Today is the first day of the first Body Mind and Business Breakthrough Telesummit! If you haven’t yet grabbed a seat–please do. We’re bringing you eleven incredible experts who will be sharing their wisdom on creating your best life and your best business. You can attend at no cost, or take advantage of a few bonus-paced options. We are kicking things off with fitness strategist Ashley Mahaffey who has tremendous energy an amazing knack for getting people into action. I hope you’ll join us on the call. Here’s a recent blog post from Ashley and a taste of what she has to offer.

The Money and Physical Fitness Factor All Entrepreneurs Need to Know

Guest post by Ashley Mahaffey

Your physical fitness is not an accessory, but a necessary tool in your outrageously successful business.

Being maximally productive to crank out products and services of tremendous value requires energy, and lots of it!  However, many people choose to invest in the accessories – website make-over, flashy power point slides, software, another training seminar, a posh outfit, etc – before considering to invest in their physical fitness.

Hey, clients aren’t buying your stuff (website, powerpoint slide, elevator speech)…really.  They are buying what you are able to uniquely serve up that impacts their lives.  How about offering them your best?  Which begs the question:  Are you truly giving from your best position?

Leaders Who Are Smashing it!

I work with many successful speakers and trainers.  They are all passionate about their work and their commitment to physical fitness increases their energy to blow away the competition.

What is clear to me is that after investing in their physical fitness my clients’ specific content doesn’t change.  They don’t all of a sudden get more knowledge to pass on to their customers.  However, the energy around delivering their message does increase.

Cost of Your Handicap

If you’re not making time for personal care and creating a holy hour  it is not only hurting your optimal health but your ability to serve your customers and get paid for doing it well.

Holding space for regular exercise will raise your game.  The truth is that if you are educated, disciplined and focused on the goal of being physically fit the end result will be that you look and feel dynamic.

After the Honeymoon

After, the courting phase with your fitness wanes and the lusty newness wears off the real challenges set in.  Travel, family and work obligations look more attractive.  But, mastery over your weight, strength and energy are achievable.

I encourage you to get a mentor or buddy to hold you accountable.

And, I’m in the business of building champions.  What I know for sure is that everyone has a champion inside.  But the champion inside of each one of us requires that we make the choice to step into our big girl shoes each day.

Step up!

Melissa McCreery

Another resource for busy women: Over the next month, I’m going to be sharing some guest posts from Brigette Polmar and Jenny Hein, Co-Founders of SqueezeItIn.com. Jenny Hein is an ACE Certified Group Fitness Instructor and Brigette Polmar is a journalist and published author.  Both are real moms working to develop real solutions for busy people who struggle to find time to exercise.  Their production company Multitask Productions, LLC, recently released the SqueezeItIn.com Workout DVD available through SqueezeItIn.com and Amazon.com.

If working too hard has you skipping your regular workout, SqueezeItIn.com can help you work smarter, not harder, and turn those long days into a good workout right at your desk.

Multitasking exercise – or functional fitness – is a great way to work in a workout when you’re just too busy to hit the gym or when you can’t find a 30-minute block of time to work up a sweat.  According the American College of Sports Medicine three 10-minute bursts of moderate intensity exercise performed throughout your day are equivalent to a single 30-minute workout.  Bottom line: it all adds up.  So the ladies behind SqueezeItIn.com have developed dozens of clever and effective exercises you can do while you’re cleaning the house, at the office, in your car, and even while traveling at 30,000 feet – so you can “squeeze in” a workout no matter how busy your schedule.

Here are three office moves sure to stop the dreaded desk spread (just click the graphic to access a short video):

Want to learn more ways to squeeze in fitness? I’m going to be getting tips from the women of Squeeze It In on May 5 and I’m sharing the interview with you.  Join me when I interview Brigette and Jenny–it’s free!

Melissa McCreery

Are you looking for some fitness mojo? I’m excited to share a teleseminar where we’ll be addressing a topic that lives in the back of many women’s minds but that very few people actually talk about: the link between your health and fitness and your professional success.

• Are you a business owner or professional who feels like your struggles to “get healthy” are holding you back?

• Do you worry that your health or your unfit appearance don’t represent your premium brand or business?

• Is your energy subpar for the audience that should be buying from you?

• Is lack of sleep keeping you away from your ‘A’ game?

• Do fits and starts with food stall your inner champion somewhere near the water cooler?

If so, this free call is for you.  I’m so excited to be interviewing Ashley Mahaffey.  

