Watch the sunset. Take it all in. Stop trying to take a picture on your phone. A camera will never be able to capture it’s breathtaking beauty.
Trust me, I’ve stubbornly tried and failed.
Just absorb that single moment. It will fade away as fast as it came.
In the next year, you will experience 365 of them.
All different colors. All at different times. All different endings to your 24 hour day.
They will remain a constant in your life. No matter your ups or downs; from the worst day of your life to the best, the sun will set. Another day will conclude. Life will go on.
Those days finished by sunsets will make up your life.
Now what you do between that first sunset on January 1st and the final one on December 31st will define your year.
Each of us will have our eyes set on different goals to accomplish in the new year. You can call them resolutions or whatever you would like.
For me personally, it’s continuing my ongoing battle with being more present in the moment.
Yes, my journey will continue on with other aspirations. A new year doesn’t mean my fitness or business goals will change.
I believe a life of happiness begins with indulging yourself in the present.
If you are in the moment NOW then you will provide yourself with some worthwhile memories when you look back at this past year in 12 months.
You will not remember your Facebook statuses.
You will not remember that last tweet.
You will not remember the selfies you took for your Instagram.
You will not remember who liked your latest picture or status nor the one’s you liked of others.
I can promise that you won’t.
BUT you WILL remember the times where you were fully into that moment.
They will become memories.
These experiences will be filled with emotion, have meaning, and shape your 2015 and your life.
That’s my goal. I’ll go after it through meditation, disconnecting from my phone and social media, and appreciating everything going on around me.
It does not have to be your goal.
But since you are reading our blog, you probably are here to change your body, become stronger, or better at your sport. So I want to give you some ways that you can be more present in your training and nutrition. Strategies that you can truly apply.
So when you look back on the last 12 months, you will have RESULTS to show for all your hard work.
With each of these, I want you to get lost in the process. Not that you become obsessive. More so that you’re fully engaged come the time. I challenge you to put all of your focus into the journey so that you can appreciate the outcome.
IN YOUR DIET
God, I love Chipotle. Ok, I admit it. Even though I am surrounded by top notch Mexican cuisine in LA, I still crave me some quick, customizable burritos and bowls.
Extra protein, of course. And I know the guac is extra.
By the way, this is an awesome tool to fit your burrito or bowl into your macros.
Chipotle Macro Calculator of Awesomeness
(Bookmark this ish right now)
When ordering, I would opt for fajita vegetables over the beans. But after a few meals, both Ryan and I realized that the peppers were not sitting well with us.
After making some homemade chili (one of my favorite recipes for weekly meal prep), I put two and two together that the peppers were causing some distress on my digestion. In this case, the peppers were causing some agita (that’s Italian for heartburn) and repeating on me.
And they were even red peppers. Because, let’s be honest, the green ones suck.
But even though these peppers are considered a “healthy” food does not mean they have to be included in my diet.
See, we all can develop different food sensitivities.
From over consumption to our genetics, some foods just don’t sit well with us. In this case, the culprit was nightshades or scientifically classified as Solanaceae, a group of vegetables that includes tomatoes, potatoes, all peppers, and eggplant.
[Of course, tomatoes sit well with me from my heritage. What kind of Italian boy can’t have the sauce!]
Now the same sensitivities could be applied to any pretty much any food depending on the person. Some of the big ones are gluten, dairy, and galactans (aka beans, lentils, etc.).
By all means, I am not saying these are “BAD” foods. However, some are not digested well within our systems and may cause a host of problems. Even though they fit in your macros or are considered “healthy”.
I just want you to become more AWARE of your reaction with any and all food.
Some questions you can ask yourself after you eat. Start making some notes or a post-food log.
Did it bloat you? Particular in the upper stomach.
Did it cause your mouth to have flem?
Does it make you tired or fatigue?
Did it cause you indigestion (i.e., burping, flatulence)
Were you sleepy right after?
