Prepare to Win

If you want to win a game in any sport, you have to be ready to play. From youth to professional sports, the team that has prepared to win is the team that will win. Are there other factors? Yes, but most of the other factors are part of preparation.

You have to prepare in order to succeed. In any area of life, you have a choice when it comes to success or failure. When you prepare, you are choosing success. When you don’t prepare, you are choosing failure. That is a simplistic view, but this is the reality.

This is the first step. Setting up a plan and preparing to move forward is the key to doing so. If you don’t do this, you can’t get anywhere. Forget success, you won’t even be participating if you don’t prepare. You will be on the sidelines without preparation.

That is sad the reality that is hitting a lot of people right now. They decided that they wanted to lose weight, but they have not prepared themselves to take action. They want to do it, but have not started changing their lifestyle in order to get the results they want.

These people are not lazy. They are not destined to be fat or unhealthy. They are not genetically predisposed to obesity or the diseases that come along with it. They can change and they will change if they can start preparing to win.

The battle is not going to be easy. If it were easy, it wouldn’t be a battle. You wouldn’t see a new fad or program claiming to be the first thing to make it easy, if it really were easy. Why is it so difficult? There are many reasons. What can you do to make it less difficult? You can prepare.

This is easier said than done, so let’s take a look at how preparation really works.

Picture this: Tom has decided to start watching his weight. He has been gaining weight over the past few years and now he has decided to change things. In order to get started, Tom thinks that getting more exercise is going to be the key for him. He has always wanted exercise more and thinks now is the time to start doing so.

This sounds like a good plan, right? It sounds like something that we would all want. It also sounds like something many people are doing. This actually leads to a problem. One of the problems that Tom saw was that his mindset was off from the start. He started by thinking and saying things like: “If so many are already doing it, it should be easy.” When deciding that he was going to start exercising, he thought, “If others can get exercise, I will be able to.”

The reason this is a problem is not because it is untruthful. It is true that many are exercising. It is true that many can do it and are doing it. It is even true that Tom and others that are trying to get started can do it. With this attitude, we are missing something. Tom is thinking about how easy it is going to be and he is not preparing.

Let’s go back to our sports analogy. When a team thinks they are going to win a game before they even show up, they often run into a big surprise. We see upsets in every sport year after year. What happens? A team overlooks one game and loses despite being more than capable of winning it.

That is what happens in health. People are constantly overlooking the details and challenges of getting their health on track and they simply get defeated by it. They try to get started with the attitude of “This is going to be easy.” And guess what happens? They soon find out that it is far from easy and things don’t go well.

Preparing to win is what gives underdogs a chance to beat favorites in sports. Preparing to win is also what gives every person on the planet the opportunity to live healthy. This isn’t easy and it certainly doesn’t happen automatically. You win some and you lose some, as they say, but the more you prepare, the more you win.

When you prepare, you are saying that you are ready to not just play the game, but you are ready to win the game. The game of health may not be easy, but it is fair. The game of health offers simple principles such as calories in vs. calories out. The game of health is something that we are all able to play and win as long as we don’t underestimate the importance.

We must respect the details that we need to cover in order to win. When we don’t respect all the details, we miss them. When we miss details, we get beat by them. In health it may be the long day at the office that we forgot to account for. It may be the gym bag that we didn’t bring with us because we thought there would be more time. It may be the added steps that we just didn’t see when we decided to make changes.
Tom tried doing it without preparing and it didn’t work for him. He thought getting more exercise was just one thing. He thought we would just show up and start doing this one thing without any issues. He didn’t prepare and he didn’t win. When this happened to Tom, luckily we were able to have a conversation. He needed some ideas and some confidence to get back in the game.

Now that Tom has prepared to win, he is actually winning. He has put in the effort to look at his schedule. He has determined the best days, times and places for him to exercise. He has set goals for himself to cover the steps he needs in order to get his exercise in: packing his bag, putting it in the car, scheduling a meeting a week in advance to prevent unexpected issues from arising that could keep him at the office too late. He even had to think about his diet in order to fully prepare for his exercise routine. If we wants to get a good workout in, he needs to bring a snack with him to eat between work and the gym.

His routine is just that, it’s his routine. Everyone has to come up with their own. Preparation is the key to success in any area. Winning is impossible without preparing to play and preparing to win. Health is no different. There are many steps that need to be addressed and if you don’t address them, you lose.

