The Speed of the Pack

Last the improbable happened...

Three Olympians from the same country captured Gold, Silver and Bronze in the same event - 500M Speed Skating.

While admittedly, I know little about speed skating other than these folks have the largest quad muscles I've ever seen, I do understand a key principle that makes this rare event more likely to have happened.  Certainly, this is not the first time these three men have been on the ice together.  For sure not, because two of them are twins. (Can someone say sibling rivalry?)  More than likely for some time these men have been training together, skating together and pushing one another.  The result - three Olympic Medals.

We have long been told by motivational speakers, personal development folks and even pastors that our success and rise (and fall) is built around those we spend the most time with.  I think this coronation is further proof of that.


In fitness you tend to run faster, lift more and work harder with a partner or group.
In business you compile the best of each person, pooling them together for further success.
In life you gather those around you that will not hold you back but propel you forward, push you to be the best version of you and elevate you to person you desire to be.

As the 3 Dutchman took their skate around the rink, hands raised, flag waived and tears being shed, I asked my son "why do you think all three from the same country won?"  His answer (as a typical 12 year old would say) "they were the fastest."

While on the money with his response, there is bigger lesson to be learned in how they became the fastest.  My theory is due to the speed of the pack.  The day one got faster it pushed the others to speed up.  If one got one one-hundreth faster, than the others had to work harder to get there. The synergy of the group created the three fastest men on ice last night and a crowning moment for the Netherlands.

I believe it was the power of WE and the speed of the pack that launched these men to the medal stand.  So who have you gathered around you to improve your speed, your business or your life?

Post your comments below.

From the inside out

A friend of mine once told me that fixing the outside if the inside is broken tends to only accentuate the brokenness.

My disclaimer is that I am not a licensed psychologist, psychiatrist or even a psychic, so anything posted on this blog is intended as an unofficial helping hand.  

Self image and self perception are huge issues in relation to your health and fitness. There are some who no matter what the result never see themselves any different.  Their body might be healthy, but the inside still isn't.  Your heart health is just as important as your physical health.

Your heart is more than just the thing that pumps blood to the rest of your body.  The heart in a lot of cultures was consider the center or the seat of your being.  It is widely considered that the source of life both physically and spiritually/emotionally was the heart!  All this being said your health goes far beyond a flat tummy, bulging biceps and skinny waist.  Health is an emotional issue.  Health is a spiritual issue.  Health is a wholistic issue.  All of you needs to be healthy.

While focusing in on your fitness improves you body, focusing in on your relationships will improve you heart condition.  While locking in on what goes in your mouth, lock in on what you put into your mind.  Surround yourself with positive and encouraging people.    Read books, blogs, posts that will fill your heart and mind with peace, joy and love.

Take aim at making all of you healthy!  Here some tips:

1) Read personal development type books.  Books that better you!

2) Find a faith community - church, synagogue, Bible study.

3) Find friends that build and support you in your dreams and in your health goals.

4) Continue to exercise.  Endorphin make you happy!

5) If necessary find someone or place to help you deal with the emotional stuff - a counselor or psychologist.  There is no shame in asking for help.  We all need some help!

Your heart and your spirit are just as important as your body.  Get all of you healthy!

Another Reason WHY

This weekend our family took a short getaway to Caribbean Cove Hotel and Waterpark in Indianapolis.  The waterpark was your typical indoor facility with kiddie area, activity area, lazy river and 3 water slides.

My youngest child is my little diva.  She is 5 years old and working on 15 most days.  It took me a little convincing, a couple dollars cash to get her down that first waterslide, but once she did...it was I could do to keep up.

Here is a little perspective, the waterslides stand 40 feet up in the air, 4 stories high, 4 stories of steps...multiplied by the enthusiasm of a 5 year old girl who kept saying "daddy, one more time."  Every one more time meant picking up our bright yellow intertubes, lugging it up those 4 stories of steps, to sit her down on that tube and give her smiling face a push down that slide.

It was just 7 seconds of bouncing and bumping down that yellow tube on that air inflated tube to get to the bottom of the pool only to find her their soaked by water but having the time of her life.  And then those words "one more time" was reason enough to pick up that tube and travel up those 4 flights of stairs one more time.

There is a difference between being a dad and being an "active" dad. Being an active dad means not sitting on the sideline and watching them slide, but traveling along side them down the slides of the journey.  It has been a journey for me to lose the weight, get healthy and get fit.  But days like yesterday make it worth it.  Worth every step, worth every slide down, worth every water soaked smile on her face.  Just one more reason why I am stay healthy!

I ate my feelings and...

In our continued stream of thinking along nutrition and my continually belief that confession is good for the soul...I am an emotional eater.

