Byrd Wellness Concepts: Health Coach Blog

Variety is Healthy

2012-01-30T16:29:00.001-06:00

As we get further into the year, there are more challenges that come our way. Work gets busy, family has needs, friends want to you to go places and see things. In other words, life happens. The gung-ho New Year’s resolution setters are already packing it in and assuming that only the die-hards are still using the gym or the running trails.
It is an easy assumption to make. After all, you did try many things over a long period of time before giving up. You did try many things, right? You did stick with it for a long time…right?

Sadly, the answer is often no to these questions. The more I think about it, the more I realize that it’s not just one question or another. These questions are actually answering each other. You can’t try many things if you don’t stick with it long enough. You also will have trouble sticking with it if you don’t try many things to find one that you really like.

Variety is not just a fun thing to enjoy. Variety is a factor in your health. If you get some variety you can live healthier. By applying the literal meaning of the word variety to your daily routine, you are able to improve your health. Think about it: what do you do all day? Work. It is the same day in and day out, right? Throwing some exercise into the mix would provide health benefits, but more importantly, it would make your day more fun.

Variety is something we all want. If we have options and get to choose the ones we like best, we are always happy. There is nothing else that makes us happier! You’ve heard the saying: “Variety is the spice of life.”. It’s true.

Die-hard exercise folks know this. They know that when given a choice, life is more fun. They have chosen to exercise. Within that choice, they also know that they have many other choices. They can do whatever they want for exercise.

If you show me someone that is on track with an exercise routine, I will show you someone that knows their options and chooses the option or options that they enjoy the most. It makes sense that they are exercising regularly because they have chosen something that they enjoy. If you don’t enjoy an option, you won’t do it. Sure, you may try it once, but you won’t go back and that one workout session will not help you in the long-run.

When the long-term exercisers look at the long-run, they are not worried about the fact that they may not want to do it next week or next month. They are looking forward to doing it again and again. There are a few ways you can get to the point that you are looking forward to exercise:

1. Try many modes of exercise

By definition, variety means having different forms or types. When starting an exercise routine, plan to try new and different things. Going to the gym is one thing. The countless things you can do in the gym offer you a chance to do many things and see many good results.

2. Try many ways within each mode

- Location: I enjoy running. What I don’t enjoy is running in circles or covering the same route over and over again. I have many routes mapped out and I try to rotate them throughout the week, so I am seeing different sites, covering different profiles (hills, flat, both) and surfaces (sidewalks, paved paths, roads, etc.). If I had to run the same route every day, I would get bored and quit.

- Intensity: Running is another good example of intensity options. Long and slow is one way to do it. Short and fast is another way to complete a good run. There are benefits to both on their own and by mixing it up, you can keep your routine fresh

- Time: Sometimes time gets the best of us all. Squeezing in a quick workout has to be an option if you want to be successful at fitting exercise into your routine. You can do this even if you have time. Just try to keep intensity up and keep workouts shorter if you feel that you are having trouble fitting them in.

I could go on for pages about different ways to change up your workouts. That is the beauty of exercise. It doesn’t matter what you do. It doesn’t matter where you do it. It doesn’t matter who you do it with. It doesn’t even matter how long you do it or how many times. If you move your body, you burn calories, improve health and best of all, you feel good.

Why doesn’t everyone succeed if we feel so good when we exercise? Variety is the difference between success and failure in many cases. We all want to exercise. We all want to be healthy, but there are challenges that come up. The biggest challenge for most people isn’t time, work or any other external factor. The biggest challenge for most people is the ability to get creative.

Creativity is not often associated with muscle and sweat. It is usually thought of as something for a stage or studio, but creativity is the key to variety. If you can think of new ways to make yourself move, you will move. If you can think of new ways to make moving fun, you will move and be very successful as you keep moving.

That is all. Get creative with your schedule to allow time for exercise. Get creative with your exercise to allow for you to enjoy it and keep it up. Why is variety so important? Variety will help you stick with exercise. Variety will help you live healthy.

Tired of Starting Over? Quit Quitting.

2012-01-18T15:59:00.003-06:00

I recently saw a post on a popular social media site. Well, I’ve seen thousands of posts on many different sites, but this one really caught my attention. In fact, it got me excited. The post was not from a health company or a site that even promotes health and wellness. The post came from a person that sees things clearly. That is what is so exciting about this post. It was about a person that found what they needed to do in order to be successful. Sharing this will hopefully make others successful too.

What was the post that got me so excited? Well here it is: "If you're sick of starting over, you have to stop quitting."- anyone who's ever had success

Every time I read this post, I am reminded of the times that my clients have told me that they are
a) found themselves “off track” having just quit, or
b) not able to get started again after quitting, or
c) wondering if they will be able to avoid quitting their current routine

This seems to be a common issue for people. I’m not surprised, as I hear it regularly. As I work with people before, during and after making changes for their health, I see these scenarios on a daily basis. Everyone wants to be successful. No one wants to quit, but for some reason, quitting seems to be the most successful part of our routine.

Why do we quit so easily?

I think we quit because we don’t give ourselves enough credit for the small steps. Each time you set a goal and reach a goal, you are successful. It doesn’t matter how small the step is. If you take the step, you can call yourself successful. Actually, you SHOULD call yourself successful. That way, you will be more confident when you go to take your next step.

How else can you expect to make progress? Take it one step at a time, but stop to give yourself credit for taking each step. in this case, stopping does not mean quitting. Stopping simply means acknowledging your success before taking on a new goal. Success leads to more success, if you acknowledge that success along the way.

Confidence is the key to keeping yourself going. When I see someone fail, it is not because they can’t do it. It is not because they took on something that was too difficult. When someone fails, they quit trying. That is all there is to it. It sounds simple, but it is the truth. This is where my favorite part of the quote comes into play.

Who has this wisdom?

Anyone who has ever had success can tell you that the best way to stay on track is to stay on track. Now it sounds like I’m patronizing you and everyone else that has struggled to stick with something. Let me assure you, that I am not patronizing anyone.

It is my job as a Health Coach to help people see what they want and start doing what they have to do to get it. One of the most important factors in finding what you want is knowing what is in your way. When you set a goal, you have to look at the possible barriers in front of you. Once you do this, you can set some realistic expectations that you can stick to. If you don’t, you are simply closing your eyes and hoping it all works out in your favor.

This applies to all areas of life. That is another thing that I love about this quote. It is not even about health. It is about success. Success is limited to money and career far too often. Again, success is nothing more than achieving the goals you have set. When you set a goal and reach it, you are now successful. When you continue to reach that goal, your success continues. When you set another goal and reach another goal, your success continues even further.

Successful people know this. That is why they continue to set and reach goals. They know that if they keep going, they will get where they want to go. Sure, there may be some adjustments made along the way, but they know that progress is the key. The more progress they make, the more confidence they get and they just keep on rolling.

How can we all use this wisdom?

We all have it, we just need to use it. The wisdom in this quote is simply, yet applies to all of us in all areas of our life. Obviously, I like to keep it in health, but I have seen my goals work in all areas. I have seen success in many things because I took the same approach.

This approach is what works for me, but it also works for everyone else that has used it. It is a fool-proof plan. If you keep trying, you will get better results. There is more to it than blindly pursuing random goals. Set them wisely, be aware of the challenges and be willing to make adjustments to overcome these challenges. This will lead to success every time.

Quitting is something that you do when you either don’t want something or don’t think you can achieve something. That doesn’t mean that you are right. If you quit and told yourself you can’t do something, while you are fulfilling your self-assigned destiny, you are not giving yourself the opportunity to succeed.

When a challenge comes up, you can do one of two things: adjust to overcome it or quit. It is up to you. No one can make you do what you don’t want to do. But, I’ve yet to hear anyone say: “I want to give it a go, but ultimately I want to give up before I get there.” No one says: “I want to start all over and again with less confidence as soon as possible.” That is not what we want, yet that is what we continue to get.

Take quitting out of your list of options. By setting realistic goals at the start of your routine, you can determine what your baseline is going to be. As long as your baseline is allowing you to accomplish something and you are reaching it, than you are succeeding. If you quit, you are achieving nothing. So, quit achieving nothing. Quit quitting!

Quit Quitting

2012-01-16T15:58:00.001-06:00

I recently saw a post on a popular social media site. Well, I’ve seen thousands of posts on many different sites, but this one really caught my attention. In fact, it got me excited. The post was not from a health company or a site that even promotes health and wellness. The post came from a person that sees things clearly. That is what is so exciting about this post. It was about a person that found what they needed to do in order to be successful. Sharing this will hopefully make others successful too.

What was the post that got me so excited? Well here it is: "If you're sick of starting over, you have to stop quitting."- anyone who's ever had success
Every time I read this post, I am reminded of the times that my clients have told me that they are:
a) found themselves “off track” having just quit, or
b) not able to get started again after quitting, or
c) wondering if they will be able to avoid quitting their current routine

This seems to be a common issue for people. I’m not surprised, as I hear it regularly. As I work with people before, during and after making changes for their health, I see these scenarios on a daily basis. Everyone wants to be successful. No one wants to quit, but for some reason, quitting seems to be the most successful part of our routine.

Why do we quit so easily?

I think we quit because we don’t give ourselves enough credit for the small steps. Each time you set a goal and reach a goal, you are successful. It doesn’t matter how small the step is. If you take the step, you can call yourself successful. Actually, you SHOULD call yourself successful. That way, you will be more confident when you go to take your next step.

How else can you expect to make progress? Take it one step at a time, but stop to give yourself credit for taking each step. in this case, stopping does not mean quitting. Stopping simply means acknowledging your success before taking on a new goal. Success leads to more success, if you acknowledge that success along the way.

Confidence is the key to keeping yourself going. When I see someone fail, it is not because they can’t do it. It is not because they took on something that was too difficult. When someone fails, they quit trying. That is all there is to it. It sounds simple, but it is the truth. This is where my favorite part of the quote comes into play.

Who has this wisdom?

Anyone who has ever had success can tell you that the best way to stay on track is to stay on track. Now it sounds like I’m patronizing you and everyone else that has struggled to stick with something. Let me assure you, that I am not patronizing anyone.

It is my job as a Health Coach to help people see what they want and start doing what they have to do to get it. One of the most important factors in finding what you want is knowing what is in your way. When you set a goal, you have to look at the possible barriers in front of you. Once you do this, you can set some realistic expectations that you can stick to. If you don’t, you are simply closing your eyes and hoping it all works out in your favor.

This applies to all areas of life. That is another thing that I love about this quote. It is not even about health. It is about success. Success is limited to money and career far too often. Again, success is nothing more than achieving the goals you have set. When you set a goal and reach it, you are now successful. When you continue to reach that goal, your success continues. When you set another goal and reach another goal, your success continues even further.

Successful people know this. That is why they continue to set and reach goals. They know that if they keep going, they will get where they want to go. Sure, there may be some adjustments made along the way, but they know that progress is the key. The more progress they make, the more confidence they get and they just keep on rolling.

How can we all use this wisdom?

We all have it, we just need to use it. The wisdom in this quote is simply, yet applies to all of us in all areas of our life. Obviously, I like to keep it in health, but I have seen my goals work in all areas. I have seen success in many things because I took the same approach.

This approach is what works for me, but it also works for everyone else that has used it. It is a fool-proof plan. If you keep trying, you will get better results. There is more to it than blindly pursuing random goals. Set them wisely, be aware of the challenges and be willing to make adjustments to overcome these challenges. This will lead to success every time.

Quitting is something that you do when you either don’t want something or don’t think you can achieve something. That doesn’t mean that you are right. If you quit and told yourself you can’t do something, while you are fulfilling your self-assigned destiny, you are not giving yourself the opportunity to succeed.

When a challenge comes up, you can do one of two things: adjust to overcome it or quit. It is up to you. No one can make you do what you don’t want to do. But, I’ve yet to hear anyone say: “I want to give it a go, but ultimately I want to give up before I get there.” No one says: “I want to start all over and again with less confidence as soon as possible.” That is not what we want, yet that is what we continue to get.

Take quitting out of your list of options. By setting realistic goals at the start of your routine, you can determine what your baseline is going to be. As long as your baseline is allowing you to accomplish something and you are reaching it, than you are succeeding. If you quit, you are achieving nothing. So, quit achieving nothing. Quit quitting!

It’s Only One Workout

2012-01-12T10:45:00.001-06:00

Early in the year you hear people saying things like: “This year I am going to be healthy” and “I have changed everything.” As people say these things, they are thinking about their new goals and feeling good about their progress so far.

In a few short months, or in many cases, a few short weeks or even days the tone often changes. Statements like: “I failed.” And “I was on track for a while but…” start to come out. What happened? Well it depends on the person, but in most cases there was a roadblock involved.

We all run into them. No matter what the goals is, there are going to be challenges to reach it. In many cases, the more significant the change is, the more challenges one will run into along the path toward making the change.

We all run into barriers. But what is the difference between people that can do it for a lifetime and those that can only stick with it for a few short months, weeks or days. Well, everyone runs into the same challenges, we just run into them at different times and more importantly, we handle the situation differently when we run into these challenges.

There are 3 categories of people. Actually, you could break it down much further than that, but for argument’s sake, we will think about it with 3 groups. The 3 groups are beginner, semi-experienced and expert. The beginner has just set a New Year’s resolution. They have never been in a regular routine before, but know that they want to be in one now. The semi-experienced person has set a series of goals to get back on track. They have been in a routine before, but have only recently run into a tough stretch where it is hard for them to get their exercise in. The expert is not starting anything. They have been doing it for years and will continue to do the same.

Let’s take a tough day at the office for example. We all have them. In fact, January, which is the time that we always have these new ambitions, is also the time when things are busiest. With winter in full swing, that doesn’t make things any easier. So, what do people do when they run into challenges? How does each person handle it? Let’s find out…

The beginner has a tough day:
The day has gotten longer and longer as work continues to pile up. The beginner has set a New Year’s Resolution to go to the gym in the evening. They are thinking to themselves: “This is not going to happen.” The day continues, the stress continues and eventually, they write off the possibility of going to the gym after work.

The semi-experienced person has a tough day:
The day is long and hard and they are only getting more and more tired as the day goes on. They feel less and less up for a workout after work, but know that they set a goal. They have been here before, so it feels familiar. This could be an advantage, but they simply remember all the times that they didn’t make it through these times before and it looks more and more like it will happen again. Eventually, they give in and the workout doesn’t happen.

The expert has a tough day:
As the day goes on, things get more stressful. The expert is no different from the other two people. They feel the stress and fatigue. One advantage for the expert is that they already have more energy because they are used the routine and it has been fueling them for years. The expert is also a life-long exerciser and sees the workout as a way to shrug off a tough day. When they finally get to leave, they can go to the gym and take out their aggression on the treadmill or weights and everything will be fine when they leave. The next day will come around and they will handle it just the same.

This is just one workout, but you can see how differently it is viewed and handled by the 3 different categories of people. The beginner and semi-experienced miss their workout, while the expert gets theirs in without hesitation. This sounds like it’s self-explanatory since that is the routine that people are in, but it is more than that.

That was just the reaction to one workout. What happens if we go out another day? What are they saying then?

Beginner: “I failed already, I guess I can’t do it.”

Semi-experienced: “I didn’t get my workout in yesterday, but I have to get it in today. If I don’t I will consider this a failure.”

Expert: “Another day, another workout.”

These three reactions are not uncommon because of the way that each person treats the exercise session. To the beginner, this is a major milestone in a fresh routine. If they don’t get it, they don’t have anything established and therefore, are not making progress. The semi-experienced person sees something similar in the way that they have not been on track. Their new routine may have been something they’ve done before, but it is not on track now, so they feel that they are off.

The expert is not thinking about all of this. They are taking it one day at a time. Are they going to work out every day? Probably not, but missing one is not going to throw them off either.

The biggest difference between beginners and experts is the reaction to the challenges along the way. If you can overcome these challenges, you will be successful. There is no question about that. The only question is, how are you able to bounce back?

Each workout should stand alone. If you miss one, you have the next one coming to get back on track. Every day is a new day and a chance for you to reach your goal. The only failure is quitting and saying that you failed. As long as you are trying, you can succeed.

You just can’t let one day ruin the week. You can’t let one week ruin the month. And you can’t let one month ruin the year. The better you can bounce back and get back into your routine, the better you can start making progress. Otherwise, you are just going to beat yourself up and quit. Then comes the self-loathing because you quit. It is a vicious cycle that can be avoided by taking things one day at a time. Each workout is its own goal and no one workout can affect another. Think about that before you give up after a tough day. Just because you miss a workout doesn’t mean that you failed. After all, it’s only one workout.

Give Yourself a Break

2011-12-29T11:49:00.002-06:00

Health is one of the most important topics that we can talk about. Clearly I think it is important as it is part of my life and business. You are reading this, so it is on your mind at the moment too. With all of the discussion around health, it is obviously on others’ minds as well.

Most of the time when we talk health, it involves tips on getting enough exercise, eating the right foods and things that involve action. Taking action is the best thing you can do for your health. With action comes results and satisfaction.

How do we know what actions to take? Well, we discuss that in many articles and there is no shortage of information out there that you can find to help you. I would like to stress the common sense approach and remind you that we have known the best actions for years. Moving your body and not over-eating are the basics that you need to live healthy.

Obviously there is more to it than that, right? Well, of course. You can do more and get more. You do less and get less. You can even do nothing if you want. You know what you will get when you do nothing, so we often think of it as a bad thing.

As an overall strategy, doing nothing is not recommended for your health. I wouldn’t tell my coaching clients to do nothing. I wouldn’t help my clients plan “do nothing” programs for their employees. I wouldn’t expect any doctors to recommend the nothing plan for better health. I have yet to see those published anywhere.

Doing nothing can actually be a good thing for you. If you are working out throughout the year, you may want to take a scheduled break to let your body recover. You muscles and joints can recover. Your body simply needs rest sometimes to get back to normal. Most trainers, coaches and other professionals would recommend taking a week or two off each year to make sure that the body is recovering.

When you have been focusing on specific diet choices, it can get difficult to stick with it. When holiday season rolls around there are some particular barriers that we all run into. As you approach these times of the year, it can be helpful to take a break from your strict routine. I’m not suggesting eating everything in sight, but easing up a bit can have benefits over short periods of time.

Although there are physical benefits to taking a break from your routine, it always comes back to mental energy. When you work hard all year to stay on track with exercise and diet, it can be mentally exhausting. The break is going to allow you to take a step back and refocus.

If you are mentally strained, it will only get harder to stick with your routine. Again, I don’t suggest you try this over a long period of time because you want your routine to be intact and consistent in order to get the results you are looking for. Doing nothing can actually have positive effects on your routine. But you may want to have a routine going before you try this approach, but in short stints, nothing may be just what you need.

Just like we took summers off in school and take vacations from work, it can be helpful to take short breaks in our routines to make sure that we can recharge and come back stronger. So, if you are feeling run down and burned out after months of dedicated diet and exercise focus, it’s ok to give yourself a break.

Goal Clarity is the Key to Success

2011-12-19T11:50:00.002-06:00

As the year winds down, I have many thoughts to coming to mind. Most of the thoughts involve the year and how fast it flew by. Each year seems to come and go a little faster. That reminds me of the importance of my goals. As I think of my goals a few questions come to mind:

- Did I do everything I wanted to do this year?
- What challenges did I run into this year?
- What will I do next year to overcome those challenges?
- What are my goals for next year?

These questions are not rare. Most people are asking themselves these questions as December comes to a close. The questions themselves are not the significant factor here. I am more concerned with the answers.

Each year, I am able to answer these questions with certainty. Why am I able to do this? I am certain of my answers, because I have clear goals and know exactly how I did throughout the year. Most people have goals. The problem is that they are not very clear. This makes it very difficult to succeed or even to know if you are succeeding or not.

You may hear about New Year’s Resolutions. You may even see some short-term success on these ideas, but when it comes to true long-term success, you need goals. In order to have success this year and through many years in the future, you need goals.
Goals are great. Goals are what we need to succeed. If you have a goal, you are ahead of the game and you can get the year started on the right note. If you don’t have a goal at all, how can you even get started?

As you start the year, or more importantly, before you start the year, it is important to make your goal as clear as possible. The goal itself is important, but if it is not clear, you may as well not set one. If there are questions or gray areas, you will find yourself guessing and possibly even losing track of your progress.

What makes a goal clear? Well, the goal itself can help you here. When you set a goal, make sure you are specific. If you are specific, you can tell the following:

1. If you are reaching it or not
2. How well you are doing/not doing

These are important measurements. First of all, you have to know if you are reaching your goal or not. If you are reaching it, you can give yourself credit and keep going. If not, it’s time to figure out what you need to do in order to start reaching it.

The questions you ask yourself are what allow you to look closely at your goal and your progress. Let’s take a look at the questions, I asked myself about this year’s goals:

- Did I do everything I wanted to do this year?
- What challenges did I run into this year?
- What will I do next year to overcome those challenges?
- What are my goals for next year?

These questions are important. The answers are even more important. If I didn’t do something, how can I get myself on track so that I can do it? What do I need to change to make it more realistic? The next question is about the challenges I ran or am running into. This is the difference between a New Year’s resolution and a real goal. If you don’t address the challenges that you are going to face, you are pretending that they aren’t going to be there. This is not realistic and will only make it more difficult to reach your goals.

The next questions are simple. They are simple because they are nothing more than building on what I learned from the last goals. I am setting new goals, but they are not pulled out of a hat. They are not some ideas from out of the blue. They are old goals with adjustments that allow them to become my new goals.

Those new goals are as clear as they can be. This is the benefit of setting real goals, analyzing your goals and then making those adjustments. It only makes your goals clear. When you set clear goals, you know that you are reaching it. If you are not reaching it, you know what you have to do to start reaching it.

Goals can be set on any day at any time of the year. Since many of us are focused on next year, it is important to clear up your goals. It is also important to clear up the difference between resolutions and real goals. If you simply through ideas out there and try to pass them off as goals, you will have a tough year. If you set a clear objective, you can locate and navigate challenges. When you make adjustments, your goals become clearer and your success becomes not only possible but probable. It is this clarity that brings success.

Health Doesn’t Change with the Season

2011-12-07T15:49:00.001-06:00

If you show me a person that is off track “because of the holidays” I would bet you anything that they were either off track before the holidays or were never on track to begin with. The holiday season may bring many challenges, but if you are actually in the habit of something, you will keep doing it.

Do smokers forget to smoke between Thanksgiving and New Year’s? No way, they are in the habit and their patters likely change very little from month to month. Do you forget to put of decorations in your house because the season is too busy? Do you decide that you can’t fit in meetings at work or activities with family and friends during the holidays? No, in fact, that is what makes the holidays “THE Holidays”.

With all of the things we have going on, it is easier to say that we wanted to exercise, but didn’t have time. It is easier to say that we would be on track if we didn’t have so much going on. The fact is, you will make time for things that:

1. You are obligated to do
2. You really want to do
3. You are in the habit of doing

These 3 categories are what drive us to do everything. You name it, if you do it, you are doing it because of at least one of these 3 things. You are either obligated to do it, you really want to do it or you are simply in the habit of doing it.

Things that you are obligated to do

When you have to do something, there really isn’t much argument. You have to do it, so what do you do? You do it. Getting out of bed in the morning, going to work and taking care of household tasks are all things that we do without giving it much thought. If we don’t do them, there are serious consequences that we have already decided are too great to risk.

The only difference between people in healthy routines and people that are not in them is the fact that they look at the consequences of not doing it and see them as too great to risk. They also have found that the result of doing healthy things is far better than the results of not doing them. That is the beauty of it. When you are truly healthy, you know first-hand what happens when you do things differently and you have decided that it won’t work for you because you won’t get the results you want.

Things you really want to do

This is another no-brainer. When you really like something, you make time for it. The people that feel obligated to do healthy things have found that they LIKE the results of these things and so they keep doing them. You can always make time to see your friends. You can always make time to watch your favorite TV show. You like to do these things, so it is easy to make yourself do them. In fact, that is the key. When you really like something, you are not making yourself do it. You want to do it.

That is how people in healthy routines look at exercise and healthy foods. I like exercising because of how it makes me feel. It may be hard for someone that doesn’t exercise at all to hear that and go out for a run today. What makes it easier is another thing that I like about exercise: I like looking in the mirror and being happy with what I see. That is another thing that people like: results.

Things that you are in the habit of doing

Healthy habits are no different that unhealthy habits. If you do them enough, you will keep doing them. It won’t matter what time of year it is. If you are in the habit of doing something, you will do it no matter what other things are going on.

People in healthy habits don’t change because things are more stressful. In fact, they take comfort in their routine and actually use it to keep balance in all areas. People in routines are successful. Even if you are in a routine of unhealthy habits, you are successful. You are successfully keeping your health in a steady decline as you age. The longer you keep the unhealthy habits going, the more difficult it is to break them and the more damage is done.

So, no matter what time of year it is, think about your health and how it ranks with other priorities. You will be doing things that you are obligated to do. You will do things that you like to do. You will certainly do things that you are in the habit of doing. The more healthy items you can fit into this, the better your health will be all year. The holidays change anything. They just give you an excuse to do other things that you are obligated to do, that you like to do more and that you are simply in the habit of doing.

The worst habit during the holidays is the habit of blaming the season for you lack of motivation. If you want to do something you will do it, no matter what time of year it is. That is why the holidays is so difficult, right? You have so much that you HAVE TO DO? Well, I have found that habits don’t really change during the holidays. The only thing that changes are the excuses that we use to justify our habits.

Health is something that takes around the clock effort. What we eat, how much we move and many other factors come into play. The more you can focus on them, the better results you will get. Successful people don’t let things stand in the way of their goals simply because they are busy. That is all the holidays does to us. They make us busy and present an easy excuse to forget about our health. Health doesn’t change during the holidays. The same principles apply. If you don’t change your habits, your health will change you. And those changes will be far more stressful for you than shopping for gifts this year.

Stop Blaming the Holidays

2011-11-30T15:17:00.001-06:00

As the holiday season rolls around, we all start to think differently. The hustle and bustle of the season gets us going and can be very difficult to avoid stress. As the stress mounts, the challenges of the holidays really come out. We are tired, there is too much to do and there are too many places to go.

Going to the gym is the last thing on our minds. Actually, it’s not. From my experience as a health coach, health and the things you need to do to be healthy are on our minds quite frequently. Even if the gym is a place you don’t frequently go, it is a place that you frequently think about.

The holidays don’t make it any easier, but they are not necessarily the culprit. Think about the rest of the year. I know it’s difficult to do this during the holidays since things get so hectic, but it is important to be realistic. Think about your normal routine on a February day. Or think about it on an August day. Whatever part of the year you feel is the most typical, think about it.

Now that you have a new month pictured, think about what your routine looks like. If you are anything like my coaching participants (before and in the early stages of our work together!), than your routine actually looks pretty similar. I know there is more going on during the holidays, but how different does your exercise routine look? How different does your diet look?

Most people are thinking about working out. If nothing else, it is that something that you want to do or that you know you should be doing. Never the less, it is on your mind. No matter how much, or hour little you have doing on, your health enters your thoughts regularly. Whether or not you do something about it, is another story.

After all, the holidays present extra activities and extra food, but are they really that different from the rest of the year? You still manage to go to work, take your kids to activities, attend parties, prepare or purchase holiday treats, buy presents for loved ones and all of the other things that seem to fill our plates. And outside of a few meals, our plates are filled about the same as they are during any other time of the year.

In other words, we all manage to keep our routines going through the toughest most stressful time of the year. No matter what is thrown at us, we manage it. We take it on and make sure that it gets done. If you are on track with your health, you will include exercise and diet choices on your list of must-dos. You will include it in December just as you do in March. You will include it because it is part of your routine.

That is the challenge most people are running into around the holidays. It’s not that there is so much going on that they don’t have time to exercise. You have time to do what you make time to do. That is why people can make time for holiday parties. That is why people make time to complete everything else on the long list. The only difference between healthy and unhealthy is including it on your list.

No matter what the season throws at you, health can fit in. In fact, exercise helps manage stress. What better way to find relief in a busy time of year than setting aside time to exercise. Eating healthy not only helps your body function at higher level, but it keeps your immune system strong so you can fight off the bugs that go along with the fall and winter seasons. And here’s a newsflash for you: If you are eating healthy before the holidays and you eat healthy after the holidays, the impact of a few meals will be minimal. The real problem is when every day is Thanksgiving.

Think about that as your move through the holiday season. Don’t blame the season on your lack of exercise. Don’t blame the season on your overeating. The season comes and goes. Your habits are here to stay. They are your habits until you change them. Rather than throwing your hands up and declaring the holidays as your worst enemy, sit down and think about it for a minutes.

If you have goals now, you can start to reach them. Maybe you can start slow by setting specific goals for the holiday season. Or maybe you can simply decide that what you want is what you will do. The problem that most people run into is the fact that what they want and what they are actually doing doesn’t match.

People in healthy routines don’t stop during the holidays. People with healthy routines don’t have to stop during the holidays. I have yet to see a person gain 5 years worth of weight in a month. It doesn’t work that way. Healthy people know that. That is why they plan their routines. They fit exercise in, just as people with unhealthy routines fit in everything else. The only difference between healthy and unhealthy during the holidays is making sure that healthy activities are on the list.

Healthy Holidays

2011-11-23T09:19:00.001-06:00

Holiday Eating Strategies

The average person puts on weight over the holidays. Gaining 5 pounds between the Thanksgiving holiday and year’s end is not uncommon. It doesn’t have to be that way. You can celebrate guilt-free and still enjoy yourself if you have a plan. There are many more gatherings between now and spring. You can use them as opportunities to gain weight or to solidify your game-plan. It’s up to you.

Only Eat Sitting Down
It is easy to graze through events and grab things as you go. The problem here is you don’t realize how many calories you are actually consuming. In many cases, since you aren’t thinking about it, you don’t even realize you are eating anything.

Tip: If you only eat while you are seated, you not only eat less, but you actually enjoy each item more because you are taking the time to savor it.

Eat well the rest of the day
If you keep yourself on track by eating healthy then avoiding the candy and desserts is easier because you will not be hungry.

Tip: Make sure that your meals and snacks are healthy on the day of parties. That way you know that there is room for some goodies as a reward for the good day you put together.

Only buy/bring the treats that you don’t like
What may be tough for someone to resist may not be too hard for you to resist.

Tip: You can control the menu if you host events and you can bring any items you want when there is a potluck or dish-passing event. Bring healthier versions or things you know you won’t eat

Decide what you want to eat ahead of time
Look at the options available to you. Do you have a favorite? If so, why eat all the other stuff just because it’s there?

Tip: pick a treat and enjoy a reasonable amount of it. Sit down and eat it deliberately. When you are done, you can look back and remember you enjoyed it rather than the mindless eating that can go on all day.

This can be a challenging season, or it can be an enjoyable season. It all depends on how you prepare. If you have a plan and can stick to it, things will go well. If you don’t have a plan, how can you possibly stick with anything? You can’t be on track if there is no track.

Keep in mind that none of the tips above are suggesting anything radical or specific to a certain diet. Your plan has to work for you. If you are trying to follow someone else’s plan into the holidays, things will be even more challenging. Make sure that your weight loss or healthy eating strategy is in line with your goals and the things you like to eat. Portion control and exercise have been the best way to live healthy for centuries. Anything that goes against that or adds other stipulations is going to be even more difficult to follow because it isn’t natural.

Good luck! Have a healthy and happy holiday season!

Costs of not eating healthy

2011-11-14T15:34:00.001-06:00

I hear people say that eating healthy is expensive. When someone tells me why they have been eating unhealthy foods, their reason is often the price of food. There is a common perception that healthy foods cost more than unhealthy foods.
Sometimes, in certain situations, this is true. For the most part, the statement: healthy food is more expensive is actually false. There are a few myths and misconceptions at play here.

I would like to take a closer look at those situations to determine why eating healthy can be more expensive. But more importantly, I want to break down the numbers and show how healthy food is often cheaper to purchase. We already know that there are more significant long-term costs to eating an unhealthy diet. I also want to break down some of those actual costs to see just how much it costs to eat healthy and how much it costs when you don’t.

