“I always start with the area of health because when I’m in good physical shape I need less sleep, think more clearly, feel better about everything, and get more accomplished.”  Jeff Olson

What will health allow you to do, be, and create in your life?

Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you?  (1 Cor. 3:16; NIV)

Over the last week or so I have focused in on one of my favorite books, The Slight Edge: Secret to a $uccessful Life by Jeff Olson.  This will be the last Daily Gram taken from his book, and I plan to quote extensively from one of his later chapters.  My purpose is to ultimately make you an offer.

“Health is one of the great riddles of existence.  The foundational importance of everyday health is one of the most commonly known truths of human existence, and at the same time, it is also one of the most commonly and blatantly ignored.  Everyone knows that ‘if you don’t have your health, you have nothing.’ …Of the three ’self-evident, inalienable rights’ that ring from the American Declaration of Independence like a trumpet fanfare–’Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness’–the first, without which the other two are irrelevant, is Life.  And the most basic condition for the free, unencumbered experience of Life itself is health.  There is nothing more basic than health–and there is no area of life where the Slight Edge is more vividly in operation, working either for you or against you.”

“That is perhaps your most important choice, day by day and hour by hour: whether to let your eating and physical activity build your fondest dreams–or dig your grave with your teeth.  Hamlet wondered, ‘To be, or not to be?’  You get to ask yourself that–and answer it–with every meal.  I always start with the area of health because when I’m in good physical shape I need less sleep, think more clearly, feel better about everything, and get more accomplished.”

“I usually say the the Slight Edge does not work quickly, but the truth is that often you’ll get positive results fairly quickly.  You may not achieve your ultimate goal in a week, a month or even a year or two, but you’ll see the positive changes far sooner than you might expect….  I’ve said that successful people are willing to do those things unsuccessful people are not.  And sometimes those things are uncomfortable.  There is always a price you pay, and for me the price included my initial discomfort.  But that price was quickly paid in full, and within weeks that discomfort faded.”

“Those Slight Edge actions that are easy to do, and easy not to do?  Soon, thanks to the powers of momentum, completion and habit, they become far easier to do than not to do!  Take a few moments to work out your own Slight Edge plan for your health.”

OK…now here’s the offer.  Sharon and I have a very straightforward approach to health that we would like you to consider.  It’s not about a miracle pill or a six-week makeover.  It’s not about only eating a certain food or avoiding entire food categories.  It’s not time or labor intensive–you won’t have to twist yourself into a pretzel to make it happen.  It’s about the basics.  The tried and true–making health a part of your daily life in a way that works for you.  It’s the step-by-step Slight Edge that Olson writes about.

We will support you to create the type of health that allows you to live your life to its fullest.  Whatever “fullest” means to you and will mean to you–in a few months, in a few years and decades from now.  We focus on the basics.  Stuff you know about or have read about, but perhaps aren’t doing consistently.  It’s everywhere.  Water.  Exercise.  Superfoods.  Intelligent Supplementation.  Our magic bullet is that we support you to incorporate the basics into your life.  Customized, step-by-step, and in a manageable way.  It’s straightforward but the results are amazing and the support makes it fun.

If you would like to learn more about our health offer, just send an email to drjerry@thecoachingpair.com with the words “Health Offer” in the subject line.

Prayer Power
Lord, we thank You for good health and the knowledge You provide to maintain our health.  Guide and direct our everyday choices that will enhance our energy and health so that we may better serve You.

Link of the Day
Yes, Prevention is Cheaper Than Treatment

Blessings on you as you begin to do the simple things you know you need to do to improve your health.

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“A fruit is a vegetable with looks and money. Plus, if you let fruit rot, it turns into wine, something Brussels sprouts never do.”  P. J. O’Rourke

How many servings of fruit are you eating each day?

In the middle of its street, and on either side of the river, was the tree of life, which bore twelve fruits, each tree yielding its fruit every month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.  (Rev. 22:2; NKJ)

Most everyone, young and old enjoys fruit salad.  Where did fruit salad come from originally?  In ancient times, combinations of various fresh, dried, candied, and stewed fruit were used to create the salad.  The ingredients and recipes used depended on what was available during the different seasons, the specific country of origin, and the socio-economic status of the people.

