Sunday Story…Happy New Year

It’s that time again. The time when we look back and look forward. Lists abound…the best of and worst of 2023.

I’ve never been a big fan of those sorts of things. However, I do believe it is a good idea to take a glance back at your victories and what you might want to strive toward in the coming year or more.

So, what were your wins last year? When you look back what are the three things you achieved or happened in your life that make you smile when you look back at them? At my house we have a memory jar…anyone can put a memory in over the year, and we go back and read them on New Year’s Eve (or other times!) This isn’t my idea, credit goes to my wife, Kiki. It is a great way to look back and remember those memorable events or “wins” from the last year.

As we look forward to the next year, you may have a few things you really want to get done…climb a mountain, retile the kitchen, or get to the gym 3x a week without fail. Any number of things come to mind. They don’t have to be big things but if they are, maybe you should break it down a bit. Decide in January you will do 1 thing to move that goal closer to fruition. Just one thing, like look at tile samples or pick the mountain. If your goal is a big hairy one it can look impossible. Yet every one of those big hairy goals is just a series of small do-able steps. Lots of aphorisms for this…the journey of a thousand miles begins with one step, or how do eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

Celebrate your victories! Plan for more next year. Let the rest of it go.

Let’s make 2024 your best year ever!

 

John Mariotti

www.crossfitodyssey.com

www.sunday-stories.blogspot.com

775-338-2412

 

 

Sunday Story…Happy Holidays

It is Christmas Eve as you read this…that is if you are getting it on time at 5AM 12/24/23. As many of you may have surmised, I am not exactly a Christmas elf sort of guy.

That being said, I do enjoy several things about this time of year.

First and foremost, the spirit of kindness and gratitude is pervasive about now. Let us be honest, it is hard to be depressed when you have gratitude. And no matter what is going on in your world you should be able to find something to be grateful for.

Second, we just passed the shortest day of the year, so we are now moving back into the light. Even though the weather may continue to be chillier than I like I know the light and heat are on their way back.

Third, as the year ends, we look back at all the things that comprised the last year. I tend to focus on all the good things and let all the rest of the things go. What good was done, what shifts and changes happened that moved your journey on this planet forward?

Lastly, the emphasis on relationships. This is often forgotten as we continue to chase our goals. Those relationships help keep our mental and emotional fitness on track.

I also want to express my gratitude to each of you, my readers. I sincerely hope that my messages move you in some way. It is my intention to inspire, inform, and motivate each of you in some way with my words. And you are doing me a favor by allowing me to coalesce my thoughts into a coherent message.

 

Thank you

 

John Mariotti

www.sunday-stories.blogspot.com

www.crossfitodyssey.com    

775-338-2412

 

 

 

Sunday Story…The Third Pillar

“No cure that fails to engage our spirit can make us well.”

---Viktor Frankl

I came across this quote the other day and I thought it particularly relevant to our discussions over the past few weeks about living longer better. This is the third pillar of increasing your “health span”.

First, we have exercise and fitness, then nutrition, then your emotional health. Failing to address all three pillars is like having a two-legged stool…you might be able to sit on it, but it is going to be very precarious.

You can be the fittest on the planet but if your emotional/mental/spiritual health is not right your fitness will suffer. We have seen many cases of prominent athletes needing to step away from their sports due to mental health issues. The same can be said of your nutrition…it can be dialed in tight but if that third pillar is crumbling, you may as well eat sawdust.

So, on my journey to the Centenarian Olympics, I am going to need to engage my spirit to fully realize all the benefits of increasing my health span. This means having healthy and varied relationships. Think of close relatives, friends, and acquaintances, as well as other human interactions. We humans are designed to be social. Another important tool for this pillar is the practice of gratitude. Another is finding joy in the mundane everyday practice of living. A connection with the divine will also put you in a place that is going to allow you to access all the benefits of the three pillars.

Our goal is to live life fully human utilizing all the benefits we can derive from outstanding fitness, close care of our nutritional biochemistry, and a functioning relationship with those people around us and the world we live in as well as the divine source.

 

John Mariotti

www.sunday-stories.blogspot.com

www.crossfitodyssey.com

775-338-2412

 

 

Sunday Story…Holidays!

It’s that time. It’s easy to say I’ll get after it after the holidays. You could still hit your exercise regimen but it’s easy to just let it slip one or two days. After all, “IT’S THE HOLIDAYS!” And your nutrition plan? With all that rich endless food you love around? I mean who can resist?

I get it. But are you willing to give up 11 months of progress for two weeks of indulgence? And except for the growing bulge around your middle or on your hips, or other places you don’t want to see, what will you have to show for that indulgence.

A truly memorable indulgence might be worth the price. But honestly, there are so very few of those, they are almost unicorn-like. That plate of store-bought fudge? Really? Occasionally you will find a unicorn and you will always remember it. Let me ask you this…when was the last truly memorable food or beverage indulgence you had? Can you remember last holiday season that one thing you knew was worth every bite or sip you took? No? What makes you think this year is going to be any different?

The same thing goes for skipping your workouts. You know what the price is going to be when you return. Do you really want to pay for it? I know I don’t.

It is simple… show up, keep your intensity down, and get out the door. You got it done. You can worry about how well you did later. Showing up is more than half the battle.

The last thing anyone wants to have happen is to walk in the box after 2 or 3 weeks of self-indulgence and realize how much pain you are about to inflict on yourself.  

The answer is simple…get in here. Stay the course.

John Mariotti

www.sunday-stories.blogspot.com 

www.crossfitodyssey.com

775-338-2412

 

 

Sunday Story…Overfed and Undernourished

If we return to the 3 questions we ask in our search for the right “diet” most of us are overnourished, many of us are under-muscled, and some of us are metabolically challenged.

The fact of the matter is this:

Never in human history have we lived with so much food abundance. Throughout history, humans have had to store, preserve, hunt, and gather food. This often resulted in some very lean months; in some cultures, February is called the “hungry” month. All the stored food is gone and there is very little available to find. We went without. Hopefully, we gained a lot of fat during the good months and now we can use that stored body fat to survive.

Today there is no “hungry” month. I can run down to the neighborhood market and buy things from around the world. We have no need to get fat in the summer to survive the winter. Yet our evolution has not changed. We want to eat and store fat for the coming famine (that never arrives.)

So…maybe being overnourished isn’t as accurate as being overfed. Way too much of our nourishment comes in the form of highly processed crap food. So, we end up overfed and undernourished. This is the horn of our modern dilemma…food is everywhere and we keep getting sicker due to being overfed and undernourished.

The struggle is real. And when we add in the aging process, hormonal disruptions due to all kinds of different issues it seems almost insurmountable. So, we need to do a couple things: first, limit alcohol intake. Second, increase protein. And third, stay away from all forms of processed food. There are too many “disrupters” in today’s foods for any of it to be good for you but eating processed food in abundance is not going to lead to many good outcomes!

 

John Mariotti

www.sunday-stories.blogspot.com 

www.crossfitodyssey.com

775-338-2412