There’s a well known and totally accepted axiom in the health and fitness world that warns, “Don’t put anything in your mouth that doesn’t promote health.”

Before you start nervously fidgeting in your seat thinking of your guilty pleasures like fried foods, coffee, alcohol, sugar, cigarettes, white bread, desserts, caffeinated and sugared soft drinks etc. etc., I’d like to say that there’s a happy solution.

“Happy” if achieving optimal health is more important to you than that plate of French fries.  The secret lies in:

1) Occasional abstinence – choosing on a desired emotional outcome, i.e., do you want pleasure (short-term) or happiness (long-term)

2) Education – we can’t learn important health lessons for each other, we must do the legwork ourselves, and

3) Retraining your taste buds in favor of better choices.  It’s this last one that I think requires more examination.

Everyone has heard the expression “it’s an acquired taste.” It usually means starting off with an unpleasant taste and over time developing a preference for that taste over the taste it replaced.

That’s not going to happen without a decision and a good reason to decide, like optimal health.

For instance: grilled over fried, 5-6 proportionally controlled meals over 2-3 big meals, Splenda over sugar, whole grains over white bread, margarine with healthy fats over butter or margarine with trans-fats, etc.

Now that wasn’t so bad was it?

Now comes the toughies. These choices may take a probationary time but remember that the new taste is acquirable and it then becomes very difficult to return to the old preference once the new taste is acquired, e.g., 2% over whole milk, diet and uncaffeinated soft drinks over regular, decaf over regular coffee, moderation of desserts over making only choices based on taste, abstinence of dessert (best) over moderation of desserts (good), etc.

Great outcomes are never random events and a healthy and fit you is certainly a “great outcome.” Don’t be a wondering generality, be a meaningful specific. You make hundreds of decisions every day; make a few more for a better long-term you.  Cheers.

If you are one of the millions who made the most common New Year’s resolution — “lose some weight” — then I have a question for you.

How did that first month go?

Before you answer, let’s take a look at why losing weight is such a common goal.

• WE INHERENTLY KNOW THAT BEING OVERWEIGHT IS NOT HEALTHY AND EVENTUALLY, IF UNATTENDED, WILL AFFECT OUR QUALITY AS WELL AS QUANTITY OF LIFE
• WE CARE WHAT THE WORLD CAN SEE
• OUR MEDIA PROMOTES AND PERPETUATES OVER EATING
• OBESITY IS THE BIGGEST HEALTH PROBLEM IN AMERICA SO THE PROBLEM IS VERY COMMON
• 60% OF AMERICANS ARE EITHER PRE-DIABETIC OR WORSE AND MOST DON’T EVEN KNOW IT AND THE BIGGEST INFLUENCE ON DIABETES IS BEING OVERWEIGHT
• AMERICA IS THE OVERWEIGHT NATION – THE ONLY COUNTRY ON THE PLANET THAT HAS OVER EATING AS ITS #1 PROBLEM

WHY IS “LOSE SOME WEIGHT” THE MOST ABANDONED NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTION?

• WITH NO SUPPORT OR ENCOURAGEMENT, IT’S HARD
• WITH THE EFFORT TO PREPARE AND PLAN, IT’S HARD
• UNHEALTHY FOODS ARE VERY AVAILABLE, PROMOTED, FASTEST, AND ARE THE CHEAPEST

WHY IS IT IMPORTANT TO ACHIEVE AND KEEP A HEALTHY WEIGHT?

• 10% LOSS IN WEIGHT REDUCES RISK OF WEIGHT-RELATED DISEASE BY ABOUT 50%
  • HIGH BLOOD PRESS
  • HIGH BAD COLESTEROL
  • GOUT
  • DIABETES
  • LOAD-BEARING JOINT DIFFICULTIES
  • SOME ARTHRITUS
  • SOME CANCERS
  • REDUCTION OR ELIMINATION OF MEDICATIONS
  • QUALITY OF LIFE AND QUALITY OF ACTIVITY LEVEL

HOW YOU CAN DO IT?

