Taking care of your physical body is the most concrete, foolproof way you can move towards any goal you set for yourself. No matter what goal you have, keeping yourself healthy and energized is going to give you a huge boost in the right direction. Nutrition is a little trickier and more individualized, but if you follow specific guidelines, you’ll start to feel and see the differences quickly.
However, utilizing nutrition and exercise is one of the things that is often overlooked when it comes to being successful, achieving goals, and even overcoming obstacles and challenges that we face in our lives. We are so focused on the mental aspect, the spirituality, and all of those things that sometimes we forget and we don’t take heed to utilizing nutrition and exercise to produce optimal results in our life and in our business. Discover why building and maintaining your body temple is important and learn some rituals for sleeping and waking up.
—
Listen to the podcast here:
Utilizing Nutrition And Exercise To Produce Optimal Results In Your Life And Business
We want to get into a topic that I certainly am excited about. It’s vital to success, vital to living your best life, your optimal life. It’s one of the things that is often overlooked when it comes to being successful, when it comes to achieving goals, even overcoming obstacles and challenges that we may face in our lives. We don’t take a look at nutrition. We are so focused on the mental aspect, the spirituality and all of those things. Sometimes we forget and we don’t take heed to utilizing nutrition and exercise to produce optimal results in our life and in our business. Sometimes we leave those things to the athletes that taking care of your physical body is one of the most concrete foolproof ways that you can move towards any goal that you set for yourself. As a matter of fact, I believe that whatever your goal is, keeping yourself healthy and energized, is going to give you a huge boost in the right direction.
The way that you do that is through nutrition. There’s a lot of information out there about nutrition and it requires you to really be conscious of what you’re putting in your body. In today’s world, there are so much stuff that they’re putting into foods and I really do want to call it crap. You can’t go to the grocery store without getting something that has artificial flavoring in it and a lot of things are now being mass produced that causes hormones and antibiotics and all of those things that are going into the food.
That stuff has an effect on your body. It really does. Not only that, some of us are not even conscious of those things and we’re not conscious of the junk that we’re putting in our body and not just the chemicals and all of those things, but just not eating healthy. Making poor decisions when it comes to the quality of the food that you’re putting into your body, the type of food that you’re putting in your body, and all of those things has an effect on your ability to perform. It has an effect on your ability to think.
Why Building And Maintaining Your Body Temple is Important
A lot of the things that we are dealing with, all of us have busy lives, some of us have stressful lives, some of us run businesses and operations, we’re coaches. We have jobs, we have families. All of these things, they put a lot of stress on our bodies and they put a lot of demand on us physically. One of the ways to combat that, one of the ways to make sure that in that area of your life that you are operating in an optimal state, that you are at your peak, that you are positioning yourself to live life fully in that area is to make sure that you are building and maintaining your body temple. It’s so important because when you do that, it helps you fight off disease. I was reading an article the other day and it said two out of three Americans are obese. Can you believe that? The last time I checked, I think there are about seven million people living in America. You do the math on that.
That really means that we’re not taking a close look at our food and our nutrition. If you’re obese, I can’t see how you can live the fullest life that you would want to live. Especially in your older age, those are things that you want to think about. For you young people, who feel that we don’t have to pay attention to that, I think it’s vitally important that you start to develop those habits of eating right, developing some type of nutrition plan, exercising regularly, and really get that into your DNA before you get older because a lot of times when you get older, it is definitely harder to implement exercise programs.
A lot of times you can’t reverse, not in its entirety, some of the things that occur from a health standpoint as a result of poor nutrition and not exercising. Making sure that you are on top of those things, it gives you a green card to enjoying your life. It’s going to help you be strong, flexible, give you the vitality that you need, the stamina that you need in order to live your life to the fullest, and accomplish the things that you want to accomplish.
[Tweet “By the time you reach your goal, your body is so broken down that you can’t fully enjoy it.”]
