Oh why am I going to share this story?  I usually try and stop my wife from telling it when we’re among family reunions, but something in me today told me I needed to share it.  So here it goes…

One early day when I was around seven years old I somehow gained access to an empty apartment above ours where we lived.  My parents were at work and me and my brothers were at home alone doing the normal boy things…getting into trouble.  But I was alone and I must have just finished watching a superman show.  You know the one, the black and white series where Clark Kent worked at the Daily Planet and always rushed into a closet or empty office to do his quick change into his Superman outfit.  (yes men, he wore an “outfit”)  The next moment you saw him take a few running steps and out the window he went…Whoosshh!

Carrying my trusty towel and the largest safety pin I could find, I went upstairs and got into the empty apartment.  I wrapped my cape around my neck, secured it with the pin and looked for my window.  Seriously…  I found a kitchen window, slid it open and looked out.  I don’t even remember looking down, I just knew, “hey if Superman could do it, so could I” and out the window I went.  You all know the end of this story.  Once airborne my cape filled with air and I felt the rush of wind.  But I wasn’t going horizontally to say the least.  Downward I flew, or plunged, whichever words suit you better.  I didn’t land like I had seen him on TV either, with the gentle two to three strides walking up to the villain.  Nope, I smacked the ground with a hard landing.  Luckily our hero only suffered a broken “widdle weg” as my mother likes to say.

But you know what, I can at least say I tried.  Have you?  But NO, that’s not my admonition to you.  Not at all.  learn from my experience and Don’t try it,…sheessh I feel like I have to have a disclaimer here.  But we do tend to do that in life sometimes.  We act without thinking.  We jump in front of an object trying to stop it when it weighs two tons.  What are we thinking.  We forget that our bodies have limitations.  And the older we get, the slower we get and the weaker.

So the morale of the story is, know your limitations.  Plan carefully, act wisely and move through life in a safe way.  Since my Blog here is about health, wellness and nutrition, I’ll encourage you to get into shape, eat right, exercise and put your body in the best shape it can be.  We want to enjoy life, yet we neglect the most important thing we own.  Our bodies.  So if we are in good shape, we can walk through the day better prepared to handle the bumps that come along.  I hope you enjoyed my story, which was true and I still have my widdle crutch to prove it!

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Motivation Tips

• Inertia – When you act or start in motion doing something you set a course and begin a process of making strides or steps towards reaching a goal.  You get past that thinking phase and start living and doing instead of dreaming.  We all know that a body in motion tends to stay in motion or is easily kept there by a little effort.  But have you ever helped a friend out pushing their car into the driveway or to a gas station?  Dang it’s hard to get started isn’t it.  But once you start moving it’s like a breath of fresh air.  Not nearly the effort to keep it rolling versus when it was still.  That’s how we are in life.  This motivational tip is simply “Start moving”  do something.  Get up, take action, do some jumping jacks, I don’t care what it is, just

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This Insanity Max Interval Circuit training routine kicked my you know what! But it was great feeling kick. Yep, I was breathing hard, sweating a river and watching the timer the whole way, but I loved every minute of it.

This at home workout routine was full of interval moves without much of a break. If I needed one, then I took it. The warm up was typical as usual about 10 minutes long doing run in place, jacks, high knees, switch kicks and such three times with a 30 sec. break in between. Then after this nice little warm up, the stretching came which felt Oh so good!

Last chance to quit came after the stretching, but why stretch if I wasn’t going to do the REAL workout? So onward and upward I went. Shaun T must be a little sadistic as he had us jumping with punches, football sets, kicking, doing Diamond jumps, running in place, then running low, then running in push up position. Crazy I tell ya! And these were just the starters. I think we did about 32 minutes of this craziness with lots of other moves thrown without a break.

Now remember, this was a Max Cardio Interval training to help you with endurance. My legs were wobbly and arms shaking at the end, but it truly felt good. I was proud of myself for completing it and I just wanted to take this moment and share it with you.

So what are you waiting for? Get off that couch, take control of your life and add a little of Insanity for good measure. Wander over to my Insanity page by clicking on the link and see if you have the guts to take it on. I’d say… “Well do ya …punk?” but that would be from a different movie …..

