Clean Slate

First, I want to say a huge thank you for those that helped support the HOPE Food Pantry this month. Your donations helped raise over $550 and about 50lbs of food. Those donations will be aid a lot of people that are in need. So, thank you.

At the gym I have something I call a clean slate policy. It means that no matter what you did or did not do that was part of your commitment, you have the ability to start fresh with a clean slate.

In other words, everyday is a new day. I say this because I know many of you will be dragging for the next couple of days due to an overflow of Thanksgiving for 4 days. This is your time to start fresh. Start new. Whatever happened, happened. Deal with it and move on.

It may be easy to give up and say well what is the point, Christmas and New Year’s are right around the corner, what I do now won’t make much of a difference. Stop telling yourself a made-up story and start creating what you want.

If you need help, ask.

P.S.- December 10th at 930am is the last charity workout for this year. It is for the St. Vincent dePaul Society. It is the oldest charity in the Chicago Diocese. They help so many causes from food banks to counseling to emergency services. Please join me on the 10th to help support them. As always, if you can not make it you can still send a donation.

How to save Thanksgiving

It is certainly not uncommon for a Thanksgiving meal to be well over 1,000 calories. Maybe some even 2,000! Basically, it is darn close to being a full days worth of food in one sitting. So here are a couple tips to help you through:

1. exercise the morning of
2. eat small meals the rest of the day and don’t starve yourself just for this one big meal
3. eat the good food first, like turkey and vegetables, and save the food that you know is not that good for you until last
4. eat slow

I wish everyone the best this Thanksgiving.

Are you out of your mind?

There was an article in O magazine (yes, guys O. I admit that I read some of the stuff. You can’t sit here and tell me you don’t skim through some of your wife’s magazines too!) about the brain and its ability to change behaviors or decisions.

The study looked at the brain activity and determined when it “lit up” and how big the activation was based on how new the activity was.

As you would suspect the frontal lobe lit up in the beginning as they were just learning the new behavior. But, after about 50 repetitions the activation started to get a bit less with each subsequent repetition. Basically, the more they adapted to it the less the brain had to fire. When the brain fires off minimum effort then it was determined that it has formed a new habit.

So if you exercise 50 times in a row or eat great 50 times in a row will you automatically form the new habit?

The answer is that it depends. The doctor conducting the study said there are many variables. Things like stress actually reverse the process and inhibit the frontal lobe. So stress management is critical. The other part is the way in which you reward yourself. Find the right reward and make sure it is instant. He uses the analogy of potty training a dog. If your dog peed on the floor and you said to it “if you don’t pee in the floor for the week I will buy you a new rawhide bone”, you would be cleaning a lot of piss up. So the reward has to be instant.

So what does this all mean? And how do you change?

Set yourself up for success. Eliminate anything in your life that would give you a reason to “cheat”. So if it is nutrition based and chocolate is your downfall, eliminate it everywhere. House, work, car, etc. Second, find something you love to do and start there. So if it was exercise, think back to when you were a kid. What did you like to do then? Stickball? Jump rope? Rollerblade?

Finally, if those don’t work, SUCK IT UP! After about 2-3 weeks depending on your brain, it will start producing a protein called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) which is like Miracle Gro for your brain.

Need Your Help

This Saturday the 12th at 930am I am hosting a charity workout for the HOPE Food Pantry.

Thanksgiving is weeks away and it is a time that we give thanks and reflect on how fortunate we are to have what we have in our lives.

There are people without jobs, homes and food for their kids. YOU can help!

If you can make it this Saturday, great! Your entry to the workout is a donation.
If you can’t, you can still send a donation and help that way.

Any questions please let me know via email:
ben@bewellfitness.com

Are your friends making you fat?

Some people have said that your closet 5 friends are a refection of you. That are a telling story about what your expectations are of your future, your health, your views, outlook, etc.

But, can they really make you fat?

YES!!!!!!

Now, before I go further, I must state that I am the first one to say people need to take responsibility for their actions and choices. We choose to eat like crap, we choose to not exercise. Having friends that share your views only makes it easier to justify yours. Have you ever had a friend ask you to workout or go to dinner or get coffee when you were neither motivated to workout, hungry or thirsty. You wound up doing those things because of your friends influence.

The even better news is that your friends can make you healthy too!

The point of this post is to get you thinking of positive influences in your life in the areas you want to improve on. In other words, if I wanted to better organize my financial future/planning, I would be calling a friend of mine back in Massachusetts to help me. Find people that take their health seriously and hang around them more. It is infectious. Follow more people on the internet that will provide you with quality information.

Lastly, in an effort to keep providing you with the best information, I have teamed up with a nutritional supplement company called Prograde Nutrition. In the path to finalizing my nutritional certification, I have found this company to take the right steps to ensure you are getting a quality supplement product. They have even given me a direct link to offer to everyone:

http://bewellfitness.getprograde.com

Please check it out and if you are interested in ordering something from them, let me know and I will give you a coupon code for your first order that will save you 15%.