We seem to gain wisdom more readily through our failures than through our successes. We always think of failure as the antithesis of success, but it isn't. Success often lies just the other side of failure.
Friday, August 31, 2012
Success
· "To me success can only be achieved through repeated failure and introspection. In fact, success represents 1% of your work that results from the 99% that is called failure."
· Soichiro Honda
Top 5 Tips to Make Progress
Top 5 Tips to Make Progress
1.Diet
You can be in the gym 24/7 killing yourself with weight training and cardio but if you’re not eating properly you’re just wasting your time and effort. What you put into your body will determine 75 – 80% of your results. You may see results in the beginning but it will slow down very fast. Proper diet means getting an adequate amount of each macronutrient into your body based on your body and specific goal. Your sources of each macro should come from quality sources.
2.Training
The way you train is another key factor to the results you will see on your journey to transforming your body. I’ve always believed in quality of quantity. Make every rep count! This means proper form and full range of motion with each rep. Train by feel. If you are doing the movement correctly then you should feel each and every rep you go through which means you will be more likely to stimulate more muscle fibers. Stimulation = growth.
3.RECOVERY
Remember your not growing and progressing in the gym. Growth and progress happens when your body is getting proper rest after training. So don’t over do it in the gym. More isn’t always better in this case. With a good pace you should be able to knockout a quality training session under 90 mins depending how many muscle groups you are incorporating.
4.SUPPLEMENTS
There is no magic pill to get you results. Supplements are used to supplement a proper diet and to give you a quantity that your body is demanding from exerting more stress on your body from training. So don’t rely on your supplements. Diet is still #1!
5.GAMEPLAN
Go into the gym on a mission and a plan. Have in your head what muscle group you’re going to kill and what movements you want to go with. Always train with a variety of movements every session. Changing things up constantly will keep your body in a state of shock and will promote maximum growth.
Thursday, August 30, 2012
Goals
The reason most people never reach their goals is that they don't define them, learn about them, or even seriously consider them as believable or achievable. Winners can tell you where they are going, what they plan to do along the way, and who will.
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
Weekly Goals
· Start off the week with a clear head and written out goals. Your incredible brain can take you from rags to riches if you use it properly.
What is your No. 1 goal that you are going to achieve this week?
What is your No. 1 goal that you are going to achieve this week?
Monday, August 27, 2012
Friday, August 24, 2012
no mervmails
Sorry, no mervmails this weekend.
I am moving my daughter, Mur into her college dorm………..
“I have to lift things up and put them down!”
Back in business on Monday.
Thursday, August 23, 2012
post workout meal
Achieve success in any area of life by identifying the optimum strategies and repeating them until they become habits. Charles J. Givens
Before your work out, it depends on what kind of work out you're doing as to when you should eat. If you're working out in the morning, that's more of an issue then if you're working out after work. Just don't go into the gym with an appetite and do a strength workout. You'll see why in the next paragraph.
In the morning, you can get a great fat burning effect if you do an aerobic exercise before breakfast. However, don't strength train on an empty stomach! Not only will you be weak, but you'll be burning muscle to fuel your workouts instead of stored nutrients. You don't have hardly any stored nutrients in the morning, your body is nearly depleted on the fuels it needs, because you've been fasting for at least 8 hours (more likely 12 hours if you eat a few hours before bed).
After you work out, eat IMMEDIATELY! After a work out, your body is depleted, and is looking for building materials (anabolic state). If it cannot find the building materials through food, it will start breaking down muscle tissue (catabolic state). Eating after a work out helps you maintain all of your gains, as well as increase your metabolism.
In the morning, you can get a great fat burning effect if you do an aerobic exercise before breakfast. However, don't strength train on an empty stomach! Not only will you be weak, but you'll be burning muscle to fuel your workouts instead of stored nutrients. You don't have hardly any stored nutrients in the morning, your body is nearly depleted on the fuels it needs, because you've been fasting for at least 8 hours (more likely 12 hours if you eat a few hours before bed).
After you work out, eat IMMEDIATELY! After a work out, your body is depleted, and is looking for building materials (anabolic state). If it cannot find the building materials through food, it will start breaking down muscle tissue (catabolic state). Eating after a work out helps you maintain all of your gains, as well as increase your metabolism.