Fruit salad, as we know it today is a product of the mid-19th century, with one of the most popular examples being Ambrosia.  The name “fruit cocktail” was developed when fruit was mixed with sugar and alcohol.  Non-alcoholic versions of fruit cocktail were very popular in the 1920’s. Also popular in the 1920’s were jellied fruit salads. How many of us remember all the various “jellied” salads?  Believe it or not, I could have been the “Jell-O Queen” in the 1970’s, until I began to see the light about real food!  In case you’re wondering, a Jell-O salad is not considered real food for those interested in living a healthy lifestyle.

Today we have so many varieties of fresh fruit available to us all year that we can enjoy fruit salad in any season.  However, there are times when certain fruits are more plentiful and thus a little less costly.  Although we’ll soon be entering the most prolific fruit season, today’s recipe is more designed for the winter months when we don’t have access to as many fresh fruits.  The recipe uses some fresh fruit and some canned pineapple and mandarin oranges.  Feel free to make substitutions with any of the fruit listed.  I’ve created a sauce that makes the salad creamy and rich, but it’s good without it too.

Always buy pineapple in it’s own juice as opposed to heavy syrup.  I’ve also found mandarin oranges packed in pear juice as opposed to heavy syrup.  Coconut is a nice addition to this salad.  Always buy unsweetened coconut, preferably organic and unsulfured.  Sulfur dioxide is a preservative added to commercial coconut and not something that I recommend consuming.

Prayer Power
Lord we’re so grateful for all of the many wonderful fruits that You have created.  Thank You for the beautiful color, texture and taste of it all.

Link of the Day
Easy Creamy Fruit Salad

Blessings on you as you enjoy your Easy Creamy Fruit Salad.
 

“Would you like me to give you the formula for success?  It’s quite simple, really.  Double your rate of failure…You’re thinking of failure as the enemy of success.  But it isn’t at all…You can be discouraged by failure–or you can learn from it.  So go ahead and make mistakes.  Make all you can.  Because, remember that’s where you’ll find success.  On the other side of failure.”  Thomas J. Watson, Sr.

What does the word “fail” do to your spirit?

Good advice and success belong to me. Insight and strength are mine.  (Prov. 8:14; NLT)

I’ve just spent the major part of the weekend studying a new system that embodies several “revolutionary” (to me) concepts.  One of those concepts promotes the idea espoused by Watson in his quote.  Basically, it is to define a couple of action steps that will move you from where you are now to your desired result, and then just do them.  Don’t worry about whether they are the right steps or not.  Don’t worry about succeeding or failing.  Just do the steps and then stop and evaluate the result.

In other words, success or failure is not the issue–learning is what you are after.  Take action, evaluate, learn, and then adjust when necessary, and then start over again by taking action.  You could say that you learn your way to the desired end result.  This is akin to the course correction procedure that we all use when driving a car.  You don’t just aim the car and hold the steering wheel steady till you get there.  You are constantly (and subconsciously) evaluating, leaning, and adjusting accordingly.  This is no less true of a pilot who is flying from point A to point B or of an astronaut who is piloting a spacecraft from earth to the moon.  That’s even how the most sophisticated auto pilot systems work.  Continuous course correction is the key!

When you really stop and think about it, this gives a whole new connotation to the word “fail.”  All of a sudden, failing is a good thing…something to be pursued.  Isn’t it sad how our culture has taken a powerful and positive word like that and given it such a negative stigma so that many of us have been paralyzed by our fear of failure?  We plan, plan, plan, and do some more planning.  When everything looks right, we take a few tentative, faltering steps.  And if it doesn’t go according to plan, we tend to give up and conclude that we just are not smart enough, or good enough, or lucky enough.  What balderdash!!!

Jeff Olson, in his book, The Slight Edge, tells us that the Japanese have a business management philosophy called kaizen, sometimes translated as “continuous improvement.”  Some of you may be old enough to remember what a joke the label “Made in Japan” used to be.  Well it’s no longer a joke, but a mark of superior quality.

