5 Tips for Staying Healthy on the Road

Since starting my Arbonne business almost two years ago, I have gotten SO many amazing travel opportunities (Virgin Islands, Bahamas, Seattle, Arizona, DC, Miami, Tennessee, NYC, Charlotte, just to name a few).

Charlotte enjoying the Virgin Islands, Arbonne Trip 2015

In fact, I just returned from a great week in Las Vegas for our Global Training Conference (SUCH a great week, but more on that later!).  Through our Clean Eating Challenge program, many of you have told me that sticking to your health and fitness goals while traveling, for work or otherwise, is a big struggle.  Here are a few tips that I use to make sure I stay on plan while I am traveling:

1. Preparation is KEY

Just like when you are eating clean at home, sticking to your priorities on the road will take some good preparation. If you usually spend Sunday afternoon meal prepping, do that exact thing for your trip!   First of all, plan ahead.  Do you need to order anything special?  Ready to drink shakes? Single protein packets?  A blender bottle?  Order those at least a week ahead of time.

Then, think about how you will handle meals, and get your nutrition needs packed up.  For breakfast, maybe pack your blender bottle, individual packets of protein, and any other supplements.  For lunches, consider whether you will be in the car all day (need nutrition bars and individual packets of almond butter, or ready-to-drink shakes to avoid the drive through), or having business lunches (plan what you will choose right now-”I will have a piece of fish and a vegetable”) for lunch everyday.  Put sturdy snacks in your luggage.  Powdered greens are a great safeguard against a no-vegetable trip. This seems obvious, but most of us don't even consider planning our nutrition on a trip.

Next, look at your schedule and plan your workouts.  Commit to how many workouts you will get in while you are gone.  These days, that is much easier than it used to be.    I am so grateful that Arbonne so highly values health that they offer group workout options for us, but if that is not your situation, plan them for yourself!  (In fact, maybe a friend or colleague would appreciate the invitation to join you!  Encourage each other!)

Arbonne charitable workout for Hope for Haiti #gtc2016

Group yoga to benefit Arbonne Charitable Foundation #gtc2016

Running or walking is always a simple option.  It has the added benefits of needing only a pair of shoes, and also allowing you to explore the area!

One of the ways I have been introduced to awesome new workouts is to take every opportunity for new classes.  Are you traveling to a big city?  It is a great chance to try that awesome class that everybody raves about!  Are you in a scenic area?  Ask friends for recommendations for a hiking spot or walking trail.  Are you visiting someone who is passionate about a certain workout?  Let them introduce you to their fav!  That is how I tried a barre class, and it is a regular part of my routine now.

Hiking on trip in AZ

If you know that you will have a crazy trip with little downtime or no good options, consider signing up for streaming workouts.  This is what I do when I am home on the farm.  My personal favorite is Physique57 streaming because they offer a free 1 week trial.  Other great options include Tracey Anderson streaming, or Barre 3 streaming.  All of those choices offer no-equipment workouts that you could easily do in a hotel room.

So how do you fit all this into your traveling schedule?

2. Prioritize

Write down your goals, and commit to sticking to them.

One important way to make sure that happens is to spend the money: pay for the exercise class, the daily gym pass, whatever it takes.  Buy the blender bottle, the single serve protein, the stacking containers, the PB 2.  Why?  Because you need to make staying healthy as easy as possible.  Making small investments in necessary preparation is an essential part of that.  

If at all possible, make it a priority to go to the market when you first arrive and grab clean food that can be kept in your room fridge: hardboiled eggs, precut veggies and hummus, non-dairy milks, water.

If you track your food using a diet and fitness calculator, consider where you want to spend your calories/macros.  Don't stray from that plan except for a truly once in a lifetime treat.  (Airport food ain’t that).   Planning ahead will help enormously here.

For example, here is the difference in Starbucks v Arbonne's Fizz Sticks nutrition:

If you are committed to staying on plan, do you really want to spend THIRTY TWO grams of sugar on one coffee?

Another important way to prioritize is to discipline yourself for what you want the most!  

Leave the party early so you can get up early and squeeze in that workout.  If all else fails, walk laps at the airport.  Ask your business contact or friend to meet you for an active meeting instead of a drink.  I have done this with great success several times lately, and gotten to have some great experiences as a result.

Barre 3 Studio, Georgetown

3. Essential Take Alongs

So what to pack?

For me, these are essential take alongs, and I can fit most of it into one gallon size ziplock.