When it rains, it pours highly carbohydrated snack foods in a Noah's Ark style flood.  In order for me to achieve the success of my goal weight and maintain that healthy, the one thing I have to find control over is my emotional eating.  I tend to eat when the stresses of life become overwhelming.

So here are 3 alternatives to eating my weight in snack foods:

1) Workout - pop in a DVD and sweat it out.  Pushing my physical fitness and releasing endorphin keeps me from binging.

2) Run - while similar to working out, running allows me to put my body on cruise control and engage my mind in some thinking and processing.  It gives a chance to escape to another place (both physically and mentally) and avoid the snacks.

3) Laugh - The proverb says that laughter is good medicine.  Being able to find humor in laugh is healthy.  While whatever the situation was may not have be funny at all, there is plenty in life to find laughter in.  So laugh, smile, and take your hands away from the sweets and salty.

I have not perfected being an overcomer of emotional eater.  I am working on it.  I try to use these alternatives to stuffing my face.  In an honest reflection, I really don't feel any better by eating.  While I satisfy my taste buds, I upset my belly and worse really don't emotionally feel any better.  (SAD FACE)

Day #22 The Hardest Workout

No it is not P90X or Insanity Pure Cardio...it is the workout that you don't want to do.  Tonight was one of those nights.  I was fighting a headache, so every time I jumped my head throbbed.  I watched the seconds tick slowly as my only thought "oh Lord, when is this going to be done!"

Sometimes the hardest things are the things that you feel least like doing.  On the flip side of that coin is that those workouts are oftentimes the most rewarding.  I may not have burned as many calories as a workout that I felt fresh and ready to go, but the emotional reward of pushing through a difficult workout is as much a gain as workout you attacked.

These are the moments that are a test of grit, a test of determination, a test of discipline.  Tonight I had all three....

EXERCISE:
LES MILLS COMBAT Extreme Cardio 60

Day #10 Halfway to a Habit

It is said that it takes 21 days to create a habit, while just 4 days to end one.  Well then, today marks my halfway point.  In actual truth, I have exercise everyday of 2013 but one (we were traveling home from IL).  But since January 7th I have been focused in on my fitness and my nutrition (with an occasional nibble of chex mix).

My goal this year is to reach a goal weight of 170 pounds by April 1st.  What I know about achieving success, whether health and fitness or any other field, consistency is king.  Good eating and exercise have to become as integrated in your life as brushing your teeth or showering (one time is not enough).  While most of the Americans who stated in proclamation on New Year's Eve that this was the year they were going to get fit, lose weight or get healthy, most of those who made those resolutions have fallen off the wagon.  As a matter of fact, they are once again riding high in the saddle of McDonald's and Dunkin' Donuts.

In order for me to get to that goal will take staying on track, staying focused and having a plan.  The stumbling block to most, including myself is not knowing what to do or what to do next.  So here is my plan to get through the spring:  complete Les Mills Combat (7 more weeks) and restarted (dramatic pause) Insanity.

So how are you doing on your goal of becoming fit, getting healthy, or losing weight?  Are you on track to create your healthy habit?

EXERCISE:
Les Mills Kata 45

6 pounds in 30 days

In June I roasted through Insanity, shedding a total of 17 pounds in the process.  I hit an all-time adult low of 171.8 pounds.  I was fit, healthy and feeling great.  In a moment of honest confession, my fitness and nutrition have been "okay".  I have picked us some running again, working through p90X at about 60% of the workouts, missing from time to time. My focus has lacked on reaching my own personal health and fitness goals.  I am in good shape, but have yet to hit great shape.

So I am challenging myself and asking you to hold me accountable to it.  Today is Day 0 of my 6 pounds in 30 day challenge.  I weighed in at 175.5 pounds, 6 pounds breaks that barrier of 170 pounds.  There is nothing special about the number 170, other than the tens have been my walls that I have needed to break through.  While nothing significant physically, 170 means a whole lot mentally.  Seeing 6 after the will indicate a level of fitness and health that I have yet to see as an adult.  It will be payment for working my "gut" off the next 30 days!

I am giving you permission to check in on me -- ask me about my workouts, my nutrition and diet, ask me anything!  My commitment to you is to be honest, to post regularly via youtube videos - (www.youtube.com/karch46mu) and posts on my facebook like page -- www.facebook.com/AFitterYou.

So join me, follow me, watch me change...my Thanksgiving thanks will be for all the support I have got to get this done.  If you are willing to be my encouragement and my accountability partner in this, I would love for you to leave me a comment below!

Thanks in advance!

