“Four years ago I started walking in my neighborhood. I weighed 240 pounds and had a cholesterol level to match. I promised my doctor I would try to get both numbers down. There is a big hill in my town, and it took me over a year to be able to walk it. Tonight I ran up that hill! I joined Anytime Fitness one year ago and have slimmed down to 170 pounds. My cholesterol is at 185. That hill was my little victory. Look how far I have come!”

Keep on climbing, LifeIsGood! We’ll be cheering you on every step of the way.

I recently found out that I have the signs of early gum disease. Admittedly, I’ve missed a few biannual dental appointments, but I have healthy teeth and brush regularly. With all that going for me, I haven’t always seen the need to floss. At the end of the night, it’s easy to find excuses not to.

Now I’ve had a wake-up call. Just the thought of flap surgery or bone and tissue grafts is enough to make me take action. But why did I wait? Healthy gums are vitally important to a person’s overall health, but more than 75% of Americans suffer from some form of preventable gum disease.

Lack of regular dental care can cause many issues, including:

•   Chronic bad breath

•   Loss of teeth and bone

•   Bleeding gums and infections

The pictures below aren’t pretty, but there’s no denying their impact. On the left, a healthy mouth, and on the right… not so much.

Does any of this sound familiar?

Nationally, more than two-thirds of adults are overweight or obese—and that number continues to grow. And yet, the wake-up call is not being heard. What are we waiting for? Obesity is preventable, but the negative impact on our health is not compelling people to take action.

Lack of regular exercise can cause many issues, including:

•   Heart disease and stroke

•   High blood pressure

•   Diabetes

•   Cancer

Again, the images below are not pretty. On the left is a 220-pound woman, the woman on the right weighs 120 pounds. A quick glance shows the stress on our bones and organs when we let the pounds pile up.

Taking action 
In the short time since my dental diagnosis, I have made great strides in reversing the situation. I’ve become an expert at flossing. I am now brushing my teeth and gums like I am scrubbing a dirty, old pan. I’ve even purchased special dental tools to make sure this never happens again.

Remember, only you can answer your own personal wake-up call. Don’t wait!

•   Go to an expert and listen to their advice

•   Make an action plan and stick to it

•   Commit to living a healthy life

Taking action is not easy, but your body will thank you—and so will your loved ones!

Everyone knows about credit ratings, numerical assessments of your overall “credit worthiness” that financial lenders use to determine whether or not you can receive a loan.

These numbers have become so important that some potential employers will check credit scores before extending an employment offer. Many landlords, cellphone providers, and insurance companies will also use them to determine your rates.

Credit ratings have created a level of accountability that gives us an incentive to make better decisions in exchange for easier lending and lower interest rates. They have also given birth to an entire cottage industry focused on improving credit scores.

But what if, in addition to our credit scores, we all had a personal health score? And what if that score determined health insurance premiums, auto insurance rates and employment opportunities?

After all, companies want to employ healthy people who will be more productive, require fewer sick days, show better morale and lower the company’s overall health insurance costs. It makes sense to hire people with higher health scores.

If there were a way to account for health conditions that people truly can’t control, a PHS would be hard to argue against. Auto insurance companies already lower their rates for people who make better choices, so why shouldn’t that model apply to other areas of our lives?

Until we provide bigger carrots for the healthy (and bigger sticks for the unhealthy), we are doomed to perpetuate a cycle of inactivity, obesity and escalating healthcare costs.

What do you think? Would you be in favor of a personal health score? If you knew that lenders, landlords and employers were looking at your score, would you feel inclined to change your behaviors?

Back in February, I wrote a blog post about a position paper published by three obesity researchers from the University of California-San Francisco. The topic of the paper was sugar and its role in chronic disease.

Led by principal advocate Dr. Robert Lustig, the researchers went as far as to say that sugar is toxic to the human body, and due to this finding, should be regulated much like tobacco and alcohol. This obviously created a bit of a stir, which was clearly the intention in the first place.

Dr. Lustig was at it again on during his primetime interview on 60 Minutes. He called sugar toxic, labeled it a primary culprit in everything from heart disease and hypertension to diabetes and cancer, and generally scared the bejesus out of consumers everywhere.

But here’s the interesting thing: there is scientific evidence to back-up most, if not all, of his claims. Now that’s really scary! It’s important to note that fructose is the real problem child, but since sucrose (table sugar) is one part glucose and one part fructose, and collectively we eat A LOT of sugar, there’s a cause for concern there too.

So what does this mean exactly? Should you avoid all processed, packaged food? Should you no longer take your child to get ice cream? Should trick-or-treating become a thing of the past?

