P90X: "Easter - The Ultimate 'Lead by Example' Moment" Day 63 of 90

What is it about we human beings that, in order to really believe and absorb a message, we need to see an act of extremity?  Easter time, like Christmas, is a time of reflection for me.  As I was going through my P90X routine last night, I thought, “If Jesus could hang on a cross for 6 hours, I can do this for an hour.”  I think a lot about the fact that a person like Jesus, who went around preaching with such a strong and well thought out message of peace, had to ultimately die on a cross for people to listen.  Not ‘hear’ the message…listen to the message.  Before all the non-Christians hit the “close” button on their web browser, this blog post does relate to my exercise as well as to a lot of things in life.

When a message is well thought out and presented in words, what is it about us that stops it from really being absorbed?  Is it skepticism?  Ignorance?  Too much noise in the personal filters of our life?  So often, we hear someone trying to give us a message and all we hear is a bunch of words.  It can make all the sense in the world.  We listen and look at the messenger and say, “Yes, I get it…thanks.”  And we walk away.  The message is often not even committed to your deep memory, no matter what its value.  Like a computer, it sits there in instant memory and is never written to your hard drive memory.  When you go to sleep at night, you reboot and that instant memory is wiped for the next day.  The message is lost.

Words have always had the ability to seriously change a life.  But the fact remains that we human beings don’t really listen well to them.  In the past twenty five years, as the information age has evolved, this devaluing of words has become even more prevalent.  There is so much noise coming at us day to day.  Television with 900 channels, the internet, radio, billboards…it is non-stop.  How does a valuable message even bubble to the surface of such an ocean of noise?  More and more, a good or great message has to be accompanied by an act.  Someone has to take action based on the message.  Words have power.  They contain the basis for the belief.  All the reasoning, all the information you need to know is in the words.  But to truly motivate human beings, that must be accompanied by a demonstration of commitment.

For almost all of us, the action actually says more than the words.  For a great many, they simply follow and pay attention to the action without EVER listening to the message.  The action is what we latch onto.  The message could actually be muddled and a bit troubling…but we will pay attention to the act and the half-baked message.  This, also, is something magnified in the information age.  Those who present the messages to you, those who make money from the amount of attention you pay to a particular message, then wrap the information they give you with the most salacious and attention grabbing actions.  You don’t believe me?  Go to a website for news or grab your newspaper.  Read the headlines and the top articles.  Are the most valuable messages at the top?  Is Kim Kardashian’s divorce really more important than people dying in Darfur?

I often wonder, “If Jesus died on a cross in 2012, what would happen?”  It's troubling to think that he would be a headline today, a follow-up story tomorrow, and then be replaced by the winner of the Masters Golf Tournament on Sunday.

Maybe we just simply don’t have the time to sort through the messages of value.  Maybe we have simply stopped developing the thinking skills required to carefully slice and dice up a message and really understand it’s value.  Maybe though, just maybe, it goes deeper than that.

Anybody can say words.  It takes a really strong person of drive and character to commit to something.  Commitment requires action.  Action gets the attention.  Action is what turns your message into a headline.  It’s one thing to “talk the talk.”  But when you “walk the talk,” you open eyes.  Some of the greatest messages, and some of the most atrocious ones, were accompanied by acts that got people’s attention.  Think about that for a moment.

In 2012, action needs to have one more thing going for it.  It needs to be consistently done, over and over.  It can’t be just a sound bite today because it will be nothing two weeks from now.  It has to be a suit you put on and wear every day.

So whatever it is about the human experience, we need to see someone commit to a belief before we notice.  Sometimes, and we can think about this at Easter, we need to see someone willing to die on a cross before we truly listen.  As Jesus died, so the scripture reads, a man was heard to say, “Truly, this man was the son of God.”  Now, whether you have a Christian belief system or not, you have to react to that and say, “You didn’t notice the words, the preaching, the carrying of the cross over dirt in scorching heat, all done while wearing a crown of thorns…but when he died for his message, the light went on?”  It's a lot to demand before we begin to truly listen.

