PLAN FOR SUCCESS - Having a plan is so important in our success in life and health.  I think this quote says it well: “A goal without a plan is just a wish.”  When something is planned out and written down, not only is the motivation kicked up, but also the personal challenge to reach that goal increased.  Besides, it is a written plan right in front of our face, and not something that we are only thinking about and may put into place someday.  See the difference?  If we are good stewards of our money for example, we are budgeting for expenses with our income and successfully paying our mortgages, rents, and overall bills.  Without that budget plan in place, I am sure we can all agree a huge financial mess would be the result of our irresponsibility.  Planning takes responsibility and a commitment to do what is best for our life and health.  Failing to plan sets us up for failure. 

Let’s get back to the plan and what it takes to put a health related goal into place.  I highly recommend an accountability journal to plan out strategies for exercise scheduling and also a healthy food tracking area to record food intake daily.  I also like to keep track of water intake, sleep and my overall mental game.  Tracking your weight on a scale one time per week is also motivational to see your progress and to ensure that the plan is working.  When the plan fails to function, it is never the goal that changes, but the plan or program.  Finding what works for each of us is a trial, error and fine tuning of our plan until we see the results of our investments. Just as it is exciting to pay down debt with a responsible budget plan, it is equally or even more exciting to reduce our waist lines through our commitment to the plan of adopting a healthy lifestyle. 

Everybody understands the need and importance of money to support our lives and my goal is to convey that our health banks are even more important. Imagine not balancing our checkbooks and leaving out transactions each day to the point of not knowing the balance.  Accounts would be overdrawn, additional fees paid, collectors knocking at the door, and stress increased tenfold.  That same analogy can be applied to our daily exercise and food intake.  If we do not balance our food intake, write down what is consumed, or never record our exercise expenditure, we are setting ourselves up for weight gain, increased risk of disease and illness, increased stress, and eventually doctors knocking at the door. Looking at how important a plan is for success in these terms should motivate all of us to implement them today. 

Living a healthy life is not a guessing game or a wish and we are only kidding ourselves when we run around without a plan.  Success comes when daily habits of eating healthy and moving our bodies are made a planned priority. Do we sweep our money responsibilities under the rug?  Well, I suppose some may but the outcome is always an unhealthy consequence in doing so.  How much more important is our health and that so many people do just that, sweep it under the rug.  Let’s turn the goals of obtaining a fit body into more than just a wish by starting today with a plan for adopting a healthy lifestyle. 

Thanks for stopping by my Blog. Remember to subscribe and never miss a free update. 

Be well and Stay Healthy 

YOU DON’T NEED TO TELL ME I AM FAT

In my daily walk of being a trainer and consultant, I work with many beautiful people who want to lose weight and get healthy.  Guess what, they not only know and tell me that they are fat, but carry a heavy emotional burden of unhappiness about it.  I or anyone else does no need to verbally slap them across the face by telling them what they already know.  For some reason our society feels the need to point out the obvious as if the person does not know their own condition.  Who am I or you to judge anyone without walking in their shoes physically or emotionally?  I am blessed on a daily basis with gaining insight into the lives and emotions of those who are fat challenged, empathetic to many of the shares and driven to help them adopt a healthy lifestyle.

A fat person does not need to be told their fat just as a skinny or muscular person does not need to be told what their body looks like.  Standing in the truth of our own mirrors tells that story.  There are strong stated “no excuse” and “your fault” labels placed on the fat challenged and even coming from those working in the fitness industry.  Blanket or general statements of blame seem a bit harsh without knowing each individual’s circumstances in life.  Sadly, strong and hurtful terms can be used as publicity gaining ploys but at the emotional expense of those who are in a fat challenged position in life.

I am not saying that it is a healthy state of well-being to be fat and that it should be an accepted way of life.  That is way off the base of this blog.  What I am addressing is the unfair judgments, statements, and ignorant approach to those who are fat challenged.  All people deserve to be treated with respect and honor and we definitely should not be throwing stones when most of us live in glass houses.  There are many people running around unhealthy and simply not wearing it on the outside of their bodies in the form of fat.  Imagine if everything about everyone was exposed automatically for all to see.  In such a state, I guarantee the judgments would quickly come to a halt and all of us would be running with our unhealthy tails tucked between our legs.

