Team Quadzilla

Think about this with me for a minute. You have a job. You need a job. It pays you so you can buy things you need and maybe even a few extras. You have to show up every day and give you best effort at your job, because if you don’t there will be trouble. With me?

You won’t let yourself fail at work because you need the job. You are focused at work. You do what needs to be done. You might even go above and beyond the call of duty and eventually get rewarded for it. You have proven that you are capable of focus, consistency over time, and hard work. You are a hard worker!

What if you took even 1/2 of that focus, consistency, and effort and applied it to other areas of your life? Would you be a better spouse, parent, friend? What would your health look like with this kind of effort? I talk to people all the time who are great at their work, but their health is not so great. They don’t have time, or they are too tired they say.

Baloney.

Listen, you need to take care of your health as if it were part of your job. If your health fails, can you work? If you are overweight, stiff, exhausted, or frequently ill can you properly take care of your kids and spouse? In order to be your best at the roles that are most important to you, you need to optimize your health.

So what are you waiting for? It’s never too late to start. You can make changes to your health now that will help you be your best in the future. But don’t wait. There is a sliding scale of returns on your health investment. The longer you wait the harder it will be to get where you want with your health.

Your health is your job. In fact, it is your most important job. I beg of you to take your health seriously. You have one life to live, one chance to make an impact on this world, one chance to leave a lasting and positive legacy for future generations. Don’t be held back from being your best because you chose to lay on the couch and eat junk food. You are better than that. You know you can do it, because you do it at work. Treat your health like your job. Put in the focused effort to eat well, to exercise, and to be consistent at it over time. You will be rewarded for your work and it will feel better than the raise or promotion. You will be your best at life AND your job.

There are lots of ways to go about improving your health. Everyone starts at a different place. There are no cookie cutter solutions. That’s one reason why I think it’s important to have a coach or advocate on your side. Someone who is willing to work with you, to help you, encourage you, kick you in the pants once in a while. Find someone to be that for you. Ask me. I will help you. No nonsense, no fluff, no pills, patches, wraps, or magic elixirs. You can do this. Let’s go!

faith, Family

How To Make Matters Worse: Act Out Of Your Emotions

May 30, 2017June 4, 2020 teamquadzilla

This article is entirely from Dr. Raymond Force, but it resonated with me enough that I wanted to share it with you here. You know that part of healthy living includes our relationships and for many of us the most important relationship we have (besides our relationship with God) is with our spouse. I trust this will encourage you as it does me.

I have been a Christian since the age of 17 and my flesh is no more saved today than the first day I came to Christ. Though it’s a little frustrating at times, it was also the admission of the apostle Paul when he said “in me (that is, in my flesh) dwelleth no good thing.” (Romans 7:18)

That said, I will also have to admit that there are times when emotional hurricanes come through my soul that could destroy my family and myself if I do not take cover as I should.

Here are a few tips for those times when your emotions are swirling and you feel as if you are about to do the worst thing possible, act out of your emotions:

Never make any major decisions when you are upset

I have heard countless people say things like “I’m getting a divorce”, “That’s it. We’re through!”, or “I’m never opening my heart to you again.” only to have a change of heart just a few days or even hours later.

It is always best to wait and take the advice of Isaiah 30:7 when an emotional storm is raging within. In this passage, God literally counseled His people “to sit still”.

Other passages that have proved to be helpful during these times are Psalm 4 and Psalm 27. In these passages God said:

“Stand in awe, and sin not: commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still. Selah.” – Psalm 4:4

“Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the Lord.” – Psalm 27:14

Stay in the day

Worry has a way of casting a very dark shadow upon a matter. However, if you think about it, almost every time you are overcome with fear, you are thinking about something that may happen in the future.

Mark it down. We are commanded in the scriptures to stay in the day (Matthew 6:34). Once we get into the realm of what could happen or might happen, we are allowing our fears to take us on a horror ride to see things that 99.9% of the time never come to pass.

