Showing up is always the hardest thing to do!

A good response this week from many of you on your training efforts and many of you are  now developing fresh confidence levels to reach your goals.

The secret i developed a long time ago was that if i show up here enough times, if i show up training enough times, i show up and shop for good nutritious food enough times, if i keep on believing in what i do every day and i use that mantra for all areas of my life, i will be successful.

People ask all the time how they can be more successful, how they can be healthier, how they can become fitter etc etc, and the answer doesn’t change a whole lot!

There is a book you can read for free online called Think and grow rich published in 1936 by napolean hill that i recommend as essential reading. Google “think and grow rich” and follow the links, no catches and i repeat, its all free!

Its not what you think though, its not about money as you may guess, its about fulfillment and getting what you want out of life, rather than life making you a prisoner in your own body and mind, afraid to take risks and not being able to try anything.

This book encourages you do read just one chapter every day and more or less guarantees success should you follow the advice from real life case studies. You dont need any magic power to read it or do what the book says, it promises anyone that they can achieve anything they put their minds to, and everyone i know has read it has found the promise to be true.

The main message from the book is for you to find the strategies to become successful in your chosen areas, then perform those strategies each day until you become a master and do these things automatically. When this happens, you become successful without making much effort because your life and daily actions will have changed so much over a short period of time.

The very most important thing i took out of it was the consistency bit, meaning as long as i showed up every day and approached all my tasks with real effort and dedication, good things would naturally happen.

We go over it all the time on here and try and work out in your head how much more successful you would have been if you were more consistent with your food, your training, your sleeping and your positive attitude. How much would that have made a difference to your results and the way you feel?

Go on and be honest, how much more would you get out of yourself if day in day out, your performance in every thing you did was higher? Interesting thought and this is the message you ought to get to really improve big time once again!

Your workouts make everything better!

I always encourage people to get away from the thought proccess of simply wanting to look better, and use that sole reason to workout and eat well, there is so much more to that if you really get into a lifestyle of health and fitness.

Most people i have questioned answer that being fit and healthy actually changes their lives.

Their family life gets better because they have more energy, they are more tolerant because they are less irritable, they feel better about themselves because they are able to give so much more to their families.

Their business or job gets so much better because their performance gets so much better, their sick leave gets so much lower if it exists at all, and a healthier person is usually much happier in their jobs because their work or business stress gets taken care of by strenous workouts.

The by product of it all is that the boss will be so much more pleased because he/she knows that they have an employee who takes care of herself/himself and is likely to be a very productive member of staff for years to come if they have a sustainable workout and eating plan. I speak to many bosses daily and this is really what they think.

In these harsh economic times, jobs will always go the best candidates and good health is way up the list these days.

Your love life is likely to improve too, everyone feels a lot more attractive when they have much reduced body fat levels and good muscle tone. Good skin is a natural by-product and increased energy goes is always going to be beneficial for your love life.

Any of you who are studying or concentrate hard all day are bound to have huge percentage increases in accuracy overall. There have been many studies to show that concentration will go up 30% if you train regularly and eat well, as well as drinking enough water of course, a huge help in improving concentration levels.

Botton line is EVERYTHING IMPROVES right across the board!

Come on, lets do it!!

Your option to decide

So here we are at the start of yet another week, and believe it or not, im still excited about what i do!

I look forward to going to work, in fact i don’t call it  “work” anymore and have a problem calling it that.

I enjoy what i do and how many people can say that? I used to have jobs where i totally DID NOT like what i did, i found it unfulfilling, unrewarding, not mentally stimulating, all the negative adjectives you want to use, go for it and they could be possibly the right descriptions!

Then i changed it all round and to cut a long story short, i am here right now trying to inspire you to do something really important, valuable, hugely rewarding, fulfilling, enjoyable, fantastic for your health. There can be no denying that this statement is true so hopefully more than a few of you are going to take the offer up and change your lives very much for the better.

If you say you’re too old, my oldest client is 84 and started training at 75 years of age, so no excuses there please.

If you think you have gone “too far” the other way and your belly is too much to reduce, then i have had many, many clients lose over 10 inches off their waists, so that excuse will not wash with me either!

