PJ’s Fitness Blog
A blog about a fitter you. Come find out what is on the cutting edge of fitness science and be a part of the ongoing conversation.
Continuing on my quest to rewire the brains of the world for permanent fitness without the need for willpower, I submit to you part 3 (be sure to read parts 1 and 2 below before this part).
3.) Exercise. Start small and move ahead when you are ready. Most people think exercise is a big huge commitment, but it doesn’t have to be. I average less than 10 minutes a day and I am in the best shape of my life! Exercise is vital to your success because it changes the way you move, your posture, how you feel, what you think you will and will not do, and many other things that effectively reform your mind’s eye.
Small steps is the best way to start out, because that makes it easier to establish consistency. When you establish consistency, you create a habit, which can then become a part of your lifestyle. Once you are at that point, exercise is just as much a part of your life as brushing your teeth. Since we now live in a modern transportation society, it is more important than ever to keep moving. God did not designed us to sit down all day!
Exercise can be condensed (like we do at the X Gym and on the X Gym DVD) so time isn’t a factor any more. If you don’t have 40 minutes per week to exercise, you’ve got bigger problems to deal with, so get those straight first! If you do have 40 minutes per week, but you still won’t exercise, then it’s just a priority issue, then read on and practice the other techniques in this series of posts, because they will help you with this one!
4.) Check your peer group. This can be co-workers, your social network, your family at home, or any other group you associate with. Your mind’s eye will listen to the messages from these people too – especially those messages that are linked with emotion. This is how others can brainwash us. Be careful what you hear, and catch others feeding you these negative messages.
You may even find that you need to make some courageous decisions in your life and break off some friendships or hang out with certain people less. Your peer group will either drag you down or pull you up. You have to choose wisely!
If it is your family that is pulling you down, then you need to be a leader and pull them up. Tell them this is your new lifestyle and you really need their support. Be sure they understand that you won’t force this all on them, but that this is your new resolve, and that you need their help, support and love to make it work for you.
You may also find that you need to hang out with certain people more. Find friends that support the lifestyle and goals that you want to achieve. Surround yourself with people who are already living that dream so you can find it easier to share those habits.
Sharing your proclamation with someone in your peer group can also be very helpful. For instance, if your proclamation is “Today I commit to getting healthier and fitter,” say it to that person. Have them respond with, “I believe you and support you in that.” If you don’t see them on a given day or you forget (remember that your old neural networks will sabotage you and try to make you forget or just take away your motivation to do it), then call them, text them or email them as soon as you remember. Just do it every day. It will help you in two ways: first, to remind your brain that this is a new lifestyle and second, to remind them that they are supporting you in it.
To be continued in part four…
Changing your mind’s eye and personal identity might seem like a daunting task at first, and this blog has limitations due to the fact that it is only one form of communication, but if you would like to learn easy and specific strategies on how to apply these principles and work with me live, then come to my next seminar, because this is the subject matter I will be speaking about with much more detail than can be delivered through this medium. Click here for more details…
If someone could safely brainwash your subconscious brain and reset your mind’s eye so you thought like a thin person and therefore became one for the rest of your life, would you do it? Most would jump at the chance. Some wouldn’t though, unless they trusted that person unconditionally, so how about if that someone was you?
Forming a new mind’s eye will help you break the old patterns and once that happens, willpower isn’t even needed anymore. You will think like that new person and will act differently as your old patterns are a thing of the past and new patterns control you. Sounds great, huh? So how do you brainwash your mind’s eye and form a new identity in your subconscious? All you need is commitment and consistency to follow the next 7 steps.
1.) Link pleasure to your goal. You have probably already found enough discomfort with your present state to make you want to change, but people can learn to live with discomfort, so while it might be a good catalyst to get you started, it’s never an effective long-term strategy for success. If you imagine enough pleasure to link to your “after” picture however, you will be motivated towards long term results.
Since pleasure is the only long term motivator, you will need to focus on this aspect. Do this by writing down a list of good feelings you will have when you achieve your “after” picture. Look at this list daily and feel the pleasure in the present tense, as if your after after picture has already happened. This only takes a minute or two to be effective!
