Older Bolder Life

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Motivation

Begin Your Health and Wellness Journey with the End in Mind

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A Very Short ‘Begin with the End in Mind’ Backstory

Several years ago, a physician friend, business partner, and mentor who possessed the gift of speaking very directly and candidly without crushing one’s spirit, began to challenge me about longer term goal setting.

The immediate context at the time happened to be non-health related (it was multifamily real estate in fact) though the principle translates beautifully to the health and wellness world.

My friend’s challenge was simple: never begin any journey in life (whether a literal journey or adventure, a major lifestyle or health adjustment, business project, etc.) without carefully considering what your goals might be, what the endpoint is, and what happens next (real estate guys call that your exit strategy).

Beginning Your Health and Wellness Journey with the End in Mind

By far and away the most common reason people have approached me in the past several years is a desire to shed excess pounds. Losing weight is one of the most commonly tagged New Year’s resolutions of the past 30 years, and perhaps the least successfully accomplished.

Getting started with a major lifestyle change to improve your health is pretty danged daunting, particularly if you’re truly engaged and serious about it. Fascinatingly, when I chat with folks about why they want to use a health coach to facilitate this transition, most often, they reply with very non-specific answers, almost always including “I just need to lose some weight”.

Hells bells, that was my own somewhat mis-focused intent over three years ago when starting my own recovery; I had no idea what my goals really were, what it would take to actually get there, or even if I could possibly drop enough pounds to make a real difference. No way could I have imagined dropping 170 pounds thus far, with more to go…

Simple Suggestions for Beginning with the End in Mind

First, think (or dream) big, respecting that for those of us over 40 (or perhaps even 30), charting big goals most often demands a longer time line. That’s ok, most of us can do more to improve our health than one might guess at first blush, and time becomes much less critical when you’re making steady gains along the way.

Make today’s decisions today; right now you only have to choose to eat the next meal on plan, take your next walk, or jump into that next workout. Other challenges down the road will come in due time, just make the decision to engage in the moment presently.

Craft a set of meaningful goals. At the start of the new year, I reminded readers about using SMART goals – Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound.

Even better, set short, intermediate, and longer-term goals, and be prepared to adjust them along the way.

Dive in and get started. Now and again people I interact with, especially those who have a long road ahead to restore their health, get devastatingly discouraged looking at how far they have to go, and quit, or even worse, decide it’s not even worth trying.

And don’t forget to mind your focus. At least for now, we have this quote on the landing page of our main Older Bolder Fitness site –

The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new. – Socrates

Hone in with laser-like sharpness on the good changes you’re building into your routine – better food, more movement, targeted strengthening, less exposure to toxins and harmful behaviors, better sleep, better sex, and more.

Begin your journey with the end in mind; we’re here to help you along the way any time you have a question or need additional insight, encouragement, or a push.

Older Bolder 2019 Challenges: Four Thoughts on Getting Your Wellness Journey Started

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As part of the challenge series for 2019 that I introduced a few days ago, here are four thoughts on getting started on your journey to improve your health and fitness this year.

The Best Way to Get Started Improving Your Health: Start TODAY

This is a caveat well-learned from personal experience.

How many times have you said to yourself, or someone important in your life: “I’ll do it when…”

For those of us prone to procrastinate, putting a task off using “the when” ploy can be a stroke of genius – it’s ridiculously easy to set a target that’s so nebulous, so distant, so unlikely, or the final domino to fall in a complex, convoluted chain of events that you never have to step up, make a decision, and act.

I’ve been there, I’ve used this contrivance many a time, and heard so many versions of “the when” I should write a book about it (maybe I’ll get around to that when I get the current book finished).

A dear friend and mentor years ago stopped me right in my tracks after using “the when” ruse and verbally slapped me up the side of the head and said to just do it. He was right.

It’s time to start your health and wellness journey (or recovery) today. Just take the first step and start. You don’t have to leap, or cover huge ground. Tiny steps, coupled with a resolve to change and improve, count just as much.

Begin Your Health Journey with The End in Mind

The same guy who provided the wake up call mentioned above offered another great piece of life advice – begin any life adventure with the end in mind. His analogy built around the reality that you might not be able to define precisely the path you’ll take, but you can capture a vision of your eventual destination.

