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Walking to a first place win
This month has been a new milestone for me. I have won two first place awards in sporting events in one month. Now for many of you that would seem like old hat. I knew your types and their abilities my whole life. I just was never on a first place team or came in first on any sporting event in my life. This month I received a first place ribbon in a 5k walk for my age bracket and our volleyball team won the university staff tournament for staff appreciation week.
Now for you folks that have been good at sports getting 2 first place awards in a month might seem small. Stop for a moment and imagine being in your 50’s and never having taken first place before. Twice in one month seems like a life changing event. In fact it was due to a lifestyle change that it came about.
I now know why people who are good at sports seem to walk a little taller. It feels good to compete honestly and win. Win with humility and not in their face but win none the less. Imagine a whole lifetime of never winning and you understand why someone might give up the idea of ever winning at anything. I have lived my life thinking I would never win. It did keep me from trying until the last couple of years.
Still moving at the end
After I lost my weight someone suggested trying for a 5k run. My first one I did some training and came in better than some but didn’t place at all. The great thing was it keep me focused in trying to improve. I found I could get faster. I found I could run longer. I found that I could train for a purpose that was as much about me as it was the people I was working with to improve their health and fitness.
The results are, it continues to motivate family and friends to do more for their health. They remember when they couldn’t get me off the couch, or to garden, heck even sometimes to just go visit somewhere. I was too tired. I was too sick. It gives them hope. I get the benefit of enjoying more life. I believe because of my choices to lose weight that people in my life and those yet to come along will live longer, more enjoyable lives. And that my friends is a prize worth winning.
Tobey and April not far behind
I say if I can do it I can help someone else do it. What say you? Your comments are welcome!
To continue the series I want to address the people who you will want to coach. If you are reading this series as a possible client you may see yourself in one of the categories mentioned.
First Timers
This is a group of folks that have decided for the first time in their life to really take on their health. They are ready to take an honest look or have been motivated recently to take care of themselves. Often one would associate this with age, but I see a trend that it is about awareness of their personal health condition. They may have recently visited their doctor, taken an honest look in the mirror, or even heard someone say something when they thought they weren’t listening. Something has them thinking about needing to make a change without any knowledge of how to get started, more or less to finish the journey successfully. They need someone with the expertise to do it right and teach them how to make it stick!
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Yo-Yo’s
I was one of these so I have particular affection for them. This person is someone that tries to lose weight, in fact often has tried many times. They may have had some measure of success. The hard thing for them is the ability to find it inside to try one more thing. Why would they think this diet would work for them, everything else failed at some point, why this one? They don’t understand why and they don’t know about metabolism and diet, they just know they have really tried and failed. They need someone that understands they are serious about it, they just struggle with something that keeps them from succeeding. Often they are the hardest to get to try again. They need an uplifting coach to believe in them and motivate them to give it effort and determination that this time they will succeed.
The Expert
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This bunch is a hard bunch to even get to work with. They know it all. They have read every book. They have tried everything, and yet they have not reached optimal health. Another version of these wonderful people show up at trade fairs and run when they see a weight loss booth. They know nothing will work for them. I was also part of this group. I was convinced that nothing would ever work and that somehow I had messed up my body so bad that I would never be able to lose weight. I knew that there was no magic pill, no patch, no abs system, and it seemed like there was nothing that would work. If there was certainly I would have found it already, after all wasn’t I the real expert on what would work for me. This group has one question to ask them: Are you happy with the results you are getting now? If the answer is yes, they automatically become un-coachable. To be coach you have to be willing to admit you don’t have all the answers.
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It doesn’t matter if you are thinking of being a coach or a client of a coach it is helpful to understand the reason for the need of a coach. I hear it all the time. I can do weight loss and achieve health on my own. I have one honest answer to that. If you can then why aren’t you? When you look in the mirror are you happy with what you see? Why aren’t you at your optimal health then?
You see in today’s faced paced world many of us don’t have time to focus on all the education we need to optimize our health. I know personally I have worked on this journey for 20 years before I made the decision to focus all my spare time in that direction. Sure I had to give some things up. What I have gotten back was well worth the journey. Now it is a focus and one of my biggest purposes in life. Many of my clients simply can’t devote the time. Coaches are primarily self-made, self-developed. They work on themselves continually, learning, growing, and becoming more capable and competent over the years.
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People want results. They want the most effective use of their time and commitment to their health. A good coach can make all the difference if they are wasting their time or getting the most out of it. Why do you think when people yo-yo diet they often fail their attempts to lose weight and keep it off? It is because they don’t understand what is going on within their body when they diet.
Many give up even before they lose any amount of weight because they can’t figure out how to create a plan for themselves. They simply don’t have the time for it. But do they have time for the illness that will follow if they don’t do it? No, this is where you come in as a coach. You spend the time to sort through the noise of why they are where they are now and how to get to where they want to be. You help to create an individual plan for their success. You bring the panel of experts with you to make it all work.
After you get them going then your role shifts a bit. You still measure and adjust the plan, however your main role is to believe in them and inspire them to be accountable to their plan. Your goal is to get them to believe in themselves. It is important to work towards always raising that level of belief in themselves. This by the way is another area where many dieters have given up.
Look for the next in our Why Be a Health Coach – Part 3 Who to Coach.
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Seems to be a lot more written lately about if being slim means that you are in better physical condition. I find this question lacking in common sense actually. Why? Because it relates to the idea of physical fitness. Not to how you are doing physically. Over the years as I had become bigger and my obesity started to really take it’s toll, I was often more active than many people my age. Now looking at me you would not have guessed it because at almost 3/4 of my height inches around my waist. I worked out each week. Many of my friends did not. I would often work harder in group situations than many of the people that where thinner and even younger.
