Sunday story...the Question

Sunday Story…the Question

I get the question every week if not every day. It really isn’t the question that someone is asking. Because the question they are asking is rarely the question that needs to be answered.
Usually the question is:
What do I need to do to lose 20 pounds?
How can I get in better shape?
What can I eat to enjoy better health?
How should I work out?
How do I communicate better with my spouse/child/significant other?
What do I need to do to be better at my job/career/school?
How can I make more money?

There is nothing wrong with these questions. They are perfectly valid and they do need to be answered. But almost each one is not asking the question that needs to be answered before the answer to these questions can be validated.

The reason for this is simple. Each of these questions simply does not make sense until we start measuring where you are in the light of how you live your life. And where you are in terms of the commitment to getting where you want to go?

Context Covers a lot of Area
If we look at context, or the availability your life is going to allow you to do the things necessary to get the goal done we start realizing that certain limitations exist.
Want to make a million dollars?
Want to bench press 300 pounds?
Want to date a super model?
How is that going to work in the context of your life? If I live in say, Fernley Nevada, which is not exactly the entertainment capital of the world, nor is it part of the fashion industry in any way shape or form, the likelihood of me even seeing a super model is pretty darn slim, let alone being able to date one. The “context” of my life is such that the possibility of that outcome taking place is just not going to happen. In another (maybe more realistic example) if I want to lose 50 pounds but I work 2 jobs, raise 3 kids by myself, eat crap food from fast food joints every day, don’t sleep well and have never worked out in my life and I think getting up from the couch for a glass of water is real exercise losing weight is simply not in the “context” of my life.

The bottom line on context is that if I have goals or quests that I want to achieve but they do not fit into the context of my life then they are not real and they are not achievable. We call things like this “dreams”. If I want to win the lottery but I never buy a ticket then winning is only a dream and not even a remote possibility. I have not made the changes in the context of my life to win the lottery. So if you want to do certain things you are going to have to shift some element of your life to get them done…you are going to change or shift or transform the context of your life to make room for getting the goal done.

Commitment is Compliance

You are going to hate this one. You must be committed to not just the goal or the quest. You have to be committed to the everyday, to the plan, to the nitty gritty, down and dirty daily work of implementation. You have got to do the work! Every day. Every moment. Unerringly committed to doing what must be done each and every day. If you want to lose 50 pounds but every Sunday you eat a large pepperoni pizza to reward yourself you have lost sight of your commitment. Yes I understand the psychology of rewards and all the rest of that blah blah blah. Guess what? I don’t care. Get a plan. Stay on task. Do the things every day the plan calls on you to do. Don’t cheat. If the plan needs to be modified, modify it but don’t quit, don’t take your eyes off the prize at the end of the quest.

So what’s the question?

If the question you are asking is not the question you should be asking then what is the correct question? Let me put it this way…The magic is not in the plan. It is not in the perfect diet, plastic surgeon or career, or work out plan. There is no magic pill. The magic is in how much you care. The magic is in how much you are willing to do the 2 things you must do to complete your quest…shift your life to make the quest fit into it AND commit to doing what needs to be done to move forward everyday toward the goal.

SO…the question is this: Are you doing or Have you done Everything you can do with what you have already? When you read all the words before this we come down to this: Are you doing enough with what you already have? If you are not then get after it first. Do the research, do the plan you already have. Then if you can say yes, I am doing all I can with what I have then we can start there. That is our jumping off point. When your commitment and your context have shifted to accommodate the quest then we can get to work. Want to lift 300 pounds off your chest? We can make a plan for that if you have the context and the commitment. Date a super model? Same thing. Lose weight? Enjoy better health? Same same.

I can help but only to the degree that you are willing to work. Not to the degree that I am willing to listen to your reasons for not being committed and contextual.
Want help? Call me.


Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...Couch Potato

Sunday Story…Couch Potato?

The other morning, after kickboxing class several of us were having a conversation about various exercise methods. The fact of the matter is that there are many ways to become more fit, especially if you are starting from zero, or less than zero (yes that is possible). I know of one example of over 100 pounds lost by riding a bicycle. We have all heard of people who lost weight and improved their physical fitness by running, swimming, walking, dancing, p-90x, zumba, crossfit, aerobics, tae-bo, or any of a number of other things. All of these things have one thing in common: they require you to get up and start moving. It is impossible to get fit lying on the couch bemoaning your health and fitness.

