Red's Health Tips

Blog 06JAN12 – Results Matter – Day 3

How can you change something if you don’t know what you are doing?  If you do the same thing every day, you will get the same results.  Your daily habits, your lifestyle, got you to your current state of health and wealth.  I’ll address the wealth issues in my motivation blog.  But health issues I tackle in my health blog.  The first seven days of my 28-day fast start program for a lifestyle change is to reflect and record what you have been doing.  That means to think about what you have been eating, how much have you been eating, what times of the day you chose to eat and how you felt about what you ate – while you were eating and immediately afterwards.  Do the same thing for you physical activity – analyze and record.

This gives you a baseline from which to make adjustments.  The adjustments you make should be incremental.  If you haven’t been a person enveloped in an exercise program, it makes no sense to go ‘whole hog’ into a new exercise program.  Those types of decisions seldom work long term.  Walk around the block today.  Walk around the block tomorrow.  Go to the mall and walk around for 30 minutes.  Do something you don’t normally do to increase your physical activity.

If you have been eating a lot of high fructose corn syrups drinks – cut back.  If you have been eating a lot of simple sugars (carbohydrates) – cut back.  You don’t have to go ‘cold turkey’ to begin making a change in your lifestyle.  The purpose of the first week of my 28-day program is to change your mindset.  Once your subconscious brain is supporting you, then your journey will be much easier.

I had two home-cooked meals today – nice omelet for brunch and fish for dinner.  I worked out for nearly an hour and then spent 30 minutes in the sauna today.  My gym has a movie theater with cardio equipment.  You can do most kinds of cardio exercise while watching a full-length feature film (pre-recorded, of course).  I like to spend 30 minutes watching a program (some days a little longer) and keep my heart rate up.  I push it every few minutes to increases my heart rate momentarily and then allow it to come to the exercise norm.  I had a good day today and really enjoyed it.

I notice that the ‘habit’ I had prior to the New Year was to eat snacks late at night, along with an occasional glass of wine.  I have had no inclinations to eat anything after dinner.  It’s as if my internal snack switch has been turned off.  It’s a habit that I need to break.  They are idle calories – comfort food – late at night, that don’t get burned off before going to bed.

I have been drinking water and iced tea.  I like the taste of both.  The water is filtered (either from my water filter or from a bottle).  I mix green tea, white tea and oolong tea together in a large pitcher.  I like to add black tea also, but my wife has been joining me and has weaned herself off artificial sweeteners for her iced tea and I’m willing to live without the black tea in our communal tea pitcher.  I used to add ten to twelve sugar bags to my 8-10 oz glass of iced tea when I was in boot camp a long time ago.  I had to have something to cut the taste of the tea.  I gave up on tea for a few decades and started back a few years ago.  I really enjoy the taste of tea without any sugar or lemon.

I’ve made good progress on my weight loss book – RESULT MATTER When You Want To Lose Weight and Keep It Off.  I want to publish this book electronically.  Electronic publishing is a little more daunting than physical publishing.  I would have a stack of books sitting next to me today if I had chosen that option for this book.  I’ll choose that option later on this month or next, but I am focused on publishing in Kindle, iBookstore, Nook, etc.  Progress is slower than I like, but I am still making progress.  I will let everyone know when I have it published to my website and to the electronic book stores.

Red O’Laughlin

Your Prosperity Professor

281-437-8114 H/W    281-687-1188 C