Imagine if calories were in your face all the time. People often ask how health and fitness people stay so slim and look so good. The bottom line is that the lens of trainer and the lens of most people are very different. They don’t walk into that infamous coffee place after a hard run with intention of ingesting what ever the neon glowing magic glass pavilion has in its bounty. They view each item and weigh what the healthiest option is. They consider the amount of fat, its carbohydrate type, how much sugar is in it, and if it has protein. They also consider how close to clean it is. When I mean clean I am referring to how much processing the item in question has. Most trainers will bypass the stuff in wrappers. When it comes to drinks they pass up the ones filled with heavy creams which usually carry lots of sugar and fat.  They have train themselves to do this and it has become second nature to them.  Their taste buds are even trained because of so many years of eating healthy.  As odd as it sounds crap food does not appeal to me these days.  If I eat it my body has a mini type of hang over which consists of being tired and wanting to sleep all day.  It’s not a good feeling for me.

 So when you order your food think about how it will affect you. Imagine a pebble in a pond. What you toss in will cause ripples in the water. If you throw a rock in you get water everywhere and you make a big ass mess. If you beat up a blueberry muffin and wash it down with that pumpkin latte after a light run because you think you earned it you end up causing a big ass mess for yourself. Why? Because chances are you burned about 300 calories on that light run and that muffin was 400 to 500 calories. If you washed it down with a venti whatever then you may have killed 1000 calories! In the short run you move farther from your goals and in the long run you increase the risk of gaining more then just fat.

 What if you’re still not sure of what’s healthy at the place you’re at? My question to you is why in the heck are you even in line! Take 5 minutes and use calorie king to find the things you like to eat at the places you’re at on most days. Make a list of options, or at the very least have 1 to 2 items locked into your head before you walk in. What’s the point of claiming that you eat healthy when all you do is walk into food establishments with no clue of what nutritional value the items in question have? If that’s to hard then go for the fruit and the tea. Food establishments are not responsible for your health, you are! 

It takes 3500 calories to burn or gain one pound of fat and believe it or not these days it is really easy to do. We eat so much more then we did 50 years ago. We also are far less active then ever before. The human body has not changed that much in the last several thousand years. What has changed is our type of living. So if you think those trainers are nut jobs for eating what’s closer to the diet we all had a few hundred years ago, or that they are working out at extreme levels then you are missing the point. The human body was meant to be active and it was meant to eat food that was not engineered. The human body was supposed to eat fruit, not soda. It was designed to walk every day for miles not sit on a couch and watch others do it on TV.

Don’t be the person that walks around saying there are no healthy options for you or you don’t have the time to commit to it.  I have been in the industry for 12 years now and I have heard this story a million times and my only reply is “if it’s important enough you make the time”.  Trust me there is not a single person out there that cannot make some change to live healthier.  All you need to do is start by changing that lens.  If you need help then contact us and will sit you down and give you the skinny on how you can lose the fat.

Fat has friends. Friends like coronary artery disease, diabetes, hypertension, stroke and more.  Fat is lonely so it will always encourage more friends to hang out. After all, the more the merrier, right?   Every time you take a bite from that blueberry muffin, fat has a party and sends out emails to those friends’ coronary artery disease, diabetes, hypertension, and stroke.  Fat lets them know there will be an Evite in the near future for all to sign onto.  These friends in turn let their friends; cardiac meds, kidney dialysis, and gastric bypass surgery know that a big kegger is in the works.  With each bite of that muffin thousands of his friends pour through the door of your internal house.  Your stomach begs them all to keep it down.  To the left you see fat at the bar mixing up martinis with LDL and sugar.  Sodium is trying to pick up on a group of hot looking free radicals.  The party is in full force and your body is doing everything it can to keep the crowed from spreading outside the digestive system.  And just when you think the stomach’s capacity was at maximum sugar gets on his cell phone and calls for more of his friends to stop by!  Within moments the door opens and there is a rush like a stampede of buffalo as sugar’s pals from that pumpkin latte fill the room to breaking point.  Worst of all they brought more drinks!  Fights break out. LDL teams up with Sodium and beats the crap out of HDL forcing him to leave.  The free radicals get mad and slap Sodium’s pal Hypertension because he can’t take the hint that no means no.  The party is now out of hand and the stomach is beyond capacity.  The neighboring organs are getting pissed off because of all of the commotion and call the cops on stomach’s kegger.  Within minutes the front door opens and the digestive police have rushed in.  Everyone is in panic mode. Hypertension and Diabetes sneak through a side exit and hide out in the kidneys. Sugar and some of his pals scatter throughout the whole room.  Some follow Hypertension and Diabetes into the kidneys and others shoot strait for the waistline where they can find a nice hiding spot.  LDL manages to sneak out with a drunk Free radical into the blood stream hoping he can stay at her house for the night.  The party is over and all but a few were caught.  In the end Stomach rethinks his strategy on house parties and who should be there but he knows his roommate the brain and the mouth will always overrule his suggestions.      

That may have been a funny story but the truth is that I am noticing there are a lot more keggers growing above the belts of people these days.  The bottom line is that if we continue the ritual of blind eating we will continue to face more medicines, medical procedures, and diet fads that just deal with the symptoms instead of finding a lasting solution.  This week I encourage you to consider what you put in your mouth.  I want you to open your eyes before you eat. If your not sure of it then bypass it to avoid the bypass later.

Christopher Brownlee

Imagine for a moment you’re at the front of the line at that infamous coffee place and you have your selection burned into your mind.  You just ran 4 miles and for you the victory is in the meal! Your trainer told you that you needed one for recovery after you worked out and what better way to celebrate your first run then a snack and a drip! The sweat beads from your brow, you know you must have burned a gazillion calories and the only way to satisfy the rumbles in your belly is the options in the glass pavilion of pleasure.  The barista at the counter asked for your order and with out missing a beat you call out for the blueberry walnut thing and the nonfat pumpkin spiced venti latte.  You are satisfied; you chose items that allowed you to exclaim the words blueberry, walnuts and pumpkin.  You even used the word nonfat and looked around so that others could follow your guru like example. It is an epic moment for you.  The crowd in the back of your mind is cheering and chanting your name.  People will write songs of this moment.  Wrong! 

The reality is that you just ordered 740 calories of crap.  Why is it crap?  Well, the latte was 400 calories which came from mostly sugar (60grams).  The blueberry walnut thing was 340 and that too was mostly sugar.  Don’t hang your head in shame, most people make this mistake their first time out when they commit to being healthy.  The first tip which is pretty obvious is that fat does not make you fat, calories and sugar do.  Fat just happens to have the most calories per gram.  The next tip which is vital because most people can’t seem to get this one right is sugar and sodium.  Sugar is the biggest calorie booster these days.  I say this because most food that is processed or stored is filled with it to give flavor.  Sodium which does not have calories helps give this crap flavor as well, fooling you into thinking you have found the secret weapon in eating right. These are things you need to consider when you order.  If you don’t believe me take an old shoe dip it in sugar and salt water and then fry it.  I am sure it will resemble some of what you might have eaten in the past.

Are you at that point where it feels like a marathon can’t get you to the results you want? Is the food you’re eating preventing you from your goals?  Everyone knows that 80% of your results come from your diet, but do you really know how to master this when you’re eating out?  Being healthy is not a matter of just sweating and eating less.  If that was the simple truth then no one would have a weight problem.  In order to master your human potential it starts with your mindset.  Master your mindset and goal setting will no longer be a New Years resolution but your New Years Revolution. Are you ready to say yes to your revolution?