You could say I had more endurance than some, but still I wasn’t physically fit. I could not have run a mile to save my life. Three miles before work like yesterday would have been out of the question. First of all I could not have done 3 miles in one setting walking or running. Giving it my best still would have wiped me out for the day. So active is not always fit. And slim is not always active. How to measure fitness?
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1. Determine if you are talking medical fitness or endurance fitness. Medical fitness can be tested and measured as well as endurance fitness. Each one is a different set of tests. Medical fitness is measured with things like blood tests, having check-ups, body fat percentages, and various other measurements of healthy body. Put them all together and you have a measurable results that tells you if you are healthy or not. Physical fitness has other tests. Length of workouts, recovery, intensity, endurance, and the list goes on. It too can be measured and tracked. If physical fitness is not being worked on, it is dropping.
2.Decide what needs to change. If you are at your ideal weight (determined by you and someone you trust) than you may need to look at the other forms of testing. Are there areas of either physical fitness or medical fitness that you need to look at? Start working on them and perhaps you can combine the two for “optimal health”. If you weight needs to change, stop fighting it and work on weight loss. If you have no endurance then exercise and come up with a plan to change it. If you have no ideas, than ask for help. It is available here and many other place on the net. Make a change.
3. Lastly stop making excuses for yourself. I hear it all the time. On of my favorites is that BMI charts are old science and have no bearing in truth. So frigging what! Adjust it for your body type and muscle mass and figure out if you are in shape or get your body fat measured. Stop using it as an excuse for not doing the work to reach a healthful state. Same with exercise. Here it is I am too out of shape or it takes too much time. How will that change if you don’t change something? As far as time goes you can pack life changing fitness into 20 mins a day or less. So time is not the issue. Commitment is! Way out of shape? Start slow and keep ramping it up till you get where you want to be.
You are not too big, too old, too young, too timid, too out of shape or too anything to not change something to make an improvement. You may need some help to get started. You may need a kick start on your weight loss or your physical program. You may even need some one like our team to teach and encourage you. But you can do it! You can reach optimal health no matter where you are now. And optimal health is the best that your body can do for the condition it is in, not in comparison to someone else and their abilities.
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Several of my clients and friends have asked me to start using my hypnosis certification again. I have to agree with the meal plan and hypnosis it will make life easier for many of our clients to make permanent changes in their lifestyle. Well that would be “positive changes” as well. Sorry I could not resist the pun there as I think certain businesses take much more out of your pocket than they should. This week alone I have had 2 past positively changed patients come to me and ask for a re-tune.
So check out the other site. It will be more business than blogg and we will over other tools to help your weight loss there. Here is a quote from our first post.
I found this fascinating quote today:
We all have had times when diet and exercise feels tedious, repetitive and just plain boring. We start to lose our resolve to stay on target after the New Year passes. That is because we are shooting at the wrong target.boisehypnosis.coachtolose.com, How Will This Year Be Different?, Jan 2010
You should read the whole article.
One of the great advantages in blogging is the people you meet. Over the last year I have gotten to know various health care professionals, fitness people, life and weight loss coaches, hypnotherapists, and other various versions of people that are interested in weight loss and optimal health. Top that off with working with clients, learning and teaching, support groups, and the research that it takes to keep up with it, I finally feel like we can start putting it all together.
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I wanted to start out with the various folks that have followed my journey from morbid obesity and stuck with me over the last year or so and offer it up to them first. I am looking for those of you that want to be contributors to the blog and therefore the newsletter. I talk with so many passionate people that have something to teach on weight loss and fitness that just need a place to express it. It is time to start putting it down and archiving it. America needs to hear the facts on obesity. I am not convinced they need to hear the judgment and condemnation that goes with it from some. But, I am convinced that there are more than enough people that have made the journey that want to help others.
This weekend I have added the news letter sign-up again to the site. If you go to subscription options you can set it for everything from each post to a monthly newsletter. It is easily subscribed to and opted out if needed. I can tell you unless I get a graphics person it will have to evolve a while before it becomes pretty. Having said all that I can say that if you like the blog, you will like the newsletter as that will be where it comes from. We will throw in some extras along the way for those that subscribe when we can. We will see how it goes.
I am sure we will start out slow, but I am also sure that as some of the team gets the hang of it that you will find it an honest place to get information that will inspire, motivate and inform you on your weight loss journey.
Thanks for being apart of this new stretch for me as I reach out one more way to help people have the hope and faith that morbid obesity is not the “final answer”. It can be overcome! We can turn the tide and make sure our future children and grandchildren don’t live shorter life spans than we will.
It appears that America is not the only one paying attention to the rise of diabetes cases and the projections on what it will cost in future health care issues. Although the headlines seem to agree that it will cause an economic storm, there are solutions to the issue. Weight loss, diet and exercise, and education can stem the “tide” so to speak. What if we started here in America to make it actually possible for health insurance to support weight loss other than surgery?
Cost of diabetes in Canada ‘an economic tsunami’
CTV.ca – 21 hours ago
The number of Canadians with diabetes is likely to skyrocket in the next decade, new projections show, and that could set up what’s being called an …
Diabetes called a brewing ‘economic tsunami’
Globe and Mail – Dec 7, 2009
Steve Dembicky, who suffers from diabetes, sits in a coffee shop near his Mississauga, Ont., apartment on Dec. 6, 2009. From Monday’s Globe and Mail …
Cost of diabetes ‘an economic tsunami’: report
Type 1 diabetic Tamara Khachatoorian puts her finger in her mouth after testing her blood …
Number of diabetes cases, cost of disease to economy predicted to soar by 2020
Winnipeg Free Press – 12 hours ago
TORONTO – The number of Canadians diagnosed with diabetes and its cost to the economy are expected to soar over the next decade, says a report by the …
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