First step in the fight…

Don’t kid yourself, this will be hard to accomplish. At first it may seem easy to do but wait, wait until something happens to you good or bad. We have a tendency to revert back to our old ways to either celebrate because something good happened or just give up because something bad happened. Yea I am talking about your health and finally getting it to a point where you feel real good about yourself. Getting your health to a point where medications are not an issue. Getting to a point where YOU take back YOUR life!

First things first… we must surround ourselves with people who care about our success. This is very hard to do, because everyone has an agenda and most live with the attitude, “what’s in it for me”. This person(s) has to have our best interest in mind at all times. They must be able to hold you accountable in a friendly loving way. They must be willing to sacrifice for the cause, whatever that cause may be, without reservation. They must be willing to come along side us when we are down and discouraged and lift you up. We need to feel comfortable around that person to be ourselves at all times and without reservation.

Sally has been a client for a number of years and I remember having this talk with her when she first joined with me. She blew me off and told me that her friends would support her. Well, a year later she told me that it was a struggle to maintain her losses. She was still drinking excess, eating more than she should and not getting the rest she actually needs. I mentioned to her our initial conversation and at first she became defensive but after thinking about it decided to begin the process of replacing her old friends with new more supportive friends. Now don’t read too much into this. She kept her old friends just did not hang out with them anymore. Her new health conscious friends came alongside her and cultivated her and now she has no problem creating and achieving goals.

This first step is the most important and about 80% of your battle. Once you have this piece in place, the workouts will be much easier to maintain and your goals much easier to achieve and keep.

Is food the answer?

I was on my Facebook page the other day and there was a general message left from a friend. The message said, “Really tired most of the time. What can I do to get some energy?” I stayed silent for a few days but kept looking at the people who were posting. People were telling her that if she were to eat this certain food or take this certain supplement she would get the energy she needs. Some people said apples, some said veggies, some even went as far as to say more coffee. But none of them asked the question, “What does your exercise look like?”

Believe it or not, exercise, whereas if done really hard, can tire you out, also has the effect of giving you much more energy in the long run. Here is something that many don’t realize… Science has proven that the harder your heart pumps during a workout, at rest, the slower it will become. Also, exercise gives you the ability to handle much more of a daily stress load on your body. Medical science has proven that people who tend to exercise daily have a happier physical life and don’t suffer from illnesses as often.

In defense to my friends who really mean well, food is our fuel for life. We need it to stay alive, but I believe what most people need to do is not eat more but exercise the fuel we have stored in us. Our bodies need to become more efficient in the fuel we give it. I know my Facebook friend meant well, but in the end is more food really what she needs? Or is it exercise to lose the excess weight and put her into better shape? Think about it.

Step Challenge...How are we different!

What a crazy world we live in. Could you have imagined just 20 years ago that we would have a device on us that could measure the amount of steps we take each day. Be able to tell us where we are by GPS and map our route and then measure our resting heart rate? What a world we live in.
Last year I started a Step Challenge at my gym, Parkers Place, because I really was tired of hearing people complain about gaining so much weight or not being able to lose the weight they had. I also started this challenge just to see how many steps the average person in my gym actually takes. Little did I know that after the first month, this challenge would take on its own life.

The Parker's Place Step challenge was not your usual 3 or 6 week challenge. This challenge measured how many steps you just don’t take on a day but also for the year. Actual steps were counted every day and tabulated on a white board. Now just counting steps, in it of itself is quit boring, however I asked myself a question… Where would those total steps put us if we were to really walk from our homes? Would we be still in Wisconsin? Would we make it to the west coast? Where would we be?

So, along with counting steps I also drew a map of the United States and started everyone from Oconomowoc Wisconsin and we started walking west. (Now we used 2100 steps as a mile which is just about the national average). The goal was to get to the Pacific Ocean. I also sweetened the pot a little by adding prizes at 250,000, 500,000, 1,000,000, and 2,000,000 steps. Boy, did this challenge take off. By the end of the first month I had several people who had passed the 500,000 mark and was quickly approaching the 1,000,000 mark. People were hitting the marks much quicker than I thought they would.

My hopes on putting this challenge together was to make people aware of how much we are not physically active and it worked. For those that finished the challenge, which ended at the end of November, they all told me that they were better off doing it because it got them thru the usual times when they would have experienced a low and lost focused. This challenge helped them keep focus.

Well we have started another challenge this year and this one finishes in San Francisco (market street). The prize points are higher 750k, 1.5mil, 3mil, and 5mil and we started January 1st instead of March 1st. This gives us two more months to get those goals achieved. Well, here we go. I will blog about our experiences later on in the year.

Visit us at http://www.parkersfitness.com/ for more info!