from now you will not have progressed at all.  We are often times our worst critics, we are most times what’s keeping us back from reaching our dreams.  We are going to start releasing these negative thoughts and seeing why we’ve been stuck in the same old rut.  Tomorrow we are going to take another step, a positive one, to move you closer to your desired outcome.

Let us know below in the comment section how this exercise went for you?  Did you learn something new?  Did you decide to break free from some of your past negative thoughts so you can move forward like never before?

Annett Davis, Olympian & Founder of Fit Moms Fit Kids

Special thanks to Anelys at 3 Little Flowers The Blog for our cute buttons and banners!

If you are a blogger joining us in the challenge, feel free to grab our button or banner!

Big Step Track go on over and read your extended challenge.

Today I pause to remember a great man, my father, Cleveland Buckner.  Five years ago today, he died of a heart attack.  It was the third he’d had in his lifetime.  I remember when I was younger and he had his first heart attack how nervous and scared I was.  Visiting him in the hospital with tubes coming out of here and there.  My dad was 6’9″  he hardly fit into a California King sized bed, let alone a hospital bed.  To be a young girl, seeing her big strong daddy, in a tiny bed, in a small room, hearing beeps, and nurses being buzzed was let’s just say, a lot for me to handle.  Unfortunately, I’d visit him another time in my lifetime in the same position before the 3rd one would finally take his life.

I pause to remember my dad today for several reasons.  If you don’t know, he was the reason I started Fit Moms Fit Kids Club in the first place.  He too was a professional athlete.  He was an all star player at Jackson State University (he was inducted into their hall of fame before he died), and he also played in the NBA.  Though he had been a pro athlete in his younger years, like so many of us, he began to neglect his health as he got older.  Years of coaching after teaching math all day, and having to make a long commute home afterwards took it’s toll.  As they say, you are what you eat, and he ate pastrami sandwiches and burgers from some of the greasiest places in town.  Stress and neglect of his body took its toll and high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and in his later years type 2 diabetes took residence.

As many of you know I am a professional athlete as well.  After my fathers death I was so bitter, and angry at him for not sticking to a healthy lifestyle.  All of the things that plagued him from heart disease, to gout in his knees were all preventable.  He had a choice, like we all do, to eat right and exercise.  I was upset because now he would not get to see his grandchildren grow up, and I wouldn’t have my daddy.

Well, as God often does he put a mirror in front of my face and told me to look into it.  What I saw was not pretty.  He showed me that I was living my life just like my father was in my off season.  I’d stop exercising and I’d eat whatever I wanted.  Every off season I’d gain 10 pounds.  The reality was, if I lived this way after I retired, that I would end up exactly like my dad.  I’d gain a ton of weight, end up with heart disease, possibly type 2 diabetes, and maybe I wouldn’t be there for my children either.  This was a hard pill to swallow.  I was living the life of the obese, and I was teaching my kids how to do it too!

Something had to change.  I had to change. I realized that I wasn’t going to be a pro athlete forever.  I wouldn’t just lose all the weight every year once I started working out and playing at my events during the season.  I realized that I had to make some serious changes and I did.  Fit Moms Fit Kids Club was created because I realized that I’m not perfect, and I know other moms aren’t either.  We need each other, we need support, we need encouragement, we need information, we need accountability, and we need to feel a part of something bigger than ourselves.  That’s why we started this revolution to try to get 1 million moms to sign the pledge to commit to raising healthy families.

If you’d like to join me on my journey and gain support you can become our Google Friend on the right, a twitter follower, and you can subscribe to the blog to get helpful tips to help you on your journey.  Soon, hopefully today our facebook page will be reinstated. Someone took us down for the wrong reasons, and thankfully realized that that was wrong and asked today for our page to be reinstated.  It’s been down almost 4 weeks, very unfortunate.    So, look out again for our Fit Moms Fit Kids Club page on facebook.   I know some of you were wondering what happened.  We were trying to work it out over the weeks with the utmost intergrity on our side.   Anyhow, when you download the pledge on the right side bar you’ll get a free meal plan and workout plan to help you get started with your desired outcomes.