So, may I challenge you to change your mindset from “ready, aim, fire” to “ready, fire, aim?”  Plan, do, and review.  Take action, evaluate, learn, and then adjust when necessary and then start over again by taking action.  Follow Thomas Watson’s advice and “double your rate of failure,” or John Maxwell’s similar advice, “fail forward.”

Prayer Power
Lord, forgive us for throwing in the towel too quickly.  Forgive us for the times You have given us a desire, causing us to start down the road to fulfillment, and then given up prematurely because we thought we didn’t have the capability.  Lord, give us the grace to see that our only limitations are self-imposed.  We are designed and destined for success…not mediocrity.  Hallelujah!!!

Link of the Day
Overcoming Failure

Blessings on you as you step out and “fail” several times this week.

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“Nothing is stronger than habit.”  Ovid

Think of one habit you have that you would consider bad.  How does it serve you?

You will always reap what you sow! (Gal. 6:7c; NLT)

Habits can be friend or foe.  We all have some good habits and unfortunately, we all have some bad habits.  Interestingly enough, what is a good habit for you may be a bad habit for me.  Go figure!

Good habits serve you.  Bad habits don’t.  It’s as simple as that.  In The Slight Edge, Jeff Olson writes, “Brushing your teeth is a habit that serves you; biting your nails is one that doesn’t.  Thinking things through for yourself serves you; blindly accepting everything you read on the Internet or hear on television doesn’t.  Looking for the best in people serves you; anticipating their worst doesn’t.”

Habits are done unconsciously, i.e., without thinking about them.  I’ve read that more than 90% of our daily behavior is unconscious.  Scary, isn’t it?  We truly are creatures of habit.  But again, that can be a good thing…if we’ve developed a preponderance of habits that serve us.  Unfortunately, most people don’t give it much thought.  They just go about their habit-driven lives blaming the circumstances around them.  Little do they understand that they are, in fact, creating their circumstances with their habits.

Olson again: “Getting up early can become a habit.  So can getting up late and staying up late.  Complaining can become a habit.  Spending more than you earn can become a habit; so can putting a piece of every paycheck into a retirement account.  Looking for the positive side of every challenge can become a habit, so can finding the cloud in every silver lining.”

One of the secrets to changing a habit is to become aware of it.  As long as it continues to operate on the unconscious level, you don’t have a chance to change it.  Once you are able to view the habit for what it is doing for (or to) you, then you have a fighting chance to change it if you determine that it is not serving you.  However,  it is not as simple as just focusing or becoming aware of it and purposing to change.  You can’t just say, “I’m not going to do that anymore!” because you see, there is another law at work here…what you focus on, grows.

The only way to successfully replace a bad, non-serving habit is by displacing it with a good habit that does serve you.  Don’t focus on the bad habit–instead, focus on the good one that will displace the bad one.  Then, of course, you must simply repeat that good activity over and over and over again, until it becomes the new habit.  It’s not really as hard as it may sound, but it certainly does take commitment.  As Winston Churchill is famous for saying, “Never, never, never give up!

BTW, “trying” to do something, for example, I’m going to TRY to make this exciting new activity a habit, is NOT commitment!  Commitment is “doing,” e.g., I’m going to DO this new activity until it becomes a habit for me.  But, then again, that’s fodder for another Daily Gram.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Prayer Power
Lord, we thank You for true friends that are willing to risk the relationship to show us something that we’re doing that is not serving us well.  We thank You that You have given us the ability to rise above our circumstances and form new, good habits.  Forgive us for those times we choose to ignore our abilities and play the victim game.  We truly are incredibly blessed!

Link of the Day
18 Tricks to Make New Habits Stick

Blessings on you as you choose one habit that is not serving you and you purpose to replace it.

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“In the olden days (as my kids call them), taking your shoes off at the door was the norm. This custom is still the standard practice in Korea, Japan, and many other countries.”  Helen Suh MacIntosh

What are you bringing into your home on the bottom of your shoes?

