50 reasons why

50 reasons why you should exercise

The number one reason why people don’t exercise is…. You guessed it, we are lazy. However, this blog is about quit the opposite. This blog is about the 50 reasons why we should exercise. Then once a week after that I will break each reason down why they are so important. So here are the 50 reasons why we should all be exercising:

01.Lifts your mood                                                                      26.Strengthens your bones

02.Improves learning abilities                                                     27. Strengthens your heart

03.Builds self-esteem                                                                  28. Improves posture

04.Keeps your brain fit                                                                29. Prevents colds

05.Keeps your body fit and able                                                  30. Improves appetite

06.Boost mental health                                                                31. Improves cholesterol levels

07.Boosts mental health                                                               32. Lowers risk if (certain) cancers

08.Reduces stress                                                                         33. Lower high blood pressure

09.Makes you feel happier                                                           34. Lowers risk of diabetes

10.Has anti-aging effect                                                               35. Fights dementia

11.Improves skin tone and color                                                  36. Eases back pain

12.Improves sleeping patterns                                                      37. Decreases osteoporosis risk

13.Helps prevent strokes                                                              38. Reduces feelings of depression

14.Improves joint function                                                           39. Prevents muscle loss

15.Improves muscle strength                                                        40. Increases energy and endurance

16.Alleviates anxiety                                                                    41. Increases sports performance

17.Sharpens memory                                                                    42. Increases pain resistance

18.Helps to control addictions                                                      43. Improves balance and coordination

19.Boosts productivity                                                                  44. Improves oxygen supply to cells

20.Boosts creative thinking                                                           45. Improves concentration

21.Improves body image                                                               46. Helps with self-control

22.Gives you confidence                                                               47. Lessens fatigue

23.Helps you keep focus in life                                                     48. Increases sex drive and satisfaction

24.Improves eating habits                                                              49. Makes life more exciting

25.Increases longevity                                                                   50. Improves quality of life

So there you have it, 50 reasons why we should exercise. In my next blog I will being the process of discussing each one in more detail. But just for the fun of it, read  them over again and ask yourself this question, where do I need help and can exercising really help me? Think about it.

What Makes a Champion?

What Makes a Champion?

What makes a champion? Is it something a person is blessed with at birth? Is being a champion just about being lucky? Can anyone be a champion?

Over the many years I have been involved in athletics and business I have taken note on all those that have achieved greatness in their endeavor and there are a few things that they all have in common.  

1. They are focused on their task at hand
2. Negative vibes don’t exist in their world
3. They are goal planners
4. They think outside the box
5. Being “normal” to them is failing and there is no room for failure
6. They surround themselves with positive people. There is no room for negative influences regardless of who we are. They will get rid of us.
7. They don’t settle for their last performance, whether in business or on the field of play. They are constantly trying to get just a little better.
8. They are risk takers
9. There are no such things as excuses for bad performance. In their world, excuses are for the weak.
10. Winning is the only option in their world.

I don’t believe that one is thrust at birth into being a champion. I believe that it takes hard and consistent work to become one. It takes years of failures and doubt. It takes years of sweat, blood and tears to reach that final destination of being called a champion. Luck does play a bit of a role but a very small bit. Hard work is the only key to success and nothing less. It is constantly working when others call it a day or quit for the night. It’s running in all types of weather when others will only run when the weather is perfect. It’s always giving 100% regardless of how they may feel at that moment.

It really upsets me when I see competitions where there is no really winner and everyone gets trophies at the end of the day. We are setting our children up for mediocrity in the end. What is wrong with mediocrity? America was not built on that or for that. Mediocrity breads failure in the end on so many levels.  

Yes I believe that anyone can be a champion. The question you have to ask yourself is, “How badly do you want it?” If you want it bad enough you will focus and figure out a game plan for you to achieve your final goal… being a champion.

The hardest part of life changes

The hardest part of life changes is that sometimes we may need to make the hard decision of not hanging out with the same crowd we are accustom to.

Mary has been trying for years to lose the 150 pounds she had additional on her frame and she would lose it then gain it back. It was frustrating to her. She tried everything to keep it off but could not. She would work out every day religiously and still somehow or another she would end up back in the same position months later.

One day while analyzing why this yoyo thing was happening, her trainer asked her who she hung around. She told him that she has been hanging around the same crowd for years now. She did not think that they had anything to do with her weight problems. They were much thinner than she was, even though they too were overweight. The trainer had told her that they looked at her fuel intake and her rest and they were running out of ideas. The trainer suggested that she stop hanging around them for a few weeks. At first she blew that idea off but as luck may have it her friends had to go out of the country for a few weeks, so she decided to take advantage of this opportunity.

Well, at first, it was pretty easy to do because they were out of the country. But when they came back it was really hard. Thursday thru Sunday nights were spent with them and every Friday night they would meet at the local bar to socialize. Mary decided to stop going there for a while and hang out with her other group of friends. These friends were made at the gym and she seemed to have a lot of clean fun with them. Well weeks turned into months and before you know it, she did not miss her old crowd and something else happened… she just didn’t lose that unwanted weight, she actually kept it off.

At first she couldn’t believe that it was her friend and the environment she was in so one Friday night she was asked by her old group to go out. She did, and her eyes were open. Besides the alcohol drinking and the food consumption, everything they did was over the top. That was the last time she went out with them. One year later she hasn’t seen any of them and she has run several marathons and now teaches aerobic classes and feels great about her “new” life.

We need to understand that if we are to have a total life change, we may need to make the hard choices and change the environment and the people we hang out with. Maybe your friends and environment is holding you back from achieving what you ultimately want. If so change them and you will feel better for your move.

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.