The Concentrated Effort of Obtaining a Warrior Mind Frame

I have been inundated with catchy slogans and phrases lately there is “Strong is the new Skinny” “Girls Gone Strong” “Fit. Fierce. Fearless.” Heck I have one of my own; Wimp to Warrior. I’ve “liked” these websites on Facebook and browsed through the site owner’s postings and the member’s. Most of it is quotes or videos of girls training or recipes and nutrition tips– hey same basic stuff I have on my site!

But then I start to read through the posts and I come to the realization that a majority the girls on these sites have serious body issues or are recovering (or trying to recover) anorexics. They are using “being strong” as a replacement for their obsessive tendencies. Instead of restricting food they are precisely calculating macronutrients (carbs, protein and fat, commonly referred to as macros) for what they refer to as “strength gains and goals” which is a viable term. However my problem with this is that they are still obsessing about what they look like, just using this mantra of “I’m getting strong” as their justification to obsess about never being happy with their body.

Their friends and family frowned, scowled and/or threw their ass into some form of rehab because they were committing suicide slowly by starving their organs and forcing their bodies to cannibalize their own muscle and organs (and remember the heart is a muscle), but their new obsession is going to the gym and lifting heavy to add “muscle”, however their precisely calculated macros are at about 1300 calories of plain chicken breast, egg whites, salad, green beans (broccoli bloats), some oats mixed with some flavor of sugar free Walden’s farm syrups, sugar free jello with sugar free whipped cream and the never ending low carb/net carb protein shakes mixed with water or turned into some sort of pudding, or cookie, or muffin. These women aren’t cured of anorexia; they’ve just found a new avenue to carry on their obsessive traits, they still hate their bodies; their real health problem has not been addressed or cured; and even worse they openly educate on these forums for other women who have body issues to jump on this “I hate myself so much that I will eat nothing but chemicals and obsess over every fake food morsel macro I put in my mouth and sit around and design workouts that will burn x amount of calories while only consuming x amount of calories to be perfect” bandwagon of neurotic-ness. But hell it’s really popular these pages have THOUSANDS of members eating this shit up with a spoon.

My Wimp to Warrior slogan is more a frame of mind to obtain - a concentrated effort of discipline, dedication and really hard work. Which will reflect in all aspects of your life...not just in the gym.

Don’t get me wrong, I think a girl with some muscle is much better than a girl that looks like a skeleton. But let’s clarify here…neurotic is neurotic. And it’s not attractive. Period. Let’s face it, if us girls could be skinny we would. That’s a no brainer. Maybe it was playing with Barbie as little girls that put this magical glow around being 5’8” and 120#s. I get it, there is always something that seems extra attractive about a girl that looks great in skinny jeans. And you know what? That is fantastic. Great for her! But that’s not me.

We seriously need to stop caring so much what others think and we especially need to stop caring what we think others think. If someone feels the need to compare and or knock you down to feel better about themselves there will be absolutely nothing you can do other than MAYBE sitting down and giving this person an earful of a daily walk in your shoes and the world according to you. And even THEN you have a 50/50 chance of winning them over to see things from your perspective.

That’s a lot of time spent for little value. One of the most important themes I carry in my hip pocket is “I cannot control others, I can only control how I react to them.” I have better things to do with my time than to justify my existence to someone that has absolutely zero impact on my life. Not to be an ass…I’m jus sayin’.
I found the most attractive thing to a man is NOT being neurotic. Trust me I’ve been 12% body fat, I’ve been 25% body fat, I’ve been pregnant and bloated and not able to see my toes; I’ve had blonde hair, red hair, brown hair, black hair and the one time I accidentally dyed it silver; I’ve had short hair, long hair and in between hair, it’s been curly, strait and there were even times it was so dry I thought I might have to shave it all off…..my husband loves me regardless….he can tolerate me a whole helluva lot more when the main conversation doesn’t revolve around my waist circumference, triceps fat, wing span and the length or the color of my hair. I know he enjoys spending time with me most when I am being goofy and not taking myself seriously. He’d much rather sit around and laugh with me than try and bring me out of an imagined sulk that I’m somehow less worthy of a human because I don’t look as good in skinny jeans as Justin Bieber.

