The end game

I think I may have figured out why so many people lose a lot of weight and then a few months later or a few years later gain it all back again. Most people don’t understand that there is no “end game” with actually having a lifestyle change. For most people lifestyle change means, “well I will lose this weight and get in better shape so that I can get back to life as I know it” and that is just wrong, way wrong.

People ask me why I am so successful with people losing weight and it is because I make sure they understand that there is no “end game”. There is no time, once we get started that they can rest and go back to life as they knew it. If they feel as though they cannot change their ways, and for good, I cannot work with them.

If you want to be successful at your lifestyle change you must understand that what you are about to do is something that you will have to do for the rest of your life. You will never be able to go back to life as you once knew it because if you do, well, you will only be setting yourself up to fail…… again.

There is a medical term that we use when it comes to our health and it is called “set point”. The “set point” is the point where our body is accustomed to and lives at. If you have been heavy your whole life and then you lose the weight, unless you do something drastic, your body will revert back to your original “set point”. This can be changed, but it takes hard work and strong discipline for this to be changed. I believe your set point can be reset after a minimum of 3 years of consistent change. I could be wrong however. I have only seen a small number of people actually reset their body to a better, healthier setting. Most fail miserably within the first year.

So, who will you be? Will you be the person who fails or succeeds? Do you understand that the only way to win this game is to change your lifestyles and for good? Do you understand that your old life can NEVER be visited ever again? Think about it.

New life New times…

I can remember when my first son was born. Here I was in the room waiting for my wife to give birth, but it hadn’t occurred to me that when he was born my life would never be the same. At 9:05am Corbin was introduced to this world and my life, as I had known it, would never be the same ever again. I remember when the doctor handed him over to me for the first time and said, “Here is your new son, dad.” I freaked! I thought he was talking to my father. I had never been called a dad or father before and it was a term that took me a long time to get use to. I remember going home and wondering to myself, “now what do I do?” I told myself, “I am not ready for this.” But as quickly as day turns to night, so did my old life vanish in front of me and my new life begin.

Over the years I have lived by a saying, “Who I am, my kids will someday be.” A statement that scares me an awful lot. Why? Because that tells me that for my kids to have a fighting chance in this life, I have to straighten out and fly right on so many levels. Now I wasn’t a late night partier, nor was I a drinker or smoker so the transition was not that tough for me, but responsibility and accountability became my best friends and worst enemies.

Responsibility and accountability to who? Now not just to my wife but a little defenseless baby boy who is going to look to me for everything and follow in the footsteps I leave behind. He will mimic my every move and become a mini me and if I don’t like myself and my ways, I must change them so that he doesn’t pick up my bad habits. Wow, to me, that is heavy and almost impossible to follow thru with.

Most Americans today are obese and most Americans don’t like that fact. Every morning we get up and try not to look in the mirror and if we could shower in the dark, well, we would. Then we look at our children and get upset when we see them sneaking snacks and sitting around doing pretty much nothing. It scares us and we yell at them to get up and get moving. There are programs out there like” 60 minutes of exercise” that are supposed to help motivate our children to get up and move.  There are children diet plans and classes in school to teach our kids to eat “healthier”. All of this is BS. It is a waste of our money on so many levels.  Remember what I said a few paragraphs up? “Who we are, our kids will someday be.” Does anymore have to be said?

The programs out there should be designed for adults not their children. The adults are the lazy ones not the children. The adults are bringing in the fast food and junk foods into the house, not the children. The adults, the parents, are the blame for our kid’s obesity problem. Let’s call a spade a spade and get our heads out of the sand and change ourselves and not worry as much about little Johnny or Anna. They will follow suit, we need to set the example.

Let’s start now! New Life and New Times are here. Take advantage of it and change!

Quality over Substance

I always get upset when people question me about the statement I made which was, “Activity is more important than the food you are consuming, when you first start out.” When we understand what a calorie is, then it really doesn’t matter what we eat, but it does matter what we do afterwards.