Acknowledge that your feelings are not a reality

Though your feelings are real to you, they are hardly ever parallel with the promises of God and the pure facts of a matter.

When you are tempted to wallow in your feelings, ask yourself the following questions:

1. Am I afraid of what I absolutely know to be true or what I think may happen?

2. Are my feelings parallel with the promise that all things work together for good to them that love God? (Romans 8:28)

3. Do I have 1000% hard evidence to back up what I am thinking and feeling at this time?

4. Can I do anything more than I have done about the matter?

5. Will it help me to dwell on this matter any more?

6. Are there people worse off than I? If so, maybe I should go and serve them during this time.

When my emotions are stirring about a matter, it has helped me to remember this little quote: if you are a Christian and you are sad, then it simply means that the story is not yet over.

This, of course, is true because God promises eternal blessedness to His people. That said, no matter how difficult the situation, it only means that there is always another chapter to be written by the finger of God. Our job is to obey and wait upon Him to bring those things to pass that will glorify Him and work for our eternal good. (Romans 8:28)

Know that your feelings will be different in a few hours or days

It is a great life skill to learn how to stay stationary until an emotional storm blows over. In fact, the fundamental problem with acting when you are highly emotional is that you typically end up making matters worse. Then the problem becomes a little more difficult because the recovery period is almost always longer because of the guilt you feel or damage that was done by acting out of fear, hurt, or anger.

– Dr. Force

faith, Family

Living with Expectancy

May 28, 2017June 4, 2020 teamquadzilla

Expectancy is a new word for me. Never really thought of it before. It has a powerful and encouraging meaning for me that I hope will encourage you.

I often write about mindset how powerful and necessary mindset is to goal achievement or behavior change. I’ve said that the first step to personal change or reaching a goal is to set you mind to it; to discover the real reason WHY you want to change.

Real change in ourselves does not happen by chance or by some menial effort. Often there is a “crisis of belief” – something happens to remove the blinders from our eyes, knock some sense into us, and wake us up to the reality that what we are doing (how we are living) and what we think or believe about something important is either not working or not true.

I’ve experienced this often in my life and I’m sure you can relate. For example, I can remember a fundamental mindset shift I had several years ago about the pursuit of material wealth. I thought that if I just worked harder and longer I would be the Jones’s that everyone would try to keep up with. I even acquired significant debt to make it seem like I was keeping up with the Jones’s, even though I wasn’t. Not even close. One day I looked myself in the mirror and said, “Dude, you are killing yourself and for what? What joy and peace do I have with all this stuff? Stop it. You need less. Less is more.”

Then and there began my journey to reduce my stuff, get rid of debt, and live more simply. It took a few years, and I’m still on the journey to eliminating debt, but we made a big move across the state into a house and mortgage about half of what we had before. I call this a ‘mid-life reset’ or ‘purposeful downsizing.’ Living with less is liberating. More time, energy, and resources to do what is most important to me rather than just trying to ‘pay the man’ and keep up with the Jones’s. BTW – no offense if your name is Jones. 🙂

Another example is in my health journey. In my mid 30’s I realized that if I didn’t make more effort to take care of myself, I risked not being able to keep up with my son as he grows up and becomes more active himself. I realized that to be the best husband, dad, employee, friend, etc. that I can be, I needed to be personally healthy in body, mind and spirit first. I also feared ending up like so many middle aged men who more or less give up on their health and suffer all kinds of ailments for the rest of their life. I didn’t want to be like that. So I made some changes to my nutrition and exercise plan and am now enjoying the benefits of being fit and feeling great into my 40’s. All because I first changed my mind and realized that what I was doing and how I was living was not working.

