The Skinny On January

Let’s face it… dieting is just way too difficult. With so many diet books out today, it seems like there should be one that works, right? I’m sure there is, but the majority of them lack one key element.

To successfully lose weight, or get healthier, or more athletic, you have to address your mindset and how you think about your health. In other words, you have to educate yourself.

People have all sorts of self-limiting beliefs when it comes to their health. I know… I talk to these people all the time. They say things like "That’s too hard," or "I could never eat like you do." Everyone thinks you just have to be disciplined and strict with your diet and exercising, otherwise it’s not possible. People live in extremes. They either do nothing, or they do too much and burn themselves out.

What they don’t understand is that it has nothing to do with will power at all. It has to do with a change in perception.

My current perception is that if I eat anything unhealthy i.e. sugar, grease, excess fat, etc., I will feel like hell. Yesterday was a good example.

January and I have been eating mostly raw foods for the previous three weeks. I’ve also been in the midst of a goal where I’m running every single day for thirty days. Yesterday, we went down to Tucson so the kids could have Christmas at my father-in-law’s place. He got us stuff like salad and veggies to eat, but let’s face it, the cookies and chocolate-covered popcorn looked pretty darn good… and they were.

But when we got home, all that crummy food really hit me hard. When I got out of the minivan, I felt like I had been hit by a bus. My sinuses tickled like they do when I get sick, my right oblique muscle was extremely sore, my upper back muscles were extremely tight, and I felt really worn out. I didn’t feel like that when we left Tucson at all. It got to the point where I couldn’t even move. So my goal of running thirty straight days went out the window ( I had planned on running when we got home). At one point, I felt like I was getting the chills, so I took a really hot bath, which I fell asleep in. I eventually got out and went to bed, and when I woke up this morning, I felt much better. However, I can still tell I ate too much sugar yesterday. It gives you a little bit of a hangover feeling. Seeing as how sugar ferments and turns into alcohol, and too much alcohol gives you a hangover, you get the point about eating too much sugar.

When I was in high school, my perception was that I could eat 2 Burger King croissant-wiches for breakfast, $5 at Taco Bell for lunch (which back then bought you about two tacos, two bean burritos, a tostada, and a double-decker taco), and a whole pepperoni pizza or more Taco Bell for dinner, and I would be fine. Actually, I’ll go so far as saying I thought I was healthy back then. Never mind that I got sick all the time. I felt like I was getting a cold every month. That was my perception, as it is for many, many people in this country.

The best way to get healthier and lose weight is to educate yourself. That’s what I did. I learned a lot about exercise and how it affects the overall physiology of our bodies. I learned a lot about food, good and bad. I learned about all the preservatives used to preserve and enhance the taste of food. I learned about vitamins and minerals and why our bodies need them. After I learned all these things, my perception on food and health was/is totally different. What I learned was important enough for me to make the change my body needed to be healthier.

That’s it. No magic dust, no magic pill, no diet books.

It’s all about the education.

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January’s previous post briefly touched on the importance of goals, as well as her own personal goals. I want to go into a little bit more depth about goals in this post, but I’m going to apply it to health.

Goals are important. Without goals, we tend to just go through life without any enthusiasm, just going through the motions. That kind of life is very unfullfilling, and can lead to outright misery with everything you do. I know I’ve gone through periods of time where I didn’t have goals, and I would wonder why my life was so bland and frustrating. Not having a destination is the same as being lost, and being lost is no fun. Being lost will get you into a situation that you don’t really want to be in, whether it’s the wrong career choice, the wrong schooling, the wrong spouse, etc.

A good friend of mine recently visited with his wife and their three kids from Utah. He and I went to school together in Dallas. I remember him being so happy and carefree, while willing to challenge ideas and concepts with professors and other students. But this last weekend, after not having seen each other in about six months, he just seemed beaten down with his job and bummed out about where he was in his life. We got into talking about what we wanted out of life, and the more we talked, the more I realized he didn’t know what he wanted out of life. He didn’t have any goals. I told him this I harped on him about this and he realized that was the problem. He has since come up with some goals, and he sounds a lot better because of it.

