You need a "coach" - real or otherwise

I am a firm believer in the power of self, but also in the benefit of an outsider to watch us, keep us honest, and provide challenge and ultimately to believe in us. You really need someone to do this for you to truly succeed. The thing is, it needn't be a single person.

Watching is a crucial first piece. Having someone to check in to see if you're doing what you need to do and to watch your progress is so helpful.

They call our BS, but also our wins - especially the smaller ones we may not catch ourselves that can help reinforce the feeling of success that keep us motivated. That's the 'keep us honest' part.

They can then challenge us, and not just in the 'tough love, sense. They can give us tougher goals than we are giving ourselves to keep us going and pushing hard. They can also warn us when we're going to far and risking the big picture. So, in a sense, they can push us to the next peak while keeping us from falling off a ledge.

Now, the ideal coach is a dedicated person who can do these three things honestly and unwaveringly whenever they need to. However, if you don't have that person in your life or can't find them (and I can be that person for you), you can find alternates. Online tools like stickk.com and beekeeper.con (I love this one - it's about tracking it - principle 1 - and getting reinforcing pushes and financial pressure) can serve some of this role. Supplement it with social pressure and support via Facebook, Google+, Twitter, etc, and you start to approximate what a single coach can do. It will never be the same or as good, but it's much better than nothing.

Lastly, make a commitment to be real with yourself, your performance and your dedication, and you round things out nicely.

So, best bet is to get a real coach, but don't let not finding one be an excuse - you can still do it and get much of the coaching benefit to ultimately hit your goals.

I did. So can you.

Enlighten Your Body

I have been struggling to come up with a concise and witty tag line or slogan for newbodi.es for some time. I launched newbodi.es with the saying, "helping people change their lives and minds, starting with their bodies." That's fine and true, but certainly not witty or clever.

A slogan hit me today that I think really hits the nail on the head.

enlighten.your.body

I love that. Enlighten is such a rich and meaningful word. And you never see it referring to bodies (or, at least, I never have). Here, it serves two purposes.

First, enlighten refers to the physical - making your body lighter. Even if you end up heavier weight-wise, you will no doubt be nimbler and feel lighter and healthier than before following the advice in this site and the resources we share. So, 'enlighten' as in 'make lighter'.

Then - and here's the clever bit - 'enlighten' like you enlighten a mind, but for your body. Teach your body how to be healthy. Use food, fitness, biology and knowledge to open your body up to the greater world of healthfulness and how it can naturally crave and achieve it. Like a mind, your body gets enlightened to be something more and better than it's ever been.

Lastly, using a term normally meant for minds, but for a body here, I am tying back how you can't achieve true health without including and affecting your mind. Through the enlightenment of your body, your mind will be enlightened.

Like it? Hate it? Have something better? Let me know in the comments. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Challenges are what push us to excel

Today I got confirmation of something I have been fearing for a few days since the pain began. By "confirmation" I mean "was told it was twice as bad as I feared.". The news I feared is that I have a hernia. The "twice as bad" part is that I have 2 hernias.

My initial reaction was not from a place of strength or resilience, I will admit. The reason is because I have a chronically ill wife and a toddler at home, so it is incredibly hard to fathom taking me out of commission right now. Our family can't afford for me to go down. Another reason for my poor reaction is that I had only recently found and started addressing the cause of my back pain, and will have to stop PT as it is aggravating the hernias. The final reason is that I love the way my workouts and the progress they help me make have made me feel, and they are going to have to be significantly cut back. I am - for the first time ever - really happy with how I look. It's a shame to think of losing that.

But, as I say, these are the wrong reactions and wrong things to focus on. It sounds trite, but I'm not dying and my problems are solvable. Those are HUGE facts. The drivers of my reactions are inconveniences I will have to solve for, but they, too, are solvable. And I have an alternative to keep my body in a good place by staying committed to eating smartly. And I can use my sauna during the free time I am creating by cutting back on my workouts. Oh, and I might get another 15 minutes of sleep per day (as a percentage, that's a big increase for me - you have no idea how good that sounds to me!).

It isn't all bad. It's unfortunate. That's it. As I tell my direct reports when we face a problem at work, our only real problem is that we don't have a fast forward button. We always solve things - it'a just a question of wishing we could skip ahead to the part where it's solved and we've moved on.

So, grab your TiVo remove, and hit the Skip button. Even your biggest problem really isn't your biggest problem.

Who are you arguing with?

I was recently talking to someone who wants to change their body, and actually didn't need to make too many dietary shifts to get there. Surprisingly, they put up the strongest fight of anyone I've spoken to recently. They need to cut their 3 bowls of cereal per week and use stevia instead of sugar in their daily coffee. That's about it. I got back, "oh, but this is so hard!". Seriously? I don't think I've seen an easier starting place yet.

So why the push back? The answer is actually really simple - they aren't ready. If they were, they would be making the few changes needed and wouldn't view a slightly different breakfast plan as something to latch onto so firmly. If they were ready, they would be willing to act for the health, fitness and good feelings they said they wanted. Tim Ferriss talks about these little pains as "ab tax" - the price you pay to get those abs you want (he actually says it in reference to the extra buck you might pay to substitute in more beans or veggies or salad at a restaurant in place of the starch, but raises it again in reference to skipping bad stuff you crave in the moment to postpone it until cheat day). The cost is really low in reality.

So, if you aren't ready, be honest with yourself. If you find yourself pushing back on your supporters or coaches, or if you are spending mental, physical or emotional energy creating excuses and pushing back, take that as a sign of your need to get mentally committed more than you are today.

