Becoming a Champion

Becoming a Champion

I had two experiences this weekend that made me reevaluate the effort I put in to my workout. I was talking with a co-worker the other day about fitness and nutrition the other day. Not only is he very fit, he helps motivate me. Several times we will do our workout together or at least at the same time.

I was describing how during some of my sprinting runs I would get to the point where it felt like I was running in honey. He asked, “What do you do when your legs feel like that?” I responded, “I slow down.” That was when he very enthusiastically said, “YOU HAVE TO PUSH THROUGH THAT! If you don’t you’re cheating yourself.” I realized he was right. I could have run as fast as I could even though it was slower than my sprint, but I didn’t I settled for something less than I could have done, and therefore for something less that I could have been.

The other experience was my wife sent me an email and I hope she doesn’t mind me using the main points of it. She went to a women’s conference where she was inspired to reach for her dreams. She told me the speech was on natural vision versus vision of the mind. As we age our natural vision takes control of our lives and we lose the child like ambition for the future. I don’t know why this happens but it does for most people. We end up moving slower and falling into what we believe our place in life is but, overweight and sitting on a couch is not our place in life. If you are in that place right now it’s time to change. You are meant to be a participant in life and not watch it go by.  If you allow your vision to be muddled with what everyone else thinks you will fall into the trap of “IF" not "WHEN.”

You have to start thinking in terms of when because that shows your optimism, your resolve, your determination, and strength of purpose. As you do this you will stop settling for a mediocre workout. You will stop settling for just good enough. And you will start being the Champion that you are supposed to be. I will be honest. I may never win a marathon but I will sure try my best, and put forth a championship effort. Effort is the key here. The better the effort you put forth the better you feel about the workout and yourself. When you combine consistency and effort you will become a champion.

“Champions are made one day at a time with Hallmark attitudes, “When you care enough to give your very best”

 

Effectively Changing your Cravings

The Changing of the Buds

When I was a kid, like many children, my favorite food was peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I loved opening a new bag of white bread and then spreading liberal amounts of both peanut butter and jelly of jam on either side. While I still love eating peanut butter and jelly I no longer like the white bread. I have heard it said that as a person grow older their taste buds change. I think there is some merit to that idea, but I also think that we have more power of the how our taste buds change than we think.

Until I recognized the truth of the story above in my own life I couldn’t understand how and why people could eat and love some foods.  My wife and I have raised our kids, almost exclusively on whole wheat bread, and when given a choice they choose wheat. 2 years ago I started using spinach on my sandwiches as subway instead of lettuce. Now, I didn’t particularly like spinach, but I knew it was more nutritious for me so I made the switch. I prefer the spinach now.

You can do the same thing, but don’t overdo things. Select a few foods that you know would be good to replace, like maybe soda. Changing that one thing in your life will change how you feel and look faster than any other thing. In fact if you simply started drinking water in place of anything else, you will start to feel better and lose weight. Another idea is start eating carrots instead of chips. Making small changes like this will help you in your quest for a fitter body.

I was recently talking to a friend and he was talking about some of the foods he eats, which are very healthy, and he said that he doesn’t enjoy a lot of foods that mainstream America eats. He has effectively changed his taste buds to the point that he craves healthy foods. This is the goal, but it requires consistently making good decisions until they are a habit. It requires a support system that is willing to change with you. But you can do it. I know you can.

“Leopards don’t change their spots, so it’s a good thing we are humans because they change every day.”

A Perfectly Tuned Instrument

Hello, Its my turn finally :). This Is Tyra (I'm the wife), its nice to finally meet you. Brig asked if I would write a little today.

As I pondered what I should say I thought of how my morning was going. Poorly! Sunday mornings are stressful more than they should be. Trying to get 5 kids feed, washed and ready for church is no easy task. Not to mention getting yourself ready as well. Its not for the faint of heart! All I could think was "I'm so tired and hungry!" There's an unspoken rule that something has to happen every time mom sits down to eat. I'm ashamed to say I was grouchy and had already yelled at a few kids, and literally almost cried over spilled milk. "I should be feeling the spirit and preparing for the Sabbath, not being like this." I was a little frustrated. Then I realized why I was feeling like "this" and not spiritual and pleasant. My body was out of tune.

The body is an instrument. We are highly religious (we belong to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints aka the Mormons) so we believe the body is a gift and that we can communicate with our heavenly Father through personal revelation.  We often explain revelation using the analogy of a radio. The body is the radio and revelation being the radio waves.

My problem is my radio is slightly broken, because I have not been taking care of it. I get nowhere near the necessary amount of sleep (haven't for YEARS!). I  rush through meals and have been known to skip them entirely. Thanks to AdvoCare I've lost some weight and have energy enough to keep up with things but just barely. Most importantly my life is full of stress, I've let in too much noise. Its like a radio with broken speakers and bent antenna. I can find the right channel but while those things are out of whack, I will continue to get a lot of static.

Lack of sleep and stress take a major toll on the body, physically and emotionally. They drain energy making us cranky, irrational, and forgetful. Too much will make you anger. So as much as you eat right and work out, if you aren't getting the sleep your body needs and you have too much noise in your life, you won't see or feel the results you would like. So take a moment today to check your radio. Are you in tune? Or is your antenna bent? Ask yourself what do you need to do to fix your radio?

Trouble sleeping? Try Sleep Works and a warm bath.
Too much Stress? Try Oasis and learn to say no.
Not enough nutrition? Try Coreplex and meal planning.
Not enough energy? Try Spark or V16 and do some exercise.

But most importantly, eliminate the noise from your life. Find some quiet time, and put the basics in place first. If you can't be in tune with the spirit, what you do with your body will be of little consequence.