2.) Compose a proclamation and say it at least 3 times a day. Become obsessed with it. Post it in places you will notice it. Write it on your window or mirror with dry erase markers, place post it notes in strategic places, etc. Get weird about it, and when you recite your proclamation, say it with emotion for full effectiveness.
Your subconscious brain will hear messages most clearly when emotion is applied. If you find it hard to muster up emotion with your proclamation, or even if you don’t believe what you are saying, you can fake it and it will still work. Just be an actor. Your subconscious brain is easily fooled and doesn’t know that you are acting, so it will hear it just as well.
Your subconscious brain will always go with the majority of the messages it hears, especially the messages that are linked to emotions, so make your proclamation the majority message and your subconscious brain will buy into them even if your conscious brain isn’t convinced!
My proclamation is, “Every day and in every way I’m getting stronger and wiser.” I say this at least 11 times, emphasizing a different word each time. Sometimes I restate it a few times emphasizing the word “stronger,” because that has many different meanings to me (i.e. physical, endurance, power, will, spiritual, etc.).
You can create emotion to some extent by simply involving your physiology, so even if you don’t feel your proclamation is “just right” yet, you can still make it work over time by saying it emphatically with a focused posture, while looking in the mirror at yourself with utter intensity. You may feel silly at first, but do it anyway. Even if you do feel silly, wouldn’t you rather feel silly and be successful, than feel comfortable and fail again? I sure would!
It is important to know however, that this and other exercises might be difficult to perform. Your brain might tell you things like, “This one just doesn’t sound right” or you might put it off until you have formed “just the right proclamation.” That is your established neural networks trying to sabotage you. They know how effective this technique is, because you have been using it all your life already, but just in a negative way. These networks don’t want to die off, so they will resist your efforts. Expect this resistance and when it happens, recognize it as a sign that you are winning the battle and push on to win. These old networks are dying off and are simply fighting for their survival. Just press forward and finish them off! Once you do, you will look back on those times and wonder how you ever even thought that way!
I’m living proof of this principle. So is Taz and many others. I was a Doritos freak in high school. I could eat a family size bag in one sitting! When I got to college, my main addiction was those soft candy orange slices, made from high fructose corn syrup and coated with granulated sugar. I would buy the Costco size bucket and pound through one of those in just a couple days! Now my cravings for things like spinach and bell peppers are even stronger than my past cravings were for Doritos and sugar. I couldn’t imagine eating a single Dorito or candy orange slice today. It still blows me away how much my brain has changed! This can be you too, with just a little consistency of these 7 easy steps.
To be continued in part three…
Changing your mind’s eye and personal identity might seem like a daunting task at first, and this blog has limitations due to the fact that it is only one form of communication, but if you would like to learn easy and specific strategies on how to apply these principles and work with me live, then come to my next seminar, because this is the subject matter I will be speaking about with much more detail than can be delivered through this medium. Click here for more details…
When I originally finished this post in its entirely, it was quite a monster. To make it easier to digest, I decided to break it up into smaller sections. Here is part one and the following parts will be posted every few days. That way, you will not only be able to understand the concepts better, but you will be able to put them into practice more easily by applying the principles one by one, letting them build on one another.
This concept is one that is very important to learn, because it is the key to permanent fitness and fat loss. The process of rewiring your brain for permanent fitness is easy when it is done in metered doses, but releasing all the information at once would be disservice and would make it seem like more of a challenge than it really is.
My upcoming lecture will make this all very easy to understand and implement, but since I only have the written word as a vehicle for the message here, it needs to be delivered it in metered doses.
I have written previously on how our identity shapes our decisions, actions and results. It warrants revisiting, with a new twist of course, because it’s all about how we see ourselves, or in other words, our “mind’s eye.” This term is interchangeable with “identity” because they really are the same thing.
The strongest force that guides your actions is the need to remain consistent with your mind’s eye. This will dictate your actions, habits and patterns. This is very important because these actions, habits and patterns create who you are.
If you see yourself as a conservative person, but want to “cut loose” and have a “wild and crazy time,” you may be able to do that for a short while, but you will soon revert back to your usual conservative lifestyle.
