March 22, 2018

Here at the Wellness Training Institute, we’re incredibly excited about the recent launch of our Executive Health Coaching Program.

Like our other programs, it’s designed to guide you step-by-step, no matter how dire your health situation might be, through the process of reversing and preventing lifestyle diseases and building the necessary habits to create lasting health.

Unlike our other programs, though, the Executive Health Coaching Program is tailored specifically for the fast-paced, high-pressure lives of leaders operating at the top tiers of their particular industries.

We’ve helped many of these leaders through our other programs, so we understand their unique situations. But we also realized that we needed to create a program that took our tried and true processes used in our other programs to the next level.

(For more on the story of how this program came about, click here.)

So, Here’s how it works.

If you’ve achieved massive success in every area of your life except your health, and you’re ready to make the change, click here to watch a short video and register for your 30-minute Goal-Planning Session.

During this session, we’ll get to know each other, discover what your health goals are, and see if we’re a good fit. We never make promises we can’t keep, so this last section of the call is very important.

If we are a good fit—and you’re ready for the challenge—we’ll tailor a custom plan that ensures you’ll have a clear path forward toward accomplishing your goals.

Each person is different, so each plan will be unique, but each plan will address the five pillars of health: Nutrition, fitness, detoxification, hormone testing, and stress reduction with an emphasis on the nervous system.

From there, we’ll guide you through the entire program—which generally runs for six to nine months. How that interaction happens is going to depend on your specific situation. Whatever you need, we’ll ensure you get it. We can work toward your goals in person, or we can do it remotely by means of our virtual training sessions.

Amazing Results

We’ve seen massive success with this program already, and we’re excited to continue to help successful leaders hit—and even exceed!—their health goals. I can’t guarantee your success—you have to do the work—but I can promise one thing: our whole team will walk with you through the entire process. We’re dedicated to being available at any time, for any reason.

Our goal is to give you the tools to take back your health not just in the short term, but instead for the rest of your life. Through the Executive Health Coaching Program, you’ll walk away with everything you need to be healthy for the rest of your life.

So, if you’re ready for the challenge, click here to register for your free 30-minute Goal-Setting Session and take that first step in regaining your health and living your best life! 

The post How the Executive Health Coaching Program Works appeared first on Wellness Training Institute.

October 10, 2017

The most important question you can ask for your health is a very simple one…

“Energy,” especially when it comes to the body, is one of those topics that get pretty hippy-dippy pretty quickly, depending on who’s explaining it to you.

But take a step back for a moment and think. What causes you to move throughout the day? How does your brain communicate things to the rest of your body? How do your muscles move?

The answer? Energy. Electrical energy, in fact.

Are you ready to lose weight… FOR GOOD? Register for our FREE Wellness Dinner Seminar and learn how here.

If you remember back to seventh-grade science, energy exists in two states. Potential energy is the energy that’s stored up. It’s not doing much of anything except sitting there. Kinetic energy, however, is the energy that is in motion. It’s the life force that powers everything from the miraculous microbes in your gut to the distant stars growing in strength and brightness by the moment.

THE MEANING OF LIFE

Philosophers have been at work for centuries attempting to figure out the meaning of life. And while that’s still an open question, I’m convinced that energy factors into it. Namely, we’re supposed to tap into our kinetic energy and, well, move.

If you take a look at the diabetes and obesity epidemics in our country, you see a lot of potential energy. A lot of stagnation, and very little growth and change (apart from our waistlines, which, c’mon, that doesn’t count.)

Growth is one of the six basic human needs (along with, according to Tony Robbins, Certainty, Variety, Significance, Love and Connection, and Contribution.)

And growth is just another example of kinetic energy.

We are designed to change. To grow. To become wiser, healthier, better.

We’re not designed just to sit back and let the world happen to us. That’s a recipe, quite literally, for disease. For death.

So, you have a choice. We all have a choice. We can continue to commit slow suicide by eating the junk we’ve always eaten, spend our time avoiding the problems that come standard with each human life, to exist in toxic relationships with those around us, and keep remaining in a state of potential energy.

It’s Newton’s first law of motion. Whatever state of motion (or lack thereof) you’re in will continue until something pushes it in a different direction.

And honestly, I see the consequences of remaining in this state of stagnation every single day. It doesn’t end well.

But, again, Newton gives us the key. Allow that other force to move you towards growth and change, and you’ll find health and happiness.

What’s Your “Why”?

And what’s that other force? What’s your “why” for getting healthy and staying that way?

For some, it’s knowing that your loved ones need you. For others it’s waking up one morning and deciding that enough is enough and it’s time to live. For some that “why” reveals itself when they catch a clear, terrifying vision of the future if they continue to stay the same.

Any of these reasons are perfectly valid for deciding to change your life and seize happiness.

Watch a video on choosing life each moment of every day below!

Or listen here…

The post Kinetic Energy and the Meaning of Life appeared first on Wellness Training Institute.

August 4, 2016

One of the things that sort of drives me nuts when I see a Facebook ad about getting healthy is how narrow the perspective is.

For example:

Does losing six pounds per week necessarily make you healthy?