Then said the Lord to him, put off thy shoes from thy feet: for the place where thou standest is holy ground.  (Acts 7:33; KJV)

Let’s play a “pretend” game today!  Remember when you were a child and you played, “Let’s pretend?”  I usually was pretending about having a lovely tea party complete with fancy tea sandwiches and dainty cookies.  See even then I was a “foodie.”  J

Anyway, imagine with me today that tiny cameras are on the bottoms of your shoes, taking pictures of not only where you walk, but also what you actually step on (and in).  Think about this.  From the time you leave your home until you return at the end of the day, where all have your shoes walked?  Think of parking lots doused with grease and oil, dirt, gum and yes, even spit.  For the male species among our readers, what all do your shoes step on when you go to the restroom at the office or in a store while shopping?  Your little cameras would have dozens of rather amazing and unbelievable shots, don’t you think?  Now imagine walking into your homes and carrying all of that with you onto the carpet and flooring.

We can also pick up a lot of pollutants on our shoes.  Things such as pesticides, lead, and other chemicals that can be present in dirt get on our shoes.  The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency showed that people bring lawn pesticides into their homes on their shoes. These pesticide-laden shoes can be a major source of pesticide exposures, especially for young children who spend a lot of time on the floor and who put dirty fingers and toys in their mouths.  A very interesting study showed that wearing shoes indoors was a larger source of children’s pesticide exposures than eating non-organic fruits and vegetables!

Infants are particularly susceptible to organ damage when exposed to various volatile compounds.  Because they spend so much time on the floor, primarily on carpets, it is estimated that an average infant ingests 100 milligrams of toxic chemicals every day, according to Dr. Steve Nugent in his book, How to Survive on a Toxic Planet.  Although wiping our feet on a standard doormat can reduce the amount of toxins brought into the home on our feet, it is far better to do as the Japanese and other Far East cultures do, and remove our shoes.  The simple act of removing our street shoes when we enter our homes can drastically reduce toxins in and around the home.

Jerry and I first began learning about this several years ago from the brilliant naturopathic doctor, Steve Nugent.  It can be a hard pill to swallow at first…and a hard habit to break.  However, once I began picturing what I was bringing in on the bottoms of my shoes, I was easily converted. We each have “house shoes” that are only worn indoors.  My father will be 86 years young this year.  And although he has made some major changes in his life with his diet and nutrition, he has never taken his shoes off in the home.  While recently caring for him, I could see how much dirtier the kitchen floor and the carpet became from just one person wearing shoes in the home.  It was almost as if he was wearing little cameras on his shoes!  J

Prayer Power
Lord, thank You for our homes, and thank You for keeping us healthy.  May we honor You in our everyday lives, doing all we can to make our homes as healthy as they can be.

Link of the Day
Remove toxins from your home

Blessings on you as you contemplate not wearing your shoes in the home.
 

“Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.”  Peter F. Drucker

How long would it take you to make a list of the significant things you did today?

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal … to tear down … to build … to weep …. to laugh …. to mourn …. to dance … to scatter … to gather … to embrace … to refrain … to search … to give up … to keep … to throw away … to tear … to mend … to be silent … to speak … to love … to hate [and] a time for war and a time for peace  (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8; NIV).

One of the disciplines we were taught when learning to become life coaches was the discipline of reflection.  As the pace of life approaches break-neck speed, the idea of reflection becomes a distant memory.  Have you ever raced through a book, and rather than reflect on what you just learned, you quickly grab the next book on the ever-increasing pile of things to be read?  Hmmmmm…makes you wonder what’s the use?

Our coaching mentor, Tony Stoltzfus wrote in our training manual, “Every significant event in life is a potential learning opportunity.  Unfortunately, these God-given opportunities are often overlooked.  The discipline of reflection helps us mine universal principles out of our past and present experiences.”

Jeff Olson, author of The Slight Edge, makes an interesting suggestion–instead of spending so much time writing lists of things we need to do, we should devote some of that time and energy writing lists of things we have done.  You see, what we should be trying to do is differentiate between taking action and taking the “right” action.  Everybody is super-busy these days.  In fact, many wear their busyness as a badge of significance.  But how many of those actions we are taking are the right actions that will move us closer to our goals and destinies?

