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Weight Loss Exercise

Creating some 21 day habits



Experts say that it takes 21 days to create a habit. I do not even know if this is true but the one thing that I do know is that if you do something, anything for 21 days it becomes ingrained inside you.

Let’s take that idea and run with it here shall we? Today we are as we are, if I decide that I am going to become more positive (this would make my wife and coworkers crazy) then I would think in my head as much as I could all day everyday about my successes in the past and the things that are going well. This would change me from being pretty positive to excited as I would feel that there is nothing that I can not do.

Building Great 21 Day Habits

Creating some 21 day habitsAt the same time if someone wanted to become healthy and they started to jog everyday as a runner would they would be sore the second day, sore the third day, stronger the fourth day, and very powerful by the fifth day. The habit is being formed, by the 21st day this person would be areal runner putting in mile after mile a week. Often runners have trouble taking days off even when they know they have to because that cadence of exercise reminds them of who they are, the habit has already been formed.

There are really only three steps in creating new habits that will become ingrained within 21 days, and really probably more like 10 days, and these are the following:

1. Decide on the Change – This means that you are making the very concious decision that whatever you are doing starting now will be different than before. This may be big like deciding you will exercise daily, eating better, or giving up alcohol, or this could be something smaller like deciding to start the day with a glass of water, or giving up some inane TV show.

2. Make the change often – To ingrain a change you have to conciously make that change as many times as possible. Usually if it is gaining something this is easier but if it is losing something than it will be more difficult. For instance every single time you want a cigarette but decide against it you will be giving something up, but if everytime you want to go for a walk you just get up and walk around the building you work in then you will be making an easy concious decision that you are looking forward to.

3. Understand that this is YOU now – The final step is the acceptance that you have changed. I do not consider myself a smoker anymore because it has been 15 years or so. I also don’t feel lazy becasue I have proven enough times that I know it is not true.

You should make your habit like SMART goals as well to help you to be able to get them right. If you wanted to lose weight this 21 days to a habit is even a shorter time but it works the same way. If you decide to eat only fruit instead of candy then you struggle for about three days and then it is over and three weeks later you have some chocolate and it starts burning in your stomach and the sugar rush gives you a headache, the habit was formed already.

My Experience in Building Lasting Habits

Years ago when I quit smoking I just imagined myself as a non smoker and then I just quit, I had been unsuccessful at cutting back so I decided that cold turkey was my best chance. After a couple of days for struggles I was OK and I continued my working out then one day weeks later I realized that the habit was now that I looked at myself as being in good shape and that I was flushing those bad toxins of smoking, I had turned the corner.

So now it is up to you. What do you want to do now? Do you have any bad habits to reverse? Or some Good habits you would like to incorporate into your daily life? As I said earlier, the change is the tough part and as you go along creating habits is a 21 day process so three weeks from today you can make a difference in yourself that you can be proud of.

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Weight Loss Exercise

Procrastination and Missed Opportunity



I and many others have a problems with procrastination. There are a few ways to win the battle of procrastination but one of the big one is to look at the loss of opportunity when it comes to procrastination.

How Procrastination Hurts Us

One of the problems with procrastination is that when we decide through inaction that we are not going to do something then we feel no sense of loss. Often we can find other busywork to stop us from doing important things and make that procrastination seem not quite as bad.

The real way that procrastination hurts us though is when we have some kind of important opportunity that we miss in life. I am not talking about missed opportunities like buying a winning lottery ticket or finding the love of your life but more commonplace types of opportunities to make change.

Here are some examples of missed opportunities thanks to procrastination

Eating badly or not exercising today – Means that you will not be in a better place physically 1 year from now than you are today
Watching TV today instead of going out and meeting new people – means that you will be STILL watching TV a year from now

I know these are a little harsh and don’t think that I don’t procrastinate either. Or else there would be 10,000 posts on this blog instead of just under 2,000. My procrastination is painful to me everyday. I have missed a lot of opportunities and successes in life because of procrastination and it can really hurt.