• SIX  PROPORTIONALLY CONTROLLED MEALS PER DAY
• LESS PREP TIME AND COST THAN WHAT YOU WERE DOING LAST YEAR FOR YOUR DAILY INTAKE
• LOW GLYCEMIC LOW FAT FORMULATIONS
• LETTING A COACH HELP YOU STAY ON TRACK WITH WEIGHT AND EXERCISE
• KEEP CARBS AND PROTEINS IN BALANCE

MYTHS

• “I CAN’T DO IT” – SURE YOU CAN!  COMPARE THE BENEFITS WITH THE EFFORT REQUIRED – IT’S A “NO-BRAINER”
• “I CAN’T CHANGE MY HABITS” – YOU’D BE AMAZED HOW QUICKLY A GOOD HABIT CAN REPLACE A BAD HABIT AS THE PREFERRED BEHAVIOR – ABOUT FOUR WEEKS
• “THERE’S ALWAYS GASTRIC BYPASS SURGERY” – REALLY?  IS THAT REALLY YOUR BACKUP PLAN?
• “I’M OK WHERE I’M AT!” – ASK YOUR DOCTOR; DO YOU HAVE A BODY MASS INDEX (BMI) OF 24 OR LESS?  THE MEDICAL COMMUNITY SAYS THAT A WAIST-LINE SHOULD BE LESS THAN 38” FOR MEN AND LESS THAN 32” FOR WOMEN

To build muscle you need either free weights, a gym membership or a professional trainer. But this is not today’s focus — been there, done that. I’m talking getting health — not some vanity thing. Something that can provide quality as well as quantity of life.

Wow! That’s quite a claim. Well, it’s not my claim — there’s a huge body of evidence provided by the medical community and it’s growing. It asserts that daily exercise provides energy and reduces medical issues (therefore quality) as well as extension of life since it’s a proven reducer of the likelihood of contracting cancer and heart disease and offers basic heart health (therefore quantity).

So whatever “exercise delivery system” you choose — for example, treadmill, power walking, sport stationary bike (my favorite) calisthenics, etc. — do it for an aerobic rate for at least 20 minutes, stay hydrated, and do it at least 4-5 times per week. I also recommend making yourself and your program accountable to someone like a spouse or a health coach like me. I think a health coach is best because it won’t ever take the form of nagging (real or perceived).

This accountability should be at an appointed time and weekly seems to work the best — too often can be overwhelming and too infrequent risks abandonment of the program. Consider, if you know you’re going to talk on Friday with your health coach, your weekday activity will probably reflect this. Especially on the 2-3 days leading up to the conversation. People don’t want to disappoint. We want to do what we say we’re going to do. We want to be people of integrity.

Some words to the wise: schedule the workout and even put it in your calendar — make it a priority because it’ll create an attitude of proactivity. Be realistic by picking a routine that’s do-able long-term and a pace or exertion level that’s medically prudent and that you can handle.

Incidentally, the “fun” part can be with ear buds for listening to an awesome book-on-tape, or if  you’re home, watching a great DVD that you only get to watch the “X” minutes of during a workout so you actually look forward to the workout. In this way you really can create a habit of health.

For more tips on achieving your ideal health and maintaining it, check out the Next Level Coaching – Take Shape For Life website.

The thesis is further “proven” if we examine the importance of keeping your axe sharp.  Now this might be your mental axe or it might be your physical axe.  Doesn’t matter.  If you’re not playing at your best, you’ve handicapped your results.  Life’s too short and difficult and too short to hobble your effectiveness.

Given the need for a good night’s sleep, just how is that done? Remembering that everyone is different, here’s a compilation of some of the better ideas. I’ve drawn liberally from Dr. Wayne Andersen’s “The Habits of Health,” and wish to give him credit for his excellent insights.

• A natural sleep aid is the vitamin Inositol if 500-1000mg is consumed before bedtime
• Don’t go to bed angry with your spouse
• Don’t watch television or eat in bed
• Choose a bedtime that allows eight hours of sleep
• Keep the sleeping area cool and serene
• Find your preferred sleep pattern and try and make it your routine
• Once you wake up, get up
• Limit your afternoon (or later) caffeine – you’d be surprised what has caffeine in it
• Avoid eating within three hours of bedtime, especially avoiding high-glycemic, energy dense, or fatty meals
• If you need something before bed, try a small glass of skim milk or chamomile tea
• Avoid naps – it’s a recipe for the disruption of a good night’s sleep
• If you’re inclined to naps, avoid high glycemic and fatty foods at lunch
• Decrease stimulation
• Minimize liquid intake two hours before bedtime and empty your bladder before bed
• Avoid exercise within two hours of bedtime
• If you have evening medications, take them at least two hours before bedtime
• Avoid all alcohol within ninety minutes of bedtime
• Loose-fitting pajamas and socks to dilate blood vessels in your feet to aid relaxation if needed

For more health tips and advice on achieving your optimum weight, please visit my health coaching website.

