Do you guys know who Ronda Rousey is?  She’s the #1 female athlete in the world, she’s a UFC competitor, and she’s got an awesome book out, Rousey, that’s all about being true to yourself and doing the right thing no matter what you feel like.

I’m so loving it!  Here’s a quote from the book, “My mom always says that to be the best in the world, you have to be good enough to win on a bad day because you never know if the Olympics are going to fall on a bad day.”

I’m not going to the Olympics, but I still love this quote.  For me, I just think of every day as my Olympics; I need to be my best everyday, no matter what.  I’ve got kids and a husband and clients and people who take my classes and they all expect me to bring it; and since I’m being paid (by some of them), I better!

It’s all about a mindset.  We either develop a mindset that powers us along towards our goals, or who we want to be; or we feed the mindset that says we can jump off our path every time we have a bad day, a bad moment, or a bad feeling.

Since I’m all about nutrition and wellness, let’s go there.

Our level of health, our energy, our weight, they’re (mostly) a direct reflection of our every day life style habits and actions.

If we let a bad day be an excuse to eat crap, not workout, and feed the whiny -victim part of our soul, even if it’s just a day or two a week, we’re in trouble.  A healthy, fit body means that we do the right thing on good days and bad days.

Moms and dads, isn’t this what we expect from our kids?  Or at least hope for our kids?  That they still do well on their tests, or with their friends, or in their sports, despite bad days?

We’re they’re primary role models; it’s important that we model being our best on a bad day.

What if you’ve conditioned yourself to roll with your bad days, if it’s a norm for you to allow your bad feelings to dictate your actions and choices? Don’t worry!  People change all the time, you can too.  It takes a plan and a focused effort, but if you start now, you could be a whole new you by Christmas.

Purposely fill your mind with information that reinforces 2 things,

1) The fact that our body needs to move Every. Single. Day. A lot.  We don’t have to “workout”, but we do need to move.  Sitting’s the new smoking.  Our body – and our brain – were created to be strengthened and made normal/healthy/functional through movement.  Can’t get to the gym?  Do a 15 minute yoga workout/HITT workout at home, or a cardio machine w/ plank intervals or sprint up and down your driveway/yard/street 5 times.  Walk the stairs at your office, squat for 1 minute every hour,……. do something.

Remember, the Centenarians in the Blue Zones – the longest lived people in the world – don’t “workout”, they walk, they garden, they ride bikes to work,…  they move.

I know I keep talking about my FitBit, but I’ll tell you, those things work!! I have consciously/unconsciously worked a whole bunch more steps into my every day life, usually without thinking about it.

(Oddly, the classes I teach, HITT and yoga, don’t give me many steps, darn-it!)

Sometimes I do think about it though.  Whenever I water the horses, or walk my little dog Reese, I jog in place.  If it’s getting late and I’m not to 10,000 steps, I jog in place.  But I’m having to do that less and less because I’m hitting 10,000 steps more and more often before dinner.

2) the power of Food as Medicine.  Make this belief as powerful and natural as possible so that Will Power – which is limited – isn’t necessary.

There’s a great saying, ” Food can be the most powerful form of medicine, or the slowest form of poison.”  I want you to look at healthy fats and vegetables and clean proteins and fruits, nuts, seeds, herbs and spices and literally be excited.  And I want you to look at processed food like an old, dirty cigarette butt lying on the side walk, smushed onto a piece of old gum.  You’d NEVER put that in your mouth, it’s disgusting!

It’s all about our perspective, right?  Yesterday I was at the Natural Market to have lunch with Shelby.  While I was waiting, a couple came in and looked around.  They looked in the fridge, they looked at the menu… the guy had such a sour look on his face he looked like he’d sucked on a lemon.  He made disparaging remarks about the green wraps, and how nothing looked good to him.

His wife said, “We’re only here because you said you wanted to get healthy.” And he said, “Yeah, but I didn’t want to eat this kind of stuff.”

They left.  They should have stayed!  The food there is AMAZING and delicious and Real.

Also, everything about him said “heart attack waiting to happen”, but I digress.

Here’s some ammo for the Food Is Medicine part of your brain we’re trying to grow. This is a recent article from the British Medical Journal preaching the science behind food quality when it comes to health, weight, and mortality.

Honestly, this article is fantastic.  It points to study after study proving the positive results of Real Whole Food on heart disease and diabetes.

The 3 co-authoring doctors use a lot of data – data we won’t hear from Main Stream Medicine – to tout the benefits of eating food for it’s nutrients, not it’s calorie count. The research is clear and definitive:  if we want to get healthy/be a normal weight/have less risk of dying from a disease, Real Whole Food trumps medicine and “dieting” by a long shot.

I’m attaching a link to the entire article, but in case you don’t have time to read the whole thing, here’s a few highlights:

*  An energy/calorie unrestricted diet supplemented with Extra Virgin Olive Oil and nuts achieved a 30% reduction in cardiovascular events in over 7,500 high risk individuals – within 3 months.

* In comparison with an American Heart Association “low fat” diet, a Mediterranean diet – post heart attack – is a more powerful coronary intervention tool for mortality than aspirin, statins, or stents.

* The weight loss industry makes $58 BILLION annually in the US, yet all long-term follow up studies reveal that the majority of individuals (almost 100%) regain their lost weight; about 50% gain more than they lost.

I want to end this with a word on Dieting.  Mini meals, special diet foods, diet pills, diet drinks, diet plans…. they make you CRAZY.  It seems like such a great idea:  something that makes you full, takes away your hunger, and still enables you to have your favorite foods ( processed diet food is a multi-billion dollar industry), but dieting doesn’t work in the long run; sometimes it doesn’t work in the short term either.

Weight loss happens when our body becomes NORMAL from eating Real Whole Food.  Diets are anything but Normal.  Diets are ABNORMAL.  Jump off the Diet Roller Coaster!  It’s all been a big hoax and a scheme for companies to make money off us, and it’s worked.  The more we diet, the bigger and more addicted to food we get.

Take back your life and your health and your energy.  Move, eat Real Whole Food, quit being afraid of healthy, real, fats.  Stop counting calories.  Examine the nutrients in foods and relate them to your body and how those nutrients affect you.

You can do this!  I said above, start today, and be a whole new you by Christmas.  It can happen!  If you need help, get in touch with me.  Lots of people change, you can too.