One day my father was sharing a regret he had form his past.  As a new father of sons he worked so hard to provide the financial security he felt his family needed.  He spent hours working hard in the office to provide this security. Until one day he was faced with the worst news any parent could ever hear. “You son has terminal cancer”.  His regret was that he had spent too much time working and not enough time with the son he loved.  His message to me was simple…don’t take life for granted and spend time with the people that you love the most.

Be careful, you can be fooled into thinking that you have nothing but time.  If you are not purposeful in prioritizing you time, you may look back with regrets. Years ago it was thought that computers and other forms of future technology would make our lives easier, which would give us more freedom to enjoy life.  The work day could be cut in half leaving us time for more leisurely activities. In fact, technological advancement is often driven by this premise.

The reality is that we still buy into this lie.  In our lack of foresight, we forgot that with increased productivity comes an increase in expectations.  People now expect we can do more for them than ever before. Employers want more because with technological advancement we can deliver more.  One small problem (actually a big problem) there is still only 24 hours in one day.  The reality is that we only have so much we can give to others before the quality of the time we spend with others diminishes. Therefore, we need to prioritize.  What people in your life need quality time with you? Is it your spouse, children or friends? Are you focused on things that will give you a quality life such as health and wellness?

One of the saddest stories I have heard in the last year was the one surrounding the last days of Steven Jobs.  By all measures, Jobs had a life many of us might envy.  At some point during his battle with cancer he said he was writing his memoir so his children would know who he was.  In my opinion this is one of the saddest statements I have ever heard. In his desire for fame and fortune he had to sacrifice the biggest thing that most people need from us…our time. Over the last 13 years in my private practice I can’t tell you how many people have climbed the success ladder to only discover, at the end, their ladder was leaning against the wrong wall. They come to me near retirement and want to reverse all the negative effects (Obesity, high blood pressure, sky rocketing cholesterol levels) of a poor life-style.  I am happy to help, but I would encourage people to never let it get to this point.  It’s much harder to change the habits later in life.

I have to be honest with you; I too have lived much of my life in pursuit of the wrong things. However, it’s not too late for us to make a 180 degree turn and head in the right direction.  Therefore,  I encourage you to reevaluate your life. Are you living a life that will lead to regrets?  Are you spending time with the people who really matter in life?  Are you investing in your healthy habits that will, in the end, add quality years to your life? If not, it’s not too late.  Let’s make that 180 degree turn together and start living a life with fewer regrets.

God Bless,

Jason

Let’s face it; change can be difficult and scary especially if you try to change your world in one day or even in just a few weeks.  If you are finally motivated to begin a new exercise program and/or change the way you are currently eating, attempting to make too many changes will ultimately lead to frustration and failure.

Research shows that when people try to make one change, their compliance is about 85%.  If they attempt 2 changes their compliance drops to 35% and if they try to change 3 habits, compliance plummets to about 10%.  Therefore, it’s most effective, in the long run, to work on 1 change at a time and build on that change 1 change at a time.

So…what’s the 1 change you can make today, that you can consistently stick to day in and day out for at least 2 weeks?  For example, if you are only eating 1 serving of fruits and vegetable a day can you begin eating 1 more fruit or vegetable daily?  If you are working out 1x/week can you work out an additional time during the week for 15 minutes?

If you are having difficulty pinpointing what needs to be changed let me help you.  I extend this invitation to meet with me for a FREE consultation where I will help you figure out what is the best starting point for making the change you need in order to reach your health & fitness goals. I am here to help…

Sincerely,

Jason

www.envisionstrength.com

1. Eating every 2-4 hours—this means consuming 4-8 meals/snacks a day.  If your goal is to lose weight, eating more frequently (4-5x/day) allows you to increase your metabolism, helps to maintain lean body mass and keeps your blood sugars more consistent throughout the day, which will help you avoid making poor food choices and overeating when you are over hungry. The idea of eating when you “feel” hungry is a fallacy.  You should begin making a habit of eating on a regular schedule so you never become ravished.  Skipping meals, especially breakfast, causes many people to binge eat late at night to make up for calories they needed during the day.  Often these people will feel full in the morning due to slowed digestion and will skip breakfast again. Thus the cycle continues.

If your goal is to gain weight you should also eat more frequently up to 7-8 meals/snacks a day.  The difference is that you will be consuming a bit more calories each meal to gain weight slowly.  If you are currently weight stable (no weight loss or gain), I recommend adding 250-500/day to your diet for weight gain and subtracting 250-500 calories a day for weight loss.  In addition, you will want to make sure the added calories are quality calories and not from processed junk foods (I will talk more about proper food choices in my next blog post). Also, you should start a properly designed weight training programs in order to gain muscle as you increase your calories for weight gain or as you reduce your calories to drop body fat.