Ashley Mahaffey, certified personal trainer and Ironman triathlon finisher, is a fitness strategy expert specializing as the secret weapon for speakers and traveling professionals who want to be lean and energized for their big platform. Ashley has trained NCAA champions and business leaders alike. For more information, visit www.AshleyMahaffey.com.

In this free call Ashley will cover:

- What The Money & Physical Fitness Factor is and how it affects all entrepreneurs

- What two foods may be keeping you from your weight loss success

- How changing 1 simple variable in any cardio routine can boost metabolism to burn fat

- 4 effective full body exercises that you can do at home or in your hotel room

Won’t you join us?

The call is Thursday, February 25 at 11am Pacific, 2pm Eastern.

The call will be recorded so please register even if you can’t make it. All who register will have access to the recording. Just go here to register.

Take good care,

Melissa McCreery

Hi, I’m home office fitness expert Scott Tousignant here with another guest post to help you increase your productivity and improve your quality of work while improving your health. If you missed any of my previous guest posts you can find them at the following links…

Time Efficient Cardio, Stretch Away The Stress, and Fun Challenge.

Today we are going to discus how you measure fitness success. Do you rely on the scale to provide you with feedback? If so, how do you react when you see that the numbers on the scale don’t budge even though you ate really well throughout the week and exercised daily? Do you become frustrated? Do you give up?

That’s the problem with only using one tool to measure your success. Fat loss or maintaining a healthy body weight is only one of the benefits of living an active lifestyle especially when you are a busy entrepreneur. When fat loss is your only reason for participating in a fitness program or eating well it can become easy to get discouraged and throw in the towel.

Many of the benefits from living a balanced lifestyle are difficult to measure, yet they can have a significant impact on your happiness and fulfillment. For example, the increase in energy that you experience as a result of eating well and exercising will have a positive impact on the quality time that you spend with your family. You will be able to keep up with your children and desire to be active with them rather than plop yourself on the sofa after a hard day in the office. Your increase in energy will have a positive impact on your work in a variety of ways and your customers will feel it as well. You will notice that your mood improves when you are active and you adopt a more positive outlook on life.

The confidence that comes from living an active healthy lifestyle is one of the greatest benefits. It really can’t be measured but it can be felt and seen. I sure notice it with the Fat Loss Quickie members. I see it on their blogs where their passion and excitement shine when they use video. I can hear it in their voices when they record their podcasts or teleseminars. I can see it in their writing, which becomes even more creative. I can see it in the way that they put themselves out there and attract great customers and joint venture partners. I can see how others respond to them and want to network with them more.

As you continue to adopt a healthy active lifestyle you will notice that you can get a lot more done in less time during your workday, which frees up more time that you can devote to your family and doing the things that you really enjoy in life.

A scale simply can not measure these incredible successes that you achieve. To throw in the towel and give up simply because you have not noticed a significant change in the number that is displayed on the scale would have a significant impact on your business and quality of life.

Fitness was never designed to lose weight. Fitness was designed for fun. Allowing you to express yourself. To put your body in the state that it desires. To help your brain function optimally. Focusing your fitness efforts strictly on weight loss is a recipe for disaster. Put the fun back into fitness and celebrate the successes associated with it, such as increased confidence or more energy to play with your kids.

I know that Fat Loss Quickie members aren’t afraid to celebrate successes like that. They show it on their blogs and in their tweets. They are proud of the impact that physical activity is having on all areas of their life and they want to encourage others to embrace this balanced and healthy lifestyle.

I encourage you to embrace the active lifestyle and see first hand how your business flourishes and your life becomes charmed. I hope that you have enjoyed my guest blog posts this week and that they have inspired you to incorporate home office fitness into your busy day. I look forward to building upon our new relationship and becoming a source of motivation as you create the life that you deserve.

You ROCK! Enjoy the experience,

Scott Tousignant

Melissa McCreery

Hi there. My name is Scott Tousignant and I am honored to be a guest blogger here this week. This is the 4th installment of my Home Office Fitness Blog Tour and today we’ll be covering a fun strategy to help you maintain your motivation for a healthy active lifestyle.

As a passionate entrepreneur I’m sure that there’s a bit of a competitiveness inside you. Am I right? You set your heart and mind on something and you want to achieve it. It feels incredibly rewarding to complete major projects and tasks, but a big part of the ‘thrill’ comes from the journey… facing challenges along the way, overcoming them and learning from the process.

