Starting Tomorrow

Those words might precede words like, “…garbage pick up will be __________” or “… all winter coats will be ____% off”. But sadly, you hear “starting tomorrow” more often in terms of lifestyle changes. I am going to quit smoking tomorrow, I am going to quit drinking tomorrow, I am going to go on a diet tomorrow or I am going to start working out tomorrow.

For many people that means that they will never change and they are stuck in today all over again every day. Much like Phil Connors (Bill Murray) in the movie Ground Hog Day. The mistakes that we make today, like Phil Connors forecasting a blizzard wrong, come back to haunt us. Whereas he was forced to go back to his hated weather assignment in Punxsutawney, PA covering the real Ground Hog Day celebration again, you may be faced with a life threatening, life shortening or life limiting lifestyle choice that instead of waiting until tomorrow, you could start changing today.

Phil Connors realizes his situation and uses it as an opportunity to live life recklessly, knowing that he will wake up the next day at 6:00 am to the sound of Sonny and Cher’s “I Got You Babe” on his clock radio. Phil knows what he got away with and was given a second chance (and third and forth, etc.) but to the inhabitants of Punxsutawney, it is February 2nd and the meteorologist Phil Connors will be covering that day’s celebration.

We don’t live life like a movie and most of us don’t get second chances (let alone third or forth) and our choices and failures today will follow us into tomorrow and the next day and the next.

Do you need to make a change in your life today that will have life changing benefits? If so, don’t wait until tomorrow, because you may end up trapped in your own Ground Hog Day, living life recklessly and not making the changes that you need to make. Start eating healthy today. Don’t wait until tomorrow. Start exercising today. Don’t wait until tomorrow.

Phil Connors realized his arrogance and began to examine his life and his priorities. You are not trapped in time, but rather trapped in your inability to make changes. Examine your life and your priorities and start making changes today.

Please Don’t Label My Child

Once a child moves beyond breastfeeding, it’s up to us parents to take on the awesome responsibility of navigating our way through a pretty lousy American diet and nourishing our kids in ways that help — not hinder — their growing bodies and brains.

This is more challenging than it ought to be, because the American diet — especially for kids — is so skewed toward empty calories. Too many of the foods favored by kids have too much carbohydrate and sugar but not enough protein and far too few good fats (especially EFAs) and micronutrients.

It’s our job, then, to make sure that our kids aren’t poisoned or sickened by diets that are aggressively high in sugar and high in saturated fat but low in protein, vitamins, minerals, and essential trace elements. We need to resist the urge to let marketing efforts (especially those of the fast-food industry) lure us into giving our kids the wrong kind of nutrition. Instead, we have to dedicate ourselves to feeding them adequate amounts of the six key nutrients.  Continued…

The Power of Food

As a nation, we are obsessed with food. Fast-food restaurants and their billboards clutter our city streets. Volumes have been written on the topic of food. Newsstands are littered with magazines about it, and there is even an entire television network devoted just to food. We savor it, discuss it, and even plan our lives around it. And we consume a lot of it. In the process, we’ve also managed to supersize our health risks dramatically over the past few decades.

The kind of food eaten has nearly as big an impact on health as the amount — and sometimes more. In fact, much of the malnutrition in the world can be attributed to unhealthy food or consumption of “empty calories” (highly processed foods lacking important vitamins, minerals, and other essential nutrients). Though it may seem surprising, many obese individuals are actually significantly malnourished.  Continued…

4 Healthy and Hearty Dips

When aren’t we going on and on about how you need to eat more vegetables? They’re full of fiber, vitamins, and antioxidants, and they’re low in calories and fat. And one of the best ways to eat them? Raw. So you’re trying to be a good camper, with your bowl of broccoli and cauliflower florets, baby carrots, and celery sticks, crunching your way to a leaner (and probably gassier) you. You know what would really make these veggies sing? Some dip!

French onion dip . . . or guacamole . . . or hummus . . . or nacho cheese. Ha! Guess again! Nothing can make your healthy vegetable snack descend the rungs of Michi’s Ladder faster than a few dunks into a bowl of fatty, salty, delicious dip—not to mention what they’ll do to your Slim in 6® or Turbo Jam® results. But we’re not completely heartless. Here are some variations on some old favorites that are actually pretty good for you!  Continued…

The Low Down on Dairy

Milk: does it really do a body good? This advertising icon is one that most of us are familiar with. It’s also one of the most maligned slogans in history. A quick headline search reveals a slew of parodies, ranging from sarcastically simple “milk: it does a body bad” to the more straightforward “milksucks.com.” Whether or not we should consume dairy products is one of the most common dietary issues in the news and, yet, there still seems to be no definitive answer. Let’s take a look at the pros and cons of dairy, which can hopefully shed a little light on whether or not you want it as a part of your diet.  Continued…

Goal Setting

One of my childhood memories is collecting the little paper tags from the Lipton tea bags. They had sayings on them and I kept them in a little clear plastic box. Every time my Mom got a new box of tea bags, I would pull off all of the tags with new sayings and add them to my collection.

