Month: June 2014

Ok I am sure there will be people excited about this giant of a buger but is there really a need?

FAST food chain McDonald’s is launching a giant burger for the World Cup – flying in the face of its healthier food policy.

The burger will be 40 per cent bigger than a Big Mac and new president Steve Easterbrook admitted: “The emphasis has changed.

Choice of World Cup Burgers in Australia

To celebrate the World Cup, that huge sporting event everyone in the world but the United States cares about, McDonald’s will be offering a special World Cup burger that will be forty percent larger than the normal Big Mac patty. At first I was impressed, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized it’s actually not that big of a deal. I’m going to assume that the Big Mac is roughly the same size in other countries as it is in the United States, which is to say, it’s not that big. I mean, the sandwich itself is big, once all the ingredients are stacked on, but the patty itself is rather small and flimsy.

McDonalds in Australia actually is offering a choice of the Brazil Burger as well as the Argentina burger (France burger is coming next…)

McDonalds World Cup Brazil Burger

“We are a burger business. Our traditional menu – hamburger, cheeseburger, Big Mac and chicken sandwich – is front and centre of our plans.

“Everybody loves a burger and there is nothing wrong with that.

“It’s time to be proud, to say ‘We’re a good burger company’.”

Three years ago McDonald’s adopted a healthier menu, including salads and fresh fruit, after bowing to pressure to encourage healthy eating, especially among youngsters. But only a small number of customers bought the products.McDonald has seen its revenue grow by 30 per cent in the US while sales in Britain have been flat since 2002 when the healthier menu was brought in.

Celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay has blasted McDonald’s and wants burgers to carry the same health warnings as cigarettes.

He said: “We have got to start conveying a serious message about exactly how bad these foods are.”

I am personally a bit split about this subject. If people really want to eat this much burger that is there own fault. The trouble is that people love to try to sue companies for making them fat. On the other hand, society as a whole suffers because of people making very bad health decisions and eating these very bad foods.

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I wanted to write a few posts this week on changing our lifestyles and building a lifestyle priority list. This is critical if we want to make the most of our lives. I know that I am probably not alone in the feeling that a lot of hours and days go by without really working on the things in my life that I feel, but have not acknowledged, are important to my life.

What are our top 10 list of things to do? Do you know what your priorities are at all? I know that I have a list that helps and I wanted to share a bit of a process on building a lifestyle priority list.

Why Building a Lifestyle Priority List Is Important

building a lifestyle priority list

The beginning point of building a priority list is to make sure that you know what your goals and where you are headed. I find that most of us may try to make changes in our lives but other people and situations will force us to give these up and stay a bit more mainsteadm. Do you feel this way as well?

For you, building a lifestyle priority list is your chance to decide what in your life is important. We all have to work or have an income to stay living indoors and have food in the cupboard but work only takes 40 or so hours a week for many of us. The questions really comes down to how much control do you exert in your worklife for the changes that you want to see, and outside of work how do you spend your time.

I know last year at this time I was very much a couch potato at home after work and workouts but now I have fallen behind on almost all of my TV and am spending more time online seeking to learn how to make change, spending more time with my kids, and getting involved a lot more with both of my kids schools parent associations.

What is a Priority List?

So make a list. Start the list today and let it get bigger. Remember this list is not a todo list (my todo list has over 100 items just for my online stuff on it). But a priority list is really a way to get around those mission, vision, and value statements that people almost never do and that companies love. I have mentioned making mission and vision statements for the family before and my life looks at my like I was growing an extra head.

This priority list is certainly less formal than making a statement but I like to put action kinds of terms on there and it really makes sure that you are “heading” in the right direction where a todo list is just making wure you have stuff to check off when complete.

Here are the kinds of things that I have on my priority list. Traveling overseas, buying less “stuff”, spending better time with the kids, losing track of TV shows, exercising every day, posting, and tweeting often.

You see this list may look obvious but it is not always true. I will spend a lot of time online (I think we all tend to) and then realize that this time should be spent with the kids, or working out. I don’t plan vacations but when we go away I force us to go on a plane instead of just spending a week at home.

What About a ToDo List?

