Sheer Wellness

If you’re like millions of Americans, you woke up on January 1st and vowed to turn over a new leaf – run three miles a day, lose a pound a week, cut out sugar, save $200 a week, whatever. You actually imagined a better you and felt a sense of excitement to start your “new you” journey. But then, come late January or early February, 3 miles a day turned into 3 miles a week, you stopped being able to resist those M & M’s on your co-workers desk. In other words, you slipped back into your old habits.

Well guess what? I’m here to tell you the brutal honest truth. Summer is coming and it’s time to revive those resolutions. There was a reason you set those goals and if you dig deep and remember your “why”, you will be able to focus on the bigger goal in the face of your immediate desires. Willpower is a skill you can strengthen through visualization. Here are some tips that have helped me lose 16 pounds in the past 90 days:

1) Post photos on your fridge of yourself at your desired weight or a bathing suit you have your eye on. This will serve as a friendly reminder when temptation sets in.

2) Accept the busy stressed person you are and find a program that fits into your lifestyle. Weight Watchers works but all that point counting does NOT work for me. After I accepted that and started on a program that fits into my lifestyle, I was finally able to stick to the program for longer than 2 weeks.

3) Set small incremental goals and celebrate each milestone. 30 lbs. is a lot to bite off and can feel overwhelming. Start with a goal of 10 lbs. Reward yourself when you reach that goal and then set a new goal. The same is true of exercise. If you are not active but have vowed to get fit, start by building a 10-minute walk into your day and then try to build up each week.

4) Rethink your environment. When your surroundings stay the same, so do your ingrained habits. You can’t keep junk food in your house and expect your willpower to hold up every time. New habits take time to develop. Don’t expect drastic changes to take place in a week. You have to commit to being in it for the long haul.

5) Envision how you will achieve your goal. Visualization is one of the most powerful tools for achieving a goal and is even used by Olympic athletes. Picture yourself eating healthier foods, imagine yourself feeling healthier, how it will feel to be able to fit more comfortably into your jeans. Anticipate obstacles like feeling too tired to hit the gym and then imagine how you’ll overcome them.

Misty May is one of my favorite athletes and role models. She is also an Olympic Gold Medalist in my favorite sport – Beach Volleyball. Her body is strong and lean and curvy, not too thin.

The fastest way to achieve success in network marketing is to find a leader or a  mentor who is earning the level of income you want to achieve, and do what he/she is doing. You can not recruit your way to the top, you must duplicate your way to the top. There are so many great network marketing companies out there with fantastic products and great compensation plans, but without leadership and an easily duplicatable system that focuses on the newest person just getting started, you will be spinning your wheels trying to get people to move.

Success requires not only the right product or the right comp plan, but the right tools and partners. If we seek the right mentors in our business, they can help us achieve success. If you are not working with the right team, it may be time to re-evaluate your choices.

Here are some attributes of great mentors you want to look for when choosing a team to work with.

1) They show up when they say they are going to.

2) They believe in you.

3) They have a vision for you and have a roadmap to get you there.

4) They have good communications skills, are empathetic and genuine.  I would be wary of someone who throws around too much hype.

5) They will coach you on what you need to do, not necessarily what you want to do.

The other day I heard a personal trainer to the stars being interviewed on the radio. She was discussing the benefits of drinking a protein shake in the morning and I found it very interesting. Starting your day with a protein smoothie can boost your metabolism by up to 35%. It also stabilizes blood sugar, which will reduce cravings and hunger pangs later in the day and therefore keep you from overeating. If you crave carbs in the afternoon or evening, increasing your morning protein intake can resolve the problem in as little as seven days. According to a study in the British Journal of Nutrition, a morning dose of protein sensitizes the brain to react more rapidly to serotonin’s appetite-dampening signals. This reduces PM caloric intake by as much as 55 percent. Another great time for a protein shake is after a workout. Doing so can improve insulin sensitivity for up to four hours according to researchers. This can mean better blood sugar control, more energy, clearer thinking and faster calorie burn. Protein will also help the muscles that you worked rebuild and recover faster, preventing soreness, and ensure that your body loses fat pounds and keeps the lean muscle mass.

By adding fruits and even veggies to your smoothie, you can increase the benefits of your protein shake even more to ensure your body is meeting the daily requirement of 5-7 servings which let’s face it, most of us are not meeting. My protein powder of choice has less than 1 gr of sugar so the fruit is a great way to get natural added sweetness without the harmful effects of sugar. I also add 1 cup of spinach to my shake. You won’t taste it and it will give you much needed iron as well as essential minerals, fiber and phytonutrients.