Whether the amount of overweight is twenty, forty, or over one-hundred pounds, the person carrying the extra weight knows and feels that burden without me as their trainer or you as an observer saying anything. Those people dealing with obesity need to feel safe to share what has gone on in their life that has brought them to such an unhealthy state of living.  Some are at the point of owning their sabotage and others are still lost in denial and not ready to make healthy changes.  I do not need to blame or fault anyone because those feelings are always shared honestly with me by those who are fat challenged.  Obesity carries a stigma that is negative and can feel painful for those that suffer it daily.  I like that saying that goes “you have fat, you are not fat” because it is not the abundance of fat that should define us as a person. 

All of us in this life want to be healthy, and even supported through the process.  It is our personal responsibility to create that healthy life regardless of our size and shape, and the healthy choices that we make today will form our healthy tomorrows.  I know what needs to be done and what makes me feel great as a healthy person, and what I offer is support, motivation and education to those who desire to get there.  All of us can find reasons to procrastinate and that is probably a good place to start by asking that question.  Why are you waiting?

Thanks for stopping by my Blog. Remember to subscribe and never miss a free update. 

Be well and Stay Healthy

For You Diabetes Patients, Then Join Diabetes Management Study Facebook group

For You Diabetes Patients, Then Join Diabetes Management Study Facebook group - A University of Virginia researcher named Hannah Menefee contacted me recently to ask for our help.  She and her colleagues are conducting a study on how people with type 2 diabetes use Facebook to manage their health, and how that technology can be leveraged to support effective health communication.

If you have type 2 diabetes, and you'd like to participate in the study, please join their Diabetes Management Study Facebook group.  There, you'll receive more information about the study, you'll receive a short survey, and you may be invited into one of the study phases.

When most people think of rodents, automatically mice and rats come to mind. However, nearly 40% of mammal species are rodents, and they are found on every continent except Antarctica. Rodents include mice, rats, squirrels, chipmunks and beavers, among others. A very detailed list can be found at this website: http://animals.howstuffworks.com/mammals/rodents.htm. 

The approximately 4,000 rodent species are divided on the basis of their anatomy into three well-defined groups, or suborders, and more than 30 families. The Sciuromorpha, or squirrel-like rodents, include the various species of squirrel, chipmunk, marmot, woodchuck (or ground hog), prairie dog, gopher (or pocket gopher), pocket mouse, kangaroo rat, and beaver.

The Myomorpha, or mouselike rodents, include a great variety of mouse and rat species, as well as species of hamster, lemming, vole, muskrat, gerbil, dormouse, and jerboa, according to InfoPlease.com. This is the largest rodent group. The Hystricomorpha, or porcupine-like rodents, include the porcupine, capybara, nutria (or coypu), agouti, cavy (including the domestic guinea pig), mara, and chinchilla, as well as many species whose common names include the term rat (e.g., the South American bush rat). More info can be found at this site: http://www.infoplease.com/encyclopedia/science/rodent-types-rodents.html.

According to the Orkin company, rodents’ biology and habits can make them challenging to control, and they present a serious menace to your home. If you’re in need of rodent control services, here’s what you should know about these pests:

Rats

·         Instincts: Rats are instinctively wary of things new to their environment, including rat control measures such as traps and bait, and colonize in attics, burrows, under concrete and porches, in wall voids and other hard-to-reach places.

·         Disease: Rats can harbor and transmit a number of serious diseases. They can also introduce disease-carrying parasites such as fleas and ticks into your home.

Mice

·         Access: They invade your home seeking food, water and warmth.

·         Contamination: Each mouse can contaminate much more food than it eats.

Rodents are warm-blooded mammals that, like humans, can be found throughout the world. They have oversized front teeth for gnawing and check teeth, which are adapted for chewing. Rodents chew on a variety of items available to them and cause great damage in and around homes. Plus, they tend to be rapid breeders. Some species breed year-round, and populations are maintained through constant reproduction.

Because of the rodents’ body plan, they are capable of squeezing through spaces that appear to be much too small for them. All such holes should be sealed to prevent entry and reentry of rodents. A pest control professional should be contacted for assistance. Rats and mice are both extremely destructive within agricultural communities. A number of species feed on seeds and grains. The feces and urine of some rodents may contaminate surfaces with which they come into contact. More details can be found at this site: http://www.orkin.com/rodents/.

