Understanding Reality

There's a very real difference between expectation and reality. Sometimes they match, but most times they don't.

For example, the horn on your car:

Most people use the horn with the expectation that it makes other people comply with their wishes. Most people honk the horn to make people go faster, honk the horn to tell people they're driving wrong, honk the horn to express anger or insist on right of way. They honk the horn with the expectation that honking the horn will immediately and effectively convey what they want from the other drivers. However, that's not the reality.

What does honking the horn actually do? It makes people stop, and look at you. That's it. Honk the horn and the other person hits their brakes and looks in your direction. The horn conveys one and only one thing effectively: LOOK!

This means that the only appropriate way to use your horn is when danger is imminent if the other person does not immediately cease movement and look in your direction.

I know what you're thinking: What does honking my horn have to do with my health, Laura?

The answer is: Everything! If you look at it in terms of understanding the reality as it compares to the expectations.

In health, we all have certain expectations. These expectations may come from our parents, from the TV that we watch or the previous experiences we've had, these expectations may even come from your doctor. However, that doesn't mean that these expectations are always true. For example, many Americans believe that you'll get ulcers from eating spicy foods. The truth is that ulcers are caused by a certain type of bacteria and are only worsened by spicy foods.

What sort of health expectations do you have that aren't realistic? Do you think that "exercise just doesn't work for me" or "I can't lose weight"? Do you believe that you're perfectly healthy when your lifestyle bears markers of poor health like a complete lack of exercise or an excess of freezer-isle food?

This happens in more than just your physical health. Mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and financially, it gets really easy to start honking that horn without ever accomplishing what needs to be accomplished. Where in your life are you using the wrong method or tool, or believing the wrong things? More importantly, what can you do to start using your tools more effectively?

What Kind of Life?

After a long hiatus, I'm back again. I'm in learning and researching mode for a while but there's something personal that's been on my mind recently and I wanted to share my thoughts with you. 

There's one question that's been...not quite haunting me, but definitely sticking around. Every now and then it just pops back into my head again, and each time I get a little closer to a definitive answer. The question: What kind of life do I want to live?

 

This question is about more than weight loss, it's about more than money, it's everything. All of it, wrapped together. Physical, mental, spiritual, financial, and emotional all together. Unsurprisingly, my current answer is still mired in the way that I want to relate to food. 

Food has been a big deal for me, pretty much my entire life. Every event, every significant memory, is earmarked or categorized by the food that was present at the time. My whole identity for a really long time has been wrapped up in my relationship with food. That's why it's not surprising that my answer to this question is stuck in this category for now. 

So, how do I want to relate to food? It's a tricky question for me. Unlike my health coach and the real food mom blogs I follow, I don't want to cut out every food that doesn't strictly comply with all of the recommended standards. I don't want to go to parties and avoid the cake because I "can't" or "don't" eat cake. I don't want to crave pizza and never ever satisfy that craving, sticking instead to substitutes that only half do the job but are what I'm left with when I look into the 'healthy foods' category. 

What I do want is for food to be just a piece of my life instead of the whole thing, I don't want my world to revolve around the next meal. I don't want my whole existence to feel hinged on what I'm going to eat next - and that includes the worry and 'what if' that comes with trying to make sure I only ever eat in certain guidelines. 

If I want a piece of cake, I want the ability to eat that piece of cake without feeling any guilt over it. If mealtime is swiftly approaching and I'm on the road, I want to allow myself to choose a salad, or sometimes a cheeseburger and fries, 

And y'know what? I want the same thing for you. 

Bondage is bondage. Whether you're a slave to a master who takes care of you or to a master who abuses you makes no difference, at the end of the day you're still a slave. Junk food is a cruel master, but being enslaved by vegetables isn't actually any better. What kind of a life do I want to live? I want to be free. And I want you to be free too. That's what this journey is really about for me. 

What kind of life do you want to live?

As Unto the Lord

"Clean like Jesus is coming over!"

As a child, that was the battle cry of Saturday afternoon. In a house of six kids and two working parents, Saturday was the only time the real cleaning could happen and my mom had a plan. Like a well-trained general she handed out assignments and then sent us to our tasks with the reminder that cutting corners (or not vacuuming them) wouldn't fly. Do your best, she was telling us. "Do it perfectly" is what I heard. After all, if Jesus was coming over he'd be offended by the lack of organization in my bedroom. Right?

Clearly, I didn't get what Jesus is really all about. I carried this misunderstanding with me into adulthood, often choosing to ignore the mess rather than cleaning it because the idea of cleaning like Jesus was coming over intimidated me. Jesus is perfect, so imperfection would bother him. At least, that's what I thought. This misunderstanding wasn't just applied to cleaning, either. Anything and everything in my life was under scrutiny. I was treating God like a distant and disapproving parent. In my mind he was sitting up in the throne room of heaven, clicking his tongue in disappointment over my lack of self discipline. The image sent me into a spiral of striving for perfection, failing, running away from God in shame over my failure, then striving for perfection again as a way to earn my way back into his good graces. 

Sounds awful, doesn't it? Everything in my life became a train wreck of self pity and guilt, pulling farther and farther away from God because I didn't want him to see me in an imperfect state. "Jesus loves me," I thought, "but he doesn't like me and he wouldn't approve of me." What a sad and alone place to be in! 

The truth is that God loves us just the way we are right this moment. He wants us to become better because he loves us and that love for us gives him a desire to see us at our best. But that love for us also gives him a desire to be with us as we are right now. 

If Jesus was coming over, he wouldn't really care if there were dishes in the sink, or if I'd forgotten to vacuum the floor. My basket of unfolded laundry in the bedroom wouldn't bother him. If Jesus was coming over today, he'd be coming over to hang out with me. He wouldn't be here to judge whether I'm a good wife or whether I'm good at cleaning. He'd sit on the couch with me, maybe even drink some tea, and we'd just talk like old friends do. Because that's how Jesus is. Of all the names the Bible gives to God, the ones that Jesus claimed for himself most often are friend, brother, and companion. This is how his disciples knew him, and it's how he wants us to know him, too. 

Today, take some time to connect with Jesus as a friend. This doesn't have to be ritualistic. You don't have to confess your sins first. Just be who you are, and think of Jesus as your best friend. I think you'll find it's a very relaxing experience. 

You Choose

Choice is one of the most powerful forces on our earth. As humans we are gifted with the ability to choose our path with the millions of little choices we make day-to-day. I think that's a beautiful thing.

We've talked about choice before. I talked about my experience with the little choice to not have a piece of cheesecake and how our habits make up our life. I encouraged you to change the choices you make on a daily basis, to bring them into alignment with your goals.

Today I'd like to talk about why it's important that *you* choose to make the changes in your life. It can be easy to succumb to peer pressure and in some cases that pressure can be positive. But if you don't make those positive choices for yourself, you won't stick with the new behaviors and thought processes. That's just the truth of human nature.

It all comes back to intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. We've talked about that before, briefly. Extrinsic motivation is when there's something outside yourself that is pushing you to make your choices. This may be a spouse or doctor who is concerned about your health, it may be a parent or a friend, it may be that you're not happy with the person you are right now, or it could even be that you saw something inspiring on TV. All of these things are external - they're outside yourself, putting pressure on you. These are great for getting you started, but once the pressure is released there has to be something that holds you to your decisions so you keep making the choices to become who you want to be.