Rituals For Sleeping And Waking Up
We have these big goals and sometimes we kill ourselves trying to reach these goals. We don’t get enough sleep, we don’t drink enough water, and we don’t practice nutrition and exercise. By the time you reach your goal, your body is so broken down that you can’t fully enjoy it. What is the beauty in that? There is no beauty. I just really believe that nutrition and exercise are vitally important to producing optimal results in your life and in your business. I talked about sleep, and I really believe that creating rituals around sleeping and waking up are vital ingredients to living a well-balanced life.
Sleep to me is like nutrition. Sleep is just as important as your vitamin A, your vitamin C, your iron. It’s just as important as your B vitamins. If you don’t get those vitamins, and that’s why they call them vitamins because they’re vital minerals. If you don’t get those things, it starts to have a negative effect on your body. Just like sleep, if you’re not getting the proper rest, it’s going to start to have a negative effect on your body.
Some of us are CEO’s and we are required to make major decisions. We’re required to perform on a dime. We’re required to think and create, we all are creators, not just CEOs, but how we treat our bodies, really determine how we’re going to be able to perform during our day-to-day demands. I want to talk about putting some rituals in place for your sleep so that you can wake up feeling revived, wake up feeling good. How many of you wake up with a smile? Let’s think about that.
Most of us don’t wake up with a smile. We wake up, we’re punching the alarm clock, throwing it out the window. We don’t want anyone to talk to us for two hours, “Don’t talk to me until I had my cup of coffee.” Have you ever said that? It is possible to wake up with a smile, wake up energized and charged and ready to tackle the day. I want to give you some things that you can put in place, which are just as vital as nutrition in order for you to wake up with a smile.
One of the easiest things that we can do in order to make sure that we get proper rest is to develop a game plan the night before. It all starts the night before. Before you go to bed, what is your game plan? Do you know what it is that you’re going to do when you wake up in the morning? That is a great habit to develop for yourself. I myself have this thing called the critical six. What I do is I think about my day, what I’ve accomplished and then I think about what are my priorities for the next day.
I think about what are the six things that I need to do tomorrow in order to make tomorrow a productive day. What are the heavy hitters, the most important things I need to knock out for the next day? I write those things down and I make sure I have at least six. No more than six because sometimes if you start to get more than six, that can be a little bit overwhelming and a little bit unrealistic depending on what they are. Six is just a good number of tasks or items that you need to cross off your list to start with.
I do that and then I have my game plan. I know what it is that I need to accomplish the day before. I don’t have to get into bed and start thinking about what it is I’m going to do, how I’m going to do that. I develop my game plan and sometimes I even develop the steps that I’m going to take in order to knock those things down. I have that and then I go to sleep. Some of the things that we need to do before we go to sleep, is make sure that we’ve got everything ready for the next day. That we have everything laid out, everything ready to go, so when you wake up, you don’t have to worry about all of that.
Make sure that you have all the things you’re going to need to get your breakfast. If you’re going to work out, you have your workout clothes. Make a little schedule of everything that you’re going to need to accomplish, to make the day productive, the start of the day productive. It could be your coffee. You need to make sure that you have that so you don’t ever run out. Make sure you stocked up on that. It can be whatever it is for you. You want to make sure that you have that and then you want to go to sleep.
Utilizing Nutrition And Exercise: Sleep is so important because when we sleep, our cells grow, that’s where we regenerate and it’s one of the best anti-aging treatments on the planet.
Sleep is so important because when we sleep, our cells grow, that’s where we regenerate and it’s one of the best anti-aging treatments on the planet. We want to make sure that we get enough sleep, we want to make sure that we get the proper hours, seven to nine hours depending on who you are and what works for you. One of the ways that you can find out is taking a look at yourself and when do you feel tired, when do you feel like going to sleep? When you sleep without anything waking you up, when do you wake up? How many hours of sleep does your body need to feel good?