Misconception #1
In General: Healthy food is more expensive than unhealthy food

This is something that I hear a lot. You see the value menu prices and compare them to the costs of fruits, vegetables and other fresh items and it’s easy to say, at first glance, that the value menu is cheaper. It only costs a dollar to get a sandwich. It only costs another dollar to get a side or a beverage.

How could something that was purchased at the store and prepared at home be cheaper? Well, let’s do the math: For $20, you can buy many combinations of food. Let’s say you just buy 20 $1 burgers from a fast food restaurant. That is 20 sandwiches for $20. Now let’s say you go to the store to buy the ingredients for 20 sandwiches. You need bread: $2 loaf, 1 lb. of meat for $8, a tomato for $1, cheese for another $2, a head of lettuce or spinach for $1. So far, we are able to make 20 sandwiches with as much nutritional value for only $14. We also lean meats of much higher quality than you get at a fast food restaurant. If you wanted to, you could make these sandwiches MUCH cheaper by skimping on quality, which is exactly what they do at the restaurant to make that sandwich so cheap for you to buy. You can upgrade the bread and add other veggies while still keeping the cost under $1 per sandwich.

As you can see, cheaper is not healthier. More importantly, healthier is not more expensive. You can make good foods at home without spending any more money. In fact, often, you can buy and make foods for less money than you would spend by eating out.

Reality
It actually costs more to eat out.

Misconception #2
Eating healthy food is not important to maintain good health

Many people think that as long as they are buying food from a familiar place, they are eating healthy. What’s worse is that often people think that what they eat doesn’t have a big impact on their health. The truth is: eating healthy is very important! If you don’t eat well, you don’t get good results from your body. Food is what fuels us and when we don’t get good fuel in, we don’t get good results out.

This is why so many Americans are tired, cranky and depressed. It is also why so many people need caffeine, don’t get as much done as they would like and just feel an overall dissatisfaction with their lives. The diet has a significant role in helping us do good things and helping us feel good about those things.

As we continue to abuse our bodies by putting in more fat, calories and chemicals, we start to develop other problems. The most common is excess weight. The body can only burn so many calories. Since most of us are not getting enough exercise to begin with, the fast-food combo becomes extra dangerous because we are packing in double, triple or even more calories on a daily basis. An obese individual spends about $2000 more each year on healthcare- medications and other procedures. They spend another $2000 on other incidentals throughout the course of a year. That is $4000 extra dollars spent, just because they are overweight. That doesn’t even include the extra money going toward all the extra food.

What are some of these other problems? How about Diabetes? A person with Diabetes spends an extra $900+ each year compared to a person that does not have the disease. This is due to medical costs, testing equipment and supplies as well as other procedures that are routine for them.

Those are the most common and immediate issues that come from eating unhealthy. We also know that there are some more severe consequences. Heart attacks and strokes cost people their lives every day in our country. For those that survive or their loved ones if they don’t, these events can cost over a million dollars each. When it comes to hospital stays, follow-up treatments and medications, these costs add up fast and don’t go away on their own.

Reality
Eating healthy is very important to maintaining good health

As you can see, there are many costs to NOT eating healthy. The longer we pretend that a dollar cheeseburger is a good deal, the more health issues we will be dealing with in the future. Even if the cost of a healthier choice were slightly more expensive, the results would lead to cheaper living for the rest of your life. The fact is, healthy food is NOT more expensive, so the excuse is no longer valid. Can you spend more money at the grocery store in a month than you spend on fast food? Of course you can, but that doesn’t mean you are getting as much food and certainly doesn’t mean that you are getting the nutrition that you need to live healthy.

There are more costs involved than simply the price the food. As illustrated above, you can spend more money on medication and medical treatments than you will ever spend on healthy foods. The bonus is that the healthy foods will actually prevent the need for medication and prevent you from needing medical treatment of any kind. We have known for centuries that healthy foods are the best medication. They are the best and they are the cheapest. Healthy food doesn’t cost more. It cost you more NOT to eat healthy.

Balance: Find it or you will regret it

2011-11-10T14:53:00.001-06:00

Work-life balance is something we hear about on a regular basis. I discuss it with my clients as they find that they want to be companies that support work-life balance. I discuss it with my clients’ employees as they want to find it for themselves. Work-life balance is something we all strive for.

Balance itself is a word that can help us in many areas. When things are balanced, we can do things better. We can do good things and we can even do more of them. But most importantly, with balance, we don’t get too far off to one side in any area.

What does that mean? When you have balance, you are in the middle of the spectrum. On one end of the spectrum, you have one extreme and on the other end of the spectrum, you have the complete opposite. Being in the middle means that you have found a way to incorporate parts of both.

When it comes to work-life balance, this can be difficult to achieve. I know that you have to work in order to maintain a living. When I was an employee, I knew that I had to work in order to keep my job. As a business owner, now I know that I have to work in order to keep my business moving in the right direction.

My clients know all of this too, which is why they want their employee s to work hard for them. They not only want this, but expect employees to work hard on a regular basis. That is what makes a successful business. Hard working people doing their hard work every day is how a company gets ahead.

There is more to life than work, however. Just because hard work leads to success, does not mean that the harder you work and the further you are on the spectrum, the better you will be. This may be true in short stints, but over the long-term, you need to find balance or you will not be able to sustain the pace and eventually your performance will fall off.

My clients also know this, which is why they want to be supportive of a balanced work culture. When they talk about their employees, you hear about more than simply output or hours worked. You hear terms like sustainability, quality and of course balance. These terms are what come from a workforce that is not stuck on one end of the spectrum.

I’ve seen companies on both ends of the spectrum. We all know what happens when a workforce doesn’t do very much. We all know how it goes when people aren’t working hard or not working at all. That is never a good thing. What we don’t always think about is the consequences of working too hard.

Working too hard has consequences too. What happens when we work too hard? We start to see issues like fatigue and poor quality. Think about the work that is completed at the end of a long day or after too many hours, days and weeks in a row. What does the work look like? It actually takes longer to do the same tasks and you make more mistakes.

When it comes to health, work-life balance is very important. We all know what happens when you don’t take care of your health. You lose it and problems ensue. When you are on one end of the spectrum with your health, there is only one way that it will end. Well there are actually many ways it can end, but they are all bad. Heart issues, diabetes and even cancer are all attributed to poor lifestyle. Making unhealthy choices has clear consequences.

My clients know this too. Businesses that want to be successful today and in the long-run are taking note of this. They know that working hard is important, but they also know that taking care of health has a significant impact on their employees and the work they do.

Companies are seeing this in all industries. Balance doesn’t mean that people are exercising instead of working. Balance does not mean that people are reading nutrition labels instead of reports. And no, balance does not mean that employees are researching health products online instead of sending company emails. Balance means that people are working hard and making time for other things.

We all know that working hard is the key to getting ahead. What we need to realize is that people can’t work hard if they don’t have health. They can’t work hard if they don’t have rest. They can’t work hard of they don’t take time to recharge and recover.

Balance is more than just rest. Balance is both working hard and relaxing. Finding this balance is not only the key to health, but it is the key to success overall. Without balance, you cannot achieve success in any area. The idea of balance is good for everyone. Finding it is another story. When you find it, good things happen. If you don’t find it, there is a whole list of reasons for regret.

Vacation: Put it on Your To-do List

2011-10-26T15:57:00.001-05:00

After coming back from a short weekend vacation, I couldn’t help but think to myself: I need to do this more often. There are a few things that made me think this. Obviously, vacation is a good thing, but there were some specifics that made me really appreciate this particular vacation.

Before I explain the specifics, let me explain the nature of this vacation. It was short. It was only a weekend. It was near home. We didn’t travel far away. This vacation wasn’t supposed to be the most relaxing or the most extravagant. It was simple, but clearly very effective.

So what made this vacation so effective? For starters, I had it on the calendar for a while. This sounds like a no-brainer, but when it comes to short trips and simple plans, they often get moved to the back burner or completely put off. It is easy to make room for big plans, but little things often get overlooked.

Vacation To-do List
Item 1: Schedule a quick vacation

Once this vacation was on my calendar, I could start planning the details. This really means that my wife could start planning the details. She has a knack for planning and organizing many things and vacations are one of them. Now that my calendar was blocked, I could be sure that those details would get done when we got to that date.

Vacations are something that we find very valuable. We have always taken them and some of our best memories have come from these trips. We do different things on some, others are similar activities done taking place in new locations. No matter what we do, things are planned ahead of time so we are ready and jump right into the enjoyment when we get there.

Vacation To-do List
Item 2: Plan the details

The calendar is marked, the details are coming together. The closer we get to the vacation, the more clearly we understand what will be done. Now is when I start getting excited. The time is set aside and I can look forward to spending it doing things that I am going to enjoy.

What is the best thing I can do to make sure that I enjoy these things? The best thing I can do is be present and focus on the main objective. Now, in my day to day life, I have many things to think about. I have emails to read and return. I have calls to make, messages to return and I have other things that are kept on my calendar to make sure my business is running smoothly.

That is just the business side of my life. At home, there is whole list of things that have to be done too. I’m not unique in this situation. We all have many things to do at work and at home. We also have hobbies and other obligations. Life is busy and it takes some practice to manage it and keep stress in check.

Keeping stress in check is no easy task. When it comes to vacations, you can do a lot for yourself just by taking them. But, that is not enough. We’ve all been guilty of this and it can defeat the whole purpose of our plans. The biggest problem we have is our inability to turn our brains off and truly focus on the vacation. It is too easy to check emails or make and take phone calls. If you don’t fully take the vacation, it doesn’t bring you nearly as much satisfaction.

Vacation To-do List
Item 3: Fully engage in your vacation

These “to-dos” are simple. At least they sound simple. The point of vacation is to get away. We want to go somewhere new and do things that are fun or relaxing. If we don’t fully commit to this, it happens, but we don’t get the results we really want. We come home feeling like we missed out or often it feels like we never left in the first place.

You don’t have to go far. You don’t have to be gone long. All you have to do is go. When you go, keep these keys in mind and you will truly feel rested and relaxed when you return. The vacation is very important part of a successful schedule. No matter how many things you have on your to-do list, make sure you make room for a real vacation.

Create Change or it will Create You

2011-10-17T15:53:00.002-05:00

Changing is not easy. In any area of life, change is difficult. In everything we do, we can make changes to get new results. That doesn’t make it easy to do. When it comes to making changes in our health, change can be especially difficult.
When you think about your health, it is easy to think that changing is going to be a challenge. Many people are dealing with this dilemma by doing just that. They are thinking about how hard it will be to change. When you do this, it is even more difficult.

The difficulty often comes in the anticipation. The thought of change is worse than change itself. Think about the prospect of changing everything in your life in order to improve your health. We all know that you don’t have to change it all at once, but this feeling is common.

When you have been doing something for many years, it is hard to even imagine not doing it. Likewise, when you have not done something for many years it is hard to imagine doing it.

When you turn on the news and hear about the risks of not changing your lifestyle, how can change be scary? By comparison, isn’t changing a small habit easier than dealing with a major health issue? On paper that may make sense, but many people are not able to see it that way. The thought of change remains scary and therefore it gets avoided.
What is happening while we avoid change? Well, the title of this article says it all. If you don’t make a change, you will see other changes occur. The changes that you will see are not positive. They are the things we fear and never want to see happen.

This happens in all areas of life, but in health it just feels more cut and dry.
If you don’t exercise, you gain weight. If you eat fast food every day, you gain weight. If you smoke, you damage your lungs and your body is constantly full of toxins. All of these things lead to more serious illnesses. They lead to problems that none of us want to deal with.

I would think that these problems would be enough to help us change. Avoiding the change may be easier, but that doesn’t mean it is easy to deal with. Heart attacks are no fun. Aches and pains are no fun. Buying fat jeans is no fun. There is a whole list of things that are not fun. You get to deal with all of them if you try to avoid dealing with change. That’s life.

The title of the article came from a quote. That quote really hit home because I am talking to people every day that are dealing with this issue. They are looking at two options. One feels easy because it is what they have been doing for a long time. The other feels difficult because it requires them doing something different. The problem is that they aren’t seeing the entire picture. They see the immediate changes, but they don’t see the consequences of not making them. In reality, they are not seeing the worst part. They are letting the initial challenge of changing a habit be the scary part, when the real fear should come from the results of not changing that habit.

Don’t fear change. Fear what will happen if you don’t make change. The quote says it all: “Create change, or it will create you.” It is true. We are a product of our habits. Our health, our success and all of the results in our lives come from change. We either make changes to create the outcomes we want, or we let things happen and deal with the consequences. We always have a choice. What choice are you making?

Injuries Really Hurt

2011-10-10T13:19:00.001-05:00

During a conversation with my coaching client, the topic of injuries came up. They were dealing with a few nagging injuries that made it very difficult for them to continue with their routine. The frustrating part about this for them was that they were not able to do as much as they wanted to do. The frustrating part for me was that the injuries were nagging.

I found myself getting frustrated because the injuries just wouldn’t go away. Why wouldn’t they go away? Well, they kept coming back, or really, they never fully healed because my client refused to give them time to do so. I can understand wanting to get out and go. I can understand not wanting to rest. I can even understand thinking that an injury is better, when it is not fully healed yet.

I’ve been there. I have dealt with injuries. In my athletic career, I dealt with injuries from head to toe. Thankfully, they didn’t all occur at the same time, but it seemed that there was always something wrong that I had to rest. Unfortunately, many of the injuries couldn’t be rested, so I just had to push through. But there were some injuries that I couldn’t just push through.

When there was a more serious injury, I simply couldn’t play. That was the reality. A trainer or doctor would say: if you continue to play, you will cause more damage and you will be out even longer. That was a pretty clear message. Basically, the lesson for me was: the sooner you stop and rest, the sooner you will heal and the better thing will heal. This wasn’t always an easy lesson to take, but it was better than missing more games in the future or dealing with more pain as an injury kept coming back.

My clients have gotten this lesson when things were more serious. The problem is not with serious injuries. The problem is with minor injuries. Things that they can simply fight through were the ones that they tried to ignore. The problem when they didn’t want to take time away from their routines is that eventually these minor injuries can turn into major injuries.

It doesn’t happen overnight. I’m not trying to scare anyone off the road or away from the gym. I’m simply reminding you that even little aches and pains can become serious issues if they are not taken care of. Taking care is the key when it comes to injuries. If you don’t do it, you can be out much longer than you think.

Often taking care of an injury is the difference between a minor set-back and a major hurdle. One of my clients thought they were just dealing with a minor strain. Months later, he was still dealing with it because he wouldn’t give it time to heal.

Time isn’t the only thing that helps injuries. The following ingredients may be what you need to keep on track, even if it means staying off until your injury has healed:

Ice it- Icing your injured area can help you recover more rapidly. The cold provides short-term pain relief and also limits swelling by reducing blood flow to the injured area.

Wrap it- Ace bandages or braces can give you added support during movement. Compression is a great way to limit swelling while you are resting.

Elevate it- holding the injured area above the heart can help reduce swelling as well

Stretch it- doing movements that simulate your exercise or sport can help you assess the severity of the injury and help you get back to it by easing into it. Stretch the injured area lightly and slowly so you don’t feel any pain. Keep the range of motion within your limits too, so you don’t re-aggravate it.

There is no magic cure for injuries. Major injuries need medical attention and even surgery. Minor injuries often just need time to heal. The key to remember is that the longer you are out, the more the injury will hurt you. It may not cause more physical pain, but injuries can make it very difficult to reach goals. Not reaching your goals can hurt a lot.

Medicine and Health are Very Different

2011-10-04T15:39:00.001-05:00

I was giving a seminar at a school and I asked a group of students what they thought of when I said the word health. When asked what health meant to them, some said healthy as in doing healthy things. Others had specific ideas about what things can lead to health. Some said some things that actually disturbed me.

The most disturbing of the answers was: medicine. The fact that medicine and health were associated isn’t what made me think. That actually makes sense. The disturbing part that made me really think about our current state was something that came on the follow-up questions I asked.

When I asked them to elaborate on what “medical” meant to them, I was shocked to hear the answers. I heard: “Medicine that you need to get your health.” I also heard: “Medicine is what you get when you need to get healthy.” One student simply put it this way: “Medicine is what you get when you get sick.” When I asked about health, this student went right to sickness.

The more I think about this, the less surprised I am about the answers I got. Kids today are seeing the worst in health. They are actually seeing the best in medicine. As a nation, we are continually advancing in the field of medicine. We are doing things now that we would only dream of doing just a few years ago. I am impressed and even grateful for our medical advancements. We are doing great things. That isn’t the problem.

The problem is not our advancement in medicine. The problem we have is the reason that we have needed the advancement. We are becoming more and more dependent on these advances in order to live normal lives. There are people today that have more access to education and technology that can help them prevent illness, but instead, we are just giving them more drugs and using different technology to treat the symptoms that are brought on because they refused to use the education or technology to help them stay healthy in the first place.

The Difference Between Medicine and Health

The biggest difference between medicine and health is the time that it is utilized. Medicine is used to primarily to treat issues that are already happening. The body has become weak and medicine is used to get it back to full strength. More accurately, medicine is used to treat a symptom. When something is wrong on the outside, medicine helps change how it looks and allows you to feel like the symptom is gone. The symptom may be gone, but the root cause may still be wrong internally. Until that is fixed, the symptom will come back. It may come back as a different symptom.

What is the solution for this situation? You guessed it: another medicine. There is a medicine for every symptom and you can continue to take more and more as your symptoms continue. You may even get a medicine to counteract what another medicine is doing to you. Most medicines cause symptoms of their own.

Health, when done right is proactive. Health is the habit of doing things that help the body and mind. The more you do these things, the healthier you will be now and the healthier you will be tomorrow. Many of the needs that arise are simply things that we should’ve taken care of. Most medicines are given to reverse symptoms that are caused by lack of health. In other words, health allows you to take care of problems before they become problems.

The problems that we are dealing with are real, but they are coming up with more and more ways to administer medicine. There are many conditions that are serious and that people don’t have much control over, but that is not the norm. The norm is to spend more money and commit more research to drugs and procedures that can help bring people back from the brink of symptoms caused by their own choices.

Take a look at the commercials that are on TV or the ads in magazines. Not only will you find countless drugs and reminders that you “need” to take them in order to be healthy, but you will even find new conditions that you didn’t know existed. I’m not saying that there aren’t serious issues out there that medication is helping, but we have started putting more effort into finding the problem and throwing another medicine at it than we are putting in trying to solve the problem.

The scariest part about the entire medicine vs. health debate is that we have known for years what we need to do to keep health going strong. In fact, we are only in this situation now because we have not taken care of our health. I don’t know which came first, the chicken or the egg. We’ll call the lack of focus on our own personal well-being the chicken and the emphasis on the latest and greatest drug the egg.

No matter which came first, we have a problem. We have a big problem. People are no longer taking care of their health because medicine will “take care of them” when something goes wrong. This is true, medicine will take care of you when you are sick.

It will also cost you, your family and your company more and more money while you have more problems. You can just take more medicine as you add problems, so no worries, right? Wrong.

The only way to live healthy is to do healthy things. You can’t simply take a pill or have a surgery and become healthy. You can take a pill and mask a symptom. You can have a surgery to fix a problem. Without healthy habits, that problem is only going to come back, just as the symptom will return.

Medicine is great. We have seen incredible advancement that saves lives and allow people to do things that they wouldn’t have been able to do in years past. I’m not saying we should throw out all the technology. I am saying that we need to wake up. Our health is not dependent on medicine. Our health is in our hands. It always has been and it always will be in our hands.

Remember this: Avoiding problems is easier, less expensive and just plain smarter than waiting for them to appear and trying to fix them. Health is not just something you think about when you need medicine. Health is something you think about so you don’t need medicine.

How Healthy Are You?

2011-09-29T10:25:00.001-05:00

Health is subjective. Some people are very healthy, while others are only a little. The notion that you are either healthy or unhealthy is completely ridiculous. The idea that you healthy or not, as if it is black and white, just doesn’t work for me.

Health is more like a spectrum and you can be anywhere from one end to the other. Healthy is at one end and unhealthy is all the way on the other end of the spectrum. We all tend to think we are on the healthy side, but it is important to know for sure.

The key to actually living closer to the healthy end of the spectrum is to do healthy things. That is easy enough to understand. But how do you actually know where you are on the spectrum? There is really only one way to know.

The only way to know how healthy you are is to assess your current health. There are many ways to do that. The best and most common ways to assess your health are:

- Going to the doctor for preventative check-ups
- Taking health risk assessments
- Keeping up your healthy habits

These 3 methods are pretty straight forward, but let’s take a look at how you can use them all to your advantage.

Preventative Check-ups

You’ve heard it since childhood, going to the doctor’s office is good for you. You may not have liked it, but you went anyway. The reason you went as a kid was to make sure you didn’t have anything wrong with you. Now that you are an adult, that reason still holds true. It’s not enough to assume everything is fine. You have to get checked out in order to know if something is wrong or not. Once you have done that, you will know that everything is fine.

Health Risk Assessments

In the corporate environment, health risk assessments are very common. They are a great way for companies to ensure that their employees are taking a look at their numbers. This is also a good way for the company to get a look at the health numbers of their employee population. The data is protected by law, so personal information is never shared with the company. They are only able to look at aggregate data, so employees don’t need to be concerned about their privacy. Most companies offer incentives for taking health assessments too. In the future, we will see more and more companies tying health assessments to the health plan and incentives will make significant impact on premiums and deductibles paid by employees.

Healthy Habits

It is important to know your numbers. Going to the doctor to get your check-up is a great start. If you know your current health and have received validation from your doctor, you can be sure that you are good…at least for now. The next step is the health assessment. This is a quick and easy way to get a snapshot of your current health numbers.

These options are essential. It is important to get check-ups and take health assessments each year, but they are only the results of what you’ve done over the course of year. If you don’t do anything to improve your health, it doesn’t matter what your numbers look like. In fact, you can be sure that they will keep getting worse year after year.

Using any of these 3 methods to know your numbers will help you plan your routine. Using all of these 3 methods will keep you on the right track. Being healthy is not just about being young. None of us is as young and healthy as we think we are. Without the habits, our health is on a steady decline from birth until death. It is important to actually know where you are on the spectrum of health. When was the last time you went to the doctor or took a health assessment? What does your health routine look like? All of these questions lead to one very important one: How healthy are you?

Health Doesn’t Just Happen

2011-09-22T12:26:00.001-05:00

Health is something we all have. Each and every one of us has health. If you are alive, you have some degree of health. In fact, you were born with it. Everyone was given a clean slate to start life out and it was up to us to keep it or lose it.

The more stories I see about our nation’s health, the more I see that we are losing it. We are losing it rapidly, which brings me to the question: Are we even trying?
It would appear that most Americans have simply thrown in the towel and given up on their health. This just leads me to more questions:

What made them feel that there wasn’t any hope?
What made them think that they couldn’t live healthy?
What does it take for everyone to live healthy?

These questions are difficult to answer, but I feel like I see the answers to them every day. The answers may be difficult, but they are possible. In fact, they are only difficult at first. Once you are used to living this way, it becomes second nature and there is no problem sticking with it.

What makes people feel that there isn’t any hope of living healthy?
This question, as bleak as it sounds, is all too real. Many people have decided that health is not something that they can have. Many have given up on living a healthy lifestyle because they think it’s too hard, they don’t know what to do, or simply because they don’t think they are the “type of person” that can do it.

No matter what the reason, there is a huge problem arising from this mindset. The mindset is that they can’t do it, so why try? Why would they try if it’s not going to happen?

Every time we see one of the statistics about American obesity, it reminds people that they aren’t doing what they should be doing. Every time we share the guidelines on how much you should be exercising or what you should be eating regularly, people are reminded that they are not exercising enough and they are not eating the right foods. This is what makes people feel that there isn’t any hope. What happens when they see this? They just keep doing what they are doing because that’s what they know how to do.

What made people think they couldn’t live healthy?
This is a similar question t our first, but I want to clarify as I answer. The hopeless feeling people feel when they see that they are off track is painful. It is painful because it is often the first blow they receive when trying to get themselves going. Even if it is just a mental battle, it is difficult to overcome when you see how far you really have to go.

That is where the repeated blows come in. Every time you set out to do something, there will be some obstacles in your way. In health, there are many challenges that can be difficult to overcome. The more we try to overcome them without the proper support or without a clear game plan, it keeps getting harder and harder. Not only do we fall down on this path, but it gets more and more difficult to get backup as we see just how much further we really have to go in order to reach our goals.

When I mention goals, I am reminded of a bigger problem. In our society we are taught to set goals, but we are not taught how to set them. Everyone knows what a goal is and could tell you the reasons they are important. But very few are able to set them and reach them on a regular basis.

In health, the goal is simple, at least it seems that way. Be healthy seems to be what we all want to do. For some it’s to lose weight. For others it is quitting smoking. The point is, we have these broad, general goals that no one has any real way to measure. The more you try to reach these broken goals, the more you fail and the more difficult it gets to try again.

What does it take for everyone to live healthy?
This is not a difficult question. It feels like it may be a challenge to answer, given all problems we have with health, but it is not. Health is simple. Living healthy is nothing more than doing healthy things more than you do unhealthy things. It is difficult to do this when you think that you can’t. It is difficult to make changes when you don’t know how or feel that they are not possible for you to make.

That is the first change that has take place: We have to believe that we can do it. Health is within the reach of every person on the planet. No matter how long you have been telling yourself that you are stuck in a certain way, you can change. You can live healthy.

Believe
The next change that has to take place is the actual process of living healthy. It starts with habits. If you can develop healthy habits, you will live healthy. It doesn’t have to happen overnight, in fact, it rarely does.

Set Goals
This brings us to realistic goals. Set small goals and make small changes. As you take small steps, you will achieve small pieces of success. These pieces will help you get used to the habit of succeeding. Set goals as the actions you will take. The rest will take care of itself and you will keep doing it because it feels good. You have more energy and a sense of accomplishment, so there is no reason to go back to any other way of doing things.
Do it

The goals you set are your goals, which means two things:

1. You can do what you want and how you want to do it.
2. No one else can do it for you. Only you can make it happen

The best part about health is that we are in control. You can set goals and achieve whatever you want to. You can lose weight, quit smoking, exercise, eat vegetables and everything else that leads to good health. That is the good news.

The bad news (or we can call it the “real news”) is that if you don’t take action, nothing happens. Nothing changes if you don’t make it change. When it comes to health, nothing happens on its own. You have to do it. That means asking how things are prepared at restaurants if you are uncertain. It means shopping and cooking. It means planning ahead. It means setting time aside for yourself to get some exercise. It may even mean doing less of some things that you are comfortable with and more of some things that you are not as comfortable with.

No matter what your goals are, no matter where you are starting from or want to go, you have to be the one to do it. You have to put in the effort that it takes to live healthy. You have to make it happen. In other words, health doesn’t just happen.

The Lesser of Two Evils is Still Evil

2011-07-21T12:04:00.001-05:00

When we think of fast food, we think of grease, fat and just plain bad food. Well, at least when we talk about fast food, that is what we say. It is hard for me to believe that people really dislike it when I see a full drive-thru every time I pass a restaurant.

No matter what time of day you go by, there will be a line around the building at every fast food joint you see. Morning, noon and night, people line up for it. Breakfast, lunch and dinner, we have to have our fast food.

How did this start? Well, the key word is fast. I understand the concept of getting food quickly and how that can make the day feel easier. I understand the concept of not making your own food and somehow feeling like you are still getting what you need.

That is where we have gone astray. When you eat fast food, you are not getting what your body needs. It is easy, it is quick, but is not complete. I don’t need to tell you about what you are getting. The calories, the fat and the sodium speak for themselves. You can see that just by looking at the food.

What we miss is the nutrients that real food provides. That is the scary part. We don’t get any of the vitamins or minerals that keep us going. In order to function at a high level, we need so much more. With a fast food diet, we are barely getting by from day to day. Yet, we still do it.

One thing that has me even more upset is the marketing machine. Fast food is fast food. The burger and fries have always been the burger and fries. They don’t claim to be healthy. They don’t try to sell you on their health benefits or make you think they are good for you. They simply taste good and that is all they need.

There is a new wave of restaurants that is trying to tell you something different. You’ve heard the slogan “Eat Fresh”. You’ve seen calorie comparisons and comical views of people eating too much fast food and popping out of their close or breaking chairs. Who is showing this to you? The people that are making food that is no better. The people showing you this information simply want you to eat their unhealthy food rather than someone else’s unhealthy food.

A sub sandwich, while the calorie total may be slightly lower than a burger by volume is a misleading choice. The content of a sub can tell you more than just the total calories. Think about sodium and fat for starters. Often, they put cheese, sauces and fatty meats on the sub which gives you more than enough fat and sodium. They also use white bread, or “wheat” bread that is the same only a little darker. This doesn’t give you any satisfaction or nourishment. The additives and preservatives are another story altogether. Let’s just say that your body is either working really hard to break this stuff down, or it basically going right through you without you absorbing much.

Why do we eat this stuff? Well, it does look better than a burger. It has less fat and at least you can try to put more vegetables on it. Given the choice, I suppose it is the lesser of two evils, but the fact remains: fast food is evil.

With choices like this, how can we see it as anything else? You can choose between bad or worse. When it comes to making choices about what we eat, there should be something better. What happened to good? Oh yeah, there is also a restaurant telling us to “eat good” by going there. This is not even a better choice. It is just using the word good. When it comes to fast food, good has nothing to do with healthy.

The real problem is that food has nothing to do with health. When we go through our day, we are just getting by. The options that are right in front of us are the options we choose. The fast food companies know this, which is why they keep pounding the message home: eat more of this…please!

Just because it is convenient, doesn’t mean that it is easy in the long-run. Just because it is cheap, doesn’t mean that it won’t cost you in the long-run. No matter how good they say it is, make them prove it to you. Take a closer look at what you eat and remember that if you can get it in a drive-thru, it can’t be that good for you.

Sure, you can find options that may be a bit better. It may not be as bad, but remember what you are comparing it to. Fast food is fast food. There may be degrees of poor quality and unhealthy ingredients, but if you truly want to live healthy, this can’t be your idea of a healthy choice.

Is it better to eat a grilled chicken sub than a burger? Yes it is. Is it healthy to eat grilled chicken subs every day? Probably not. That is the real message here. Making a healthy choice is a good thing. The problem is that fast food has many of us fooled into thinking we are making healthy choices. What we are really doing is choosing the lesser of two evils. Guess what, we are still choosing an evil.

Set Real Goals for Real Success

2011-07-13T09:02:00.001-05:00

We all have goals. At least we all have things we want to achieve. What is the difference? There is actually a big difference between a goal and something you want. Something you want can become a goal, but you have to make it a goal.

It takes a specific action in order to achieve something. There are the steps it takes to start moving in the direction you need to move. There are the many challenges that you will have to overcome and finally there are the ideas that you will need to generate in order to solve these problems and continue to progress despite the many challenges you face.

If you just want something, you can’t possibly go through these steps. It takes more than wanting something to start making changes, analyze and overcome challenges. It
takes more than just wanting something to achieve it.

What does it take? It takes a goal. Actually it takes a series of goals that will take you progressively through the steps you need to create new habits and change your lifestyle. But it all starts with one goal. If you have a goal, just one goal, you can achieve anything you want to achieve.

I know this may sound quite dreamy and even a little “pie in the sky”, but in fact it is the exact opposite. The dream is for you to think that by wanting something you can have it. By simply wanting, hoping and wishing, you can and even feel that you should have something. That is the mindset that many people have these days and it is leading us down the wrong path.

What path is that? Well, health is my thing. I think it, talk it and live it every day. Naturally, the path I am talking about is the health of the average person. I don’t have to site statistics or show you any scary details about what is happening right now. You know as well as I do that our country is suffering from many epidemics that we have brought on ourselves. We brought them on ourselves despite knowing exactly what we need to do to stop them.

We can prevent everything we are dealing with if we can change our mindset. Right now our mindset is something like this:

“I want to live a healthy lifestyle.”
“I want to look and feel good.”
“I want to live a long and happy life.”
“I want to hear good news when I go to the doctor.”
“I only want to see the doctor for routine check-ups to make sure everything is STILL GOOD.”

These are all great things to want. They are even great things to say. They are statements that we are all saying every day. Unfortunately, they are rarely goals. They are nothing more than statements about things we want. The things we want are important, but at this point, they don’t seem to be important enough to achieve.