Olson writes, “Instead of writing down what you’re going to do (chances are you’ve been doing that your entire life anyway, and it doesn’t make you any better at doing them!), write down at the end of the day what you did do that day.  What actions did you take today that made you successful?  Did you read ten pages of a good book?  Did you eat healthy food and get some good exercise?  Did you engage in positive associations?  Did you do the things you need to do to be successful in your business [or ministry]?  Did you tell somebody, ‘I love you?’”

The idea is simply to slow down and reflect on what you are doing.  If we all did that, it would be highly likely that, after a fairly short period of time, our actions would begin to change–simply because we would actually start looking for things to do that we could write at the end of the day that would demonstrate that we were taking actions that would move us toward success (however you define success).  Pretty good idea.  Pretty simple.  But it does require us to slow down and do a little reflecting.  That can be a pretty tall order for some of us who are literally addicted to the adrenalin rush that comes with our out-of-control lifestyles.

Prayer Power
Lord, place within us a desire to slow down and reflect a little on what we’re doing.  Help us to avoid the “tyranny of the urgent” and replace that with the blessing of accomplishing the important.  Teach us to find the lessons in life and be able to articulate them and pass them along to others.

Link of the Day
Tyranny of the Urgent

Blessings on you as you sit down tonight and make a list of what you did today.

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“Cooking is not a requirement for healthy eating. I found such amazing health results as an outcome of raw food that there was no turning back.”  Dr. Douglas Graham, Healthful Living International

How many raw vegetables are you eating each day?

The land you are entering to take over is not like the land of Egypt, from which you have come, where you planted your seed and irrigated it by foot as in a vegetable garden.  (Deut. 11:10; NIV)

I know I’ve mentioned the many benefits of eating raw food, on more than one occasion.  There are people who eat a diet of 80-100 % raw, uncooked food.  There are countless books and several websites dedicated to raw food eating. 

There have been times in our lives when we’ve cycled through eating primarily uncooked food.  Even now, as our chronological age increases J (and as the price of groceries continues to climb), I’m preparing more and more raw food for us to eat.  Spring, summer, and early fall are the easiest times to eat more raw food, especially living on the east coast in the mid-Atlantic states.  For those Floridians and Californians in our midst, you’re blessed with abundant produce throughout the year.

Today’s recipe is a mixture of raw vegetables without it being a “regular, green salad.”  Different varieties of raw vegetables can be mixed together with a bit of olive oil and a favorite vinegar and labeled a “salad.”  The recipe today contains avocados, which are a wonderful food.  Actually, avocados are the fruit from the Persea Americana, a tall evergreen tree that can grow up to 65 feet in height.  Also known as the Alligator Pear, reflecting its shape and the leather-like appearance of its skin, avocados are a rich source of mono unsaturated fatty acids including oleic acid, which has recently been shown to offer significant protection against certain serious diseases.  The fat in avocados is a good, God-given fat.  Don’t think of avocados as a “fattening” food that needs to be avoided.

A ripe, ready to eat avocado is slightly soft but should have no dark sunken spots or cracks.  I cut it in half lengthwise and then gently twist the two halves to get it apart.  I then cut each half again lengthwise and then peel each quarter.  The pit will usually come out without much difficulty.  Then the quarters can be cut into pieces for a salad such as today’s recipe, or mashed with a fork to make Guacamole!  Other vegetables used in today’s recipe are cucumbers, which can be purchased all year round.  However, I’ve been buying the English, hothouse grown cucumbers this winter as they are grown without pesticides and herbicides.  I’ve recently found colorful peppers and tomatoes that are also hothouse grown without herbicides.  Even though they’re not grown organically, they are the next best choice for this time of year.  Feel free to experiment with tossing various vegetables together.  Have fun and enjoy!

Prayer Power
Lord, we thank You for all of the wonderful, colorful produce that You created for our enjoyment.  May we partake of more of Your created foods and less of man-made foods.