• Protein packets
• Ready to Drink shakes (for car travel, or ship ahead)
• Fiber (35 g of fiber per day has been proven to help you eat 245 less calories per day without noticing)
• Fizz Sticks
• Greens
• Digestion Plus
• Sleep Spray
• Blender bottle
• Stacking cups
• Nutrition bars
• Complete Hydration

4. Stay Flexible

Let's say you slept through your planned workout this morning. You're giving up on today, right?! NO. Figure out a way to squeeze something in! Walk laps in the airport. Do a 7 minute HIIT workout (there are apps for this!). What if your boss just loves fast food, beer, and general shenanigans? (Well, don't we all?!) Make the best choice you can-check the nutrition info, order a club soda and lime, plead jet lag and get back to the hotel-whatever it takes. Don't let your perfect plan be the enemy of a good alternative choice. Staying on track is absolutely about a "no matter what" attitude than it is about sticking to any one small part of your plan.

5. Tips & Trips

• Packets of single serve protein are perfect for when you are only using a carry on bag. Make sure you have your blender cup and stacker ready to go in your bag for your travel day.
• Ready-to-drink shakes are the gold standard for car trips and checked luggage. SO easy.
• If you will be in one place for more than a few days, consider sending nutrition ahead to the hotel. Most hotels will hold boxes for you at the front desk. That will save you some weight in your luggage.
• Stay on your probiotic, for two huge reasons. 1) Many people suffer from tummy trouble while traveling, and your probiotic is essntial to protecting your digestion, and 2) Do you know that a large percentage of your immunity resides in your gut health? By being consistent with your probiotic, you can save yourself all that crud many of us pick up while traveling.
• Bring your own water bottle. Keep it filled. Enough said.
• Commit to keep using your trackers, especially if you normally do at home-My Fitness Pal will give you nutrition information on most restaurants. Even if you are planning on indulging, keep yourself accountable by tracking everything!
• Write down your goals and keep them with you. WHY do you want to stick to your plan? What is your end goal? Keep these with you to remind yourself when you are tired from travel and feel like diving into a mediocre pizza.
• Try to get a friend to commit with you. If you can chat throughout the day, it will help keep you accountable. Even better if you two are traveling together. It is so much easier and more fun to make healthy decisions together. Encourage each other when one is feeling weak!
• Make the effort. This is key. Work hard ahead of time so that your decisions are easier later. For example, pack food for airport on travel days, don't plan eat fast food and hope you will find something healthy.  Start yourself off on the right foot.
• A quick example of what I ate while I was gone last week:
• Breakfasts: protein shakes made in the room, with fiber, Digestion Plus, and PB2. Prepared and packed in my tote: Fizz Sticks made with Greens
• Lunches: Always protein and a veggie combination of some kind at a restaurant. Made sure to get in a healthy fat (avocado is a good bet)
• Dinner: (admittedly, at 11pm most nights): Again, protein and veggie combo. I even got a beautiful salad from room service one night. And champagne. Because vacation.
• Snacks: bags of almonds, another protein shake, or nutrition bars in my tote. We also keep veggies and hummus, and some meat and cheese in our hotel fridge. Cut myself off coffee before 2 pm, stuck to fizz sticks so that my sleep wasn't disturbed.

May you be encouraged in your efforts to stay healthy while traveling! Tell me, what are your traveling healthy tips? I challenge you to make one healthy swap this week, whether you are on the road or not.

A Year in the Making: How Arbonne Taught Me to Live Inspired

Hello faithful friends!  I apologize for being inconsistent with this space in the last year or so.  So many exciting things have happened in that time that took my time and attention, but I have missed chatting with you all.  I am committed to making the room for this in my life again.

In the meantime, let's catch up!  As I alluded to above, it has been a surprising and fun couple of years.  First of all, my family is healthy and well, and growing up quickly.  Those babies are now almost 11, almost nine, seven, five, and three.  Not exactly babies anymore.  I am everyday both delighted and exhausted by all their energy and passion for life.  There are a lot of feelings and talking and NOISE in this tiny house.  We are still happily homeschooling, so I feel blessed that we get to spend all our days together.  In addition to farming, Seth has started another business of his own doing sales and service for precision planting.  His business is absolutely exploding at this time of year, right before planting season.

Olivia, 10.  Amelia, 8.  Charlotte, 7.  Henry, 5.  Griffin, 3.

The biggest surprise of these years has been my Arbonne business.  When I started a little less than two years ago, I was just terrified.  I thought there was no way that a business like this could work.  I thought that I had absolutely no time to fit anything else into my life, let alone my own business.  I thought that I couldn't be successful at a network marketing business, because I didn't know anyone here.