You have a choice between success and failure. Preparation is that choice. You can prepare to win and do it, or you can choose not to prepare and lose. Prepare to win or prepare to lose. It sounds like a no-brainer doesn’t it?

Easter Candy Info

Easter has always been a big candy holiday. One of the toughest parts about it is that you don’t realize you are eating so much. Each jelly bean and chocolate egg doesn’t seem like a whole lot, but it adds up. Each one contains a lot of calories and that will add up to a huge total when you add it to your regular meals throughout the weekend.

Active.com is a great resource for all things wellness. You can find events and get tips on diet. The diet detective provided the list below to help you watch your Easter candy intake:

• Speckled Jelly Beans, Jelly Candy, 9 pieces, 220 calories
• Bunny Mix, M&M's Peanut, 1.5 ounces (1/4 cup), 220 calories
• Reese's Peanut Butter Cup Miniatures, 5 pieces, 220 calories
• Palmer Happy Hopper Bunny, 13 ounces, 1,100 calories
• Cadbury Creme Egg, 160 calories
• Cadbury Mini Eggs Candy, 12 pieces (40 grams), 190 calories
• Russell Stover Marshmallow Rabbit, 2 ounces, 230 calories
• Reese's Peanut Butter Eggs, 1 piece, 170 calories
• Pez Hippity Hoppities, 1 roll, 35 calories
• Bunny Peeps, 4 bunnies, 110 calories
• Jelly Beans, 4 calories per bean
• Hershey's Hollow Milk Chocolate Egg (570 calories for the shell alone) with 4 candy-coated milk chocolate eggs inside (90 more calories)

Watch your candy intake for a healthier Easter. Let’s be realistic: Candy is around, we are all going to eat some of it. The best way to get through the holiday without too much guilt is not deprivation. The best way is to be aware of what you are eating.
Happy Easter!

Spring Into Your Routine

When we turn the calendars to March, there is always an excited feeling. And then we realize that spring is not quite here yet. Then we turn our calendars to April and things get a little more exciting. Why is it so exciting to start the month of April? Well, for starters, winter is over. Now we are one step closer to the season we all look forward to from the time summer ended last year: Spring.

Spring is a season of change, new beginnings and fresh starts. No matter how your year started, spring can always bring you some rejuvenation. One of the most exciting things about the season is getting outside again. By the time March comes, it feels like we have been inside for a year! In Minnesota, we still have a little time to go, but at least we know the end is in sight.

So what do you do with the end of winter? What does the spring mean to you? We’ve talked about rejuvenation, excitement, getting outside. We’ve even talked about new beginnings. As a Health Coach, beginnings are kind of my specialty. I help people get started on new routines and get back into routines that have been tough to stick with. Either way, this is the time of year to do it and I have some tips that have helped many others do it before.

Spring into your routine by:

Choosing your activities
What is the best way to get through a long winter evening? Thinking about spring and summer can help. And by thinking about what you want to be doing when the weather turns, you can make it more realistic when it comes time to do it.

Picking your location
You have many options for working out, relaxing or doing other activities. You have to choose what you want to do, but you also have to choose where you are going to do it. Take a minute to plot out your routine so that when you get started, you can be realistic about the details:
Where can I go? Can I do my activities there?

Setting your schedule
No matter where you go or what you do, you have to have a schedule. I don’t care how badly you want to go to the gym. If you don’t make it part of your schedule, you will never get there. Setting a schedule is the most important factor and can mean the difference between success and failure. The details that will help you succeed are:
How long does it take you to get there? How often can you go?

Easing into it
When you are choosing activities, it is easy to choose something grand like running a marathon. When picking your location, it’s easy to just name a place. When setting your schedule it’s easy to say every day! But do you know what isn’t easy? It is not easy to stick with all these things! That is why you have to be realistic and give yourself time to ramp up. Don’t try to do everything in one day. Don’t try to go from beginner to expert in a day or even a week. Think long-term with the following details:
What is realistic for me right now? How much time to I really have? How much more likely am I to succeed if I don’t burn out right away?

These steps are easy, but they can present quite a challenge if you don’t give them enough thought. Spring is a great time to get started, but you don’t have to do it all at once. Use spring for what it is: A good starting point. The rest of the year can be used for mastering your activities and refining your routine. Spring into your routine and you can have a healthy spring!