We all want to make these statements true. What will it take to start achieving these things and making them true? It will take goals. Each of these statements is an opportunity to set a goal. A goal is nothing more than a destination or a point that you desire to reach. In health it may be a weight, size or simply a feeling. It can also be a specific number of days, hours or even minutes of exercise. A goal can be eating a certain food or not eating at a certain restaurant. No matter what you want to achieve, there is a goal that can help you achieve it.

What happens if we don’t set real goals? Well, that is even more simple that when we do set goals. There are very few options here. When you don’t have a goal, you don’t succeed. That is all there is to it. Can you take a trip without a destination?

Well, you can certainly drive around, but until you decide where you are going, you aren’t really going anywhere. Don’t get me wrong, when it comes to life, I am an “enjoy the journey” person. I am certainly enjoying the ride as I go, but I am on my way to somewhere that will bring me great satisfaction.

This is where most people get hung up and give up on their goals. They look at the destination and feel like it is too far away to reach. It is easier to say, “I would love to be there.” but it is more challenging to say, “I want to be there and I will take action in order to get there.”

That is the difference between wanting something and having a goal. When you have a goal, you have a plan to get something. When you just want something, you are not taking the steps needed to actually get it. You have to want something before you can decide to take action, so it is a good thing when you can identify something you want.

When you want something enough, you will take the steps necessary to get it. When you really want to achieve something, you will set a goal to get started in that direction. The most common mistake that people make is trying to look at each achievement as something that they have to do in one step or with one goal. Actually, most habits are many goals wrapped into an entire series of habits. Once you set one goal and start making progress, you can handle each challenge as it comes. If you just sit back and hope that something will happen, you will keep seeing the whole picture and it will never appear to get easier. It will always look like this big daunting thing that you don’t think you can realistically achieve.

Once you can set a goal, even one goal, you are able to start breaking down each thing you want and taking it step by step. Nothing worth doing is easy. I’m not going to sit here and tell you that living healthy is easy and you should be able to do it with no problems. That would be mean and would actually keep you in the mindset that it can’t be done.

In fact, that is happening all over the country as we speak. Someone just read another article or saw another report on what they should be doing. The remembered that they are not doing it and it felt even further from reality when they saw yet another story about how they should be able to do it. The reality is, we know what we should be doing. We know what we can do and we want to do it, but we are not doing it because we have yet to go beyond wanting.

We are still making statements about what we want, but we are not taking action. Once you take action, you can take statements like this:

“I want to live a healthy lifestyle.”
“I want to look and feel good.”

You can turn these statements into real action. The difference between wanting and doing is the practice of setting a goal. These statements can be goals with some slight adjustments. They could look like these instead:

“I am going to exercise before work on one day.”
“I am going to bring lunch from home a few days this week so that I don’t eat fast food everyday.”

These statements are simple. They don’t take a ton of effort, but they will make a big impact on your lifestyle. If you can make these statements, you are on the right track to setting real goals. If you can make these statements true, you are achieving those goals and succeeding.

What is the difference between simply wanting something and actually achieving it? It comes back to goals. Wanting something is great. We all want things in life. Some of us are getting what we want, while others just keep on wanting. The only difference is goals. Setting a goal means that you are actually going to do something to get what you want. If you set a goal and reach a goal, you are succeeding. So when you break it down, setting real goals leads to real success.

Marketing Wellness Internally

2011-07-01T12:08:00.001-05:00

With healthcare costs on the rise, many businesses are trying to improve employee health through wellness programs. Employee engagement is the biggest factor in the success or failure of a wellness program, but it is often difficult to get employees engaged.

The fact is your employees want to be healthy. They want to change and they will change if structure is there to support their health. How do you engage your employees? It’s the same concept that your business uses to get customers engaged. It’s all about marketing.

You have to help your customers understand why they need your product or service. You have to make sure that your customers are aware of your product or service. You have to help them understand the value. You even have to support them to make sure that they are educated on your product or service so they know how to purchase and how to use it properly.

The same principles apply to wellness. You have to help your employees understand the need for changes in health in order to improve your company’s healthcare costs. You have to make sure that they are aware of the control they have over their health and the effects on their costs. You have to support them to make sure that they are educated on health so that they can participate and be successful.

Just like your customers want to use your product or service, your employees want to participate in wellness programs. Your business is successful because you are filling an important need for your customers. Your employees have an important need too. They have a need to be healthy. By applying the same tactics, you can successfully market your wellness program to your employees and they will buy in.

When employee needs are in line with company needs, it makes sense to make the investment. Just as you make an investment to keep your clients happy, investing in your employees is a good idea. Clients continue to be paying customers because they are happy. Employees continue to be good workers when they are happy and healthy, which also keeps your company moving in the right direction. In fact, with more energy employees can be more productive. With better health, they cost your company less while providing even better results.

Marketing to your customers is all about communication and understanding their needs. As you listen and provide quality, they buy in and everyone is happy. Marketing wellness to your employees has the same affect. Wellness is going to keep your good people doing good work and save your company money, which will keep your company on the path to success.

The key is to communicate the message to your employees in order to get them engaged. When customers are engaged, your business will be successful. Marketing helps you achieve that success. You also need employees to be engaged for your business to be successful and internal marketing is the key.

Practice Makes Perfect

2011-06-15T14:07:00.002-05:00

When you learn a new skill, you know that the more you do it the better you will be at it. As children, we learned many skills and practiced quite often to make sure that we continued to get better. We may have experienced some frustration, but we didn’t get discouraged to the point where we quit. If we wanted to get better, we just kept on practicing.

Now, much of this was built for us through the structure of activities we were doing. Whether it was a sport, a musical instrument or a particular subject in school, there was always another practice, lesson or class that forced us to keep working on the skill. No matter how frustrated we were, we had to get up the nerve to show up the next day to work on it again.

It’s a shame we don’t have teachers or coaches to keep us focused on our health. Well, we do, but the majority of people are choosing not to use us. That is not a cheap shot or a plug for myself, it just the nature of the way people look at their health. The fact of the matter is, most people don’t look at health as a set of skills that can be improved with practice.

Maybe we should start looking at it like that. Maybe if we looked at health like we looked at learning to ride a bike or learning to play our favorite sport, we would understand that we got better at it the more we practiced. More importantly, we would realize that health is not only possible, but it is much easier the better we get at it.

The more you ride a bike, the less you have to think about the fundamentals. Think about the most basic skills we have and how little we actually think about them. Riding a bike is one example I like to se because I can remember the steps it took to go from a big wheel to training wheels to a mini-bike to a regular bike. It took a long time to make that progression and there were a few skinned knees and even a few tears. I remember thinking after a few falls that it may never happen. Despite this feeling of frustration and failure, I still knew that I was going to have to try again. The next day would come around and guess what: I was back out there trying to get on those two wheels.

No matter how difficult it was, I knew that I had to do it. I feel the same way about health today. No matter what obstacles stand in my way, I will do the things that lead to a healthy lifestyle. I will always exercise. I will always watch my diet and eat good food. I will never smoke and the stress that is in my life will be managed so that the whole of my routine is healthy. The only difference between now and then is that I’ve been doing it for so long that it comes naturally, just like riding a bike.

I don’t have to spend too much time thinking about food or wondering when I’m going to exercise. I don’t have to try to quit smoking or get a handle on an out of control routine that brings me down day after day. That is what many people are trying to do today. They are living unhealthy lifestyles and are trying to change that. It is not easy, but they can do it too.

If we can start looking at health as a set of skills, we can live healthy without the feeling that we can’t do what we need to do in order to live healthy. It is easy for someone that is out of practice to say that it can’t be done. It will be more difficult the longer it has been, but that doesn’t mean that it can’t be done.

Let’s go back to our bike scenario. The process of learning how to ride a bike was not easy and it didn’t happen overnight. And we didn’t already have a skill and simply forgot it. We started from square one, not knowing how to do it at all and we figured out what we had to do. Once we figured it out, we still had to practice and practice until we were able to ride a bike. Now we can jump on a bike, no matter how long it has been, and we can ride it comfortably. We may not be as good as when we were riding a bike every day, but that is the point. The more you do something, the better you get at it and the easier it becomes. In other words, practice makes perfect.

Plan B is Better than Nothing

2011-06-08T16:41:00.001-05:00

It’s easy to get upset when things to go according to plan. In life, many things we plan get altered and many plans change as we go along. This is part of life. No one can avoid it, but you certainly can drive yourself crazy if you try.

Health is part of life too and planning is part of a healthy life. If you are going to live healthy, you have to plan. If you plan, you are going to have to make adjustments and find new ways to do things. If not you will drive yourself crazy while struggling to make the progress you want to make.

The most successful people in life are able to adjust and continue moving forward despite changing circumstances. Health is no different. Those living healthy or “healthy people” are able to eat healthy foods, exercise and take good care of themselves in all circumstances. Some are just so rigid that they won’t go or do anything outside of their health-zone, but those people are few and far between.

For the record, I am not one of those people. I always try to emphasize this just to make sure you know where I stand. I am a “healthy person” (I better be with all the advice I give!), but I am not healthy because I live a freakish life of strict training routines and a steady diet of rabbit food grown in my own garden. I am healthy because I am able to embrace change and adjust when I need to.

Changes are taking place all around us. As these changes occur, plans are difficult to stick with. At least the first plan is anyway. The first plan is often the best laid and most detailed plan that we are certain is the way to get us where we want to go. The first plan, or plan A as it is often called, is the “right way” or the way we picture things taking place.

Plan A is not always what actually happens. Plan A is a picture in our mind that exists only before we get started. Plan A, even when written down will have notes and adjustments on it by the time we are actually in motion. At least that is the case if you are successful.

Let me explain: being successful is not getting to a certain amount of money, living in a certain house or driving a certain car. Life has showed me that you can be happy in any class, neighborhood or car. Being successful in health or living healthy is more than just the number of calories and the minutes spent exercising. Health Coaching has shown me that you can be healthy with many different methods and patterns and by eating in many different ways.

So what is success? My definition of success makes it more of a process. Success for me is a journey and not a destination. Why is this? Well, if you have to get to a certain place in order to be successful, than it is automatically going to take more time or effort for some.

Let’s say success is Miami Florida. If being healthy is getting to Miami, than someone in Seattle is going to have a much longer journey toward health than someone in Fort Lauderdale. That doesn’t mean that they can’t get there or that everyone is automatically as healthy as their origin. That’s not the case at all. People change all the time. I’ve seen thousands change their lifestyle and therefore change their health.

That is why my definition of success is about the process or the journey that you are on. Success for me is setting goals and reaching goals. If you are reaching a goal, you are successful. If you continue to set and reach goals you will continue to be successful because you will keep moving toward your desired destination.

In health, success is as simple as action. Take action and you will be healthy and successful. Everyone has a different journey, which is why you need to set your own goals and take your own steps in order for this to work. You are successful as long as you are on your journey. The journey may be long, or it may be short. It may be very difficult, or it may be easy. The point is, you have to have goals and set up a plan in order to even get started on your journey.

How do you get started on the journey? It’s all about the plan. If you have a plan for your life, you can get the job you want, the house and car you want. If you have a plan for your health, you can look, feel and perform the way you want to. You just need a plan.

It does get a bit more complicated than that. As you know, life always presents changes and makes us adjust. What happens when we can’t adjust? We fail.
That is where the most important plan comes into play. It’s not plan A, it’s more like the plan that comes to be when plan A doesn’t work. The most important plan is the one that you can use. If plan A doesn’t work, we have to come up with a new plan or change the existing plan in order to succeed.

That is why plan B is better so important. It is often the difference between getting any exercise or eating anything for lunch. Plan B is what you do in real life. You can draw up the best plan A in the history of mankind, but if it doesn’t fit into your life, it will not work.

That is where most of us meet our demise. Plan A looks great, so we set out with that sparkling plan and on Monday morning and as soon as the alarm goes off. Then real life starts and your plan A goes right out the window. This is a problem considering plan A is all we had. It was the end-all plan that was sure to take us to the top, so when it failed, what did we do? We quit and assumed that there was nothing else we could do. If this plan didn’t work, what will?

The plan that will work is the plan that actually fits into your lifestyle. That may be plan B or it may even be plan C or D. I’ve seen people succeed on plan Q as long as they executed it. The point is, most people make plan A and assume it will work. When it doesn’t there is nowhere to go. The journey ends there. It’s like getting on the road toward Miami, running out of gas and choosing not to fill up the car.
When you set out on a road trip, you know that you can’t make it in one tank of gas. You know that when you see the fuel light, you will need to look for a place to fill up. That is part of the trip and you build that right in.

Changing your lifestyle in one sweeping step with a “perfect plan” crafted from nothing but expecting it to bring you the perfect routine is just like setting out on a cross-country trip and expecting to get there on one tank of gas. It sounds silly, but that is what many people try to do in their routines.

Life may be complicated. Health, being part of life, is no different. There will always be something keeping you from the gym. There will always be something that throws your schedule off. There will always be something to make your ‘plan A’ a big challenge.

The solution is simple: Don’t rely on Plan A. It’s good to have a plan, but it’s better to be ready for adjustment and able to put plan B into motion. It doesn’t mean you failed at plan A, it just means that you needed to adjust in order to keep going on your journey.

Running out of gas on your trip doesn’t feel like a failure. So, why does getting stuck at the office or having a crisis in the morning feel like failure? On the trip, we simply pull off, fill up and get back on our way. At home, we see that plan A is no longer possible and we give up.

In reality, which is where healthy living takes place, you need to have a plan B. Plan B is not failure. Plan B is not even secondary. Plan B may become plan A when you realize that the original plan was drawn up with great intensions but simply doesn’t work for you. Again, this is not failing. It is simply adjusting.

In health, the only failure is doing nothing. As long as you have goals to do something for your health, you are succeeding every time you do those things. If plan B is what it takes to do those, do it. Not having a plan B or refusing to come up with one is easy. It’s easy to do nothing, but won’t bring you success. Plan B will bring you success. In health, something is better than nothing. The more you do that, the better you will become at it. As you practice, this becomes your habit and keeps you going. Something is always better than nothing. If plan B is what it takes for you to do something, than isn’t it better than nothing?

Personal Pride

2011-06-06T16:56:00.001-05:00

When it comes to health, it is easy to let external influences get in the way. There are many obstacles to living healthy. Just take a typical day for example: you have to get ready for work, go to work, you are busy all day at work, you have to get home from work and do any number of household and family activities before getting to bed so you can get up and do it all over again.

If you are anything like me, this routine takes its toll on your mind and body. We all have a routine that we are in. It may be more or less hectic that what we have described, but no matter what you are doing, it is important.

This is your life. You have to do what you are doing in order to make a living and support your family. You have to keep everything organized so your family can do what it wants to do and sometimes you just have to make sure you don’t go crazy.

There are many reasons we do what we do every day. There is money, respect, entertainment and many other factors that drive our activities. As I see health take a back seat, I wonder why. I wonder why people can justify running themselves ragged on a daily basis without even considering their health.

When most people describe a typical day, it looks like above with a million things going on. I know how it is because I am dealing with a schedule like that every day too. I have to balance many things just like everyone else. I have to prioritize and decide what I have time for and what I don’t. More accurately, I have to decide when I have to do things to make sure that they fit.

But how do you know what you want to fit? I use a few things to gage how important something is. We are all motivated by different things. You can talk about money, fear or personal fulfillment. You can talk about any number of things that will get people to do something, but I think we need to think about one in particular.

Personal pride is what keeps me focused on my health. No matter what I have going on, there is time for health. I make time for workouts, for buying and preparing food, managing my stress and many other things during a typical day. The reason I do this is because of personal pride.

There are few ways that pride comes into play for me, so let’s discuss what it means to be proud to live healthy. Pride comes from many places and here are the places I get mine:

Success

When you set a goal and reach a goal, you are successful. The more goals you set and reach, the more successful you are. No matter how big or small a goal is, if you reach it, you are experiencing success. This habit has become part of my daily life. I set goals every day and I take pride in reaching the goals I set. I take pride in being successful.

Results

The results you get from your day to day life depend on your actions. The goals I set are clear and the results I get by reaching them are too. I take great pride in controlling those results. I control results by controlling my actions. It’s that simple and I will always do it. When I am deciding what actions I want to take, I think about the results and I remember that my personal pride will be greater when I take action and get those results.

Control

Health is in our hands. I can decide how I will live and I decide how I feel each day. When I wake up in the morning, I am tired. I feel like the day just started, but I wasn’t ready for it to start. I feel like the night wasn’t long enough. My routine is designed to stop that feeling and help me get on track for a successful day. My morning workout is what gives me the energy to have a good morning. The goal of getting up and going is all it takes (most days) to take action. I take pride in accomplishing that goal to start each day and the rest of my day is on track because of it.

There are many other decisions that I make on a daily basis that determines how healthy that day, week, month, year will be. As these add up, I am determining how healthy my life will be. I have decided that I want to be successful; I want a certain result- to be healthy and feel good every day and have the control to do all of this.

I am proud of my accomplishments day in and day out. I am proud of the clients that have been able to do the same thing. They aren’t doing it so I will be proud of them. They do it because they have their own personal pride. Anyone that is living healthy has decided that their pride is strong enough for them to set goals, take action to succeed and maintain control over their lives.

The same can be said for those that are not living healthy. If you are not able to find time or make decisions that will support your health, you are not finding pride in being healthy. It’s no surprise. It would be difficult to take pride in being healthy when you are not doing it. But that doesn’t mean you can’t do it.

Living healthy may not be easy, but if you are willing to start with one step, you can take pride in that one step and keep doing it. The more success you have with that step, the closer you are to taking another. Step by step, you will be successful, see the results you want and realize that you are in control of your life. You won’t stop because you will have something that you didn’t have before you started taking these steps. You’ll have something very powerful that will keep you going. You will have personal pride.

The Rewards of Living Healthy

2011-05-25T12:37:00.001-05:00

Living healthy is not easy. Health is a big challenge, but the greater the challenge in life, the greater the reward. We were built to seek and overcome challenges in our lives. Health is no different and it. No matter how difficult it may seem, it is not only possible, but very rewarding as well.

There are many rewards that come from living a healthy lifestyle. These rewards come from the effort you are willing to put in. The more you give, the more you get. It’s that simple. The more you get, the better you feel. This is a also a simple concept to understand, yet it can be difficult to put into practice. Why else would so many people be choosing to ignore their health or have such a hard time taking control of it?

The problems we keep hearing about are very real. They are being experienced by millions right now and it seems there is no end to them in sight. The problems may be real, but so are the rewards. That is the rewards: believing that you can reach them.
Health often feels difficult and in many cases it is difficult. Once you have struggled for a while or seen a few attempts fail, it is easy to give up. It is easy to lose sight of why you are trying to do this. Why are you trying to live healthy? I suspect that you are doing it for the rewards. If you are, you are more likely to succeed. The list of rewards below is just a few of the positives that come from living healthy. Let’s break each reward down so you can see what it really does for you when you achieve them.

Satisfaction

This is a simple concept, but it often gets misconstrued. Satisfaction is really why we do anything, right? If you accomplish something, you are satisfied. If you are satisfied with something, you likely wanted to do it and will continue to do it. Living healthy somehow gets left out of this equation despite the level of satisfaction you can achieve.

So, how does health bring you satisfaction? Well, for starters, you know that you are focused on the most important thing in your life. In fact, you are focused on your life itself. There is no other task that is more important for you to complete. Each time you do something for your health, you get that satisfaction. The more you do it, the more you can be satisfied that you are doing it.

Confidence

Confidence is a key component in any area. Confidence can mean the difference between success and failure. If you are trying to get into a new routine, it takes confidence just to get started. Without confidence, you can’t get started and you certainly can’t get the results you want.

The best part about confidence is that it carries over. When you build confidence by mastering skills in one area, it can help you do the same in other areas. As you get started and keep a good routine going, you can take pride knowing that you are accomplishing goals and getting positive results. These results will help you feel good when setting goals in other areas such as social, business/work and even romance. I know that being a parent is easier when you are used to getting your routine done and with the energy that comes with it. And in true cyclical fashion, as you become more confident in those other areas, you can continue to grow more and more confidence for more and more success.

Success

Success is what it’s all about. Everything we do in life is held up as successful or unsuccessful. When you set out to do anything, no matter what it is, you want to be successful. When you try to get into a healthy routine, you want to be successful. That is the only way that you are going to be getting what you want.
The definition of success is setting a goal and reaching a goal. In health, you can set any goal you want to set. It can be as complex as a lifelong dream of completing a marathon or as simple as going for a walk after work. If you set a goal and reach it, you are succeeding. This becomes a habit as you do it more and more. Success leads to more success as you make setting and reaching goals your habit.

Personal Fulfillment

The above categories all have something in common. They all have to do with what you get out of living healthy. True, that is what we are talking about, but they all add up to one thing. The one thing that you get when you put all of the categories together is personal fulfillment. As you gain all of these things, you realize that you are doing great things and that is fulfilling.

Control

Why do we want to live healthy? Well, the above reasons certainly help. They are what we gain mentally and emotionally, but health, while all-encompassing, shows itself physically. We notice health or its absence when the body breaks down or doesn’t do what you want it to do. That doesn’t have to happen if you don’t want it to happen.

Health is control. By taking action and focusing on your routine, you are taking control of your health and taking control of your life. The diseases that we read about and the statistics that we hope we won’t be dealing with are all preventable. You can decide to live above all of it and that is certainly one of the positives you gain by taking care of your health.

All five of these areas are important and you will enjoy them when you get there. Each area is different and may hold different weight depending on where you are coming from. No matter what you set out to achieve, it is important that you get something of personal value to you. These areas are of great value and they can give you many reasons to live healthy.

The most important thing to remember is that you are at the root of all of these reasons. From satisfaction to control and everything in between, you are gaining knowledge about yourself and learning what you are capable of. We are all capable of living healthy. When we choose to do it, we gain some amazing rewards.

The Greater the Challenge, the Greater the Reward

2011-05-17T14:24:00.002-05:00

When it comes to health, we all want it to be easy. Just look at our daily lives. We want to eat the fastest foods. We want to do the shortest exercises. We want to put in less time and get more results. Time is one thing that always seems to be a barrier. We all want more of it and no one ever has enough.

Despite the challenges and the constant crunch, time is not my biggest concern. When it comes to the health of the people in our country, my biggest concern is effort. We are not putting in the effort that it takes to live healthy. When it comes down to it, we can live healthy. We can change the trend and start moving the other direction on the spectrum of health.

We can do anything we want to do. The knowledge and technology we have today gives us unlimited possibilities. Maybe the technology has actually hurt us. Maybe our quest for the fastest, shortest and most convenient has actually hurt our ability to progress personally. Sure, we can make more money and help companies reach more people in less time. We can even have conversations with people around the world at any time.

Technology has provided us with a lot. I’m glad we have the tools to do what we can do today. The problem is not the technology. The problem is our expectations and our effort. The more advanced we get, the less we have to do to see a reward. As things have gotten easier, our willingness to put forth any effort has decreased.

With so much instant gratification it is no wonder that we have gotten used to things being easy. We want things to be easy. We like it when things are easy. That has created one big problem. The problem I see with this is our disinterest in doing anything that’s not easy. We are so used to quick and easy that anything else is simply not worth it. If it is too difficult, we won’t do it.

This is clearly a problem for many reasons. When it comes to work, family, school or any other area of life, we all know that you have some difficult things to do. You have to suck it up and get through quite a few things in order to be successful in life. Don’t get me wrong, life has many wonderful things to offer and most of it should be happy and enjoyable. Most of life should be happy, but all of life should be rewarding.

Health, for me, is all about rewards. The reward that you get may be a combination of instant and delayed rewards, but there are many that come living a healthy lifestyle. The fact that we need to continue to highlight the rewards and sell health in order to make people do it is a crying shame, but I’m ok with it as long as people buy in and start to seek these rewards.

What are these rewards? Well health offers many positives that we can’t get from any other source. I’m not talking about avoiding heart attacks, preventing diabetes or avoiding death at age 50 because the body can’t make it any further. These are all good things to short for, but they are based in fear.

The fear of having a heart attack may be enough for some to take control of their health, but it is usually too late. They are only realizing that they need to make changes since they have had one or are told they are at high risk of having one very soon. This doesn’t equal a healthy lifestyle. This is just last-minute panic when a lifetime of ignoring health has finally caught up to you. This may keep you alive for a few more years, but it will not bring you the reward you are looking for.

The real rewards we get from health are not avoiding our worst fears. The rewards we get from health are more about what we want than what we don’t want. The results we really want are possible. They can be achieved if we are willing to put forth the effort.

What are these rewards I’m talking about? Well, there are many. Here is a short list of reasons we should all be focused on our health. These are the rewards we receive when we take control and give the effort necessary to live healthy:

Satisfaction
Confidence
Success
Personal Fulfillment
Control

These rewards are not easy to achieve. They take time, planning and commitment. Most importantly, they take effort. You have to go out and work for these rewards. You have to put yourself first and decide that you are worth the effort. If you don’t, you are simply taking what’s given. That may be easy for you to do, but it will not bring you what you want. Easy does not yield the rewards that truly satisfy us, it only gets us by.

Challenges are what bring us the real rewards in life. We were built to seek challenges. Just think about how good it feels to win a dare or to win something that no one expected you to win. It is natural to feel a reward when overcoming a challenge. Health is a big challenge, but that is what makes it so important. Just remember: The greater the challenge, the greater the reward.

Prepare to Win

2011-04-27T16:00:00.002-05:00

If you want to win a game in any sport, you have to be ready to play. From youth to professional sports, the team that has prepared to win is the team that will win. Are there other factors? Yes, but most of the other factors are part of preparation.

You have to prepare in order to succeed. In any area of life, you have a choice when it comes to success or failure. When you prepare, you are choosing success. When you don’t prepare, you are choosing failure. That is a simplistic view, but this is the reality.

This is the first step. Setting up a plan and preparing to move forward is the key to doing so. If you don’t do this, you can’t get anywhere. Forget success, you won’t even be participating if you don’t prepare. You will be on the sidelines without preparation.

That is sad the reality that is hitting a lot of people right now. They decided that they wanted to lose weight, but they have not prepared themselves to take action. They want to do it, but have not started changing their lifestyle in order to get the results they want.

These people are not lazy. They are not destined to be fat or unhealthy. They are not genetically predisposed to obesity or the diseases that come along with it. They can change and they will change if they can start preparing to win.

The battle is not going to be easy. If it were easy, it wouldn’t be a battle. You wouldn’t see a new fad or program claiming to be the first thing to make it easy, if it really were easy. Why is it so difficult? There are many reasons. What can you do to make it less difficult? You can prepare.

This is easier said than done, so let’s take a look at how preparation really works.

Picture this: Tom has decided to start watching his weight. He has been gaining weight over the past few years and now he has decided to change things. In order to get started, Tom thinks that getting more exercise is going to be the key for him. He has always wanted exercise more and thinks now is the time to start doing so.

This sounds like a good plan, right? It sounds like something that we would all want. It also sounds like something many people are doing. This actually leads to a problem. One of the problems that Tom saw was that his mindset was off from the start. He started by thinking and saying things like: “If so many are already doing it, it should be easy.” When deciding that he was going to start exercising, he thought, “If others can get exercise, I will be able to.”

The reason this is a problem is not because it is untruthful. It is true that many are exercising. It is true that many can do it and are doing it. It is even true that Tom and others that are trying to get started can do it. With this attitude, we are missing something. Tom is thinking about how easy it is going to be and he is not preparing.

Let’s go back to our sports analogy. When a team thinks they are going to win a game before they even show up, they often run into a big surprise. We see upsets in every sport year after year. What happens? A team overlooks one game and loses despite being more than capable of winning it.

That is what happens in health. People are constantly overlooking the details and challenges of getting their health on track and they simply get defeated by it. They try to get started with the attitude of “This is going to be easy.” And guess what happens? They soon find out that it is far from easy and things don’t go well.

Preparing to win is what gives underdogs a chance to beat favorites in sports. Preparing to win is also what gives every person on the planet the opportunity to live healthy. This isn’t easy and it certainly doesn’t happen automatically. You win some and you lose some, as they say, but the more you prepare, the more you win.

When you prepare, you are saying that you are ready to not just play the game, but you are ready to win the game. The game of health may not be easy, but it is fair. The game of health offers simple principles such as calories in vs. calories out. The game of health is something that we are all able to play and win as long as we don’t underestimate the importance.

We must respect the details that we need to cover in order to win. When we don’t respect all the details, we miss them. When we miss details, we get beat by them. In health it may be the long day at the office that we forgot to account for. It may be the gym bag that we didn’t bring with us because we thought there would be more time. It may be the added steps that we just didn’t see when we decided to make changes.
Tom tried doing it without preparing and it didn’t work for him. He thought getting more exercise was just one thing. He thought we would just show up and start doing this one thing without any issues. He didn’t prepare and he didn’t win. When this happened to Tom, luckily we were able to have a conversation. He needed some ideas and some confidence to get back in the game.

Now that Tom has prepared to win, he is actually winning. He has put in the effort to look at his schedule. He has determined the best days, times and places for him to exercise. He has set goals for himself to cover the steps he needs in order to get his exercise in: packing his bag, putting it in the car, scheduling a meeting a week in advance to prevent unexpected issues from arising that could keep him at the office too late. He even had to think about his diet in order to fully prepare for his exercise routine. If we wants to get a good workout in, he needs to bring a snack with him to eat between work and the gym.

His routine is just that, it’s his routine. Everyone has to come up with their own. Preparation is the key to success in any area. Winning is impossible without preparing to play and preparing to win. Health is no different. There are many steps that need to be addressed and if you don’t address them, you lose.

You have a choice between success and failure. Preparation is that choice. You can prepare to win and do it, or you can choose not to prepare and lose. Prepare to win or prepare to lose. It sounds like a no-brainer doesn’t it?

Easter Candy Info

2011-04-22T10:21:00.000-05:00

Easter has always been a big candy holiday. One of the toughest parts about it is that you don’t realize you are eating so much. Each jelly bean and chocolate egg doesn’t seem like a whole lot, but it adds up. Each one contains a lot of calories and that will add up to a huge total when you add it to your regular meals throughout the weekend.

Active.com is a great resource for all things wellness. You can find events and get tips on diet. The diet detective provided the list below to help you watch your Easter candy intake:

• Speckled Jelly Beans, Jelly Candy, 9 pieces, 220 calories
• Bunny Mix, M&M's Peanut, 1.5 ounces (1/4 cup), 220 calories
• Reese's Peanut Butter Cup Miniatures, 5 pieces, 220 calories
• Palmer Happy Hopper Bunny, 13 ounces, 1,100 calories
• Cadbury Creme Egg, 160 calories
• Cadbury Mini Eggs Candy, 12 pieces (40 grams), 190 calories
• Russell Stover Marshmallow Rabbit, 2 ounces, 230 calories
• Reese's Peanut Butter Eggs, 1 piece, 170 calories
• Pez Hippity Hoppities, 1 roll, 35 calories
• Bunny Peeps, 4 bunnies, 110 calories
• Jelly Beans, 4 calories per bean
• Hershey's Hollow Milk Chocolate Egg (570 calories for the shell alone) with 4 candy-coated milk chocolate eggs inside (90 more calories)

Watch your candy intake for a healthier Easter. Let’s be realistic: Candy is around, we are all going to eat some of it. The best way to get through the holiday without too much guilt is not deprivation. The best way is to be aware of what you are eating.
Happy Easter!

Spring Into Your Routine

2011-04-11T10:20:00.000-05:00

When we turn the calendars to March, there is always an excited feeling. And then we realize that spring is not quite here yet. Then we turn our calendars to April and things get a little more exciting. Why is it so exciting to start the month of April? Well, for starters, winter is over. Now we are one step closer to the season we all look forward to from the time summer ended last year: Spring.

Spring is a season of change, new beginnings and fresh starts. No matter how your year started, spring can always bring you some rejuvenation. One of the most exciting things about the season is getting outside again. By the time March comes, it feels like we have been inside for a year! In Minnesota, we still have a little time to go, but at least we know the end is in sight.

