After having job titles like Apprentice Carpenter, Subway Sandwich Artist, Door to Door Salesman, and Second Mate, becoming a fitness professional was a bit of a shift in mentality. With my new found profession I realized, that whether I am training a client or watching TV at home, my profession is forever with me. This is a good problem to have. To live a healthy lifestyle in the great United States, one has to be on guard 24/7, 365.

All of my clients are successful in their fields of work and work very hard to do so. Often our biggest hurdle is not getting them to show and work hard at the studio. The hurdle is changing their habits outside of the studio. Every day I see the things my clients are forced to fight against to live a healthy lifestyle. Because they need their food fast, they eat fast food. Because there are bills to pay, they work long into the night and eat too late (or not at all!). Because… (fill your excuse in here)… they couldn’t get their cardio in this week. Because… (find alternate excuse here)… they skipped breakfast… again.

In traveling the world a bit, I have seen many cultures. The Italians, Greeks, and Spanish for example take time every day for siesta. Wouldn’t siesta make finding a healthy lunch easy? Their culture has provided them that luxury. I ask: why are we such workaholics that we can’t even get a healthy lunch? Why has our work become more important than being healthy enough to enjoy our days off…? Having worked my fair share of 50, 60, and even 80 hour weeks I can say that, although a challenge to rival all others, one can be a workaholic and still live a healthy lifestyle.

The point is the only way to truly win the battle against our daily habits is to change our daily habits. The small things make the big difference. Spending 10 minutes to prepare your lunch and daily snacks the night before saves money and the 30 to 45 minutes you’ll need to get to your local lunch spot, eat, pay, and get back to work. Waking 15 minutes earlier allows time for a simple breakfast and ignites your metabolism so you burn more calories all day. Turning off your TV or PC early enough to get the 7 to 9 hours of sleep, recommended by the CDC, allows your brain to store valuable information and your body to repair the day’s stresses. Want some reasons to get more sleep? Check this out these suggestions to get some sleep! Got a problem with eating too many bad snack foods at home? Don’t buy them next time you are at the store. These are a few of the ways to live a healthy lifestyle that have worked for my clients and me. Have you found any that work? Need suggestions to guide you in changing your habits? Post a comment and we’ll work together to fight the battle for a healthier life.

I look forward to hearing from you!!!

It seems that sleep should be somewhat of a natural thing. I am VERY fortunate that I haven’t ever really experience disruptions to my sleep. Ok…there was my daughter when she was born…but only for about two weeks…she’s a great sleeper as well. Like dad, like daughter! There have been some occasions that I have chosen not to sleep because of events and the like… I called it college! When I do miss an episode of sleep or two, I can tell you that I am worthless. Physically, mentally and even spiritually I do not respond the same as normal.

We have become a 24/7 society that has the ability to access almost anything we want at anytime. If you can’t sleep, you can surf the web for any topic you want. So you get up and Google Sleep Disturbances and read for the next 4 hours why you’re not sleeping. You can go turn on the TV and watch one of the 5000 channels you have. You can read a book…ok, who actually READS anymore?!?! You can listen to a book or your iPod until it’s time to get up.

More and more frequently I have clients coming to me that are not getting the results in their exercise programs, because they are not sleeping. When I try to address this area, they look at me like I have two heads. I get the same response consistently,

What does not sleeping have to do with me not losing weight?

The bottom line is that not enough sleep makes you fat, hungry, impotent, hypertensive, and cancerous with a bad heart! Sounds like I’m exaggerating, I know, but it’s what happens and what I’ve seen.

I could give you all the resources so you could spend sleepless nights going through all the research and articles, like I have… or you could just read this one very good article in Men’s Health, entitled Good Night, and Good Luck, to get much of the info.

Hopefully, if we are lucky, the article WILL put you asleep!