We need to be careful here. Sending parents into a sugar-fueled frenzy is counterproductive. And let’s be honest. We knew sugar wasn’t good for us. However, it appears to be even more detrimental to our health than we first thought. So what do we do about it?

Although new research findings will continue to emerge, it’s clear from what we know already that we need to decrease our sugar consumption right now.

Here are a few tips to help you get started:

• Buy most of your food from the outer perimeter of the grocery store. This will ensure that you’re keeping processed foods (with lots of added sugar) to a minimum.

• Read food labels. Ingredients are listed in order by weight, which means that the first few make up the majority of the product. If sugar is one of the first three or four ingredients, you might want to steer clear.

• Learn the terminology. Sugar has more names than I care to count, so make sure you can identify them.

• Make the simple and obvious changes first. For example, soda and other sugary beverages offer no nutritional value, so it seems logical to limit and/or avoid these before moving on to other dietary choices.

• Stay active. Sugars are primary fuel sources for activity, especially intense activity. Even Dr. Lustig admits that sugar is okay for active individuals and athletes, but even some of these folks can overdo it.

What are you doing to curb your sugar intake?

1. Your post-workout calorie burn contributes significantly to your daily energy expenditure.

It’s true that you continue to burn calories even after finishing exercise, and the degree to which you burn those calories is largely dependent on the intensity and duration of that exercise. As a result, many people will have you believe that the 24-48 hour period after strength training turns you into a calorie-burning machine.

Unfortunately, research has proven this isn’t the case. The calories you burn after your workout do not contribute significantly to total daily energy expenditure. What you need to be concerned with are the calories burned during your workout session. If you are concerned about continued calorie burn, try to find ways to be more active throughout the rest of your day as well.

2. You should follow the no-pain, no-gain philosophy to strength training.

It’s true that weight-training sessions can be intense, resulting in micro-tears and subsequent muscle soreness for a day or two afterward. This is completely normal, and as the body heals itself, the muscle fibers gradually become larger and stronger. This is the essence of strength training.

However, if the implication here is that a workout is only effective if pain is involved, that’s simply untrue. Mild discomfort is common as fatigue starts to set in at the end of a hard set, but actual pain during a workout is never a good sign.

3. You can work out when sick.

You often hear people say that working out is fine if it’s just a head cold with mild symptoms you can work through, such as a stuffy nose, or coughing. This philosophy probably works for most of you, but here’s my take…

When I’m working out, I don’t really want people that are sneezing and coughing around me—and I would guess you don’t either. Plus, I like to workout with intensity, and I put a premium on the quality of my exercise. Illness takes some of the focus away from the exercise. It is better to rest up for a day or two, even it is only a head cold. Then, when you get back to exercising, you can start right where I you left off.

4. Women will bulk up if they strength train.

It’s possible, but unlikely. First of all, women simply don’t have the proper hormonal balance to put on huge amounts of muscle tissue. Secondly, even if they did have the right physiology, it would take some serious training to do it.

Picking up a few weights here and there isn’t a recipe for building mass—it’s what you do and how you do it that really makes the difference. Building bigger muscles requires high-volume workouts (lots of sets and reps) and a pretty high intensity as well.

5. You need to do your cardio at a low intensity to maximize fat burning.

This is one of the oldest myths in the book. If this were true, why not go sleep to maximize your fat burning—it doesn’t get any lower intensity than that! The real issue here is the whole idea of relative vs. absolute.

In other words, you can burn more fat relative to sugar at a lower intensity level, but in absolute terms, you actually burn just as much fat, and even more calories, if you work out at a higher intensity level for the same workout duration. This means that you should exercise as hard as you can for as long as you can, given your individual fitness level.

“I completed a 30-minute Boot Camp today. I’m thrilled! I pooped out halfway through the last one.”

Congratulations on your victory, Trudge!

For many of us, the most difficult aspect of working out is getting to the gym.  Moving from the couch (or the bed) to the gym can become a psychological landmine. It is one of the most frustrating deterrents to sticking with a consistent workout schedule.

Something to remember:  People who are consistent about working out aren’t more determined or intelligent, they are skilled at working through the biggest obstacle of all…resistance. 

Psychological resistance to working out is deeply hardwired in our brains. The reason it’s so difficult to manage our resistance is that many of us have come to rely on counterproductive strategies.

When facing resistance, we need to think outside the box and rely on counterintuitive thinking. Here’s an example:  When you tell your child, “No, you can’t have that toy,” you create resistance. He will usually up the ante by becoming insistent. Your resistance to his request often creates MORE resistance, not less.