So what do you do with the end of winter? What does the spring mean to you? We’ve talked about rejuvenation, excitement, getting outside. We’ve even talked about new beginnings. As a Health Coach, beginnings are kind of my specialty. I help people get started on new routines and get back into routines that have been tough to stick with. Either way, this is the time of year to do it and I have some tips that have helped many others do it before.

Spring into your routine by:

Choosing your activities
What is the best way to get through a long winter evening? Thinking about spring and summer can help. And by thinking about what you want to be doing when the weather turns, you can make it more realistic when it comes time to do it.

Picking your location
You have many options for working out, relaxing or doing other activities. You have to choose what you want to do, but you also have to choose where you are going to do it. Take a minute to plot out your routine so that when you get started, you can be realistic about the details:
Where can I go? Can I do my activities there?

Setting your schedule
No matter where you go or what you do, you have to have a schedule. I don’t care how badly you want to go to the gym. If you don’t make it part of your schedule, you will never get there. Setting a schedule is the most important factor and can mean the difference between success and failure. The details that will help you succeed are:
How long does it take you to get there? How often can you go?

Easing into it
When you are choosing activities, it is easy to choose something grand like running a marathon. When picking your location, it’s easy to just name a place. When setting your schedule it’s easy to say every day! But do you know what isn’t easy? It is not easy to stick with all these things! That is why you have to be realistic and give yourself time to ramp up. Don’t try to do everything in one day. Don’t try to go from beginner to expert in a day or even a week. Think long-term with the following details:
What is realistic for me right now? How much time to I really have? How much more likely am I to succeed if I don’t burn out right away?

These steps are easy, but they can present quite a challenge if you don’t give them enough thought. Spring is a great time to get started, but you don’t have to do it all at once. Use spring for what it is: A good starting point. The rest of the year can be used for mastering your activities and refining your routine. Spring into your routine and you can have a healthy spring!

Are you following the trend?

2011-03-30T15:46:00.003-05:00

I see more studies every day that illustrate the poor health in our country. I see many trends, like our health declining and obesity increasing. I also see a trend that a number of diseases that come along with obesity are continually increasing.
This trend is disturbing and it has to stop. It is costing us all a ton of money. We are spending more on healthcare, food and clothes. We are even spending more on airline tickets and gasoline because we consume more fuel carting extra weight around.

The trend, while widely known, does not have to continue. I am working with people day in and day out to stop the trend one person at a time. I can’t do anything unless the people I work with make one important decision. The most important decision they (and you) can make is to stop following this trend.

That’s right, the trend can be stopped if we decide to stop it. How do we stop the trend? The same way we stop any trend, we stop following it. This is easier said than done, but I have put together a few simple ways to stop following the current health (or lack of) trend and start setting your own trend.

Stop and Think
The first thing we need to do is take a moment. Just take a minute or even a few seconds to think about your health. Health is not just blood pressure and cholesterol. In fact, by the time these numbers are brought to our attention it is often too late. We already have major issues with weight, fatigue and other areas. How do you want to feel each day? You have control over how you feel. Health is about feeling good and making choices that will help you realize that feeling every day. Stop and think about what you feel like today, how you want to feel tomorrow and what you have to do in order to bridge that gap. If you have already been focused on your health you have some good news. You just have to keep doing it. Stopping and thinking is still helpful though, since you have to acknowledge your progress and keep yourself motivated to continue.

Decide what YOU want
The questions we asked above are the key to living healthy. How do you want to feel? Do you want to feel good or bad? Do you want to feel energetic or sluggish? Do you want to feel healthy or sick? These sound like simple, no brainer questions. These sound obvious when asked out loud. Well, that is the key to getting the answer you want. Ask them out loud. Talk to your friends and family about what they want. Tell them what you want. When the options are next to each other, it gets much easier to make the choice. Once you have decided what you really want, it is easier to make the healthier choice. The more you make it, the easier it gets to keep making it. This isn’t a newsflash, but sometimes we all need a reminder of what we are doing (or not doing) for our health. If we just do what is easy or right in front of us, we will not be making the choice to live healthy. The most convenient option is not likely to be the healthiest option. This is old news, but we still make the easy choice most of the time. That is the problem and the biggest reason for the health trend. By making a conscious choice, you are deciding to live healthy.

Be the expert
You know yourself. You know your routine. You know you better than anyone else does. If you are a person that likes to eat at certain times, make sure you have options available. If you know that you have a craving for chocolate around 2 pm each day, put a tiny candy piece in your desk so you can get a taste and be done with it. There are a million things you can do to match your routine. We all know the difference between healthy and unhealthy. We all know what it takes to do it.

Be the expert, trust yourself and do it. Not knowing how to live healthy is no longer a valid excuse. Every time they show us the updated obesity numbers, they remind us why this is the case. The obesity numbers are on the rise because we eat too much and don’t exercise enough. This is obvious. The real reason we eat to much and don’t exercise enough is more valuable information. We have become dependent on the experts and have convinced ourselves that we can’t do it. We have become satisfied with the trend because it is easier to just go with it. It is easier to be fat if our friends and family are fat. It is easier to let our health go if we see that everyone else is doing it too.

The trend is no secret and neither is the solution. These steps can help you figure out your own plan. The difference between successful people and unsuccessful people is not that significant. The results are much different and the difference there is very significant. But the difference between one person and another is simply this: one has a plan and one doesn’t.

If you are struggling with your health, what do you need to do? You don’t need to start a specific diet. You don’t need to go to a certain gym. You don’t even need to change much internally. All you need is a plan. If you can set up a plan for what you want to be doing, you can do it. There is no question about it. No matter what the trend says, you don’t have to be part of it.

By taking a moment to stop and think, you are able to take control. You are able to assess your current situation, which allows you to slow or even stop the negative cycle.

By deciding what you want, you are now taking control. You are looking at your routine and deciding how you want it to look. You are thinking about how you feel and deciding that you want it to improve. You are deciding that the way you feel is important and you are willing to act in order to affect it.

And finally, by being the expert, you are perfecting your routine. You are taking the process that you want and results you hope to achieve and finding a way to make it all work. The only way you can do this is to trust yourself and believe that you can do it.

The real trend is more than just people getting fat while they eat and don’t exercise. The real trend is people refusing to take ownership of their own health. Maybe you don’t think you can or maybe you think it will be too difficult. Maybe you just don’t understand the ramifications of not making changes.

Well, you know what they told us when were kids. Following trends seemed like a good idea. When we used the trend as an excuse to do something, what did our parents say? Mine asked me, “If everyone jumped off a bridge, would you do it too?” That is basically what we are all doing. We are letting our health go and slowing jumping off of a bridge by not taking control.
Are you following the trend?

Make Yourself Do It

2011-03-09T15:55:00.003-06:00

Making yourself do something doesn’t sound like much fun. Eating all my brussels sprouts and doing my homework are things that I’ve had to make myself do. So how does exercise get lumped in with homework? When was the last time you heard a kid say: “I don’t want to go outside and play, can I stay in and do my homework?” I’ve never heard that and I don’t think I ever will.

Something happens we reach adulthood that makes us feel like we need to do certain things. The problem is that we often make ourselves do things we don’t want to do. In fact, that is one of the definitions I heard about adulthood when talking to a group of kids. They thought that being an adult was all about doing things you don’t want to do because that’s what adults do.

I agree that there are certain things that need to get done. Work, family and other things come to mind, but you don’t really have to do these things either. When I’ve said this in front of a large group I have always gotten a rise out of the crowd. They say, “Yes I do!” or “I’ll be homeless if I don’t work!” This is true, but you still have a choice. You chose to set goals for yourself. If a home and family are among your goals, you have to do what it takes to reach them.

That is where the real challenge comes in. I haven’t met too many people that want to be living on the street. I haven’t met many that want to be poor or struggle to feed their family. That is why so many of us work hard to get these things. It is no secret and it is no small task. We work very hard day in and day out to make sure we get what we need and even what we want.

That doesn’t mean we don’t want health. You see, I haven’t met too many people that don’t want to be healthy either. I’ve yet to run into someone that says, “I want to be sick and have my health steadily decline as I age causing me more and more pain.” No one wants that, yet many get it.

Why can we make ourselves do some things, but not others? Why can we make ourselves work? Better yet, why can we make ourselves work so late that we don’t have time for anything else? It’s a mystery to many, but I can tell you why we are able to do that.
It all comes down to a four-step process. We’ve covered this process before in a previous article and I’ve discussed the steps with hundreds of employees to make sure they understood how they too could get themselves going. Yes, you can make yourself do anything. You’ve already been making yourself stressed and tired by working so hard. You’ve gotten used to making yourself do things you don’t want to do. With these four steps (and a newly added fifth step) you can make yourself exercise too.

Step 1: Make Time

Setting time aside is the first step to getting into any routine. No matter what you are doing, you have to set time aside to do it. I’m not talking about finding time or wishing you had more time. I’m talking about sitting down and planning to do it when you think you are able to do it.

Step 2: Make an Appointment

Now that you see time available and can commit to it, you have another opportunity to make it more likely to happen. When you have a meeting at work with your kids’ teacher, what do you do? You set an appointment. When it’s on the calendar, it gets done. If you do that with exercise and it will get done too.

Step 3: Make it Easy

The first two steps will help you do this, but there is more you can do to make your routine easy. I am tired of hearing about how hard it is to get enough exercise. Exercise is something we had to invent because we stopped moving on our own. Exercise used to be built into our daily lives. Even our generation was active as kids. We played naturally and didn’t need someone to tell us to. We didn’t need to make ourselves do it. Find an activity that you really love to do and do it. You can also do little things to make it easier on yourself, such as reminders or preparing beforehand.

Step 4: Make it happen

The simplest way to look at exercise is from your own perspective. What you want to do is in your own head and no one else can tell you what that is. You can hear recommendations and feel nervous that you can’t do it. You can hear about others and feel discouraged that you aren’t where they are. The only control you have is to decide where you are now and where you want to go. Follow the first three steps and you will be closer to step four. The only thing left to do is to commit to it and go.

The beauty of exercise is that we actually want to do it. It is easy to commit to something you want to do. That is where the fifth and final step comes in. I’ve been kind of negative on making yourself do things as we’ve sited working late and homework. As negative as it’s been, maybe that is what we really need.
After all, we make ourselves work. We make ourselves sick and tired by working too hard and never doing what we really want to do. The key to the final step is to remember that you want to do it and then make yourself do it.

Step 5: Remember that you want to do this

When it comes to exercise, we don’t need much of an excuse. When it comes to work, no excuse is big enough. Let’s flip that around and commit to exercise. I’m not suggesting quitting your job and exercising all day. The funny part is that I’ve talked to many people that think that is what it takes to get enough exercise. Nonsense! All you have to do is focus on a short time period that is realistic. (step 1). Next you can put those times on the calendar to make them concrete. (Step 2) By doing these things you are making it easy. You can take it further by finding little things in your day to day routine that make it even easier and more likely to stick with. (Step 3). Finally, there just has to be a certain amount of commitment. You have to just decide that you will make it happen. (Step 4)

Finally, we come to the final step. In a way, we are putting exercise into a category that we are used to. We are used to doing things we don’t want to do. We have become experts at making ourselves do it. Why does this work? It works because we can find enough reasons to do it.

It is the reasons that keep us going. Your health, the health of your children and all the enjoyment you get from living healthy is a series of reasons. Exercise can give you more of it all. Are they enough for you to make yourself do it?

Healthy Vacation

2011-03-03T14:50:00.001-06:00

Vacation is one of the best parts about working. In school, we looked forward to summer vacation. If you have a job, you look forward to using vacation days. No matter what you do, you need to take some time away in order to recharge and unwind. If you don’t, life will get very difficult.

One thing that seems to be very difficult is sticking to a healthy routine while on vacation. It’s difficult enough to live healthy at home, so when you through in airplanes or cars, hotel rooms and restaurants, it can get downright scary.
It doesn’t have to be scary. Vacation and health can go hand in hand. It just takes some planning and some focus on your goals. I have a few specific tips for you to make your next vacation a healthy one, but first let’s discuss why you would want to do this in the first place.

Let’s talk about goals before we get into the tips. Your goals are what keep you doing what you want to be doing. Your health is a series of goals. If you are living healthy, you are reaching those goals. You clearly want to continue living this way, so it becomes important to adjust no matter what your schedule looks like. That is the key to health in general and it is the key to health on vacation.

Healthy Vacation Tips

Get out and walk
Walking is the best way to build calorie burning into your day. Vacation is all about relaxing and part of relaxing is not being in a hurry. What better way to get to and from a meal than nice walk? If you are vacationing near a beach, this helps to get you active again after a long day of sun and sand. If you are worried about how many calories you will consume at dinner, a walk can help you feel at ease since you are burning them off to and from the meal.

Find a store
The most difficult part about living healthy on vacation is the fact that you are away from home. Where do you eat when you are away from home? Restaurants are the most common and often the only places we eat away from home. You can make this better by snacking healthy. Pick up some basics at a local store, keep them in your room and you can enjoy some lighter options between meals. Not only does this build healthy items into your day, but it also helps you fill up and save some of the calories from those dreaded restaurant meals.

Share and split
The restaurant portions are out of control in 99% of the restaurants you go to. I’m sure your vacation is in a place that this will be likely. The hardest part about controlling portions as restaurants is the fact that it’s good food and it’s already in front of you. Eating a little good food isn’t going to hurt you. Eating a lot of good food will. The solution is to share. If you split a meal, you can enjoy the good food without worrying about eating too much. You know you will get enough. The restaurant portions are so out of control that you are likely still getting enough food to constitute a serving…or more.

I’ve written an article about vacation before and it talks about why we take vacations. We take them to relax and recharge. We don’t take vacations to ruin ourselves or to go against our goals. Think about this when you take your next vacation, apply these tips and you will stay on track.

Do more

2011-01-24T12:03:00.001-06:00

We’ve covered the first 3 steps in the process of health. There is a fourth and final step that that needs to be done. This is a very important step. In fact, if this step isn’t taken, the rest of it just goes to waste.

Let’s go through all of the steps you took along the way to your successful routine:

Thinking

You sat down to think about what you wanted to do. You have thought about it long and hard and now have a good idea of what you want to do. When you started this process, there were many options, but you narrowed down based on what you thought would be most realistic.

Doing

Once you found the most realistic option and decided to go for it, you did just that. This is the step where your thoughts turned into action. You got out and started doing and this is what brought you the results you were looking for.
Adjusting

The action steps you took were good. You got started, saw some good results, but eventually things became more challenging. As you progressed, there were things that were more difficult. Maybe it was a schedule change. Maybe it was the season. Maybe it just got boring for you to do the same thing over and over again. Being able to adjust is what allowed you to overcome these difficulties and keep things going.

That is where the fourth and final step comes in. You have gone through the first three and now it is time for the all-important fourth step. What is this step? What makes it so important? I’m glad you asked. Let’s take a look!
Doing More

The fourth step in the process is a lot like the second. It involves action. When you were thinking about what you wanted to do, the only way to get it done was to take action. Now that you have adjusted to some of the challenges, you have do the same.

Action is always going to be the key to results. This step is about more action.
It is only natural to start doing your routine again after you adjust. At least it should be natural. It doesn’t always happen automatically. That is why I laid things out this way. It can be easy to fall into the trap of thinking too hard. Just like in the thinking step, adjusting takes thought.

It also takes a decision. Once you make that decision, you can begin doing again. Now you are back on track!
Why is this so important?

Well, it is easy to see why action is important. Without action, nothing happens. The fourth step is nothing more than re-entering the action or doing stage. As you do this, you will notice that things get easier again. It will always be like this right?

Wrong. I wish I could say that once you got started, there was never going to be another challenge. Unfortunately, in any area of life, we have to go through the process. We have to go through the whole process in order to succeed. If don’t, we are just stopping and deciding that nothing more will get done.

That is why I call it the fourth step. It may come at the end of the process and feel like it should be the last step, but it is not. Doing more is not the last step and should not be considered a final destination. As soon as things get difficult or you want to make a change for another reason, the process starts over again.

That’s right, the process of health is not a one-time thing. You have to go through it many times. In fact, it is constant. As soon as you are doing something that you thought about, you are in need of some adjustment. Once you have made that adjustment you can get back on track and do more. When you run into other reasons to change you have to adjust and do more continuously as you go.

Hopefully you don’t have to go all the way back to the thinking step. That would mean that you were unsure of what to do. That is the beauty of this process. Once you have thought about the options and start doing your routine, you don’t really have to go back. Sure, there can be some adjustment, but as soon as you adjust, you just start doing it again. No thought required.

Good luck in your own process. That is the key: It has to be your own! As soon as you have put in the thought, taken action and adjusted, you are ready for the fourth and most important step…doing more!

Adjust to Succeed

2011-01-10T13:25:00.001-06:00

We’ve covered the first 2 steps in the process of health. Let’s recap quickly before we get into the third.

The first step is thinking:
You have to know what you want in order to accomplish any goal. You also have to know how to get there before you can get anywhere. It takes thought to get here. You need to take some time to think about your goals.

The second step is doing:
This is pretty self-explanatory. You have to do something to reach your goal. If you do nothing, you will accomplish nothing.
The third step is adjusting:

You have thought about what you wanted to do and how you would do it. You started doing it, so you are well on your way. That is it right? Not so fast. There is more to the process of health than that. What happens when you get a few weeks, months or years down the road? What happens when you get into the routine and you find things to be more challenging?

You have to be able to adjust. When you start on a new habit, things are rarely going to look the same day after day. We all know that life throws us curve balls and we have to be able to adjust in order to stick with our routines.

Many would argue that the hardest part about health is getting started. We’ve discussed the issues with people being able to start doing and the tendency to get stuck in the thinking step. Getting started is a challenge. Doing is a challenge.

There is another challenge that often gets overlooked. I believe that this challenge actually derails more people than just not being able to get started does. Many people have gotten started and even seen some success. Down the road, things change and now its hard to get back on track.

That is where the adjustment step comes in. In order to reach any goal, there is going to be a need for adjustment. If we didn’t need to adjust than everyone would be healthy. Everyone would be reaching every goal that they ever set. Do you know anyone that has never failed? Do you know anyone that has never had to adjust in order to accomplish something?

Adjustment is the key to success. It doesn’t matter how you start, as long as you finish strong. You can start strong, but if you can’t adjust than you will only succeed for so long. If you live in the real world, it may not be a very lengthy time period for you.

Without adjusting, we are simply doing the same thing over and over again. The definition of insanity is doing the same things expecting different results. Jumping into a routine and expecting that we won’t have to adjust is no different. When it comes to living a healthy lifestyle by sticking to goals, the only thing certain thing is uncertainty. If you are confident in your plan and have been doing it for a while, you can find yourself in a much better situation. When you get to a difficult point, you can simply adjust and be back on track.

Adjusting is like the tactics within the overall strategy. A strategy is only as good as your ability to apply and adjust the tactics. General Patton had a quote about this: “Good tactics can save even the worst strategy, but bad tactics can ruin even the best strategy.”

Think of your routine as a strategy. Think of what you do on a day to day basis as tactics. When you think about your routine and start doing these things you also have to take the outside circumstances into account. Just as General Patton had to adjust based on what worked or not. He had to change his approach depending on what his opponents did or didn’t do.

Just as your routine is your own, so are the adjustments. You have to make them based on what is happening now. No matter how well things went last week or last month, if things are different now, you have to adjust. If you don’t, then I guess this is as far as you can go.

I know that you didn’t set out to get halfway or to change a little. In health, we want it all. We all want to feel good every day. We want to be active and eat good foods and see all the benefits from these habits. Not every day is going to be perfect, but if we can stick to the plan, we can keep moving forward. What does it take to stick with the plan? It takes an adjustment. Minor or major, you have to be able to adjust in order to succeed.

What are you doing?

2011-01-04T14:54:00.001-06:00

In a previous article, I asked the question: “What are you thinking?” When it comes to health, most of the time we are thinking too much and not getting anything done. We all want to be healthy, but how many of us are taking action and living as healthy as we want to be? That is why I think the more important question is: “What are you doing?” That is the next step in the process.

What is the process I am talking about? This is the process of health. As I illustrated in the article¸ “The Process of Health”, it takes more than just wanting to be healthier. Simply wishing to be healthier is not going to get it done. It sounds funny, but without realistic goals and a plan, we are wishing we were healthier.

What is the right plan? The plan has to be yours. No two people have the same plan, but there are some similarities in the structure. That is the process of health. If you use this process you will be able to see success on your journey toward healthier habits.

Thinking
Doing
Adjusting
Doing more

These four steps sound simple enough right? The trouble is not getting into one or another. The problem is getting from one to another. Often we get stuck in one stage and can’t get going on another. When this happens, we either stay put or quit. Staying put is
not going to get us anywhere and quitting is the definition of failure.

No one sets out to fail. We all want to succeed. In order to succeed, we need a plan and a process. This process works for everyone. No matter what your goals are, you need to have this in place in order to reach them.

Now that we have revisited the process, let’s take a look at the next step in it. Doing. We covered thinking and why it is not enough. Now let’s cover doing and why it is so important.

What is the first question you ask when starting something new? The first few questions should involve what you want to accomplish and what you will do to accomplish it. This takes some thought, which is why that is the first step in the process. If you jump into doing without thinking, you don’t know what you are doing. Without thinking, what are you going to do?

Hopefully that is something you’ve already decided on. As soon as you make that decision, you can start the next step: doing! What you do is what determines everything. Are you going to be successful? Are you going to make progress at all? It all depends on what you do.

If you don’t do anything, you know what will happen. Taking the time to think about what you want is a big step. That is how you determine the right action. Thinking doesn’t lead you to do nothing. Thinking leads you to action and now you can decide what that action should be. What should that action be? It all depends on your goals. No matter what your goals are, there are specific actions that will lead you to the desired results.

If you’re trying to lose weight, what are you going to do: Watching your portions is a good action. Exercising more is also a good action. We all know that without really thinking. The actions you take will be more accurate and successful if they fit your routine. More specifically, what do you need to do to watch your portions more consistently? What do you need to do in order to get more exercise?

It is these steps that are going to make the difference. You’ve thought about the ways you can be successful. Now you have to do them so that you can make it happen. Until you start doing something, you are not making any progress toward your goals. Until you start watching portions and exercising, the weight will not come off, no matter how badly you want it.

So, you’ve thought about what you want. What are you doing to get it?

The STAY Model

2010-12-27T15:23:00.002-06:00

As we prepare to ring in the New Year, many things come to mind. Resolutions, a start of a new decade or maybe just the fact that we are in the middle of winter are common thoughts. Another all-too-common thought is the fact that you just threw your routine out the window during the holiday season.

We have discussed the importance of preparation for the holidays. In doing so, we have covered specific ways to keep your routine on track during the holidays despite all the challenges. One thing that we don’t hear as much about is recovering from the holidays. It is easy to say: “get back on track” or “set goals for this year and stick to them”. Those are great ideas, but it is more difficult to actually make those things happen.

The PLAY Model is a guide to holiday survival. Hopefully it helped you get through the season without feeling like you lost track of your goals. For those of you that successfully navigated the gatherings with your routine intact, the next step is to maintain your momentum. If the season wasn’t successful for you, now it’s time to go beyond the previously discussed ideas and put them into action.

The STAY Model is a guide for holiday recovery and long-term success. To review the PLAY Model:

P- Planning
Planning your events and obligations can make it more manageable. Many of us try to be everywhere and do everything. Before committing to going everywhere or doing everything, take a look at when and where things are taking place. Often, by making some decisions or even just minding the order of your events, you can make life much easier on yourself. Plus, once you know you plan on going to an event, you can make adjustments to the rest of your week or day to make sure that you aren’t overwhelmed.

L- Listing
Once you’ve decided which events you will attend, list them or put them on your calendar. Seeing them in an organized (planned) way can feel less overwhelming. Armed with the list of your obligations, you are better equipped to handle the season. Have you ever felt like you were never done? Or you always had another place to be? If you put together a schedule and stick with it, you won’t feel this way. In fact, just seeing the events can help you feel more in control. And when you are in control, everything is easier.

A- Attending
This seems odd, I know, but by attending is the next step. It sounds automatic to be there, but this is taking it to another level. By attending, I mean truly being present the events. When you are consciously and making an effort to enjoy yourself will remind you of why you are going in the first place. Some people like to list all of the positives of attending events before they go in order to focus on the positives. This can help you stick with diet goals by enjoying a conversation instead of going back for more pie.

Y- You
It’s all about you. This should probably be the first step, but that would ruin my acronym. YOU can decide what is realistic and what’s not. As you look at your goals, you can decide what you want to do. Making sure you stick to your plan through busy times will help you stay energetic and feeling good. If you are feeling good and taking the time for yourself, you will be able to prevent unnecessary stress from ruining your holiday season.

Now that we’ve reviewed the PLAY Model, let’s get into the STAY Model. This is your key to keeping things on track during and getting things back on track after the holiday season.

S - Set Goals
You have to set goals to get anywhere. The key to this season is making sure you know what you want to accomplish. That way, you can actually accomplish it. Think of your goal as the plan. Stick to the plan and you will be successful.

T- Take it to the next level
Once you have set your goal, you will run into challenges. That doesn’t mean that you should quit. It just means that you will have to go outside of your comfort zone in order to get what you want. Just doing the same old thing rarely leads to success.

A – Arm yourself
Don’t be afraid to take a look at where you are. If you are not exactly where you want to be, you don’t have to give up. You may just need a boost or change in plans to get you to the next level. By making it easy for yourself, you are arming yourself with the tools you need. Setting up your schedule and focusing on your goals

Y - You
It’s still about you! No matter how you look at it, there is no one else that can determine your health. You decide what you want to do and you can do it. But the only way you can succeed is if you are willing to set goals, take it to the next level, arm yourself and focus on what YOU want.

The better prepared you are to start the new year, the better the year will go for you.

Living Healthy vs. Just Living

2010-12-01T16:16:00.001-06:00

We all know what health is. We’ve all heard from a young age that health is good. The older we get the more we start to see how important health really is. There is a clear progression that takes place with our health awareness as we move through life.

Think about it:

- When we are young, we don’t think about health, we just do what comes natural to us- Running, playing, moving around as much as our parents and teachers will tolerate. We eat what is put in front of us and when we are full, we usually stop because we can’t eat anymore. Then it is right back to running around again. This continues for most of our school-age and often into early adulthood. We don’t have to think about health, we just do healthy things by default.

- When we get out of school and join the workforce, things change. Health becomes more of a challenge. That exercise that we naturally took part in is now extra and doesn’t fit in as naturally. The food we eat is still the food in front of us, but now it’s no longer placed by a parent. The food we eat is now the quickest and easiest option to fit into our busy schedule. We move less and eat more as we cram as much as we can into each day. We are still young, so health doesn’t seem like something we need to worry about now. We won’t have to deal with any health issues for a long time, right? Wrong.

- Age 40 hits, or maybe age 30, some people even see a change at 25 or younger. Now those things that you didn’t have to worry about are becoming part of your life. Extra weight, poor energy and medication are now routine despite you feeling like you had years before you needed to think about these things. What happened? The years of declining movement and increasing calories caught up to you. On paper it is easy to see how it happens. In life, it is a challenge that very few see coming. But it always comes.

- Now the next 20, 30, 40 years are spent trying to figure out what we can do to keep things on track. “I want to get back to a certain weight.” Or “I want to keep my weight here.” Is what you’ll hear many say. Others may just say, “What the heck, it’s all just part of getting older. I guess this is the way it is.” If you believe that, you’re right, that is the way your life will go. It will be a slow decline until death.

The problem with this timeline is that we have decided to make it this way. Clearly the big problem is the whole decline and death part, but it’s the cause of those things are what have me concerned. The cause of our problems is us!

Again, if you believe that you get slower as you age and health declines no matter what you do, you will take that path. If you don’t believe that, you can live long and happy AND have the energy to do the things you want to do.

The solution is to focus on health from a young age. It’s that simple. Health is something we do. If we don’t do it, we don’t have health. If we don’t have health, we die. I don’t want to be an alarmist, but clearly the fear is not enough to motivate most people to take care of themselves.

As a society we are not making health a priority. Fear is a motivator for most of us. We fear that we will be late or that we don’t have enough time. We fear that the project isn’t good enough that we won’t make the sale. We fear that our family won’t be safe or that there will be disaster. We fear that the economy will collapse and our home will crumble underneath it.

Fear helps us stay in the rat race every day. Fear is what keeps you getting up on time. Fear is what keeps you cramming more and more into your day. Why doesn’t fear motivate us to ward of certain death. I know that everyone will eventually have their day when it ends, but why not enjoy the time we have?

There is a big difference between living and dying. It sounds crystal clear, but I don’t think it is as clear as you might think. Technically, we are all dying from the day we are born. The problem is that most of us have taken this quite literally. If you are just getting from task to task without any regard for your own goals, you are dying. If you are telling yourself that “someday I will focus on my health, but I don’t have time right now”, you are dying.

There is an even bigger difference between living and living healthy. Living doesn’t take much. In fact we all live for years without even trying. All you have to do is be here, breathe and you are living. Well, we discussed above, you may actually be dying if this is how you are living.

What does it take to live healthy? It only takes a single goal. If you have one thing you want to accomplish and you do it, you are on your way to living healthy. If you keep putting that goal off and finding other things to do in its place, you are just living.

I know there are a lot of important things to do out there. I know that we are all busy. But I also know that we all have the same 24 hours in each day. We also have the same life. No two lives are exactly the same, but they are all similar. Every life begins, ends and is impacted by the same things. Every life can all be cared for and enjoyed. At the same time, every life can be neglected and be miserable.

The choice is yours. That choice is as simple as living healthy or just living. What will it take for you to start living healthy? What will be the reason that you decide that just living or dying is not enough for you? It’s all in our hands. We decide how we want to live. What will make you take control and start living the life you want?

Healthy Holiday Eating

2010-11-25T11:49:00.002-06:00

Happy Thanksgiving! Now that the holiday season is in full swing, let’s make sure that your health is still part of the equation. With all of the celebrations, gatherings and food that come into play, it can be a challenge. That doesn’t mean that health has to go out the window. The average person puts on weight over the holidays. Gaining 5 pounds between Thanksgiving and year’s end is not uncommon. It doesn’t have to be that way. You can celebrate guilt-free and still enjoy yourself if you have a plan.

Change the way you think about food

Most of us associate sweets and other holiday favorites with comfort and a carefree feeling before we eat them. After we eat them, we remember that they are not the going to help us get the health results we want.

Tip: Focus on the other aspects of the season like the family, friends and enjoyable conversation you can have. Food may be around, but you don’t have to eat it all. If you are talking more, you can eat less.

Eat well the rest of the day

If you keep yourself on track by eating healthy then avoiding the candy and desserts is easier because you will not be hungry.

Tip: Make sure that your meals and snacks are healthy on the day of parties. That way you know that there is room for some goodies as a reward for the good day you put together.

Only buy/bring the treats that you don’t like

What may be tough for someone to resist may not be too hard for you to resist.

Tip: You can control the menu if you host events and you can bring any items you want when there is a potluck or dish-passing event. Bring healthier versions or things you know you won’t eat

Decide what you want to eat ahead of time

Look at the options available to you. Do you have a favorite? If so, why eat all the other stuff just because it’s there?

Tip: pick a treat and enjoy a reasonable amount of it. Sit down and eat it deliberately. When you are done, you can look back and remember you enjoyed it rather than the mindless eating that can go on all day.
Thanksgiving is underway, but there are many more gatherings to follow. You can use them as opportunities to gain weight or to solidify your game-plan. It’s up to you.

The Inner Battle: You know what you have to do

2010-11-08T15:26:00.001-06:00

There is an inner battle that I have to win on a regular basis. Many people have a similar battle, but unfortunately, they don’t always win. I’m not saying that I’m great or better than anyone for being able to win the battle. I’m just bringing up the battle itself to show what we are all dealing with on a daily basis.

What is this battle that I’m talking about? The battle is the little voice in your head that says: “I don’t want to do that.” For many this voice is loud and wins most of the battles. For others, who have found a way to win, the voice is just a whisper. No matter how loud or soft the voice is, we all hear it. It is in our minds and we have to overcome it to reach any goal.

Normally I am talking about health, so that is the first area that comes to mind for me. This battle can happen in all areas of life. In fact, not only does it happen everywhere, but I believe that the inner mental battle is a big part of life in general.