But what is fitness, really? How do you define fitness? How do I define fitness? What makes up an athlete or a state of athleticism? Who is an athlete? Is there some independent measure or benchmark that we can say makes someone fit? After all we can say when someone is unfit, or ill, or unhealthy. There are some objective measurements for sickness or disease…blood pressure, pulse rates, blood markers, and more. And, yes, some of those markers would also indicate a fit person as well.

We can look across a spectrum of fitness and find lots of different examples. For example, an Olympic marathoner can run 26 miles in just over 2 hours (120 minutes). That means they are going to average less than 5 minutes per mile. I don’t know about you but I cannot run 1 mile in less than 5 minutes let alone 26 in a row. This is obviously an athlete of some repute. But is he really fit?
How about a Triathlete? One of the folks who can swim 2.4 miles (in the ocean), ride the bike for 112 miles and then run for 26 miles. One after the other and do it in less than 8 hours. This is a feat to be reckoned with.
What about a power lifter. I recently met a man who can squat (put weight on his back and drop his rear down below his knees and stand up with the weight) over 1000 pounds. That is a strength I don’t have but is he fit?
How about the body builders and fitness models…the people who get their body fat so obscenely low so we can see every striation and fiber in their flexed muscles? Must be fit right?

All of these examples are of athletes who can be considered to be in good shape, have a decent cardio vascular response to exercise, and the potential to excel in their sports. But they are each different and they each have made a similar fitness choice…they have specialized in their “thing”. An Olympic marathoner is never going to be a power lifter. He just isn’t made for it. And that power lifter is never going to outrun the marathoner once they get past about 50 yards. His fitness is not going to allow for that.

So how are we going to define fitness? Because the definition we use will determine the method of exercise we choose. And the method will create the level of fitness and health we are trying to achieve.

Most commonly we are looking for the following characteristics: strength, flexibility, balance, coordination, agility, power, accuracy, cardiovascular/respiratory endurance and stamina. The ability to have all of these things is what makes an athlete. Obviously if I am going to be really good at running 26 miles I am going to give up on a few of those fields in favor of my chosen sport. The same holds true for power lifting.

Fitness by my definition requires me to be good at all of those things. I must have power and strength. The other day a man asked me to help him pick up his motorcycle that had fallen over at the gas station. He couldn’t do it. I walked over and lifted it up…this is functional fitness. I must have endurance and stamina to run or swim or bike or row as I choose. Even if that is a 4 or 5 hour hike or walk in the amusement park. I have to have balance and flexibility…too many people as they age can no longer move the way they did years ago and the primary reason is that they aren’t flexible any more. It is a practice to stay flexible and balanced.

If I am going to be an athlete I must work on all those areas without prejudice or specialization. That means I have to do 2 or 3 things frequently…I must train, I must practice, and I must push my body when I practice and train. Doing 45 minutes on the hamster wheel just isn’t going to get it done. Knocking out 3 sets of 10 reps of a specific body part isn’t going to get it done. I have to train which means I am increasing my cardiovascular/respiratory response, strength and flexibility in the activity. Training is an activity that increases performance in a measurable way. I have to practice which means I am improving coordination, balance, accuracy and agility. This activity results in changes in the nervous system…I am getting better at the activity. Power and speed are improved through adaptations in both training and practice.

The definition of fitness I use says that no matter what I am tasked with…picking up a motorcycle, mowing the lawn, hiking up the mountain, sprinting across the road, sitting down without a chair and getting up without assistance, jumping over the fence, climbing up a tree, or???...I will be able to perform. You see I want to be a life athlete. I want to be an athlete that can do what we wants when he wants and be able to say when it was over I am glad I train and practice hard so I was able to get that done. It’s pretty simple really. But it is definitely not easy. It takes sweat, effort, thought and fortitude to push yourself hard. And then come back tomorrow for more.

Come on and get fit with me. Unleash your inner athlete (and bury your couch potato)…they are just sitting there waiting for you to put them in the game…the game we call life.

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...Why I'm Fat

Sunday Story…Why I'm Fat

I am fat. I have to face it…like all 2/3rds of Americans today I am overweight. I am at least 10 pounds overweight and I have no one to blame but myself. I really need to stop kidding myself about this. Sure, I have some abdominal muscle showing which should indicate a particular level of fitness and body composition. But the facts are simple…over 66% of us are overweight and I count myself among them. Even worse…1/3rd or over 33% of us are obese. The world health organization (WHO) defines obesity as a “BMI” (body mass index) of 30+, and overweight is 25+. Mine is 24.8 but I am an athlete and as such my ideal weight would be about 10# lighter and a BMI of closer to 24.