A few days back I offered a few reminders about goal setting using the SMART approach in particular; framing your vision (setting goals) should be encouraging and fun. I encourage clients to develop big, longer term visions of how they’d like their lives to look down the road, and set concrete, attainable, SMART goals along the path to get there.

Begin your health journey with the end in mind.

Strive for Flexibility (And Not Just Metabolic Flexibility)

I truly love the concept of metabolic flexibility (in a nutshell, being able to effectively and efficiently utilizing different nutritional substrates to thrive in different situations).

It’s important to develop another form of flexibility on this health and wellness journey, a flexibility that recognizes and embraces the likely fact that you’ll need to use different approaches at different times along your way to achieve your optimal results.

What the heck does that mean? Probably the most common example I see in my coaching practice is very close to this actual story. Let’s say Lindy has decided it’s time to drop 65 pounds, and enthusiastically starts in on a Primally-aligned nutrition program, and the first 25 pounds seem to fly off by April Fool’s Day. Her weight loss slows in April, and by the end of May she’s only down another 7 pounds, and while her heartburn has resolved, she’s down two dress sizes, and feels great, she’s frustrated and even a little panicked about having stalled.

Her friend, who happens to be a health coach, looks over her diet, and finds she’s eating a bowl of fruit every day. Lindy agrees to cut fruit to once per week, and adds in a walking program that she loves, walking 30min a day initially, though by week four she’s walking an hour a day or more, sometimes out again for another walk in the evening with her husband on those long summer days.

By September first, Lindy’s weight loss now totals 58 pounds, though while being chased by a dog at the park, she stumbled off a curb and fractured a metatarsal in her left foot, ending her walking program for six weeks.

Encouraged by her friend, Lindy decided to give a run of nutritional ketosis a try, and coupled with an intermittent fasting trial, lost another 7 pounds effortlessly over the next six weeks waiting for her fracture to heal.

The point is simple – as your metabolism (and overall physiology) improves and changes, particularly if you’re starting from a point of genuine metabolic derangement (metabolic syndrome), you’ll likely need to change your approach to nutrition and activity multiple times along the way.

Learn, Learn, Learn (Get Good at Finding Nuggets and Filtering Noise)

Finally, and probably my favorite concept in the entire health and wellness universe right now, it is critical that you embrace the reality that you’ll be learning vital and useful information from this point forward as you take greater responsibility for your wellness and fitness.

There’s a literal flood of great information available at your fingertips today, much of it free for the taking, and you have the ability to access experts worldwide via digital communications easily.

Granted, there’s a lot of noise (generously put – less useful, even frankly misleading information) out there. Finding nuggets of useful information takes a bit of sifting, and filtering the noise can take some effort. Sorting the best information from the rest is a skill you’ll get better at with practice, though I’d encourage anyone wanting to improve their health and fitness to read widely and frequently.

You’re unique, your body and physiology are unique to you, and your challenge is to find the package of nutrition and conditioning that make you the best you can be this year.

Need help sorting it out? We can help you anytime.

It’s time to get started.

Three Reasons You Should COMMIT and Not Resolve This New Year

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For nearly twenty five years as a physician (and now as a wellness and health coach) I found it fascinating to query patients in my practice about their “resolutions” for the New Year.

Though it was not uncommon to hear something along the lines of “I’m too tired/weak/pained/sick to even think about making resolutions”, the most common responses could easily have been pulled right off the most popular New Year’s Resolutions of All Times List – such as get in shape, lose weight, stop smoking, get more sleep, watch less tv, drink less, get a raise, buy a new car, get married (or divorced), and so on…

As an aside, it’s reported that over 92% of us who make a resolution don’t complete it over the next twelve months; in fact, it’s reported that over 80% of resolutions have failed by the second week of February. I’m not sure how you’d ever complete hard research to confirm these data points, but intuitively (and as an observer of human behavior now for almost four decades), I’d believe it.

And while I typically wouldn’t ask the next obvious question – how many of those resolutions were on last year’s list? – my own experience from younger years had already provided the answer. Most of us never truly engage with and act consistently upon our New Year’s resolutions, and those issues impacting our lives negatively never get addressed in a meaningful, lasting, and consistent way.