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Motivational Tip #3 Dare To Dream

Have you ever seen that person who day after day does the same thing.  Stays in the same ruts of life, fighting this or that, complaining about all the things that happened to them during the day or week and then starts all over again the next day or the next Monday?  What is that person doing to change the outcome of the picture of their life?

Why do we think our situation is going to change if we don’t change the routine of what we’re doing?  One of the things I think we don’t do is “dare to dream“.  We tend not to ask ourselves what we want in life.  Why do we do the things we do?  Why don’t we ever dream, AND the most important part, put this thought down on paper and glue it to our foreheads….no I mean bathroom mirrors.

Stretch your thinking, dream for that new car that will at least get you across town and back.  Dream for that house to raise your family in.  Dream for that extra income to pay off those bills.  Dream for that  job where you get to

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I don’t know about you, but I don’t like feeling tired.  I’m not talking about being worn out after a long hard day of shoveling snow, working out in the yard or doing that spring cleaning, which by the way I’m due for.  I’m referring to the tired feeling of just dragging through a normal day, lethargic and sometimes a bit depressed.  It’s that feeling of just not being able to do anything even though you want to and know you should.

A couple of reasons I’ve found that contribute to this tired feeling is that we do not drink enough water.  Think back to yesterday.  How many glasses of water did you drink?  Oh, so you only remember stopping by the water fountain for a quick sip?  Unfortunately that’s what most people wind up doing every day.  We just don’t drink enough water like we should.  We’re told that we should be drinking 8 large glasses of water each day.  There is a reason for that, but we just don’t accept it.

By not drinking enough water we are dehydrating our bodies and one of the effects is feeling tired all the time.  So I challenge you today to make an effort to drink more water.  It has so many positive benefits that I can;t begin to name them all in this post.  Look for a future article coming out just on that.  But our bodies need a lot of water.  We will feel much better, walk around with more energy, all the while our body is using that water for many things, not the least of which is to flush out all the impurities and bad stuff that we don’t need.  So yes, you will have to visit the bathroom more often, but that’s a good thing.

The second reason we feel lethargic and tired could be because we are not eating right and often.  A lot of people starve themselves trying to lose weight and just hold off eating until dinner time.  What are our bodies saying to us?  Mentally we think we’re going to lose weight, but what’s really happening is that our bodies are shutting down and going into hibernation so to speak.  They think “hey, he’s not feeding me so why should I have a normal metabolism, I’m just going to slow down and conserve all this fat that he’s so generously given me, and I may even burn some muscle for fuel.  I’ll burn the fat as a last resort.

So, by not eating we slow our metabolic rate down and we feel tired, lethargic and generally just run down.  We should be eating 5 or 6 meals a day.  Are you crazy Coach Bill?  Yep, but not huge “Ginormous” meals.  For a typical male (is there one), and a 2000 calorie diet we should be splitting that up into 5 or 6 small meals a day every 2-3 hours.  I typically eat at 6am, 9am, Noon, 3pm and 6 pm.  My body gets the fuel it needs, ramps up the metabolism, stays at a high level and burns the fuel I feed it instead of getting into a shut down mode to conserve because of lack of food.

Our bodies are a lot smarter than we give them credit.  So today my second challenge to you is, eat, eat and eat.  But eat good quality foods and drink plenty of water.  Your body will love you for it!

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Motivational Tip #1 Just Do It

Oh no, not another motivational Blog! Oh yes! Why, because we all have days where we just don’t feel like doing anything! I was going to insert an expletive there, but the missus may read this.

So what’s the tip of the day? Just DO IT! What? Just do it! Not that hard right?

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Motivational Tip #2 Eat That Frog

WHAT?  Eat that Frog.  You have got to be kidding me!  No I’m not.  OK, maybe a little, but it’s really not that difficult.  You see, with a little seasoning, a bit of ketchup and…  oh I really am kidding now.

It’s a term used by a friend of mine Brian Tracy.  He wrote a fantastic book on this subject and makes a lot of good points.  But here’s the quick and dirty on this little tidbit.  Do the thing that is hardest or takes the longest at the start of the day.  Do the hardest one first, then every thing after that will be easy peasy.  Doing the hardest one first accomplishes a lot.  It gets a good task done and gives you a huge success to mentally check off as being done.  For me, these seem to give me a bit of rush with the endorphins that kick in once I’ve completed something, see the success and feel good about the results.