2. Planning Ahead (food preparation strategies)— All the good intentions in the world will not help you if you don’t have a plan.  The old saying “failure to plan is planning to fail” is so true when it come to good nutrition.  Here are some ideas that can help:

• Plan your meals on Sundays for the upcoming week or in the mornings plan your meals for the day.  The first question is what are you going to eat for that week or day?  If you are now eating 5x a day that works out to 35 meals a week.  Looking at it from this point can be daunting, so break it down into days.  What will you need for breakfast meals, snacks at work/home, lunch meals and dinner meals?  Based on your meal choices, you will make up a grocery list of all that you will need for the week to prepare your meals.
• Once you have the food, preparation is the next step.  Depending on what your choice are, you will need to make sure that your food is easy to prepare when you need it most.  Let’s assume for now that you will be eating more fruits, vegetables and quality protein.  I recommend that you cut up the vegetables and fruit that you will need for 3 days.  In additions, precooking any lean meats your will need for your lunches and snacks  (chicken, beef, pork) will make it much easier to stick to your plan.  Once you prepare the foods ahead of time make sure you have plenty of zip-lock bags or Tupperware to store your food.  I also recommend buying a cooler for work, so you can store your meals/snacks for the day.
• Cook more food then you will need for your dinner meal and put the leftovers in a personal sized Tupperware for your lunch or snacks the next day.
• If your goal is fat loss, you will need to reduce your carbohydrate intake.  Since sandwiches are a staple of most people’s lunch diet I would substitute bread for flat rounds or whole grain flat wraps.  By doing this, you will reduce your carbohydrate intake and still have your sandwich.

I hope these tips help you to make better decisions as you strive to reach your health & fitness goals.  Next week I will address how many calories you need to reach your goals and what food choices you should be making.  In the mean time, contact me with any questions you may have.

In Health,

Jason Karson,CSCS,CES

www.envisionstrength.com

My point is that many of us live in bodies like this.  We work hard watching our diet and getting regular exercise in order to “look good”.  Our “core training” programs or lack of any programs may be setting up our bodies for the big crash and burn.  If all you do are flexion exercises (I.E. Curl Ups/Crunches) you are setting yourself up for a back injury. Your “core” is far more complex than just your abs.  Also, just because you have six-pack abs does not mean you have a strong core.  Likewise, if you are overweight and carry much of your excess weight around your stomach, you are at greater risk for a back injury.

So, what can you do if you are worried about injuries?  I would first of all contact me so I can do a full movement evaluation (http://www.functionalmovement.com/SITE/)  in order to identify any areas that could lead to injuries in your fitness program.  Let’s face it, if you’re injured, you won’t be burning as many calories and your fitness goal will be on hold until you are pain-free and functional again.  After your evaluation, I will set you up on a comprehensive core training program that will help keep you injury free and on your way to reaching your fitness and athletic goals.

Jason

Recently I turned 40 and recently have had some time to reflect on my life.  Here is some insight into who I am and why I do what I do:

I would describe myself as a hard charger.  I am a doer and hate to sit on the sidelines of life watching things happen.  This can be both a blessing and a curse.  It’s a curse because you can run over people in your quest for success.  You can put your ladder up on the wall of success and get to the end of your life or career and discover that your ladder was up against the wrong wall.  I have talked with people from all walks of life and have too often heard the same stories of people who followed someone else’s dreams for their life and followed the wrong path.  I have met people who have sacrificed the wrong things for fame and fortune only to wake up with broken family relationships and poor health all for the pursuit of a dream that fell short of their expectations.  Don’t get me wrong, I am not preaching just to you, I am preaching to myself.  I have been at this place in my life. You can’t take back the past, but you can make a fresh start and finish strong.

If you are in your 30s or 40s and feel as if you’re in a rut and your health and well-being are headed for a train wreck, you can turn things around.   By discovering your purpose and having a greater vision for where you want to go in life, you can turn both your health and well-being around. If you are older, there is still time to make the change and finish strong but, as Tony Robbins said, ” If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.”

God has a plan for each of our lives; He put you on this earth not to just to slave in job, retire and play golf , but to give you a future and hope.  He wants you to have a greater purpose.  We all have turning points in our lives that make or break us and I have had many.  In my early 30s I woke up, hungover again, with no inner peace in my life.  I had this sense that there was more to life, but did not know how to obtain it.  It wasn’t until I gave my life over to God and starting trusting Him that I found inner peace.   One book that highly influenced my life was The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren. Through my ongoing relationship with God and some insights form The Purpose Driven Life, I am able to live out my life with the purpose of helping others succeed with respect to their health & fitness.

I encourage you all to consider thinking about your purpose on this earth.  If you have sacrificed your health for empty promises, I encourage you to make a change now. Seek guidance form someone who can help you overcome the poor habits that are keeping you form having success with respect to your health and fitness.  Make a new beginning now!!

Jason

Let’s face it, most people know that vegetable and fruits are good for you.  I always laugh at health reports on TV that says…“breaking news…a new study shows that the more fruits and vegetables you eat, the lower your risk for obesity and diseases”.  In many cases, it’s not knowledge that keeps people fat, it’s poor life-style choices that have turned into deeply ingrained habits. So, how do you change habits? Here’s my advice…

1. First, you have to want to change.

2. Secondly, you need a plan for change.  We all know the saying “Failure To Plan Is Planning To Fail”.  It’s so true when it come to changing your fitness and eating habits.