Today, I’m not angry at my father anymore.  I realize that he was just human.  A great man, but just like you and I, he made some poor health choices over the course of his life.  I thank him for teaching me so much in my life.  Some of you ladies may feel like you or your child’s weight issue is beyond changing.  Maybe you feel like you’ve eaten this way all your life, and you cannot possibly change now.  Let me tell you what my dad would have said.  He would have said, ‘NOW IT’S TIME TO GO TO WORK!” It doesn’t matter what you used to do, or what you did 5 minutes ago, NOW is the time.  You can change your choices.  And, as my husband always says “Change your Choices, change your life”.  You can do it.

Here's a hug and a kiss on the cheek, you can do it!

In the final years of my dad’s life he started to make positive changes in his heath and fitness.  He began walking to exercise, he started eating much better.  In fact, he was getting his diabetes under control.  He was on less medication than he had been on in years.  He was changing his choices.  His body started to slim down, he looked younger, more confident, and was feeling good too.  Unfortunately, it was too late for him, his body had taken a toll.  Don’t let that happen to you, don’t let your choices as a mom affect the health of your children in a negative way.  We have a responsibility moms to take care of ourselves so that we can be there for our kids.  And, to take care of our kids so that they can outlive us.  It is predicted that this current generation will not outlive ours.  It will be the first generation to not outlive their parents.  This prediction does not have to become a fact in our history books.  Let’s make better choices, let’s change our lives together.  Let’s start today.

Now, it’s time to go to work!

Annett Davis, Olympian & Founder of Fit Moms Fit Kids

P.S  I forgot to mention that my dad taught me a ton of other wonderful things.  He encouraged me to get my college degree before I got married (so that I’d finish school).    He taught me that an education was a gift and that I should not waste it!  He taught me that life is short, so make sure I ENJOY what I am doing.  He taught me that if I really love something I’d naturally spend a lot of time doing it without having to be paid.  My dad would spend hours on the couch doing math problems because he LOVED math!  We’d also see him making out basketball plays, even when he wasn’t coaching anymore.  I too do this blog because I love it.  I’m not being paid, but it brings me joy to learn things myself, and to help others. My dad taught me that my relationships and family are important, and that we need to nourish them.  He taught me that traveling is a MUST, and that we must take time out to see the world.  He taught me that I must take time out to just have fun doing the things that I love.  Most importantly I got to see his eyes beam brightly with love when he’d hold my son Mya as a baby and my daughter Victoria, and how he looked at them with love and amazement.  It taught me how special my kids are, and that each moment with them is a gift from God.

Thank you dad for teaching me all this… and so much more!

I love you forever… see you in heaven.

Spring is upon us!   What better time to start a revolution?  Obesity is fast becoming the #1 Killer in America.  Yet, the fast food and processed food industries are still reporting huge profits (even in this economy).  As embarrassing as it may be, America has a vested interest in making American families fat.  While we live in a time where advances in medicine are greater now than ever before in history, more kids are being diagnosed with type II diabetes and more parents are dying because of obesity related illnesses.

What Has Made Obesity an Epidemic in the U.S.?
Rosenwald quotes Tomas J. Philipson, an economics professor who studies obesity at the University of Chicago, as saying, “The obesity problem is really a side effect of things that are good for the economy, but we would rather take improvements in technology and agriculture than go back to the way we lived in the 1950s when everyone was thin.”

Why Businesses Want us Fat?
He also tells us that obesity has actually fattened the wallets of many corporations and doctors alike (pun intended). He provides data that the “obesity industry” was estimated to make in excess of $315Billion in 2006. He included in this industry fast food chains, medical treatments, and books about dieting.

He goes on to list a few of the food companies that thrive on bad food choices, stating that in 2004 Kraft Foods made more than $244Million on Oreo cookies!

In addition to the companies who are profiting from the junk food we eat, there is the “fat-cure” industry that depends on us getting fat to make their money such as Jenny Craig, Nutri-system, Weight Watchers, and Physicians who perform weight-loss and cosmetic surgeries. We sit smack dab in the middle of two hungry industries, out to keep us on the roller coaster ride of obesity.

Doesn’t this make you mad?  It’s time for moms, all across America and around the world to stand united for Family, Fitness, and Fun!

That’s why Fit Moms, Fits Kids Club was created.  We exist to simply inform, inspire, and empower moms to make fitness and good health a way of life for themselves and their loved ones.

Here’s What YOU can DO NOW!
Join The Revolution…Take the Pledge (on the right side of the page) to help us get 1 Million Moms to say “I want to be healthy and help my kids to do the same!”  We’ll help you meet your goals along the way.