Over the past decade we’ve (as a family) worked through a process to look at the New Year though a somewhat different lens – committing to specific goals; here’s three reasons you should too.

Commitment Reflects Your Deeper Motivation (Get the Why Right)

There’s no question that defining the why behind your desire to change helps cement your commitment to the process. I’m suspicious that many if not most of the resolutions that will be bandied about this week are things that people think they “should” do, when they really should be committing to things they will do for a specific reason(s).

A mentor and friend used to say often that we do what we do because we believe what we believe. What we truly believe, for instance about our health, drives everyday decisions about what we eat, how we move, how we challenge and condition our bodies and minds, and manage our physiology over the long haul.

A simple example – not understanding the why behind the disastrous, accumulating over the years damage that unfettered consumption of highly processed grains and sugars produces leads to ever-expanding waistlines and festering metabolic damage that eventually erupts in catastrophe.

Defining the why’s – the true beliefs or reasons behind your behaviors (or intended behaviors) – allows you drill down to the heart of the issue, and yields deeply motivated eventual success.

It’s ok to have some fun with this; one of my most successful client couples dropped over 200 pounds and became more fit than ever before because they wanted to improve their sex life. (It worked by the way; incentives are important.)

Commitment Implies SMART Goals

You’ve no doubt seen it before, but setting SMART goals can be an absolute game changer as you look at what you’d like to get done this next year. Here’s a quick refresher on the SMART goal process; you need to make goals –

Specific. Drill down and be as specific as you possibly can; split hairs and break big goals into component parts if needed.

Measurable. I love the sense of accomplishment that attaining a goal milestone brings; it doesn’t have to be a huge, life-changing milestone either. Set thoughtful (and meaningful) measurement markers along the way and cherish the victories as they roll by. Success begets more success.

Attainable. Be brutally honest with yourself here, think big but set goals with targets you can reach. A great example here is clients that want to lose over 100 pounds; for most of us, that’s a tall order for one year, but a piece of cake to do in two…

Relevant. One way to look at this is consider time lines, we all have short, intermediate, and longer term goals, create a balanced mix of all three time frames to align your progress this next year with the overall direction your life is taking.

Time-bound. Even if your goals are somewhat open-ended, or you’re not absolutely convinced your time-line projections will work (i.e. weight loss), define a set of deadlines that drive you with a sense of urgency and purpose. Dates can be wiggled.

Commitment Works for the Long Haul

Let’s face it, there will be days when you don’t feel like working hard to take another step toward achieving your goal(s), days you just don’t feel it, days where the first mile, not to mention the extra mile, simply looks too long, and you’ve lost sight of the longer term results and outcomes. Take heart, you’re not alone; we all have those days.

Commitment, however, isn’t based on how you feel. (Sorry, but it’s not, and may those who are attempting to define feelings are the absolute arbiter and driver of behavior should be condemned forever to the depths of perdition.)

Commitment, among other things, means completion. It means results. It means change. Commitment isn’t in any way dependent on feelings.

We’ve been conditioned to expect instantaneous results when we want something these days. The most valuable things in life, health and wellness treasures in particular, but material things as well, most often come about after our commitment over time to something – whether you want to define that as a lifestyle, a process, or specific goals is up to you.

It’s time to commit to be the best version of yourself you can be this year.

The Simple Power of NEXT

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This time of year, for obvious good reasons, tends to get a bit hectic and (for many) more than a little stressful.

At least for some of us, some of the most tempting, and most egregiously bad, Standard American Diet fare shows up at work, on the family table, at your favorite coffee shop, holiday parties and gatherings, and just about anywhere else you care to venture.

For those of us working to maintain a healthier, active lifestyle, the challenges are oft compounded by the time demands of the season, shortening hours of daylight, and the arrival of late fall and winter weather all conspiring together to cut into your valuable exercise and workout windows.

There’s a simple principle you’ve no doubt heard before, but it’s worth mentioning again, and in fact, I’ve been sharing repeatedly it with clients for the past ten days in particular…

The Simple Power of Next

Get off track with your food plan this week? It happens. And will likely happen again before we see another New Years Day pass. Don’t waste time beating yourself up.