That’s when you know how many hours of sleep that you’ll need. It’s important to put yourself on a routine of going to sleep. What I mean by that is going to sleep at the same time every day, waking up at the same time every day. Keeping in mind the amount of time that your body needs to feel good, to get the proper rest, and then incorporating that into your schedule. If you need nine hours, you need to go to bed at 9:00 or you need to go to bed at 10:00 to get your nine hours. Because you want to wake up at a certain time in order to do what it is that you need to do on the morning. Put yourself on that routine, break the pattern, exercise a little bit of discipline and stick to it.
Sometimes it takes a while for your body to get in tune to that but set a regular bedtime. That’s what we’re really talking about, is setting a regular bedtime and then going to bed at the same time every night. Waking up at the same time every morning and starting your day. You want to make sure that you get a good night’s rest. One of the things that you could do to ensure you get a good night’s rest is don’t eat four to six hours before going to bed, cut down on any caffeine four to six hours before going to bed, turn off the electronic devices. It’s going to calm your mind, it’s going to calm your senses.
A lot of times we have to check our phones, we have to check our emails. You’re stimulated because you’re doing those things, but when you shut that stuff off, your calming mechanism kicks in and it just prepares you to have a good night’s sleep. If you find that it’s hard for you to calm down, one of the things you could do is practice relaxation techniques. You can do a little deep breathing and positive thoughts thinking, do a little bit of visualization.
These are practices that you can practice right before bed. Maybe you want a little lavender tea, maybe you want a warm bath, play some soft music, turn the lights down, make sure your room is cool and dark. One of the things I love is when you make sure your room is dark. I love going to sleep in a dark room. I don’t like a lot of light, I like it to be dark. What I’ve learned that, when you have a dark room, it’s good for melatonin production.
Melatonin is a hormone that influences your sleep-wake cycle. If you have a dark room, it increases the melatonin production and artificial lighting disrupts the melatonin production. Having a dark room really boosts your melatonin and it really sets you up and prepares you for a good night’s sleep. Once you’ve gotten that good rest, wake up. Wake up early. Some people, they wake up at 11:00, for some people 9:00 is early. That’s not early. The morning is gone. It’s almost noon, it’s midday.
If you want to be a productive person, I really believe that getting a jump on the day is important. Waking up and getting your body going, going to bed early, getting the rest you need, and then starting your day early. I really believe that the first thing that you should do whenever you wake up, you want to be grateful. You want to send some praises up, and be grateful for waking up, having a moment of silence just to express some gratitude for a good night’s rest.
Getting through the night and then having the opportunity to wake up and to breathe, and to be present with the day, realizing that waking up in itself is another gift of the day. To express that gratitude first thing in the morning. I believe it’s a wonderful thing. The very next thing you should do, in my opinion, is get your body moving. Your body has been fasting, so to speak all night. You haven’t had any food, you haven’t had any drink. It’s been still, as it’s been resting and restoring, rebuilding. Now, it’s time to get it moving, to stretch it out, to get your blood flowing, get your body moving, get your blood circulating, get your organs moving.
[Tweet “Fuel your possibility. This is when we get back to the nutrition.”]
One thing that I do is I drink water. I really believe that water helps you hydrate. Obviously, you’ve been fasting all night. When you could put that water back in your body, that has a tendency to get your organs going, wakes your organs up, and it helps your body to wake up. It helps your body to get going again. Then you hit the gym, and then you get your body moving. A lot of us say, “I don’t have time for that. When I wake up, I’ve got to go to work. I got to get busy.” Here’s the deal, some of the busiest people in the world find time to work out.
You’re talking about people like former President Barack Obama, Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey. These people wake up and they do hours of workout. They do strength and cardio training. Why can’t you work out? I don’t get that. I think we make excuses for not working out. We do. I know for everyone it’s not comfortable. They may not like it, but here’s the deal, it’s highly necessary and it’s beneficial to your health. You have to find that time to work out.