It’s time that you take that competitive spirit and apply it in a fun and healthy way, motivating you to adopt a more active lifestyle. I do enjoy body transformation contests and believe that they are an effective motivator. But they only work for a few people. Most of the people who join a transformation challenge never follow through to the end. I believe that a big reason for this is because they’ve placed too much pressure on themselves and take extreme measures that simply can not be maintained… especially when you have a hectic lifestyle.

Melissa and I promote a more balanced approach that is fun and can easily be adopted into your busy schedule. Here are some examples of challenges that you can incorporate into you life that are fun instead of focusing on losing a certain amount of weight in a specific time frame…

1) Challenge yourself to perform at least one stretching exercises every hour during your workday for the next 7 days. The stretches that I shared with you yesterday can be used as a great start.

2) For the next 21 days you can challenge yourself to wake up 30 minutes early and listen to an educational audio while you go for a walk.

3) Challenge yourself to spend 10 minutes at the end of your day sitting in a quite place, focusing on slowing down your breathing, and clearing your head from the craziness of your day.

4) Challenge yourself to celebrate a small victory that you achieved each day.

5) Challenge yourself to drink 8 glasses of water each day for the next 30 days.

The options are limitless. The focus of each individual challenge is not on how much weight you are aiming to lose. But each individual challenge will contribute to a more healthy lifestyle that will result in maintaining a healthy weight. Focusing on losing weight is not fun. Focusing on small improvements to your well-being can be fun and it gives you the opportunity to celebrate small victories more frequently, which can be a great motivator in itself. It’s that sense of accomplishment that can really drive you forward.

I created a fun 30 Day Home Office Fitness Challenge that is broken down into small tasks that are easy to achieve. The focus is to help you gradually incorporate home office fitness into your busy workday and experience the many benefits that will impact all areas of your life.

There’s fun exercises, quick and fun nutrition tips, motivational strategies and much more included in the FREE 30 Day Home Office Fitness Challenge. If you have been enjoying my guest posts here and would like to discover a variety of fun ways to increase your productivity throughout your workday, I suggest that you head on over to Day 1 of this fun challenge and commit to following through for the next 30 days. It’s a stress free way of making healthy habits stick.

You ROCK!

Scott Tousignant

Melissa McCreery

Hi there. My name is Scott Tousignant here to share some more home office fitness tips to help you become the super-focused, highly productive, beautiful person that you really are!

As a busy female entrepreneur with too much on her plate you are bound to experience stress in your life. It’s part of the package deal. Stress can be a good thing. It can drive you to accomplish tasks that you’ve been procrastinating about. But in many cases stress can be harmful to your well-being and make it more difficult for you to lose weight even when you are eating well and exercising regularly.

The home office workout and home office cardio that I shared with you during my first two guest posts here, are great tools to help you reduce stress. Melissa’s post yesterday, “Making Fitness Work For You” is a great discussion about taking the stress out of fitness by making it something that you enjoy doing and want to do instead of “Should Do” of “Have To Do”. This is a philosophy that I certainly live by and recommend to you.

Stretching has become one of my favorite ways of reducing stress. It forces me to ‘slow down’ and get in-tune with my breathing. It also clears my head and helps me refocus.

The key to effective stretching is to relax. Don’t force the stretch. Focus on your breathing. Ease into the stretch and with each breath that you blow out try to stretch a little further.

You should hold each stretch for 10 relaxing breaths. By focusing on slow relaxed breathing it will automatically put you in a more relaxed state of mind.

Stress creates tension in your muscles and stretching will work wonders for relieving that tension. Allow me to demonstrate five of my favorite stretches that I perform in my home office each day.

5 Stretches To Relieve Work Stress

There’s no limit on how often you should stretch. I recommend taking a couple minutes each hour to stretch and relieve the tension in your body that occurs naturally from sitting at a desk all day. It’s a great way to manage your stress throughout the day.

I’d love to hear your thoughts. Perform these stretches throughout your workday and let us know how if affects your mood and performance.

You ROCK! Enjoy the experience,

Scott Tousignant

Melissa McCreery

Having Scott Tousignant sharing his great guest posts about fitness this week has me thinking…

What helps women make fitness a key part of their lives?

I know what doesn’t. I see more women spurn fitness and a healthier lifestyle when it becomes a “should”—one more thing in the laundry list of “have-tos” that already feels too long and overwhelming. Who needs that?

Transforming fitness and even healthy eating from a “should” into something very different is what I believe creates healthy lifestyle transformations for many of my clients.