The same goes for your body. If you think of yourself as a fat person, you may be able to change your patterns with exercise and diet for a short time (maybe even long enough to lose all the weight you want to) but if your mind’s eye doesn’t change, you will go right back to the way you were.
This is why people yo-yo diet. Their body changes, but their brain doesn’t. It’s a shame so few people are talking about this, but it is the fundamental reason 97% of dieters fail to keep the weight off. If trainers Jillian and Bob from the Biggest Loser TV show knew this principle, they could change their students forever, instead of just throwing them under the weight loss yo-yo bus like all the other trainers.
Have conservative people become wild and stayed that way? Have fat people lost their weight and kept it off? Of course, and in every case, they changed their mind’s eye to make the change permanent. 100% of the 3% who do succeed in staying thin have trained their brains along with their body. This process must happen for permanent success. There are no exceptions.
Your mind’s eye is housed in your subconscious brain. You may not even know that you think of yourself the way you really do, because your conscious brain isn’t always on the same page as your subconscious brain. The ONLY way to find out what is housed inside your subconscious brain is to look at your actions and the results of those actions.
Have you ever done something or said something and immediately thought, “Where the heck did that come from?” That action or language certainly isn’t you, or is it? We all have “brain farts” where we make stupid mistakes and sometimes they are just that, but most of the time it’s your subconscious brain taking over and keeping you consistent with who it thinks you are.
Do you know someone who always has to be right, no matter what, even when they themselves know they are wrong? Many of us have had bosses like that, haven’t we? That’s what your subconscious brain is like. It’s “the boss” and it always has to be right. Whatever it believes you are is the way it will make you act. It’s the way we are wired and whether you like it or not, that is what you have to work with.
What if the mind’s eye is not the one you want? Well, the good news is “the boss” is easy to reprogram. In fact, it’s even easier to reprogram than your conscious mind, and it can be done by faithfully following the 7 steps I will lay out for you through this blog.
To be continued in part two…
Changing your mind’s eye and personal identity might seem like a daunting task at first, and this blog has limitations due to the fact that it is only one form of communication, but if you would like to learn easy and specific strategies on how to apply these principles and work with me live, then come to my next seminar, because this is the subject matter I will be speaking about with much more detail than can be delivered through this medium. Click here for more details…
I got this message in an email from Michael Lovitch, Co founder of the Hypnosis Network . I found it so interesting, I just had to post it. I have told people over and over that willpower isn’t a matter of personal strength, but more an issue of how much re-wiring needs to be done in their brain. Michael offers a great explanation on how willpower plays into how the brain works.
Will Power is not a “Character” Issue
Most of us assume that a lack of will power is a personality defect, and that if we had a better constitution we would meet our resolutions (stop overeating, stop drinking too much, quit smoking, get more done, create and follow a budget, etc…)
But the research is now clear that our brains simply aren’t designed for willpower – because willpower is a limited resource.
A series of experiments has clearly demonstrated that the part of the brain responsible for self control, the prefrontal cortex, simply can’t maintain the act of self control for an extended period of time.
Baba Shiv, a marketing Professor at Stanford University, conducted a really interesting experiment that I think really drives the point home:
Cake or Salad?
Baba Shiv’s team assembled two groups. Group One was tasked with remembering a (more…)
I was recently asked about a current Biggest Loser TV episode, where a contestant lost 34 pounds in one week! Is this really possible?
A dietitian would calculate that someone would have to burn 119,000 more calories than they are eating to lose 34 pounds. To do this in one week, that would require burning 17,000 calories per day, or 708 calories per hour, if you stayed up for 24 hours and never went to bed the whole week. Oh yeah, and that’s just the burn rate above what you eat, so you would have to fast the whole week too.
To burn 708 calories per hour, you would have to run at a pace of about 7 mph, 24 hours per day, for 7 days straight. That would be 168 miles per day, or 1176 miles for the week (while fasting of course).
The guy that lost 34 pounds in one week weighed over 500 pounds, and even though he would certainly be (more…)
I received this email message from coach Devlyn Steele and thought is was so good, I felt the need to reprint parts of it here. I will start with some of his thoughts and then close with some of mine, which will help you achieve your New Year’s resolutions once and for all!
