I had an employee of our health club, Dave, come up to me this morning and asked, “Hey Darin, can I ask you a question?”  I said sure.  Why do I see the same people come to the gym week after week, year after year and look the same, if not worse?  I had to stop for a moment and think. Dave was a custodial employee, and even he noticed something that has been evident to me for years. I do agree with Dave, that most gym members are wasting their time, which blows my mind!! I told Dave that I thought that 5 reasons were, 1. Bad information  2. Not having a plan 3. Close-mindedness  4. Lying to themselves  5. Their body is acidic and toxic

 I see many members training themselves for two hours, four to five days a week.  That’s a total of 12- 15 hours per week including travel to and from gym. If you are in this group then please finish this article with an open mind considering time is by far the most precious resource that we have.

 No one has ever been ever to come up with more that 1440 minutes in a day.  It is the same for every-one, whether you are black, white, or any color in between, rich, poor, young or old. 

BAD INFORMATION)  I will start out by saying that even the best information in the world is worthless without purpose or passion.  Because we just won’t act on it with out some kind of pep in our step if we don’t have a reason too.

 Consider that the majority of what we hear is spoon fed to us and is propaganda. One of the biggest ones that I deal with almost on a daily basis is that milk is good for us, good for calcium and strong bones.  Who do you think has been paying for those commercials on television  for the last 50 years?  That’s right,  the milk industry. 

Other sources of information may not have an agenda, but they may be misinformed themselves.  Social Proof is a powerful force that is prevalent cross culturally world wide.  Social proof is when an individual is not sure what to do or feel or what something means in that particular situation inevitably look to someone else to determine how to feel or what to do.  Put simply it is peer pressure.  It is more powerful than most want to admit.  An extreme example is when Jim Jones convinced 908 people to drink cyanide laced Cool-aid on Nov. 18th, 1978,  in Guyana South Africa. 

There is a price we must pay for going with the flow.  The pain of giving up your dreams and taking the fall that those who fail to think for themselves must inevitably take.

Stand guard of your mind people!!  What the masses are presently doing is not working.  The thoughts that they are thinking,  the foods that they are eating,  their approach to health and exercise.  I say, lets stand up and re-identify ourselves, and live up to our true potential as are maker envisioned.   

NOT HAVING A PLAN) My personal body-building experience:  Only have one source of info at a time is a very good idea.  What this does for me is gives me momentum.  Momentum is very powerful and real.  If you watch any sporting event, it is very noticeable. If a team or an individual senses something negative is occurring, then they are focused on that negative thought or feeling and comes through in their body language and their facial expressions.  It is almost like that individual is going to full-fill that negative prophecy that they are mentally focused on.  Of course the team that has the positive thought does the complete opposite.  So every thing starts with the thought that we are focused on, is compounded with transferring that thought to our physiology, (the way we hold our body and face.  Example, there is no way that if someone is focused on something bad that they will smile, stand up tall with good posture and feel energy, and visa-versa.

 If you just think about momentum for a moment, common sense should tell you how important the mental part of any endeavor is.

Keep in mind that you should have just one specific plan of action (POA) at a time (just having one adds to your energy and momentum because we as humans only have the ability to focus on 2-4 things at a time because of something called the Reticular Activation System which I will explain in my next article) and ride the momentum as far as you can and when you sense a plateau in progress then come up with a different POA.  Realize that you will have to take one step back to take two steps forward.  Look at anything that is powerful, a batters swing at a pitch, a pitchers throw,  just shoot a paper wad into a waste-basket.

CLOSEMINDEDNESS)   One of my pet peeves is when an individual  is so strongly opinionated that he or she says to the hell with everyone else ideas.  I would venture to guess why I take such a strong stance on this topic because I consider myself to be a very open-minded person.  This has seemed to serve me well to this point in my life.  (I will be 40 years old next year and I feel as though I will be hitting the ½ way mark in the next 5-10 years.

Don’t limit your information and your options in the future.  But do pick just one, and go with it for a specific amount of time and have a gauge to see if you are happy with the progress.  If you are then continue on again for another run, if not choose another strategy, stay focused on just that one strategy for a specific amount of time and gauge whether your new strategy was more or less effective.  If some-one is close-minded they obviously are going to limit their options in the future.  With history proving that there are only a few inevitable truths, how anyone can be close-minded blows me away.  Don’t fall into this trap and limit your true potential in the future.

In order for the above technique to work very well, you need to have a purpose, preferably a passion, and consistency.

LYING TO THEMSELVES) Maybe this is a little harsh but maybe the average person needs to be slapped across the face and realize that they are just settling in life and that over the course of 10, 20, maybe 30 years they have become merely a shell and are walking around in a daze not being real about the quality of their life.  Lets stand up!!  Lets look in the mirror!!  If you through a rat in boiling water, it would jump right out immediately.  But if you put that same rat in bath water a cranked the heat up under the bath water he would stay in the water and boil to death.  Most people are slowly eating themselves,  thinking themselves, into their grave not even realizing it.

  We want to be positive 90%, negative or see it as it is10% of the time.  Negative thinking can serve us as long as we don’t do it very often. Or better put seeing a negative situation or circumstance as it is, being real, then visualizing and implementing a positive plan of action to get us to our optimistic vision for the future.

THEIR BODY IS TOXIC AND ACIDIC) With today’s environment and life-styles our bodies are challenged more than ever before in the history of man-kind.  The stresses of today’s fast-paced information age life-style, with the lack of physical activity because of all the technological advances, (we don’t even have to leave our bedroom and we could still manage to do every-thing that we needed to get done in a day or two), along with the massive consumption of over-produced over processed, over preserved foods that are full of chemicals that have no place in our bodies.  Most people are full of toxins and acids in such amounts that their health is compromised and they are barely hanging on just waiting for some disease or sickness to surface.

I do believe that 90 % of people are wasting incredibly valuable time in the gym. I do believe that the majority of people are over-weight, have low energy, and are slowly eating themselves into the grave with their teeth, but its not because they are lazy, have no self-discipline, and are content on just getting by.  For I am no different than you, I am nothing special, and if I felt that was true about you, it would also go for me.  I feel that it is because the masses are fed bad information, and don’t have a plan, maybe some-what close-minded, get runned down and start lying to themselves, but most of all because their bodies are toxic, tired, and acidic.

You can radically change your waistline, your lifestyle, and your life with a well thought out approach as long as it encompasses training, nutrition, positive mindset strategies, goal setting, and social support.

With over 500 graduates and over 90 documented success stories www.fatlosslifestyle.com program is proving to be the most effective, and time efficient fitness / fat loss program in the world.

Sincerely,,
Lewis + Sarah
www.atozfitness.com
www.trainwithsarah.com