Goals On The Road To Success

by Kris Pitcher

“You must have long term goals to keep you from being frustrated by short term failures.”

Charles C. Noble

We see our mistakes as the end all. When we falter, we throw our hands up in the air and say, "See...you were right I can't do this!" 

Having long term goals really does keep us on track by allowing us to accept our mistakes, or short term failures. You did know you might make mistakes, right? One of the biggest hurdles for us is we think we have to be perfect in this pursuit.

We don't. We're not. There won't be a time when we get it all right, all of the time. It's just not realistic. Letting go of that notion should free you up to move forward.

It will be your long term goal that you'll continue to look toward to get you through your tough times. A glitch in the road? Look ahead. Think about how you'll get yourself through this temporary situation to move toward your long term goal. 

Being able to navigate the glitches is what makes people successful long term with weight management, or any other issue. Because there will always be difficulties/mistakes/glitches. That's life. 

It's how we deal with them that gets us through. Keeping our eye on our long term goal will do just the trick. It's time to re-evaluate your goals. Get clear on where you are going, and the small things along the way won't frustrate you.  

Diet Soda Makes You Fat

by Kris Pitcher

I'll be honest, I've been avoiding this topic because I know it won't make me popular. But you're used to hearing the truth from me, and you know I don't sugar coat it for you. Now, I'm not even going to sugar substitute coat it. I'm just going to share some information and as usual you can make your own decision.

I always talk about the "value laden" decisions we make in and around nutrition and this one is no different. Butter or margarine, to drink alcohol or not, fat free or regular, meat or vegetarian...all choices we each have to make based on our values.

Sugar substitutes used to fall into this category. I say "used to" because with the exception of a few rats with cancer early on, we pretty much know the current ones on the market don't "harm" us. Except the science is beginning to tell us information about how the sugar substitutes in diet sodas are making us fat.

Now, maybe this is an issue of relativity. If the choice is sugar vs. sugar substitute...is it's a matter of degree? Degree and your teeth falling out maybe. Again, things to think about as we make choices.

The San Antonio Longitudinal Study of Aging looked at 474 people over 9.5 years. They found the diet soda drinkers had a 70% increase over non-diet soda drinkers in waist circumference. This demonstrates a positive relationship between the consumption of diet soda and the increase in obesity. "Frequent" users of diet soda, those consuming more than 2 per day, had a mean increase in waist size five times greater than the non-diet soda drinkers. Check out the study abstract: Diet soft drink consumption linked to increased obesity.

The take away here is, more research is coming out supporting this link. If you're a 12-pack a day consumer...you might have some decisions to make. If you enjoy one diet soda a day, that may be another story - I don't have the answer.

For me, if I was consuming something that was counter to my goals - I would need to think critically about taking that out of my diet. Our choices should be about aligning our actions with our goals. Food for thought...

Lose 20 Pounds Fast!

by Kris Pitcher

Losing weight is important to people. So I thought to myself - how could we do it fast, super fast! And I have two ideas for super fast weight loss. I think these will be easy too. We like easy! I mean who wants to work for this?

First up - our skin! We can lose our skin. Did you know your skin makes up about 15% of your body weight? There's 21 pounds right there. Gone! It is the largest organ in our body and covers 22 sq feet. That's a lot of space.

Our skin is there for a reason though. It's job is to protect everything inside. It is a giant barrier from infection. Our skin keeps us from getting all dried out...inside. Eww. OK, maybe not an option.

My second great idea was our skeleton. Surely we don't need that weighing us down. At 14% of our body weight on average, we're looking at 20 pounds. Bye bye big numbers on the scale!

We have 206 bones. And no, men don't have more than women. Our bones are fairly important however. We need them to hold up our structure and ambulate (walk around). It's the joints of our skeleton which allow us to move. Again...bad idea.

Well, these two ideas for weight loss might not be my best ones ever. But I've had other good ideas in the past. And maybe it helps us keep our expectations in perspective. We wouldn't want to do something as drastic as this, now would we?

Making Meal Time Work

by Kris Pitcher

If I had to rely on preparing each meal when it was time to eat...I wouldn't have time to do anything else. And this is a common pitfall and the reason we have a multi-billion dollar fast food industry. Most people are unprepared. But in order to make your goals work for you - you need to make meal time work.

This is easy to accomplish with another "trick of the trade". People who are successful with weight management plan ahead. You just have to. Now I recognize not to the extent of an athlete. But I'm going to share a few tricks to help you through your week a lot easier.

We've already organized our pantry. What? You didn't quite get to that project yet...well there's still time. Get your grocery list together, you're going shopping for your food for the next seven days. What will you need and how much? Look at your plan! I'm just going to talk you into a big circle here.

But you're right, you might need to get the calculator out. X number of meals, X number of days, times X number of family members...oh boy you're going to have to do some menu planning here! Once you do that, make your list and get your groceries.

Pick a day for food prep. Sunday is a great day. The family is lounging, or at least a little slower. It's time to wash and cut vegetables, and cook ahead. You'll need some nice big storage containers for the refrigerator. At our house, we grill a lot of chicken - so fire up the grill. Six pounds at a time I grill it up, cut it up (it's easier/faster to weigh it out for meal time) and store it .

