September 27, 2016

Very few people have ever decided that they are going to just throw up their hands, decide that whatever happens happens, and just choose to stay sick and broken down and headed for an early grave.

But at the same time, the evidence is there that a big chunk of our culture has done just that.

We eat terribly. We’re addicted to distraction. We spend enough of our lives not moving around to the point that movement becomes difficult—if not impossible—later in life.

And, any commercial break during any TV show at any time of day shows how much encouragement we are getting from the corporations intent on selling us more and more of this lifestyle that’s killing us quicker than we could ever hope to manage on our own.

So, how do we fix it? How can you, today, start making better nutritional choices to feel better, live better, and simply be better?

I’m glad you asked. It’s not nearly as hard as you might think.

1. Look at What You’re Eating

The best way to get as many calories (and toxic chemicals, empty carbs, and stuff that isn’t even food to begin with) through your mouth and down into your body is to just shovel it mindlessly in.

It’s like the old adage: If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. In this case, if all you’re eating is food from a bag or a box, then everything looks like food.

Which, of course, it isn’t.

Instead, if you choose your food mindfully—and then eat it in the same way—you are quickly going to become aware of what, exactly, it is that you’re eating.

And with everything you eat, ask yourself this question: Is this helping my body or hurting it? People know a Double Whopper with bacon-flavored cheese isn’t good for you. But, what if you thought about it in this way: If I continued to eat this, every day, would it help me or hurt me?

The answer is obvious. And if you keep that question in mind when both choosing and consuming food, you’ll be a lot more enlightened about what exactly is going into your body.

Just shovel it in. Seriously. Whatever it is, just eat it.

2. Eat Plants.

It’s really that simple. Plants are healthy. They have almost all the nutrition inside them that you will ever need. Vitamins. Minerals. Fiber. A whole array of nutrients.

And the best way to start introducing more plants into your diet is to do just that. Introduce them.

Don’t take anything else out of your diet. Eat what you’re eating now. But add in two servings of vegetables to every meal. For those of us who aren’t keen on counting, think about it this way: For every meal, half your plate should be vegetables. You like Twinkies? Fine. Keep eating Twinkies. But also add in some broccoli, or carrots, or (if you want to get fancy) a rutabaga. Whatever.

Just fill up half your plate with whatever vegetable you choose.

After a while of not feeling so horrid from dawn until dusk, you’re body is going to adapt. It’s going to want those vegetables. Like a truck you’ve been filling up with maple syrup for the past decade that now has a taste of what it feels like to run on premium gasoline, you’re going to be surprised at how much you won’t miss the garbage.

Don’t eat them. Don’t think about them. Don’t even look at them. Pretend they are all poisonous. (Because let’s face it… they are). 

3. Quit Frying things.

Seriously. Just stop it. No more frying your food.

Oil just adds calories. You can still use your frying pans, but use them for steaming or sautéing. Or, if the temptation is too much, take all your frying pans and make decorative planters out of them. Or give your cat a little treat in the form of a much wider, slightly shallower, and be-handled new watering dish. Or fill them up with soil and start growing sprouts for all the salads you are going to look forward to eating in the future once your veins de-grease themselves and your body is more animal than off-shore oil well.

4. Understand Why You Eat What You Do

This is a big one.

A lot of why we eat isn’t from nutritional deficit, but instead because we feel a certain way.

Happy? Grab an Oreo.

Sad? Grab a Double-stuff Oreo.

The food we eat often has very little to do if we’re hungry or not. A lot of people (and I used to be this way, so don’t accuse me of getting preachy on you) just eat out of simple boredom.

An Oreo in our culture is legitimately just something to do.

Being mindful about WHY you eat, on the other hand, puts the nutritional factorial back into the equation. If you are upset and start reaching into the snack cabinet, take a breath, and ask yourself why your hand is currently wrapped around a Ho-Ho. Are you hungry, really? Or are you eating out of emotion?

Eating mindfully is one of those habits that can make a big difference very quickly. We have members that come into the program that have legitimately never once thought about WHY they eat what they eat. And once that lightbulb goes on above their heads, you can see the change almost visibly in their faces.

Once you get it, you get it. And then, combined with the other steps on this list, eating starts becoming something life-giving and rewarding, and not a mindless exercise in chewing.

What steps do you want to take to begin eating better? Let us know in the comment section below!

The post 4 Things You Can Do Nutritionally RIGHT NOW to Improve Your Life appeared first on Wellness Training Institute.

September 13, 2016

When most people hear the words “eliminate” and “diet” together, they think of deprivation. They think about giving up all the foods they currently eat. They picture a grey wasteland of bland foodstuffs and unfed cravings.

They think of misery.

What an elimination diet actually entails, though, is far less severe.

And the benefits of doing one are nothing short of miraculous.

How it Works

Given your current habits and symptoms of illness, a good nutrition coach is going to be able to look at all the evidence and pinpoint certain things that are causing havoc in your system. Dairy, gluten, soy, peanuts, corn tomatoes and other nightshade vegetables—all of these are common system triggers.

But we’d never go after all of them all at once.

Instead, it’s a systematic, scientific and gradual process.

After determining some of the types of foods that could be causing you problems, we choose one and eliminate it.

If it’s dairy, then obviously we eliminate milk, cheese, etc.

Instead of taking it out altogether and leaving you curled up in the fetal position with fever-dreams about never tasting a milkshake ever again, we supplement all things dairy with nutritious, delicious substitutions.

And even if that still sounds terrible, here’s the thing:

Once we pinpoint the triggering food (or foods) and they’ve been out of your system for a few weeks, it’s amazing how much better you will feel.

It’s a biological truth: Take out the stuff that’s causing the problem and the body automatically starts working at a far more optimized level. By which I mean: You will feel better.

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!