That's where intrinsic motivation comes in. If you have a reason that is all your own, that comes from inside yourself, then your intrinsic motivation will keep you going on the path you chose. The key there is that it has to be a path you chose. You have to be the one to make the decision for yourself and for your own reasons.

Today, take some time to examine the choices you make on a regular basis. What big decisions are driving those little decisions? Have you chosen your own path, or have you allowed someone else to choose for you? It's never too late to change the direction your life is taking. You only have to choose.

Healing Like a Sequoia

When a redwood survives a fire - and they almost always survive - it heals giant slabs of wood over the scorched portion of the tree. Redwoods are strengthened by the tragedies they encounter and in fact need otherwise devastating forces like fires in order to survive as a species. Fires thin out the weaker trees that would take needed resources away from the redwoods, and the seeds of this giant tree race can only open up when subjected to the extreme heat of a forest fire.

When our hearts go through the fires of life we can choose to deal with them poorly, wrapping ourselves in darkness and defensive bandaging, never exposing the wound to the light of day. This will cause the wound to fester and create bitterness in your heart, as we discussed with yesterday's HURTS acrostic from Paul Tsika's book, "Sequoia-Size Success."

Today, let's look at how to handle those hurts properly so we - like the trees - can heal stronger than ever before, using another paraphrased Tsika acrostic: FORGIVE

F - Face up to your responsibility. Stop accusing other people for their part in the hurts you've sustained and instead take responsibility for your part in the hurt. Perhaps you could have reacted differently or perceived something differently, or perhaps you have locked yourself into the role of victim or mere survivor of your hurts. Whatever the case, admit your responsibility in the situation.

O - Open the unhealed wound and expose it to the light. Bring your pain, openly and honestly, to God and ask for healing and - where applicable - forgiveness.

R - Release total forgiveness toward those who have hurt you. Keeping someone "on the hook" actually keeps you hooked into the pain. It's natural to want the people who hurt you to meet justice, but the only way to really heal is to let go. You have to relinquish your desire to make them pay.

G - Guard what you receive. Remember when we talked about being careful with your association? This becomes especially important in terms of healing your hurts. You have to make sure to reject ideas like your right to revenge, and only accept the ideas that coincide with your goal of forgiveness and healing.

I - Invite God to love you through your pain and use you to extend that love to others. God wants to heal you, and only his perfect love can heal you perfectly. When you've experienced that kind of healing, you are then better equipped to reach out to others with the same kind of love and healing. Invite God to start this process in you.

V - View yourself the way God views you, not as the person your pain wants you to become. Pain wants to convince you that you are unloved, alone, and unique in your pain. If you let your pain dictate your response to situations, you will end up isolated. Instead, remind yourself that you are loved, wanted, and protected by God. You have been given great grace, freely and lovingly, and there is no reason to reject that grace.

E - Embrace your life as a healed person, a cracked pot through which God's light can shine. There's a practice in some Asian cultures of filling in the cracks in pottery with gold. This makes the otherwise useless pottery into something beautiful and more valuable than it could have been before the brokenness occurred. In the same way, God wants to fill the empty spaces left by your pain. Pain happens, fire happens, hurt is a part of life, but God wants to take that and make it into something truly beautiful and more valuable than ever before.

Healing is possible. Whatever pain you've been through, however long you've held on to it, healing is possible for you. It's a process, and sometimes a painful one, but the result is truly beautiful.

Fire, Forgiveness, and the California Redwood

The mighty Sequoia, also known around here as the California Redwood, is a plant that can endure anything. Nobody knows how long they can live or how tall they can grow because they keep growing until tragedy strikes and they are cut or knocked down. These trees grow around, through, and because of the trials they face. Most impressively, the redwoods survive - and even thrive on - fire.

Fire is a devastating force to a normal forest. But to a Redwood, fire is just an opportunity. The first branches of the redwood tree grow high above the highest flames of a forest fire. The tree's thick, sappy bark is fire resistant. When fire does damage the trunk of one of these magnificent giants, the tree immediately sets to work growing a slab of wood even thicker than the rest of its protective bark. Each time a sequoia survives a fire it becomes even stronger than before.

What can we learn from this?

Have you ever been through fire in your life? Maybe you were burned by job loss, or maybe someone you really trusted turned out to be untrustworthy. There are a million ways that we humans go through the proverbial fire in life. Fire hurts. It creates large, open, blistered wounds. It makes us afraid of situations similar to the one that hurt us. Like the redwood we must learn to grow stronger and stand taller as a result of the fires in our lives, instead of allowing them to consume and devastate us.

How?

Right now I'm reading a book by Paul Tsika titled "Sequoia-Size Success." In it, Tsika explains several principles of success in life that we can see demonstrated in the gargantuan trees that have lived hundreds of years. One of these principles is that you must learn to heal deep wounds. I'd like to share an acrostic from Tsika's lesson today - with the explanations paraphrased.

If you react to the fires of life and the pain they cause in an unhealthy way, these "heart burns" lead to lifelong spiritual and emotional bondage. Using the acrostic "HURTS" we discover:


H - Horrible experiences combined with
U - Unbiblical perception creates a wrong pattern of thinking that is mired in self-centeredness and self-pity. This leads you to
R - Raise up a stronghold to shield yourself from further pain. You cut yourself off from everyone, insisting that no one can understand you because you are the exception, that no one should come near you because you are the exception, and that it's perfectly healthy for you to be living like this because you are the exception. As you perceive yourself as the one exception in the world, you also start judging people more harshly. This creates a situation where
T - Troubles are wrapped up in darkness where light and love cannot reach in to heal the hurts. Because of this, the pain only grows deeper. Heart burns become
S - Soul Burns that are then perpetuated through the generations as you pass on your bitterness toward a person or group by constantly rehashing the pain you experienced.

Mistreated or poorly dealt with "heart burns" affect all of your relationships.

With God, we become closed off and tormented, unwilling and unable to accept the love and grace he has to offer.

With ourselves, we become hateful and angry, creating self-sabotaging habits and self-depreciating thought patterns.

With others, we become locked in a state of emotional immaturity, making us needy, suspicious, and fearful.

The good news is that we, like the Redwood, can heal from these terrible wounds if we will only learn to forgive.

Overuse Injuries Part Two

Yesterday we talked about how to avoid an overuse injury (don't be stupid), but sometimes that's easier said than done. How can you tell when you've injured yourself, and when you're just sore?

The number one differentiation between an injury and regular soreness is that injuries greatly limit movement. Sometimes there will be swelling, sometimes the area will look injured (redness, bruising, disfiguration), but sometimes there's no way you can just look at it and see that you're actually hurt. However, injuries limit movement more than soreness does. Regular exercise related soreness will make movement a little more uncomfortable, injury will make it darn near impossible.

If you have a regular stretching routine that you use for cool-down at the end of a workout - as you should, if you're being healthy about your exercise - this is probably when you will discover your injury. Stretches that would normally be difficult because of your soreness will bring you sharp pain and your body won't want to comply with the movement you're trying to accomplish.