The difference between success and failure often takes place before we even begin the action. Comparing it to a game, it is often won or lost before the opening whistle. How does this happen? Well, often, we decide what we can and can’t do before we ever try it.

When it comes to health, the easiest situation to understand is the battle to go workout…or not. We have all been there. Maybe it’s an early morning when the bed is just too comfortable to get out of. Maybe it’s an evening after a long day of work when all you want to do is go home to the couch. There are many places this battle takes place, but those are the ones that I see the most in my own routine and hear the most about with my clients’ routines.

The more you win this battle, the better off you are. When we try to do things that we want to do or need to do, it takes energy. It takes more than energy to win, but the energy to battle at all is often the first step we need to get going. The next step is preparation. We talk about this a lot and in the context of the battle, preparation is really just your argument. Why do you want to get up and go? What is the reason that you have to win this battle?

The best scenario is to skip the battle altogether. This concept sounds intriguing doesn’t it? Wouldn’t it be great if you could just go do what you wanted to do with no resistance? It is great and it can be done. It’s all about preparing for the battle and making sure you know what you want your outcome to be. Once you are sure of what you want and what you need to do to get it, the battle is winnable.

The more reasons we have, the easier the battle is. The more points we can make in our favor, the more likely we are to get through the battle. Getting through is often all we need because that means we are on our way. Once you are able to get past the initial argument, everything becomes easier.

Once you get to this point, you can stop worrying and start doing. We’ve dealt with this our whole lives. We’ve dealt with this in all areas of life too. When we were kids it was cleaning our rooms or eating our vegetables. In school it was studying or getting that homework assignment done. Now as adults, the list gets longer, but the same inner mental battle takes place. There are things we need to get done. We may not always want to do them, but they need to get done and we will do them eventually.

For that reason, not having the battle really is your best bet. Think about it in those terms. The consequences of not doing it are unthinkable. With the most extreme examples this is easy, so apply it to the rest of them and the battle will be won before you even get into it.

You know what you need to do. You know you are going to do it. Wouldn’t it be easier if you had a few reasons that it was easier to get it done sooner and with a better attitude? Wouldn’t that make the day go faster? What if instead of worrying and thinking about all the reasons you don’t want to be doing it, you just got it done?

If we did this, we would all be healthier, happier and more successful. It may not be easy, but it sure beats the alternative. Being healthy, happy and successful can mean many things to many people. Being unhealthy, grumpy and unsuccessful is enough for me to get things done. What do you need to motivate you?

Responsibility is the Best Medicine

2010-11-03T15:55:00.002-05:00

There is a series in the Minneapolis Star Tribune called “Too Much Medicine?” that has caught my attention. The series focuses on the fact that in the U.S. we spend roughly twice as much on health care as our counterparts in Germany, Canada, Australia and Japan. We spend twice as much, but we don’t have better health. In fact, in many cases, our health is far worse.

I hope this series catches others’ attention too. I’m not sure many of your average Americans knows that we spend so much on health care. That is one of our biggest problems. I talk and write a lot about the habits that we need to change such as diet and exercise. Smoking and stress are killers too, but these habits are not the topic of this article.

This article is about part of the “Too Much Medicine” series that featured a particular category of drugs that has gained popularity in recent years. In my article titled “Medication: Worth the Risk”, I shared a statistic that the average 30-year-old is on three medications. This stat is alarming in itself, but this latest part of the series raised even more questions about medication.

One of the drug categories topping the list of those taken by 30-year-olds is heartburn medication. There are many brands and products to choose from, so I’m not going to attack any one in particular. I suppose I am going to attack them all.
The ‘’heartburn epidemic” has been taking its toll on many Americans. This has become one of the most common medical problems since more than 119 million prescriptions were written for heartburn medications last year. People are taking this to relieve heartburn and other symptoms such as acid reflux and indigestion.

That is a lot of prescriptions. No matter how many people you think need this drug, 119 million is a lot of people to be taking a medication. When you look at the side effects, you may be more alarmed. When you look at the costs (over $200 per month in some cases) you may be even more alarmed. What had me most alarmed are the causes of heartburn and indigestion, or the reasons that people are choosing to take these medications.

Most people that suffer from indigestion only suffer from it after eating a big meal. This big meal likely contained a high amount of fat, calories, sodium and other flavors that disagree with the person’s stomach. After they eat certain foods, or certain amounts of food, they continue to feel a burning in their stomach and esophagus as the acid in their stomachs reacts.

This doesn’t sound like a lot of fun. We’ve all been there. We’ve all eaten too much or eaten something that didn’t sit right. What alarms me is that people are eating things on a daily basis that make their stomachs hurt. They are eating so much that they have severe heartburn and indigestion on a daily basis.

When someone is watching television with a huge meal in front of them, they may see a commercial that is advertising a medication to prevent the very feeling they are so used to. The commercial shows them how easy it is to get rid of these feelings and all they have to do is call their doctor.

What the commercial doesn’t tell them is that they just caused the symptom by choosing to eat that food or the amount of food they just ate. It doesn’t tell them that they can prevent this feeling just by changing the way they eat. It doesn’t mention that the drug will cost them as much as their meals for the next 2 to 4 weeks either.

In other words, we are choosing to eat foods that give us problems and in quantities that harm our bodies on a daily basis. We are choosing to do this because it there is a pill we can take that makes these feelings go away. We can take a pill and eat whatever we want and feel the same.

Of course, we have yet to find a pill that prevents the other side effects of over eating. The weight gain and other disorders that come along with it are still increasing in numbers and don’t show signs of slowing down, which actually leads us to even more medications.

The fact is, we are putting many things into our bodies. Whatever you put in has an effect on the way your body works. Foods and drugs have to be processed. The body will react to all of them. I don’t have to go into detail about the side effects of some of the drugs as we know there are severe consequences to taking them. Yet, we still take them.

We keep taking drugs because they allow us to ignore the body and keep doing what is told us not to do. When you get a pain it is not because your body has a new disease that we need to treat with a medication. When you get a pain it is because your body doesn’t like something that is happening to it. It is trying to tell you what results the latest actions have caused.

If you ignore these messages, you will continue to do harm to your body. The medications we are taking are making it easier to ignore the messages that the body is sending us. The more we take the less we are aware of what is happening.

This sounds irresponsible doesn’t it? In any job or relationship, we have to take responsibility for our actions. Our health is no different. It may take years to realize the damage. It may cost millions of dollars to treat that damage. There may be medication to help you now and in the future, but that will always be the most painful and expensive option.

The rise in prescription drugs is due to the fact that it seems like the easiest way to get the results we want. It feels like we are able to eat our cake and have it too. Unfortunately, that is not the case. There is always a price to pay. Again, there may be a medicine that can help you down the road. But the best medicine is responsibility.

Today is the day

2010-10-19T08:37:00.001-05:00

If you’ve ever made a change in your life, you’ve had to pick a day to get started with that change. If you are waiting for the perfect day to make that change, you are likely going to be waiting for a long time. No matter how well-planned your routine is, you will never have a perfect day to get started.

We’ve all heard (and maybe even said) “I’ll start on Monday.” Or “I’ll get started…someday.” Someday is not a great day to get started. In fact, someday rarely comes at all. As a Health Coach, I’ve worked with enough people and seen enough routines to know that Monday will be here every week. I also know that it probably won’t be the perfect day you’ve been waiting for.

As a nation, we have a problem. Many of us are sitting and waiting for the perfect day to get started. We need to start exercising. We need to watch what we eat. We need to quit smoking. We need to do many things, but we are not doing them.

There is something that we need to do first: get started. We need to do something, anything to get our health moving in the right direction. What is the best day to get started? Today is the best day to get started with any plan.

No matter what steps you are going to take, you need to take the first one. You have to take step one before you can take any other steps in the process. It is easy to say that you want to be healthy and think about all the things you would like to be doing. If you don’t get started, you can’t do any of it.

Let’s take a look at a former client that got off to a rough start on their routine:
Robin was excited to get in shape. She was going to join the gym and go every day. She had yet to join when we had our first conversation, but she sounded confident that it was going to happen. I asked her a few questions to get a better picture of when she was going to get started. Her answer was puzzling to me. “Someday very soon...in the next few weeks” she said. She had the whole plan mapped out, yet she didn’t have a realistic start-date.

The most telling detail of this situation was how long she had this “plan” in place. Robin had been thinking about getting started for nearly a year. She knew she wanted to join the gym. She knew she wanted to go every day after work. She knew all of this, but she was waiting for a perfect day to get started. Guess what: almost a year later her perfect day had not yet arrived.

Robin is not alone. She is only one of many people that have told me they were going to get started, but didn’t know when. It is easy to set a goal. It is easy to pick something you want to do. The moral of the story: it doesn’t matter what you want to do if you don’t get started.

You can have the best intentions and even have the best plan. If you don’t execute that plan, you get nothing. When it comes to health, we all know what we need to do. We can talk about it day in and day out, but if we don’t do it, our health will suffer.

Often the talking point is when we will get started. Just like Robin, many of us have an idea of what we want to do, but we have yet to get started. Many are waiting for the right day to get started. There is no perfect day to get started. If you keep waiting for a perfect day, you will be waiting forever. The only day that is perfect is today.

If you are trying to get started with a new routine, you just need to take the first step. Don’t worry about all the other steps or trying to do it all at once. The first step is the most important step. You have to take that before anything else. If you don’t take the first step, you can’t take any others. The best strategy to get that first step is to pick a day and take it. Today is the day.

Break It Down

2010-10-13T15:48:00.002-05:00

Health is not just one thing. Health is many things. It takes a series of habits to ensure that you get moving and more importantly keep moving in the right direction. The list of habits can get quite long when it comes to living healthy.
This can be good news or bad news depending on how you look at the situation. The bad news is pretty obvious: there are many steps to be taken. The good news is that we don’t have to take all of these steps at once.

That is the solution. You have to break it down. When you are looking at a list of things that will help you live healthy, it is easy to look at the whole thing and feel like it can’t be done. That is why many people continue to live unhealthy lifestyles. They don’t think that they can do it, so they choose not to.
This is a shame considering the fact that we all want to be healthy. No one wants to feel terrible on a daily basis. No one wants to look in the mirror and see a “before picture”. We all want health and all the things that come along with it. So, how do we get it? The solution is simple: Break it down.

Getting Started

Many people struggle to take the first step because they are too busy worrying about all the steps that will follow it. When you are looking at a list of things, it is important to tackle one thing at a time. The entire list can be overwhelming. The best way to get started is to pick one thing and focus on that.

Example: Getting Started

Dee is a health coaching client that was trying to lose weight. She had tried various things in the past, but couldn’t seem to get the results she wanted. When we started working together, she wasn’t doing anything to get her the results she wanted. Why? Because she didn’t think she could do ALL of the things she needed to do. Because ALL of the things she needed to change didn’t seem realistic, she simply gave up and did NONE of the things that she needed to do.
The first step Dee and I took was to step back and look at the big picture. She described all the things she needed to do in order to start losing weight.

The list looked something like this:
Get new shoes
Join the gym
Start setting aside time to go to gym
Start going to grocery store every week
Make a list of food items to buy
Pack lunch every day
Bring gym bag to work daily
Set reminders to go to gym each day
Get up by 6 to make sure she is at work on time
to name a few…

Looking at this list, I could see why she was overwhelmed. There is a lot to accomplish here. They are all important, but they don’t all have to be done at once.

I asked her how long she had to make the changes she wanted to make. Her answer was a lifetime. She had no deadline. Because there was no deadline, the pressure didn’t need to be on to complete everything as fast as possible.
Once we discussed the various things that Dee had on her list, we eventually decided what step could be taken first. She had a few ideas, so there was a decision that had to be made. How did she make this decision? She thought about what she could start doing right away. What could she start doing with the least amount of hassle?

The first step was to put buying new shoes on her calendar. This was a step that seemed simple when it stood along, yet was just another thing adding to the stressful list that she created. She set the appointment and went to buy new shoes within a week of our conversation. That was the goal and she accomplished it.
Why couldn’t she do this before? It wasn’t that simple before. She had to break the list down in order to make any of the steps happen.

Keep It Going

Dee needed to get started. That was her biggest obstacle. She was putting so much pressure on herself to do everything, that she couldn’t do anything. She just needed to break it down. Clearly she needed help to do that. She needed help getting started, but once she took that first step, the rest followed. They followed one at a time. It was that easy for her. We broke Dee’s list down into single steps and she completed them once step at a time.

That is the first step, but it clearly isn’t the only step. Or is it? When you break it down, you only need to worry about one step at a time. Once Dee had her shoes, she could check that off the list. It was done and no longer occupied any of her mental energy.

Now she was free to focus on the next step. And that is how she continued. Focusing on one step at a time, Dee was able to keep checking one thing off the list. She kept setting a single goal and she kept reaching a single goal.

That was her process until she was finally doing exactly what she wanted to be doing. She became successful by breaking it down. Dee was struggling and didn’t think she was able to live healthy. She overcame that and was able to start making progress. Not only did she get started, but she was able to keep going. She didn’t have some miracle product or an iron will. She didn’t need any of these things. She just needed to break it down.

3 things exercise has to do for you

2010-09-07T17:03:00.002-05:00

Exercise is an important part of life. There are many things that exercise does for us. Unfortunately, it has also become one of the things we “wish we had more time for”. We know all of the things that exercise CAN do for us. It can only do these things if we do it.

I look at things a little differently because I know how difficult it can be to change. For that reason, I came up with the 3 things that exercise has to do for you. This is not a list of the benefits of exercise. You already know what those are. You already know what you are getting…or not getting.

These are the 3 things that exercise has to do for you. If your routine doesn’t do these things, you will not stick with it for very long. You may not even be able to get into it if these things aren’t on your mind and part of your goals.

1. Exercise has to fit into your schedule

If exercise doesn’t fit, you won’t do it. If anything doesn’t fit in our lives, we tend to let it fall off the calendar. Speaking of calendars, the best way to make sure you get your exercise is to make an appointment. After all, what do we do with other important events? We make appointments and put them on the calendar!

By taking this step, you are committing to yourself that you are going to make it happen. Remember: If exercise doesn’t fit, you won’t do it. Often the first step is not to go out and exercise. The first step is to plan WHEN and WHERE you are going to exercise to make sure it fits in your schedule.

2. Exercise has to be enjoyable

We’ve all heard the expression: “no pain, no gain.” While it has its place in a small segment of the exercise world, you probably don’t want to be in pain. You probably don’t want to put yourself through any unnecessary discomfort for or during exercise. That is why the first point is so important. Making it easy to schedule is step one, step two is really about what you are doing.

If you like doing something, you will keep doing it. If you do not like something, you will not likely keep doing it. This sounds like a simple concept, right? It’s no wonder the same people that say that they hate exercise because it is too hard, don’t do it at all. There are far too many options to say that exercise is hard or that you don’t like it. There is something that you can do that you will enjoy. If you do something and don’t enjoy it, simply try something else. That is the beauty of exercise. You don’t have to do the same thing. You can do whatever you want. Just do something!

3. Exercise has to be for you

This may sound funny, but I don’t benefit from your exercise. I don’t get anything out of it when you go to the gym or when you go running. I get nothing from your routine. The same goes for the people around you. They don’t benefit when you work out. (Or do they? Stay tuned.)

Who benefits from your routine? YOU! You are the one that gets to enjoy the increased energy, healthy weight, confidence and the long list of benefits. You are the one that feels better when you move. You are the one setting goals and reaching goals. At least if you are going to make it a habit, you have to be the one setting goals and reaching them. Motivation has to come from within. You have to be able to look inside and ask yourself: “What do I want to get out of this?” Once you do that, you can do what it takes to get what you want. As you do that, you can continue to draw on the reasons you want to keep going. As you continue, your goals are being reached and the benefits can be attributed to the steps that you have taken.

Exercise can do many things for us. Hopefully it is part of your day to day routine. If not, these are some easy things you can do to get started. If you can make the above steps part of your routine, you can also make and exercise part of it. That is the biggest misconception about exercise: it is hard to get started. I work day in and day out helping people get started without feeling like they have to alter their entire lives in the process. You simply have to make sure that…

1. Exercise fits into your schedule

2. Exercise is enjoyable

And

3. Exercise is for you

If you can think about a few simple things, you can get started and keep going without too much trouble.

I would love to hear what you get out of your exercise routine: share your comments or email me at coach@byrdwellnessconcepts.com

Make a Decision

2010-08-30T16:30:00.001-05:00

There are many people trying to get healthy. There also many people struggling with this task. We’ve talked about the challenges and you can probably think of a whole list of challenges from your own routine. It is no mystery that getting and staying healthy is not easy. We know that, but why is it so difficult?

It’s not just the barriers that we run into that get in our way. We often get in our own way. I’m not just talking about the things we eat or the exercise we don’t get. I’m talking about something that has even more influence on our routine. I’m talking about decisions.

Every day we make decisions to do things that we need to do. We need to eat food in order to live. We need to do something in order to earn enough money to live. We need to do a lot in order to get through a day. These are just a few of the basics, but you get the idea.

Where does your health fit in your list of decisions?
Your health is nothing more than the results of your decisions. What does it mean when you say: “I’d like to be healthier”? To me it means that you are going to do what your body needs in order to function at its best. That is the connection I make when it comes to health.

This connection means a lot to me. I live it every day and I actually help others live it every day too. It’s not enough to know what the connection is. We talk about that all the time. It is more important to know what the connection means.

What does the connection between wanting something and acting on it mean to me? It means that when I say I want to do something it is my decision to get it done. When you think about doing something, it may get done…some day. When you say you will do something, it may get done…you hope.

These levels of commitment are not enough. That is why so many of us are “trying” or “saying” we are going to get healthy. The only way to be successful in any area is to decide to do it. When you decide to do something, you are not just saying or trying to do it. You are taking action and doing it.

When you make a decision, you are truly committing. I’ve seen this with clients, friends and family. I’ve even seen it with myself. My connection was made and reinforced in my own life. That is why I can confidently say that if you were unable to reach a goal, you didn’t fully decide that you would reach it.
If you want to change something, decide to change it. Make a decision and stick with it. That is what it takes to get what you want. You clearly want to do it.

If you didn’t want it, you wouldn’t be thinking about it all the time. If you didn’t want to do it, you wouldn’t have tried to do it in the first place.
When you trying to make a change, it is important to remember whose decision it is.

It is yours. You decide what you want to do and what you don’t want to do. No one else makes decisions for you. When you try to do something, only you can make the effort. When when you say you are going to do something, only you can hold yourself accountable to make sure that it gets done. When you think about doing something, it’s still only in your head. Trying, saying you will try or just thinking about what you will do doesn’t get you through the challenges because you are not fully committing yet.

Only when you decide to do something, will you actually do it. And only you can decide. It is actually pretty simple. You don’t have to have a magic formula for success. If you really want something, you have to make a decision.

Risk vs. Reward

2010-08-16T10:36:00.001-05:00

When you try to do something different, there is always going to be a challenge. Some may consider this challenge to be a risk. When you accomplish something different, there is always going to a reward. After all, you have decided to do something different. You took a risk. For one reason or another, there must be some sort of reward for you to take this risk.

Whenever you set a goal or take a risk, you have to have this reward in mind in order to get started. Once you get going, you also have to keep this reward in mind in order to keep going. When the risk becomes clear, the reward can keep you going. The reward gets us on track and the reward keeps us on track.

What is the reward that will get you on track? There has to be something that will make you get up and go after your goals. We all have something that we want. We also have risks that we need to take in order to reach these rewards.

When you look at our health, I see many rewards that should be motivation to reach goals. Feeling good, looking good, the list goes on and on. These things are what we all want. What are the risks of seeking these rewards? Giving your time, effort or maybe a little money can be risks?

How much are you willing to risk for the rewards you want? Maybe this is a better question. This question brings us to the real issue. The rewards are clearly very significant. Feeling good and having energy to get through my day are very significant. Looking in the mirror and liking what I see is very significant. These are just two of the rewards.

What are the risks? Giving up a few minutes of sleep in the morning is one risk. Taking time to schedule my exercise is another risk. When I compare the risks to the rewards there is a very large gap. The risk seem very small to me compared to the rewards. This turns my routine into a no-brainer. Low risk and high reward are ideal.

Maybe my view has changed due to the length of time that I’ve been at it. When I take a closer look at my routine and the routines of my clients, I realize that the risk is larger than I first thought. It seems that my routine has been in place so long and I’ve had to take the risk so often that it seems smaller than it is.

When I work with someone that is just getting started, I see that the risk is more significant when it is new. When you are risking something for the first time, it seems like it will be more difficult. When you have something in place for a long time, it seems like more of a risk to change it and less of a risk to keep going with it.

This can work both ways. It can be a positive, as it has been in my routine. I have been making exercise part of my routine for so long that it doesn’t seem that it is a big risk. The longer I do it, the less of a risk I am taking.

In fact, the opposite is true for not exercising. I feel like it is a bigger risk for me to not do it in a given day or week. The risks of not taking care of my health are certainly greater than the risks of me taking action in my routine.

It can also work negatively for someone that is just getting started. When you are trying to do something you have never done, it feels like a big risk. When you are trying to do something that you have not done for a long time, it can feel like a big risk.

Even if I have to adjust, which I recently have done, the risks of not adjusting were far greater to me than the risk of adjusting. Now that I have adjusted, everything is smooth and there is nothing but reward on day to day basis.

It comes down to the thought of risk vs. reward. If you are truly thinking of the risks and rewards of making changes that you want to make, it feels like a no-brainer. When YOU decide that you want to be healthy and take action toward that goal, it makes perfect sense. You see the reward of you being healthy, you see the risk of you making time in your day and see that one far outweighs the other. The reward is much greater than the risk.

I can understand the concept of risk. I can see, because changing anything is difficult, why people associate risk with this process. Despite the reward far outweighing the risk, it is still there and we have to overcome it in order to reach our reward.

Just like everything in life, this is easier said than done. That doesn’t mean that it impossible. It just means that we have to be deliberate in order to get where we want to go. Think about your risk and acknowledge it. Make a list of the things that you are going to have to give up. Once you see them in writing you can see that this really isn’t risk as much as it is an adjustment.

The same goes for your reward. Once you have written them down and decided that they are things you want and will go after, they will not only feel more achievable, but you will start to look at them as necessity not just ideal. Once you are underway, keep focusing on the reward and reminding yourself why you are taking the risk in the first place.

After all, the only reason you are taking the risk is to get the reward. What is your reward? What are you doing to get it? Knowing the risks of not taking care of your health, I have to ask, what is the reward for that?

Medication: Worth the risk?

2010-08-02T12:43:00.001-05:00

I recently read an article about the latest medication to hit the market. This medication sounded like it was going to help a lot of people. The disease that it treated was horrible, many people were dealing with it and this drug seemed to offer a good solution.

A solution in a pill sounds too good to be true. As I learned from later articles about the very same drug, the “too good to be true” label was correct. The latest articles contained studies that showed side-effects that included heart trouble and even death. You may say to yourself that the risk is low and they wouldn’t put something out that could harm people. Well, that is a big risk to take. The latest study on this drug showed these side-effects occurring in as much as 30 percent of those that it.

I’m not citing specific names of medications, but I do want to shed a little light on a problem in our society. This article is about the risk of medication in general. This article is not to condemn those that are taking medications as I see a need for many. I simply want to make sure that before we take a medication, we ask two questions:

1. Can I prevent or reverse this condition on my own?
2. What are the risks to taking this medication?

By asking these questions, you can be sure that you are looking out for yourself. It is important to do that. It sounds like common sense, but no one else is looking out for you. If a product that is on the market and being prescribed to people right now is causing such serious problems, how can you leave it in anyone else’s hands?

After reading the article that I mentioned above, I was alarmed. I’ve actually been alarmed for a while now due to the increased frequency of use. This just made me think about it again. In today’s world it is very easy to get started down the road of medication. The average 30 year-old American is on 3 medications. The most common prescriptions in this age group are depression, acid reflux and blood pressure medications.

As a 30-year-old myself, I am shocked by this statistic. Why does someone so young need any medication, let alone 3 medications? Well, the type of medication is an indicator of our problems. Many people have legitimate medical needs, but think about the structure of our medical model:

You go to the doctor with a symptom. The doctor has been given a list of options to treat symptoms. When the doctor sees your symptom on the list, the easiest thing to do is give you the drug that matches up. It is quick, it is easy and everyone wins, right?

Not so fast. What if we looked at the cause rather than just the symptom? What if the doctor treated the cause of your problem so that it actually went away? These seem like logical questions, but this is not something you can expect in our current system.

In our current system, you get the drug that matches the list of symptoms. You get a quick visit from your doctor, maybe a referral to a specialist (where you’ll get another quick visit…and another bill) and then the medication is given.

Our role in this process is the scariest part for me. I can see how a doctor would find a medication that treated a symptom and allowed them to ease pain and discomfort with little to no effort. I can even see why that seems good to most people. Who doesn’t want to feel good?

We all want to feel good. What we don’t want to do is take the time to consider our options. What will this medication do to me? How will it affect my body and mind? These are two very important questions that often go without asking.

After seeing the studies and laundry lists of side-effects, it is shocking to me that more people don’t ask about their options. It shocks me to hear that we are taking more and more medications and spending even less time thinking about what they are doing to us.

I think it goes back to the model we are in. It’s not just how the doctor is trained. It is about the symptoms. What we are dealing with is nothing but a list of symptoms. From the diabetes to depression, we are dealing with the symptoms. These conditions are merely symptoms of our lifestyles. When we eat too much and gain weight, the body can’t process blood sugar properly and we end up with diabetes.

3 most common symptoms treated by medications in today’s 30 year-old:
When we don’t move enough and continue to do things that aren’t in line with what we want, we feel down and depressed. When we eat foods high in sodium and don’t get enough exercise, our blood pressure will be elevated. When we eat processed foods high in fat, salt and sugar and drink acidic sodas, the body will react and show digestive problems such as acid reflux.

You can go to the doctor and get treatments for these symptoms. As we’ve discussed, that is easy. The doctor will give you what you want without much question. You don’t have to ask yourself why these symptoms are occurring. You don’t have to try to find a way to improve on your own. You don’t even have to know why you are suffering from this symptom. You can live this way and everything will be fine.

At least we hope everything will be fine. What happens when it’s not fine? What do you do when a medication causes a side-effect. What if that side-effect is worse than the symptom or more difficult than simply changing your habits to avoid it all together?

This is often the case as many medications are taken to fight symptoms of lifestyle habits. In other words, we are doing harm to ourselves and taking medication to mask the symptoms of that harm.

It doesn’t have to be this way. You can ask the doctor any and all of the questions above. You can ask your doctor about the causes of the symptoms you are having. You may not even need to take medication. You may be able to make a simple change.

A simple change is what I see as the best solution to our medication problems. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. I understand why people take medications before considering a change of lifestyle. It is easier to take a pill than it is to take care of ourselves.

This is a very risky strategy. We are putting our lives in the hands of the drug companies, hoping (often just assuming) that they have our best interests in mind. I’m not here to bash the drug companies, but I am here to remind you that there are many drugs like the one I read the article about. There are many medications that cause many problems that far out-weigh the symptoms they are taken to treat.

Before you start taking any medication, stop and ask yourself if you can find a solution on your own. Ask yourself if you are the problem causing the symptom. It may not be fun to ask a question like this, but it can literally save your life. Speaking of saving your life- Before taking anything, ask yourself if it is worth the risk.

Wants and Needs

2010-07-26T14:12:00.001-05:00

What do you want? What do you need? What are you doing to ensure these things are in your life? I ask these questions because I know how important having what you need and what you want really is. If we don’t have what we want, we are sad, upset and unfulfilled. When we don’t have what we need, we see more serious problems like illness or even death.

You can make or break your life by doing what you need or not. On the most basic level, we need things like air, food and water. These are the big ones. If we don’t have them, we can’t live. But what we want is very important, especially when we want what we need.

Do you want what you need? I know that this question sounds rather silly, but if you think about it for a minute, you’ll see the significance. First think about what you need (make a list…ok, just the top 5 things you need) and then think about how much time and effort you devote to these things.

Do you need what you want? Now make a list of the top 5 things you want. You may have these things already. You may be doing them on a regular basis. That’s ok. In fact, it’s a very good thing if you have what you want. But the first question is: Do you need it? The next question: How do these lists match up? How do your wants and needs compare?

I asked these questions because I’ve been thinking a lot about priorities. Most of my Health Coaching clients have a challenge on their hands. Their challenge is something that you are likely experiencing as well. I know I experience the same challenge. The main challenge is not time, work or being too busy. The main challenge is aligning our wants and needs.

When we put our needs first, we succeed. It works in all areas. Here are some examples of how needs become the end-all when it comes to success or failure:

Health: “I need my health”- by devoting time to care for yourself you are allowing your body and mind to function at full capacity. If you don’t devote any time or put in any effort for your health, you will not have it for very long.

Business: “We need customers”- by investing time and energy into drawing customers to your business, sales and profit can be made. If your business doesn’t put in the effort to get customers, you won’t be in business very long.

Let’s go back to the above statement: “I need my health” to get more clarity around it. This is a broad and general statement, but by making it more specific we can see how this works (or doesn’t work) in real life:
“I need to exercise in order to…”
…avoid heart problems
…have enough energy to play with my kids in the evening
…feel good during my day
…get in shape for my high school reunion

No matter what your need is, it fits within a statement like this. These statements are being uttered all over the world as we speak. In various languages people are telling themselves what they need. They are thinking about what they need and what they need to do in order to get it.

Since this is happening everywhere, people must be successful, right? If everyone knows what they need, they are achieving it, aren’t they? Well, they might be. Unfortunately, many are not. They are not doing what they need despite the fact that they need it.

Why does this happen? It happens because we don’t always want what we need. We need to live healthy in order to feel like we want to feel and look like we want to look. We need to do certain things in order to reach those goals. (Setting goals is one of them in itself.) The problem is, we don’t want to do those things.

It’s easy to say that you want something. It is another thing to actually do what it takes to get it. If you don’t want to do something, you won’t do it. It’s that simple. The fact is, no matter how much you need something, you won’t adjust your life to get it if you don’t really want it.

So, what do we do? How do we get what we need? Well, for starters, you have to want it. The next step is something I’ve spend years working on and helping others do. It is something that I’ve written countless articles about.

The next step has been called many things: goal setting, planning, routine, systems, etc. If you really want something you need to be willing to take this step. No matter what area you are talking about, the same rules apply. Doing these things is the difference between success and failure in any part of life. Doing these things is the difference between getting what you want or not. More importantly, these things are the difference between getting what you need or not.

Question: Do you need to be healthy?
Better question: Do you want to be healthy?
Best question: Are you willing to do what it takes to be healthy?

What would you do with an extra hour?

2010-07-14T08:54:00.001-05:00

I recently saw a show where they asked Americans what they would do with an extra hour in their day. It was a nice experiment to fill some time on a morning talk show, but I thought about it more and more as the day went on. It turns out that there was more to this question.

When I heard the answers to the question, I knew that it was a very important question. The answers included many things like reading, exercising sleeping and spending time with family. These things are clearly important to most people. What makes this so significant is the fact that we feel we need an extra hour in the day to do what’s most important.

Why does TV fit into the regular day when playing with kids doesn’t? Why does the extra work fit in when exercise doesn’t? Why do the miscellaneous errands fit into a regular day when value-adding activities don’t? I don’t understand how that works. I understand how we get into that situation, but I can’t understand not changing it.

The question for me is: Why do we need the extra hour to do things we know we want to do? Many of the things like sleep and exercise are actually needs. They are more than just wants. If we don’t get enough sleep, there are many studies showing that we decrease life expectancy by years. So not only are we not taking advantage of the hours we have, but we are actually eliminating hours from our lives.

That is a scary thought. What is even scarier is that we can sit down and make a list of the things we would do if we had an extra hour and still not be doing them. We can think of a list off the top of our heads and yet, we can’t take that list and make it part of our lives. That is the scariest thought of all.

You’ve heard about the importance of goals and planning. You’ve heard about priorities. You’ve also heard about the state of American health, family structure and many other areas that are in dismal condition.

So what’s the excuse? I’ve heard a laundry list of excuses. I’ve heard everything from work to spouse to pets. You name it and it’s been used as an excuse. Some things are more common than others and actually make this whole concept clearer.