Sweet dreams.

We’ve all heard that experience is the best teacher (grandma’s wisdom as it were), but I’d add that “experience is the best teacher as long as it’s someone else’s experience.”

At first hearing, that seems to have the sound of truth but what exactly is wrong with independent thinking and action?

Nothing, really, so long as you’re not “reinventing the wheel.” What’s so good about having a garage full of reinvented wheels especially when all the work it took to reinvent the wheels is considered?

So often we creative thinkers rush off to find the perfect solution to what we think is “the problem” that has never been solved or even thought of. That sounds like a silly thing to do, but who among us do it (besides me)?

Let me point out some pitfalls in the aforementioned “arrogance” of thinking that you’re the first to have “this problem” and you’re the first to solve “the problem.”

1) If you rush off to solve “the problem” without any investigation of what’s been done in the past, it’s as if we have a nail, “the problem”, so now the world looks like a hammer – very limiting and very wrong.

2) We better do the whateveroogle search to check for copyright protection, pre-existing logos, patent searches, correct quote attributions, DBAs, etc. Why wouldn’t we do a Google search, for example, to see if “the problem” has already been solved – at the very least, you’ll get some help and/or ideas regarding “the problem.”

3) You shouldn’t give yourself a haircut or a root canal any more than think you’re the only person to have ever confronted “the problem.”

4) Make sure “the problem” is “THE problem.” For example, how many times do we go shopping for a drill when what we want is a hole.

Maybe there are other ways to do it that are cheaper, quicker, more elegant, etc.

As a continuation of this theme I’d like to offer what we’ll talk about next time – “Ask your wife.”

It’s for the men but it’s about the ladies.

You determined your niche, you’ve started to fill the pipeline and now you’ve converted a suspect into a client.

As that continues you start gathering a “clientele” (that’s a group of life-forms that you’ll want to keep as clients and as referral sources).

You want to build a relationship with each so you’re not strictly transactional. If this is so, you’ll need a client management strategy. Any client management strategy basically recognizes that the larger revenue and referral producing client MUST be given more touches than the client at the other end of the spectrum.

The touches can be periodic calls, mailings like newsletters or strategic news items, event invites, etc.

It’s intuitive to call the prioritized client groupings your “A,” “B” and “C” clients but I’d certainly do something and call them anything, really. Now, even though they’re the “lowest,” you don’t ignore the “C’s,” you just invest a minimum amount of time and treasure.

It’s another expression of the Paredo Principle, a.k.a. as the 80/20 Rule whereby 80% of your revenue and/or referrals will come from 20% of your clients.

It’s also suggested that the prioritization system also includes a mechanism to recognize the conditions necessary to upgrade (or downgrade) the client’s priority.

Keep the system simple — but keep it one way or another. The guy who says, “Oh, I give all my clients equal attention” is a guy who probably only has four clients.

Once you have a single client, you’re in the client retention mode because no matter your business, it’s 5-10 times easier to retain a client than to go find a new one.

There’s a googolplex of techniques for client retention but on top of everyone’s list of client retention techniques is “contact.”

Plain and simple – client retention is a contact sport.

We’ll talk about some of the more inventive contact techniques in a bit.

Just a few years before his death, the world’s smartest man was quoted as defining “insanity” as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

Change requires change.

That’s not zen (maybe it is), it’s logic.

Another great person and author named Charlie “Tremendous” Jones wrote a book a few years back called “Life is Tremendous.”  He became one of America ‘s greatest insurance salesmen, but in this book he claimed that you “make it” with your Plan C.

Since I’m “making it” in my Plan C now I can’t argue. Everything we do, learn and invest our passion in has brought us to this moment in time.

I’ll make the assumption that you’ve learned and applied some things along the way so naturally your Plan C (if you’re there) is going to sparkle more than your Plan B as that did more than your Plan A.

Especially if you’ve been burning your passion like rocket fuel and the trip has been nudging more and more towards your “dream” job or business venture.

I think we get ourselves in total denial when the “appropriate” transition is staring us in the face and we blink first. If your heart says go, I for one would agree – go.  Following your heart has never been bad advice but just standing there with deer-in-the-headlights eyes doesn’t get ‘er done. You can’t steer a parked car.  Sure, you’ll never wreck the car but you’ll never get anywhere either.