So we all would admit, to eat a frog would be a difficult thing to do.  I’m not talking about the fried frog legs in some southern cities, but the real, yucky, slimy, croaking thing that is very disgusting.  Some of the large tasks we have seem that way, but we should break them down into little bite sizes (or smaller tasks for you who get queasy) and plow our way through them early in the day.

End of day… SUCCESS!  So go out there and Eat That Frog!

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Ouch!!!!!!  What did I do to deserve this?

Woke up this morning that’s what!  Feeling pretty skipper, I decided to pop one of my favorite workouts into the DVD player.  Newly released, this program called INSANITY has overtaken the infamous P90X just by a tad.  I love it!  And I hate it!  How can that be?  Well… you get it then tell me the same thing!

Trying to type here and describe this program would never do it justice, so I invite you to visit the link I have here “INSANITY” and check it out for yourself.  There’s more moves, more blood pumping, heart racing, sweat flowing and people dropping than you can shake a stick at.  But if you get through this series, your guaranteed to have changed your body.

My experience?  I’m glad you asked.  I have to admit, I was pretty intimidated by the whole thing.  I started out strong and it kicked my butt!  Can I say that on the web?  I guess so.  I gained some muscle mass, lost some fat and increased my strength and endurance.  I’d say that was a winner in my book.  But any way, just wanted to share a quick note and encourage YOU to take action NOW and try it for yourself.  Now I’m going to go lay down on the couch and pass out!

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Peanut Butter

I live on this stuff. Well, not really but when I’m struggling to come up with something to eat and am tired of everything in the frig, then I go for my Natural peanut butter on a slice of whole grain bread. Yum! It’s a bit high in fat and calories, but I moderate what I eat. Not only does it satiate my appetite, it taste great. The fat in this peanut butter has been found to be associated with lowering total cholesterol levels and lower LDL and triglycerides levels.  Cholesterol reduction I’m sure is on a lot of our minds.

I’ll have to post you my blood work that I had done before I started exercising with my favorite P90X home workout routine and eating right per the meal plan that comes with it. Peanut butter was a small part of that diet and I know it contributed to helping my cholesterol levels go from borderline High to normal. Look for a future blog about that real soon.

Walnuts and Nuts

I’ve always known that eating a few nuts each day was good for my health. Now I’m not saying the Salted in the shell peanuts or boiled peanuts that have become so popular, but the nuts that take a bit of getting used to. Walnuts, pistachios and Almonds are all great nuts to name a few.

I’ve even heard eating Walnuts after a meal higher in bad fat could reduce the damage that meal can cause. This from a 2006 study in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. So part of my five meal plan a day consist on one of these snack meals being a small handful of nuts. Usually almonds, but I’m open for variety.

Avocado

A lot of people shun away from this food that has fat. But now the avocado has been found to be one of the healthiest fat sources out there. Loaded with antioxidants which help fight cancer and phytonutrients that help with absorbing other foods tahtwe eat. Shakeology has a lot of these properties too, but that’s for another article.

Here are three Superfoods that you should be able to incorporate into your diet and feel good about eating them. Still not interested in these? Then check out the Shakeology that will definitely get you on the right track to putting something in your body that will absolutely be the best meal of the day! Join my Newsletter for lots of fitness, health and nutrition tips to use every day. I may also have just a few funny and comical new in the news offerings as well to help you LAUGH a little!

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Hi There Gang!  Here’s hoping all of you are having a GREAT day, doing those things that YOU want to do and enjoying life!  As for me, I’m sitting here tapping away on a keyboard that I just don’t understand why the keys are laid out the way they are…arrrgghhh!  But seriously, I wanted to share a quick video with you about a chin up bar or pull up bar that I believe is a great alternative solution for those of us with limited space and not a full workout room to have all of those nice goodies in.

So take a look and if you are interested in getting one of these fantastic bars that I cannot recommend enough, then just check them out here on my new page of “Gear“.  Enjoy!

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