If you find the same foods keep causing these unwanted reactions, then I recommend taking them out of your diet for at least 2 weeks to a month. Then you can slowly reintroduce them back into your diet and see if the same reactions occur again.
For instance, take whey protein powder.
The savior to hitting our protein targets and the king of post workout nutrition. Of all the varieties, whey is the most popular. And for good reason.
However, I recommend that you switch up your protein powder every container or so.
Try Beef, Egg White, Vegan, Brown Rice or even take a month off and go with “real” food.
The same goes for your protein bars. I know those delicious Quest bars are a staple in your “cheat” clean lifestyle. We’re addicted too.
This is very similar to the insulin reset protocol we use in our online coaching. We remove carbohydrates from the diet for 10 days to 3 weeks in order to improve insulin sensitivity and reduce resistance. Then when those carbohydrates are reintroduced, your body will need a small amount of insulin to be secreted to deposit the amount of glucose that has been consumed.
So we are using the same theory here and applying it to all foods that may be consumed too frequently and have desensitized the body’s ability to assimilate the macronutrients.
IN YOUR TRAINING
Moving from forks and knives to barbells and dumbbells, being mentally present in your training can result in a huge difference in your results.
Don’t get me wrong. There are plenty of days where I just go through the motions of my workout. Everyone has those days where you half ass your reps and sets.
I would even argue those days are the most important to your success on a training plan. Because those are the days where you force yourself to get in the gym and get it done. Despite not being there 100 percent mentally or physically, they are crucial in developing a habit and showing up no matter what.
But you’re different. You want to get the most of out of your training plan.
The first factor in truly being present in your workouts is actually having a game plan. Even as coaches ourselves, we still hire our own coaches.
They design our training programs.
They push us in our workouts.
They offer their advice, encouragement, tough love and experience.
They make us BETTER.
By having a program designed specifically for you, your goals, and your needs, it allows you to put more of your effort into executing the workouts.
You will not have to worry about choosing this exercise over another, figuring out the rep scheme, or always sticking to the same training method.
Instead, you can put your focus on putting your best effort forth.
That could be by squeezing the crap out of the muscle until you start making the CRAZIEST faces and really tapping that mind-muscle connection in hopes of hypertrophy
Or maybe it’s just getting stronger and breaking all your previous PRs.
Even on Barbell Bicep Curls. Boom.
So get a training plan. Stick with it whole-heartedly for a cycle. THEN and only then, reevaluate to see if you are progressing. If not, then it may be time to switch it up. But be patient and give it your best effort.
IN YOUR RECOVERY
The ever ending quest to become a lean, mean, fucking machine. The majority of us train to improve our body composition, drop our overall body fat percentage, increase vascularity, and just look sexy as hell.
Am I right or am I right?
In America, we always think MORE IS BETTER.
Coffee. Bacon. Money. Watches. Women.
Dan Bilzerian believes in fitness.
So it’s only fair that you would just add in more High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) to reap all the benefits that this guy Tabata discovered.
You decide to get in 3 days of interval work. That should do it overcompensate for that weekend of bingeing because your team got beat by the Patriots. 🙂
So you add in another day of HIIT work. Going from zero to 100 (real quick).
Now that you’re doing 5 days of intervals, now you can get super lean. All without changing one thing in your diet or macros.
But then you become demotivated. You’re too fatigue from all of those high intensity sessions that have now become mediocre at best.
You can’t recover from your workouts.
Then maybe you become injured.
Then you can kiss the thought of those abdominals bye bye.
So knowing when to pull back the reigns and opting for a rest day is the difference between an amateur and a professional.
Being present in your entire training process, nutrition strategy, and life will provide you with the moments necessary to not only succeed but to enjoy the process. No matter the struggle you endure, the satisfaction of reaching your goals will be that much more sweeter.
[recent_posts style=”4″ posts_num=”2″][/recent_posts]
Leave a Comment