For example: my traumatic tendinitis of the hip. One part of my stretches on distance days involves laying flat on my back (on my living room floor) with my heels on the ground, then lifting my legs up and pulling my knees into my chest to stretch my lower back and hips. On Sunday, because I had injured myself, one of my legs simply would not lift off the ground and I felt like someone was stabbing me right where my leg bone connects to my hip.

Once you've identified your injury, it's easy to know how to treat it. With the exception of major fractures or breaks, most overuse injuries call for the same treatment as a sprained ankle: Ice, elevation, and rest. Knowing this you can determine whether your injury requires a trip to the doctor, or just an ice pack and a pillow.

Overuse Injuries Part One

An overuse injury is exactly what it sounds like: an injury you get because you've over-used a muscle, joint, tendon, or ligament. Overuse injuries include twists, sprains, pulls, fractures, and tendonitis, among other things. If you're overweight or just beginning an exercise program, you're especially likely to sustain an overuse injury.

Overuse injuries sound scary. Mine is called "Traumatic tendonitis" but it's really just that my tendons have swollen because I over used them and they couldn't cope. I also managed to sprain and strain a few of my muscles. (ouch!)

It's very common for people under 35 to sustain overuse injuries because they aren't fully in tune with their bodies and limitations yet. Being so young, we bite off more than we can chew and frequently under prepare for the task we are trying to take on. That's certainly what happened for me! I know that my body starts really protesting what I'm doing when I've been walking for ten miles, but I decided to go 14 anyway. I didn't take along extra water because I didn't want to carry the extra weight, which meant that after 4 hours of walking I was quite dehydrated. I also didn't take into account the effect that the sunlight and temperature would have on my body when I decided to walk 14 miles on a particularly hot day and later on in the day than I'm used to. As a result my body started seriously protesting with sharp pains and muscle spasms at mile 6.5, and I still had to walk back to my car.

By the time I'd gotten to the car (bringing my walk to a total of 13 miles), I was biting my lip to keep from crying and looking even more like an idiot in front of everyone else on the trail. Even lifting my foot over the tiny amount of space between the ground and the floorboard of my car put me in excruciating pain. On top of that, I was dehydrated and my blood sugar had plummeted because my body was working too hard to push through the agony and keep walking. I sat in my car knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that I had injured myself - and it was probably pretty bad.

How do you avoid overuse injuries? The short answer is: Don't be stupid. If I had taken the time to check the weather, packed extra water, or accepted that at my weight and after only 7 weeks of having an exercise habit 14 miles is still pretty unsafe, I wouldn't have injured myself so badly. If I had listened to my body when I noticed that I was slowing down and feeling woozy at mile four, I wouldn't have made the injury worse. Instead I plowed through and pushed on, telling myself things like "no pain, no gain" because I didn't want to just wimp out.  Listen to your body, and learn the difference between wimping out and being safe.

While you're learning your body's signals and limitations, do your best to always have someone with you when you know you're going to be exercising intensely. Sometimes other people can pick up on our body's limits before we can. In my case, I couldn't find anyone who wanted to go 14 miles with me and my husband was sick. I knew that it wasn't safe to go 14 miles alone, but I did it anyway because I didn't want to let other people's limits keep me from my goals. If I'd had someone with me I have no doubt that they would have called attention to the fact that I'd started to limp, and I would have considered it a more serious problem and turned around at mile 4 instead.

Moral of the story: Overuse injuries are common but completely avoidable. Be smart and safe about the way that you're exercising.

Drama

Would you say that you're surrounded by drama? I'm not talking "To be or not to be" drama. I mean the kind of drama that every high school girl says she hates and somehow ends up constantly involved in anyway. The he said, she said. The single element that keeps reality TV alive.

Urban dictionary defines drama as (among other things): "A way of relating to the world in which a person consistently overreacts to or greatly exaggerates the importance of benign events"

Drama is a huge negative in terms of your health - in all areas of your life! 

Spritually, drama separates you from God because there's no room for overreaction when you're close to someone who's all about grace and mercy the way God is, and there's no room for grace and mercy when you're set on making every issue into the end of the world. 

Emotionally, drama wreaks havoc on your ability to properly process and react to normal life situations. When you're used to a life of drama, the smallest thing is a federal offense. This drives other people away from you, isolating you on top of everything else. 

Financially, constant drama can lead to poor choices and overly emotional decisions. This can be as small as making an extravagant purchase on your credit card or as big as divorcing your spouse. 

Mentally, an excessive amount of drama can limit your ability to think logically in the future and give you a warped sense of reality (which, by the way, will only lead to more drama). 

Physically, drama raises adrenaline levels unnecessarily, burns off blood sugar way too fast, produces unresolved tension in your muscles, inhibits your ability to sleep well, and creates stress. Stress leads to a host of mental, emotional, and even medical problems, some of which can become life threatening if left unchecked. 

All of that isn't even the half of it! 



All in all, drama is bad! Most people understand this, yet so many still find themselves stuck in a cycle where everything is always falling apart around them and everyone is always out to get them. Sound familiar? It can be hard to recognize in the moment, but if you're constantly surrounded by drama there's a good chance you're the source of it. 

Whether you're the source or just the victim, you can take hope in the knowledge that it's possible to limit and even stop the drama in your life. You can take control of the situation and stop the cycle. How?

1. Remove dramatic media from your life. You are who you hang around and books and TV are just another way of hanging around people you've never actually met. Reality shows, romance novels, and most sit coms are so full of drama! In fact, if you blacked out all of the drama in a romance novel, all you'd be left with is the sex scenes - which amount to porn, which negatively affects your life in a lot of ways. We'll talk more about that another time. Consuming dramatic media alters the way you react to situations around you because it alters your perception of what's normal. Remove the dramatic media, and you'll see a huge chunk of the drama happening in your life simply disappear. Here's some identifying common themes in dramatic media, to get you started:
1. Infidelity
2. Lying
3. Gossip
4. Revenge
5. Constant lack of trust between characters.
2. Check how reasonable your reaction is. Think of someone you know who has been a moral compass for you. Maybe it's your mom, your grandma, or your pastor. Generally this will be someone whose presence would make you completely uncomfortable with swearing or lying. Once you've figured out who this person is, ask yourself "what would _____ think of my reaction to this?" If that person would tell you that you're being unreasonable (maybe they'd say "calm down" or "take a breath"), then it's time to choose a different response.
3. Assess the value of your words/actions. Is what you're about to say or do going to *actually* help anyone? If you tell Stacy that you overheard Ashley talking bad about her, you'll just hurt Stacy's feelings and make Ashley mad. That's not helping anyone. If what you're about to say or do isn't going to create something good for the people involved, don't say or do it.
4. Mind your own business. Really. Keep your nose (and your mouth) out of other people's issues. Let them sort it out on their own unless they ask for your help and you can genuinely improve their situation. Don't make things your business when they really aren't. For example, your friend's ex-boyfriend's behavior really and truly doesn't become your business if she's not in physical danger - no matter how much her feelings were hurt. 