How To Kick Off Change Today

Procrastination and Missed Opportunity

Fight Procrastination

Look at the parts of your life where things are going badly for you or at least not as well as you wish they were. Now think back to what you could have done a year ago, the changes you could have made and how much better today would have been if you would have done those things.

Now look at yourself a year from now. If you make those changes today then one year ago you will be a much better place, no matter how good or bad things are today.

Change they say is inevitable. The problem is that we as people do not have to change if we do not want to. Look seriously at yourself today and make those changes. Mark 1 week from now, 1 month from now, 6 months from now, and 1 year from now on calendars and see what you want to be on those days. What action do you need to take today and then tomorrow to reach these goals?

Finally take steps that matter. I am sure I have written this lots of times before but if you have a list of 5 things to do today no matter what then you are one day closer to your goals. If you look back on the last few weeks how many of those days were wasted because you got to busy and did not do those really important little tasks that over time make giant changes.

Remember most huge success a year from now can be traced back to small changes that are made today. Let us all know what changes you are going to make and why.

Procrastination and Missed Opportunity, 5.0 out of 5 based on 1 rating

Categories
Weight Loss Exercise

Fit over 40 review

How can you be Fit over 40

Last week I turned 40 and as part of the process of reaching another one of those ages with a 0 on the end I decided to take a look at what I should do differently with my health and exercise.

Yes, I know, age is just a number and it is more important to treat your body well, but there are health and fitness issues that will make a difference in exercise, for example we produce less testosterone naturally as we get older so it is more difficult to gain muscle.

As I was looking for information I ran across an eBook called Fit over 40. Fit over 40 is a very interesting eBook written by Jon Benson and Tom Venuto. The reason that this book is interesting is that it is not just a do this, do that, eat this, don’t eat that, type of book. Instead this book is big on motivation and shows you a better way to reach your goals. The way the book uses is through example.

Here are the three sections of Fit over 40

Fit over 40 reviewFit over 40 Part one

Jon Benson describes his struggles and successes and how he was able to transform his body and health. And further Jon lays outs some great principles

  • BodyWorks: Strength Strategy
  • Inner Fuel: The Taste of Health
  • I Can See The Valley: New Hills, New Horizons
  • Begin and Believe
  • Post-40 Training Tips

Fit over 40 Part two

This is the exciting meat of this book. Now that we have a basis for looking at how it looks and feels to be fit Jon Benson takes us through biographies of 52 people over 40 that have a great health and how they got that way, some were very sick and some were healthy but the important thing is all of these people are people that we can really relate to in one way or another. This way we do not have to look at pro athletes as an unreachable standard of how to get in great shape.

Fit over 40 Part three

This is where Tom Venuto of Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle fame kicks in. Tom Goes through the five pillars of Anti Aging:

  • Pillar 1: Weight Strength Training
  • Pillar 2: Aerobic Training
  • Pillar 3: Learning To Be Flexible
  • Pillar 4: Lifelong Nutrition
  • Pillar 5: Recovery and Renewal

After going through this and helping us realize what a big part the mental game is in getting fit we now have a well rounded process for getting, keeping, and improving lifelong health.

Conclusion of Fit over 40 Review

Fit over 40, I believe is a great read and reference book for almost anyone over 40 years old. In comparing Fit over 40 to Burn the Fat Feed the muscle, I find that this book is less in the actual workout regimen but is much better in role models. It is always easy in popular culture to find the freaks, the people over 90 that do triathlons, or the young kid that swims the English Channel. But what about the rest of us? How about the people to old to be pro athletes (although the book has a couple) but still young enough to be incredibly fit and healthy?

Any day that you are having motivation problems you can come back to this book on your computer and read about someone that is just like you and has overcome what you are struggling with.

I really recommend Fit over 40 to keep your motivation and for $39.00 it is a great value.

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