Is it work? “I can’t spend time with my family or take time for my health because I am too busy.” “I am spending more time at work, so I can’t do anything else.”
It is easy to get into the cycle of working too much. You need to provide for your family and pay your bills. I understand that. What I don’t understand is how we can continue to put emphasis on something and still not get anything out of it.

This brings me back to the state of the union and many aspects of it. I can start to understand it when I think about it this way:

Work is just an excuse. We are hiding behind the busy schedule and overtime because we know that no one will question it. It’s ok to be too busy with work to take care of yourself. It’s ok to spend only a few minutes a week with your kids because it’s the busy season. It’s ok to avoid important things as long as you have urgent things to do instead.

I’d like to see that change. I’d like to see it be ok to do important things. It should not be ok to let our needs and our families needs fall by the wayside while we continue to do things that perpetuate this trend.

It IS ok to put your priorities in order. It is ok to fit the activities that you need into your day. It is ok to take that list of things that you would fit in if you had an extra hour and make it part of your day. It may not be easy and the change may not take place in one day, but you can do it. You need to do it and you know it. That is why you said: “if I had an extra hour, I’d do it.”

This is why the question of what I would do with an extra hour in my day raised so much thought. Having spent the past decade talking to people and helping them get their priorities IN their day rather than simply wishing they were there, it was upsetting to hear that so many of us still can’t do it.

Allow me to clarify: It’s not that Americans can’t do it. It’s that Americans are choosing not to do it.

The question: What would you do if you had an EXTRA hour in your day?

The answer: Things that are important that I know I need to do be doing anyway.
When I hear this question and answer, there is only one conclusion that can be drawn. We all know what to do and we are deciding that it’s not important enough.

Why else would we have a list of things that are important and only do those things if we had an extra hour? The moral of the story is: if you really want something to be part of your day…you need to make it part of your day.

That brings us to the most important question: Are you doing what you want to be doing now or are you waiting for that fictional extra hour to get it in?

Summer Eating Strategies

2010-07-01T13:56:00.002-05:00

You’ve heard about the importance of nutrition. Every day, we hear about the best things for you and the worst things for you. At the end of the day, do you know what is going to be the best thing for you? The thing that you are going to stick with is going to be the best thing for you. It’s that simple. You can worry about what is “right” or what you are “supposed to do”, but if you don’t do them consistently, they aren’t going to bring you the results you are looking for.

In other words, you need a strategy. A strategy brings the results you have in mind and helps you put them into action. This is a challenge because we all need to have our own strategy in order to stick with it. This is just a quick look at some ways that you can use your strategy to get the results you are looking for this summer.

Strategy 1: Buy fresh

The summer months offer the best in produce. You can find the ripest fruits and the tastiest vegetables. You can go to farmer’s markets, small produce stands and right to the farm if you want to. But that’s not the only place to find good produce. Your regular supermarket is going to have more choices and they are even going to have deals on fresh items that they can only keep around for so long before they go bad. They are dying for you to buy more fresh fruits and veggies, so they are often on sale and always tasty. This is also a great time to try something new.

Strategy 2: Grill out

The summer barbeque has gotten a bit of a bad name because of some of our traditional foods. Most grills that I’ve seen can cook more than just burgers and brats. Lean meats like chicken, fish and even steaks can be a great way to fill that need for hearty protein. Also, veggies can be cooked in a variety of ways either right on the grill, in a grill basket or on a skewer. Try some new
marinades and seasonings on your meat. Each meal can feel like something fun instead of “just another boring dinner.”

Strategy 3: Eat like you’re wearing a bathing suit

This sounds funny, but it actually works for many people. In fact, I've written an entire article on this strategy. I was talking to someone about their eating routines when they said: “I don’t want to eat too much when I’m wearing my bathing suit”. It makes sense doesn’t it? When we are at the lake, pool or even a backyard function, the less clothing we are wearing, the less we want to eat. You don’t have to starve yourself and it’s not just about how you look in that suit. It is about how you feel. It is easy to put on a baggy sweater and eat a lot. It is also easier to eat a smaller amount when we are wearing a bathing suit. Give it a try this summer. (See archive for complete article: http://bwchealthcoach.blogspot.com/2009/12/act-like-youre-in-bathing-suit.html)

Do you strategies that have worked for you? Share your strategies and help others reach their goals: coach@byrdwellnessconecpts.com

No Substitute for Success

2010-06-21T16:38:00.003-05:00

There is no substitute for your goals. The biggest problems I’ve seen come from a difference between goals and actions. If your actions match your goals, you are successful and everything is great. When your actions do not match your goals, you have a problem. Actually, you’ll likely have many problems.

Problems occur when you don’t do what supports what you want. It’s not complicated, yet it is difficult to stick with. For many, a goal is something that they may never reach. For others, a goal is almost a promise that something will get done.

For those that refuse to find substitutes for their goals, success is the result.
Why do some people have problems reaching goals while others are continually reaching goals? They seem to do it effortlessly. Why don’t we all do it that way? We don’t all reach goals because we don’t all set goals properly. Setting goals properly is a skill that I talk about a lot. As a skill or habit, goal setting can be improved over time and become much easier.

Easy is the key word. It is the word easy that gets us in trouble when we are trying to reach goals. As we move toward the goal, many opportunities present themselves. We have the option to keep going, try an alternative action or two (or ten) and we have to decide which one to go with. Often we take the easiest one. When we do that, we feel better because things are easy, but there is one major flaw here.

The flaw is not that it is easy. Success is not easy, but it doesn’t have to be as difficult as we make it out to be. The real flaw with taking the easy option is the fact that we don’t weigh the options for what results they will bring. We simply look at the difficulty and choose based on that alone. We accept a substitute for our goals. This works if your goal is to be the one that makes the smallest effort.

I don’t know too many people that have put in the least and gotten the most out of anything. The truth is, the more you put in, the more you get out. That doesn’t mean that everything has to be difficult just for the sake of being difficult. It means that you have to think about what you put in and make a deliberate effort to do so.

One of the aspects of our actions that gets overlooked the most happens to be the most important. That aspect is how it aligns with your goal. Before taking a step in any direction, the most important question to ask is “Is this leading me toward my goal?” The question of “Is this the easiest route” may have a place, but if it is the first question asked, you are likely to head off in the wrong direction. If it is the only question you ask, well, I hope your goal wasn’t that important to you.

If an action matches your goal, it is the right thing to do. For you, the best step you can take is the step that takes you toward your goal. If a step takes you away from your goal, you are spending time and effort working against yourself. This is ironic considering the steps were taken because they are easy. It’s a good thing they are easy, because you will be taking many of them just to get back to where you started.

That being said, I guess it is easier to stay true to yourself and your goals. It is easier to walk a straight line toward your goal without veering off the path. It is more difficult to wander away from your goal or try short cuts that take you the wrong way and cause you to start over again and again.

Since it is easier to take action toward your goals, it must be easier to be successful than it is to fail. It must be easier to only do things that are in line with your goals and therefore only lead you to move in the right direction.

Too often, I hear the same people that complain about how challenging it is to stay on track are the ones that are continually taking short cuts and trying new routes. They are looking for the easiest route and they are ending up back where they started…again and again.

So is it more difficult to be successful? I don’t think so. I still think it is easier to do what will lead you to your goals. I think it is easier to look back and know that you did what you said you would do. I think it is easier to look ahead and know that you plan to do what you say you will do.

It all comes back to your own credibility. I’m not just talking about how you can commit to appointments or tasks. It is even simpler than that. It is more about committing to your goals. That’s all it takes. When you set a goal, take actions that will help you reach them. Does that sound more difficult than trying all sorts of things that lead you in the wrong direction and cause you to start over and over again? No! To me it sounds much easier to just set a goal and do things that help you reach it.

The key is to commit to yourself. Don’t even think about it as your goals. Just think about what you want. Until you can commit to you, there is a substitution going on. You are substituting ease for success. You are substituting your comfort for your goal. In other words, you are substituting something that may be easier for something you know you want.

When you commit to yourself you will be successful. When you commit to doing what is easy, you will not be. That’s not completely true, as you will be successful at taking the easy route. That may lead you somewhere, but it is not likely to be the destination you had in mind when you set your goal.

By committing to yourself and your goals you are saying that there is no substitute for your goals. When you refuse to find a substitute for your goals, you are also saying that there is no substitute for your success.

Preparation is easier than being unprepared

2010-06-16T14:16:00.001-05:00

As a Health Coach, I hear a lot about what makes it difficult to reach goals. I work with my clients to overcome these difficulties, but they always seem to come up. If there is a challenge, I’ve likely heard about it.

Sometimes there are challenges that are more challenging…for me to hear. One of the most challenging things for me to hear about is how difficult it is to prepare for things. I obviously hear it with health goals, but it has been something that we’ve all dealt with.

Preparation is important in many areas. You need to be ready for school, work, family events and even social gatherings. Clearly, the more serious the occasion the more preparation is required. Also the more responsibility you have for the occasion, the more preparation is required.

If responsibility and preparation are directly related, than preparation should be easy. Why should it be easy to prepare? It should be easy because the success of whatever you are doing depends on it. When you look at your list of priorities, what puts things at the top? Is it things that are easy? Do we place things that are simple and have no meaning at the top of your priorities list? No, we don’t.

Our priorities are decided by importance and impact on our lives. You get up and go to work every morning, not because it’s fun. Even if you have a great career or run your own business, you take care of the important details because it is making a difference in the lives of your clients, yourself and your family. Whether you took the job or started the business, your company depends on you to make an impact. Now your preparation and action plan make that impact.

The greater the impact, the greater the importance of preparation becomes. It doesn’t take much preparation to watch television. It doesn’t take much preparation to hit the drive thru.

This is where the concept of preparation meets health. I hear how difficult it is to prepare. I hear how much easier it is to watch television or go to the drive thru. The reason I don’t understand the difficulty is the amount of impact these areas have on our lives.

What we eat and how much activity we get has a very significant impact on our lives. The impact can be seen in many areas including the very basic area of how we feel. The better we eat and the more we move, the better we feel. I ask everyone what they want from a coaching perspective. The answer that I hear the most is: “I want to feel good.”

We all want to feel good. But by not preparing in the area of health, we are not acting as if we want to feel good. We know what we need to do in order to feel good and yet, we are not doing it.

In fact, by not preparing, we are actually making things more difficult. When we enter a meeting unprepared, is a nerve-racking experience. When we throw a party without preparing for it, it is a frustrating experience. Showing up for a test in school without preparing is nothing short of a nightmare that many of us have had. When we suffer the consequences of not preparing with our health it is much more serious.

Our health is our life. We’ve talked about it over and over and I will continue to stress how important health really is. I don’t understand the idea of looking at something that is as terrible as having heart issues, gaining weight, feeling tired all day (the list goes on) and deciding that those are all easier than setting a few goals.

Even if your only goal is to feel good, you can make it easier than all the health issues you face by letting your health go. Feeling good may be the most commonly desired result, but it’s not the only one. There are countless benefits to living healthy. Avoiding many problems is one of them.

Just as the meeting or party or test is more difficult without preparation, health is too. I have seen over and over again that without preparing we simply cannot live the lives we want to live. The key is to realize that while it may be easier to put it off, it is not easier to deal with the consequences.

Being unprepared is much more difficult than preparing. Preparation is a habit, so the more you do it the easier it gets. Remember, easy isn’t bad. In fact, that is what preparation does for you in your routine. You get better at it and it becomes automatic. Eventually, preparation is easier than being unprepared.

Holiday Weekend Strategy

2010-05-28T09:56:00.000-05:00

1. Start the day off right

Eat a good breakfast in the morning. No matter what time a big meal is, making sure that you start the day off with a solid breakfast will help you stay in control when it is time to eat again.

*If you are eating closer to dinner time, your breakfast and lunch can be great chances to offset the over-the-top tendencies of the events.

2. Keep the exercise going

Your routine has helped you burn extra calories each day. This weekend is just as important and it can help you feel more energized to chat with friends guests and share laughs with family. If you burn more calories, you can feel more confident that what you eat will make a smaller impact on your weight.

*If you are not into the routine that you want, this is a good time to insert a healthy activity into the tradition. Walks or trips to the park with kids or a family game can create great memories!

3. Remember: It’s just one weekend

Just because there is more food than normal available to you over a holiday weekend doesn’t mean that it has to throw the rest of your routine off. There is no need to beat yourself up. By cutting yourself a little slack, you can actually expect to be MORE successful because your goals are realistic for the day.

*After a holiday weekend is a great time to start your new plan (if you haven’t already), since you know that you likely won’t have a bigger challenge than you’ve already encountered.

Is Your Routine Working For You or Against You?

2010-05-25T12:40:00.001-05:00

Everyone has a routine. When I’m coaching someone, I often hear, “I don’t really have a routine” or “I haven’t had a routine for a while”. These are common statements from people that have come to the conclusion that because they weren’t doing something often, they were out of the routine of doing it.

They are partially right. They may not be in the routine of doing it often, but they are in a routine. The routine is NOT doing it. The routine is doing other things instead of what they want to be doing. That puts them right in the middle of a routine. It may not be the routine they want, but it is still a routine.

Everyone has a routine. Everyone has habits and a schedule of things that make up a typical day. Control over these things varies and of course, no two people have the same schedule. The routine is there, no matter how much or how little you plan each day.

In the business world, this s is why some people are succeeding and others are failing. In the academic world, this is why some are acing courses and others are flunking out. And with health, It is why some are living a healthy lifestyle while others are not.

Those that are not living healthy can say, “I’m just not in a routine”, but we know that they are simply in a routine that is not working for them. It may be working for someone else, but it is clearly not working for the person. If it was working for them, they would be reaching the goals that they have for themselves.

It sounds harsh, but it is the truth. Your routine is there. The only question to ask your self is:

Is my routine working for me or is it working against me?

If it is working for you, you must have put some time into setting goals, planning
your actions so you could reach those goals. If it is working against you, you have two choices:

Choice 1: keep telling yourself you don’t “have a routine” and pretend that your health will magically improve without you making any changes

Choice 2: take a look at your routine and change it so your actions match your desired result

It doesn’t matter what area of life we talk about. The results that you see are completely dependent on the actions you take. We know that a business gets more customers with advertising and customer services strategies. We know that a student performs better on tests if they study the material beforehand. We also know that you will have a healthier life if you do healthier things.

So, take a quick look at your routine…you have one, you are in one and it is bringing you the results that you are getting right now. In fact, the routine you are in has likely been bringing your results for a long time. If you are in a routine that is working for you, you know the results have been good. If your routine is working against you, well, maybe you should change something if you want your results to change.

Pay Attention (Part 3 of 3)

2010-04-14T09:46:00.002-05:00

When you were a kid sitting in class, what was the instruction you heard most? Well, maybe you didn’t hear it quite as often as I did, but during my elementary school years, I was told to pay attention many times a day. Although I had to be told more times than I can even remember, I did eventually learn the importance of paying attention.

Attention is important in all areas of life. It started in school when we needed to pay attention to learn the lesson of the day. Once we knew the lesson, we could complete assignments and take the quiz or exam. Eventually this would all cumulate and we’d get a grade for the class. If you didn’t pay attention, what kind of grade did you get?

When I see the state of health in America, I can’t help but wonder what would happen if everyone started paying attention. I’m not sure where we went wrong. I have a few theories and can walk through a few steps to show what has occurred, but that is a whole new article.

Without getting into the entire history of US health, I just want to discuss the power of attention. If nothing else changed, what would we gain by paying more attention to our health? That question has been stuck in my head for a while, so I had to share a few ideas of what I think we would gain from paying a little more attention.

In Part 3, I'd like to look at health care. We've talked about two areas of health in parts 1 and 2. I'm sure you've heard about this little thing called "Health care reform." For some reason health keeps getting left out of the conversation on reform. Let's take a look at how we can actually fix health care.

Healthcare

I saw a billboard the other day that made me think about all of this. A healthcare provider in the area has a series of billboards that say: “Health should be simple.” On each of these billboards is a picture of someone eating an apple, lifting a weight or doing some other healthy activity. I like the message here. Health should be simple. Unfortunately it has become very complicated and difficult for people to manage.

This is one of the reasons that we are dealing with the healthcare crisis now. Yes, there many factors, but I think the biggest factor is the fact that are no longer paying attention to our own health. In fact, we don’t even look at it as our own anymore. Health is now something that your doctor worries about or what was passed on by your parents.

That is a good way to lose control of health. It has happened to many people and will continue to happen until we take ownership again. What do we need to do first? You guessed it. We need to pay attention. We need to pay attention to our health BEFORE the doctor tells us we need surgery or before we have been diagnosed with a chronic condition. We need to take control of our health.

Question: Do you know your blood pressure? Do you know your cholesterol numbers?

The advances we’ve made in the medical field are amazing. We are constantly finding new ways to do things and to make what was previously a death sentence into a manageable situation. This can be a double-edged sword though. The one drawback to this is that we no longer try to avoid the medical care. I appreciate this and I see great value in all of it. I’m not suggesting that we pear back medical technology to make healthcare cheaper. I’m just suggesting that we start managing our own health rather than waiting until we need to be saved.

What am I talking about? Well, I’ve heard many people say that they aren’t concerned about their health because they are young and don’t need to. I’ve heard, “Why do I need to worry about health now?” Well, you actually don’t have to worry about it if you pay attention. If you don’t, that is when you need to start worrying.

I’ve also heard, “My parents are overweight, so why should I even try to lose weight?” This is an excuse that has become very widespread. People think that everything is genetic. This is an easy way to avoid ownership. If you are not in control it’s not your fault. Well, you are in control and so are your parents.

If you are overweight, it is not because your parents passed on the “overweight gene”. You are overweight because of your habits. Your parents are also overweight because of their habits. Oddly enough, those habits seem to be similar. How did that happen? It looks like they passed those habits along.

Question: What habits are you passing along to your children?

Too often we are ending up in the doctor’s office with something we could have avoided. We have let medicine become something that only the doctor can deal with. We take the mentality explained above and say that our health is just happening to us and we all we can do is what the doctor tells us to do.

I find this especially hard to understand, considering the medical community has been telling us to exercise and eat right for years. I guess we don’t hear that. We do hear the doctor when we have to start taking another medication though. At least we can make the decision between taking that medication or changing the way we live so we don’t need it.

Again, medicine has come a long way. There are many great medications out there. For people who need them, they have worked wonders. For people that do not need them, they have helped them continue to live an unhealthy lifestyle without the consequences. At least the consequences haven’t shown up just yet.

Last Questions: How did your actions today affect your tomorrow? Is today going to have a positive or negative impact on tomorrow?

Maybe that’s the problem. We are aware of the consequences of our actions, but we are still unwilling to change our behavior. Maybe we just don’t see it because it’s so long term. Actually, this brings me right back to the same place: Paying attention.

If you pay attention to how you feel today, you can alter what you do in order to feel better tomorrow. If you keep doing this you will keep feeling better and enjoy life much more. If you choose not pay attention, you can easily end up in the cycle where you are not in control.

The best advice I can give: Don’t give up your control. If you have given it up, take it back. It only takes one step to get started. The best way to take control of your health: Pay attention.

This concludes the 3-part series on paying attention. Hopefully this was a helpful read for you. We all have more power than we think. If we use that power, there is no telling what our lives, the insurance and the medical industries will look like moving forward. If we keep leaving it up to someone else...

Pay Attention (Part 2 of 3)

2010-04-06T13:51:00.002-05:00

When you were a kid sitting in class, what was the instruction you heard most? Well, maybe you didn’t hear it quite as often as I did, but during my elementary school years, I was told to pay attention many times a day. Although I had to be told more times than I can even remember, I did eventually learn the importance of paying attention.

Attention is important in all areas of life. It started in school when we needed to pay attention to learn the lesson of the day. Once we knew the lesson, we could complete assignments and take the quiz or exam. Eventually this would all cumulate and we’d get a grade for the class. If you didn’t pay attention, what kind of grade did you get?

When I see the state of health in America, I can’t help but wonder what would happen if everyone started paying attention. I’m not sure where we went wrong. I have a few theories and can walk through a few steps to show what has occurred, but that is a whole new article.

Without getting into the entire history of US health, I just want to discuss the power of attention. If nothing else changed, what would we gain by paying more attention to our health? That question has been stuck in my head for a while, so I had to share a few ideas of what I think we would gain from paying a little more attention.

Exercise

It is so simple, yet we could go on and on with the reasons we need to pay attention. It’s a shame, but exercise is something we have to watch now too. We used to be active by nature, but now we have to try and “fit it in” or “find time” to get the exercise we need. Guess what? We are not finding the time for the exercise we need. The average American is now only even active for a few minutes per day and is not exercising at all.

Why don’t we exercise? Again, I think it is because we stopped paying attention. We’ve talked about what happens when we don’t pay attention to our food. Well, it’s not any better when we stop paying attention to our exercise. In fact, I would think it was easier to be in tune with the exercise we need. After all, we know how we feel at all times (if we pay attention) so shouldn’t we know when we need something? Shouldn’t we be able to feel that our energy level is not where it should be so it is time to take a quick walk? I wish it were that simple for everyone. Unfortunately, we don’t tune into that and we assume we just need more caffeine to get through the day.

Question: How many days per week do you feel good?

With exercise, just like with nutrition, the best advice is to pay attention. We are build to move. Our bodies have evolved over the years to function better with movement. Our current health issues are testament to the affects of the sedentary lifestyle. It’s a shame that we have come so far in some areas and gone the other direction in something so important.

Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe the average American doesn’t find feeling good important. Maybe the average American doesn’t want to live a long life. Maybe they want to die young and feel like crap every day. I don’t think that is true at all. I don’t believe for a second that anyone wants to deal with any of the health issues that are now plaguing this country.

I think we all want to feel good and live healthy. We just don’t know what to do. I see commercials on TV, ads in the newspaper and links on the web promising weight loss and good health. This can’t be a coincidence. I also see that Americans spend billions of dollars on home fitness equipment every year. Not to mention what we spend on gym memberships and diet plans.

The numbers are incredible. But what is more incredible is the fact that we are still chasing our health. We spend all of this money yet we have not found the results. Why is this? I think it’s because we are trying to find the quick fix. We see something that looks like it will work (It promises to work much better than it does.) but we don’t stick with it.

Another Question: How many times have you tried the “next big fad” and been disappointed?

It all comes back to that first step. You won’t use a piece of equipment that you don’t like. You won’t go to a place that you are uncomfortable with. There are many components to a routine. If you want yours to work you have to have a plan that takes these into consideration. How do you know what you want to do or what you will stick with? Start by paying attention.

What does your body need? How do you feel when you do this or that? These questions are where we need to start. Without asking these questions we are just going to keep going along with whatever is in front of us. That is clearly not working. For the average American, the food that is in front of you and the exercise that “you have time for” are what is killing you.

I know that no one lives forever, but the current trends show us that life is not only getting shorter, but it is getting more difficult. Just like when we didn’t pay attention in class. Those exams were difficult too.

This was part 2 of 3. Next time, we will discuss another area that paying attention will bring positive results in part 3.

Pay Attention (Part 1 of 3)

2010-03-31T18:15:00.003-05:00

Deciding Your Own Future

2010-03-22T16:45:00.001-05:00

I have a hard time seeing people quit. This is due to advice from a childhood coach. He said: “When you quit you are deciding the outcome.” He was talking about a game and the outcome you are deciding is that you will lose the game if you quit before it’s over.

This applies in many areas, which we will touch on as we go. This saying came back to me when I saw a post from my friend who runs a sports-performance facility. The post was “Choose your own future”. It may be a little different than deciding your own future, but it really means the same thing. It means that you are in charge. If you choose to go for it, you can get it. If you choose not to go for it, you can’t get it.

My career in the health industry has been very enjoyable. I love what I do on a daily basis. Working with people has been a fun experience for me and is why I started my business. As a health coach, I get to help people set goals and improve specific areas of their lives.

While this is very rewarding, it can also be frustrating for me. The most frustrating part is when I see people give up. I often hear people tell me that they are stuck. They tell me that they are unable to reach a goal and they don’t see themselves moving past where they are. This gets very difficult because all I want to do is help.

Luckily when it’s a client in this situation, I can actually help them. We can work together to get them through the rough patch and make the goal more realistic again. I still get frustrated when I see people quit.

Why is it frustrating? The toughest part is hearing someone decide to quit because they don’t think they can do something. They are not quitting because something is impossible. They are not quitting because they don’t have the ability to do it. Why are they quitting? They are quitting because they see a goal and don’t think they can reach it. When this happens, they are giving up not just on their goal, but they are giving up on themselves.

When it comes to life, you are in charge. We can talk about a business or career. We can talk about your finances, family or any other area. No matter what we talk about, you are in charge of the future of these areas. No one else decides how many meetings you set up or projects you complete at work. No one else decides whether you spend or save money to determine your financial future. You are in control of all of this. It is your life and your routine.

Health is an area that seems to be left out of this conversation. When I ask people about their goals, I hear them say many things that would suggest they don’t have a choice. I hear people say things like, “I can’t do that” or “I’m just not ever going to get there”. I even hear “I’m just an unhealthy person”. When someone says this, I can’t help but hear that they are forgetting they are in control. They forget that they can decide what their future looks like. Or maybe they just didn’t know that they are in control.

Why do we think we are not in control? I think we have actually given it up. In our day to day lives it has become the norm to do what we have on the to-do list. Often our list consists of things that others want us to do. It is important to consider others. Family, friends, employers and clients are all important and should be considered.

We’ve given up our control, but why? I think we have given it up because than it’s not our fault that we aren’t where we want to be. It is easier to say, “Oh well, I guess I’m not supposed to be healthy.”, than it is to take responsibility and work toward your goals.

Not everyone has willingly given up control. Many people want to gain it and improve their lives, so how do they get it back? It’s not as difficult as you may think. In fact it starts with one choice. Choosing to be in control is the first step. Once you’ve done this, you are in charge of your goals and your future. I’m not suggesting we put everything on hold and focus strictly on health. In fact, I’m suggesting we use the same tools that help us accomplish tasks in these other areas to help in the health routine.

Take a minute to think about what your goals are? What do you need to do in order to accomplish them? Planning is the key. Setting up your schedule and reminders can help you execute. There must be a balance between only focusing on health and the other extreme of never focusing on it. Success is found in the balance between the extremes. Having a plan can help you make that balance sustainable.

Many people are struggling because they are strictly focused on work or something else. When they try to set goals in another area they often fail because they don’t take control to reach them. In fact, it is easier for them to say they don’t have control and choose not to reach their goals. “I’m too busy” or “I just don’t have time” are perfect examples of this.

You may be reaching your goals. Or you may be making excuses like “I’m too busy”. If you are reaching your goals it is because you have taken control and decided on your own outcome. You have decided what you want your life to look like (in any area) and you have taken the steps necessary to make it that way. In other words, you are deciding your own future. The moral of the story is that if you are not reaching your goals and blaming outside circumstances you are simply making excuses. You too are deciding your own future.

Trying vs. Doing

2010-03-15T17:46:00.002-05:00

We’ve all been in a conversation (with someone else or internally) where we say we will try to complete a task. We also know what the word try means. Trying is not doing. We try to find time for things we don’t want to do. More accurately in health, we try to do things we want to do, but don’t think we are able to do. We try to make it to places we don’t want to go and we try not end up doing things we don’t want to do. What happens when we try to do things? Well, often they don’t get done.

Why don’t we get things done when we try? The biggest reason was already stated: trying is not doing. Trying doesn’t work because it has built in doubt. When you say you are going to try something, you are implying that it isn’t going to be easy or natural. You are building in the expectation that it may not happen. When you start something thinking about how it may not happen, guess what, it may not and usually does not happen.

I hear this scenario a lot with exercise, diet, smoking and a long list of other changes that people want to make in their lives. We all want to be healthy and do things that will help us be healthy. Whether you want to exercise more, eat different foods or any other healthy change, you know what it feels like. Hopefully you are doing these things and not just trying to do them.

These are all things we “want” to do, so it is funny to me that we keep trying to do them as opposed to just doing them. It’s funny because we continually tell ourselves that that we are trying or we are going to try. If we are just trying, we are simply saying that we don’t really want to do it or don’t think it will happen.

Think about it with your friends and a social gathering. When someone is “going to try to stop by” are you waiting for them as if they said “YES, I’m coming”? No way. You are more likely to assume they are not coming. We hear the word try and the tone of their excuse and assume that they will not be coming. Not that trying means they automatically won’t come. If they do it will be a bonus, but we don’t expect them to come.

It’s the same thing when we do it to ourselves. When we say we are trying to do something that we want to do, we are just hoping we can do it. We are not planning to do it or better yet…doing it. Therefore, when something doesn’t get done, we already have the excuse ready: “oh well, I’ll try that again later”.

We’ve discussed the importance of habits before and likely will again. Trying can become a habit. When that happens, it only gets more difficult to stop trying and start doing. If you are already in the habit of trying, you can still change this. It often starts by taking a look at your routine. Whether we are talking about your health, work, relationships or any other area, you know whether you are doing what you want to be doing.

How does your routine look? When you think about what you want to be doing, are you actually doing it or are you just trying to do it?

Want Energy?

2010-03-10T07:48:00.002-06:00

As an entrepreneur, I need a lot of energy. It takes energy to manage all areas of my business, not to mention the rest of my life. In my 2+ years in business, I have discovered something else about energy. I have discovered that energy is more than just something that comes out of the wall socket. It is something that we create. That’s right, we all generate our own energy.

Energy is what drives my business. Energy is what drives all businesses. Not only is energy necessary to keep you functioning, but energy can determine the direction of your life as well. So in fact, energy drives you. It doesn’t just drive your work, but it actually drives you as a person. The important discovery I made is that there is a formula for energy and how it affects your life.

The formula is simple. You may have even heard it before in other areas. “You get what you put it”, “You get what you give” and other phrases like that are very true. The more energy you put into your life, the more results you get out of it. This is true and I have seen it firsthand with individuals, businesses and in my own life.

I see it in many businesses as they try to drive their culture toward a vibrant, high-energy environment. It works on an individual level as well. In fact, in order for it to work, each individual has to adopt it. Perhaps that is the easiest way to understand the energy formula.

Picture this:

You are tired after a day of work. You go to bed and wake up tired again. The next day feels the same. Getting up and going to be tired.

This doesn’t sound like a whole lot of fun, but it is reality for many people. Unfortunately, this may be your reality. Not only have I talked to hundreds of people living this way, but I’ve also been there myself.

How can you get out of this? How did I get out of this? Well, I’ve written about the energy cycle and how you can move upward or downward depending on how active you are. That is one way to look at it strictly from an exercise perspective. I would like to step back and look at this from a wider perspective. There is more to life than exercise. Despite my passion for health, I know that not everything revolves around exercise.

I also know that you need energy to make it through the day. Exercise can be a way to get that energy. Others use caffeine, hydration, food or other methods to push through the daily grind. But it’s the daily grind itself that we need to look at. When I step back and look at the big picture, I see many opportunities for increased energy. In fact, everything we do is a chance for energy to propel us.

Do you find yourself saying: “I don’t have the energy.” Or “I can’t do that because it will take too much out of me.” If you have said this, you are choosing not to put energy into these tasks. What do you get for results? Not good? Not a ton of results or high-energy coming back to you? I’m not surprised, are you?

It comes down to our simple formula: you get out what you put in. If you put in a little, you get a little in return. We’ve all worked with someone in school or at work that only contributed minor effort to a group project. Everyone on the team may have gotten the same grade, but how much respect did you give the person that put in minimal energy? Did you want to work with them again? Did you actually end up working with them again? Not likely.

This is why the energy formula is so important in your personal life. I’m not just talking about health either. I’m talking about every aspect of your life.
Picture this:

You have goals. You know what you need to do in order to accomplish these goals. You know that the more you put in, the more you will get out of this process. As you get started you realize that as long as you are acting toward your goals, it’s only as hard as you make it. In fact, the more you do something, the easier it becomes.

This goes for your exercise, your diet choices, work schedule and everything else in life. It is easy to think about whether we are capable of something or not. It is easy to say “No, that’s too hard.” Those are the easy choices in life. Or rather they are the easy decisions to make when faced with a challenge.