What else can fitness be?  Scott has already told you that fitness doesn’t have to be long and laborious and that it isn’t taking time away.  Exercise can be a time-efficient energy and productivity booster.  It can also be a great way to work out that kink in your shoulders that comes from being on the computer all day.  Fitness can be time spent laughing with your kids (children + stability ball almost always = something fun) or a way to incorporate music into your day.  Fitness can be a way to shift your mood or play your favorite superhero (kickboxing anyone?). It can be a way to get outside and play (when was the last time you walked or ran in the rain or came home muddy?). Exercise and fitness can be a gateway to being able to do some things that you can’t do so well anymore—riding a bike or a horse, sailing your boat, even sleeping without back pain.

Instead of asking yourself how you can “make yourself” exercise (because you “should,” ask yourself what you’d like physical activity to do FOR you. What’s the feeling you seek? Energy? Calm? Strength and power? Grace?  Maybe you are looking for a way to clear your head, combat stress, renew your focus? Perhaps you’d just like your knees to stop hurting. Fair enough. What are the juicy, life enhancing things you’d do more of if your knees didn’t ache? That’s something to work for that can be significantly more motivating than a “should.”

Could you shift from a dull boring “should” to activity that’s more fun? What do you LOVE to do inside your body? Dance? Play? Throw snow balls? I had a client who got her cardio in by passionately conducting the classical music she played on her stereo. Another gave up her cardio contraption in the basement to go outside and shoot baskets. What would FEED your soul?

I really hope that Scott’s posts are helpful to you this week and inspire you to consider ways to incorporate more activity into your work day and your life.  I also want to challenge you to think about the mindset you have about exercise and fitness.

I’d love to hear your thoughts about this. What motivates you to workout? If you are struggling with “shoulds” and creating motivation, does a mind shift seem necessary? Does it seem possible?

Take good care,

Melissa McCreery

Hello there. This is Scott Tousignant back with another guest blog post to help you incorporate home office fitness into your hectic schedule. Yesterday I shared a quick home office workout to help you get more done in less time throughout your workday. Today I will have you perform a 10-minute home office cardio session that will boost your metabolism and increase your productivity.

But first I have a question for you. Have you been avoiding cardio because you simply don’t have the time? Allow me to provide you with a solution that fits your busy entrepreneurial lifestyle. I don’t want you to think about this 10-minute cardio session as ‘taking 10-minutes out of your day’. This 10-minute cardio session will actually give you more time in your day. Once you complete this fast and fun home office fitness session you will be energized, more focused, and ready to check off your to-do list quicker than ever before.

It’s time for you to take a quickie fitness break. Your health is the #1 asset in your business and this break will do wonders to keep this asset functioning at peak performance. It’s just 10-minutes. Everyone has 10-minutes… lets go!

Time Efficient Cardio

How do you feel after challenging your body and getting your blood pumping? Are you ready to tackle today’s tasks? Is your mind clear?

There are two times during the day that I recommend you perform this quickie cardio session. Set your alarm ten minutes earlier and get the best start to your day. There is no better way to boost your energy and prepare yourself for the day than with a quickie cardio session. Alternatively you can perform this session around 1pm when you typically begin to feel tired and sluggish and when your productivity begins to drop off. This quick home office fitness session will give you a great boost to carry you through the rest of your day. Ideally you should perform this cardio session first thing in the morning and do a quickie home office workout at 1pm.

Is 10-minutes really enough time for an effective cardio workout? Absolutely! My clients and myself have been experiencing better results from the quicker cardio sessions than we ever did from longer typical cardio sessions. It certainly has a great impact on your metabolism, but it’s my opinion and belief that the reason why it’s so effective is because it’s easier to stick with for the long term because it suits your buys lifestyle.

If you have the time and you enjoy jogging, biking, or going for a brisk walk, I highly recommend that you incorporate it into your day as well. I’m not one of those fitness guru’s who bash long duration cardio. I actually enjoy riding my bike for 30 minutes during the warmer months of the year. I enjoy going for a brisk walk during the colder winter months. And it does product great results for me. I have found that the best results are achieved when there is a combination of both the short and long duration cardio scheduled into your week.

In order to maximize my time and work more efficient and effective I load up my mp3 player with educational audios, audio books, or recorded calls from my mentors before I go out for a brisk walk or jog. I use my cardio time as education time. I also use this time to clear my head and plan for the day.

Fitness shouldn’t be something that you dread. It should be something that you embrace.

You ROCK! Enjoy the experience,

Scott Tousignant

PS Don’t use lack of time as an excuse to put off your health. You deserve this quickie fitness break. Your business deserves it. Your family deserves it.

Melissa McCreery