What does it truly take for us to begin hearing messages and really seeing their value without being assisted by extreme acts?  Good question.

Until something changes, we all are faced with this human behavioral fact.  If you have something to say, you better be willing to put action to it.

Now, before I write the next paragraph and upset people about the analogy I am about to make, please understand that it is not a comparison nor is it something meant to be even close to Jesus.  It is a small, very small, depiction of my point.  It is a statement about the human life we all experience and what it takes for ANY message to be heard.  If Jesus had such a hard time making his point, what chance do the rest of us mere mortals have?

I know one thing about all the words I have spoken about how to be more healthy, lose weight and get fit.  The words are read more when they are wrapped by pictures of me depicting real results.  It’s not enough for me to tell people how they can do it.  They have to see me do it.

And so it goes.  You have to commit to action if your message, any message you have to impart, is going to be heard.  We cannot change human nature so we must demonstrate our belief every day and show everyone that it can be done.

And so, on Easter, you can ask yourself these questions.

“Will I begin to listen for myself to messages given to me, and truly think about their value and meaning?”

“Is the message that I want to pass on so valuable and important to others that I am willing to commit to it fully?”

While you ponder those things, don’t eat too much chocolate.  It’s bad for you.  But you won’t listen to the message, so know that I won’t be eating any.  I hope you are smiling at that.

Happy Easter to all of you who celebrate it, and Commit.

P90X: "Oh Yeah, You Have to Eat Right" Day 53 of 90

Everyone who looks at P90X as a potential fitness program thinks immediately about the exercises.  They are hard, no doubt.  But everyone who has asked me so far about this focuses directly on the exercise…not the diet.  In fact, many don’t even know that there is a diet portion.  It is almost not even mentioned on the TV Infomercials.  It’s as though the routine itself is some kind of magic.  I chose P90X but, in reality, if you chose Insanity or any of the other Beachbody exercise routines, you can get results.

The key to any fitness plan is four words.  That’s the magic right there.  Four simple words.  “Eat right and exercise.”  That’s all there is to it.  It doesn’t matter the fitness plan so long as it pushes you to exertion for longer than thirty minutes and uses all areas of your body.  Well, that and the fact that you have to do it consistently, over and over, to get results.  Did I say you have to eat right?

There I was, looking for a fiction book that I was sure I had stuck somewhere in the family room.  In desperation, I dug to the bottom of a basket of books and stuff.  Guess what I found?  The P90X Nutrition guide!  I didn’t even remember getting one.  There was also a wall chart for the program that you could chart results on.  Now I do remember getting the chart, because I searched high and low for the damn thing when I was beginning the program and couldn’t find it.  Here it was, with the Nutrition Guide.

You may have surmised by now, but just in case I will point this out, that I don’t go by the P90X Nutrition Plan.  As I skimmed through the book last night, I realized why.  The Nutrition Guide is as big, if not bigger, than the Fitness Guide.  It also is loaded, absolutely loaded, with content.  By that, I mean words…lots of them.  Also, it has meal plans in phases, graphs with blocks representing your daily carbs, proteins, fats, etc.  There are zillions of recipes….and pictures.  It was mesmerizing.  It also was obvious why I opened the box and pitched it.  It is also why, maybe, they don’t show it in the infomercial.  But, and this is a big but, your diet and nutrition are essential to your fitness success…at least if you want to do it efficiently and safely.

There is a diet balance to be struck here.  My general rule is to make sure that I monitor my calorie intake, ensure they are good calories, and my newest rule, make sure the food is nutrient dense.  That said, I am an odd duck when it comes to food.  I don’t care what I eat.  I really don’t.  It’s not important that I have a certain steak or a special fish dish.  I don’t care how the food tastes.  I know that sounds foreign to many of you.  Except for some very particular tastes I deplore, like liver for instance, I can eat virtually anything.  With that in mind, variety in my food has no meaning.  None.  Everyone who knows me knows that, even when I was really fat, I ate the same way every day consistently.  When I was fat, however, it was consistently poor food and in large quantities.