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
crave healthy
When you eat healthy, you crave healthy. When you eat junk, you crave more junk. Choose healthier nutrient dense foods to get more bang for your calorie buck and to help your body crave good for you foods.
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
Monday, August 20, 2012
Friday, August 17, 2012
Bad Diet
So true! All that hard work at the gym can sabotaged by the food we eat……….
So what's for breakfast?
Breakfast
Breakfast is the most important meal of the day! And so is the next meal...and the next meal...and the next meal! You get the idea! Eat smaller meals every few hours to fuel your body and keep your metabolism going!
Why “Diets” don’t work
Fat loss Physiology; Why “Diets” don’t work.
Why do we get fat? And when we try to lose it why do most fail or revert back? The answer lies in a simple analogous adventure into our prehistoric past. If we look at how our caveman and women ancestors lived and subsisted, and how our physiology seeks homeostasis, it is easy to see how diets are often unsuccessful in the long run.
The human body and its checks and balances are meant to keep us at just the right weight and body fat. Our fat cells, and to a smaller extent the cells in the lining of the stomach, secrete a hormone called leptin. That's right, our fat is an active part of the endocrine system. When we become lean our fat is lower and subsequently less leptin is produced and sent to the brain, and more specifically the hypothalamus. When this happens the hypothalamus decreases thyroid activity, down regulating our metabolism and also sends out hormones such as ghrelin and neuropeptide Y (NPY), which make us hungry. Think about it, if we go back to our caveman, it makes sense to decrease his metabolism in famine, and increase his hunger to seek his next meal. His body wants him to get back to a body fat that will support famine or the long winter.
The inverse happens when our body fat increases. Increased body fat increases the leptin signal to the hypothalamus and to this it increases metabolism via the thyroid, and decreases hormonal signals of hunger. Although our caveman needs to have enough body fat to survive the next famine, his body also realizes he needs to be lean enough to run away from the occasional tiger.
↓ Fat = ↓ Leptin = ↑ Hunger Hormones + ↓ Metabolism
↑ Fat = ↑ Leptin = ↓ Hunger Hormones + ↑ Metabolism
So how is it that obesity is an issue in the western society? Much like the body becomes resistant to insulin in Type 2 Diabetes, it also becomes leptin resistant. This is due to many things such as a sedentary lifestyle, over consumption of processed carbohydrates, elevated triglycerides, chronic stress, and toxicity just to name a few. This sounds a lot like the lifestyle of many Americans. Essentially the hypothalamus does not receive the signal despite the over abundance of fat and subsequently leptin. Luckily reversing leptin resistance can be accomplished by paying attention to the aforementioned lifestyle factors. Maintaining regular physical activity, increasing whole food consumption in contrast to processed foods, dealing with stress, decreasing alcohol consumption, and investigating and rectifying possible sources of toxicity will go a long way in dealing with leptin resistance.
So getting to our main point; why do "diets" fail? First it's because the modern conception of diet is incorrect, and means nothing more than a way of eating or a lifestyle. Essentially the same physiological mechanism that kept our caveman the right body fat still exists in our bodies today. When we begin to go into famine, which in modern day is merely caloric restriction through decreasing food consumption, our bodies’ natural mechanisms sense this over time and decrease metabolism. To compound this dieters try to create a caloric deficit by increasing activity, and in many cases this takes the form of long duration aerobic activity, although this may not always be the case. Now think about it, if our caveman were in famine would he go for a jog to expend energy, or conserve it? To this our body has to release cortisol, a stress hormone that helps liberate fat, glucose, and protein from muscle to provide us with energy. The only bad thing is that this hormone also likes to deposit fat in the abdominal region when elevated chronically! While this is all happening our body is in a net protein loss, which leads to loss of muscle. To pile it on our body also begins to send out this hunger signals ghrelin and NPY as it senses famine, and also because our stress hormones do a great job at stimulating NPY release. NPY is an interesting hormone because it makes us crave sweet things, not so bad for our caveman who would find some berries, but now those berries have turned into a snickers bar from the closest vending machine.