According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), worldwide, rats and mice spread over 35 diseases. These diseases can be spread to humans directly, through handling of rodents, through contact with rodent feces, urine, or saliva, or through rodent bites. Diseases carried by rodents can also be spread to humans indirectly, through ticks, mites or fleas that have fed on an infected rodent.

The primary strategy for preventing human exposure to rodent diseases is effective rodent control in and around the home. This is achieved by eliminating any food sources, sealing even the smallest entries into homes, and successfully trapping rodents in and around the home. Cleaning up after a rodent infestation can be labor intensive, and potentially harmful to your health. For a complete overview, visit this website for extremely detailed material: http://www.cdc.gov/rodents/cleaning/index.html.

In spite of some health hazards concerning rodents in general, some mice and rats, gerbils and hamsters, and a few other rodentia are available as household pets. If you’re interested in providing room and board for one, here is a good overview and comparison of what to expect: http://exoticpets.about.com/cs/resourcesgeneral/a/choosearodent.htm.

Certain variations of mice and rats serve the medical research community. By testing these rodents through controlled laboratory testing, many medicines and valuable new clues to curing some diseases have been developed. Much more significant data about this topic can be found at this site:  http://www.sciencedaily.com/news/plants_animals/rodents/.

However, some interesting studies using laboratory rodents have recently come to light. According to Nature, the international research journal of science, male, but not female, experimenters induce intense stress in rodents that can dampen pain responses, according to a paper published in Nature Methods. Such reactions affect the rodents’ behavior and potentially confound the results of animal studies, the study suggests.

According to the research, this surprising gender disparity was discovered while investigating whether the presence of experimenters affects rodent pain studies. For years, anecdotal reports have suggested that rodents show a diminished pain response when a handler remains in the room. More information about this study can be found at this site: http://www.nature.com/news/male-researchers-stress-out-rodents-1.15106.

Finally, according to the State of Florida Health Department, wild rodents can cause home damage, contaminate food, and cause illness in people and pets. Rodent infestations are more likely to occur when events such as flooding displace them. To avoid rodent infestation remove potential rodent food and water sources, and store food for people and pets in sealed containers. Clear debris and other material where rodents can hide.

Safely clean up rodent droppings, urine and nesting areas, always wearing gloves and spraying material with disinfectant until thoroughly soaked before attempting to remove or clean. More details can be found at this website: http://www.floridahealth.gov/%5C/environmental-health/rodents/index.html .

Rodents serve a purpose in creation, but they can also be problematic in many cases. Make sure that your home or worksite is protected and monitored, and cleaned. Rat bite fever is not the same as Saturday Night Fever, so your dance routine is definitely not the same.

Until next time.

One Way to Fight Frustration With Motivation

One Way to Fight Frustration With Motivation - I know in the midst of frustration it's hard to be motivated. Especially when results aren't happening as fast as we may want them to.  Sometimes the feelings move past frustration straight into pissed off and angry. We can feel right out BLAH about it all.  

This is the time giving up may enter our brain. Questions like, “what’s the use” dominate our thought processes. We may even give up and return to old unhealthy habits. Sometimes, this defeatist attitude can come calling with a vengeance. Before the negative mental game takes completely over, consider fighting the frustration with motivation.

We are all fighting for our health and best self each and every day. Health is a process of small steps taken over time that provide big results. Just know each positive change to improve our health IS improving our health. 

Our bodies know something good is happening, even when we are unable to see it. It's during times of the unseen we must have faith in the process. Be motivated by the good being done to become a healthy person. 

Throwing in the towel and going back to old habits will create nothing but further unhappiness and frustration. It will rob us of all the effort accomplished so far. This is not the time to quit, but to stand strong in your efforts, and kick frustration to the curb with motivation.  

Fighting the frustration with motivation will require an inner strength all of us possess. It will be a choice to love ourselves at this moment no matter what a scale says. It will require a celebration of that healthy meal, a completed workout, a daily goal, a completed food journal, or whatever has been the most difficult struggle finally accomplished today.  