Link of the Day
Raw Veggie Salad

Blessings on you as you purpose to eat more raw vegetables.
 

“You can have money piled to the ceiling but the size of your funeral is still going to depend on the weather.”  Chuck Tanner

How many will cry at your funeral?

So Peter returned with them; and as soon as he arrived, they took him to the upstairs room. The room was filled with widows who were weeping and showing him the coats and other garments Dorcas had made for them.  (Acts 9:39; NLT)

One of my favorite books is Jeff Olson’s The Slight Edge: Secret to a $uccessful Life.  While I’m confessing, I might as well confess that I have engaged in a life-long struggle about being overly concerned regarding what other people think of me.  There have been a number of things that have contributed to my acquiring the level of freedom I have from that debilitating concern, including Olson’s book.

In that book, he relates the experience of reading a magazine article (he doesn’t give the source) wherein he learned that at the average funeral, about ten people cry.  Olson muses, “That’s it?  You mean I go through my entire life, spend years going through all these trials and tribulations and achievements and joys and heartbreaks–and at the end of it, there are only ten people who care enough to cry??

The article apparently went on to say that of those attending the funeral, the number one factor that would determine how many would go from the funeral to the actual burial would be…you guessed it…the weather!  Olson relates his thought process upon reading that grim little statistic.  “You mean, I’m lying there, at the grand conclusion of everything I’ve ever said and done, of everything I call my life, in those final moments when my entire life is called to account and acknowledged and memorialized by those nearest and dearest to me, those whose lives I’ve most deeply and profoundly touched…and half the congregation checks out halfway through because of the weather?!”

“You know what?  I don’t give a [expletive deleted] what anybody thinks of what I’m doing any more.  If the odds are that iffy as to whether or not they even cry at my funeral, and chances are fifty-fifty that they duck out anyway before I’m planted if the sky happens to cry for me more than the people do…then why am I spending so much time worrying about what they’re thinking now?”

Kind of sobering, isn’t it?  You know, we tend to spend so much time worrying about what the other person thinks about us, when in reality, they’re probably not even thinking about us anyway.  And if they are, it’s probably to wonder what we are thinking about them.  Man!  Where does all this garbage come from, anyway?

In looking for something on the Internet to put with this I found a great blog post that I believe you’ll find very interesting (and helpful) as well.  So, go in peace.  There’s only One person you need to be concerned about satisfying with your behavior and life accomplishments.  And the truth is…He loves you unconditionally!

Prayer Power
Lord, we thank You for Your unconditional love and Your amazing grace.  Help us to be ever mindful of what You’ve called us to do rather than what we think others would find acceptable.

Link of the Day
What Others Think of You is None of Your Business!

Blessings on you as you begin marching to your own drummer.

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“Obstacles are what you see when you take your eyes off the goal.”  Vince Lomardi

How committed are you to reaching your goal?

And Jesus said unto him, No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God. (Luke 9:62; NLT)

Both in my study of coaching as well as my study in the popular “success literature” genre, I often run across the seemingly sound advice to “keep your eye on the goal.”  Keep looking ahead.  Focus on the goal and the obstacles that are in the way will blur to oblivion, much like focusing a lens in a camera–focus on the distant object and the foreground will blur to the point of appearing to not being there.  Don’t look back!  Don’t look down!  On and on and on.  Let me emphasize right up front, that I believe this is good advice…sometimes.

Sometimes????  When is it not good advice?  Maybe you can relate to this scenario:  You’ve started down the path toward a goal or a project, and like a good trooper, you’re keeping your eye on the goal.  But the opposition you’re receiving, the land mines you keep running in to, the obstacles you keep encountering just begin to wear you down.  Wear you down to the point that you find that you’re not getting out of bed with the same “giant-killing” enthusiasm that you once did anymore.  In fact, there are some mornings that you don’t want to get out of bed period.  You’re worn down.  Battle fatigued.  Approaching burn out.  How badly did you want that goal in the first place?