Probably not.

Or, at least, not in isolation.

WHAT HEALTH REALLY MEANS
We’ve gotten so far away from what health means in this country that ads like this can just pass us by in our daily feed scrolling that no real red flags come up.

Which is why, at the Wellness Training Institute, our approach to health is holistic. Health is an all encompassing thing.

Is it changing our diets so that we can lose weight and belly fat? Sure.

But it’s also learning how to breathe, how to move, how to get our thoughts in order, and how to just—well—be.

It’s about getting our bad habits shoved to the side and replaced with good ones.

Which is the main reason that when we begin working with someone—no matter where they are on their health journey, no matter how old they are, no matter what their end goals might be—we to start with a gratitude journal.

THE GRATITUDE JOURNAL
You’re probably thinking exactly what most of our members think at first.

A gratitude journal? Seriously?

Isn’t that for second graders? What possible good could writing down what’s going well in my life do when all I want is to get my weight under control, my heart disease reversed, or my diabetes managed?

So, I get it. But stay with me for a second.

Nothing exists in isolation. No matter how independent you might consider yourself, you still came from somewhere, you had two parents, you live somewhere now, you have to eat food and drink water and breathe air to live. You are not an island.

In the same way, neither is your health. You can’t break it down into parts and attempt to reverse, say, your autoimmune disease by only treating the physical parts of it. You can’t just replace the starter in your car if the whole wiring system has been chewed bare by that nest of mice living in your carburetor.

And that’s why we start with the gratitude journal. There’s something very powerful, and very effective, about getting your thoughts and emotions pointed in the right direction before starting in on any of the other repair work.

A big part of this—and I’ll ask that you please forgive my extended car metaphor here—is that true health happens when you get the maintenance schedule in order.

You don’t keep a car running for 500,000 miles by taking it into the shop whenever something breaks.

No, you keep it running for decades by being proactive and giving it regular tune-ups.

You fix the problems by not allowing the problems to happen in the first place.

I’m talking about habits.

And because the mind—your thoughts and emotions— control so much of what the rest of your body does (often automatically, without any thought at all), starting to get that system in order is really the first step in getting the rest of the system fixed.

There are three reasons for this:

1. BEGIN AT THE BEGINNING
Firstly, change is hard. So, it’s nice to start with something simple to get the ball rolling.

How we do the gratitude journal is this: Every morning you wake up, and the first thing you do is grab a pen and the pad of paper you keep on your bed stand. You then write down five things that you’re thankful for.

Five: That’s it.

They could be the big, obvious things: friends, family, pets, etc.

Or they could be small, but vital: The air you breathe, the warm patch of bed you’re currently sitting in thanks to the sunlight streaming in through the window, the fact that you’ve been blessed to have awoken to meet another day.

It’s easy (it really is, I promise). There’s no pressure. You can even repeat yourself. It doesn’t matter. Just get it down.

You do this every day.

And soon enough, it become a habit.

Which is the whole point. Health— and sickness, for that matter— are a matter of habits. Health is one set of habits. Sickness is another.

2. AMPHIBIAN CULINARY TIPS
Which leads to the second reason for starting with the gratitude journal: Big, hard changes happen when you make a lot of little, easy ones.

It’s in the way we’re built as humans: We don’t go through complete overhauls overnight. Change—for good, or for bad—happens incrementally.

It’s the whole “frog in the cooking pot” adage. If you throw a frog into a pot of boiling water, it’s going to jump out as quickly as it can. If you put it in cold water, however, and gently let the heat rise, the frog becomes so accustomed to the gradual change in temperature that by the time it realizes it’s in trouble, it’s already being served up with whatever condiments make frog meat even slightly palatable.

(If such a thing even exists. Gross.)

So. We change slowly. That’s how we’re designed, even from the start. They don’t call them “baby steps” for nothing.

3. SETTING THE TONE FOR SUCCESS
So the gratitude journal is the first healthy habit we work to instill. It’s the first because it sets the tone for the rest.

Dave Ramsey is a pretty famous financial counselor. His systems are designed to help people pay down their debt, and his success rate is pretty impressive. Through his method, people have paid down hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt. It’s impressive.

One of the first steps in his system is to pay down the smallest credit card balance you have. It seems kind of counterintuitive at first. Why wouldn’t you tackle the big stuff first, kill those dragons, and then move on the smaller stuff after that?

The reason is a question of positive momentum.

There’s something innate within us that needs smaller successes to build out upon. We’re way more likely to get past the third step if we take the first two one at time, rather than taking all three at once.

So, by doing the easy stuff first, getting focused on the journey ahead, and then gaining that first little bit of momentum early and often, we’re far more likely to push on towards realizing our bigger, harder health goals.

That’s why the gratitude journal is such an effective way to start any change you want to make in your life—especially when it comes to your health.

Which brings us to a pretty basic question: Why do you want to be healthy? Health for its own sake isn’t a terribly valuable thing. For example, say you’re healthy and active at the age of 110, but… all your friends and family have passed on and you live alone in a cave by sea. Your physical health, at that point, isn’t worth much.