Two that I remember clearly are, “When the going gets tough, the tough quit” and “If at first you don’t succeed, quit, quit, quit”. Oh, sorry, I guess that I was thinking about themes in today’s world and not what the tea bag tags actually said, “When the going gets tough, the tough get going” and “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again”.

If those were among our mantras 40 or 50 years ago and beyond, why are so many people struggling with success now? Perhaps it is a lack of goal setting. As you read this, good friends of mine and fellow coaches, along with many thousands of others, are running the Boston Marathon. In order to accomplish this, all of those people who work hard, have families and have, I am sure, many other responsibilities and commitments, took a significant amount of time out of their busy lives and trained to run a marathon. They created an admirable goal, did the training required to finish a marathon, made the arrangements to be in Boston this weekend and lined up with all of the other people who had made running Boston their goal and they are doing it.

Do too few people have goals these days? I don’t know. Are too many people saying, “it’s too hard” when it comes to losing weight or getting in shape or giving up some bad lifestyle habits and working toward a healthier life? I don’t know.

If I had to lose 100 pounds, as I visualize it, that would be a big challenge. My body would already be stressed from carrying around the extra weight. My eating habits would have to be poor because that is how I put on the weight. I most likely would have some health issues from being obese and psychologically, I probably would be far from the top of my game and perhaps a little depressed over my physical problems and limitations.

But I would set a goal. As Lao-tzu didn’t say, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step” and instead the correct translation from the original Chinese would be, “‘The journey of a thousand miles begins beneath one’s feet’. Rather than emphasizing the first step, Lao Tzu regarded action as something that arises naturally from stillness. Another potential phrasing would be ‘Even the longest journey must begin where you stand’.”

The point is, there are extraordinary stories of people who couldn’t run around the block and went on to run marathons or do Ironman distance triathlons. These days, losing 100 pounds is a success story that is told over and over and is almost commonplace. What all accomplishments have in common is setting a goal and “starting where you stand.” Let’s all set our sights on our goals and never, never quit!

6 Reasons to Eat Your Vegetables

If you’re like most Americans, you’re probably eating only three servings of fruits and vegetables a day, if that. Big mistake. Research shows that the more veggies you consume daily, the better off you’ll be, in terms of overall health and body weight. Aim for five to nine or even 13 servings of fruits and vegetables a day. Here are six reasons why.  Continued…

9 Ways to Eat Healthy Foods (and Cheaply)

By now, most of us know what we should be eating—fruits, vegetables, whole grains, lean meats, and fish, among other foods. But anyone heading off to the supermarket with a shopping list of the best recommendations for a healthy diet is in for a bit of sticker shock. Over a two-year period, a recent University of Washington study tracked the costs of “nutrient-dense” foods (foods high in vitamins and minerals and low in calories) and “energy-dense” foods (foods high in calories and low in vitamins and minerals—aka junk).* The nutrient-dense foods rose in cost by almost 20 percent while the cost of junk food declined. The study found that getting your average day’s worth of 2,000 calories from the junk side cost $3.52 while getting your 2,000-calories worth from nutrient-dense cuisine would cost $36.32. Since the average American spends about $7.00 a day on food, you can see where the rise in obesity might come from.  Continued…

My First (and only) Boston Marathon

Twenty four years ago, I ran the Boston Marathon. The longest race I had run prior to that was the Nike New Jersey 10 Miler in March 1984, where I had met a woman who had qualified for and was running that year’s Boston Marathon a month later. We drove up together and stayed at the apartment of a friend of hers and on marathon morning had breakfast and then went to the staging area where the buses would take us to the starting line in Hopkinton. I was, as usual, dressed in running clothes and on the bus ride to the start, I was asked too many times, “Hey, what kinda time are you going to run today” or “Is this your first Boston” or “How many marathons have you done”.  Since I had never run farther than 13 miles in a training run and was neither qualified to run nor entered into the marathon, my stock response became, “I’m just holding her sweats” hah, hah, hah…

Well that got pretty old and not very funny after awhile and I started to think that maybe I should just run as a bandit (you know, one of those people who is too cheap to enter a race and they run without paying and without a number). Okay, not really a bandit, but rather a guy whose ego was being damaged and was willing to give it a shot to see if he could run 26.2 miles and on a day that was 38 degrees and raining just so he wouldn’t have to be the guy holding his friend’s sweats.