Generally, these guidelines can be summed up with a simple rule of thumb: If what you're about to do or say is what someone on TV would do or say, don't do or say that. Your life isn't a TV show, you don't need to create plot points to keep your ratings so you can go on existing. 

Protecting your mental space

Have you ever competed against someone? Maybe you were on the football team in high school, or maybe you're part of a sales force that's very competitive today. Maybe your competition has been limited to video games or card games with your pals. Whatever the scenario, most of us have been in a competitive situation at some point in our lives.

Remember trash talking? Trash talking is fun, when it's done in good spirit and received lightly. Watch a 12 year old boy playing with his friends sometime, and you'll see just how entertaining trash talking can be. If you've competed, you've probably been trash talked at some point or another and you know that it's all fun and games until someone takes it seriously. Once that talk gets into your head, the game is over. You might as well walk away the moment that seed has planted itself in your brain because once it's there, all you'll hear for the whole game is that one guy's voice. You'll lose the game and walk away saying: "He just got in my head."

The same is true of opinions.

Everyone has an opinion and most people's opinions don't agree. There's nothing wrong with that and nothing you can do to change it, because it's just a fact of life. Not everyone is going to agree with or understand your opinions and the way you do things. Because of this fact of life, it's important that you protect your mental space. Don't let other people "get in your head."

Here's where I apologize to you, my friends, because I did not do this well enough. My schedule started getting more packed in, these posts started requiring more from me in terms of research and time, and I let someone's opinion get into my head. There was a suggestion that I was putting too much into this blog, into you, and that I should back off and not post so often. I let that get into my head, and I'm sorry for that.

How do you protect your mental space so other people don't get in your head?

1. Know your 'why.' We've talked about this before. It's so important to know why you're doing what you're doing in the way that you're doing it, so that other people who don't understand or agree with you can't come along and accidentally scootch you off your chosen track. I started this blog for you, to help you and support you as much as I can by posting daily encouragement, advice, etc. You are my why. 
2. Don't get a big head. When you're in an exciting phase of life and everything seems to be going your way, it can be easy to get an inflated ego about the whole thing. You start to think you're the focus when you're not. My friend's opinion got into my head because I lost sight of the fact that this blog isn't actually about me. I use my experiences, my knowledge, and my personality to help you, but it's not about me. It's about you, your journey, and helping you toward your successes. 
3. Question everything. Advice shouldn't be rejected outright. It's bad for your relationship with the person who's giving the advice and it's bad for your personal growth. But advice shouldn't be taken at face value either. Always look the horse in the mouth. Evaluate whether the advice is actually applicable, and whether it will get you closer to or farther from your goals. Take time to think about it. Once you've decided whether the advice is really valuable to you, then you can either apply it or toss it out appropriately. 
4. Don't be afraid to say 'no.' It's okay to - politely - tell someone to back off. Don't let other people take the reigns in your dream. I recently had a friend who heard that I was writing a book and started trying to direct my efforts for me, telling me what messages I should include and how I should deliver them. The things my friend said were good points! The messages were things that needed to be said and my friend knew exactly how to make the most impact with those messages. But it wasn't really in line with my vision for the book. I tried to gently change the topic but she persisted, and so the time came for me to tell her "you have great ideas, and I appreciate your desire to help me, but this isn't where I'm going with this book." Don't be afraid to have these conversations. The friends who truly care about you won't mind being told to back off now and then. In fact, they probably prefer your honesty! 

It's important to protect your mental space so that you can reach your goals. You'll never get where you want to go if you're constantly being pulled in every direction by where everyone else thinks you should be going!

Surviving Friendly Fire

At the beginning of our journey together we talked about how important it is to have supporters. These are the people who are in your cheering section, the people who are running with you and encouraging you, and your coaches. These people love you, they believe in you, and they want you to succeed. In some cases they're even willing to help you succeed!

But what about when the people you expected to support you are actually the people who are the least supportive? What about when your sister, best friend, parent, or spouse doesn't believe in you? What about those times when your own family and trusted friends come against you for what you're trying to do?

I love my family, and I love my husband's family. However, there are a few family members - and their friends - who seem to think that I'm just full of it. No matter what I'm excited about, what's going well for me, or how happy I am to see them, these people always have something negative to say to me.

"Who in their right mind would want to run a marathon? 26 miles? No, thank you! I'll leave that to the crazy people."

"I can't believe you're *still* on that diet thing. Just have some cake!"

"Don't you ever wear normal clothes? You're making the rest of us look bad!"

"Six kids? Honey, wait until you have your first one, then you'll change your mind."

"Why are you always working? It's like you don't have any time since you started that business. Microsoft is hiring, y'know, you should apply there."

They see every one of my victories as something that I've done specifically to make them feel badly about themselves or to prove that I'm better than them. In their minds they have created a world where my sole purpose in life is to hurt them or look down on them, despite the fact that the decisions I make actually have nothing at all to do with them.

It's worth noting that these people are unhealthy, struggling financially, and generally very unhappy with their own lives. It's worth noting this because people who are not succeeding will always find a reason to hate the people who are - even if those people are their own family and friends.

It's likely that these people don't even realize how cruel they are being. They don't understand that their constant put-downs about my decisions make it harder for me to want to be around them because my heart is hurt that they would think of me that way and that they would willingly be so venomous toward me. They may not even know that they're saying anything negative, because negativity is a habit for them. Still, it creates a situation where every interaction with them puts me on an emotional battleground. Talking with them makes me feel isolated, unloved, and the depression it pushes me toward sometimes takes days of effort to recover from.

These are family members! These are people who are supposed to want me to succeed and who are supposed to be happy for my victories. These people are supposed to be my supporters. But they aren't. In fact, most of the time they run in direct opposition to my goals. Consciously or unconsciously, they work to sabotage me. When I do get invited to a family event, it tends to be very food-based and there's usually no food that is in line with my health goals. If I don't eat they get offended. If I leave early because standing around listening to the negativity with nothing but chocolate cake to eat is just too much for me, they see it as me bailing early because I think I'm better than them. I know, because they've told me as much.

It's unfortunately common for family and close friends to be the last ones to jump on your bandwagon or join your cheering section. What do you do when the people who should be supporting you are against you instead?

1. Remind yourself of why you're making the choices that you're making. What are your goals? What are you working toward? When you're under friendly fire it's important to remember why you're fighting in the first place.

2. Separate yourself. Love people from a distance. Contrary to popular opinion, trying to address the issue with these people will frequently result only in more hurt feelings. Once I saw the behavioral trend in these family members, I started declining more invitations to join them for events. I love them dearly, but it's not emotionally and mentally safe for me to be around these people on a regular basis or for an extended amount of time. As much as it makes me sad to have come to this place, I have to separate myself from the people and situations that would sabotage me as often as possible.

3. Shield yourself. When I do go to a family function, I usually bring food that is in line with my health goals, as well as something to distract myself with. I'll bring a book, or some of my crocheting, so that if everyone gets too overwhelming for me I can find a few minutes in a quiet corner to re-orient myself.