Having a positive attitude will fight off frustration one motivation at a time. Patience and a consistent habit of healthy eating and exercise will produce results. Begin to focus not so much on the goal, but what can be achieved today. This will minimize frustration and promote feeling motivated. 

The stress of trying so hard will be replaced by an inner peace of doing our best each day. When we relax about getting fit, health falls into place. Adopting that healthy lifestyle will eventually feel as natural as breathing. 

Thank you for visiting our site !!!!!

STAND IN YOUR FITNESS TRUTH

STAND IN YOUR FITNESS TRUTH - Standing in our fitness truth can be a difficult thing and really something we would rather not face altogether.  Even as we stand in the mirror with our naked truth right in front of us, we can still be in denial of what is looking back at us.  We tell ourselves that we are working out all the time and for heaven’s sake “I have been eating healthy for one week” and still no results.  Therein is the beginning of the end, as the frustration of not accepting the truth behind our closed doors becomes our norm for fitness.

If we truly took responsibility for our fitness truth, there would be a healthier bunch of people running around. We continue to be dishonest with ourselves and not accept that we are not eating as healthy as we should, and the workouts may be minimal at best.  We may talk a good game in front of our friends, family, and even our trainer but within the deepest space of our private life, the truth remains a buried secret.  Lying to ourselves does nothing to make us healthy people, and as we continue to brag about all the healthy meals we are eating, our bodies are telling the true story of what is happening.  Barring a medical condition that is causing weight gain, the general populous is not being impacted by such illness. It is denial of the truth that is happening most of the time and until that is dealt with, obtaining a fit and healthy body just will not happen. 

I find that keeping an accountability fitness and food journal really helps with standing in our fitness truth.  The additional splurge meals, several nights of alcohol, late night snacking, a bite of this and that, and working out two times instead of four times during the week are just a few of the things that we find easy to deny when it comes to our fitness. For some reason those things get forgotten and the only thing remembered is that healthy grilled salmon and vegetables eaten several times during the week.  Further, if we do not write it down, it does not exist and therefore will not negatively impact all the positive efforts.  Who is anyone trying to kid with this type of thinking and behavior.

When we begin to stand in our fitness truth positive results from our efforts will be loud and clear through our bodies changing for the healthy best. This can be a tough subject to swallow and that is alright, because we all need to start somewhere and beginning with the truth in all relationships including the one with ourselves is the basis of all trust.  Do you trust yourself enough to stand in your own fitness truth? 

Thanks for stopping by my Blog. Remember to subscribe and never miss a free update. 

Be well and Stay Healthy

Women and teens cannot get enough of it. Married men fear it on their shirt collars. Store shelves are stocked with it by the case. Celebrities hawk it on commercials non-stop on television, magazine ads, and billboards; and billions of dollars per year are spent on acquiring it. The ancient Egyptians were the first recorded people to use it, and people have been enhancing their lips with it for thousands of years.

Lipstick by definition is a cosmetic used to color lips, usually crayon-shaped and packaged in a tubular container. No individual inventor can be credited as the first to invent lipstick as it is an ancient invention; however, the history of the use of lipstick and credit individual inventors for creating certain formulas and methods of packaging, according to this website: http://inventors.about.com/od/lstartinventions/a/Lipstick.htm .

The actual term "lipstick" wasn't first used until 1880. However, people were coloring their lips long before that date. Upper class Mesopotamians applied crushed semi-precious jewels to their lips. Egyptians made a red dye for their lips from a combination of fucus-algin, iodine, and bromine mannite. Cleopatra was said to have used a mixture of crushed carmine beetles and ants to color her lips red.

Historians note that the first cosmetic lipstick manufactured commercially (rather than homemade products) occurred around 1884. Parisian perfumers had begun to sell lip cosmetics to their customers. By the late 1890s, the Sears Roebuck catalog started to advertise and sell both lip and cheek rouge. Early lip cosmetics were not packaged in their familiar tubes that we see used today. Lip cosmetics were then wrapped in silk paper, placed in paper tubes, used tinted papers, or sold in small pots.