Well.   I have never been happier to be wrong in my whole life.  Ten months after beginning my business with all that fear, I promoted to Vice President and earned a free Mercedes.  In the past two years, my business partners and I have been able to build an incredible team of people across about twenty states and three countries, people who motivate and inspire me everyday, and who have achieved considerable success themselves.  In our first full year of business, my team did almost a million dollars in sales, and we promoted 22 people to the position where they make $1000+ per month.  We promoted five people to the level where they make $2500+ per month, and this year, we are ready to help three more women earn their own free Mercedes before 2016 ends.  My personal business now brings home six figures a year.

More than that, we have been able to give back in big ways.  We have been delighted to support many causes that you told me are important to you (March of Dimes, St. Baldrick's, Girls on the Run, Boys and Girls Club, Volunteers of America, and several smaller local needs).  But the biggest success of this year is the tiny part we played in supporting the Hope for Haiti project.  Last month, the Arbonne VPs leading that project had an idea for a FB auction of gently used clothes and accessories.  We hoped the auction could raise $40,000.  We raised $300,000 in four days and CLOSED DOWN the project.  As a result of that vision and the work of so many, all 90 families who were still homeless from the 2010 earthquake now will have homes.  A few weeks later, the ground has already been broken for their houses.

I cannot explain the surprise and blessing of this, except that so many people have been incredibly generous, have consistently worked hard, and have dreamed much bigger than seems realistic.  THANK YOU, for the part that each of you has played in supporting my business.  So many of you have hosted small groups for me, referred me to other successful business people, and introduced me to your contacts.  Thank you for those of you who have loyally purchased products, written me glowing reviews, and joined my team.  I cannot tell you what it means to me to have your continued support as my little business grows.

Just a little Arbonne fun from the past two years

When I started my Arbonne business, I thought that I wanted to help Seth pay off my law school loans.  As it turns out, I am not motivated by that goal at all.  But it did lead me to my passion-helping people find a third career path.  Many of us were taught that if you work hard and do well in school, go to college and go to grad school, then you will get a great job and be successful.  Well, for the most part, that turned out to be true.  Except that we were working more and more and more hours.  And we had a bunch of grad school debt.  And then we had babies, and we found that we didn't want to work more than full-time and not see their sweet faces all week long.  But what were the options?

I know many women in that position who eventually decided to become stay at home mamas, as I did.  While I have loved being home full-time for almost 10 years now, I always felt a tug to be using a different part of my brain.  But I truly believed there was no other option (that would allow me to keep time with my family first) between working out of the home, and being a stay at home mom.

Arbonne IS that third path.  I am now able to run a thriving business, while still being at home every day, educating and raising my kiddos.  You can only imagine my surprise-before I began with Arbonne, I seriously believed that people who had direct sales businesses were sad and lonely people, who spent far more money with their silly companies than they earned.  (Sorry sorry sorry!  I really did think that!).  Helping people on this third path to career success is now my passion.  It is what gets me moving early everyday, and keeps me up late at night!  I have never felt as fulfilled and inspired as I do now, and I am able to have my business work around my first love, my family.

Mercedes Presentation Party, May 2015

Now that you have been very lengthily updated, where do we go from here?  :)

Well, as promised, I am going to be more consistent with this space.  Sharing ideas and conversation is a deep-rooted joy of mine, and I am going to make time to do that with you more.

There will also be a small shift in the conversation here-in the past, I have written mostly about babies and home and farming, and I will continue to do that.  Those are as essential to my life as they have ever been.  But Arbonne has also opened up a whole new group of passions for me, namely: healthy living, skincare and makeup, goal-setting and entrepreneurship, and even fashion.  So you will begin to see a small sprinkling of these topics as well.  I am hoping to bring you tasty (and group-tested!) clean eating recipes, makeup and skincare reviews, and a peek inside my business life.

I hope you will continue to stick with me and enjoy a broader range of topics here.  If you like what you read, can I ask you to share this page, as you have done so many times in the past?  You can also follow me on Facebook, Instagram (@sodellwenzel), or Pinterest to hear more antics from our house everyday!

And of course, I always love hearing from you in the comments!  Tell me, what is the biggest, most exciting thing that has happened to YOU in the past year?  I am anxious to hear...

Confessions of an Arbonne Husband

Roughly one year ago, my beautiful wife signed up to be an Arbonne consultant. At the time I wasn’t really sure what that would mean. I barely knew Arbonne as a company. I knew about some of their products as my wife had used their protein nutritional supplements and had lost quite a bit of weight following the birth of our sons. We have five young children at home under the age of nine. I work long hours on our family farm. Futhermore, my wife home schools our children. “How exactly is this going to work??” I kept asking myself….