So that's where the common day "dieter" is left. Sporting a decreased metabolism, increased hunger for bad food options, increased circulating stress hormones, and decreased muscle mass. Not a good situation for maintaining the possible weight lost. The truth is that it's not about a number, it's not about weight loss, it's about fat loss. It's not about the mindset of a "diet"' but a change in a lifestyle. Successful and maintained fat loss is achieved slower and through making changes in lifestyle to increasing physical activity, making better food choices, decreasing stress, and being practical about what can be achieved.
When it comes to the traditional approach to fat loss, there is a lot left to be desired. Long drawn out aerobic sessions are not the way to go. While maintaining aerobic fitness is important, one can do so by maintaining a progressive resistance-training program that includes shorter more relatively intense bouts of activity. This maintains muscle mass and decreases the chronic stress response brought about by long duration steady state aerobic sessions. In addition to this a grocery list that includes plenty of sources of protein, fruits, vegetables, and some nuts, seeds, and healthy oils, while staying away from more processed foods found in boxes and bags will go a long way. And finally, use the trusty SMART goal model to establish specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-oriented goals. Getting social support from friends and family, as well as accountability from a fitness professional will also better your chances of taking of the fat for good.
I hope this journey to ancestral homeostasis was enlightening or will at least save you or someone you know from falling into the traditional approach to fat loss. Until next time, get Big, be Strong, keep Fit, and stay Healthy!
Thursday, August 16, 2012
Being Solo
Being with no one is better than being with the wrong one. Sometimes, those who fly solo have the strongest wings!
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
friends
A true friend knows your weaknesses but shows you your strengths; feels your fears but fortifies your faith; sees your anxieties but frees your spirit; recognizes your disabilities but emphasizes your possibilities.
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
Monday, August 13, 2012
Friday, August 10, 2012
first impression
· First impressions are oftentimes inaccurate judgments of a person’s true character.
6 Ways Your Brain Attempts To Sabotage Your Goals & Dreams
6 Ways Your Brain Attempts To Sabotage Your Goals & Dreams
Now we know that you should never make excuses for not sticking to your goals, and we understand that from time to time you will have your valid reasons, but what if it is not really you to blame for your failures and that your brain is actually out to sabotage your hopeful plans?
Well this article here explains the 6 ways that your brain plays tricks on you to sabotage your goals and dreams.
1.) Your brain can hurt your goals by fantasizing too much
Would you believe that fantasizing is the #1 way your brain can unintentionally ruin your goals?
It seems unlikely, right?
The thing is, the proof is in the pudding (or in this case, the research): psychologists have found that while positive thinking about the future is broadly beneficial, too much fantasy can have disastrous results on achieving goals.
Researchers tracked the progress of how people cope with four different types of challenges.
As an example, in one of those challenges (trying to find a fulfilling job), those who had spent the most time fantasizing performed the worst in a variety of critical data points:
- they had applied for fewer jobs
- they had been offered fewer jobs
- if they were able to find work, they had lower salaries.
Why?
Why could fantasizing about a positive end take a turn for the worse?
Jeremy Dean, a psychological researcher at UCL London and the owner of PsyBlog had this to say about the researcher’s conclusions:
The problem with positive fantasies is that they allow us to anticipate success in the here and now. However, they don’t alert us to the problems we are likely to face along the way and can leave us with less motivation—after all, it feels like we’ve already reached our goal.
It’s one way in which our minds own brilliance lets us down. Because it’s so amazing at simulating our achievement of future events, it can actually undermine our attempts to achieve those goals in reality.
Our poor brain is thus a victim of itself.
Again, this is not to say that visualizing goals is necessarily a haphazard strategy for achieving them, it’s just that we need to be aware of the dangers of excessive fantasy.
Instead of being entranced with what the future may bring, we need to learn to love the work here and now.
Enjoying our day by day progress and realistic ‘checkpoints’ is a much more practical way to create our future; getting lost in grandiose dreams that focus on the ultimate end is not.
As they say, don’t give up on your dreams, but don’t fall under their spell either.