Well, in my reading I came across some fascinating recent research (this year, as a matter of fact) by a couple of behavioral scientists, Minjung Koo and Ayelet Fishbach that proved that there are times when it is better to look back instead of looking forward.  Bottom line, through a couple of experiments, they concluded that the key lies with the level of current commitment to the goal.

So, if you’re coaching others toward a goal, or maybe coaching yourself toward a goal, you need to assess the current level of commitment to achieve that goal.  If you or your client is highly committed, then by all means, the thing to do is to keep your eye on the goal and be ever mindful of how much remains to be done.  Every step is empowering, because the distance between you and your goal gets shorter and shorter.

If, on the other hand, at this point in time, your commitment is not quite as strong as it once was, the best thing you can do is look back and be encouraged (and motivated to continue) by how much progress you have already made…how far you have come relative to where you were when you started.

This is a powerful distinction to remember when you’re coaching others…or coaching yourself.  To choose the wrong direction to look can not only be de-motivating, it can be disastrous.  Thanks to Drs. Koo and Fishbach, it’s no longer just a “best guess.”  Hallelujah!!!

Prayer Power
Lord, we thank You for visions of a preferred future that You give us and also for behavioral research that lets us begin to understand ways to help keep us motivated when we allow ourselves to become discouraged by the circumstances around us.  Whether it’s for our personal use or for use with someone we’re coaching to victory, we pray that this information will help advance the Kingdom.

Link of the Day
Abstract of research article

Blessings on you as you do what ever is necessary to keep on keepin’ on.
 

“Impossibility is NOT an option.  There are always possibilities!”    Nancy Curtis

What is the price you’re paying for your fat?  (Also from Nancy Curtis)

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.  (Gal. 5:22-23; NIV)

Sometimes I feel I’m always the purveyor of “bad news,” constantly presenting things that are harmful to our health and well-being.  Today I’ll make a shift away from the “health robbers” and tell a “Success Story.” 

Nancy and I met in the summer of 2004 via phone, having been introduced by a mutual friend.  Nancy was a busy wife, mother, grandmother, and entrepreneur, having owned her own business for almost two decades.

Nancy also struggled with her weight.  A number of years back she had been involved with traditional weight loss methods and was also an aerobics instructor.  With the busyness of life and running a business, gradually she moved further and further away from fitness and taking care of her own health.  When she and I met, she was wearing a size 2X and knew her life was NOT working.  She didn’t feel well, lacked energy, and was having rather severe digestive issues.

Coming from a traditional mindset, most of what I began sharing with Nancy seemed “utterly foreign.”  Even though she says she trusted me, she still had one eyebrow raised wondering if my suggestions were really going to work.  She says she made some shifts and slowly began losing weight.  Once our sessions ended, I didn’t hear from Nancy.  She recently told me that at that time, she believed the traditional methods still held the keys for her.

Fast-forward a couple of years.  About a year ago, Nancy’s doctor suggested she begin taking thyroid medication…after Nancy’s insistence to have her thyroid checked and rechecked because of ongoing symptoms.  Nancy decided to call me to see if I knew of an alternative to a pharmaceutical thyroid medication.  We once again reconnected.  No doubt you’ve heard the common expression that “when the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”  Nancy was ready to move forward with her health.  She was fatigued and dealing with severe muscle spasms and pain.  The digestive issues were still plaguing her as well.

We partnered together to work on what and when she was eating and drinking.  She was already doing intensive exercise in her own attempts to lose weight and feel better.  We designed a sound, nutritional program for her which included supplementation to not only support her thyroid, but her other organs and systems as well.  Within two weeks, Nancy began noticing improvements; and by the end of 30 days she had much more stamina, alertness, and an overall increased sense of well-being.  Nancy has also discovered her passion for coming along side other women who are struggling with their weight, and offering them hope and guidance!  She now teaches four aerobic classes a week, is running in a 5K next month AND, is now wearing a size 12 jeans!

Congratulations Nancy!  You are an inspiration!

Prayer Power
Lord, we thank You for Nancy and for her life and for all that You have taught her.  Bless her abundantly as she gives to others what You have poured into her.

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Designing Your Health Blog

Blessings on you as you take some proactive steps to make changes in your own life and health.