The most life altering example of changing my mindset pertains to my spiritual journey. I’ll spare you the details, but suffice it to say that I had a spiritual crisis of belief in my last year of high school. Once I got to college at Michigan State University and away from everything I knew and experienced growing up, I made a dramatic 180 degree turn in the way I thought about my soul and relationship with God. Instead of literally killing myself trying to live a life that I thought would make me happy and always finding an emptiness in the results, I turned my life over to Jesus and began to let him guide me through life. To this day I’ve found so much more peace and joy knowing that not only is the ultimate creator of all the world a personal friend of mine, but Jesus is always with me and for me. I know for sure that when he reveals to me a mindset or attitude that needs to be addressed, he will be with me to help me and the results of the change will be worth it. I believe that my spiritual transformation would not have happened without me changing my mindset about how I was living and realizing that it wasn’t working for me.

So what does all this have to do with expectancy? For me, expectancy has become a term to capture what I believe about the result of making a mindset change. I have seen through the mindset changes in my life that the results are worth it. So when I see the need for a new mindset change about some attitude or belief I have now, I am even more motivated and encouraged to do the hard work required to make the change real and permanent because I have already seen the great benefits to my life for choosing so.

Expectancy. The state of thinking or hoping that something, especially something pleasant, will happen or be the case.

Be encouraged friend. Think about that thing in your life that you are afraid to do, that attitude or belief you know is holding you back from being your very best, that change you want to make but are afraid you will fail – maybe again for the hundredth time. Remember the things you have already changed along your life journey and how much better you are today because of it. Or think about your future self and compare what your life will be like without the change versus doing the hard work now to make your future better. Choose your hard. Do you want to do the hard work to change now and enjoy the benefits for the rest of your life, or keep your status quo today and inherit a future with pain and regret? Don’t wait any longer. Go boldly with expectancy.

Run/ Ride With Purpose

We’re Gonna Pedal To Kick Cancer’s Butt!

May 12, 2017June 4, 2020 teamquadzilla

We have entered Team Quadzilla in the Great Cycle Challenge to fight kids’ cancer!

We invite you to join us to ride throughout June. This is what we call Ride With Purpose!

How does Great Cycle Challenge work? You set yourself a ride target and pedal it down over the month, logging your miles via a free app which is linked to your personal rider page. It’s super simple and totally FREE to join. You don’t have to be an experienced cyclist, and there is no minimum mileage requirement to pedal.

Angie, Brandon, and I are planning to ride a few days a week with our mind on the kids fighting cancer. Like us, I’m sure you know someone who is battling cancer. We are happy to know that the donations we raise help cancer research and care for these precious kids.

The Great Cycle Challenge already has 28,747 riders signed up from every state across the country. The goal for this year’s event is to raise $4 million for cancer research to develop better treatments and find a cure for childhood cancer. Why? Because 42 kids are diagnosed with cancer every day in the United States, and 38 children die every week. We’re riding together to give these kids the brighter futures they deserve and save little lives.

As we say in Great Cycle Challenge…kids should be living life, NOT fighting for it.

Hey, This is a great excuse to get on your bike! Do something healthy for yourself AND help others at the same time!

And it’s all for a great cause, to fight kids’ cancer.

To join our team, check out our team page below:

https://greatcyclechallenge.com/Teams/Quadzilla

I hope you can join Quadzilla and pedal with us this June to end childhood cancer. Please comment below to let us know your interest, or if you have any questions.

Finally, if pedaling to fight kids cancer is not your thing, but you still want to help, please click the DONATE tab in the link above to submit your tax deductible gift on our behalf. Thanks in advance for your generous gift!

Fitness

The Truth About Lower Ab Workouts That You Don’t Want to Hear

May 10, 2017June 4, 2020 teamquadzilla

As a Beachbody Coach and CEO of my own fitness, nutrition, and healthy living company, I hear a lot of people complain about their mid-section. I am one of them. Forever I’ve had this annoying fatty area just below my belly button that won’t go away. You can see from the photo above that I still have some work to do, lol. What can I say, I’m a work in progress. 🙂 I digress… So in my quest to help others with this, while helping myself, I’ve learned a few things I’ll share with you now.