As I looked at the P90X Nutrition Guide, it exhausted me.  Too many things to think about…too many choices…too much time to cook and prepare the meals.  I am not lazy.  You would know that if you saw me work out.  But I hate to spend any time at all cooking or preparing what I will eat.  It probably stems from the fact that food has no meaning to me.  I don’t need to spend an hour and a half trying to make something taste good…because I won’t care how it tastes!  If there is one thing that can kill any decision that someone makes to get fit, this is it.  A complicated diet plan.  The Guide is designed as a healthy transition for those who live for food…and apparently that is most of the free world.  It just isn’t me.  I count myself lucky for that.

To be successful doing any exercise routine, you need to have a good, solid and stable diet.  Find a diet that works for you, or find a good nutrition guidance counselor who can help you.  If you want to avoid roadbumps, keep it simple.  You may never get as simple as me, but it can be done!

Good luck!

P90X: "A Skip In My Step? Really?" Day 52 of 90

Most of us go through our days without really thinking about the little things that are going on.  We move along with a plan in mind for the day ahead and many of the little things we do during the journey just seem to happen automatically.  We take them for granted.  Then, every so often, we get a moment of clarity when we realize that some of the things we take for granted have changed.

So it was yesterday.  As I stood outside of church waiting for my son, I found myself in thought about something and just kind of pacing the walkway.  Suddenly someone walked by me and smiled with a bit of a chuckle.  I smiled back and just kept to my thoughts.  Then a second group came by and laughed a little.  It was then that I realized that, as I walked along, I was hopping up and down with alternating steps on the eight inch concrete sidewalk that bordered the walk.  I didn’t even know I was doing it.  The steps were there…I was there…I just shuffled along doing it…it was as natural to me as breathing.

Yesterday, I blogged about Assimilation.  There have been many times when I have felt that I just couldn’t sit down, but I do that when I am tired and just want to be alert enough to pay attention.  I have plenty of normal habits and idiosyncrasies.

But, this wasn’t one of them.   I was hopping along.  This was a clear sign that the things I am doing are building themselves into my natural behavior rhythms.  It was the first time I had noticed something that different in myself.  It was as if the Plyometrics were dying to get out.  It was a little more than ‘different’ to me because it was something I would have found myself doing as a kid.  I am sure that’s why these people thought it was amusing to see me doing it.  Maybe even strange.

I’m not going to lie here.  It felt good.  It felt great.  I felt like a million bucks to be able to just move so freely around.

About seven or eight years ago, I was showing off to my kids showing them how to jump rope with a speed rope.  For those of you that don’t know, the speed rope is a jump rope made of a rubber or heavy material so it can really fly when you rotate it.  Sometimes it’s even on a swivel handle.  When I was eighteen or so, I could cross jump with it.  I was pretty good.  So there I was with my mid-forty year old two hundred and eighty-five pound frame, at a family gathering with a few beers in me trying to show the kids how to do it.  It was going real well right up to the point where I was hopping from side to side on one leg.  The ‘SNAP’ was so loud that the whole crowd of twenty or so partiers all went silent.  I knew it was broken the minute I heard it.

The broken ankle was one thing, but the broken spirit hurt just as much.  I didn’t want to be the guy that ‘used to’ be able to do anything.

I have since changed all that, but now I am noticing permanent changes that I hope will be with me for the next ten to twenty years.  Yesterday just kind of shed a little internal light on it.  It felt great.  P90X is giving me back those years and that attitude.  It’s hard to explain unless you experience it.  Far too few of us get to feel this.  At this time in our lives we are supposed to just accept that time will carry us forward and do it’s damage.  I’m not ready.  As my kids always say, “You’re like a big kid in an adult body.”  Now maybe I can be, “A big kid in a younger body.”  That’s okay with me.  In fact, it’s better than okay.

 

Thanks P90X.  Ponce De Leon was looking in the wrong place…but then again, he didn’t have infomercials.