Here are the rules:

1. I have two belly buttons. I had a surgery when I was a wee one that left me with a scar that looks like a smaller belly button under my real one. It does get photoshopped out of magazine photos but my competition photos always show my scar

While we’re on the subject of Krysten from Darwinian Fail. She has recently come into my life because of #fitblog chats on Twitter and we’re both a part of the FitFluential ambassador program. We have recently met IRL (in real life) and her story is inspiring and pushes me to be better. Check out her blog for her story. I’ll let her tell it to you Link at the top of this post.

I’m not a huge celebrity person but I absolutely adore the cast of Flashpoint. They are an amazing Canadian show. It probably helps that they’ve filmed episodes outside my old workplace and I would stalk them on my lunch break Oh and Spike goes to my local Starbucks! lol

If you can see in the picture above they sent me a card that said “Where do you find your Sparkle? Where do you find your Soul?

For me I find my Sparkle & Soul while running, doing yoga, lifting weights, taking a spin class and dancing in my living room.

Here’s what the wide black one looks like on.

And here’s me getting my Vanna White on.

The lovely peeps at Sparkly Soul would like to give 2 headbands away to one of my readers. You get your choice of one wide and one thin headband in the colours of your choosing!

Here’s the deets on how you enter to win:

1. Head on over to sparklysoul.com and pick out your 2 favourite colours.

2. Leave a comment on this blog telling me what your 2 fav colours are and “Where do You Find Your Sparkle & Soul”?

3. Tweet: I want 2 win a @SPARKLYSOULINC non-slip headband from @RobynBaldwin. Enter 2 win:  http://tinyurl.com/827yvut

One random winner will be chosen by Sunday, February 5th at 5pm EST.

If you’d like to learn more about Sparkly Soul, I recommend connecting with them on Twitter, Facebook & Pinterest.

Disclaimer: I received two Sparkly Soul headbands free of charge, but was not compensated for review, nor for hosting this giveaway.  My opinions are all my own.

****UPDATE****

And the Winner Is… Drum Roll Please… Laura Bridge

Her answer was awesome!

“I’m a huge fan of the silver and gold. Go sparkles and so metallic.

My sparkle and soul come from my great friends and laughter that starts in your gut and hurts your cheeks for days.

I ground my soul with yoga and enhance my sparkle with dance and zumba.”

Set your GymBoss Timer to 30s and 10s. 30s is activity and 10s is for “rest”. 24 Rounds.

Equipment Needed: 8 kg & 4 kg Kettlebell

Exercises:

Squat Thrusts (w/ 8 kg Kettlebell)

Burpees

Keg Squats (w/ 8 kg Kettlebell)

Switch Lunge Jumps

Clean & Press (w/ 8 kg Kettlebell)

Superman Pushups

Bike Abs

Side Plank Hold (w/ 4 kg Kettlebell)

2 minute for “real” rest time and repeat 2 more times. 3 Circuits in Total.

Here’s the video that’s posted on the hardmagnum.com site!

My Fitness Goal is to attend hot yoga once a week.

For this I need to:

• Find an accountability partner who will go with me.
• Go to bed early Saturday night so I have the energy to go Sunday morning.
• Get up early enough to start chores, go to yoga and then home to grocery shop and food prep
• Schedule it in my calendar so it’s an appointment in my brain

My Health Goal is to decrease my cortisol with sleep, yoga and meditation / prayer.

For this I need to:

• Go to Bed 1 Hour Earlier than Normal
• Turn Off the TV so I can get to sleep earlier
• Wake up 10 mins earlier than normal and go straight to my couch for a morning devotional & prayer
• Achieve my Fitness Goal to Achieve My Health Goal

So it’s official I’m going to train and run the Warrior Dash in Barrie on July 21, 2012. The race is 3.24 miles so just a little over a 5k. This I like because I’m good with just training for 5Ks vs anything longer. The killer part is the “obstacles”. These include climbing through a ropes course, crawling through pitch black trenches, climbing over a wooden barricade, crawling over nets, climbing hay bales, stampeding through a scrapyard, rappeling down a ravine, sliding down a slope, climbing cargo nets, leaping over fire and then scrambling under barbed wire in the mud to the finish line. No Big D.

So here’s the plan for training. I compete at the end of April in my fitness competition for the year so I can move on in May, June & July to Warrior Dash training. I’m thinking the obvious running, spider man crawling on the gym floor and rock climbing for some super upper body strength. Other than that I’m pretty sure I’ll just wing it!