Fast forward 12 months, and with the support of a great team, and the support of many loyal customers, my wife has proven to me that it is indeed possible to be successful at Arbonne. I can’t tell you exactly how she was successful (you’ll have to contact her direct if you want to learn more about the business), but I can tell you several things that I have learned in the past year being the husband to an Arbonne consultant.

Arbonne husbands will get to spend more one on one time with your children.  

This is one of the greatest blessings that Arbonne has done for me. Far too often in life, many Dads do not get to spend much one on one time with their kids. Moms may get one on one time if they stay at home, but often the Dads when they return home from work share kid time their spouse. There is nothing necessarily wrong with this scenario, nor is it true for all households, it is simply reality for many many families. 

If you are married to an Arbonne consultant, and your wife is gone a few nights a month working a spa or meeting with clients, don’t freak out. Think of it as an opportunity to spend more direct time with your children. Long term, you will have better relationships with your children due to additional one on one time that you spend with them.

Arbonne make great products for men.

If you are like me (and many other “average” husbands), you probably think generic store brand soap and dollar shampoo are just fine for your personal care needs. That white foamy lemon smelling stuff that your Dad taught you to shave with, has probably worked just “fine” for your basic shaving needs. But I’m here to tell you, the saying “you get what you pay for” is definitely true when it comes to your personal health.

I still remember my wife a year ago saying “Honey your skin is really really dry…”. I said “Thank you!” thinking it was a compliment. Apparently I was wrong. I have since learned that dry skin is NOT healthy skin. 

If your Arbonne consultant wife casually replaces your personal health products with Arbonne products, just give it a try. Your wife (and your skin) will both thank you. And don't forget about the nutrition and sports nutrition products.

Treat Arbonne as a business, not just a hobby.

We all have hobbies, and to be fair there are some Arbonne consultants that really only treat Arbonne as a hobby - which is totally fine. But if your Arbonne consultant’s goal is to actually build a business and generate real income, you as a spouse need to be supportive and treat it as a business as well. There will be business expenses. There will be a real 1099 at the end of the year that the government expects you to pay taxes on. In addition to your own personal family finances, keep track of all of your Arbonne expenses and income as well. From day one when my wife set up her business she set up a separate checking account to track all Arbonne transactions.

Arbonne is a real business that has the potential to generate real money.

When your spouse first signed up, what were your income expectations? Were you thinking your spouse might make a few hundred dollars a month or a few thousand dollars? If your wife works hard and sticks to the recommendations that her team provides, she will earn significant money. Did your wife ever show you the income potential for the various levels that was advertised? You know the chart: “Average consultants can expect to earn X; Average Area Managers can expect to earn Y.” From experience I will tell you that those numbers are very realistic. The numbers may not happen overnight, and by no means will they happen on their own, but hard work (as with any business) will pay huge dividends in the long run.

You may have to do a few extra load of laundry or wash the dishes by yourself. 

Trust me, laundry is one of my least favorite chores to do around the house, but if your wife’s Arbonne business is going to be successful, as a supportive husband, it is our job to “pick up the slack” when our wives are out working their business. If your wife is busy responding to customer emails, meeting with a client, or working with a new team member at night, I think we as husbands can all give up one half hour of TV to do an extra load of laundry or load of dishes. 

Facebook is not “just for fun”

I used to think of Facebook as simply something my wife used “for fun”. I always thought of it as a social tool to interact with friends and family. Now, 12 months into my wife’s Arbonne business I realize that it can be used as a business tool to communicate with clients and other Arbonne team members. If it’s 9:30 PM and your wife is on Facebook, don’t automatically assume she is simply “socializing”; she may actually be working on that next promotion that will generate more income for your family.

A Happy wife is a Hot Wife.

We’ve all heard the saying “A happy wife is a happy life.” While I agree with that statement, trust me when I say when your wife is happy she will look hot! And while Arbonne doesn’t necessarily guarantee happiness, it does provide opportunities to meet new people, educate others about skin and health care products, mentor team members, and earn full time income from home while raising a family. Those things (and many more) make my wife happy, which in turn makes my family happy.  

As the husband to an Arbonne consultant, I have learned a lot in the past 12 months. I can’t tell you how to run a successful spa night, grow your business, or make recommendations on which skin care products your customers you should use. I won’t tell you that this business is easy, nor will I tell you that Arbonne is for everyone. What I can tell you is that as a company Arbonne has the potential to change your family’s life. If you are a husband, fiancé, boyfriend, or simply a friend with someone who is thinking of joining Arbonne and are unsure of the potential that Arbonne has to offer, I encourage you to contact me with any questions or thoughts that you may have.