I like to look at it a little differently. I don’t think about what I can or can’t do. I think about what I want or don’t want to do. As I work with my coaching clients, we discuss goals in terms of what they want to accomplish. We don’t talk about what they should do and might try to do because they should. We talk about what they want to do. The choice really becomes: how much am I willing to do?

Once you decide you are willing to do something, you have another choice. The choice, “how much am I willing to do?” translates to how much energy I am willing to put in. Knowing the formula of getting out what you put in, the choice seems easy.

It seems easy to me. It seems easy to anyone that is reaching their goals. Anyone putting in high energy and getting good results will continue to make that choice over and over again.

Are you one of these people? If not, do you want to be one of these people? How much energy are you willing to put in?

Make It Happen.

2010-02-15T11:37:00.002-06:00

In last week’s Business Health Strategy entry we discussed a simple, yet profound act. It seems natural, but unfortunately it is not. The title and subject was: Think about it. One would think that a thought would come easily, but when you look at our biggest problems in health and healthcare, the act of thinking about it is what we often go without.

See Feb. entry http://businesshealthstrategy.blogspot.com/2010/02/think-about-it.html for more detail on this and how it also applies to you as an individual.

Thinking about it is very important for businesses and for each of us as individuals. We need to know there is an issue, understand our best option to change the issue. In health and in business, we are missing this step. Believe it or not the next step would be even easier if we just took the time to think about the big picture.

What is the big picture? We discuss it often. It is the fact that as a society, our health is declining and our healthcare system is in trouble. It doesn’t have to be. By thinking about it, the solution is clear and much less difficult than you think it is. Our health is in our hands and we can change our lives if we want to.

It is important to understand the options. It starts when you are able to think about what you want and how you want to live. What is more important? Doing something about it is the next step. As a person and professional, I know what it takes to make a personal, business and family schedule work. As I help businesses with their employee health concerns, I continue to learn more about people and the challenges they go through. We are all dealing with similar issues. We may live in different places with different people around us, but we all have the same amount of time in the day. Last I checked, the day was 24 hours long for everyone.

The biggest barrier is what we already discussed: thinking about it and realizing that they can change the way they do things. Deciding you want to take control of your health is important, but actually taking the steps is what will bring the new results they are looking for. We often get caught up in the thought that we’ve never done it before, it’s been a long time or we don’t know where to start. This can make it seem very difficult, when in fact, once we start the process by taking the first step, other steps reveal themselves and it becomes easier as we go. In other words, the next step is action. Now that you’ve thought about it, it is time to make it happen. It can be done if you are willing to do it.

What does that take? It depends on your goals. If your goal is to be smoke-free, than you need to start with a timeline and look at places you can reduce your smoking. If you are looking to get more active, take a look at what activities you like to do and when you can do them. As long as you act according to your priorities, you will make progress.

Making it happen may seem difficult at first. The beauty of this step is that by thinking about it first, you really set yourself up to be in a better position to act. Basically, making it happen is not as difficult as it seems once you know what you want to do.

Now that you’ve thought about what you want your health to look like and what changes need to be made, you are ready to start putting your plan in motion. Once the plan is in motion, you are already going. The hardest part is getting started, but once you have, all you have to do is continue. Just keep going and you will succeed. Make it happen.

Exercise: Fitting it into your busy schedule

2010-02-01T08:03:00.001-06:00

We all know the importance of exercise. If you don’t know the importance of exercise, here is a quick refresher: Exercise gives us…
Increased energy, improved mood, decreased risk of incidents such as heart attack or stroke, decreased risk of conditions such as depression, diabetes and hypertension, increased life expectancy, overall, improvement of physical, mental and emotional health.

In other words, exercise keeps the body functioning properly. It is clear that we need it. What isn’t always as clear is how we get it. Many of us struggle with health because exercise just isn’t part of our routine. Let’s discuss ways to make it part of your routine so that you can enjoy the benefits of good health.

First let’s take a look back in time. If we go back 100 years, it will bring us to the year 1910. Things are a little different here in the United States. The difference we will focus on is the typical work day. If we were around 100 years ago, we would all have a job that involved physical labor. Some of us would be farmers and have to work the land all day every day in order to produce food for ourselves and others. The rest of us would be in construction or manufacturing jobs that required us to use our bodies to lift and move all day in order to build products.

So what did we do for exercise? That is a trick question, because we didn’t actually do anything for “exercise” until it was invented later in the century. That’s right, 100 years ago; exercise was not something we did because we wanted to be healthy. Exercise was simply part of our lives. We had to move in order to make a living. Now we have to make time in order to get enough exercise for moderate health.

It is no wonder exercise is difficult to fit in. Our careers keep us indoors, seated for much of the day and those days we work are typically longer than what the average worker put in 100 years ago. We have progressed with technology, allowing us to accomplish more with less physical effort. This is great for industry, but it is not so great for our bodies.

So what can you do? Great question, there are many ways to get more active despite your busy schedule. The list below should help you make exercise more realistic and help you get more active:

Make time

While it is easier said than done, you can do it if you focus on the words used here. Making time is completely different from finding time. By finding time or looking for time what we are doing is thinking about exercise. We are saying that it is a good idea, but we don’t have time…at least we don’t have enough time to set any aside.

Make an appointment

What do you do when something is important? You write it down. What do you do when have an important meeting at work? You put in on your calendar. This works to keep us all on track in our careers and it can keep us on track with our health as well. Think about it, you wouldn’t be too busy to go to a meeting with your boss or to an appointment with a client. If you put this type of priority on exercise, you would stick to it the very same way. It may not seem as important in the short term, but when you consider what exercise does for you, it really should be on your calendar.

Make it easy

Making it easy is possible. By doing some little things, you can make your routine easy. For example: putting your gym bag in the car you can eliminate a trip home and make an after work workout much more realistic. Or, by keeping a pair of shoes at your desk, going for a quick walk during lunch is now less of a challenge.

Make it happen

If you have time set aside to do something, do you do it? When you have an important appointment, do you keep it? If exercise was easy, what would stop you from doing it? All of these steps can make exercise more realistic for you. Think of the reasons that you don’t get enough or that make it more difficult to stick with exercise. Once you have looked at the challenges you can begin to devise a plan. Now think of the reasons that you do or want to exercise. When you are setting goals, it is important to think about why you are setting the goal. The more you want something, the more likely you are to achieve it. Think of the importance of your health and all of the good things that come along with getting more exercise. With those things in mind and the above steps in place, getting and keeping a good routine going is well within your reach.

The First Step: Keep it Short and Successful

2010-01-11T15:26:00.002-06:00

You’ve heard the old adage: “The first step is the hardest to take” or “The first stride is the longest”. I’ve heard these for years and even believed in them because of what so many of us do. It’s not so much what we do as much as it is how we try to do it that makes these sayings true.

When starting a new plan, it seems that we all want instant results. Not only do we want to see results right away, but we want to be doing EVERYTHING right from day one. If it is an exercise program we are starting, the first week involves a trip to the gym that lasts longer and includes more exertion than we’ve had in the last year. If it is a nutrition program, we throw all our food away and replace every food item with foods that we have never eaten before in our lives.

This is a very ambitious approach. Things start out going great, but what happens? Maybe it’s a week down the road or even a month into the new routine, it all falls apart. Eventually, this happens to everyone that takes this approach. It is the “all or nothing” mentality. It is the mindset that we are going to change everything and we are going to change it now.

Although it is important to make changes, we often take an approach that sets us up for failure. By taking on too many new habits or making such drastic changes, we have trouble sticking to it. We partially accomplish many things rather than fully accomplishing a single thing.

Goals are good. We’ve talked about goals a lot. In fact, setting and reaching goals really translates into all areas of life. Let me clarify, the right goals are good. The wrong goals lead us to failure and make it more difficult to set new goals.

Think about this scenario:

Judy wants to start a new weight loss program. It has been years since she focused on her health. Over the past decade she has steadily gained weight and now wants to stop that. She is going to completely change the way she eats and get more exercise. She joins a gym, starts a new diet plan and is feeling good about her chances for success.

Getting started (first step)

The first week is a whirlwind for Judy. She is going to the gym every day, she are eating completely different foods and feeling like she is on track.

Hitting a roadblock (first challenge)

The first weekend comes along and Judy has a party at a friend’s house. When she gets there, she quickly realizes that there is no food that is “on her list” and doesn’t know what to do. She has to eat, so the food that is there will have to do.

The other side of her routine suffered early on too. Judy was also feeling sore from the first week of exercise. She hadn’t ever been to the gym every day of the week, so her body was seriously feeling the effects of the workouts she got in the week before. On Monday, she figures that she should take a day off because she is so sore. She plans on going again on Tuesday, but keeps thinking about how the diet has been difficult to get back into after the weekend problems. Judy has now missed another day at the gym.

The next week (following first step)

Judy feels guilty because she couldn’t stick with her routine. She had such a great first week, but when the weekend came along, she wasn’t able to keep things going on her diet plan. Judy was also struggling with her exercise plan by the beginning of the second week. There were some circumstances beyond her control on the diet side, but she didn’t take that into consideration. On the exercise side, she simply didn’t take the adjustment from years of inactivity into account. Overall, she didn’t give herself any slack and couldn’t live up to it. Instead, she looked only at her goal and felt like a failure.

More specifically, Judy looked at the first step as the whole routine. She tried to start her routine from day one as if she had been doing it for years. She tried to go from no activity and poor diet to exercising daily and eating a perfect diet. Not many people have success following something to a T period. Even fewer people are able to jump into a routine in one step and stick with it.

Judy was trying to change many habits that she had been forming for years in just a few days. That doesn’t sound very realistic does it? Despite this unrealistic expectation, we have all done it. I have worked with hundreds of people that have done it over and over again. Every time they get started, they try to do it all in one big step. Surprise, surprise, it doesn’t work for them. And that is why they are always trying to take that step again…and again.

When you have trouble getting started (or better yet, before you get started), stop and think about how big that first step is. Is it too big and unrealistic? The solution is to make the first step shorter and more realistic. It sounds appealing to change everything and “get healthy” as quickly as possible, but it doesn’t last. Even if you want to do something, it will be difficult to sustain without the habit being formed. The key to health is that no matter what you do to get results; the results go away as soon as you stop doing it.

In other words, take a small step that you can keep doing until it becomes natural.
Once you get there, take another step. I like to use this analogy:

Take one step forward each week. In ten weeks we will be ten steps ahead of where we were when we started. Take ten steps forward on day one, but take a step backward each day for the next ten weeks. Where are you? Not only are you not where you want to be, but you feel frustrated and defeated because you have been taking backward steps for the past ten weeks.

Take a small step forward to get things started. Every journey begins with one step- the first step. That first step doesn’t have to be the longest or even the most difficult. As long as you are focused on taking many steps and only trying to take one at a time, you will eventually get where you want to go. So take that small step forward toward your success.

Season's Greetings

2009-12-29T16:15:00.000-06:00

Hello everyone,
I hope the holiday season is treating you well. This is a great week to reflect on 2009 and look ahead to 2010. Both can be fun and help you continue on your path to success.

How to Make Your New Year’s Resolution Successful

2009-12-29T16:10:00.002-06:00

As we turn the calendars to a new year, there are often many things on our minds. One of those things may be your New Year’s resolution. Let’s take a minute to talk about the resolution. It has gotten a bad reputation as something that “won’t work” or is “destined to fail”, but it is still important to set goals for the coming year.
Goals are the best way for you to recover from the holiday season gone by. What’s the difference between a goal and a resolution? Great question, a resolution is a grand declaration or something that you decided to do on December 31st.

A traditional resolution takes about as much time to think about as it does to announce. And the typical resolution is also forgotten just as quickly. Goals on the other hand are a plan. Notice it’s not goal, but goals. It takes a series of goals to make up a plan. If you want to make a change that lasts a year, you need to break it up into steps. Each step is a goal in itself and will bring you to the next level. As you progress through each of these levels, you should be well on your way to the overall goal.

Think about your goals as a road map. When you are on a trip and question if you are going the right direction, you can always look back at your map. If you are off track, simply look at the map and find the best way to get back on. Without the map, not only do you not know where you are going, but you also don’t know if you are on track or not. By setting goals and having a plan, you can be sure that you are going the direction you want to be going.

What is the best plan? For starters, it should be something you really want to accomplish. Take your resolution and break it down into smaller steps. Start with something small and realistic. When you have mastered that step, it’s on to the next. With each step you take, not only are you moving toward your goal, you are creating new habits.

Need support? Email your plan and your coach can help you stay on track.
Coach@ByrdWellnessConcepts.com

Act Like You’re in a Bathing Suit

2009-12-22T19:49:00.003-06:00

I was at a social gathering with a friend of mine when she gave me a great idea. I want to thank and cite Amy as the one who came up with this theory. Amy is not in the industry, which actually made me feel even better about the theory because it shows how it translates to real life. This theory came from a real person that holds great value in her health and wants others to do the same.

It is difficult to value health when you feel like you don’t have it. Many people I talk to feel this way and don’t see a way out. Amy’s theory can actually help you feel like you can make changes. It is not just something for those that need to find health, but also for those that need to maintain the health they already have.

It’s also difficult to value health when you refuse to focus on it. The theory that I’m talking about is about keeping health in the forefront. It is about making sure that your health is on your mind and stays part of your day to day life. When you do that, you will live a healthy life.

Picture this:

You are out at the beach with a big group of friends. The sun is shining and the weather is perfect. Maybe you are in Florida or even Hawaii. Maybe you are just at the lake during the summer time. No matter where you are, they key is that it is bathing suit season. You are in and out of the water because you need to cool off and feel comfortable in the summer heat. All of your friends are enjoying themselves as they do the same.

Now it’s lunch time…

Everyone grabs some food and sits down at a picnic table to eat lunch. As you all eat together, you remain in the sun right on the beach. What are you eating? How much of it are you eating? If you are sitting there in your bathing suit, I will guess that you don’t want to be too full. You don’t want to feel heavy and bloated as you sit there in your bathing suit.

There is now way to hide. You are forced to look at yourself. You are forced to look at each other. You are exposed to the world. Every inch and every pound is right there. It is right there for you to see and it is right there for everyone else to see.

One thing that can influence what you eat and how you think is the reality of right now. Right now, if you can see yourself for what you look like, how you feel and what your body is now, you will make decisions that will keep that on your mind.

We have all heard the phrase: “I’m not worried about that now.” Or “Someday I will change that.” These statements of procrastination are all too common. Why are they so common? Likely because we really believe that there isn’t a problem now. When you put on your big sweater and stay inside over the winter, you don’t notice weight gain. The longer you go without looking in the mirror (really looking!) the longer you can go without seeing the weight.

For most people, it IS being added. The average person in the US gains about a pound every year. Some gain more, while others actually lose weight. Despite the national trend, I know that there are many people that are living healthy and will continue to do so.

What do these people do that others don’t? They look at their current state, compare it to their desired state and they do what it takes to bring them together. In order to look at their current state they have to take a look in the mirror. It has to be an honest look at where they are. Think about it again: you are standing in front of the mirror in your bathing suit. What do you see? Is it what you want to see? What decisions are you going to make right now to make sure that eventually, you will see what you want to see when you stand here?

These questions are not always easy to ask. But that is the point. It’s not always easy to stand in front of the mirror in your bathing suit. Easy is not always the best option. Easy does not always get you where you want to go. Health itself is not always easy. Some of the things you do to live healthy may take a little more time or effort, but they do get you where you want to go.

Remember that wherever you want to go, you have to start somewhere. No matter where you want to go, you can only start where you are. In order to know where you are, you have to look in the mirror. When you sit down to eat lunch, dinner or any other meal, think about where you are and where you want to go. Is the food you are going to eat helping you get there? What choice can you make to help yourself?

Amy’s theory that we would all make better choices if we wore bathing suits every day makes sense to me. If you could see everything, wouldn’t you eat lighter? I would. In fact, I do. During my conversation with Amy, I thought back to all the times I have been to a beach, lake or pool. On those days I never over ate. Why? Because I was sitting there with my shirt off and didn’t want to feel like I was stuffed.

If we walked around like that every day, we would assess your current state. You would have to because it would be on display for you and everyone else. Next time you eat, drink or debate exercise, simply apply the bathing suit test: What would you do if you were wearing a bathing suit?

Complaints Don't Solve Problems

2009-12-11T16:42:00.001-06:00

It is easy to complain, it is more difficult to act. I see this played out in politics all the time. It’s an old classic: someone has an issue so they complain about it. Someone else fixes the issue by acting on it and they still get complaints because it wasn’t done right. Well, those people that acted deserve thanks. They deserve to be treated as if they solved a problem. Most likely they did solve a problem.

No matter what your view is, you can clearly see that they did more than the complainers. You can see that they have put themselves in a position to be praised for their efforts. At least they should be given a break right? Right? Watching how our society is operating now, I’m not so sure that we actually see it this way.

At this point, we are willing to put fourth more effort to complain about a problem than we are to try and fix it. Think about it, we’ve all turned on the radio or television to listen to opinions. We’ve all seen the headlines and heard from the experts as they tell us what is wrong with the world. Everyone has a complaint.
Unfortunately, complaints don’t solve problems.

Maybe that was my first mistake- turning on the television. I noticed long ago that the media was showcasing, if not looking for negativity. We are shown 9 negative stories for every positive story. I don’t have the exact figures on the ration, so don’t complain. Actually, I wouldn’t mind if you wanted to help me get it right, so feel free to share any stats here.

Stats or no stats, it is clear that there is a lot of negative reporting. Some say that this is simply a reflection of what is going on in the world. They say: “the world is a negative place, so that is what we are reporting.” I can see where they are coming from…if they are watching television all day.

What I can’t see is why we continue to spend so much energy on the negative. Maybe we are actually spending less energy being negative because it is just so easy to do. Think about it, all you have to do is agree with your complaining neighbor or join in on the conversation about how bad things are with your coworkers. There is a negative conversation taking place everywhere we turn.

It may actually take more energy to get away from them or turn them into positive conversations. Have you tried it? I would be a hypocrite if I simply complained about the complainers without offering a solution.

The solution: don’t participate. It’s that simple. It seems more difficult, but it really isn’t. There is always a choice when you are thinking or talking about something. There is a positive and a negative road in front of you at all times. All you have to do is listen to your own voice and choose not to go down that road.

What does this have to do with health? Well, that is a good question considering that we’re 500 words in we haven’t even touched on health yet. (Thanks for sticking with me, by the way) Health is what got me thinking about positive and negative. It was actually a complaining person that brought this conversation on.

It started with a participant that was unhappy. What they were originally unhappy with, I don’t know. We never got far enough into the conversation to discuss any actual causes or reasons. I simply got to hear what was wrong with me and my program. I found this odd because I usually only hear good things. Not that everything is perfect, but there is a reason that I do this for a living. Most of my conversations are about how people have made great changes and are feeling good.

You can imagine my shock when I heard the following.

As I’m talking to this person that is telling me about what they don’t like, they shared this with me:

They were unhappy with the help that I was giving them
They didn’t see the value of participating and didn’t want to do it anymore
They would still stay signed up, but not participate for a discount on their healthcare
They were not reaching their goals

I tried not to take these comments too personally, but I did not take them lightly. Negative feedback is a very serious issue and I want to take it in so I can improve. My goal is help you reach your goals, so I need to be doing things as well as I can in order to do that. This feedback was something that I thought would help me do that, so I welcomed it and continued the conversation.

As the conversation continued, the complaining participant told me the above issues they had. My first instinct was to listen to their objections and empathize with their position. Before I try to find a solution, I need to acknowledge what their complaints are. Once I have all of that information and am certain that they feel they’ve been heard, I can hopefully offer a solution.

That is where I came to realize that this person was simply complaining and needed someone to complain to. Their first issue (the help I was giving) was addressed by them accusing me of not giving them specific feedback on their goals. They failed to send me any information on their goals between our last conversations. How can I help you with something that I don’t know about? In other words, how can you get what you want if you don’t take the necessary steps?

The conversation continued and they shared how they didn’t see the value and didn’t want to participate. They would however, stay in the program to receive their discount on health insurance. To clarify, I don’t want to do anything to actually improve my health or bring down my medical expenses, but I want to pay less for the coverage.

The final complaint was really the first complaint and reason for this conversation in the first place. This person was not reaching their goals. They had not stuck with the action plan that they decided would help make the changes that they wanted to make. They needed help, which is what I am here for, but they didn’t share their challenges with me. Instead they complained about the program.

Sound familiar? A problem arises, they choose to complain about said problem and go as far as blaming someone else for it? Now hopefully you can see how this relates to health. Again, it is easier to complain about the system than it is to participate in the system and make it work for you.

In this case, there weren’t even changes to be made with the system. This person was not complaining about how things worked. They were complaining about how they were not getting what they wanted. When in fact, they were getting what they put into the program. They were receiving the same service as everyone else and all they had to do was participate and all of their problems would’ve been solved. Unfortunately, there was no action taken. There was only a complaint. What have we learned about complaints? They don’t solve problems!

I still take this very seriously. I am not making light of anyone’s health challenges, nor am I bad-mouthing anyone for having trouble reaching their goals. I continue to support this person and they will continue to remain nameless despite us discussing their situation. They are still in my program and we are working through this. The key word with our program now is WORK. The root of this entire problem was not reaching goals. The initial reaction was to complain, but now that we are back where we need to be, the real solution has revealed itself: we have to fix the problem.

If the problem is “I’m not reaching my goals”, which is how they later explained it to me, the solution is to go back and change the plan so you can start reaching your goals. The solution is not to quit and blame someone else. That doesn’t work in any area of life. We all tried that as kids: “he hit me first”, ok, that may be true, but you chose to react by hitting him back. Now you have a problem and you have to deal with the consequences.

What are you going to do to fix it? You can complain and say “it’s not fair” or you can deal with it, learn from the experience and handle it differently next time. Only then, will you avoid the punishment. By choosing a different action, you get a different result. If we choose the same action (complaining, blaming, quitting), we get the same results: failure, disappointment and more complaints!

I learned a valuable lesson from this situation. Your health is just that: YOUR health. I have talked and written about that for a long time, but this reinforced it. If you want it to improve, there is one person that can make it happen: YOU. You are the only one that can set your goals and take the steps to reach them. I can help, your friends and family can help, but YOU are the one in control. No one else can take credit for your success, but that also means that no one else can take the blame for your failure.

As a society we have a lot to learn about this concept. Our health problems are a glaring indication of that. We need to do more than voice an opinion or make a negative comment to fix the problem. My program is not designed to create magic results with no effort. Our healthcare system is not designed to create magic cures with no prevention needed. If it was, I’d be a gazillionaire and we wouldn’t be in this mess with a broken healthcare system. We each need to take responsibility for our actions if we want the results we say we want.

That may have sounded like a complaint. Maybe it was a complaint. It is a justified complaint because it is only a fraction of the energy that I am expending. I am expending my energy trying to change the way the system works. I am trying to change the way each and every one of us works. I focus on this day in and day out. I focus on ways to help you live a healthier and happier life.

Because I put so much energy into helping people, it hurts when they don’t appreciate it. It did hurt a lot to get negative feedback. But, what hurt more in this situation was the fact that it wasn’t really feedback. It was just a complaint. As I’ve illustrated in this article, complaints don’t solve problems.

So what can you do? You can participate. You can get in the game and make the changes that you want to see made. You can choose not to participate in negative conversations. You can even choose to feel good and be happy. All you have to do is act. Stop complaining and act. If you just complain, you know what will happen: nothing but more complaints.

Whose goals are you reaching?

2009-12-07T15:57:00.001-06:00

In a conversation with a client this week I was reminded of the importance of goals. We talk about goals all the time. I don’t know if I’ve ever written an article that didn’t mention goals. Setting goals is clearly important and we will continue to discuss them. This conversation took things a step further though.

Setting goals is still the key to achieving success. I haven’t had too many people argue that. What often gets over looked is the goal itself. When people don’t reach goals they look for reasons. It is easy to just pick a goal that sounds good and commit to reaching it. What is difficult it reaching goals that are not your own. Setting goals that are not yours make it difficult to stay motivated and reach them.

Example: My friend has been running marathons for the past few years. He trains for most of the year and runs one marathon each year.

It would be very easy for me to look at his routine and say: I can to do that. “I
can do that” is one thing, but “I want to do that” or “I am going to do that” are very different things. I already run regularly. My distance is not far off from some of the training runs to prep for a marathon. I considered adopting this training plan and entering a marathon, but ultimately decided against it.

I still run. The distances and times are not going to prepare me for a marathon, but that is ok. I’m not training for a marathon. I am running because I like running. I am running because my dogs like running and we can all use the exercise. I’m not saying that I will never run a marathon. I’m just saying that my routine is not to get myself ready for a marathon.

Just like I made the decision to run on the days and at the distance that I enjoy, my client was able to do the same. She wasn’t deciding to run a marathon or not, but she was deciding exactly what she wanted to be doing.

That is the key. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to start going to the gym to walk on the treadmill or if she was going to simply walk outside. It wasn’t easy for her to make up her mind. There were pros and cons to doing both. The key for her was to think about what she wanted to do. I could’ve weighed in with my opinion, but then she would be doing my routine. If she does my routine, how does she reach her goals? She doesn’t. She needs to do her routine in order to reach her goals.

And you need to do your routine in order to reach your goals. No matter what results you are looking for, they have to be the results that you want. Only when the actions that will lead you to those results are the actions you want to be taking, will you reach these goals. This works because they are your goals.

Minor Details, Major Impact

2009-11-30T17:49:00.001-06:00

Many things we do on a day to day basis are done without thinking. We do them so often that they become automatic. This is how we form habits. It’s that simple: when you do something enough times, it becomes part of your routine.

These habits become engrained in the routine and we no longer have to think about them. Often they are big, significant actions that take some time such as showering, shaving or even going to the gym. These habits, while they can become automatic, still take some planning and time to accomplish. They are important, so we put in the effort needed in order to make them part of the routine.

I want to talk about the less significant details in our routines. These activities don’t take as much time and often don’t even require a conscious thought to get done. While the little habits may get forgotten, they still get done. Why do they still get done? They still get done because they are every bit as important as the bigger things, they simply aren’t as big.

What habits fall into this category? The first things that come to mind are putting on your seat belt or brushing your teeth. Neither of these habits takes much time. They don’t require a lot of effort. In fact, you may not even think about doing them at all, but you still do them. You do them every day.

Why do you just brush your teeth first thing in the morning? Why do you put your seatbelt on before you take off in your car? You do both because they are important. They both make a significant impact on your day and even your life.

Health has a major impact on your life too. You don’t have a life without health. The life you do have is not the one you want if your health is poor. For that reason, we spend time discussing options for keeping health where you want it…up and good.

If we don’t keep our health up, we know the consequences. I guess knowing the consequence just isn’t enough when it comes to our health. We continue to ignore advice and refuse to care for ourselves despite knowing what is best for us. This doesn’t make sense to me as we clearly get it in other areas.

It is enough when it comes to wearing our seatbelts. We know that we could end up seriously injured or dead if we don’t wear them. No one wants that. So we wear our seatbelts. We also honor the connection with brushing our teeth and the consequences of not doing it. We don’t want to walk around with green, rotting teeth and breath that arrives before we do. So we brush our teeth.

The key to living healthy is to honor the connection between habits and the consequences they bring. It is always about action and results. Actions yield results. If we want certain results, we need to get in the habit of certain actions. It is that simple.

It is my mission to have everyone saying the following: “I don’t want to feel like crap every day, so I will take care of my health.” Or “I want to feel better, so I will change my diet and exercise.” Even these statements sound simple and obvious when you see them in writing.

What isn’t so simple is the fact that little actions can lead to big results. Just like the simple act of putting on a seatbelt can save your life, other minor details can have major impact on your life. I suppose that means that the real key to living healthy is more than just action and results.

Or maybe it’s less. Less meaning the size and significance of the action can be minor while the impact or result can be major. When you put it that way, it actually makes it feel simpler. Tying this into your health routine is a great way to start moving in the right direction. Sometimes it can feel like you aren’t doing anything significant by making one little choice. Sometimes it can feel like the little things don’t matter. Despite this feeling, they do matter. Every action has a result, no matter how significant (or insignificant) it feels.

As much as it can feel like they don’t mean anything. Just remember that each little thing you do can have a big impact. If you know that (and think about it regularly) it will be easier to keep going. It is easy to forget the little things and their impact, but it will help you succeed. As you continue to do the little things or minor details, you will make them part of your regular routine.

As you know, the actions will lead to results. The more you continue the action, the more you continue to see the results. Even if the actions are small and feel like minor details, they can still have big results and a major impact.

Do you have an example of a minor detail that has had a major impact in your life? Share your comments and help others see how they can progress too!

Holiday Survival: Model to Help You Enjoy the Holidays

2009-11-23T17:03:00.002-06:00

The holidays are here. For many of us this can be a season of stress. It’s a shame that we have to look at such a fun and festive season as stressful, but when you are trying to manage your health, it can quickly feel that way.

The average person puts on a pound at Thanksgiving alone. The scary part is that they don’t take it off during the rest of the year. That’s right, the average person gains a pound every year. That doesn’t sound like much, but where does that put you in 5 years…10 years…20 years? You can do that math and see that it puts you somewhere you don’t want to be.

So how do we cope with “stress season”? I call it the PLAY model. The PLAY model is the key to getting through the “stress season”. By focusing on these steps, you can actually enjoy the coming months!

The PLAY Model

Planning

Planning your events and obligations can make it more manageable. Many of us try to be everywhere and do everything. Before committing to going everywhere or doing everything, take a look at when and where things are taking place. Often, by making some decisions or even just minding the order of your events, you can make life much easier on yourself. Plus, once you know you plan on going to an event, you can make adjustments to the rest of your week or day to make sure that you aren’t overwhelmed.

Listing

Once you’ve decided which events you will attend, list them or put them on your
calendar. Seeing them in an organized (planned) way can feel less overwhelming. Armed with the list of your obligations, you are better equipped to handle the season. Have you ever felt like you were never done? Or you always had another place to be? If you put together a schedule and stick with it, you won’t feel this way. In fact, just seeing the events can help you feel more in control. And when you are in control, everything is easier.

Attending

This seems odd, I know, but by attending is the next step. It sounds automatic to be there, but this is taking it to another level. By attending, I mean truly being present the events. When you are consciously and making an effort to enjoy yourself will remind you of why you are going in the first place. Some people like to list all of the positives of attending events before they go in order to focus on the positives. This can help you stick with diet goals by enjoying a conversation instead of going back for more pie.

You

It’s all about you. This should probably be the first step, but that would ruin my
acronym. YOU can decide what is realistic and what’s not. As you look at your goals, you can decide what you want to do. Making sure you stick to your plan through busy times will help you stay energetic and feeling good. If you are feeling good and taking the time for yourself, you will be able to prevent unnecessary stress from ruining your holiday season.

Stay tuned for the next step in the process. It's called The STAY Model and it can help you keep your routine on track during and after the holidays.

Have a Happy and Healthy Thankgiving!

You Only Get One Body

2009-11-09T18:44:00.002-06:00

Your body has to last your whole life. I recently met with someone that gave me this great analogy. I really like analogies that help you picture your health in a logical way. This particular analogy made me think and helped me go into more detail on how we can take better care of ourselves:

Picture yourself buying a car. It’s your first car and you get to select the car of your choice. You choose the make, model, color and every detail down to the cup holders.

Now, picture that you are trying to make this car last the rest of your driving career. It will be the only car that you own and it is up to you to make it last as long as you can.

Think about it. How well are you going to take care of this car? Are you going to keep your car in to shape? Are you going to get the required maintenance done? I’ll bet that you are going to do all of the above. In fact, most of us do this on cars that we don’t have to make last more than a few years.

If it is so natural to maintain our cars, why don’t we treat our bodies the same way? After all, your body has to last the rest of your life. No matter how long (or short) it is your body as to last your whole life. Let’s take a look at some scenarios that sound ridiculous, but most of us are still doing (or not doing).
Fuel grade

When you buy your car, you look at the type of fuel that it needs. You fill it with gasoline every time, because that is what it needs. You wouldn’t put some cheap blend of gas made at an unauthorized station or in someone’s garage. If you did, you know that your car wouldn’t run well. Even if the person who sold it to you said that it would only hurt performance a little or you that it would be cheaper more convenient to use this fuel, you would not do that to your car.
Scheduled Maintenance

When your car is due for an oil change, you don’t hesitate to take it in to get that done. When you hear a strange noise it doesn’t have to go on for long before you take the car in for maintenance. Why are you so quick to mind these signals? Not because you want to spend more money at the mechanics, but because you know that by not tending to this maintenance, you will incur much bigger expenses when they lead to larger problems. Not only are the expenses greater, but it’s just not good for the car.

