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During my weight loss journey and often when people hear what I do “at my age” 
, I am asked how I can keep doing it. This question always catches me by surprise as I rarely have a conscious thought about not doing what I need to continue to reach for optimal health. A day wasted is a day lost.
Don’t get me wrong last week we helped some wonderful friends back and move their house. This was a 4 day project after work. Was a lot of lifting, stacking, packing, bending and all kinds of exercise. So after the first day, I didn’t do my morning workout for 3 days. I went to bed each night exhausted and feeling good about how well this old man humped all that stuff.
This morning I realized that my workouts are a lot like my life in general. I have come to realize over the years that life is lived in moments. Some moments are like the next rep of curling a dumbbell to my chin. If it is the first few reps it seems easy enough, but as the set nears completion, it will become harder for me to complete that set with the full number of reps. Now if I don’t increase the weight, it stays easy, but no progress is made.
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Life is that way isn’t? If we glide through it we get comfort zone results. We live from what is easy. There is little challenge, little growth and often no or very little progress. Kinda of boring don’t you think? That is where I used to survive from. It seemed like it was all I could do. Perhaps as you read this it is where you feel you are now as well. Well I have some good news for you, it isn’t that hard to get more from life.
When obesity limited my life, I had no energy, no motivation and struggled each day with pain, depression, and various concerns of my health. Had I given up I would have lived out my life in a much shorter time span. I would have allowed the doctors and the pharmacy to control how my body “survived” for the time I had left. I just had to make new choices and become more conscious that it really is about moment to moment living.
So ask yourself right now, what choices do I make in each moment to have a fuller, more fulfilled life. Notice I didn’t ask where you are now. I didn’t look for the reasons you got there, I asked what are you going to do to change it? I don’t believe in being stuck in the past, or what someone just said that hurt my feelings. I believe in the statement “If it is to be, it is up to me!” What say you?
I read several blogs a day. It appears that there are all kinds of things to blame our poor diets and weight gain on. What are people saying? We eat poorly because it is cheaper to eat badly. We use fast food because we are too busy to prepare meals that are nutritious and tasty for our families. There is no time to prepare a meal plan, do the shopping, and cook the meals.
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When you add it all up here are some common truths. People feel the pressure to feed their families more nutritious foods, they just can’t find the time to do it. The next choice is to try and make the best choice they can in the drive-thru. They tell themselves that there is healthy and good choices they can make and still find some quality time to read to their kids. A fair trade-off for many parents.
I would like to present another option. How about looking at those fast food places and learning something from them? If the best they have to offer is a salad, how hard is it to put a salad together? My estimate, given the ingredients are sitting at your house is that you can do the salad faster than you can wait in line to pick it up at the drive-thru.
What if you planned for one of those fast meals as part of your shopping trip anyway? If you stop at the fast food place once a week or more, why not plan a “fast food” at home instead?
Let’s take an example from a discussion I had at work today. The discussion came when I uttered that corporation X’s fast food will kill you. Followed by the response, “Well Rick you know they have good food choices as well!” I responded with yes but those foods you can fix just as fast and cheaper at home. It was not well received to say the least. Most likely, it comes from my lack of tack when it comes to making excuses to abuse your health.
So I did some homework. I picked a Bacon Ranch salad that averages price in said fast food place was between $4.87 to $4.99 depending on where in the country you find yourself under their golden arches. Adding the ingredients I found you could save $1.00 to $1.50 per serving fixing it on your own. So I had to take into account prep time. I used grated cheese, prepared salad mix, and copied the total ingredients of the salad and came up with less than 15 minutes to prepare. Oh and one more point it was much easier to find salad dressing that not only cut calories but was much healthier and tastier than offered.
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Results for diet, nutrition, weight loss or maintenance, was that it is just as easy and cheaper to eat right than to stop by the drive thru and tell yourself you are making better choices for your family. Eating better doesn’t take a degree in nutrition. It doesn’t take hours of preparation. It doesn’t take too much time to plan the meals. It just takes letting go of the excuses and making a small lifestyle choice to fuel your body for optimal health. Because when you look at the message we send our children and the message we send the food industry, we really are paying way too high of a price. It is time to stop blaming and start doing something about our health, diet and weight problems by taking a more personal look at our choices and how we are making them.
I am reminded during Memorial day weekends of people that have come and gone in my life. I remember my grandfather that has passed from cancer and who fought in a World War only to came back with his faith challenged from the tragedies he saw. I still remember his questioning the existence of God and the stories he told me. I remember my dad who died of cancer yet lived the life of a proud Marine even though his service time led to a broken back and a life of pain. I remember my good friend Jim who fought with his weight and struggled with diabetes all his life only to swiftly die too young. I remember each one and what they taught me. They taught me freedom isn’t Free, it has to be fought for.
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Each one stood for the idea that if we want freedom’s in our life we have to go after them. We have to claw, fight, struggle and seek those freedoms. Many would offer easy solutions but dedication and work was needed to get out of life the things that many people take for granted. By nature we all seek the easy road, but by design only those things that become habit and purpose will stay with us. Our life choices will determine the outcome, not some cosmic spinning wheel of fate or luck.
This comes to our health as well. We have choices presented to us moment by moment. Eat this, don’t eat that. It is all choices that will determine our weight loss or weight gain. It will determine if our body will operate at optimal health or something less than. It is never just simple calories in versus calories out. There is no quick fix although there are choices that will take us where we want to be faster. But like all choices we have to make the ones that will take us where we want to go. It gets down to choosing health or illness. Freedom or something less.
So today I choose to keep fighting for health. Fighting to help others find it. Taking on a different battle but taking in on with everything I have. Why? Because I have a legacy of fighters in my life that taught me that “Freedom in any area of life is worth fighting for!” And I take nothing away from the battles and the struggles those very dear to me fought. Today like many days I still hear them say to fight the good fight no matter where you find your battle. Live life to the fullest and help those who would come along beside you. For many people died so that you might have those choices to make each day.
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More From CoachRick
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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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Don’t read this set of articles, if you don’t enjoy working with people. Don’t read them if you haven’t got time to spend with people. Last but not least, don’t read these articles if you don’t believe that you can make an impact on others performance. A coach has to be willing to go beyond their comfort zone and learn they can’t control others and they have to think differently.
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Many people who experience some level of success have a coach or a mentoring relationship. Health and fitness are no different. A health coach teaches people to build on their successes, work on their skills, come up with a plan, monitor important milestones, and stay on top of the feelings that go along with it.
When talking about success on any journey we have to remember that success is never an accident. It takes planning, training, commitment and monitoring. The dictionary defines a coach as someone who trains people in order for them to prepare. Wouldn’t we prepare them for success? What better success could be achieved that optimal health and fitness? My goal as a health coach is to improve your performance in all of the areas of health. Do it in a planned and tested way and offer guidance. But like all forms of coaching, the steps of the journey are still up to the person being coached.
In order to facilitate success a coach should have a range of learning experiences to draw from to help their client bring about improvement. I honestly believe that the most successful coaches are either very teachable themselves (intense observers and learners) or they have walked the same journey before themselves. Take a coach that has both and you have a power-packed combination of skills to assist and guide others.
Check Back for Part 2 – Why be a Health Coach? Health Coaches Role
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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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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.
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