If I spend even 20 percent of my time focused on pleasing others and let’s be honest I probably don’t even have a good idea of what would please someone else, I’d have to make an educated guess and who knows how long it would even take to come up with the guesstimate. Well that’s 20 percent of time plus however long it took me to take an “educated” guess at what this asshole wants, of my time wasted. And time thieves come in all shapes and sizes and unfortunately they usually come in the form of our mothers, and close friends. It is okay to accept and acknowledge that some people are just poison and sometimes those people just happen to be related to you. I am not saying you have to disown them but I am suggesting that you recognize it and take their suggestions and comments for face value and it never hurts to tell them exactly how, what they say is making you feel. If they truly love you and value you your relationship they will at the very least listen to you – will they change, meh, probably not, but at least you didn’t let someone roll over on ya. Having a strong backbone is essential in the concentrated effort to have discipline and dedication ;-)

It’s time for you to focus on productive thoughts, positive energy and plans. Let go of the animosity, resentment, envy, jealousy….these are all negative thoughts that will tear you down in a heartbeat. They can ruin a good day. So let go of it whether you are imposing these feelings on yourself or you feel these energies coming from others.

I know this is more easily said than done. It’s going to take a concentrated effort. I recognize this. But I am also going to tell you that this concentrated effort that you will have to take to love yourself and avoid negative attitudes, behavior and energy you are going to need to apply to all aspects of your life to include your food choices and getting your butt up off the couch to move! Yep, I said it….no magic pill, no amount of coffee, no special mix of bananas and water….just a hard core concentrated effort to have discipline and dedication. Sorry they don’t sell it at GNC, QVC, HSN or the Vitamin Shoppe.

Some pulled pork and mashed cauliflower (as much as you’d like to eat) or 400 points worth of a Jenny Craig frozen chicken alfredo. And hell this might mean that 30# pork shoulder you smoked on Sunday is what you eat everyday for lunch that week. I know this isn’t as exciting as being awarded 1000 points and being able to eat whatever you want as long as you stay in your 1000 point range – but I guarantee you will be more satiated.

Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig are excuses to eat shit food. An excuse to fill ourselves with 1000 points of junk; of course you’ll lose some weight, you are restricting calories. That’s simple calories in versus calories out for losing weight. If you consume less energy than you expend then you lose weight. However this DOES NOT mean you’ll be healthy or look good naked….but more importantly you won’t be able stick with it. Junk makes you hungry for more junk – so when you embark on these adventures of 1750 calorie diets, or Weight Watchers or Jenny Craig it’s a numbers game – you eat your allotted number and then fight the hunger beast the rest of the day. And the hunger beast will be there because junk food, especially foods made with sugar and grain are designed to make you hungry. I can’t sell you more Oreos if you only eat one cookie and are satisfied now can I?

But our need to make excuses for filling ourselves with junk doesn’t just rotate around our kitchen; it spills into the rest of our lives. We fill our minds full of garbage all the time. I cannot tell you how many times I have overheard people concerned with how many days Kim Kardashian was married. REALLY? Why the fawk do you care? Does her marriage impact yours? Does it somehow make YOU feel better about yourself because you have been married longer? Or that you aren’t married at all? If I am going to have a conversation with someone I’d like it to be a positive and thought provoking conversation. We start talking about what Michelle Obama is wearing instead of her husband’s policies I am going to glaze over like a jelly donut. This trash doesn’t enrich anyone’s life….well it is certainly “in-riching” Kim Kardashian….you making her popular in turn E! pays her more money to do more stupid ass shows.

By watching these shows and increasing their ratings, by buying these rag magazines and increasing their sales you are endorsing this lewd behavior. By endorsing this lewd behavior you encourage your children to act this way. This behavior is rewarded with popularity and a pay check. Think I am crazy….ummm…ok, explain Jersey Shore, Basketball Wives, Real Housewives of ANY county, RealWorld, Wild Girls, Bad Girls, The Braxtons, The Kardashians, 16 and Pregnant, Teen Mom, America’s Next Top Model, Anything for Love, the Bachelor, The Bachelorette, Big Brother, Jon and Kate….OK, really, have I made my point yet? Shut this shit off and become a good role model for your kids or kids in your life. There certainly isn’t enough out there, especially female role models.