So, it makes sense that a big part of overall health also has a ton to do with your outlook on life. You could call this your mental health.

That’s what the gratitude journal does, first and foremost. It gives you a positive perspective on your life. And, after just a few days, you’ll find that because you know you have to write down something positive the next morning, you’ll begin looking for happy things. Our perspective changes so much of how we live. A positive outlook—as cheesy as it sounds—serves as the first few bricks in the foundation of your health.

And that positive foundation is where healthy habits begin to accumulate. As they accumulate, you’ll be shocked to find how great your life can be!

I hope that you’ll take these ideas to heart. You’ll be surprised at how much this one activity, done diligently over the course of the next month or so, will begin to transform the rest of your life. And if you have any questions, or want to learn more, I encourage you to join us for a free dinner!

Want more great information about the foundations of a healthy life? Download the first installment of our NEW 7-part eBook series The 7 Habits of Highly Healthful People for FREE right now, right HERE!

The post Thank Your Regular Stars: Why You Need to Start a Gratitude Journal Today appeared first on Wellness Training Institute.

June 3, 2016

Cultivating awareness is one of the most important things you can do for yourself. Just like knowledge is power, knowing yourself—what motivates you, what stresses you out, what makes you afraid, what truly makes you happy—is the first step in the journey to living your best life possible.

So, great! But… how do you do that?

Here are four simple steps to getting to know yourself—and being conscious of what is actually going on inside the complex animal that you are!

Develop a Meditation/Mindfulness Practice

We live in a world full of distractions. From the internet, your smart phone, the tv blaring in the background… the volume knob on you daily life is set to eleven by default.

That’s why it is important to learn how to sit in silence and focus inward.

It sounds like a big job, but with a little practice, you’ll see the benefits in no time.

How to do it:

Find a quiet spot. Wear some comfortable clothes. Sit and close your eyes. Breathe deeply.

Now, sit with your thoughts. Observe them. Put space between them. Understand what they are, where they are going, and focus on recognizing that your thoughts are moving you to different places.

The more you practice this, the better you’ll get at it. You’ll begin to understand how your brain—and your thoughts— affect your body—and vice versa.

Journaling

Humans are really good at making things up. Our brains fill in a lot of gaps that our memory leaves out. Which means, it’s hard to get an accurate view of what your actual habits are if you don’t write them down as they’re happening.

That’s why journaling is so important. It gives you a very accurate view of what your “normal” behaviors are.

This can take a number of forms. Food journaling is a great way to keep track of what you’re putting into your body. If you want to be healthy, it’s easy to forget that you binge-ate a box of Twinkies at 2 AM last night. In fact, your brain wants you to forget about it because otherwise you’ll feel guilty about it. It’s a cognitive dissonance issue.

So, keeping a food journal gives you both an accurate view of what you’re actually eating, and also holds you accountable to your own health, since whatever you eat you have to write down.

Exercise Journaling works in a similar way.

You can also just write down your thoughts. Knowing—and seeing—what you are thinking is a great way to get a gauge on who and where you are personally. Knowing your thoughts raises your consciousness, your awareness, and will positively impact your health.

How to do it:

Turn off your phone. Get a pad of paper or a blank journal. Schedule out a time each day to just sit for five minutes and write. Figure out a time where you know there will be no distractions. Make it as easy as possible for yourself to succeed. And don’t stress out about what you’re writing. Just get it down within the set timeframe and then move on with your day. You can look back later—hours, days, even weeks— and see what you’ve written. You’ll be surprised at how valuable this exercise is in raising your awareness.

Breathing

You can go approximately one whole month without food before you die. You can survive for three whole days without water.

Without oxygen, however, you won’t last six minutes.

That’s how important air is.

So it makes sense that learning how to breathe correctly would be vitally important to both your health and your awareness.

Believe it or not, but you’re probably not breathing correctly. Most people breath with their faces, which results in a very shallow breath. Good breathing happens from the ground up.

How to do it:

Sit or stand with good posture, keeping your back straight and your feet flat against the floor. Exhale down into the floor, concentrating on fully emptying your lungs. When you take your next breath, push your feet into the floor as you inhale. Squeeze all the way up through your body, imagining that the breath is filling you completely. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Goal Setting

Health doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It also doesn’t happen just by yourself. You need community, because community breeds accountability.

Goal setting is important for a few reasons. You’ll never get to where you want to be if you don’t know where that place is. Goal setting is also good because in the process of setting those goals, you’re also strategizing about how to get there.

How to do it:

Say your goals out loud. Write them down. Let others know what your goals are and ask them to hold you accountable to reaching them. Just getting a little air under your words makes a big difference. Set both short term and long term goals, and put realistic milestones between them. Make your goals attainable and measurable.

And then work each day to meet them!

I hope this post about how to cultivate awareness has opened your eyes a little to how important it is to understand what is going on inside of you. Meditation and yoga have been around for thousands of years for a reason. There’s something integral to who we are and how our bodies function that relates directly to our thoughts. Getting into the habit of tracking with what’s going on inside of yourself is key to living the life that you’ve always dreamed of.

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