So I still do have a todo list. I keep on my itouch. I find that I get ideas and then they float away so I don’t get very emotional usually about how big this list is and then every once in a while I realize that one of those parts of my life has really drifted in priority and I get back to knocking things of the list. This happened to me this weekend when I was doing some modifications to this blog, hanging with the kids a lot and not getting any posts out.

I think that giving everything that I can to this blog is important and tweaking things may make your experience a bit better but content is more important than how pretty that page is. I started looking at my list and decided that I needed to write more so here it is. One more thing off the todo list.

Getting Started With Priorities

So today is the day that you should start this. Make sure that you have an angle, a direction, priorities, lifestyle that is important to you and then you have a way to live a better life. Make priorities and then you will be able to move forward and get rid of those3 conflicting feelings when you are doing something when you know you should be doing something else, whatever that is.

I will be furthering some of these concepts more this week on building a lifestyle priority list as I have not done any of these kinds of posts since I did a motivation week on the blog a couple of years ago. I think it is important to get away from post after post of loss and muscle gain and improve our lives a little.

Are you going to do this? I would love to see some comments as I never know if I am going off topic too far on this blog.  Is building a lifestyle priority list something that you feel would be important to you and to know more about?

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This is the end of this set of posts. I have wanted to look at the inner workings of our head and what we can do to really make a difference in our lives and now I think is the final chapter. Accountability to yourself.

What is Accountability?

Accountability is the answering for our actions. Most of the time in families and at work there are certain expectations that are put on us and we are able to live up to these expectations, usually because they are expected of us.

In our personal lives though this is the difference between success and failure. The only person that we are accountable for our success in health, fitness, financial success, and personal happiness is ourselves. No one to answer to but ourselves may mean beating ourselves up about lack or accepting and blaming outside forces for it.

Do We Really Have Personal Control? Can We Be Accountable to Ourselves?

This is one of those questions that I believe is an easy answer. Yes, I do believe that we have control over our destiny. Sure there are always roadblocks that we have no control over, there are others that may be against us, but if we want to make change, if we want to succeed in something, almost anything, then yes we can make changes, make plans, execute and alter plans until we succeed.

Accountability is in our control!

Yes in fact even though we see and tend to listen to others in either laziness or their own agendas we do in fact have ourselves to answer to and it is critically important to make sure that you always do what YOU need to do for yourself before worrying about what others need. It reminds me of when you are on a plane and they do the oxygen mask demo, ever notice they say put YOUR mask on before putting your kids mask on. This makes sense, think if you put your kids mask on but pass out first then you can’t save either of you.

One of the greatest things that I learned from The Biggest Loser TV Show was that people, no matter what position that they find themselves in can make changes in their lives. Of course on that show they have a lot of things going for them (we will look at this) but still almost everyone on that show during the season makes huge changes.

How Can We Be More Accountable to Ourselves?

There are a few ways that we can become more accountable and I will use the contestants on The Biggest Loser to illustrate them.

Focus – On the Biggest Loser Ranch they do not exactly what they are supposed to be doing. They are there to lose . They rely on other people there, they have left their families, they don’t have access to junk food but when the cameras are rolling they know that the only thing that matters is the Big Giant Scale and the weekly weigh-in.

Adaptability – We all have the ability to change and adapt and that is a tool to our own accountability. On the Biggest Loser they have their bodies changes, metabolism changing, team dynamics changing and through all of this it still comes down to knowing what they want and accepting then the changes that they have to make.

Confidence – In our life as in our family and work lives we need to have confidence that we are good enough to make the changes that we need. If you have low confidence then you will not be able to make those changes but why would you accept yourself as being less. You are really the only one that matters for your own life so have the confidence that you can do whatever it is that you want. Live YOUR life to the fullest. (No Biggest Loser comment needed here)

Importance – The world needs us, all of us. You may be making great strides or not at work or home, but really there is a lot that the world needs. We live in the greatest time in the history of the world and at the same time there is the greatest stress on the planet, extinction of animals and the worst poverty in the history of the planet. It is important that we look at our lives as being an extension, a help to the planet and so be accountable not just to yourself but all of those around you as well.

I know that there may be a lot that I have missed on accountability. Wow, I bet we could do a book on it here today. But, the most important thing that i want to leave you with today is to realize that you are very important and it is this importance that means that you need to be accountable to yourself, that accountability will lead to a great self confidence and an opportunity to help yourself in all areas of your life.

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