4. Create new association for yourself. This one is the most important one. It takes seven yes's to counteract the subconscious effects of one no. This means it also takes seven statements of encouragement and belief to counteract one family member making one negative statement about your goals one time. If you're dealing with a lot of negative from friends and family, it's that much more important to find supporters outside of your friends and family. Surround yourself with people who have the same goals you do, who will support and encourage you in those goals, and who will provide the cheering section you need. Having these people in your life will help you detox from the people who should be supporting you and are doing the opposite.

This week, work to build and strengthen your support network so that you can survive any friendly fire in your life.

On a Personal Note

Consistency is important in all areas of life. As my schedule picks up this August and leading into the fall, I'll be cutting back the number of times I post per week so that there is consistency. I'll be posting twice a week, on the days that are designated "rest days" in my training schedule.

Thanks for growing with me! I'm so thrilled for you and your progress in your journey!

Preparing for sleep

Preparation is an important part of health. We prepare for a workout with a warmup, prepare for healthy eating by purchasing healthy foods, prepare for healthy finances by creating our budget...but what about healthy sleep? Good sleep doesn't happen until your body and mind are ready for it. If you've ever laid

awake in bed at night because your brain just won't shut off, you know this all too well! Many people suffer from disorders that make nearly impossible for them to fall asleep on a schedule, but many more people simply aren't preparing their bodies and minds for the rest that they need.

Think about it this way: When you shut your computer off by pressing the "power" button, it takes a few minutes for all of the processes to stop running. You might hear the hard drive clicking, or the fan whirring, or even a slight sound from your processor, for several seconds after you've pushed that power button. However, when you shut your computer off by first closing all open window and programs, then using your start menu to select the 'shut down' function, everything powers down before the computer has actually shut off and you don't hear much going on after that.

Did you know that the computer is literally a mechanical model of the human brain?

Just like your computer needs to go through certain processes before it can actually shut down, your brain and body need signals that it's time to power off before you hop in bed. Otherwise you lay awake with that frustrating sensation of being VERY awake when you know you should be fast asleep. How do you prepare your body and mind for sleep? Start here:

1. Stop drinking any caffeine after 1pm. That stuff hangs around in your system and affects your brain function long after you've consumed it. You may not think you have a caffeine problem, but your brain knows you do!
2. Handle the day's business during the day. There are few tools in the world that have been universally helpful to all of the most successful people. A task list is one of them. Complete your task list during the day and set a cut-off point for yourself (I'd suggest 8pm). At this cut-off point, transfer any unfinished tasks to the next day's list in order of priority and resolve to leave it alone until the next morning. This will help your mind and body understand that unfinished tasks don't mean you'll be pulling an all-nighter. 
3. Clear your mind. Sometimes your brain just has too much to work on and can't sleep with all of the background stuff it's dealing with- like having programs open when you try to shut down your computer. Take up nightly journaling. Don't worry about making it pretty, just take 15 - 30 minutes each night to write out your thoughts and feelings about the day, as well as any last minute reminders your brain kicks at you. "Gotta bake cookies for Joe's bake sale next week" can be just as distracting for your brain as caffeine.
4. Let go of emotional garbage. Negative emotions can hang around long after you've decided to ignore them. As you're documenting your day, you may run into some of these bad boys. Do what you need to do in order to deal with them, and then determine to go to sleep without those burdens. 
5. Practice breathing exercises. Stress relief yoga is a great way to go for this one. Regulating your breathing to a slower, calmer pattern will help your body understand that it's time for rest. 
6. Use aromatherapy and calming herbs. What smells relax you? Many people swear by lavender, for me it's apple cinnamon. At night I light an apple cinnamon candle (which I blow out before falling asleep) and drink a cup of apple cinnamon tea, to tell my body that it's time to relax and start shutting down the processes that aren't needed for sleep.
   - As a side note, I also do this after my morning walks to calm my body down from the exercise enough that I can focus on the tasks at hand for the day. 

These are just a few tips to help you prepare for better sleep. Start here, and begin enjoying the restorative sleep of a healthier you!

Sleep

Restorative sleep is essential to health because sleep is the ultimate relaxation for your mind and body. It's a chance to recharge, and to catch up on the task list that can't be worked through when you're asleep. In sleep your heart rate, breathing, and digestion all slow down and your muscles all take a fully relaxed position. This allows your body to focus its efforts on other things until you wake up. For example:

Physically
Your body takes sleep as the opportunity it needs to focus on defense and repair. If you're injured, sleep is when you'll heal the fastest. If you're sick, sleep is when you'll recover the fastest. Your body needs sleep like it needs water and nutrients so that it can refresh the emergency backup glycogen (blood sugar) stores and quickly deliver stored nutrients to your muscles so that they can repair themselves.

Mentally
Your mind needs sleep just as much as your body does, if not more! Sleep is when your subconscious sorts through and files away the various things that have happened since the last time you slept. In sleep your brain can rationalize and reason through upsetting incidents, create solutions to pressing problems, and strengthen the new neural pathways you've created in the day by learning new things.

Like it or not, your body simply cannot go very long without sleep. Just like refusing to change the oil in your car will cause problems - and ultimately a breakdown - denying your body the sleep it needs is going to reduce your physical and mental performance capabilities. Keep up the habit of not sleeping and you'll find yourself with a broken-down body.

How much sleep do you need?
The amount of sleep you need depends largely on your age and gender. A healthy adult male in his prime tends to do best with between 6 and 8 hours of sleep - two full REM cycles - and a healthy adult female in her prime needs between 7 and nine hours - three REM cycles. Children generally need more sleep, roughly nine hours, because their little bodies and minds are doing so much developing still.

Today, make sure your schedule is set up to give you the right amount of restful sleep, and then do the same for your children if you have any.

Relaxation

Relaxation is a very important part of being healthy. If you aren't taking appropriate rest days you'll burn out pretty quickly. This is true in mental work, and exercise alike.

Because exercise makes your muscles stronger by tearing them so that they will re-heal, giving them a chance to do that healing is essential. If you don't take a rest day once or twice a week when you're exercising, those muscles won't have a chance to repair themselves. Continuing this will only lead to your muscles failing under the strain of your exercise - which in turn leads to sprains, pulls, tears, and sometimes even broken bones. Your body needs appropriate rest and one way or another, this marvelous machine will make sure that you give over the goods!

The same is true with work. It can be easy in a world of deadlines and alarm clocks to forget how important mental rest is. We can get caught up in checking off our various, very full checklists and forget entirely that the mind is also a muscle that very much needs its own healing time. When your mind doesn't get rest time it reacts the same way the rest of your muscles do: with eventual failure. This is what causes mental breakdowns, anxiety attacks, as well as all of the physical manifestations of stress (back pain, joint pain, and shortness of breath, just to name a few).

What do you do to rest? What makes you feel refreshed and ready for whatever comes next? If you're struggling with this one, think about your favorite celebrations. What makes them so good? Is it the family? The food? The chance to just have fun? Whatever part of your celebration makes you feel the best, integrate it into a healthy habit of relaxation! If your favorite part is friends and/or family, then schedule some coffee dates, shopping days, casual sports, or even just a walk. If the part of celebrating that feels best to you is food, then find a special and healthy meal - my personal favorite is pastazero noodles with broccoli and homemade meatballs. Whatever part of celebrating is the part that makes you the most relaxed, find a way to mix it into your life (without compromising on your goals!)