It doesn’t matter, at least in the long term, bigger picture IF you simply exercise the simple power of choosing to get back on track for your NEXT meal.

Get off track with your exercise or workout plan this week? It happens. And will likely happen again before we see another New Years Day pass. Don’t waste time beating yourself up.

It doesn’t matter, at least in the long term, bigger picture IF you simply exercise the simple power of choosing to get back on track for your NEXT walk, run, yoga session, or workout.

The Simple Power of Next Works Wonders Over the Long Haul Too

One of the most common concerns I’ve heard over the years from people who are morbidly obese as they consider lifestyle changes to restore their health is that it just seems too overwhelming to actually visualize themselves dropping what in some cases might actually half their body weight. (Count me among that unique crowd at one point years ago…)

Granted, setting a long term goal to drop 80, 100, even 200 pounds is a daunting challenge, though what I chose to do, and what I encourage clients to do continually, is simply reduce that challenge to making the best choices possible for their very next meal (or the day’s food plan) and their very next workout.

The old adage that success begets success is certainly true in this case, and it’s much easier to summon the willpower and momentum to make a single meal or single workout ‘best choice’.

Git ‘er done today, and leverage the simple power of next.

Quote of the Day 14 August 2018: Excellence

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We are what we repeatedly do.

Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.

-Will Durant

I probably should have included this in yesterday’s Just Get Started reminder, but it’s been one of our favorites for a long time, and sits just to the left of my desk where I see it every time I come into the office to work.

Making the best effort you can, every day, indeed becomes a powerful habit.

Monday Motivation: The Empowering Value of Simply Getting Started

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Somewhat ironically, four times in the past three days I’ve spoken with two family members, a friend, and an acquaintance/prospective coaching client, all at their request, about some of the more approachable lifestyle and food plan changes they might implement to increase their capacity for life activities they enjoy, improve their fitness, refine their approach to food, and not surprisingly (in this day and age in America) – drop excess pounds that have accumulated over time.

Somewhat ironically again, all four shared several features in common.

For example, they’re all above what we used to call in medicine their “ideal body weight”; two within 15 or 20% of where they’d like to be, two more than 35% above their desirable weight range.

They’ve all tried various diet plans over a number of years, yo-yo’d up and down again, never finding a way of relating to food that provided the critical combination of good taste, appealing variety, broadly-based nutrient density, and sustainability over the long haul (the longest successful “diet” of the four lasted roughly five months).

They’re all fairly intellectually inquisitive (a powerful personality feature that often contributes to long term success) and familiar with current terminology and trends in both ancestral and traditional health and wellness circles; for example, all had researched nutritional ketosis but found much of the information available online to be intimidating if not confusing and at times contradictory in terms of approaches, compatible foods, etc.

They’re all for the most part fairly sedentary, three of the four working in office settings, with consistent focused movement or exercise of any sort a very low priority, save for an occasional round of golf, social tennis, and the rare weekend-warrior team sport activity.

They’ve all been motivated by someone they know or know of who has experienced a major health transformation in the past year or two. I happened to serve as the example for the two family members, the others had seen individuals in their work arenas drop significant weight (by report one inspired woman lost 104 pounds in 12 months – Atta’ girl.) and watched their attitudes and approaches to life change.

The “I’ll Do It When…” Diversion

Finally, and perhaps most impressively, each person used (more or less) the same terminology in explaining why they hadn’t set off on their own health improvement journey – the “I’ll do it when…” mantra that fosters, for many, an open-ended delay loop that can be darned difficult to close.

I’ll do it when I have more time, when it’s not so hot, when my husband/wife is more supportive, when my work schedule lets up a bit, when I feel more motivated, when I have more energy, when I feel like cooking more, and on and on and on. (You’ve heard it before, as have I, and we’ve both very probably throw a few “I’ll do it when’s” of our own out there.)

The Empowering Value of Simply Getting Started

My encouragement to each one in turn was identical – it’s time to make the choice to simply get started.