Running in a race without a number is frowned upon by other runners, because they paid and you didn’t. Running Boston in 1984 amongst less than 4,000 other runners meant that you had qualified with a pretty good time in the marathon and that is why you got to run the race. My thinking was that if I started in the back, then very few people would notice me and that when I stopped to get water, everyone else had already had a chance to get theirs (it is even worse if a bandit takes water at a water stop).

At the mile, which I passed through in 12:00 pace, my plan was working to perfection. I wasn’t being yanked off the course by an official (it used to happen) and with the rain and cold temperatures, no one seemed to notice me. I had told my friend that I would try to catch her by 10 miles (I don’t know what I was thinking that I was going to do after that, since it was still 16.2 miles back to Boston) and I just kept running and looking at people’s backs trying to find my friend.

Ten miles passed, then 13.1 miles then Heartbreak Hill and 20 miles and all I kept thinking was that my friend was really having a great race because my time was pretty good and I had passed other people in our running club from New Jersey.

The lowest point for me in the race, besides not catching my friend, was that when I really wanted the finish line to finally be there, there was one more turn and a little ways to go. I did finish, however, ran 3:00:40, was wrapped in one of those shiny Tyvek blankets at the finish and ushered away from the finish area because, you know, I was a bandit.

And there I stood, elated but deflated, having been beaten by my friend and thinking that this was worse than the ride up when I was just a dry, warm “sweats holder”. But the worst was yet to come. Glancing around, I saw my friend hop over one of the yellow police tapes and I was then totally crushed. Not only had she beaten me, but she had the energy to hop over a police tape when I could hardly move.

The happy ending to my first (and only) Boston Marathon story is that my friend had actually dropped out at 10 miles and taken the bus back. In trying to keep my word and catch her, I had focused entirely on my commitment and the miles just breezed by making it by far the most enjoyable marathon that I have ever run!

The Fear of Fitness Persecution

An Open Letter from Rich to His Coaches.

As coaches, fitness persecution is a real fear that we all have and it certainly limits our desire to spread the religion of fitness. Although we are passionate when we are among those who share our beliefs and feel safe when we get together and talk about how much we love what we do and the benefits of what we do, there is always that underlying fear that if we tell someone else outside of our religion, we will be persecuted.

Is that fear unfounded? Absolutely not. Religious persecution gives us the historical precedent for that fear. Moses brought forth Judaism out of Egypt and the Ten Commandments forbade the worship of all but one god. The spread of the pantheistic Roman Empire to that area brought with it religious conflicts. Out of Judaism came Christianity, and its strict adherence to monotheism and emphasis on conversion lead to greater persecution. Anti-monotheistic persecution of Christians began with Nero and reached its apex with the Inquisition. While Christianity’s empire stretched across Europe and neighboring regions, south and east of their empire a new monotheistic religion arose, Islam, and it spread across Africa, the Middle East and northern India.

Out of religious intolerance and religious persecutions arose religious wars which have occurred in much of the rest of the world. In this country, we have the freedom to attend churches and temples and mosques without fear. But there now exists a reluctance to openly speak about our religions to other people for fear of offending their religion or out of fear that the person will think that we are trying to convert them to our religion.

And so it is with fitness and health. Unlike our religious beliefs which can be easily concealed unless we speak about them, fit and healthy people are obvious to everyone around them. We have the glow of health from eating right, the lean fit bodies and energy that we get from exercising and smiles on our faces, in our case, because we are making money from promoting our lifestyles. That is fine when we are in the safety of our own homes, but what about when we have to venture out. Personally, I suggest wearing baggy, heavy clothing so that our low body fat and lean bodies are concealed and we blend in better with the rest of the population. You can also feel sad for all of the overweight and out of shape people that you see and that will mask the revealing smile that might otherwise give us away.

Finally, I would continue to not speak openly about what we do so that people won’t think that we are trying to convert them. Our fear of persecution for promoting fitness and health is real and the repercussions are obvious. God forbid that we would meet someone, begin telling them about what we do and get into a conflict in the grocery store, for instance. I don’t know about you, but I for one don’t have the physical stature to get into a conflict with someone as they counter what I have to say and begin to advocate the benefits of being obese, not exercising and eating poorly. I am cringing at the thought of the consequences of losing that conversation. It is far better for us to limit what we have to say about the benefits of being fit and healthy to strictly the people who share our beliefs and won’t persecute us for our beliefs. It is a far safer existence.

Sincerely,

Rich Dafter
Team BeachBody Coach Howtobefit
howtobefit@aol.com