The average American diet looks like this… Practically nothing for breakfast. Then for lunch, well let’s WORK thru lunch. We are just so busy; we need to get these projects done. Then somehow we get home later that evening and we are beyond hungry and in some cases we even have a headache. At this point we open our mouths and consume everything in sight, good bad or indifferent. Oh now let’s not kid ourselves, yes we do.

For my “healthy eating’ people, in some cases you are no different. The only thing you may do different is instead of a greasy hamburger, you may have a huge salad for dinner. But everything else is pretty much the same.

So what is wrong with this? One thing, food does not make you healthy. Food does not make you thinner. Food does not make you lower your cholesterol or reduce your high blood pressure. Food only is the fuel we need to support life, period. What makes us thinner, healthier, lower or cholesterol and blood pressure? Activity. Activity helps our body clean out the bad stuff in our systems. Activity helps clean out our arteries by pumping blood thru them.  Thru activity and good blood flow, we have a great potential to lower our cholesterol and blood pressure.  Food cannot do that.

Now once we have established a decent active routine and the process of getting to greater levels of fitness has now become an issue, then we can bring the quality of food to the table. Then and only then does food enter into the equation.

In my next blog I will talk about finding reason to get active.

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!

The Beginning of the year

Well, here it is January 1st and you told yourself that you wanted get in much better shape this year. You have tried many things over the years and not one of them has really stayed with you and worked. You have tried thousands of diet plans and bought hundreds of pieces of equipment that you saw on infomercials. But this year you tell yourself that “THIS YEAR WILL BE DIFFERENT!!!!” Well, let me just state outright that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. I guess that means that most of us our just plain insane.
In this blog I am going to give you some ideas on what you can do to finally turn that corner and get yourself in the shape you have always wanted. So let’s get started.
Step one:
Take a moment and think about what you really want to do. Do not go to a gym in an emotional state. That is like going to the grocery store hungry. You won’t make wise decisions. Once you have realistically thought about it then write your goals down. Most people I know don’t want to have movie star bodies, they just want to feel good in the body they have, so, be realistic.
Step two:
Once you have written your goals down. Put them to the side and wait a week and revisit them. If they still make good sense, then begin the process of pursuing them. Go to your local gym and ask questions about the place and most important the owners. Why the owners? Because you can tell a lot about a place by the who the owners are. Are they absentee owners? Do they do the personal training? What does the client base look like? Are there people there your age? Are they open 24/7? What type of neighborhood is the gym located in? Then finally look at the price. The average gym should cost you $35 per month for single membership and $70 per month for family. Remember, you get what you pay for. If you go cheap, you will get cheap. If you go expensive you should get top treatment. DO NOT LET THE 12 MONTH COMMITMENT SCARE YOU OFF. If you are serious about committing to your goals, 12 months should not be a deal breaker. Two year or three year commitments are not necessary and are just plain stupid. Don’t fall for them and don’t sign up for anything more than a 12 month commitment.
Step Three:
Once you have selected a gym, commit to three times a week to improve your health. You cannot do it once or twice a week; you are wasting your time and your money. You need a minimum of three times a week. If you need help, seek out a personal trainer that is your own age to help you. Why your own age? Because a 20 year old trainer has NO idea about the needs of a 50 year old even if you told them. They can be well educated but reality and book smarts are two different things. This is not to knock my young trainers, but the majority of them are only in it until they can find something else they can do to make MONEY. When you find a trainer who is older, the majority of them are in it for the long haul and have the knowledge to help you achieve your goals. Most important though, their staying ability is far greater than a 20 year old.
Finally, do not select a gym just because your friends are there. Socializing while working out just doesn’t work and you will not achieve much. Remember why you are seeking out a place to work out. If it is for social reasons, then don’t purchase a gym membership, take your friends out and spend that same money on having fun. (Sorry, told you I was going to get real about this). More on this in a later blog. My next blog will be on dieting after the holidays. Should we do it?