You've Got to Love Somebody The desire to be loved! The desire to give love! Let's start with understanding that you are loved by the Creator God. I also will state that in order to give love to others you have to love yourself. This self love is very important, how you love yourself will affect how you love others. As a health and fitness professional, I role model and teach the need to love yourself by taking care of your body. The health of your body is a gift of love to your family. So this Valentine's Day give yourself a gift to become healthier, stronger and more attractive. Then you can give your wife, husband and children the greatest gift of love! A healthier you! God's gift to you is His Love. What you do with this gift is your gift to yourself and others. Keep It Real Now that you are ready to start a plan to re-shape your body, lose body fat, get healthier, etc... there are some questions you should ask yourself. FIRST: Where should I go? SECOND: What workout program should I do? THIRD: What exercises should I do? AND: How long should my workout be? First, where to join? This is a very important decision because most, if not all, of the other questions will be answered by the trainer. So the knowledge and experience of the trainer is very important. The price of the membership should not be the deciding factor. Point being, if you buy a membership based on price alone and get the wrong or misguided instruction, you will not reach your goals. One of the most obvious things to watch for is the program offered to you based on easy, fast, fun workouts. If this is the offering go to another gym! You Are What You Think In most cases, the things you do and say begin with the thing you think and believe. Imagine your life as a glass filled to the halfway mark with water. How would you describe your life? Is your glass half full or half empty? Your answer may reveal a lot about your thought, life and life view. A positive view would say half full, focusing on what you have. A negative view would say half empty, focusing on what you don't have. I believe that faith and positive thinking based on God's word are vital keys to health, prosperity and living life with purpose. Goals Your goals decide your focus, energy, feeling and the people you will need to help you succeed! Once you announce your goals, you will soon find out who is for you and who is against you. Make sure you distance yourself from people who do not support you. When your adversaries attack you, they fear your potential to succeed. Have faith in God. He will empower you with love, hope and faith. He wants you to succeed. It is very important to paint a picture in your mind of what you want your goals to look like once you achieve them. A positive attitude will give you energy to go for it! Write down your goals and a workplan. Goals can be measured. You will need a mentor. Someone who can help with the instructions you will need to be successful. You will need financial resources. If you do not have them, ask someone who can help. Anyone who gives financial support will receive favor. Health Care Reform: What is it? I believe that true health care reform starts with prevention. This starts with taking personal responsibility for his or her own body, mind and spirit. Good health practices must be part of your life plan. Once you make a commitment to working out, eating healthier, drinking more water, and enough sleep, you can encourage your family, friends and church leaders to join the Health For Life Revolution. Working together we can change our community into becoming healthier, happier more loving people. Here are my instructions to you and your family for a healthier body. 1.) Stop eating, drinking all sugar products! 2.) Drink water as your main fluid. 3.) Get 7-9 hours of sleep. You must make this a priority. 4.) Join a gym so you can do muscle training using weightlifting equipment. This is very important. Pay the money and do it. 5.) Go to church. Renew your mind and spirit. 6.) Become a role model for children. Live and Die Strong! All of us have a family member who worked hard all their lives, retired, but then couldn't enjoy their life because they are a physical wreck. If doesn't seem fair that you end up in bad health with little energy after working hard all your life. Do you have to spend your retirement years with a weak, unhealthy body? Or can you be strong and vigorous until the very end? Many of the physical problems associated with aging stem from lost muscle mass. Most people ages 55-60 have only 50 percent of the muscle mass they had at 25-30. After age 60 you will lose between 3 and 6 percent more muscle mass each decade. Muscle loss slows the metabolism making it easier to pack on body fat! Also, muscle loss depresses important hormones, sapping your energy and making you feel tired continualy! Exercise - particularly weightlifting - can stop muscle loss in its track and regain new muscle. Strength training or weightlifting at a gym is the best insurance against old age. It's like taking a drink from the fountain of youth. Go to the gym. The sooner you start the fewer problems you will have whith your body. Make sure the trainer is knowledgeable. How young does the trainer look? Accountability Now that you have joined the gym, made a commitment to yourself to lose weight, become healthier, the trainer has put together a work-out and instructed you what, how and when to work out. The work-out is about 30 to 45 minutes, 2-3days per week. You now need self-discipline and maybe someone to be accountable to. Someone who understands your desires and goals. Self-discipline is the skill and art to instruct yourself to do what it takes to accomplish your goals. When it comes to working out this can be a difficult task. Your lifestyle, family, friends, work, etc... can break your focus. Hopefully the people in your life will encourage you, support and praise you. I have always believed and stated the health of your body is a love gift to your family. So hopefully your efforts will be appreciated. Let's not forget the Creator, God, wants you to be a winner in life. Knowing God loves you unconditionally, He will always be in favor of your positive goals. Love, Hope, Faith will be some of the foundation blocks of a winner's lifestyle. Stay focused! Use self-discipline and accountability to accomplish your goal to victory. On Your Way to a Victory Day You want to lose weight? Yes! This is a goal worth pursuing. You will look and feel better! Maybe you have tried only to gain the weight back. Maybe you just gave up. Maybe you were distracted by others or problems that broke your focus! This may make you feel like you failed. I'm going to make some statements to help you. All people fail at something. The great ones get back up! Never consult your past to determine your future. Do not focus on what you are going through. Stay focused on what you're going to do. What you do not master in your life eventually will master you. Have relationships that will move you towards your goals, not away from them. Those who do not respect your time will not respect your goals. You will only have significant success with something that is an obsession and a passion. Let me add to this last statement - obsession is not a negative! As long as the obsession is a good and positive goal. Passion needs to be guided by knowledge and skills with the tools to get the goal completed. You have an obsession to lose weight, become healthy, look good, handsome, sexy. It's all good! Your passion for goals should be guided by a trainer at the gym. The trainer has the knowledge, the gym has the tools. You bring the obsession and the passion! Ladies: You Want to Lose Weight! Here is a fact, woman who want to lose body fat should work out with resistance machines. The reason why this is true is because resistance training is the most effective way to increase your metabolism. The way this happens is that resistance training should and will increase your lean muscle when done correctly with the right resistance machines. Not all resistance training programs are created equal. The best, most effective resistance training programs have and use machines with weight stacks stating this fact. When you use resistance training programs that use machines with hydraulic shocks and no negative resistance you would have to use the machine faster to get more challenging workout. This is the complete opposite way all professional trainers teach. When you are weight training to increase your strength and muscle, you should lift the weight slowly. The machine would have a weight stack, in order to increase your resistance. Also, the machine will have adjustment to fit your body size. So, programs that offer some kind of resistance machines with hydraulic shocks are not strength training programs.