Day 24 Max Phase (This is just the Beginning)

Day 24

Well here I am at the end of my 24 day challenge. It’s been reveling. I have learned a lot of things about how I should feel. Before starting I felt like work outs were drudgery. I think I felt that way because that is the way I felt. I noticed that as I progressed through this process I felt better. Before when I had tried different style cleanses, I never felt much different, besides the feeling of an empty stomach, because sure, my body was clean and ready for nutrition but the nutrients weren’t put back in. With this challenge my body was receiving the correct nutrition immediately after being cleaned and prepped for it.

I recommend this to everyone. In fact after about 2 weeks I felt so strongly about the power of the program I bought one for my dad, because I knew that his strength and energy levels would receive a boost from the challenge. I have decided that I will be doing an herbal cleanse every few months because it makes we feel so good.

For all of you that have been faithful in reading, I thank you and promise you this is not the end. In fact this is only the beginning. I used the 24 day challenge to relaunch this blog. My vision for the future is to sue this blog to review work outs and products for y’all. My posts next month will not be as often but I plan on 2 to 3 a week. I will continue posting every day for the rest of this month.

In fact if you have any topics that you particularly want to read about let me know and I will do my best to research, test, and post. I am also trying to come up with some contests and giveaways for upcoming posts as well so keep coming baio.

My goal is not to tell you what to do but give you options and ideas so that you don’t get bored with doing. Exercise can get boring if you don’t throw in a few things that are different. The other day I saw the local high school cross country playing ultimate Frisbee for practice. That is the kind of change of pace we all need from time to time. 

Day 23 Max Phase (Nutrition Wars Something Funny)

Day 23

I saw this on TV and I had to show you all. Please don’t make nutrition a competition with other people. Find something that works for you and your goals and go with it. Tweak it as needed but don’t go overboard. This video illustrates what not to do.

“Live your life like you trying to impress yourself.”

Day 22 Max Phase (The Power of Music)

Day 22

What a day. As most of you know I work nights and to be frank it really stinks. There always seems to be some kind of crisis, or commitment during the day when I am sleeping that I have to wake up and deal with. And if by chance I go through a day without someone calling in the middle of my REM cycle, I can’t seem to sleep past 4:00 pm. Today was a call at 12:30 pm day. I can never get back to sleep after that.

After the call I naturally tried to regain my slumber to no avail. I was also a bit stressed about some other things in my life with which I will not bore you. So, I proceeded to stomp around the house and be cranky for the rest of the afternoon. Finally I decided that when I took my son to his scout meeting I was going to run around the parking lot while he was in scouts.

I started my run using my Zombies, run! App. There is nothing better than listening to the troubles of post zombie apocalypse survivors to make all your stresses seem small and insignificant. Anyways as I ran I started to “go numb” but I still wasn’t very happy, even with the woes of the zombie fighters playing in my ears, interspersed with some of my favorite tunes.

Then about half way through my run, it happened. A song came on that brightened my whole mood. If you have young children you may recognize the kids show “The Backyardigans.” Well last year my wife bought one of their episode sound tracks that we both really enjoyed and it started to place. You can hear it on the video in this post. For some reason that 1 minute and 20 second song changed my demeanor. I started to smile and my pace quickened.

There are so many things that bring us down don’t let fitness be one of those things. Select music that inspires you, or that make you happy. You deserve to have your stress melt into smiles and music can do that. I believe that music is one of those things that are underestimated.

Be careful in you selection because it can work the other way as well. For example, I listen to a group called “They Might Be Giants.” They are an alternative education rack genre. It’s kind of weird I know but, in one of the songs that I had on my playlist for a while, there was a phrase, “You can’t run away. Your feet won’t help you run.” I notice that throughout that whole song my pace dropped and it literally felt like I was running in honey. It’s not a bad song, just a bad song to listen to while running.

I feel like I say this a lot but, you are different from everyone else. You have to do what works for you. The music that one person finds inspiring might make you fall, flat when it comes to your work out.

“I accept 100% responsibility for all my data entries.”

Day 21 Max Phase (Using Workouts the Battle Stress)

Day 21

Stress is bad, very bad. That is what we have all heard for pretty much our whole life, and some in our society have bought into this false notion so deeply that we try at every turn to calm ourselves with pills or boos, or whatever. In don’t know where this idea of stress being inherently evil comes from but today we are going to turn stress into our ally much like a kite uses the opposition and stress the wind places on it to fly. Now, I’m not advocating that we go on a quest seeking for the fountain of eternal stress because that would be evil, and our kite would be ripped to shreds. All I am suggesting is that you take the stress that naturally comes to you and use it to your benefit.

In my life I have identified that when I get overly stressed I eat. This obviously doesn’t help my fitness, or my waistline. Like the other day when I was woken up early and couldn’t get back to sleep, and the house was crazy with toys and kids and fruit flies. By the way fruit flies are just about the most annoying thing ever, because they never go away. If you have the silver bullet against them let me know in the comments. Anyways that day my wife taught me something as I went to the fridge to find something to eat, and she probably had no idea she was teaching me. All she said was, “Why don’t you go for a run?”

I took her advice and when I came back I felt so much better and I’m sure I was much nicer to be around. My wife can verify that in the comments if she likes. The point is once we find out what our unhealthy stress reliever is we can use fitness to fight it. This way you can avoid yelling at your kids or the dog or life in general and you can channel that frustration in a way that will better you. Next time you feel like you are about to lose your mind, try it.  If possible excuse yourself from the situation, get ready for a workout and go.  If you can’t get away do some push-ups or sit-ups.

Fitness is all about feeling good and balanced. When we are overly stressed it is usually because that balance is off, and I believe you will find that exercise will clear your head and when finished the stress will be gone, smaller and more manageable, or you will have had time to sort out the problem while working out. This is have we turn negatives into positives.