See, if you are pushing against others, you aren't doing this for you. Who else could you be doing it for? If for another person or an event (that school reunion, a wedding, etc) then how do you stay committed when the event passes, the person pisses you off or doesn't appreciate your change, etc? The only constant and ultimate beneficiary is you. If you aren't ready to do it for yourself, don't start.

Don't start something you can't. Notice I didn't say, "can't finish," but instead that you can't start. If your mind isn't committed and you aren't there for yourself, then you never began in the first place.

Be honest with yourself, be committed to yourself, and the rest will follow naturally and easily.

newbodi.es Don't tolerate crap fuel

Through my journey, I have made an interesting discovery. It began on my first cheat day. I had worked hard to adopt a new way of eating and was already seeing and feeling results. I really didn't want to throw that all away with a cheat day. Well, my body had no reason to fear. It had a defense mechanism.

This post isn't for the squeamish. Ok, with that out of the way, commence grossing people out...

I went into my cheat day with some foods planned out. I wanted fruit, chocolate chip cookies, Greek yogurt, ice cream and donuts. This being my first, I decided to get a lot of cravings out of my system. I had no idea how literally my body would take that.

After about 6 pm, I had already dropped all the weight I had put on during the day due to constant trips to the bathroom. By bed time, I was down a half pound from the morning - and I never weigh less before bed than when I wake up. Ever.

See, my body had taken the great opportunity to flush refined sugar, chemicals, dairy, fructose and white carbs out. When I flooded my system with them, it couldn't handle it, and was all about rapid processing to get that junk out of me. By the end of the day, no cheat item lasted more than 20 minutes in me.

This has largely held true after a few months. I have been lucky to slow the rushes to the bathroom, but it basically all comes out and I make very little reverse progress on cheat days. There have been non-cheat days when I slip up, and it usually doesn't matter to either weight or body fat percentage as my body just rushes it right out.

So, get on a whole, healthy food regime, and your body will become a newbodi - a self-protecting temple that will not tolerate garbage being put into it. It happened so fast, it was like my body has been waiting all my life to be fed the right way, and now that it is, it rejects anything that isn't right.

The Mind-Body Connection

A coworker who I've always admired for her extreme commitment to her wellness and personal enrichment shared a topic that she felt was important to blog about, and I totally agree - the mind/body connection. As I say in our mantra, newbodi.es helps you improve your mind by starting with your body. One cannot be without the other - literally and figuratively.

Let's take the first part first - the mind. It is unbelievably powerful just what impact your mind can have on your body. The Tarahumara are an entire civilization set on this principle as shown by their peaceful nature and the huge smiles on their faces as they turn around to run back the 100 miles they just came. It's proven by people like Kris Carr who are given very negative prognoses when they find out they have cancer, yet they are alive today and have an amazing zest for life. It's proven by simple things like feeling tired when you are working out but finding the power to go that extra bit by giving yourself a little pep talk or simply saying, "You can do this - come on!". On two separate occasions I have literally wiped out sharp knee pain when running by smiling. No joke. I think the smile kicked my mind off the pain so I could correct my form and instantly break the pain cycle. Either way, it worked just by changing my mindset. The point is, the mind is amazingly powerful and can trigger all sorts of physical reactions by releasing chemicals. It can also be easily manipulated into believing an alternate reality from what it is immediately perceiving - in a good or a bad direction. So be careful and responsible with it.

The second part may seem more obvious, but the impact is more profound than people think it will be. The idea of looking good and feeling good is nothing new, but it goes deeper than that. Tim Ferriss talks about how his dad came alive in his job after losing weight. He felt rewarded and appreciated by it. This triggers a chain reaction. Look better and have you body function better, and you will feel better and feel better about yourself. You will then carry yourself better, perform better, feel more rewarded, and the cycle comes full circle to self-reinforce.

Can you lose weight without chancing your mind? Yes. But you will gain it. back. I promise you that. Can you feel good and be out of shape? Yes. But something physically can too easily take that away from you or diminish what it could be.

There are so many things that can derail you - other people, your own insecurity and past pain (mental and physical), logistics, etc. Align your mod and body around your goals and these things slip away. You worry less about history and focus more on achieving the future. You make fewer excuses and build more solutions to facilitate your success.

As we think, so shall we feel. As we feel, so shall we do. Think positive. Feel great. Do better than you ever imagined. You can do it, and we are all right there with you.

Don't let others bring you down when you are going up

I was talking to someone close to me tonight, and they were both blasé about the race I'm training for, and even questioned why I'm doing it if my last attempt was a failure. That attempt was 22 years ago when I was an extremely overweight kid and today I am in great physical condition and I run every night.

My point in this post isn't to react to that person or to defend my choice to do the race. My point is to advise you to be clear in your conviction to succeed in reaching your goals no matter what others might or might not say or do in support of you. And it isn't about revenge or proving them wrong. It's about their view being irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. Your body. Your mind. Your goal. Your life. Not theirs. Ok?

My wife shared another view on this idea which I think is really good. These sorts of people also have a way of seeing you at some point in time - like when you were a certain age or maturity - and have trouble seeing you as something different today. We all know what she means - for me, it's how I see people from high school who are amazed at how much weight I've lost since school because they forget that I was in great shape senior year and weigh about the same today as I did when they last saw me.  Or it's how siblings stay in the same roles relative to each other, and keep fighting in the same way over the same sorts of things despite lots of personal growth, education, life changes, etc. Some people who we have known an especially long time - especially those who have seen us when we were not what we are now or what we're now trying to be - are more likely to question what we're doing, whether we can or should do it, etc.  The advice I would give in these cases is the same.  Their view - whether grounded in the now or in earlier times - is irrelevant to you and your goals.

Be strong. Be committed. Be positive. Be successful. Be happy. Live in that order regardless of outside forces, and it will be an inevitability.