Right now I think I have a team of 5 including me that will run it together. I just want to complete the course! Anyone else in Toronto game?

The FitFluential Website describes themselves as “FitFluential is a growing family of fitness fanatics spreading a positive healthy message year-round. Fitfluential is Fitness Found.”

Our fearless leaders are connecting us with brands and products that would be awesome in our lives and we are reviewing them or starting conversations in the social media sphere. As part of this amazing network we have the opportunity to pitch ourselves as writers to several amazing magazines.

I have been developing my fitness brand for the past 4 years now and have really found my love for writing. So this is my audition post as a writer and video content creator!

I’m Robyn Baldwin. I want to write and shoot video about health and fitness because I’m a jack of all trades, an Alpha Female if you will (someone who has found work/life balance and does “it all”) and love sharing my knowledge with others. My friends call me fitpedia.

My fitness story can be found here and how I battled being skinny fat!

My readers like that I take on challenging fitness workouts to get ready for competitions while balancing working full time.

I will bring to the table great, easy and succinct reads as no one has time for long articles these days. Especially Alpha Females. I will also bring to the table great video content from new fitness trends, to new equipment reviews, to cooking healthy recipes straight from the pages of your magazine to demonstrate how easy they are to implement in real life. You can follow me along at future fitness shoots and see what it takes to get ready for a photoshoot or competition.

Here is my Sizzle Reel

Please click above on the contact link to get in touch with moi!

Today’s Chapter is all about working backwards to reach your Push Goal. It’s called Reverse Engineering so here goes nothing.

1. Research How to Write An E-Book

2. Research How to Promote An E-Book

3. Set aside an hour a day to write

4. Read Successful E-Books

5. Ensure There Are No Other E-Books on Becoming an Alpha Female (if someone reads this and writes their own then bugger!)

6. Decide What Publishing Platforms To Use

7. Outlines E-Book Chapters

Here Goes Nothing!

Since I started my health & fitness journey in 2009 I’ve changed the way that I eat and train. One of my inspirations was my fiancee. He brought protein powder into the house when he first moved in and I started to wonder if that’s something I could take. I started doing research on supplementation, nutrition and training so really he can be blamed for my start in the industry. I would say that Dave eats half and half. Half the time it makes me vomit in my mouth and half the time he will entertain my healthy eating to make me happy. He is still blessed with a fast metabolism and genetically fit. He does work out but not nearly enough (he may argue about this point). So one of the ways I started incorporating health(ier) eating into Dave’s diet was showing him recipes in Clean Eating Magazine and he would say yay or nay. He does let me cook for him but I would say the hardest part is getting him to give up those wings, fries and beer. You win some you lose some.

HE SAID

Beer is great, wings are great. If it were up to me, that is all I would eat day in and day out. I’m very happy that it’s not always up to me. There are a lot of battles that are fought within our relationship and I must say this one could have been deadly.

Robyn started eating what I consider crap early in our relationship, she would have water in the morning and all her meals would be made on Sunday for the entire week. I find this strange as I love to make my meals fresh and enjoy a ice cold beer with everything. As with everything in our relationship it came to me over time that if I’m going to live and look my best I will have to change my diet and who better than Robyn to show me the way. Like all men I’m very against change and a change in my diet was not an easy one. But as I’m getting older I find it harder to maintain my physique. I ended up conceding victory to her on this one, however  I should point out, I refuse and may I stress refuse to give up wings and beers, but I have cut it down to once a week.

In Chapter 2 I accidentally set 10 weekly goals. One of them is already quite manageable.

I want to attend Hot Moksha Yoga every Sunday morning. 

Measurable: attendance

Achievable: once a week commitment

Rewarding: I just feel better after class and I’ll feel better knowing that I’ve gone even though I could have slept in

Time Sensitive: I need to commit to attending every Sunday for a month to achieve this goal

In Chapter 3 I set some bigger goals. One of them was to decrease my cortisol levels. To make this one a Smart goal…

I need to get 8 hours of sleep a night, attend yoga once a week and meditate/pray once a day. 

Measurable: daily check off

Achievable: I do it or I don’t

Rewarding: by achieving these 3 things I will force my cortisol levels down which will help me feel better and less stressed

Time Sensitive: I need to commit to changing my lifestyle daily, nightly and weekly so I can make a change to the output of cortisol in my body.