Consistency is paramount when working toward any health goal; abstaining from cake only one time will not shed stubborn pounds. To lose weight, lower your blood pressure, improve energy or decrease anxiety, you need to change your preferences — your daily habits — so that more often than not you are making healthy choices. You need to be consistently healthier. It may sound obvious, but consistency falls into the life category of “simple, but not easy.”

Adopting a healthier lifestyle can be a difficult, overwhelming, and frustrating experience, but it doesn’t have to be. Frustration and defeatism often bloom from a feeling of doing the same things over and over (dieting or exercising) and never getting the desired results! Of course you feel overwhelmed and at a loss if you consistently start and stop health programs. If you are constantly on and off your fitness horse, this time instead of getting back on and hoping for different results, rethink your mindset and LEARN from your past experiences.

Now, I have been running for (gulp) over 15 years. When I first started running I was too nervous to run outside in colder temperatures. I get that adapting to different temperatures can be tricky, especially for newbie runners. I have been there, done that. The lesson I learned is not to be intimidated by the cold.

To catch you up, Finding Your Fit is "A Compassionate Trainer's Guide to Making Fitness a Lifelong Habit: it provides readers with practical tools that will allow them to connect the dots between wanting to make a health and fitness change and actually making it. Finding Your Fit is the "anti–Biggest Loser" handbook for realistic, lifelong health: a motivational handbook with realistic strategies and practical information to help readers initiate and then follow through and adopt a long-term healthy lifestyle."

SHHHH Want to know a Secret ?

So I'm sure most of us have heard of "The Secret". The book is no secret but its idea really does work! There is one thing they don't like to focus on though and that's the work part.

If I had to pick the most important thing I've learned over the past couple of years, it would be, "No matter how good, how accessible, or how cheap a piece of fitness equipment is, if a person does not 'start' or 'want to start,' then nothing happens. I've even wirtten about it here "

This is why I love a new book to be released this October by Canada's fitness information leader - Kathleen Trotter – as it addresses this very issue.It is entitled, "Finding Your Fit; A Compassionate Trainer's Guide to Making Fitness a Lifelong Habit."

I recently was on vacation, or a "staycation" as lots of people have come to call it. And trying to stay in routine (if you're in one) fitness wise, is definitely a challenge. Motivation at times sort of flies out the window, workouts start to be skipped, but worst of all, your eating habits become lack luster at best. But it's not a bad thing. It's perfectly fine to take a break every once in a while with both the eating right and performing any workouts. But of course you don't want all of your progress/gains to go right out the window either.

Guest blog by Brandon Fischer, Flaman Fitness, Burlington, ON

Summer is a busy season for almost everyone, for me it means spending an average of 5 nights a week on the diamond. I laced my first pair of cleats at the age of five and I haven't looked back. Softball is a sport predominately played by women; it's a popular summer past time and has many health and fitness benefits.

A guest blog by Callie Tweedie, Graphic Designer for the Flaman Group of Companies (the parent company to Flaman Fitness)

Guest blog by Mike Henschel, Flaman Fitness, Saskatoon . . . .

Summertime in Saskatoon is a wonderful opportunity to see the city's beauty with the river banks, gorgeous parks and bike trails all over. One outdoor activity I enjoy is hitting the diamond. There's nothing like tying up my ball shoes on the bench, look up and see the shale infield surrounded by the freshly trimmed emerald-green, grass outfields protected by a fence that acts like a goal for so many.