I’m getting side tracked….I’m never going to make a living off coaching; it’s my hobby. I only make money off the sessions I sell and even if I did this full time I couldn’t train someone every hour – that is where I would have to “supplement” my income with some sort of gimmick. Well I don’t have a gimmick. I mean Work. Really. Hard. Isn’t really for sale now is it. I do love cheesy t-shirts; but seriously you can’t make any money off shirts. I’m proud as hell to see someone I have touched in a positive way in regards to health and exercise sport one of my shirts. I do not expect to get any business off my dad running around Altoona, PA sporting a Gym Cellar shirt. I was just super flattered he wanted to buy a few of them to start with. If you can print enough shirts you can probably make about $4 off of each one – hardly paying the mortgage.

That is why so many trainers resort to the supplements. The shakes, smoothies, pills….they make a few bucks from the company for selling the garbage. The more they sell the less actual coaching they have to do. And I’ll be honest with you coaching is a hard, hard job. Anyone that thinks it is easy has never done it or never done it correctly. There are nights after my clients are all gone I sit in my gym and look around and have to gather myself before I can go upstairs and spend time with my family. I get emotionally wiped out. If my client comes in and is upset it is my job to lift their spirits and get them focused. If they come in and don’t want to get out of their comfort zone it’s my job to pull them kicking and screaming out of it so they make progress so the hard earned money they are paying me is worth it to them. If they have questions I need to have answers or I need to find the answer for them. I need to be able to demonstrate an exercise using simple terms and break it down into simple steps. I need to chew their ass when they aren’t doing what they are supposed to do when they leave me.

It’s HARD work! And its work I am not going to make a living (or at least a living I can’t pay MY mortgage with…damn housing market crash….). And I am OK with that….well actually not really, I’d love to be able to do just this – but here’s the problem….no one wants to Work. Really. Hard. No one wants to make that concentrated effort at discipline and dedication. We are indoctrinated to think we will fail when we should win every single time….with a concentrated effort at discipline, dedication, and hard work. But hey, if you get sick of failing with what you are doing and you want to try my way – shoot me an email – I’ll hook you up.

Pissing on your health? Not with my consent!

“You seem mad about it?” This was the question posed to me recently when I had yet another vehement rant with the same client about taking care of their body. This particular client has a tendency to think money will buy their health. They pay me lots of money to train them; have bought stacks of books, dvd’s and gadgets; have bought supplements, shakes and pills; and of course has subscriptions to several popular fitness magazines.

“You are damn right I am upset. You are spitting on your health. Do you hate yourself?” “No, of course not,” they say, and give me this strange offended look that I even asked them that question. “OK, well you are all talk, no walk. We have come to a point where I need progress from you, YOU need to do your part in this relationship or it is over. I can beat you up in here (my gym) and I can hammer you with knowledge, lend you every book I have, and send you endless emails and text messages and you still won’t listen!” “Angela, PLEASE don’t fire me, I’ll do my part. I promise.” “Do you understand how emotionally invested I get in your success? Do you understand how it pains me when you GAIN weight after all of MY efforts and you walk out my gym door and kick me in the teeth?” “I know, I know.” They put their head down, then they walk out the door. Nothing has changed with this client; I have to fire this client. It saddens me and makes me feel like a huge failure as a coach every time I break up with a client.

This above back and forth is why my clients love and hate me. I hold them accountable, I invest in them, I spend time educating them, I check on them, and I will end the relationship and they know this. I refuse to take people’s money for the hell of it, I have what you call a severe conscience. I WANT them to succeed. I only take on a few clients and I invest A LOT in them. But I am intelligent enough to know when someone just isn’t going to change no matter how much I beg, plead, rationalize, educate or scream.