Same goes for ground turkey. We go through a lot of that. It's on the stove at the same time. You're multi-tasking here. You may also be putting veggies in baggies for lunches, washing fruit, making a cous cous or quinoa salad. That salad can become a meal base you throw your protein into. See how easy meal time is going to be?

Cooking fish? We buy fish frozen - we live inland - I fill my broiler pan and cook 8 fillets at once, no need to thaw them or anything. Getting things prepped in bulk makes mealtime in the (busy) evenings a snap. With food prepared it is easy to fix lunches in the morning, or right alongside dinner in the evening.

Taking two hours on the weekend to prep for a successful week makes or breaks your nutritional plan. Like I've said before, good eating habits don't happen by themselves, and people who are successful at weight management practice it every day. Every. Day. Here is another great trick of the nutrition trade to help you be successful!  

Shortcuts and Haircuts

by Kris Pitcher

I don't see men wearing shape-up's. Now, maybe they don't make them for men. Or maybe it's that women seem to fall for every fad, gadget and gizmo. (Not that these shoes are any of those.)

The Hand Fitness Trainer

I'm not sure if we are desperate for something, ANYTHING, that will finally work. Or, if we have just given up and figure what the heck I'll try anything for under $100.

To our credit, we are looking for shortcuts. Our days are too busy, we have too many responsibilities and the dishwasher isn't unloading itself. So a shortcut here and there would be nice, wouldn't it?

One of the problems with the shortcut mentality is it's often coupled with the notion that once you get to a certain size, or weight...it's done. You're done.

You're not done. You don't cut your hair once and it stays that way forever. It continues to grow. Maintaining a style requires continued, regularly scheduled cuts. To think it would just stay the way it was cut would just be silly. So is being done once you make a goal weight/size. You will always have maintenance work.

Shortcuts are different from being efficient. You should look for ways to be efficient in your life, but there aren't shortcuts to getting the results you want. There isn't a magic gizmo that's going to do the work for you. You don't need it anyway. You're doing this!

Rewarding Good Behavior

by Kris Pitcher

You've had a great week! You've mastered your plan, followed your workout routine...you even got to bed on time. You deserve a reward! Rewards can be a great game plan, or game changing depending on how you see them.

Your reward plan should include both big rewards for reaching goals, and small rewards for making weekly progress. The type of reward is crucial to your success long term.

Throughout history, we have rewarded good behavior with - food. Sweets, goodies, going all out! Now, if we're going to make progress we need to make our rewards count, not make them counter.

Learning to reward yourself with non-food items might be a new idea. You do deserve a treat. Let's think about treats that won't take you back two steps when you've just taken one step forward.

The thing about rewards is they have to matter to you. I can make a list of things, but they've got to appeal to you. You'll need to make your own list - get creative. Here are a few things to get you started.

• go to the movies
• compliment yourself - make yourself a "self-affirmation" box with sayings in it
• put a $1 in a jar every day you meet your goals, when it reaches $50 spend it
• take a bath
• treat yourself to your hobby
• get a pedicure
• buy new underwear
• read a book
• spend time with a friend
• go to the spa

You get the idea. Big rewards might be a weekend away, or an actual vacation. Identify things you love and treat yourself to those things. The work you are doing is deserving...not of a backslide, but of a reward.

Learning to give yourself gifts through your reward plan will have you feeling great about all the hard work you're doing. We need positive reinforcement, it's human nature. Supporting ourselves is part of the process. Now you can begin rewarding good behavior!

Sick of Being Tired?

by Kris Pitcher

Are you sick and tired of always being tired? According to the National Institutes of Health, 50 to 70 million Americans suffer from chronic sleep loss and sleep disorders. Seems every one's tired. Here are a few tips to get you out of your daze and back into life.

You need 7 to 8. Hours that is. People who think they can get by with 6 or fewer hours of sleep aren't kidding anyone. On average, we need 7-8 hours of sleep for rest and recovery. It's also difficult to "make up" for lost sleep. A consistent 5 hours per night during the week can't be made up by sleeping the whole weekend.

Make a list before you go to bed. If you wake up and worry, or have trouble falling asleep - this is a great tool. By making a list you are releasing all of your "to do's" and not relying on yourself to remember them the next day. That's too much pressure. When you wake up with worry, write it on the list.

Take a close look at your schedule and commitments. Are there things you can let go of so you aren't as over-committed? Time is precious, make sure you are filling it with the things most important to you. Busying yourself in the evenings with too many things makes for very late nights. What can you let go of?

Decrease your caffeine. Try enjoying your caffeinated beverages before noon, and no later. We can get into a cycle where we need it to wake up, rely on it all day, then it keeps us up most of the night only to leave us needing it in the morning. Vicious cycle. Nothing after noon.

Increase your water intake. Being fully hydrated allows our body to operate at a higher capacity. This just makes sense. It will literally perk up your cells. It will wake up your brain.

Get off the sugar rise and crash cycle. Eat your balanced nutrition throughout the day to maintain a healthy and steady blood sugar. Eating sugary foods high in refined carbs make us tired. Period. These are the habits that get our systems into cycles of feeling down and tired. Get out by eating well.

Taking control of a few things will get you out of the tired rut in a hurry. You'll be sleeping better and feeling refreshed when you wake in no time. Sleep loss is a tremendous stress on our bodies, doing what we can to counter that keeps us healthy. I'll see you on the other side of tired!