Failing Forward

How do you see failure?

There's a couple of different camps on this one. The most common view of failure comes from the group that says "You haven't failed until you've quit!" Cute sentiment, but that's just denial. Denial is a lie, and no lie in the world can help you reach your goal.

The second most common view of failure, in my experience, is what I'm going to call the dieter's approach. This is the idea that if you fail on Tuesday you might as well stop trying until Monday. This camp sees every failure as a devastation, a comment on their worth and ability to do things right. They see life like it's a game of chutes and ladders, with each failure being a chute straight to square one. For them life is a roller coaster and they ride from disappointment to disappointment, ultimately throwing their hands up in surrender to the seemingly inevitable and giving up altogether.

Both of these views come from the way we were taught to see failure in school. As infants, we know instinctively that failure is just something that happens when you're on the way to where you're going. We fall down and get right back up to try to walk again, being wiser for having fallen because we now know that simply lurching to the left will land us on our bottoms (or faces). This attitude continues through our toddler years as we experiment with the way the world works, but is halted suddenly when we enter school.

In the educational environment, failure is a stopping point. If you fail a test, that's a percentage of your grade you're never getting back. And whether you've failed or not, the new concepts will be introduced the next day. Failure isn't a learning point in school, it's a brick wall that smacks you in the face and holds you back for the rest of the year if you don't go through inhuman efforts (and beg someone with a higher grade to tutor you) so that you can catch up. Maybe. In my experience, once you've failed a few tests or homework assignments, your year is screwed.

Because of this, a fear of failure is born. Fear of failure will only hold you back in life. Psychologists have been dancing around this fact for years and are just now starting to meet it head on. When I was in middle school, studies and articles were published telling teachers that they should stop using red pen to correct assignments because the red color of the corrections damaged the students' self esteem and made them less able to grow into successful adults.

You and I both know that's malarkey. The color of a pen doesn't determine your success in life - so long as you know to fill out legal documents in blue or black. What actually happens there is that the child falls victim to the view of failure that the education system passes on, by throwing a brick wall at them with every 'F' and then leaving them behind to fail again and again as everyone else progresses without them. This, in turn, makes the child into an adult who is terrified of failing.

No bueno.

The third view of failure is one of the common denominators between all of the successful people in the world: Failure's just part of the process. This view takes us back to the understanding we had as infants and tells us to learn from our mistakes and move forward, gaining momentum with every failure. Doesn't that sound much better? The truth is that failure is just what happens when you get something wrong, and it's okay to be wrong sometimes as long as you don't stubbornly choose to stay wrong.

Today, examine your most recent failure and decide what you're going to learn from it that will help you on your journey.

Supplements

Now you know how many calories your body burns every day in order to maintain the life you need now. Much like your budget, you can now decide to make changes based on A) Lowering your calorie input, or B) Increasing your calorie output. Since we've been on this journey for almost 8 weeks, it's my hope that you've already done one or both of these things. Now that you have an understanding of how many calories your body uses every day, you can fine tune what you're already doing.

Calories aren't all that counts about your food, though. Nutrients are key, and they become even more important when you are exercising! Unfortunately, it's not physically possible to get everything your body actually needs in order to be healthy without supplementing. Today's food simply doesn't contain the right levels of nutrients. You can get your daily minimums from your food, but as far as what your body actually needs if you're trying to be optimally healthy - that's just not possible.

Don't believe me? Take a look at this video. It's a commercial for one of the supplements I use (and also sell, because the brand and the products have proven themselves to me). You don't have to pay any attention to the particular product or brand it's advertising, just watch the part where this couple is loading up their grocery card with all of the foods one person would need to eat in a single day to meet the average adult human body's real nutritional requirements, and the part where they explain why those foods are important. It's 6 minutes long, but worth the watch!

Do you think you could eat all of that? Even if you could, and you had the time to prepare it all healthfully and the money to purchase that amount of food every day, the number of calories represented there is....super high. You'd have to run a marathon every single day to burn off what you'd be consuming just to get your proper nutrition from your food.

Or, you can supplement.

How do you choose the supplement that's right for you?

1. Pick a supplement that meets all of your nutritional needs. This begs the obvious question: without being a doctor, how am I supposed to know what my nutritional needs are? Good question! You're smart for asking that! Here's your options:
1. Learn. Do a lot of in-depth research to learn what the average human body needs beyond the FDA stated minimums to be truly healthy. This will require a lot of time and effort on your part, a lot of sifting through garbage and rumors, and a LOT of coming to your own conclusions only to have them proven wrong.
2. Recruit someone who knows. This means hiring a nutritionist or dietitian and also doing a lot of your own research so that you know if what they're telling you is the truth.
3. Find a company who has been checked and re-checked by various third-party consumer and medical organizations throughout the world, and put your faith in their products. 
2. Pick a whole-food supplement. Most supplements on the market today are created with synthetic materials. Scientists sit in a lab and create Vitamin C based on it's chemical makeup. Those types of vitamins are far less useful to your body and put unnecessary chemicals into your system. Instead, what you want is a supplement that's made by extracting the vitamins from food, or breaking down food to make the vitamins accessible to your system.
3. Pick a supplement that's been tested and approved by credible third parties. Since supplements are not regulated by the FDA, there's no one looking over the shoulders of supplement companies to make sure that what they write on the box is what they're putting in the pill (and nothing more). In place of regulation, reliable third party testers have stepped up to the plate to hold these supplement manufacturers accountable. One such company is consumerreports.com, where you can find reports on most of the major brands. 

Today, look into the type of vitamin that's going to work best for you.

PAL, TEF, and predicting weight loss

Knowing your BMR is good, but it's only a piece of the puzzle of how many calories you're already spending every day without changing anything. Roughly 60% of your total energy output during the day is made up of your BMR, and the other 40% is a combination of your Physical Activity Level (PAL) and the Thermal Effect of your Food (TEF). 

To find how many calories you spend on existing and on your current activity level, multiply your BMR by the Activity Factor that best describes your lifestyle:

AF 1.2 = Sedentary (no consistent exercise)
AF 1.5 = Slightly Active (light exercise 1-3 days per week)

AF 1.8 = Moderately Active (job includes standing with some walking; moderate exercise or sports 3-5 days per week)

AF 2.0 = Very Active (Job includes walking; strenuous exercise or sports 6-7 days per week.)

AF 2.2 = Extremely active (physically strenuous job; very strenuous exercise or sports)

Personally, I walk a few miles at a brisk pace 5 mornings out of the week. That puts my activity factor at 1.8. As we discussed yesterday, my BMR is 1856.875. That means that in order to exist, and to keep up with my current level of activity, I need 3342.375 calories. 

Does that seem like a big number? It is. I'll explain later. 

The second number we're looking at today is the Thermal Effect of Food (TEF). This number refers to the number of calories required to digest the food that you're eating. The math for this isn't complicated, it's just 10% of your total calorie intake in the day. 

At maximum, on a really *really* off day, I take in 1500 calories. Most days I'm closer to 1000 or 1100. For today's purpose (and to not inflate numbers here), I'm going to use the smallest number in my factor. Ten percent of 1000 is one hundred. 