Many years ago all the humans who walked the earth were fit and healthy and lean. They were taller than we are today, had fewer cavities, enjoyed better health and had bigger brains. So what happened? Why are we, today, in the face of having more than enough food to eat getting fatter and fatter as time progresses? You would think, in light of what we know, that we would be able to eat in ways that science tells us will make us even healthier and fitter. But the facts are in…in the last 40 years we have gotten fatter and fatter, our health has gone downhill, new diseases have come about related to diet and we are generally in poorer health. This just doesn’t make sense. Or does it?

Imagine for a moment what a lion living on the savannah of Africa eats. Meat. They eat lots of meat and not much else. We don’t see lions out foraging for a snickers bar or even sitting down to a nice breakfast of leaves and twigs. Nope it is pretty much meat all the way. The lion has developed this way over thousands of years. He is programmed by evolution to eat what it is that he eats. Imagine for a moment that we would try to turn our lion into a vegetarian. I am just guessing but I am willing to say we would probably end up with a pretty sick lion. The thought of him being a vegan is chilling.

On the other hand let’s talk about cows. Our happy cow living her life in a bucolic pasture, munching on green grass, chewing her cud and producing milk for her offspring, all of whom then eat more grass and get fat and happy. Our cow has developed a digestive system that works perfectly when fed grass. She takes grass and turns it into meat and milk. It is a beautiful thing. How about we start feeding her animal parts? How about we ask our cow to start running down a deer for dinner? But she doesn’t have the teeth, the stomach acids, or the digestion to make animal parts into milk and meat. She will get sick (by the way, this is why feedlot cows have to be given a regular diet of antibiotics to keep them alive).

Now let’s turn our attention back to us human animals. What were we meant to eat? How did we evolve to eat the foods we are eating? The fact is we don’t really know. Our pre-historic ancestors left no menus lying around for our anthropologists to decipher. There is a way to get some clues, however. We know they didn’t eat cereal, pizza, or drink milk. All of those things are fairly new developments. And in anthropological terms anything in the last 10,000 years is fairly recent.

We didn’t eat grain or legumes. In order to destroy the toxins the grain (a seed designed for one thing---propagation of the species) produces to protect itself we have to process the grain to make it somewhat palatable to our digestive systems.
We didn’t drink milk or eat dairy products. There were no domesticated critters yet. And if you have ever tried to milk an animal that didn’t want to be milked, well let’s just wish you good lick with that shall we?
We didn’t eat processed fats, sugars…they simply did not exist for those humans.
The tools needed to process those foods did not exist until about 10 thousand years ago. It was here that human civilization really began. We could take seeds, plant them, harvest them, and process them and feed people. And for the last 9,900 years grain has reigned supreme in the human diet. This allowed us to stay in one place because we had a constant food source readily available. Then we could create cities and roads, and have traffic jams and start enjoying all the wonderfulness of the non-hunter-gatherer lifestyle.

At the same time humans began to get shorter, have smaller brains and have more cavities. It’s a small price to pay for a Starbucks on the corner, right? Then about 100 years ago we began to industrialize our food system. We introduced processed oils and sugars into our diets but even into the 1960’s we were still pretty lean. The obesity rate was rising but not alarmingly so. Somewhere about 1970 we were told to avoid fat…that eating fat was making us sick, causing heart disease, and causing havoc with our arteries. So we all went on a carb-binge. It was OK to eat cereal with a 30 gram sugar filled yogurt on top. It wasn’t and our waistlines are expanding every year to prove it. Even worse all those grain based carbs began to work their magic with our immune systems and digestive tracts.

We got sicker and fatter than ever. And today I am fat. I am fat because I swallowed the party line hook line and sinker. And I will continue to be fat until I change my diet. It really is that simple.

Now, those of you who know me already think I am a fringe foodie. I don’t eat grain, sugar, legumes, or dairy. The problem is simple. I am not 100% compliant and that is where my last 10 pounds are hiding…in that glass of wine, shot of tequila, chocolate bar, and piece of cheese. I may be 90% compliant but until I take that last step those stubborn last few pounds will remain with me.

I am going to get 100% compliant. I am not willing to put myself in the overweight category anymore. I will be the lean human machine I was created to be. How about you?

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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