Setting goals properly… At least, in my opinion

When we set goals, we should write them out. Put them up somewhere you can see them everyday, whether it’s on your bathroom mirror or the refrigerator or a 3"x5" index card you carry with you in your pocket. When we do write them out, they should always be written out in the present tense. An example is something like "I am running 2 miles a day, every single day, in January." When you write it out in present tense, it reads as an affirmation and eventually gets planted into your subconscious mind permanently.

When writing out a goal, a good tip to keep in mind is the 30-day trial. When I read this, it made a lot of sense to me. First, you set a goal and you stick with it for 30 days. If you don’t like it anymore after 30 days, or if your goals have changed, fine. But at least you stuck to it for 30 days. That’s important for gaining momentum with your confidence. It takes 21 days to form a habit, so just hedge that habit with an extra nine days.

I’m currently on a 30-day trial with exercising. Everyday, I’m running at least two miles in the morning, and I’m doing one set each of push-ups, pull-ups, and crunches, each until failure. I’m going to see how that goes, and if I like how my body feels, I’ll keep it up. I figure if Wayne Dyer ran 10-15 miles every single day for 22 straight years, I can do it for a measly 30 days.

We can start out with small goals, such as walking 20 minutes every day, to bigger goals, like running 5 miles every day. It doesn’t matter as long as the goal has been set. It will give us the confidence to push ourselves farther than we thought possible. For example, if you set to walk every day, it will be difficult in the beginning. Once it gets easier, you can upgrade to jogging, When that becomes easier, you can upgrade again to all-out running. For example, right now I’m only running two miles. In a month, that will probably be at least three miles, but more than likely, four or five miles.

The same goes with eating. First, start out by incorporating more fruits and veggies into your diet. Once you start feeling more energetic and regular, you might decide to cut out fast food. Then you might decide to eliminate red meat from your diet, and so on and so forth. The more you do it, and just push through those first few hard days, the easier it will become, and the more confidence you will have.

So, when you figure out your goals, write them down in present tense, carry them out (for 30 days), and upgrade whenever possible. If you do these things, you’ll soon be riding a confidence snowball with so much momentum, people won’t even recognize you.

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I listened to the audiobook version of The Hidden Messages in Water by Japanese scientist Masaru Emoto yesterday. In it, Dr. Emoto describes an experiment he conducted in which he took high speed photographs of frozen water crystals.

There was a catch, though. He only took the photographs after specific thoughts or words had been directed toward the water crystals. He found that when he directed a specific good thought or word, such as “love,” at the water, the photograph depicted a perfectly-formed hexagonal crystal. But if he directed a specific bad thought or word, such as “hate,” at the water, the photograph revealed a malformed, jumbled mess of a crystal. Using a quantum physics approach to the final data, Dr. Emoto concluded that our thoughts and words really do have an impact on the environment around us, most notably, water.

How does this relate to losing weight and overall health? Quite a bit actually. Dr. Emoto said that when we are first born, our total body composition is about 90% water. As adults, we drop down to about 70%, and elderly people drop as low as 50%. He also added that when a person becomes sick and full of disease, the water in the body becomes stagnant.

Can you think of anyone filled with stagnated water? Do you know anyone who carries too much stress, worry, anger, resentment, depression, or sadness? I think we are all guilty of having these feelings from time to time, which in turn means we have some stagnation going on within our bodies.

Dr. Emoto said that when we are filled with love, we are better people. That sounds obvious, but he added that the oldest people who still continue to do amazing work sustain their production because they are in love. By “in love,” he didn’t just mean intimately, but rather a love for all of humanity.

How much love do you have in your life? Do you have any? Do you need more?

If you’ve heard the saying “you get what you give,” you can probably figure out how to get a little bit more love. Since this is the holiday season, show some love to those that maybe you’d rather not be around, or maybe even the people that ring the bell asking for donations outside grocery stores.

If disease is related to stagnated water, and if stagnated water is due to negative thoughts, words, or emotions, it seems pretty obvious to me what should be done to avoid this.

Overall health doesn’t just mean what you eat or how many times you exercise; it’s a state of mind. Healthy people are happy, they eat well, sleep well (hard to do with three kids ages four and under), and exercise. They do things that fulfill themselves and others around them. They are examples to those around them.

Do you want to continue “needing to lose weight” or “needing to get over a sickness?” Or will you just make a decision to think positive and visualize yourself becoming a beacon of health?

That’s the goal January and I have set for ourselves. That’s also the goal we have for people reading this blog.

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