Resistance usually creates insistence, not resolution.

So, let’s apply this theory to going to the gym.

1. Accept your resistance.  It’s counterproductive to get insistent about something that can’t be erased from the human condition. Tearing yourself down or getting frustrated every time you feel unmotivated is a monumental energy drain. By having compassion for your resistance, you give it less power.

Tip: Feel your resistance, don’t focus on it. Get out of bed, put your shoes on, grab your gym bag and get in the car.

2. Understand your resistance.  Our brain becomes cranky when we transition from one experience to another (like going from sleep to exercise), or when we introduce a new behavior. Changing activities creates a lull in our brain, which becomes the perfect vacuum for distractions and resistance.

Tip: Remind yourself that resistance is a temporary and predictable experience, and will subside once you reach the gym.  All you need to do is get there, and you WILL start to feel better.

3. Focus on the goal, not the resistance.  By accepting your resistance, you create more space in your brain to focus on your goals and the benefits of working out.

Tip: Focus on the top five reasons you work out. Keep this list front and center in your mind. Fuel your goals, not your resistance.

Working out consistently is a challenge, and we won’t be successful in this endeavor without compassion for our resistance. The next time you feel unmotivated, accept your resistance with a smile (be counterintuitive), and direct your energy toward your fitness goals.

2011 Weight of the Union report

Do you remember playing with a yo-yo as a kid? It was a cool toy…but maintaining the yo-yoing motion could sometimes be exhausting and frustrating!

In life, we all struggle with our own forms of “yo-yoing,” or becoming trapped in a self defeating cycle of creating goals, missing the mark, abandoning our goals, and then recommitting…only to find ourselves back in the same place where we began. This constant back and forth movement undermines our self-confidence, and seduces us into believing the negative voice in our head that whispers: “I can’t reach my goals.”

As humans we’re polarized between our hardwired fears and a search for happiness and greater purpose.  Setting goals is a practical way we use to seek meaning, but our fears can drive us back to complacency.

You can reach your goals if you learn how to regain the energy that’s being drained from your life.

Step 1: Define the problem. You are Yo-Yoing.   If you feel tired, afraid, and frustrated then you are caught in the magnet.

Step 2.  Understand why you are trapped. You are stuck because your goals aren’t planted.  Think about it this way:  If you plant a seed in the sand, it will die.  Cut a rose from its stem and it’s here today, gone tomorrow – beautiful for a fleeting moment, but without roots, it quickly dies.

Step 3. Reflect on what matters to you. Your goals must be planted in your heart, which means they are important to you for reasons beyond yourself.  Goals that are self-serving don’t last. Think for a moment about why you get up in the morning.  What makes your heart beat?  For many of us, this has everything to do with our children, family, friends, and a commitment to making the world a healthier place.

Step 4.  Give your goals roots. Why do you want to lose 20 pounds?  Think beyond yourself, and focus on how your choice can make a positive impact on the world around you. How will your kids react when they see you choosing a healthier lifestyle? How can you positively impact your friends and family? How can you be a role model?

Step 5. Think about critical mass. By definition, this is the amount of energy needed to create a chain reaction in the world.  Every choice we make can influence the way the world operates.

If you want to get rid of your YO-YO, then plant your goals in something beyond yourself.  Think about your children, family, and community.  Go to the gym for yourself AND for what it can give to others. You are the difference the world needs!

I’m not a conspiracy theory guy, but here’s one I can believe in: School lunch ladies are really secret government agents.

Think about it. They’re trained to feed our children high-fat, sugary foods, which accelerates health problems and pushes them to die off early. Don’t forget, our kids are now projected to live shorter lives than we are. And this, in turn, solves the Social Security funding crisis. Genius.

Okay, maybe I’m being a bit cynical, but why else would the government continue to provide the same high-calorie, low-nutritional-value food while a third of our kids are now obese? I mean, counting pizza as a vegetable? Really? I know it’s not easy or cheap to change the tray, but can’t we at least try?

And since we’re on the subject of school, why shouldn’t kids have to test out of gym class? High school athletes could be exempt from gym so they could use the additional time for study hall or an elective. Students who don’t participate in a sport (but are still active and healthy) could test out of gym completely. Students who aren’t able to pass the test would have to take gym in order to increase their activity level and learn about the positive impact of personal fitness and proper nutrition.

If you disagree, I simply want to ask: When did the brain become more important than the heart? What good is it if our kids are prepared mentally, but not physically? While you think about that, I’ll try to erase that image of Chris Farley from Saturday Night Live. (Total secret agent…)