Ask yourself this profound question. Am I living today or dying today? To help you understand this important question I will use the analogy of your bank account. We all know how important money is to us. If everyday you have a choice of making your bank account grow or deplete, which would you choose? Duh. Right.. If good health represents money in the bank, wouldn’t you want to put as much health in your account in a 24 hour period as you can? Rhetorical as it may be, this is how you should think of your health on a daily basis.
Most of us are so concerned with the negatives, or the withdrawals, that we lose sight on how to become rich with health. Millionaires do not focus on how to lose money everyday, they think of how to make and deposit as much cash as they can. People who focus on the negatives are spending their day avoiding fats, trying not to eat too many cookies, feeling uneasy about working out, and stressing about everything. This sounds exhausting, right? Well it is. These negative feelings all lead to major withdrawals from your bank, leaving your account in the negative by 3pm everyday. That in itself causes more stressful thinking resulting in the attitude of ” just forget it, what is the point in trying, I feel terrible about myself.” Once that mood shift occurs you will more than likely make really bad choices for dinner and even later before bed. Now you are really in the hole. In reality, this is how we become overweight, obese, sick, etc. Ultimately, the solution is to spend most of the day putting money in the bank. I always talk about the 80/20 rule. This is where you spend 80% of the day trying to be healthy and allow yourself to be bad 20% of the day. It is never a good idea to try and be 100% everyday, this will always lead to a crash. 80/20 is something we can all do. The average person that I spend time assessing is usually 20/80, which is upside down.
The problem with most people is that they do not know what is positive for the body and what is negative. Positive, or life giving foods, are what give us energy. Again, it is like adding money to your account. Negative foods are those that rob energy from our system, or drain our account. Really you have to take into account all of your actions in order for your system to start off rich or in the positive. A full night’s sleep will start you off in the positive. A bad night’s sleep will start you in the negative. Let’s assume you start your day with a good 7 or 8 hours of sleep. The next thing you want to do is clean your mouth and tongue. Next comes about 8 ounces of good clean water, which helps your system rid bacteria and get your gut ready for nutrition. Now be careful, this next step is tricky. If you have only been awake for around 30 minutes, go ahead and workout without breakfast. You will eat right after. If you eat protein and good carbs right after you will keep your body anabolic. Pay attention to this definition on how being anabolic is positive (Anabolic processes tend toward “building up” organs and tissues. These processes produce growth and differentiation of cells and increase in body size, a process that involves synthesis of complex molecules. Examples of anabolic processes include the growth and mineralization of bone and increases in muscle mass). If you do not eat you run the risk of becoming catabolic. This is the opposite of being anabolic. This is where your body starts to break down muscle to use as energy. Marathon runners fall into this state often because they do not eat enough calories to support the distance they run. They tend to have high body fat percentages because of the loss of muscle, so it is a negative. Back to your day. After exercise and breakfast, you are now in the black. To keep yourself in the positive you have to continue to eat every 3 to 4 hours and continue to put water in your system. If you are a coffee drinker you can not drink more coffee than water. This will make you dehydrated and being dehydrated will drain your system and put you in the negative. You will now be in the red. Want proof you are in the negative. Here are the symptoms for dehydration.
Symptoms of Dehydration in Adults
The signs and symptoms of dehydration range from minor to severe.
- Increased thirst
- Dry mouth and swollen tongue
- Weakness
- Dizziness
- Palpitations (feeling that the heart is jumping or pounding)
- Confusion
- Sluggishness, even fainting
- Inability to sweat
- Decreased urine output: Urine color may indicate dehydration. If urine is concentrated and deeply yellow or amber, you may be dehydrated.
As you can see from this example, you are in the negative. Now you see why I am always talking about drinking more water throughout the day. You can have the perfect workout program, like my Boot Camp program, (haha) and the perfect food intake, and not get positive results because of dehydration.
Anytime our body is in the negative, our body shifts into our sympathetic nervous system. This is when our body goes into “fight or flight.” When we are in this state our body starts to take on the stress hormone cortisol. When this hormone floats around it causes a lot of negative effects. Body fat being one of the biggest enemies of being healthy. If you are in the positive state and stress hits, you are far better equipped to handle it. If you have went out of your way to be positive, you can take a negative without the risk of going in the hole. Think about it. If you have put 100 in the bank and stress takes out 50. You are still ahead. Unhealthy people get hit with stress and they go deeper in debt. It is funny to listen to the people who have poor lifestyles talk about what they do when they are sick. Most of their days, months and years break down like this. A lot of fast food, alcohol, soda, etc. as well as lack of good food, sleep, water, and exercise. Now that they are sick it is chicken soup, water, rest and a new outlook on their lifestyle. They say, “Man when I get better I am going to start taking care of myself”. Don’t be that person! Take care of yourself everyday. Take a hard look at your lifestyle. What is your lifestyle percentage of good to bad? Remember the 80/20 rule. You do not have to obsess over being 100% good all the time but being upside down in this percentage is sure to leave you in “poor” shape.
Tim Gojich