I recently started replacing my usual morning breakfast of oatmeal with a delicious protein smoothie, as well as a protein shake following my workout. I also eat two healthy snacks and a reasonable healthy dinner. This small change in my eating plan has helped me drop over 10 lbs. in a period of 60 days. So don’t wait, go blend up a smoothie and start feeling better today.

Thanksgiving has come and gone and got us all thinking about the things in our lives for which we are grateful. Gratitude is one of the greatest human virtues. In many religions we are encouraged to make hundreds of blessings a day. But with Black Friday and now Cyber Monday being so closely tied with Thanksgiving, it got me thinking about what being grateful really means. This year most people didn’t even wait until early Friday morning to get shopping. The deals began at 10 pm the night before, literally cutting short our holiday meal and the time we were supposed to be spending giving thanks. In today’s culture, advertising seems to be the enemy of gratitude.  We are bombarded with around-the-clock commercial assaults that tell us never to be satisfied with what we have. Black Friday being so closely connected to Thanksgiving is ironic to say the least. Or is it?

The dilemma I am having is this: Does seeking out something better need to mean that you are not grateful for what you have? Isn’t personal growth about not being satisfied with where you’re at and always reaching higher? Why not seek out a nicer television or car if it will bring you more pleasure? Why not seek to constantly grow your business if it means you can thrive financially? My desire to make things better for me, for my family, for the world, does not mean that I am not grateful for the blessings that unfold in my life every single day. In my tradition there was a great leader that once said “Always be happy, never satisfied.”

A new way to look at gratitude is as a way to improve your life. We can always strive to be better, to do better.  Much like gratitude itself, it is a choice. We can choose to focus on blessings rather than burdens and it can transform your life.

Another approach is to live with two ideas simultaneously: “Things can be worse” or “Things can be better”. “Glass half full”, or “glass half empty.” One way makes you feel better about where you are and what you have been given, the other motivates you to improve it. In this approach, you need not make the choice. You can be grateful for your blessings all day long, and in between, work hard to make things better.

During this holiday season I am going to be grateful for my ability to hold two competing ideals side by side and not have to settle. I will embrace pleasure, yet seek meaning. I will be open to new ideas but know my own limitations. I will be humble, yet bold enough to do big things. I will be grateful, but never satisfied.

I’ve been standing on my soap box (no pun intended) for the past year trying to warn you all of the dangerous chemicals found in our every day household products manufactured by trusted brands like Johnson & Johnson. This week major media outlets like the Huffington Post and Forbes are finally reporting the news that the Campaign For Safe Cosmetics came out with 2 1/2 years ago – Johnson & Johnson Baby Shampoo contains formaldehyde-releasing preservative quaternium-15, as well as the chemical byproduct 1.4-dioxane. Formaldehyde and 1.4-dioxane are known carcinogens. The federal Consumer Product Safety Commission has reported that “the presence of 1.4-dioxane, even as a trace contaminant, is cause for concern,” and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services added formaldehyde to its list of known human carcinogens in June 2011.  Johnson & Johnson responded by saying it is reducing or gradually phasing out the chemicals. They said in a statement that formaldehyde-releasing preservatives are safe and approved by regulators in the U.S. and other countries. Yeah, well, agent orange was also considered safe once.

Gradually phasing out?? Is that something you as a parent are willing to wait for while you rub a known carcinogen on your baby? Even though the levels may be low, why risk it? Especially when there are natural, safe, effective and affordable alternatives.

Unless you are trying to harm your family, I trust your answer to that question is no. Yet that is exactly what you are doing every time you use products like Febreze, Glade Air “Fresheners”, Tilex, Soft Scrub, and countless other products you probably have in your home. The Consumer Product Safety Commission has deemed that of chemicals commonly found in cleaning and personal care products, 150 have been linked to allergies, birth defects, cancer and psychological abnormalities. Here are some more facts to consider and then tell me if you’re really willing to take the risk of continuing to use products containing toxic chemicals in your home.

· In a study conducted over a 15-year period, women who worked at home had a 54% higher death rate from cancer than women who had jobs away from the home

· Day-in, day-out exposure to the toxic chemicals in household cleaners are 3x more likely to cause cancer than air pollution

· Every year, 5-10 million household poisonings or burns are reported. Most of the victims are children.