Tanika: 'I love my body and I love mySELF'

Ok wouldn't you know it's the last week of the mission and it was my weakest of all. However ladies I do want to say I'm not happy about my performance in the last week, I'm not beating myself up either. That was a powerful lesson for me during this trial. I realize that the guilt we feel about falling off our programs is the biggest obstacle to our future health.

We've all been there. We weren't able to stay on our game plan or we got sick or we may have eaten something really fattening and then we felt bad about ourselves. This state allows guilt to creep in which amplifies our defeatist selves. "It wasn't going to work anyway" or "I'll always be fat" or simply "What's the point?"

But if you treat yourself with kindness and love, having a couple bad days won't throw you off course. Working for EXTRA keeps my schedule constantly busy.

This last week I flew to Las Vegas for a couple of days to cover the MTV VMAs. It's Vegas and as disciplined as I was, a drink or two was consumed. It's not the end of the world. I counterbalanced that by chugging a lot of H2O. Then I flew from Vegas to New York City for a week of shooting the launch of our 14th season of EXTRA!!!! Everyday I woke up saying I'm going to fit in a workout today. Very emphatically I would pronounce my desire to workout. NYC is nonstop though!!! I started my days at 8 a.m. dressed with full makeup, ready to work. The next thing I knew it was 10 p.m. and no workout happened, and I still had one more event I had to attend. This unfortunately continued everyday that week. The saving grace was I walked a lot through the streets of the Big Apple from an interview with Kanye West and then uptown to chat with Regis and Kelly. So I didn't get to follow the plan to a T and I improvised a lot ....but isn't that life? Things don't always work out exactly as you plan, but with the goal of health in mind, you make it work.

I love my body and I love mySELF. Everything else will fall in line.

My body is definitely tighter, and I have learned valuable lessons. So overall I call it a success!!!! Thanks for the journey. I'm a work in progress, but aren't we all.

Much love,

Tanika