Often we will limit or excel ourselves based on our past experiences, mainly due to our primal instincts of self-preservation but also due to our intellectual need for self-affirmation.
Self-affirmations can be a powerful ally or destructive master, particularly when we are striving for improvements in health and fitness.
Take for example the squat exercise, labelled the “king” of exercises; it is a powerful movement that engages the whole body. It is simply being able to stand and sit using our body’s muscles.
Many big gyms intimidate exercisers with the squat hype, but the best squats are those done by a 2-year-old child before they unlearn what is natural.
Seeing results is motivating.
Progressive results are hard to see on our health and fitness journey and “before and after” photos of others “success” can create a sense of disappointment with our personal progress.
The fitness industry has gone viral with midriff selfies, giving accolades to questionable exercise and diet regimens.
“Just do it” is the chant that has sold millions of shoes on the principal that health and fitness success is JUST mind over matter and the right pair of shoes.
Understanding that “just do it” is a simplistic shoe selling slogan is the first step in acknowledging the illusion of quick fixes in health and fitness.
Mind bending spoons and using forks
Illusions or delusions are compelling; Uri Geller is renowned for bending spoons with his mind.
Whether you believe he is telekinetic or a clever illusionist is irrelevant, he was able to convince or confuse prominent scientists in the early 1970’s that he indeed had “special” powers.
No self-respecting scientist would today believe that Uri Geller can bend spoons with his mind, but he is still making a fortune from people, like me, who enjoy believing in the magic of the awesome.
Uri Geller’s recent campaign is bending spoons for Kellogg’s…
The food industry is a master of creating both illusions and delusions, particularly when it is promoting health foods or “super” foods.
When any food requires a label to identify its origin, I would be sceptical as to whether it is a real super food or even a health food.
A simple method to help you identify real foods is by using a fork. Whole real foods can be easily eaten with a fork, for example, carrots, potatoes, zucchini, celery, spinach, etc.
However, juices, meats, dairy, crisps, confectionary, are not as easily eaten with a fork nor can they be easily identified as healthy without a label.
Forks over knives; is an American movement that advocates a vegan whole food based diet for optimal health and wellness.
Sadly, the movement is extreme, and extreme diets are at best anti-social and at worst, self-deluding and dangerous. Uri Geller was a vegan who later revealed his battle with anorexia and bulimia.
It is important to know that occasionally, it is ok to bend the rules and eat processed foods, and it is healthy and advisable to use a spoon for homemade soup in winter!
Making it real
Healthy eating is simply about eating food that you can identify with taste and/or by sight. Fitness is being able to move regularly and naturally.
Everyone has the special power to do something small towards achieving their health and fitness goals.
Start healthy eating by adding an extra serve of whole vegetables to a meal each week and work your way up to 5 serves of vegetables per day.
Start your fitness by taking a 5-minute brisk walk daily and increase it weekly by a minute. In 6 weeks you will be walking 11 minutes a day, and have doubled your fitness.
Include in your fitness schedule, our 9-minute workout and you have reached 20 minutes of daily exercise as recommended by the Australian Government department of health.
We may not be able to change the obstacles, people, or the circumstances of our life, but we can move forward by unlocking our personal dogma and resist the clinging to what is familiar.
I invite you to experience the equivalent of “spoon bending” in the transformation of your body’s health and fitness with our Shape-UP program.
I leave you this week with a thought that expresses success in terms of what our mind believes is possible.
The body achieves what the mind believes – Unknown Author
Live well and eat well
Anna
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