I really believe that working out in the morning, when you can get that done in the morning, there’s less chance of you putting it off. If you go ahead and get the workout completed in the morning. If you make that a priority for your morning, then you’re done. Once you get your workout, then you can focus on all the other responsibilities that you need to do. Perhaps you do have kids, perhaps you do have a busy schedule, maybe you can wake up ahead of all of those things that you need to do in order to get your workout in. I really believe that, that should be a ritual, something that is a habit. I know it works for me. For me, it’s like sharpening the edge. Given everything else that I do, everything else that I work on, by having a workout routine first thing in the morning, gets me sharp, gets the blood going and I’m ready. I’m pumped up and I’m ready to tackle the day. I think that’s just amazing.
You want to develop some rituals for your sleep, develop some rituals for waking up, and then you want to fuel your possibility. What do I mean by that? Fuel your possibility. This is when we get back to the nutrition. What are you putting in your body? A lot of us do not eat well-balanced meals. A lot of us don’t even eat breakfast. Breakfast is one of the most important meals of the day. Think about it. Your body has been fasting all night, and then people get up and they go out into their elements. They go do their work, and they may not eat until lunchtime, and I think you’re starving your body.
Not only that, you’re causing your metabolism to slow down and if your metabolism slows down, that’s going to initiate you gaining weight. You’re not going to be able to fight disease. Your immune system is going to weaken because you’re not giving the body what it really needs in order to function, and so waking up and putting something healthy in your body. Perhaps you do eat breakfast, but you eat crappy breakfast like donuts, cinnamon buns, muffins, and sugary foods. That is not healthy for your body.
You want to give your body something that it needs. Not that it wants, but what it needs in order to perform optimally. The sugar is just going to increase your blood sugar and then you’re going to be hungry again. You’re going to feel like crap. You’re going to have that crash. Then you can’t perform at your best. When you can give your body some good protein, some good plant protein, some vegetables, some fruits in the morning, or perhaps maybe even a green drink. These are things that are going to give you the vital nutrients that you need.
It’s going to awaken the body, it’s going to put in things that your body hasn’t been getting throughout the night and allow it to do what it needs to do in terms of functioning. Getting you moving, getting you sharp, getting your blood and sending that nutrition and all of that stuff in the right places, and not spiking your blood sugar. When you eat first thing in the morning, your body starts to burn and then when you mix that with a workout, you’re really burning, and that’s how you can start to lose weight.
A lot of people think that, “I want to lose weight so I’m going to eat less.” One of the meals that they cut out is breakfast. That’s the meal that you have to eat. As a matter of fact, if you are wanting to lose weight, one of the keys to losing weight, is increasing the metabolism. A lot of times we gain weight because we have a low metabolism. Low metabolism is brought on, sometimes it’s genetic, and sometimes it’s because we eat large meals.
We don’t eat enough during the day. We eat maybe three meals. I know traditionally it’s breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and then those meals are huge. Then we go to these long periods without giving ourselves a snack or giving ourselves any type of nutrition. What happens is, your body spends time burning up that food, but it causes your metabolism to go down, because you eat that and then you’d have these long periods of time before you eat again. Then you’re not active enough.
Utilizing Nutrition And Exercise: Sometimes we give our bodies too much fuel at one time and the body can’t break that down. It starts to store it.
You’re not really burning and what’s happening is, instead of burning, your body is storing, because you had this large meal, all of these calories, all of these nutrients and the body didn’t need all of that. What the body does is start to store that, and then it’s not burning because the body is not active. The metabolism slows down, and so you’re not burning. Instead of losing weight, you actually started gaining weight.
I think a key to losing weight is to eat small meals, five to six meals a day, small, just enough to take off the hunger, to get the daily calorie intake that you need, the daily protein that you need. You eat that, and then it allows your body to digest that amount of food until you give it something else, and then digest that, you give it something else a little bit later. I’m trying not to go no longer than three hours apart. I eat six meals, and those meals are spaced between three and a half hours apart. That allows the metabolism to stay up.
