Tag: Sacrifices

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Weight Loss Exercise

Emulate Olympians – or at least cheer!



I am off on holiday this week and went camping for a few days with my family. A nice break at a lakeside campground that let me really recharge and get ready for the second half of this year.

Along the way lately I have found out I need a root canal, a new hot water heater, and during camping I realized I am not a very good camper. But I love camping anyway.

Now today I have been watching the Olympics. You just know that for these guys last week and this week their whole world has stopped and they all know that this is the most important time in their entire career to peak in their entire sports career.

My son Jaiden hanging in a hammock

My son Jaiden hanging in a hammock

So for me life goes on, for these guys life is at a stand still.

What can we learn from the Olympians?

Really I have to wonder how we all look for success in the bank, on the scale, at the workplace, in our neighborhood, and in the eyes of our family and friends on a daily basis when these Olympians gauge themselves on the public stage once every four years.

We have to stop looking at the short term so much and look at making lasting change. On my Facebook page I like posting success pictures and stuff saying things like “today matters most” or “Tomorrow doesn’t count – only today” and I always agree with that, todays actions really do lead to tomorrows results. But also it is easy to get discouraged looking at what you have gotten done today.

I think really we need to look at always getting better, it does not always happen today, but know that over time we are always moving forward.

So in all our struggles, me with my teeth and hot water heater, you with your own struggles, We really just always have to look forward and move forward. Be inspired by these Olympians and the sacrifices they make and the satisfaction and victory they all feel these two weeks. It comes again in four years but these days are magical for them and us.

Lets celebrate together

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Categories
Weight Loss Exercise

Breads and Vegetables evil or good?


Breads and Vegetables? What do these have in common? Not much. The reason that we want to consider these two staples of a diet is for opposite reasons.

Breads are a nightmare for many people trying to cut down on the carbs in their diet. There is good reason to cut the carbs as most people are taking in to many carbs in the first place. In saying that cutting down carbs is good I am not writing about a zero carb policy like with the Atkins diet but instead just talking about cutting a quarter or half of your carbs out and not replacing them and thus you will have cut your calorie intake quite substantially. Bread as any diabetic can tell you is a very addictive food. To most people the cutting of bread from their diet is one of the biggest sacrifices they can make and once it is out of your diet for a week or two you will feel better and will not have those cravings anymore. I know this from experience as I have a bagel every morning (equivalent to 5 slices of bread) and for a week I went without and felt badly in the morning but by the next week I was not missing it at all.

Vegetables are also carbs but are much better for you and in the typical North American diet most of us would be very short of the six or so servings that we should have. The advantages to increasing your vegetables are threefold. First vegetables are fairly high in Water and fiber which helps your body to keep everything running smooth. Secondly vegetables are a great source for most of your vitamins and minerals and thirdly vegetables are filling and will keep you from getting up after your mealto grab something sweet.

Categories
Weight Loss Exercise

Why Your Past Is A Lie

Why Your Past Is A LieIt drives me crazy sometimes how people have excuses that are completely unfair and sometimes people don’t even realize it, just accept their thoughts as they are.

I become disappointed in people around me as well as many people that I have heard of around that make excuses, heck I have meant to write this post for a year, so I guess we can all make excuses or let ourselves down sometimes. But this habit of making excuses for ourselves because we really truly believe that we can not do something is a real sad state of mind.

Want some examples of those lies that we tell ourselves?

“I can never lose weight”

“I can’t do exercise”

“I have never had willpower”

“I have always had no energy”

“I’ve never been a fitness person”

“I never knew what to eat”

We tell ourselves things often that are not true becasue at some point we were told, or told ourselves that we had some kind of limitations. Often these were very clearly defined at one time in our life and we really do not have to live with them anymore

These lies are baggage that only we allow to define us.

There are two problems with these lies. The first problem  is that we use our past as a measure of what we are today. Secondly, we often look at these lies as limiters to our future and this is often not true

How To measure yourself yesterday and tomorrow

If you are to look back at the kind of person that you were last year and who you are today, and how you want to be tomorrow there is often a level of growth that has to happen. Take a look at your goals. Sure we need to make changes to reach those goals, we have to make sacrifices often as well, but we do have to make internal changes. The internal changes that I speak of here are those changes to our expectations of what we can expect from ourselves.

If you want to lose weight then you need to eat less sure. But you have to learn what kind of exercise that you need to do and you need to learn what you have to eat. These changes alone will give you the confidence that you have control but are the changes that are the basics of what are needed to reach your goals.

What are our limits?

This last question leads to this one as well. What are your limits? What have you told yourself that you can not do just because of who you are? You can see from that weight loss example above that one of the big changes that needs to be made is education and education for health is as easy as clicking through this blog. There are other lies, lack of energy, weak muscle, willpower, that are just excuses that we can overcome with reframing how we look at ourselves.

The one thing that we can not change is genetics. The trouble with using genetics as an excuse though is that genetics often have very little to do with success and failure in any endeavor. The biggest thing for almost everyone, likely including YOU is a lack of taking action in the direction that you want to go in.

So start thinking today and this evening of where you want to be. Do you want to lose weight, gain muscle, move somewhere, get a new job, start a business? Anything that you want that you do not have now can likely be attained by just changing your own internal beliefs.