Jeff Pitts

Follow Through

My brain has a funny way of taking little bits of information and turning them into life lessons.  My middle child, who is about 8, is all boy.  Slightly bull in a China shop meets a solid rock.  When he shuts the door, he SHUTS the door.  It is not simply a push to create momentum to get the door to the latch so that it catches.  No it is a full on SLAM.  Hand on the door all the way through until the latch catches and the whole car shakes...

So what does my son shutting the door have to do with you and me and our journey to getting healthy...well simply these words "Follow Through".  My son doesn't just do enough to get the door shut.  He finishes it!  He pushes til the point that he knows that door is going to close.  Where most give a passing push, he gives all he's got everytime.

Most of us give it all for a short while or we start off out of the gate quick, but fail to finish.  I have been known to get all jacked up to begin something -- whether that be eating healthy, an exercise program, or even a new book -- then get half way through and fail to follow through.  In an our efforts to achieve the health and fitness that we desire, we have to keep giving the same effort we gave at the start.

Here some ways to keep you following through on those commitments:

1) Set goals and make it a priority to reach them.  This might be an amount of pounds, level of fitness or a specific program like a race.

2) Community and Accountability.  While not impossible, it quite a bit more difficult to do on your own.  To make eating healthy a lifestyle change in your house everyone in the house must agree.  One person cannot bring kale chips and the other person bring french fries.  To achieve best results it is essential to find the nutrition support as well as partners in fitness.

3) Find mental strength.  Your mind will tell you to quit long before your body is ready.  Your mind will tell you to skip a workout.  Your mind will tell you to stop, that it is okay.  That is when you have to find that inner voice that say "bring it" or "dig deeper" or "push harder" or "one more".  You have to find the voice that pushes you to be louder than the voice that tells you to quit!

Finish!  Follow through!  Push that door until it's shut!   

Gaining Confidence

Let's play word association.  I say workout, you might say sweat, fitness, exercise, lifting, smelly gym socks.  The word that may not come to mind is CONFIDENCE.  The origin of the word comes from the Latin word confidere which means to trust, to have faith in.  This definitely does not bring to mind images of bulking up, trimming down or getting fit. Yet, there is an interesting correlation between personal confidence and your level of fitness and health.  Self-image and self confidence are linked!

As you push the limits of your body and achieve new levels, you start create a belief in yourself of accomplishing new limits.  As your body begins to take shape from that of a pear to that of healthy and strong, you start to see yourself differently.  Every time you achieve one goal there is a drive ignited in you to push to achieve a new goal.  This attitude bleeds over into other areas of your life. In turn that affects how you present yourself to others, resulting in a greater level of confidence.

When you feel good about you, others take notice!  When you believe in you, you show it!  Run the next mile, do the next set of push ups, push play on Insanity or P90X.  Not only will you be rewarded by building a stronger, faster, learner physique, you will be rewarded with a greater sense of self-worth.  The changes you find will be more than just physical...they may just change your life!

My Why...

I remember the first time I watched The Biggest Loser. I know it sounds sappy, but I remember tears welling up in my eyes and a lump in my throat while I watched morbidly obese people begin their journey toward getting healthy.

At the time, I was near 215 pounds myself.  I thought of myself as "slightly overweight" but never obese.  Every year as I set goals for that year was the same goal: lose 15 pounds.  And every year I failed to do anything about it.  But each season I would watch as incredibly overweight people shed pounds and gained years on The Biggest Loser.  I blamed my lack of ability to change my own life on time, on my job, on my inability to do it on my own, on my lack of knowledge, on whatever I could find to blame it on.

Then my mom bought a Wii Fit.  And that is when an insulting anime voice called me "OBESE".  I had never realized it or even considered -- pudgy, chunky, "filled out"...maybe, but never obese.  That is when the journey started for me.  I wanted to prove to myself and a Japanese animated voice that I was no longer obese...as matter of fact as of right now when I weigh in it tells me I am healthy.

My Why I became a Beachbody Coach is because I first hand understand the struggle of gaining and losing weight.  And those tears and that lump in my throat watching people I personally will never meet change their life on a TV show is multiplied even greater when someone I know, someone I love changes their life and health forever.  Do I hope to make money?  Absolutely.  But more than that I hope to make an impact.  I hope to play a role in seeing people change their health, change the health of their families.  I hope I make a small imprint in this overall challenge to "End The Trend" of Obesity.  I do it because I want the join of seeing others change the voice of their life that calls them OBESE to calling them HEALTHY! 

That is why I began the journey to a fitter me...

If you would like to start the journey for yourself or would like to help others start the journey by becoming a BEACHBODY COACH.  I would love to talk more with you.