I’m often asked what is the best diet, or the best food
program, best exercise program and which single best book to
recommend to improve your health, fitness or weight loss.
The answer is that there is no best way to do it. There is
no best book, and there is no right way or wrong way to do it.
The 5 Critical things you must do to achieve your health are
these
1. Continue to learn about health, fitness, nutrition and
weight loss from a wide variety of sources
The single most important thing to do right from the start is
to take action and begin learning about health, followed very
closely by putting what you learn into practice. We are a
very diversified bunch of people and what works for you may
not work for the next person. You have to find what works for
you from a wide variety of sources, expand your knowledge and
accept no one thing as being the best for your health. Keep
reading, keep learning and keep what works for you and discard
what doesn’t.
Knowledge isn’t power, but “knowledge in action is power!”
Some very simple things to keep in mind is that the body runs
on food and if you give it the best quality food, in whatever
manor that happens to be, then you’ll probably get some good
results in general. Keep the nutrition to a maximum by eating
as close to nature as possible, organic where possible and
eliminating processed foods and trans fats.
2. Find a mentor.
Someone who’s been there, done that and that you can model .
I realized at quite an early age that if we can model someone
who’s been there and done that and gotten results, then you
can “cut to the chase” as it were to find out what works for
your health and weight loss – what doesn’t and in doing so get
results faster.
Find a mentor, a role model for the things that you’re looking
for. If it’s weight loss or to improve your health, find
someone who’s walked in your footsteps and knows what you’re
going through. Model them. Do what they did, repeat their
process and contact them to ask what worked and what didn’t.
You can save yourself a lot of time and effort by doing what
works and skipping what doesn’t.
3. Apply the knowledge you learn about health on a daily
basis
This is where the taking action part comes in. You must begin
to apply the knowledge you’ve gained from what you’ve read
about health or watched and by talking with people who’ve been
there before you. If you do not put it into practice then
you’ve become an information junkie and not someone who
follows through on their knowledge. You must begin to work
the principles you’ve learned on a daily basis and keep at it.
Without the trial and error, you get nowhere fast and won’t
truly know what works and what doesn’t.
4. Repeat steps one, two and three
Remember, there is no right way or wrong way to lose weight,
improve your health or get what you want. You must continue
to learn and challenge what you’ve read. I’m told that what I
teach is wrong and I ask what were your results when you tried
it? Well, they didn’t try it and so I then ask “what right do
you have to tell me what I teach is wrong”. It may have
worked for me or for many people I coach including yourself,
but without trying it and challenging it, you won’t ever know.
Keep learning about health, keep reading, keep applying what
you’ve read and this new knowledge. Begin the process of
filtering for yourself what will and won’t work for you.
Remember this is about you, not me or the other guy, but what
will help you achieve your weight loss goals or your health.
This may very well be about applying certain fitness
principles that sound so controversy that you figure they
can’t possibly work. One of my favorite sayings is “believe
nothing I say, but I challenge you to prove me wrong”. My
intent is to have you try it.
When I first begun my journey to lose 300 pounds, I read one
book and I preached the principles like they were the gospel.
I was finally told to “shut up” and read something else, so I
took it upon myself to learn whatever I could about health and
weight loss. I began to apply my new knowledge daily, found
people who had used the info before and what they believed
about it, what worked for them for their health and then
discovered for myself what worked.
Finally, I discovered the ultimate secret to health and weight
loss.
5. Never give up.
It never ends. In the large scope of your life, the next 30,
40, 50 or more years, what is a few days if you happen to get
off track. Get right back on doing what you were doing, keep
learning, keep trying new things, go back to what worked when
it was working and keep up with your daily fitness routine.
Probably the single most important fact about exercise or
fitness is that our body is designed to move and we’ve gotten
away from that. We must do something on a daily basis to
exercise our body.
Never give up. Never lose sight of the health you want and
keep working towards your goal.