3. You need a support system. If your spouse or friend wants to lose weight begin to work together. Support one another and hold each other accountable.

4. Hire a nutrition coach to evaluate your current eating habits and to help you make the appropriate changes or consult a registered dietitian if you need a medically based nutrition program.

Change is not easy, but if you have the right resources and support systems in place YOU CAN DO IT!

Stay Strong,

Jason

Over the years as a personal trainer and strength coach, I have seen and used different assessment tools from strength, muscular endurance and static flexibility assessments, to max and sub-max aerobic testing. Until recently, there has been no standards for how the human body moves and should move. Thanks to Gray Cook a brilliant physical therapy clinician and researcher, research is mounting showing that many of our basic movement patterns (Squatting, Stepping and Lunging among others) are dysfunctional and lead to injury.  By dysfunctional I mean, for example, when you squat down to pick up your kid’s toy from the floor, ideally you should have free movement throughout your joints to get from point A, the standing position, to point B the full squatting position. When our movement is altered, we develop compensatory movement patterns in order to get from point A to point B.  These alterations, in free movement, can be due to past injuries that were not properly rehabilitated, the result of sedentary life-styles like jobs that keep us seated for long periods of time or repetitive movements that lead to muscular imbalances.  Now, if we take that individual and put them into a fitness or athletic program, without addressing their movement issues, we set them up for injury or re-injury. The #1 risk of injury to a client is a history of  previous injuries.  For example, if you injured your lower back last year, you may be pain free now, but you have a greater risk of re-injury unless the root problems has been addressed.  Just because you are pain free now, does not mean that you will remain pain free.

Thanks to Gray Cook, fitness professionals, therapist and strength coaches now have a tool that they can use to screen for movement patterns that are not ideal and that could lead to injury or re-injury.  Since using Gray Cook’s FMS I have seen many of my clients remain pain free, which allows them to pursue their fitness and athletic goals without interruption.  Remember, if you are injured your will have little success reaching you health & fitness goals.

Here is our approach at Envision Strength:

1. I screen all of our fitness participants via the Functional Movement Screen. It takes about 15 minutes.

2. I evaluated the screen.

3. I design an exercise program that includes advanced stretching techniques, mobility and Reactive Neuromuscular Training (RNT) exercises that correct the compensation patterns that lead to injury.

4. I retest after 4 weeks to make sure progress is being made.

Unless you are able to identify the “weakest link” that could lead to injury or re-injury, I am afraid that many individuals are unnecessarily setting themselves up for injuries the will keep them out of the game we call life.

To see our “Frequently Asked Questions Concerning FMS” visit our website at: www.farmingtonvalleykettlebells.com/fms_6.html

Take a look at this great article on Recovery Nutrition and see if your nutrition plan matches up.

Recovery Nutrition

If your goal is weight loss that you intend to keep off, slow and steady is the key, so you don’t compromise your muscle mass.  Any weight loss or gain within a 24hr period is not true weight loss or gain; it’s water weight. If I weigh myself 8am on Monday morning and then at 8am on Tuesday morning and I gained 3 pounds; it’s water weight.  In order to gain 3 real pounds, I would have had to consume 10,500 extra calories with that 24hrs period; highly unlikely unless you’re a professional eater at a hot dog eating contest. Therefore, if you are going to weigh yourself daily use this approach:

1. Do it first thing in the morning, naked, after you go to the bathroom.

2. Don’t freak out when your doctor’s scale is 5 pounds heavier then your home scale.  Go by the scale you are using on a regular basis.
3. Remember that day to day fluctuations in weight are not what you should be focused on. Focus on the trend.

4. Chart you weight over a month period to see what the trend is.  Is it going down or up?
5. If it’s going down 4-6 pounds a month you are on track.  If not, track you food intake for a week in a journal and have a nutritionist or dietitian review it and make suggestions on changes you can make.
6. If you can’t  get off  the emotional roller-coaster ride of daily fluctuations in weight, STOP using the scale and focus in on how your clothes are fitting you.  If you drop 2 dress sizes over a period of time, you are making progress.
7. Finally, if you have a history of  an eating disorder, don’t use the scale. Seek the advice of a dietitian that specializes in helping people with disordered eating practices.

Jason

For more help contact Jason at: (860) 729-0614 or at www.envisionstrength.com

Self-defeating thoughts such as “I’m too old”, “I’m too lazy”, “I’m not talented enough” or “I’ve always failed in the past” are destructive and stop you before you can even begin.

Remember…we all have strengths and weakness and talent in over rated.  You are on this earth for a purpose. To achieve your goals and find your purpose you must overcome self-defeating thoughts.  Challenges will come and failure is inevitable, but you only fail if you give up.  Never, never, never give up!!

Take a look at this video.  It’s truly inspiring.

Stay Strong,

Jason