It infuriates me to watch anyone self destruct their health on purpose. Infuriates me! This picture is of my husband in ICU right after his open heart surgery. He was 32 years young. He was born with a bicuspid aortic heart valve. Your aortic heart valve is supposed to be tricuspid. Because his was bi (two) vice tri (three) it didn’t close correctly when his heart beat and blood that had been pumped up would trickle back down. When he was a young lad it wasn’t such a big deal. His heart was young and could do the double work, as he aged his heart started to get tired of doing all that extra work. Eventually it would have quit – but that is where replacing the valve came into play. The cardiologist monitored his heart for about 10 years every six months we went to get it measured and do a stress test. They would measure his heart because the heart is a muscle and like any muscle that is worked it enlarges. This is great for your biceps, not so cool for your heart. For the stress test they would hook him up to all kinds of gadgets and have him walk, then walk on an incline then speed it up to almost a run and see how long he could go. Even though he aced the stress test (they would stop him) the heart measurements said at the very tender age of 32 his aortic heart valve had to be replaced. There was no diet, no exercise no “cure” for this.

We did massive research to determine the best valve replacement. I hunted for the best surgeon and on 1 May 2008 he was wheeled in, sawed in half and had the valve replaced. From the time they wheeled him out of the prep room to ICU was about six hours. His sister and brother were there with me and it was the longest six hours of my life. Our future was hanging on that surgeon in that operating room cutting my husband open with a Craftsman electric hand saw. We were either going to have a lifetime of him being tired, grumpy and sick or this was going to be one of the many small hitches that we tackled together and adapted to.

Needless to say (note date of picture above) it was just a small hitch we adapted to. But we are still plagued with the annual cardiology appointment. We are reminded when they draw his blood that the medicine he takes to prevent clots from developing and causing a heart attack or a stroke, could be damaging his liver and kidneys. We stare at each other in silence and wonder how having to take poison at such a young age will affect him at 60 or 70 or 80 (if we are lucky enough to live til then). We wait with stress, sweat and anxiety as the technician waves that magical wand over his chest to make sure the valve is holding up and doing its part. We talk about consequences, we reassure each other, we hug each other and then when the cardiologist blesses him with a clean bill of health we push it to the back of our minds until next year.

Although it is pushed to the back of our minds the steps we take daily are not. No smoking, moderate alcohol, regular exercise and eating real food are daily habits so that when that annual doctor visit rolls around we are slightly assured; a number of things we can’t prepare for could happen. The valve could “come loose”, or the plavix could be ruining his liver; we are doing are part and we keep our fingers crossed that science doesn’t fawk us up.

Now…..

Imagine this is the condition your loved ones get to see you in but not because you have a congenital problem that you cannot control, but because you just blatantly don’t take care of your body. You smoke cigarettes, chew tobacco, drink too much alcohol, eat too much junk food and sugar, you don’t exercise and your body has had enough and quits. YOU have to have open heart surgery, or have pieces or organs cut off from cancer or diabetes, or an organ replaced. YOU are lying there with a breathing tube down your throat, a catheter in your neck the size of a garden hose, machines are blinking and beeping and monitors are flashing. The smell of antiseptic and sick pollutes their throats and nose. The taste of despair and what will come of their life with you as a sick person. You can’t work and help support the household; your medical expenses are expensive; you cannot help with the kids or the dog or simple tasks such as laundry.

YOU have changed their entire life because you couldn’t take care of yourself. How would that guilt feel? Or switch shoes, how you would feel about tagging along with a partner who has blatantly no disdain for their health. They treat their health as if it is owed to them, they smoke, don’t get proper sleep, they drink too much alcohol or soda, they don’t wear their seat belt, they don’t exercise, they vegetate in front of the TV, they eat pizza and chips as if they were the only two food groups. They ache, they are tired, they complain, they don’t want to go do anything that life has to offer because TV, work and a sloth lifestyle has consumed them. You are a prisoner of your own home because your partner won’t take care of them self. How does that sound? Does that sound resemble love?

Doesn’t sound like it to me. It sounds like a jealous, lazy, bum.
Now you know why I get so upset when someone blatantly pisses on their health remember there are people out there like Ray with a congenital health problem they can’t control and it weighs on their mind and those that love them and you take it for granted as if it is owed to you to have good health. Just remember NOTHING is owed to you in this life; you have to work and work really hard for everything. Be good to yourself, love yourself, no one else can do it for you – so if these words are hitting home then quit being a fud king health bum!