As Einstein once said, “fish or cut bait” (well maybe he didn’t say that one, but I bet he wish he had).

For some, it’s denial, others stubbornness, still others it’s fear or maybe lack of simple discernment.

Don’t live a life like most people who “live lives of quiet desperation.” As they say, don’t die with the music still inside and to that I’d add don’t live a life without a passion – we’d like to hear that music NOW.

I was in a study last year where we pondered the notion of “setting your mind.”

It’s not a crazy idea. After all, “as a man thinketh, so is he.” Self-control plays such a large role, but I believe imagination must be considered. For example, say you’re on a diet and you have a beautiful dessert set before you after dinner. If you falter I think it’ll be because you were undone by imagination (the cause) and not a lack of self-control (the effect).

Literally setting your mind can provide “healthier” environments that make the job of having a healthy thought life more likely.

For instance, other ways to create a healthier environment might include the movies we watch, what we read, or the people we choose to associate with.

Are these chosen people lifters or leaners, growers or slowers, builders or destroyers, givers or takers?

If the conversation becomes profane or gossipy or demeaning or hyper critical, why hang around it? Better yet, why be that person who starts it?

Our minds are not garbage cans with hairy lids. If you’re committed to getting better, take control of your environment at least to the level that you can. This will go a long way to helping you set your mind on great things.

A couple of blogs ago we observed that great minds TALK about ideas, mediocre minds TALK about things, and small minds TALK about people. Well the same could be said about thinking — that is, great minds certainly THINK about ideas, etc.

As you know, our minds are wondrous creations and deserving of our respect even though it’s said we only use about 10 percent of our mental capacity. What would happen, do you suppose, if we used more of that mental capacity in the pursuit of controlling our thought life more?

I’ll leave you with one more thought I heard from a great mind years ago: In using sarcasm when talking with our friends and family (anyone really), remember that the sub-conscious mind can’t take a joke.

It’s no wonder that the Bible describes the tongue as a “sword” and cautions about its use. Be careful how you use your “sword.” Peace.

It’s because they’re going it alone. No encouragement. Probably no nutritional guidance.  No successful examples that have gone before.

Let a health coach (like me) take your hand and guide you to your ideal weight, a weight that will probably extend your life, since the AMA says for every 10% of weight loss there’s a 50% drop in the likelihood of contracting weight-related diseases. We’re talking about things like heart disease, high blood pressure, hyperglycemia, diabetes, gout, etc.

My preparation for this expansion of my coaching business had its origin last December when my doctor said I was “pre-diabetic.”

That simply jarred me into action. I stopped eating desserts and anything that looked like sugar. I lost a little weight but it yo-yo’d and the glucose level stayed high.

Then came some heart issues in the form of atrial-fibrillation. So when a good friend told me he had a possible solution, I had the ears to hear. I proceeded to lose 20 pounds in a month and dropped almost 20 points in my glucose level, taking me completely out of the “pre-diabetic” range.

I had no choice but to add health coaching to Next Level Coaching.

Give me a call today at (805) 340-8654 and I’ll give you more information on this life-saving plan.

Or, to learn more, go to Next Level Coaching – Take Shape For Life.

There are  two aspects of this additional service of health coaching that needs to be briefly described.

1. Anyone who realizes diets don’t work understands that the exact statistic reads “85% of all dieters regain the lost weight within two years.”  The approach I’ve taken is that as a Health Coach, if you know someone who has weight they want to lose permanently, I’d be contacting them every day during the tough first few weeks and then as often as they like as long as it’s at least every few days. When they get to their target weight, then the FOR LIFE part of Take Shape for Life takes over. This approach plus providing all the necessary nutrition within the six meals a day proves why the program has helped over two million people in America (so far). The Weight Management Center at John Hopkins has used this program for the last eight years and has achieved stunning results with nine successful clinical studies on the balance between the Take Shape for Life weight loss results and its nutritional value. Personally I’ve lost 22 pounds in one month and 20 points on my glucose number.

2. Times are tough right now and I recognize that an extra $300-400 per month could make all the difference. If you know anyone who’d be interested or someone whose need level is considerably higher, please have them give this a good look. I’ve been evaluating businesses for over 20 years now, and the founders of this company have simply done it right. No wonder that it’s recently been announced that this 30-year-old company is the fifth fastest growing company in America. When the person that told me about the program explained he was about to match his prosperous legal profession income, that got my attention big-time.

Learn more at our Next Level Coaching – Take Shape For Life website.