That’s really the key to staying slim, to managing your body weight, because eating those large meals at one time, it puts a lot on the body. It puts a lot on the organs, and you really don’t need that much. You want to eat enough. Sometimes we eat because it tastes good. You want to eat good food, food is good, it tastes good. I get all of that. I love food too but the deal is, you’re really eating to fuel your body. That’s what it really comes down to. You want what you eat to taste good, but the purpose of eating, is to give your body fuel.
Sometimes we give our bodies too much fuel at one time, and the body can’t break that down. It starts to store it. When we have that mindset, I could spend a whole training session on nutrition and eating healthy and some of the practices that you can implement in terms of eating healthy. We don’t have time for that right now, but you just want to be mindful what it is that you put in your body. When you do eat, give the body what it needs. It doesn’t need all of the artificial flavoring and the fructose corn syrup and all the sugars, and all of the man-made food, if you will.
It’s really simple. Fruits and vegetables, some complex carbohydrates, some really lean proteins like fish, turkey, salmon, tuna, eggs, things like that. Bison is pretty good if you have a higher protein diet than others. Then I think about diets. I’m not really a big fan of diets. I’m more so into creating a healthy lifestyle. I think it’s much easier when you have a lifestyle. I’ve seen people, at the beginning of the year and they’re on one diet.
They’re maybe on the Atkins Diet, by the end of the year, they’re on some other type of diet and they’re trying stuff. I really believe in just finding out what foods work for you. There are foods that can give you energy like cucumbers and oranges and all of those fruits and vegetables out there, especially like spinach and kale. All of those things are so healthy for you to eat. There are better alternatives than grabbing a bag of chips, grabbing a bag of Cheetos, or donuts, or the pizza, and the muffins.
Think about the choices that you’re making. I really think about what I eat certain types of food. I’m going to be honest, yes, there are times that I splurged into sugary foods, but it’s at a very minimum. I always think about when I get ready to eat something, is this food serving me? Is it going to take me where I want to go? Is it going to be food that’s going to help me be better or is it going to be food that is going to slow me down, make me sluggish. Having a spinal cord injury, one of the things that I I’m really focused on is healing the body.
The body is such a fascinating thing. We all know by default the body tries to heal itself. If you were to cut yourself, a couple of days, you’ll see that the body’s trying to heal that cut. One of the most important things when you’re trying to heal, you’re trying to fight off disease is what are you putting in your body. If you know your car takes regular gas to perform, to do what it’s designed to do, you wouldn’t put diesel gas in your car. You wouldn’t put water in the car. You wouldn’t put anything in your car other than what the car is designed to consume.
[Tweet “It’s not about just being smart. It’s not about just having the right inner circle.”]
We do things differently with our bodies and our bodies are way more important. Your body is God’s greatest creation. We put crap in our bodies and then we have the idea to expect our bodies to perform at an optimal performance, but we’ve been putting crap in our body. We want the body to heal, but we don’t put the right things in the body to heal. A little bit of insanity there, if you would ask me. I really believe that healthy nutrition, exercise, eating well-balanced meals, fueling your possibility is what that really is all about.
Giving your body what it needs in order for you to produce the impossible, to think the incredible, to go out and make a difference in the world. It’s not about just being smart. It’s not about just having the right inner circle. It’s not about just knowing the tricks and being savvy, the marketing, you have to take care of the body. The body is really the foundation. If you don’t have the ability to perform at your best, then you’re not going to be able to be your best. You’re not going to be able to make the most difference in the world.
One of the things my mentor talks about with me is showing up. Sometimes we just have to show up. How do you want to show up? Do you want to show up broke, busted, and disgusted? Do you want to show up broken and bruised? Or do you want to show up strong and powerful? Standing tall, powerful body. I want to show up with a powerful body and I hope that you do too as well.
I hope some of the techniques and strategies and some of the insights that we’ve given to you, you will find them helpful to implement in your life, in order to optimize the results in your life, in your business. Happy eating to you. Happy nutrition to you. Happy exercise to you. We love you here in the Game Changer family and we look forward to our next episode. Thank you for being here with us. This has been wonderful and we will see you again on the next episode of the Game Changer Mentality Podcast.