Add your TEF to the number you got from multiplying your BMR by your activity level. That brings my number to 3442.375. 

To exist, exercise, and eat, I burn 3442.375 calories per day. 

Here's where I'm going to use an assumption that is currently under suspicion in the scientific community. I'm going to assume that burning off one pound of fat requires your calorie input to be 3500 calories lower than your calorie output. There is an explanation of why this long-held assumption is under question right now as well as a calculator to predict your weight loss on a variety of factors and a very complicated math equation. However, as I mentioned, this is all very complicated. So I'm going to go with the long held and probably not entirely accurate assumption that 3500 is the number of calories to burn if you're going to lose a pound. 

Now, assuming this, let's take a look at my current output. Taking in 3500 calories less than I burn every day is physically impossible (if I'm not going to resort to starving myself), which means I'm not going to lose a pound every day. Shucks, but oh well. No biggie. However, I do currently take in at least 1900 calories less than I naturally burn every single day. That means that every two(ish) days I'll have taken in 3500 fewer calories than I burned in that two days and thus lost a pound. 

Sure, this doesn't take into account any kind of muscle gain, but it's pretty cool and very encouraging. Especially at the beginning of your journey it can be very helpful to know what you can expect. Keep in mind that as you lose weight your BMR will go down, and thus the number of calories you burn overall will also decrease - which mostly means that you will not be losing weight at the same rate in a year as you are this week. 

Today, calculate the number of calories you burn using your BMR, PAL, and TEF claculations. 

Base Metabolic Rate

In order to understand the rest of what I'll be saying over the next week or so, you first must understand your Base Metabolic Rate (or, BMR). BMR is a term that refers to the number of calories your body requires in order to function when you are resting. Why is this important? Basically, you have to know how hot the fire burns on its own in order to understand how and when to properly fuel it. Your body is, after all, a machine.

How do you discover your own BMR? There's an equation. Actually, there's two equations, because men and women are in fact different. That's right, ladies and gents, today we're going to be doing some math. Keep your pen and paper handy. 

For men, the equation goes:

10 * (weight in pounds * 0.455) + 6.25 * (height in inches *2.54) - 5 * (age) + 5 = BMR

For women:

10 * (weight in pounds * 0.455) + 6.25 * (height in inches *2.54)  - 5 * (age)  - 161 = BMR

To help make sure you're understanding how this works, I'm going to be really vulnerable with you and show you the math for my BMR. Ready?

10*(235*.455)+6.25*(67*2.54)-5*23-161 = BMR

Remember order of operations. Parenthesis first. 

10*(106.925)+6.25*(170.18)-5*23-161 = BMR

Next, Multiplication.

1069.25+1063.625-115-161 = BMR

1856.875 = BMR

That means, my body needs roughly 1800 calories *just* to survive. This is the number required to maintain basic body and brain function if I literally do nothing besides sitting on the couch a full 24 hours every day. This doesn't account for your Body Mass Index, the energy it takes to maintain your level of physical activity, or how much energy it takes to digest whatever food you're eating to get those calories. As such, this isn't the only equation you'll need for the next few steps in the physical health section of our talks. We'll take it one at a time though. Today, figure out your Base Metabolic Rate. Make sure to keep this number somewhere handy.  

EAT!

Yesterday we talked about Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis, which is physical activity that isn't planned exercise but burns calories anyway. Today, let's talk about Exercise Activity Thermogenesis.

Planned exercise is an important part of being healthy, though many only use it as a way to lose weight. To develop and maintain a healthy lifestyle, we should all be exercising for at least 30 minutes every day. This exercise should include cardiovascular training - what most of us just call 'cardio' - as well as strength training and stretching.

What does the perfectly healthy exercise routine look like? That really depends on you. Exercise is one of those areas where everyone is actually different, so you'll need to do your own research and try out a few different methods in order to find what is going to work for you.

For example, I know that I need high-intensity thermogenic activity. This means that while someone else can be perfectly healthy if they just go for a stroll every day and spend ten minutes strength training with resistance bands, I'm going to be healthier if I go for a run on a regular basis and do my strength training with heavier weights. I know this for two reasons.

First: I know that there are certain markers in your DNA that determine how your body responds to physical activity. Some people - like me - have a need for intense exercise coded into their DNA and their bodies won't respond to a low intensity exercise with nearly the same effectiveness, while other people's DNA is coded for either light or moderate intensity exercise to be most effective. Knowing that your DNA code affects how your body responds to exercise, I had mine tested to find those markers so I would know without a doubt what I should be doing. If you're interested in doing this, send me an email and I'll send you a referral to the company that I used for this test.

Second: I know what makes me feel the best. Even if you don't have a desire or the resources to have your DNA tested for these markers, you can still find your body's optimal exercise intensity with some trial and error. When I engage in light or even moderate exercise, I start to get physically frustrated within about five minutes. It's a struggle to slow myself down and force myself to ease up on the activity. My heart rate and adrenaline levels rise - not because of the activity I'm participating in, but because my body is responding to not getting what it needs by getting frustrated. It feels a lot like getting angry or being afraid, so it was confusing at first. But careful self-evaluation goes a long way. Since I had nothing to be angry or afraid about, I had to examine what other emotions cause this particular physical reaction for me. It was a little surprising to learn that my body was literally getting irritated with me!

When I start using intense physical activity for my planned exercise, the story changes altogether. If I'm putting all of  my strength, endurance, and physical ability to the test, my body responds with joy. Literally! As soon as I start pushing my limits, any stress that I'm feeling melts away and is replaced with happiness and peace. My mind clears and untapped levels of focus become available to me. I finish my activity feeling more calmed and at peace than when I started, even if I didn't feel particularly anxious or stressed out to begin with. High intensity exercise leaves me feeling accomplished, focused, and ready to take on whatever else the day has for me.

Today, evaluate your past experiences with exercise to discover where your optimal activity intensity level is.

NEAT!

Take the stairs, park farther away from the grocery store, adjust your TV volume manually instead of with a remote...we've all heard these tips (and lots of similar ones) when the topics of weight loss and healthy living come up. There seems to be this impression that if you just make these little changes to burn a few extra calories each day, you'll lose weight and get healthy lickety-split. This is one of those "yes, and no" kind of issues. Does burning extra calories contribute to weight loss and health gain? Yes. Does it take a surprisingly small amount of expended calories to create a difference? Sometimes. Is parking farther away from the store going to make you healthy and skinny? Probably not.

Today we're talking about NEAT - that is, Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis. 

Okay, let's start with some vocabulary. 

Thermogenesis is, simply, the production of heat. Usually when we're talking about thermogenesis, we're talking about the process that produces heat in a human or animal body. Thermogenesis burns calories. 

