Setting Goals

Achieving what you want is much easier if you know what you want. Sure, you may know that you'd like to lose ten pounds, but unless you set a time constraint, you may not have the motivation to carry out your plan. And you need a plan!

Okay. Say you have ten pounds to lose. (It may be more or less.) You need a realistic time goal in which to lose them. Don't decide you need to lose ten pounds overnight. The only way you can do that is with liposuction, and that doesn't work in the long term. If you want to lose ten pounds and keep them off, you need to decide what to do about it.

You've heard this before, I'm sure, that two pounds a week is a reasonable amount of weight to lose and keep off. Any faster than that is not healthful, and the weight will probably come back, with interest. At two pounds a week, ten pounds will take you five weeks to lose.

"Five weeks!" I can hear you screaming. "I want these pounds gone now!"

Well, of course you do. But you want them to stay gone, don't you? There's no point to lose ten pounds only to gain them back.

Furthermore, when you lose weight in an unhealthful manner, most often you aren't losing fat. You're losing muscle. Muscle is what helps burn fat and keeps your metabolism revved. When you lose that, what you gain back won't be muscle. You'll gain fat. And fat takes up more space than muscle does, so you'll lose definition as well.

So, set a reasonable time goal. And don't just diet. Change small things. Get really good nutrition, such as supplementing with Vemma products. Start exercising. The more muscle you build, the better your metabolism will be. Aerobics will increase your stamina. Strength-training will add healthy, lean muscle. Flexibility training will keep you limber and ease joint strain.

Lastly, remember, if you need to lose weight, you probably didn't gain it overnight. Don't expect to lose it overnight, either. Losing weight should just be part of your goal. Your main goal should be getting healthy!

Your Cheering Section

Ever notice how people perform better when someone is encouraging and cheering them on? We all need to know that what we're doing is worthwhile and that we're making a difference, whether it's in our work, our relationships, or even our favorite hobbies.

Photo Courtesy of Dave Johnson

Getting and staying in shape is no different. Yes, we can plow on ahead and get healthy on our own. It takes a lot of determination not to quit. If, however, you have people building you up and encouraging you, it lightens your load. It just plain makes it easier to persevere when people are cheering you on!

Who's your support team? Do you have people building you up on your quest to live a healthier life? Or are people constantly telling you that you'll never make it, never be healthy, thinner, active, fill in the blank....? People like that aren't trying to build you up--they're trying to tear you down! Don't listen to them. If it's your family, you'll have to tune them out. If it's your friends, however, maybe it's time to  find some new friends, people who will applaud your decision to get healthy and sow seeds of encouragement into your mind and heart.

Even if you don't have a team of encouragers, you can speak those words into your own heart. Say it out loud: "I'm getting healthy. I'm getting strong. I'm getting to my goal weight." You can even just declare in faith, "I'm healthy!" "I'm strong!" There is a Biblical principle behind this: "Let the weak say, I am strong." (Joel 3:10) Is it asking you to lie to yourself? Of course not! By making a declaration like that every day, out loud, those words come into your ears and from there into your mind. What you hear often enough, you begin to believe, even if you're the one saying it. So if you've been saying, "I'll never keep the weight off," or "I've been sick so long, I don't think I'm ever going to be healthy," you're just compounding your problem.

Learn to speak good things into existence. Get a positive attitude about yourself. If you have a team of people building you up, that's fabulous! Still, you need to build yourself up, as well. How much better to build yourself up than beat yourself up!

Let me tell you right now: You can do it! I believe in you! I may not know you, but I have confidence that you can achieve what you set out to do.

Supplement Your Life

As long ago as 1946, J.I Rodale was concerned with the state of nutrition in America. The United States was just coming out of one of the worst droughts in history, resulting in that terrible time during the Great Depression known as the Dust Bowl. Overfarming and lack of crop rotations combined with drought, destroyed thousands of acres of formerly profitable land, turning them into worthless wasteland.

As thousands fled the heartland of America for the still-fertile lands west of the Rockies, scientists began searching for a way to reclaim the land and restore it to profitability. Chemical fertilizers, they thought, were the wave of the future. All they had to do was reintroduce the proper combination of phosphates, nitrogen and potassium back into the soil, and all would be well.

Great idea. Unfortunately, the artificial fertilizers did nothing to restore the earthworm population. Earthworms are a vital part of the ecosystem, often overlooked or ignored entirely. Without earthworms and their casings, the land may produce for a while, but eventually it will die again.

Rodale tried to wake American farmers up to the need for traditional composting, and he did reach a few. However, the rise of single-crop farming across broad expanses of land in the mid-to-late twentieth century began to deplete the one thing we need most from our food: Nutrients.

The state of nutrition in America has gotten so bad that most nutritionists now agree we all need to supplement our diet with vitamins and minerals. The food we eat, even if we're eating the daily recommended amounts of healthful fruits and vegetables, just isn't as nutritious as what our grandparents and great-grandparents ate.

Growing vegetables and fruits is like anything else in this way: you get out of it what you put into it. If you put the plants into nutrient-depleted soil, you're going to get nutrient-deficient plants. They can only absorb what's there in the ground. If there's insufficient iron in the soil, the spinach won't have enough iron to give Popeye his strength.

Granted, not everyone has access to a place where they can grow their own garden using compost they've made from plant and animal byproducts. That's why we need to supplement our diet with vitamins and minerals. The latest wave of nutritional supplementation is in a liquid form.

Vemma has been listed as one of the top five superjuices in an article in Men's Journal. You only need 2 ounces per hundred pounds of bodyweight. Before it was released to market, the strictest double-blind placebo clinical trials were conducted to rate its effect on the body. You can read the clinical studies here.

So, if you are interested, please visit my Enthusiasm Pays Vemma site, or e-mail me marionlaird@gmail.com for more information.

To read more of J.I. Rodale's epic work on compost farming, look for Pay Dirt. It's been updated several times since 1946, and the tips for creating your own compost will help even the smallest garden grow healthier plants, meaning a healthier you!

Here's to your health!