There are several misconceptions behind the question of how to deal with this lower ab area, so I’ll take them one at a time.

You Can’t Isolate Parts of Muscles

Thanks in large part to the bodybuilding approach to fitness—in which you divide your body into segments, like a butcher’s diagram of a beef steer—many people believe that muscles, and even parts of muscles, can be worked in isolation from one another. So they believe it should be possible to perform an exercise that specifically targets that six-inch square section of flesh below their navels.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that. Muscles tend to work in groups. Even a simple action like getting up from a chair activates muscles from your neck to your ankles. And forget isolating a part of a muscle. Much like bungee cords, muscles tend to stretch and shorten along their entire lengths.

That’s true of the rectus abdominus, or six-pack muscle, as well. Contract the “lower abs,” whatever those are, and you inevitably contract the entire muscle from its point of origin at the front lower edge of your rib cage to its point of insertion at the front of your pelvis.

There are, of course, effective ways to build a rockin’ six-pack. There’s just no such thing as working your “lower abs.” You either contract your abdominal muscles—all of them—or you don’t.

Your Muscles Probably Aren’t the Problem Anyway

What most people think of as weakness or lack of tone in the lower abs is more likely just a dollop or two of fat around their waist. In both men and women, the lower belly tends to be an area where even relatively lean people carry some fat. Can I get a witness?!?Women’s fitness magazines like to call these areas “trouble spots,” though personally I find it more troubling when people obsess over seeing veins pop out in areas where both the Vera de Milo and Farnese Hercules were smooth. Hope that last link made you laugh!

Just because you can pinch an inch—or two, or seven—around your lower belly doesn’t mean the muscles underneath are weak. Consider this: most football linemen carry a few extra inches of fat around their bellies. Average body fat for these athletes, according to an NCAA Sport Science Institute study, is almost 25 percent.

But the strength and durability of a lineman’s core muscles—which enable him to deal out dozens of bone-crushing, full-body blows in a 60-minute game—is world class. The upshot: carrying some body fat around your middle doesn’t mean your core is weak. And having a strong core doesn’t guarantee that you’ll be lean. Which is a perfect segue into my next point…

You Really, Seriously Can’t Spot-Reduce

Although following strategies for reducing overall body fat can help your abs’ overall appearance, there’s no surefire way to target fat in specific areas. Go for a run and you might burn fat off your face rather than your legs. Rip off 50 pushups and you might burn fat from your thighs rather than your chest.

Trainers have been saying this for decades, but if you need further proof, check out this National Center for Biotechnology Information study showing that exercising the abs, though it does plenty for your core endurance, does little to decrease the fat on top of those muscles.

Where’s the good news in all this? Your entire abdominal musculature—top, middle, sides—will get stronger and more toned when you work them, just like the rest of your muscular system does. Planks, leg lifts, and many other ab-focused moves you’ll find in any Beachbody program will all help get your abs where you want them to be. And the fat cells on top of those muscles will shrink with a smarter diet. For example, a daily dose of nutrient-dense Shakeology can help you reduce cravings and lose weight (or maintain weight in my case). A mindset shift about food as fuel vs. a reward helps too. Eating real foods instead of packaged, chemical and sugar filled stuff marketed as health food is also key.

So if you’re looking for motivation to recommit to smart diet and good exercise habits, your “lower abs”—or whatever you want to call that area—might be it. Just don’t call it your trouble spot.

And if you wanna try some of the best workout programs ever created not just for abs, but total-body fitness, I encourage you to check out Beachbody On Demand. Hundreds of workouts are available for streaming anytime, anywhere. It sure has been a game changer for my healthy living journey! Combine BOD, a healthy eating plan, and my personal support to help you crush your goals, and you have everything you need. We can work on our “lower abs” together!

*Credit Andrew Heffernan and the Team Beachbody blog for doing the heavy lifting on this article.*