If you say “im going to try and do a bit on my own first” or “i can do it myself”, then fantastic, please do!!! However, if you’ve been making these statements year in year out since you left school, college, work, whatever, then obviously YOU ARE NOT GETTING IT DONE all by yourself, and you’re not moving around quite enough are you?!!

What you should be certain about today though is that you have the same OPTION TO DECIDE your fate this week just like everyone else reading this today, the 6th of september 2010. Either you make the same old excuses that you know are absolute rubbish or you decide to devote the rest of the year to discovering that you can actually get into shape again!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Whether its the first time since school, the first time since you gave birth, the first time since you lost your job, the first time since you got divorced, the first time since you got married, the first time since you bought a house, the first time since you suffered rejection in your life and you havent been able to recover etc etc! Whatever the situation, you have this option right now to decide to change your life today and forever.

All of us have this choice and people do it every day, or they put up with mediocrity.

Are you are “do’er” or just a “talker”?!

Commit “to do” and you will be shocked how much everything in your life improves.

Fruit doesn’t make you put on weight

A common myth used to be that you shouldn’t eat fruit because “it put weight on”.

Too much of anything will put on weight of course, but in reality, fruit is the least of your problems.

Of course fruit is regarded as a simple sugar, and people always think that all simple sugars cause rapid rises in blood sugar. This usually means weight gain and problems possibly with diabetes in the future if you keep consuming simple blood sugars.

We now have a scale though that shows the impact of sugar of all foods.

In the scale called the glycemic index, the funny think is that white rice and white potatoes come out a lot more sugary, and raise sugar far quicker than fruit!! Not saying that rice and potatoes are desperately bad foods for you, they’re not! It’s just important to consume them in smaller portions, and use brown rice if possible, sweet potatoes or new potatoes instead of white potatoes, you need to make the switch here for all sorts of good reasons.

This is why on here we always talk about balance and combining protein, good carbs and good fats, along with some vegetables and the problem of rapid blood sugar rises will not arise for you full stop!

Fibre and fats help slow digestion, improve absorbtion of vital nutrients, an even when you’re trying to lose body fat, the nutrients in fruit are vital in helping you do so!!!

So unless you eat around 5 bananas a day, a huge bunch of grapes, 10 pears, a box of cherries and a box of strawberries (not only will you start putting weight on but you will start to visit the toilet an awful lot), you will NOT put on weight with a moderate 5 a day on your fruit, it simply cannot happen. Time to stop blaming the fruit and analyse the chocolate bars/biscuits that may still be in your diet!

Moderation in food and a wide a variety of nutrients as possible are golden rules, you know this is common sense and you should not be scared of any natural food out there.

Faster, stronger, better!

Faster, stronger, better are words to describe ultimate progress in your programme, your development and all possible in 2010.

All of this will/would have been possible if you just did one VERY IMPORTANT/VITAL thing so far in 2010. If you have been truly consistent with your training and eating through every month of 2010, you WILL be celebrating great health by now and feeling as strong as a bull, and a great eagerness to get better and better.

This is not fantasy land and if you look back at your progress over the last few months, you will understand where you went wrong and where you went wrong.

Chances are that you’re truly honest with yourself, you will sit down and have a plan of attack. You will look back at the very good months, and be dismayed at the mediocre months, wondering “if only”.

Its not time to look back though and feel sorry for yourself, as this becomes a very dangerous habit. Being down and looking at the most negative possible outcome often becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Its time to break this once and for all, and look at the brighter side of things and life in general.

Chances are that if you think things are not going to work out, then they won’t. If you’re bright and optimistic, you have every chance of getting into seriously good shape.

Back to the opening sentence, yes you will have become faster if you’re lighter, you have less body fat and your fitness is good, which is should be by now.

You should be stronger by now, a lot stronger as I always encourage you to do strength  work a minimum of twice a week.

For all this effort this year in 2010, the 12 week challenge, everything really, you should be considerably BETTER than the start of 2010.

If you’re not, re-examine why everything fell off the rails and realise you can DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!! Sorry for shouting but I’m serious, DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT RIGHT NOW AND STOP FEELING SORRY FOR YOURSELF!!

Its only august, you have 4 months left to become faster, stronger and better, time to get a move on!!!