2.) Your brain procrastinates on big projects by visualizing the worst parts
Procrastination, of all of the things on this list, is likely the most recognizable: everybody realizes that they procrastinate from time to time, and it’s something we are forced to battle with every day.
How can we fight this persistent opponent?
Interesting research from Russian psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik (of whom the Zeigarnik Effect is named after) reveals to us an interesting tidbit about the human mind: we are better at remember things that are partially done.
Ms. Zeigarnik came to this conclusion by testing the memory of folks doing simple “brain” tasks like puzzles or crafts.
She then interrupted them and asked them to recall (with specific detail) the tasks that they were doing or had completed.
She found that people were twice as likely to recall more detail about the tasks they had been interrupted in than in the tasks they had completed.
What does this have to do with procrastination?
Before we get to that, know this: in a study by Kenneth McGraw, participants were given a very tricky puzzle to solve with an “unlimited” amount of time.
The thing is, all of the participants were interrupted before they could finish, and then told that the study was over.
Guess what happened next…
Despite being told they were done, nearly 90% of participants continued working on the puzzle anyway.
What both of these studies teach us is that when people finally manage to start something, they are much more inclined to remember the task and finish it.
The Zeigarnik Effect and the subsequent McGraw study assure us that the best way to beat procrastination is to start somewhere… anywhere.
Our brain has the habit of envisioning the impending huge workload of an upcoming task.
It also tends to focus on the most difficult parts or sections, and this is where procrastination begins to set in: as we try to avoid the “hard work”, we find ways to skate around it and trick ourselves into thinking that we’re busy.
Just starting though, triggers our brain in a different way.
It’s the same way that cliffhangers are utilized to keep us coming back to our favorite TV shows; we’re primed to remember the last episode because the story was interrupted, and our brain wants a conclusion.
It’s the same with your tasks: start, and your brain will overcome the first hurdle.
This seemingly small milestone appears to be the most important one to overcome if you wish to defeat procrastination.
After starting a task, your brain will be more enticed to finish it to it’s “conclusion.”
You also tend to see that it’s not as big a mountain as you initially imagined, and that the work involved in completing this task won’t be so terrifying after all.
3.) Your brain will “abandon ship” at the first sign of distress
Anyone who’s fought the good fight with dieting will likely recognize this phenomenon.
Envision this:
You’re on a diet, and have been doing well for about 2 1/2 weeks, but you know your defenses are at risk.
To make matters work, you’re having dinner with friends tonight.
Instead of the healthy meal you could have made at home, you’re forced to use a restaurant menu.
The problem is this: At the bar before dinner, you had a little “cheat” moment by ordering snacks and drinks, after all, you’re with your pals tonight, right?
You know that those drinks and snacks, combined with the bread you had before dinner, leave you with one option to stay a bit over your caloric intake goals: you must eat a salad.
The thing is, your brain is yelling out “BURGER!”.
Instead of finishing the day a tad over your 2000 calorie goal, you order the burger with fries and don’t look back.
The crazy thing about this scenario?
It’s much more than a momentary act of weakness: psychologists have observed that this is much more likely to happen as a result of you missing a previously set goal.
Specifically, in research by Janet Polivy and her colleagues, people who were actually on diets were tested with pizza and cookies.
In the study, two groups of participants (those on diets and those not dieting) were told not to eat beforehand and then served exactly the same slice of pizza when they arrived to the lab.
Afterwards, they were then asked to taste and rate some cookies (I’m getting hungry already : )).
The thing was, the experimenters didn’t really care about the cookie’s rating, they just wanted to see how many people ate.
This is because they tricked some of the participants into thinking that they had received a larger slice than the others (using framing and false information). This was to make them believe that they had most certainly “ruined” their diet goals for the day.
The result?
When the cookies were weighed, it turned out that those who were on a diet and thought they’d blown their limit ate more of the cookies than those who weren’t on a diet.
This doesn’t paint the true picture though: they ate over 50% more!
On the flip side, the dieters that did think that they were in their caloric limit ate the same amount of cookies as those who weren’t on a diet at all.
Truly, our brain is geared towards a call of “Abandon ship!”, whenever we come short of our goals.