I don’t understand why we don’t treat our bodies this way. We know that when we put sub-par food in our bodies that we are causing damage. Granted, poor nutrition doesn’t cause issues instantly, but think about the difference between feeling energized and feeling sluggish on a typical day. The sad part is that most of us don’t remember what it feels like to be energized since the sluggish days have become the norm.

As for the maintenance, we know that exercise is what the body needs to perform as it should. We would never choose not to change the oil in our car because we didn’t have time or because we are tired. We would think about the alternative (problems and expenses) and do what we know is the smart thing to do.

I hope this analogy sheds a new light on how we care for our bodies. To be honest, I like these analogies because they help me picture my own health in a logical way. Most of my conversations are due to my own thinking and vice versa. If it makes sense to me and helps me keep things moving in the right direction, hopefully it can do the same for you. I think we can all use any chance to simplify things for us.

I also hope that we can all take a good look in the mirror and start caring for ourselves. We are constantly abusing our bodies through lack of sleep, poor nutrition and inactivity to name a few. For some reason, it is easier to care for our cars that it is to care for ourselves. We spend more time and money on vehicle maintenance yet virtually none on self-maintenance.

This will eventually catch up to each one of us. In fact, the effects are happening now, many of us just choose to make excuses or ignore them altogether. Next time you have a choice (which is every day) remember that your body has to last your whole life.

Uncertainty got you worried? Certainty could be worse for you.

2009-11-07T05:28:00.002-06:00

Being a business owner, I have to stay up on the economy. It is important for me to know the latest concerns in the business community as they affect my business as well as my clients and partners. One common theme over the past few years has been uncertainty. The financial collapse and housing market woes lead to many other problems for us. Most of these problems have led us to feel uncertain about what to expect in the coming weeks, months and years.

As I work with individuals, I see more uncertainty. The state of our healthcare system is uncertain. We don’t know what will happen. There are debates, threats and even ultimatums flying around from Washington all the way to our living rooms. We know that there is change on its way, but we don’t know what that change will be.

While uncertainty can feel uncomfortable, I know another feeling that is far more difficult to deal with. It’s called certainty. Now, certainty seems like it should be comfortable and safe. We think that certainty is automatically good considering the negative feelings associated with uncertainty.

But this is not always the case. What about when problems are certain? How do we handle certainty when we know that it is a bad thing? That is where the exception comes into play. I talk to people about their health every day. As we discuss their goals and challenges, I continue to see the fear of uncertainty come into play. While I understand the concerns and often have some of the same concerns myself, I have trouble with a plan of action that seeks certainty and only certainty.

Why do I have trouble with this? I have trouble because certainty doesn’t mean it’s a positive outcome. In fact, I have seen a frightening trend toward certainty. There is a great deal of uncertainty that we are trying to avoid. The problem is, there are many certainties that are even worse.

When it comes to people and their health, there is one thing that is very certain. Health is declining and costs are rising. Healthcare has become very expensive in the US. Healthcare is used more and more every day. We continue spend more now than we ever have before. What’s worse, the costs continue to increase so we keep breaking our own records. We are hitting record highs for spending and record lows for overall health.

With this trend, you would think we would look for some uncertainty to help avoid this. It would be logical for us to start looking for new ways to live healthy, change the way we do things and create a NEW certainty.

My programs do this. My clients and their employees are already thinking this way. I wish I could say that we are all thinking this way. Unfortunately, the majority of people are still doing things the old way. Letting their health happen to them and depending on the doctor to fix things when they go wrong is the old way, but it is all too common. The process is certain and of course the results are certain. The old way yields the same old results- poor health and less happiness.

It is my mission to help businesses and employees create a new process that yields new results- better health and more joy as you control your own life. I know that it is uncertain in the beginning, but it’s all worth it when you avoid the problems that we know come along with the old process. That is the alternative when you seek certainty and only certainty. Problems are the only certainty when you don’t take charge of your health.

Halloween Candy Quiz

2009-10-30T13:10:00.001-05:00

Halloween Candy Quiz

Posted using ShareThis

Free to Be Healthy

2009-10-27T17:26:00.002-05:00

I was watching TV on a Sunday morning when I ran across a show that caught my attention. This show was a news show on a network channel and has been on the air for a number of years. The show rotates topics of national interest and this particular show was right up my alley.

They were discussing the obesity epidemic in America. Much like we discuss each week, they covered many aspects of the problem and even tried to offer solutions. As I watched it was easy to see not only the significance of our current situation, but also how we have gotten into it in the first place.

That is where I started to become alarmed. It is one thing to be an individual that has struggled to reach goals. I deal with that every day. As a health coach, I deal with people trying to lose weight, quit smoking and every goal you can think of that falls within those categories.

What I have realized over the years is that I’m not just dealing with each person. I am dealing with a national problem. Sure, I’m only working with one person at a time or a small group of people at most, but we all live in a society that has continued to create our own epidemic.

Health has become more elusive as a healthy lifestyle has been supported less over the years. It is cheaper and easier to eat the food that has the least amount of nutritional value. It is easy to be inactive and will only get easier as we continue to find new ways to make things more automated. We have gotten to the point where the leading causes of death are things that we are causing ourselves.

The show wasn’t simply painting a negative picture of our culture. It was actually explaining how we developed the economy with needs that lead us down this path. There were some very interesting aspects of our situation that really made me think. The most interesting part is that we are both the cause and the effect of the changes that have taken place.

Technology has played a big role. With more automation, we are able to get more done by doing less work. As that has become the expectation, we began to demand more work from each person to keep up with this high-output expectation. Industries that were more service oriented began to do the same with hours, demanding more time from each employee. As time became scarce, a new way of eating became the norm- fast food.

Now that we have less time, food comes to us much more quickly and we are able to stay on track with the busy schedule. Marketing and Advertising took this to another level. We were shown hundreds of options and how they would make our lives easier and more pleasurable. It became nearly impossible to avoid the messages of all these products.

Our waistlines and medical check-ups began to show this quickly. As we all know, the quickest, most impulse-driven choices aren’t always the best for us. This has been clear for some time and we are really seeing the consequences.

There were a few figures discussed on the show that really jumped out at me. One of them is the fact that smoking and obesity are now the top two causes of preventable death. That means that cigarettes and French-fries are killing more people each year than guns and car accidents. It is not surprising when you think about the fact that heart disease is now the leading cause of death in both men and women.

Those are medical figures that may or may not hit home for you. I must admit, they don’t always hit home for me either. I can appreciate the significance of the numbers, but when I look in the mirror, I’m not thinking about my risk for heart disease. Even when I am working out, I’m not “lowering my morbidity”. I’m thinking about feeling good. I’m simply living healthy.

Feeling good and living healthy are easier said than done, however. As I have discovered by talking to thousands of people about their health and how they could improve it, I have learned that knowing something and doing it are completely different things. There is even a difference between wanting to do something and doing it. That is where the most shocking figure came from as I watched this show.
A recent poll revealed that 60% of people want to lose weight. This number seems high until I thought about the obesity rate in our country. Over 60% of all Americans are overweight, so it makes sense that they would want to lose weight. So what are they doing about it? There lies the biggest issue. Of those 60% of people who want to lose weight, only 30% of them is actually trying.

That number just shocks me. Every time I see it, say it, write it or even think it, I can’t believe that there are so many people that want to do something but are not doing it. What is stopping them? What is keeping them from doing what they want to do? Are we not in America? Is this not the land of Freedom?

I still think it is. I think we are living free. There are still problems with this freedom. As the show illustrated the economic changes resulting from the changes and in turn causing more changes, we are being shown many options. The problem is that the options that we are choosing are not always the best for us. That is old news. I don’t need to tell you what is good or bad, healthy or unhealthy.

I just want us to start asking ourselves the question: who is making choices for me? Are you making choices for yourself or is the advertising world making them for you. We have an amazing gift in our freedom. The problem is we are not using it to help ourselves. How else, would we be able to assert the fact that we want to do something, but still not do it.

What is even more interesting is the fact that a whole new industry came out of this shift. The health and fitness industry is huge and continues to grow. Despite our declining health, we spend billions every year on weight loss products. Does that make sense? We are paying to be less healthy.

I’m glad the industry became a reality, or I wouldn’t have a platform to run my business. It is important that we have products and services to help people live healthy lives. I think the problem still lies in our choices. It’s not just how much we are spending, it is what we are spending it on. What is valuable and what is not?

Every day in America we put forth a great deal of effort to not put forth an effort. The new tricks and schemes that promise to bring us results just leave us in a worse position than we started from. When you try something and it doesn’t work, that is very discouraging. It now becomes even more difficult to try something else. Eventually most Americans just stop altogether and become one of the 30% that wants to lose weight but “can’t”.

What do we need to do? We need to start using our freedom to help ourselves. The choices we make have to be for us and not for the sake of time or convenience. If you want to be sick, tired and die a miserable death at a young age, by all means, do that. But I don’t think that any of us want that. We want to be healthy. We want to enjoy life. What is more enjoyable, the above circumstance or getting up 20 minutes earlier and exercising?

Change may seem difficult. It may even be difficult for you to get started. I get that. I’m not saying it should be automatic. What I am saying is: use the freedom you have to choose what you want. Not just short-term things like: I’m tired this minute so I want to eat chips on the couch. I’m talking long-term like: I want to feel good each day, so I am going to do things that help me feel good each day.

When it’s in writing it sounds much more black and white. That is why I wrote this article. After watching a show that illustrated so many of our issues and how we got into them, I really felt that I needed to put these thoughts on paper. Now that I read them myself, it makes it much clearer that my clients are dealing with their own issues, but they are also dealing with our cultural issues. That culture starts at the national level and trickles all the way down through every structured group along the way, such as communities, workplaces, schools and families.

I realize now that we need to start building healthy environments, not just by providing healthy options. We need to take it a step further and help people understand what they want. What choices they have and how they can make it work for them. After all, we all want to be healthy, right? So what is stopping us from being healthy? The environment may provide choices that are not ideal for us, but we are all making those choices every day. Let’s start thinking about them a little more carefully and we will all be better off.

True Reform

2009-10-19T17:06:00.002-05:00

There are three areas that need clarification: Healthcare, Health Insurance and Health. These three terms are often used interchangeably, but they are very different from one another. Despite the recent conversations around all of these areas, the focus has been quite uneven. We all know what these terms mean. I just thought it was time for a refresher:

Health: our state of being in good condition, what we all want and need to live the
lives we want

Healthcare: the service that takes care of us and keeps us in this condition or
brings us back to the condition of health

Health insurance: the coverage that insures us access to such care

The reason these three areas keep coming up in conversation is the fact that they are all sources of great pain. In the US today, we are spending a lot of resources trying to fix a broken system. We have seen problems and have started to work on solutions. This is a good thing, but I think we should spend a little more time in one of the categories before we think we have a fix for the other two.

Don’t get me wrong. I agree that there are some system issues that can be improved. I’m glad we are working on solutions, but I have one major problem with the current conversation: none of the proposed solutions address health as a way to fix healthcare or health insurance.

So which category is being neglected? The same category that has led us down our current path: Health. There is a reason the word health is in the title of the other two categories. Health is the root of the problems we are dealing with.

What is the problem exactly? Well, for starters, going back to the definitions above: healthcare is there to provide us with medical tools and service to maintain our health. Health insurance is simply in place to provide coverage so that we can pay for such service when we need it.

Why do we need healthcare or the coverage to pay for it? Because our health is not what is should be. Clearly, we only use healthcare and health insurance to improve our health. When there is a problem with health, we use healthcare. Health insurance helps us pay for that care. The end goal is to bring back or keep health. That is why we see the doctor. The hospitals, clinics, specialists and all healthcare professionals are in place to keep us healthy or to care for us when we are not.

We can talk about the system and how care costs too much. We can conclude that with rising cost of care, insurance will also be high. This makes perfect sense. However, we fail to mention that health is at the root of it all.

Why should health be included in the solution to healthcare or health insurance? Because, we have more control over our own health than we have over a complex system like healthcare or health insurance. Our health (or lack of care for it) is what
broke our system in the first place.

Now, this isn’t all bad. In fact it can be a good thing if you can look it from my perspective.
Think about this as a reform plan:

- Everyone takes care of their health and proactively keeps themselves in good
condition

- We need less care for chronic conditions and other preventable diseases
while doctors can offer preventative options rather than reactive techniques
that act as band aids for wounds caused by lifestyle abuse.

- The system will not be overrun with procedures and medications

- Premiums that you and I pay for our insurance coverage is more than enough
to cover the amount of care we need. The money we pay for this for this
care becomes cheaper, causing the insurance rates to come down with them

The most beautiful thing of all is the fact that by improving our health, we are fixing the system. That is the only way healthcare reform will work. Health reform has to take place first. It has to become the responsibility and continue to be a priority for us all.

Any other solution involving care and insurance will break just like our current system if we don’t add health to the equation. No matter how efficient, low-cost or state-of-the-art a new system is, if we continue to overuse, abuse and depend on it to fix years of misuse and neglect (of the system and ourselves), it will fail. The system will break and it will fail.

I know that we all want to be healthy. I also know that we want to feel secure in the quality of care we receive and we want all of this at a reasonable cost. I believe that no one should be without access to care. I also believe that no one should lose their house because of medical bills. No matter what your ideal solution looks like, I think we can all agree that as a world power, we should be healthy and well-taken care of.

While many if these issues are being debated in the care or insurance setting. We must remember one thing: Our health is the biggest factor in this equation. Health is the root of it all. The worst part of this: we are the biggest factor in our own health, which means we are the reason that reform is needed. The best part about this: we are the biggest factor in our own health, which means we are the biggest factor in health reform. That’s right; you are the key to solving the national healthcare crisis. By solving (or hopefully simply avoiding) your own personal health crisis, you are preventing the nation’s health crisis.

I’ve heard from doctors who have stepped up as healthcare advocates. I’ve heard from and work with insurance brokers who continue to be insurance advocates. Both of these groups have come together in many ways across our great nation. The work they are doing is making a difference and will help us move forward.

We’ve got advocates for healthcare and for health insurance, but there is still something missing. Who is an advocate for health? I consider myself a health advocate. I fully accept my responsibility to not only care for my own health, but also to help others maintain a healthy lifestyle.

By doing this we are avoiding many costs and burdens on our system as we prevent chronic diseases. We are avoiding the expense and complications of surgeries and medications. We are even showing the next generation a new way to manage health, healthcare and health insurance.

I can’t do this alone. I will continue to give it everything I’ve got, but I need others to do the same. Each and every one of us has control. You have the solution to the healthcare crisis. The solution is solving the health crisis. That is not a solution that needs to come from Washington. It is not a solution that you’ll find at your doctor’s office or hospital.

The solution is you. By managing your own health, you will solve the problem. Health, healthcare and health insurance come up in the same conversation and are often even used interchangeably. The most important lesson for us all is that we they are not the same. While all three of the areas we’ve discussed are related and are key components to the system. We need remember the root of the system is health - Your health.

Excuses

2009-10-05T17:43:00.002-05:00

There is no shortage of excuses in this world. For every task, there is an excuse for not being able to get it done. It is easy to find them and easy to use them in our everyday lives. Excuses are so easy, that for many, they become the first reaction.

We’ve all been in this situation:

You are in a meeting and someone says: “We are going to need each of you to put in X hours to complete project Y.” As you look around the room, you can see the looks on everyone’s face. You can even hear people start to react with words and gestures.
It almost becomes easier to go along with the doubters than it is to try and accomplish the task.

This was a group setting, so it is more obvious when there are others to share in the reaction. What many people don’t realize is that we do this in our own minds too.

Think about this situation:

You wake up in the morning and think about all of the things you would like to accomplish and before you even start planning, you find yourself running through the list of reasons you can’t do them. For example: “I would like to go for a run today…but, I have to go to work, pick up the kids, go to the store”…not to mention all the other things that seem to pop into your mind at this moment.”

Why do we do this? I think we do this because it’s easier than taking the steps to accomplish the goals. You saw how everyone in the room reacted. You also heard all of the thoughts that ran through your head when you decided you wanted to do something. Those voices and words are very loud.

It is easy to listen to them. Why don’t we listen to the voices that say “Yes, I can do that.” Or “This may take some effort, but I think that I can do it.” If we listen to those voices, we can accomplish the goals we set out to accomplish.

Imagine how much better our lives would be if we had that mindset. We would succeed at one thing after another and that would become the habit. When we form habits, things seem easy to us. That is why, mentally, we think it is easier to give up beforehand, but in reality, it’s only easier because we are in the habit of doing it. We don’t have to think about making excuses. It just comes naturally and therefore, we just continue to do it.

As I help people make changes in their lives, excuses become more and more obvious. It has helped me see the situation more clearly. This situation, that we are all dealing with, has caused some major problems in our lives. It has gotten to the point where many people actually spend more time and energy thinking of reasons why they can’t do something than we would spend just doing it.

The key to living a healthy, successful life is to do. If we don’t do, we don’t accomplish. If we don’t accomplish, we don’t succeed. Excused make it easy for us not to do. In our minds, they excuse us from the expectations. The only problem is that we only realize this excuse in the moment that we decide not to move forward. And every time we do this, it becomes more and more acceptable in our minds to keep doing it.

That is the excuse cycle. Health and everything else in life is easier when we are able to do what we want to do. When we let excuses get in the way, we disappoint ourselves and we lose. When we set goals and take action…you guessed it, we win!

Moving to Live, Living to Move

2009-09-28T19:49:00.001-05:00

Do you end up sitting for most of the day? Most of us do, so you are not alone. Are you looking for ways to add activity to your day? While most of us don’t get enough activity, you still may be in the minority if you are trying to do more. That may seem like a cynical view, but it comes from watching our society find more ways to do less activity. Not that we want to be unhealthy, but it is often easier to go along with the times. As we get more technologically advanced (some would say dependent), our activity seems to become less of a priority.

This actually makes sense the more I think about it. Let’s think back to the turn of the century. In 1900, the average American was doing physical labor in order to earn a living. Now we spend time in automated, sedentary environments. The technology has brought many good things to our culture, so I don’t want to be negative about it. Actually, technology has allowed us to work out in many ways that were not possible before. Plus, now we know so much more about the body, the exercise we do and how it affects us.

So why are we less active now? I think it’s because we didn’t ever have to “exercise” in the sense that we do now. We were active because it was part of our life. If we weren’t active, we didn’t eat. That sounds like the ultimate motivation to me. Not that we don’t have good reasons to exercise now, but when your life depends on it, you will likely do what it takes.

That is the mentality we need to be taking today. It may be a different scenario, but our lives still depend on being active. It’s simple: if we are not active we will not survive. Clearly, it is a much longer process than it was back when we needed to be active to get food. Now we need to be active to burn the extra food that we choose to eat day in and day out.

Activity was part of everyone’s life 100 years ago. It should be that way today as well. You can do it by changing the way you look at exercise. Walking to the mail box, carrying your recycling bin, raking leaves…all of this is activity. By doing more if it, you get more benefits. You don’t have to be sweating in the gym to be getting activity.

Think about it. What if you needed to eat healthy foods and move your body in order to survive? In all reality, this is true. Sure you can survive on fast food and a sedentary lifestyle. I don’t know about you, but just surviving is not enough for me. In order to thrive, we need to care for ourselves. If we don’t, life will be rough.

We all want our bodies to be healthy. Why not do what it takes to be healthy? Why not take care of ourselves? It is as simple as it used to be, we just made it more complicated. It certainly doesn’t have to be complicated. Eat healthy foods and move your body. We’ve known this all along. Somewhere along the line we lost track of how simple it really is. I think it’s time we get back to the basics. We will all feel better and live better lives.

Kids: Why not teach them to live healthy?

2009-09-21T14:47:00.000-05:00

In my last post we discussed weight loss and how looking at it as living healthy rather than losing weight makes it easier to get started. It also makes it easier to stick with it, which is even more important. One thing that I have been thinking about since that article is the obesity epidemic among our nation’s children.

Nearly 1 in 3 kids is obese or overweight. This is tragic! It’s bad enough that adults are so inactive, but now kids are living similar lifestyles. Put fast food and 21st century portion sizes on top of that and it is no wonder kids are following in the footsteps of American adults.

As we discussed weight loss vs. healthy living, the kids came to mind. I have heard parents say, “They don’t need to worry about what they eat”, or “They don’t need the exercise, look how skinny they are”. This is exactly the mentality that has gotten
us into trouble. We think of nutrition and exercise only as ways to lose weight.

We forget about all the other benefits. What’s worse, is that many kids never learn the benefits of living healthy and they go down the same path as their parents. Once they decide that “they need to lose weight” they try to change a lifelong set of habits and often struggle.

What we need to do is show our kids the benefits of living healthy and start them on that path right away. If we do that we won’t need to worry about weight loss. Kids will not gain the weight they are gaining now and there won’t be a need for a drastic change in lifestyle when they are older.

Imagine all of the diseases we will be preventing if this shift takes place! We are already reaching a point where kids are dealing with what were previously adult diseases. Diabetes is one example, but there are many more out there that we could simply eliminate. Forget about managing or living with them, we can simply get rid of the disease.

Weight Loss vs. Healthy Living

2009-09-16T08:16:00.001-05:00

Did you know that weight loss is a new phenomenon? We are the first generation to deal with even being overweight. We have taken it many steps further by building an entire industry around the losing weight. Being part of that industry for years, I don’t have anything bad to say about what we are trying to do. My only issue is with the way we are trying to do it.

Just the term weight loss strikes me as the wrong place to start. I understand that many of us have reached a point where we are overweight and want to lose that weight, but there is so much more. We make it seem that diet and exercise are only for those who need to lose weight. What about the people that have not yet become overweight? Do they not need diet and exercise?

I think we should be focused more on prevention and healthy lifestyle. That changes the entire feel of exercise. If you are presented with an option to live healthy and prevent countless diseases, it is more positive than weight loss. People would be more likely to not only start living healthy, but continue to do it if they weren’t focused solely on losing weight.

So what do we do? Well, that is a great question. The industry seems to be doing quite well selling us the new products, machines and systems. There is a new one every few months that swears to be the best. What’s even better is that we are continually told that it will be easier than “those other things you’ve tried”. What happens when they are not easy? We quit. Add that product to the list of failed attempts at losing weight. Now we’ll wait for the next big thing to come out. We won’t have to wait long.

I’m not an equipment salesman, nor do I recommend any particular plan. I’m not here to debate what works and what doesn’t. I am here to help change the way you look at exercise and nutrition. If you continue to look at it as losing weight, all you will do is focus on the weight you have now, try to find a quick way to reduce it and fail when you realize that this “great plan” doesn’t fit into your routine. Now it will be even more difficult to restart the next plan because you feel defeated. The add told you that this is THE way and it’s SO easy. It doesn’t feel good when something is “easy” and still doesn’t work for you, does it?

What if we looked at our health as an ongoing, lifelong routine that can be changed and improved at will? Wouldn’t life be easier if we just set goals, thought about what we needed to do to reach them and started on our way? I think so. I don’t think we would be worried about losing weight. We wouldn’t be trying to undo years of bad habits in one day, nor would we feel failure for not sticking with an outrageous diet we saw on television.

The beauty of healthy living is that you are not restricted to one way of doing things. You choose what you are going to do and you do it. There is no failure, there is only adjustments. For those that have mastered this lifestyle, it really is easy. It may take time to build into your life, but once you do, it never goes away. Parts of it may go away, if you choose to change your plan, but again, it’s all up to you.

As a health coach, I help people change their mindset. We go from “I want to lose weight” to “I want to live healthy and this is what I am going to do.” It sounds simple…and it is when you really think about it. We’ve overcomplicated a lot of things. Health is one of them. We’ve known for centuries that eating proper portions and staying active led to a longer healthier life. It’s no different today. We may have more options to choose from or more complications, but the bottom line is: You can live healthy if you want to. Stop thinking about weight loss and start living healthy. Weight is only a product of our habits. Change the habits and the mindset and you will change your results.

Measuring Success

2009-09-08T15:30:00.003-05:00

Weight is one way to measure progress toward your diet and exercise goals. The problem is, it is only one way to measure. There are many other ways to measure progress and it is very healthy to do so. It is easy to get caught up in the concern of weight, after all, we call the entire area weight loss, weight control or management and other terms that focus strictly on that one number. My focus with clients is to stop thinking about that one number and start thinking about all the other important factors that are changing as you make progress.
Let’s take a look at some of these other factors that you can use to measure your progress instead of worrying only about weight:

1. How good you feel

This is the easiest, fastest way to check to see how you are doing. How you feel after a workout, when you get up in the morning or when you are doing something in your day to day routine is a great measurement of how you are progressing. Energy level, stamina and even mood are good ways to measure. Many people notice that after a short time, they have more energy and feel more confident. And that’s not even touching on the physical fitness that they have realized which makes movements easier than they were before.

2. How your clothes fit

The biggest problem with getting caught up in the weight number is that we are making progress, but in a different way. Muscle is more dense than fat. When we lose fat and gain muscle, often we are becoming leaner (what we want!) while our weight stays the same or even increases slightly. If we are only focused on weight, we miss the victory here as our clothes fit better and we are decreasing in size. I tell clients that when you walk around in public, you don’t have a number on your chest showing your weight. You only have your body and it’s shape. The better you look, the better you feel. The weight is only a number that you see. No one else knows what it is. They only see your shape today.

3. Exercise capacity

Part of our first option (feeling good) is gaining capacity for exercise that you didn’t have before. As you get started on a routine, you may notice that you get tired at a certain point. As you continue to do this routine, you will get stronger and be able to go for a longer period and keep a higher intensity level. Since we know that the more we work, the more results we get, this is a great way to measure success. Not only are we feeling good because we are able to do more, but we also are doing more. This way, the results are going to continue to come.

4. Body composition

To get more technical with the second option, body composition or body fat percentage is a great way to measure your progress because it gets to the bottom of what we want to do. Rather than weight loss, it should really be called fat loss. As we trim body fat, we shape our bodies to the ideal form. As we discussed, the weight doesn’t always go down in direct proportions here. Because of the different densities and distribution of fat and muscle, you may be losing body fat without actually losing weight.

5. Your ideas

What have you done to measure progress? We want to hear from you on ways that you have stuck with a program and continued to see results. Sharing tips and tricks is a great way to help each other reach goals. We look forward to hearing about your success and how you got there!

Personal Vision

2009-08-31T15:49:00.001-05:00

Your company has a vision. It has a mission statement of a mindset that defines what the purpose and goals are. Each day when your company does business, the person deal that is being made is in line with the vision. If it is not in line, problems occur and the company suffers consequences. Maybe these consequences are major and come in the form of legal action or negative media coverage. Maybe the consequences are minor and only involve some internal conversations to resolve the issues. No matter how it plays out, when a company does things that go against the vision, there are negative consequences.

Each individual person should have a vision too. When you get up in the morning, you know what you have to do and where you have to go. The one thing that many of us don’t think about is the why. Why are we going to the job that we are going to? Why are we even getting up today? There is a whole series of questions that we can ask ourselves to find this personal vision. If we don’t find it, how do we know what is important? The level of importance that we assign a task is not in our control if we don’t match it to our own personal vision. The importance will be determined by someone else.

Instead, why don’t we think about what is important to us and then start planning our agenda? I understand that paying the bills, putting a roof over our heads and having food on the table are all very important. I work to do those things every day too. But what I don’t understand is how we can spend an entire day, career or even lifetime devoted to things that hold no connection with our personal vision. This topic comes up when I talk with coaching clients about what they want to do. Initially I hear, “I want to lose weight” or “I want to quit smoking”. Occasionally, I even hear “I just want to feel better.” That statement, while still very general, is getting us closer to understanding a personal vision.

I’m not suggesting that we all quit our jobs and start an all-consuming self discovery mission. What I am suggesting is that we start a short list of the things that are important to us. Start by making a list of two or three things that you hold to be most important in your life. Once you have your list, think about how much time and effort you put into those things. If you are devoting the most time and energy to the things that you hold to be the most important, you are in line with your personal vision.

Some people like to take it a step further. Many people can identify with the corporate concept of a vision and mission statement. Try to write a brief statement that embodies your values and explains what is most important to you. Once you can do that, you can do much more. You can now measure the things you are doing against this statement. Now you have a gage for every task you complete. Is this important to me? More importantly, why is it important and how important is it to me?

Too often we end up sacrificing what is important to us. Why do we do this? I think it’s because we don’t take time to define our own importance. Not just the things we think are important; my concern is that we don’t define our importance in general. The importance of what you want to do and how you want to feel are being defined by other people in many of our lives. It’s time we took a few minutes to arrange you own list to make sure that your actions today are in line with your personal vision. If they are not, we know that there are consequences.

Living Life: making it easy

2009-08-25T19:26:00.001-05:00

I know that we all appreciate life. Despite all of the complaining we do, we really do enjoy life. After all, what is the alternative? Rather than debate the possibilities of the afterlife, I’d rather keep it simple. Let’s keep it as simple as this: we have a simple decision to make each day. Every day, with everything we do we have to make one decision. That decision is either to get up in the morning and live, or to stay in bed and hide. No matter what else you run into during the day, you’ve already made the decision to get up and live, so why start worrying now?

I was talking to a friend one day after a long day. He had been working very long hours and felt like he wasn’t going to be able to make it to our hockey game that evening. I had experienced the same thing during grueling weeks myself, so I understood where he was coming from. The advice I gave him was directly from a coach that said it to me.

The story of how I discovered the one simple decision:

One day, during hockey practice I was feeling tired. We had a set number of repetitions to get through on a particular drill. We would not be getting done until we had done the drill ten times. The number was ten, period, not eight, not nine, but exactly ten. I was so exhausted that I had to take a knee between one drill and the next. When I did this, my coach came over and said: “you know, you have to do this anyway. “ “I know”, I said with a heavy sigh, “but I am so tired!” When he heard this, my coach asked me a question that seemed out of place for the rink. He said, “Have you ever been bored in class?” I answered with a an emphatic “Yes, of course I’ve been bored in class!” “Well, did the time go any faster when you started to get antsy?” “No”, I answered after thinking about it for a second. “Ok, did you feel good when you got done?” “Yes, I waited so long to get done.” “Did you really?” He asked. “Hmmm, yeah?” I answered as he cracked a smile. His next question was what got me thinking. “Did you feel good, or did you just feel like you were no longer fighting against something?” “Just because you felt antsy and bored during class, doesn’t mean you felt GOOD when class ended. It just means you don’t feel AS antsy or bored.”

What I learned from that conversation was that no matter how much I disliked the end of practice or the end of class or anything else in life, I had a decision to make. That decision is simple. In fact, it is even simpler than I thought it was. The decision is: Do I want to do this the easy way, or do I want to do it the hard way? It is that simple. As you live your life, you can choose to do it the easy way or to do it the hard way.

Now when I say easy or hard, I don’t mean to take the easy way out and never push yourself. That is a different kind of easy. The easy I’m talking about is the state of mind we had when we were kids. Remember when it was easy to enjoy everything? Remember when you smiled all day and laughed at everything that happened without waiting to see if it was an appropriate situation to laugh at?

Somewhere along the line it becomes easier to make life hard. It becomes natural to find all of the things we don’t like about something and focus on them. We focus on them to the point that we are unable to see any good in a situation because we are too busy thinking about everything we don’t like. We will even spend time complaining about good things in our lives. I’m not perfect. I complain. I find things that are good to be a “hassle” or a “burden” just like everyone else. But I noticed something that many of us are doing without thinking about it. We are making life very difficult for ourselves. When given the decision to make life easy or make life hard, we are choosing to make it hard. I don’t know why this is and I don’t even know that I have the answer. What I do know is that we have the power to make a decision. We can decide to make life easier, if we really want to. I believe that when you are truly living your life, you make it easier on yourself and everyone around you.

Live life, enjoy it and make it easy.