So, non-exercise activity thermogenesis is just an activity that isn't planned exercise, but burns calories anyway. It's important to burn off extra calories throughout the day so you're keeping your metabolism even, but regular NEAT can also boost your mood, improve your mental clarity, and help you to maintain a positive mental and emotional state. These simple activities can also bring more fun into your life and help you to boost heart and circulatory health. Having trouble sleeping? NEAT requires your body to use more energy throughout the day, increasing the chance that you'll be tired enough for your body to naturally achieve restful sleep when it's bed time 

Today, get more NEAT into your day. Need some ideas? Try:

• Turning on the music! Studies show that our bodies naturally respond to music with more activity in more of the large muscle groups. So turn up your tunes while you're cleaning, cooking, driving, and working!
• Take an extra lap around the store. You know you wanted to look at that thing over in that one section anyway, so head on over there and then take the circuitous route back to the check stand. 
• Stand up and walk around during commercials. Even TV time can turn into NEAT time if you make sure to stand up and move during the commercials. Get some water, check your thermostat, load the dishwasher - anything other than stuffing more calories in! If you're working on getting your whole family healthier, this is a great time to have everyone stand up, stretch, and wiggle together.

  

Savings - Part 2

Robert Kiyosaki teaches people to take calculated risk, leverage good debt, and think like a business owner so they can stop relying on a job for income. Dave Ramsey, on the other hand, teaches people how to create financial health with less risk, get rid of debt, and create a healthy retirement income for themselves without relying on employer contributions. 

Ramsey talks to the working man or woman who has little resources, no desire to start a business, and an oppressive amount of financial hardship to deal with. He shows them how they can be debt free, gain a better sense of security, and prepare for retirement, all on the income they're currently drawing. For that reason, he is naturally a more conservative voice financially. When Ramsey talks about your savings account, he addresses it as something you should be putting as much as you can into as often as you can spare it. Rather than make it a priority over paying basic bills, he teaches that it's a project you chip away at a dollar or two at a time if you only have a dollar or two to spare. 

Once you have your savings account built up, he recommends that you leave it alone. Just let it sit there until you have a real emergency that you can't otherwise handle with your budget. Then, put every extra dollar into your savings to build it back up again. 

We'll talk more at length about Ramsey's methods when we get into dealing with debt, since that is his main focus in his teaching. 

Whatever method you're using, saving is important. Having a savings account provides the cushion to fall on if something unexpected happens so that the little hiccoughs in life don't completely destroy your financial stability. Experts agree that this cushion should be - at minimum - six months' income. Some say never stop adding to your savings, some say cut it off and add money to some other fund or project after you have your six months' income. 

I, personally, think that you should always be adding to your savings account. Ten percent of your income, off the top, should be going into an account for the unexpected and I believe that you should do this throughout your whole life. Ten percent to God, ten percent to savings. After all, you give that much to the IRS, why wouldn't you put it toward your future. 

In all fairness, I have to admit to you that Jared and I are pretty horrible about this one and currently don't have a dime in savings. Today's action step is for me more than it is for you, but I'm sure you'll benefit from making and following a savings plan just as much as I will. 

Saving Part 1

First off, I am so sorry for not posting yesterday! I'm still adjusting to the way my marathon training schedule affects the rest of my day, and I did not do a good job of getting everything done yesterday.

So far our talks about financial health have covered creating and sticking to your budget. Now let's talk about some of the non-bills that should be a regular part of that budget, starting with a savings fund.

Dave Ramsay, Robert Kiyosaki, and most - if not all - of the other financial experts in our country agree that having a savings account you regularly contribute to is a must. How much should be in your savings account? That's up to you. The suggested minimum is six months of living expenses, but if you need a year or two of living expenses instead for the sake of your own peace of mind then there's no reason to stop adding to your savings even a penny before you reach that goal.

Kiyosaki and Ramsay do differ on which priority spot your savings should have in your budget. Kiyosaki, who made his fortune on smart risks and thinking (and then teaching others to also think) like an investor, says that savings is a higher priority than any bill. Ramsay on the other hand, who made his fortune on teaching people how to take control of their finances and climb out of debt, says that you contribute to your savings as though it were one of your bills but that it's closer to the bottom of the prioritized budget - with your credit card minimums. Let's look at those two mindsets. Today we'll focus on the Kiyosaki mindset of saving before you pay your bills, and tomorrow we'll explore the Dave Ramsay mindset.

To understand why Robert Kiyosaki teaches what he does, you have to understand that his goal and focus is to teach people how to use the free enterprise system we have in this country to create better lives for themselves. He focuses heavily on managed risk, good debt, and especially on business ownership, because he believes that you can't ever really be control of your destiny and your life until you don't *have* to work for someone else. The idea of working in someone else's business 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, 50 weeks a year, for 40 years, is personally unacceptable to him. He grew up poor, but his best friend's dad was a businessman and someone I would call an empire builder. This man, his "rich dad" taught him how to think for himself in a way that would guarantee his success no matter what field he went into later.

For more on that amazing story, and to better understand Kiyosaki's methods and history, check out his Rich Dad, Poor Dad series.

Robert Kiyosaki teaches in his books that you should think of yourself as an independent contractor instead of as an employee. He says this is crucial to being a successful business-person down the road. What does this really mean? It means that you start seeing your time/paycheck exchange as just that. You trade your valuable time for a paycheck, so why not give that time to the person who's going to give you the highest return? When you see yourself as an independent contractor instead of just an employee, your world opens up. You start being able to see whether the return you're getting is really worth the effort you're expending.

If you're thinking about yourself as a business owner or an independent contractor, your money priorities shift. I can say this from experience! When we were employees, our first priority was our mortgage/rent, then all of our bills, and then we tithed, gave to charity, ate and took care of our basic needs and other desires from the leftovers. Switch to a business owner mindset and the whole thing shifts.

As a business owner your business depends on your ability to perform. Since that's true, your first priorities for where your money goes are those line items that lend to your performance. For Jared and I, priority number one is and always will be God, so we make sure that our tithe and charity commitments are fulfilled before anything else. After that it's the bills for the services that keep our business making money (like our phone and internet bills), then the things that keep our health up so we can continue to work (like healthy foods, and supplements), then the things that allow us to advance our business (like marketing), and everything else falls in place after that based on urgency and current resources. We operate this way even in months when our cash flow is less than normal because we know that we can't increase our cash flow unless we can do business, do it well, and do more of it.

In the beginning, that did mean there were months we didn't pay the water bill unless the paper was pink.

Is it risky to handle your finances this way? Yes. Is it a little stressful for me, as a woman, to know that finances are being handled this way? Yep. However, as a business owner a big part of what we do is managing risk and using stressful situations to motivate us forward. If we hadn't seen a few pink bills in those beginning months, I don't know that we would have had the motivation to continue growing past the bare minimum we needed to survive. It is with this understanding that Kiyosaki advises his readers to handle their finances the way he does. As he says it, you'll never advance if you're always living on what's left over after other people have laid claim to your cash. Pay yourself first, even if that means you get a few of those whiny letters from the credit card companies. Use your cash wisely and use the pressure from your creditors to spur you on to bigger and better things.

I'd like to take a moment and say that this is not a method for the faint of heart, those lacking in organization or personal discipline, or those who do not currently have a vehicle they can put cash into so that more cash comes out. If you're just working a job, and that's the one and only thing you have right now to give you income, you might be better off with Ramsay's method. We'll discuss what that is tomorrow. For today, take that budget back out of the files and compare it to your personal priorities. Number each line item in order of priority, and then make sure that's the order in which you're paying those bills.