Don’t let this happen to you!
The best way to combat your brain from signaling ‘Mission Abort!’ after you’ve missed a short-term goal is to re-frame what just happened.
Yes, you did fall short or maybe mess up this time, but remember the progress that you’ve made.
With the diet example, you could look at all of the “good days” you’ve accumulated thus far: even if you fell after only a few days of starting your new diet, it’s still an accomplishment to have started one and to have set long-term goals for yourself.
Short-term lapses in your end-goal is not like a bad apple spoiling the bunch: you have gotten things accomplished so far and you need to stay focused on the long-term, not become distraught by a single mishap.
Research tells us that this is the best mindset to take for misfortune and failure in general: your progress and achievements go so much farther than that slip-up; don’t let your brain convince you that all is lost!
4.) Your brain loves mindless busywork disguised as progress
How fitting that this should be posted on a site that relates to social media!
One of the ways in which your brain continues it’s trickery is through busy work: work that gets “something” done, but not something that produces any measurable results.
In fact, research by John Bargh and colleagues reveals that our brain just loves to become robotic and to even mimic people out of habit.
I shouldn’t have to tell you that this is disastrous to achieving long-term goals!
This busy work is often a mechanism our brain uses in cohesion with avoiding big projects (mentioned above): instead of diving into the difficult tasks we KNOW we should get done, we’ll instead float around doing semi-related (read: barely related) menial tasks to make ourselves feelproductive without actually getting anything done.
Here’s the thing: you’re not going to build a thriving business or a successful blog with that kind of busy work.
It takes doing the hard work and it takes deliberate practice, there’s no way around it.
The thing is, your brain knows this, that’s why you have to remind yourself that the challenging stuff is often the stuff that produces the results you desire.
Also remember that you can fight that procrastination by just getting started.
When you look back at what you’ve gotten done by the end of the day, make sure you’re proud of what you got accomplished, don’t let your brain ruin your goals by diverting you from what needs to be done!
5.) Your brain is not good at “winging it” when it comes to planning… ever!
Every night before I go to sleep, I like to write a simple “to-do” list that I group into two categories.
I put some in category ‘A’ (must be done tomorrow) and some in category ‘B’ (must be worked on or done in 2-3 days).
I do this because when I sit down at the computer to do work without a plan, I tend to fall flat on my face.
My so-called “work time” turns into the not-so-productive “check email time” or “browse Reddit” time; nothing of any importance gets done.
It seems that I’m not alone!
In research by Gollwitzer and colleagues, the subject of “if-then” plans was discussed in relation to how we set and stay consistent with out goals, and the results are not surprising but reveal a lot of insight into how our brain reacts to planning (and even some great tips).
The thing is, researchers found that not only do well laid plans seem to get accomplished more often, but planning for failures along the way (“In case of emergency…”) helps people stay on task under duress.
Let’s continue our diet example from above.
Say you did have that lapse and go over your calories for the day.
Instead of “winging it” and letting your brain crumble to it’s likely response (discussed above), you should have a backup plan ready to know what to do when failure strikes.
This could be something like: “If I go over 2000 calories in a day, I’ll finish the day as close to 2000 as I can, and then the next morning, I’ll go for a 15 minute run as a ‘penance’, make sure I eat an extra healthy breakfast, and then continue the rest of my day as normal.”
You are likely no stranger to feeling ashamed about getting off track, we’ve all been there.
Having those “In case of emergency…” plans help us to have a game plan in case we do falter, and including a small ‘penance’ like I discussed above can help us get over it quicker.
If you failed on your diet for a day and then ‘punish’ (again, just with a quick run) yourself by running in the morning, you can go about your day knowing that you got what you deserved, instead of sliding down the slippery slope of guilt through the rest of the day.
So remember to include an “If-Then” plan for your next big goal, you’ll be able to beat back your brain’s guilt over slipping up now and then and you won’t have to ever “wing it” in case something goes wrong!
Thursday, August 9, 2012
Wednesday, August 8, 2012
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
Monday, August 6, 2012
Sunday, August 5, 2012
Friday, August 3, 2012
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