According to CNN, every day millions of women apply lipstick without a second thought. What many don't know is that lipsticks may contain lead, the notorious metal that can cause learning, language and behavioral problems. Lead is a neurotoxin and can be dangerous even at small doses. So what's lead doing in lipsticks? Not all lipsticks contain lead, but a number of studies in recent years show that the metal is more prevalent than previously thought.

Medical experts say there is no safe level of lead in your blood. The FDA says it doesn't consider the lead levels it found in lipsticks to be a safety issue. No lipstick lists lead as an ingredient. The amounts are small, but the presence of lead in lipstick, which is ingested and absorbed through the skin, raises concerns about the safety of a cosmetic product that is wildly popular among women.

Urged on by both consumers and the cosmetics industry, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration conducted its own testing in 2010. The FDA's results were even more astonishing: The agency detected lead in all 400 lipsticks tested, ranging from 0.9 to 3.06 ppm -- four times higher than the levels observed in the study done by Campaign for Safe Cosmetics in 2007. 

And lead isn't the only toxic metal you may be applying to your lips.  Recently, University of California researchers tested eight lipsticks and 24 lip glosses and detected nine toxic heavy metals, including chromium, cadmium, manganese, aluminum and lead. It's true that a single lipstick application will not lead to harm. And the good news is that not all lipsticks contain detectable levels of lead or other heavy metals. (And by the way, cost doesn't seem to be a factor; a cheap or expensive lipstick isn't the determinant of how much lead is present.)

The problem is when women who wear lipstick apply it 2 to 14 times a day, according to the study by the University. The result is that they are ingesting and absorbing through their lips as much as 87 milligrams of product a day, the study says. Women are not only applying their lipsticks several times a day, but they also are doing this in the span of a whole lifetime, which means that exposure to lead and other heavy metals adds up and can potentially affect their overall long term health. More details on this subject can be found at this website: http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/04/opinion/rasanayagam-lipstick-lead/.  

There remains a wide range of metal concentrations across colors and brands, according to the New York Times, and cosmetic companies are able to control metal content when they choose.

Some metals are undoubtedly absorbed through mucosal tissues in the mouth. And people do swallow lipstick, one reason that it’s so often reapplied. Given the continued debate about how much is absorbed, everyone — including the cosmetics industry — is pushing the F.D.A. to study the issue further.

In the meantime, health care practitioners recommend that consumers take a common-sense approach to cosmetics. For starters, don’t let young children play with lipstick. You should treat it like something dangerous, because if they eat it, a comparatively large level of metals are going into a small body. And be cautious about how often you reapply that shimmering color. Given the uncertainties, two or three times a day is all that beauty can reasonably demand. More information can be found at this site: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/16/is-there-danger-lurking-in-your-lipstick/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0.

Cosmetics safety should be assessed not only by the presence of hazardous contents, but also by comparing estimated exposures with health-based standards. In addition to lead, metals such as aluminum, cadmium, chromium, and manganese require further investigation, according to the National Institutes for Health. A detailed overview of a scientific study can be found at this website: http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/1205518/ .  

Now that you're thinking about lipstick in a new way, let's look at the basics. In short, lipstick is a compressed tube of waxes, oils, additives and pigments that color and moisturize the lips. Most lipstick-wearers don't give much thought to anything other than the color, how it feels on their lips and how much it costs. Lipstick can be had for anywhere from $1 to $100, depending on the brand. One lipstick made by Guerlain costs more than $60,000, but that's probably because of its diamond-encrusted, 18-karat gold tube, according to HowStuffWorks.com.

Although there are many different types of lipsticks and a vast array of colors, there are some basic ingredients. And that list of ingredients above is just a paltry few of the many substances that might be in the tube of lipstick in your purse. For many women, wearing lipstick for the first time is a rite of passage, and even if they wear no other makeup, they feel naked without it. Lipstick essentially began the modern cosmetics industry. Much more info on lipstick can be found at this website: http://health.howstuffworks.com/skin-care/beauty/skin-and-makeup/lipstick.htm.

Lipstick in general is considered to be safe, but check the ingredients with the manufacturer of the brand you want to buy. Although the health effects of lipstick have not shown to be harmful yet, there is a growing body of evidence that it could cause long term issues. If you suspect that you may have health related issues due to using lipstick, see your doctor. All health issues should be addressed by a physician or professional medical practitioner.

Until next time.