Devlyn: Year after year we go through the same routine of closing out one year and bringing in a New Year. As we do so, we wipe the slate clean and start the New Year with a fresh outlook. We say that this is the year that we are going to create certain changes in our life. We state these changes in what is commonly referred to as New Year resolutions. Psychologically, the idea of a new beginning gives us a sense of optimism and hope. That’s a great way to approach your life and the start of a New Year, with hope and belief that things can change.
Even though we go through this routine, more often than not we do not follow through with the actions and behaviors for a long enough period to produce the results we want. Our initial enthusiasm gets worn down by the routines and patterns that we have established in our life. As the years progress we have in fact reinforced the notion that it’s okay not to follow through. We have grown accustomed to our behavior and don’t hold ourselves accountable. We, in fact, know that for the most part we will not follow through with our resolutions.
Further, we are so aware of our patterns of behavior that we might even stop making (more…)
It’s done! I’m super excited about it, and it’s just in time for the holidays!
The special introductory price is only $19.95 (plus tax, shipping and handling)! Get a copy for yourself, your friends, family, travel buddies, kids in college, and anyone else who wants to get in shape fast with very little time required.
Just click the “Buy Now” button below to have it shipped to your door within 2-3 weeks, or stop by the Alki or Kirkland X Gym to get your copy today!
Me, Steve and Kourt eating Taz's truffles!
Raw cacao (the chocolate bean) certainly is! In fact, cacao packs the most potent antioxidant punch of any food on the planet. It stomps all over acai berry and leaves blueberries in the dust.It’s vital to choose the right chocolate however, because most commercially prepared varieties are just plain toxic because of all the sugar, processing and additives.
So how do you get the good stuff? I tell you, but first, check out some of the health (and fitness) benefits I have found, with the research studies to back them up. Just click the last word in each sentence to hyperlink to the study reference:
Allrightythen! It looks like X Gym put on another stairclimbing clinic tonight (12/3/09) in the 56 floor WaMu tower. The credit really has to go to God though, because we even stomped on our own times from last year by miraculous margins! Thanks to everyone who was praying for us! It obviously worked!
Here are the awards they offered tonight and who won them:
1st place male: Jesse Berg (X Gym Friends and Alumni team)
2nd place male: Kevin Crossman (X Gym Team)
1st place female: Kourtney Dexter (X Gym Team)
2nd place female: Jamela Leddy (X Gym Team)
1st place team: X Gym Friends and Alumni
2nd place team: X Gym
1st place relay team: X Gym
2nd place relay team: “Loaded for Bear”. Sorry X Gymers- we only had one relay team. My bad! I didn’t know they were awarding a 2nd place relay team this year (they didn’t last year). If I would have known, I would have formed another one (Kailyn Jeff and John were chomping at the bit). Then again, it was nice to let some other people win something 
Loaded for Bear was actually really fast, so good job guys!
1st place trainer: Kevin Crossman (X Gym). Kevin isn’t actually a trainer, but that’s OK. X Gym still got the award. Jesse is a spin instructor in Chicago, so technically he won this award, but that still would have given us the award, since he was on the X Gym Friends and Alumni team.
1st place gym: X Gym
I should also mention that between the two X Gym teams, we won 8 of the top 10 overall best times, and: (more…)
Most people think of food when the word Thanksgiving is uttered. Their next thought is usually about family and who they will be with. Unfortunately, most people surveyed have negative associations with holiday family gatherings and focus mostly on what they can do to avoid conflicts, uneasy dynamics and tension. These associations are also tied to food patterns, so family gatherings can cause an unhealthy emotional chain of events that result in unhealthy eating and overindulgence.
The reason for such a reaction is because food is medicine. We medicate our brains with food. Certain foods (i.e fast carbs, sugar and starches) do make us feel better in the moment, but cause us to feel worse soon after. Food is the most powerful drug there is, and some foods are even more addictive than cocaine.
The good news is that food addictions have a physical component that last only 3 days or less, so as far as your cells are concerned, they don’t crave it for long after they stop getting a certain food. The psychological component on the other hand, takes longer to break, especially if it is tied to patterns associated with family, established over long periods of time.
This psychological aspect can easily be overcome though. One extremely effective technique is to crowd your mind with (more…)