That choice to get started is fundamentally a very simple one. I reminded each one that making a choice to live a fuller, more active, more functional life by optimizing the foods they eat, their approach(es) to exercise, sleep, stress, relationships, and work simply signifies they’re willing to begin a journey to learn new approaches to old challenges, listen to their bodies, move more, and (eventually) move away from old habits that harm to new ones that heal and restore.

One of the challenges I often issue to people when they first make the decision to reshape their health is this: you don’t have to plot out the entire journey from start to finish (in fact, pending your body’s response, that pathway will likely be revised more than once along the way). You simply need to decide to approach every meal and every opportunity to move (you could of course throw in more formal workouts and exercise in the mix as well) with the intent of making the best choices you can right then.

If you make great choices today, that’s wonderful, put a notch in your metaphorical belt, and be empowered to face tomorrow. Didn’t make great choices with a meal (or meals) today? Life happens, tomorrow (or the next workout or meal) brings another set of opportunities to succeed and take a step, even if a tiny one, toward your eventual goals.

Part of what makes this health and wellness game so interesting is that tiny little successes, accumulating over time, lead to big changes.

Making good choices, like many challenging workouts, gets easier with repetition, and brings richer results with a bit of sweat and persistence. Some folks have an iron will, that, once set and striving toward a goal, pushes them down the path of eventual success, with little waver or distraction along the way (admittedly, a rarity these days). Others need a mentor or helping hand (I sure did); that’s where a successful friend or a perhaps even a coach comes into play.

Read. Explore. Ask questions. Find a mentor or coach (we can help you here at Older Bolder Fitness). Then git ‘er done.

Getting Started: Taking That First Step to a Healthier You

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For literally years during the time I was involved in the patient-oriented study and practice of medicine (twenty-five years and change), one of the most challenging tasks I faced was encouraging (if not mandating) that patients under my care commit to a healthier lifestyle.

For so many of those patients, getting to the metaphorical (and literal) first step in their personal journey to better health was deemed dauntingly complex and a huge hurdle to overcome, even though it was as simple as barefoot wading the shallows of Montana’s Gallatin River (my daughter Jess’ image above).

Details of my own story will be coming shortly as we launch Older Bolder Fitness’ more expansive website, though to share the Cliff Notes version, after finishing medical school I completed a residency in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at the University of Utah, later spending a bit of time on faculty there before heading off into private practice.

My teams cared for patients who had suffered medical catastrophes of all sorts – including spinal cord injuries, ischemic and hemorrhagic cerebrovascular accidents (strokes), traumatic brain injuries, various orthopaedic injuries and cases requiring a comprehensive rehabilitative effort after joint replacements or unusually complex fractures, and all sorts and manners of neurologic and neurodegenerative diseases.

One glaringly common thread of all the non-traumatic pathologies we dealt with was that most were caused by or significantly worsened by what was called then (and still is today) lifestyle diseases – ranging from being “just a tiny bit” overweight to suffering the ravages of full-blown metabolic syndrome, morbid obesity, profound deconditioning (being really, really out of shape) , and including the devastating, whole body disaster that is wrought by the chronic process of excessive inflammation.

Getting to the First Step in a Healthier You

The team approach we used back in the day taught me a host of invaluable lessons, one of which was the critical necessity of taking a moment to take stock to fully understand where you (or the patient in our analogy above) stand, defining a reasonable set of incremental goals to attain, and then outlining a plan to get from Point A (you are here today) to Point B (where you want to be someday).

We stressed, even with severely challenged patients, that even though “recovery” seemed a long way off, if not impossibly far from where they sat that particular day, the road to recovery most often starts with the simplest of tasks.

Obviously one of the biggest obstacles my teams faced in guiding patients down this recovery pathway was getting them on board – they had to truly decide on some level that the investment of effort was worth at least a try; most, encouraged by a bit of early success, went on to significant gains and restoration.

The point: No matter what your objective – be it weight loss, overall better health, improved fitness and function, looking better naked, longevity, athletic performance pursuits, or whatever else – at some point you must decide to engage and start reshaping your world.

For many of us, that journey is best made with a team of sorts, whether that’s family, friends, a trainer or coach, even an online community, but you have to decide to engage and take the first step.

It’s time.