Knowing How You Feel

And that’s where things start getting fun. After the cravings are gone (which don’t last that long, maybe a week or two at most) and you start to understand how it actually feels to not feel terrible all the time, that triggering food won’t appeal to you anymore.

We have this sense in this culture that cravings are some natural feeling. That they will persist no matter how long you stay away from the particular object of those cravings.

But it just doesn’t work that way. The cravings go away and new, better habits take their place. Cravings are simply another word for “habits.” Your body doesn’t like to change the way it operates and when you force it towards new directions, initially it baulks. But that doesn’t last.

The Other Side

Most of our elimination diets at the Wellness Training Institute last for six weeks or so. At that point, we can start putting some of the potentially problem-causing foods back into the rotation. You try them again, see how your body reacts, and then the decision becomes easy.

If you aren’t sensitive to it and your body is fine eating, say, tomatoes, then awesome! Eat tomatoes.

But if your body rejects that potential trigger again, then you’ll know it. You’ll also know how poorly it makes you feel.

At that point it’s your decision: Eat it and feel terrible, or don’t eat it and feel great.

Because, now that you’ve gone through the elimination diet, you know what it feels like to feel great.

After that, it’s just a choice. And I’ve met very few people who, once they understand how it feels to ACTUALLY FEEL GREAT, ever choose to go back to their old, miserable lives.

The post Feeling it Out: The Power of the Elimination Diet appeared first on Wellness Training Institute.

September 1, 2016

Life can be overwhelming. Jobs, families, the daily grind of just being alive.

It can be hard.

That’s why it takes an intentional plan to keep yourself centered and calm. So much of our lives are spent just reacting to things. In order to be healthy, we need to flip that equation and plan our days out to be proactive in the face of whatever stressors come our way. It sounds strange to speak about staying centered, calm, at peace as work—but that’s really exactly what it is.

So much of what we do lies in the overlap between our minds and the rest of the world. How we think and feel about the world determines, in a very real way, how we live our lives. Adding powerful habits into your daily flow can have life-changing effects on all aspects of your health.

Here are 7 ways to take action and optimize your daily routine for optimum health.

1. Gratitude Journal

Spending a few minutes each morning writing down three things you are grateful is no small thing. It’s easy, yes, but the impact is enormous. It’s so important, in fact, that this is one of the first habits we begin building in our members at The Wellness Training Institute. Before dietary stuff, before breathing and meditation, before anything.

The reason for this is because a Gratitude Journal does (at least) two key things.

One, it gets your mind set for the day. Even if you’ve gotten up on the wrong side of the bed that morning, focusing on tangible positives in your life will get you calibrated to spend the rest of the day looking for silver linings despite whatever storms might be looming.

Secondly, it’s an easy habit to build. And once you get this habit down, you’re able to build other healthy habits on top of it.

So, take five minutes each morning for the next two weeks and write down three things you are grateful for. It’s that simple.

(To learn more about why a Gratitude Journal is such an amazing tool, check out this post.)

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!

2. Lunchtime Meditation

You don’t have to be the Dalai Lama to meditate. No mountain tops required.

Here’s the deal: Meditation sounds like this big scary thing. It sounds hard. It sounds boring. It also might sound like something that someone like you wouldn’t ever do.

The reality, though, is that meditation is really just focused on two things:

One, meditation is about what we call “mindful breathing.” This is the simple action of concentrating on your breath as you inhale and exhale.

Breathing correctly can relieve — if not eliminate altogether — our depression and anxiety. Our minds are constantly under attack from our senses, our thoughts run crazy, and distraction is the norm. Breathing correctly puts all of this back in balance, grounds us, and puts our bodies at ease.

Two, meditation has a lot to do with cultivating awareness. This is simply the act of sitting with your thoughts, observing them, putting space between them. You separate out all the thoughts you have, as they come, focus on how they connect, how they make you feel. And with each one, once you’ve seen it for what it is, you release it and allow the next one to come.

Meditation, at its foundation, is just combing these two things—mindful breathing and cultivating awareness.

Simply set aside ten minutes in your day to find a quiet spot, close your eyes, breathe deeply, and relax with your thoughts.

3. Time Out Your Breath

Breathing is the foundation of a healthy life. Without air, you literally die. And learning how to breathe the right way is one of the most important steps you can take in your health journey.

The key is to get it positioned inside your day as something that eventually becomes a habit.

Here’s a great way to do that:

Set a timer for a few times a day. Whenever the timer goes off, take ten deep body breaths.

It’s that simple.

Commit to this technique, and you’ll be surprised how more relaxed you feel throughout the day. It makes a huge difference.

4. Schedule Your Calm

Another habit to begin to develop within your daily routine is to be very mindful of what points in your schedule allow you to kind of “get away” and do something relaxing.

Your drive home from work or the store, for example, could be a good time to shut out the distractions and be alone with your thoughts. (Provided, of course, that you can do this and still navigate, you know, traffic.)

Scheduling out a walk after dinner, or in the morning before you jump full bore into your day, could also be a good way to find some peace and work through your thoughts and feelings.

Whatever you choose to do, just do it. Schedule it in and commit to it.

5. Retrain Your Triggers

Remember that Pavlov guy and his dogs? By teaching his pooches to connect in their minds the sound of a bell with a bowl of kibble, he found he could get them to salivate on cue.

You can do the same thing with your stressors (minus the drool).

Here’s how it works:

Figure out one of your stressors. For this example, let’s say it’s a phone call from your boss.

Next, attach a sound to that stressor. In this case, it would be the sound your phone makes when he calls you.

Take that sound and use it as the timer we used in #3 above. Whenever you hear that sound, you do something relaxing (like take 10 deep body breaths, for example).

Do this for a few days. Within a week you’ll find that the very sound of the phone will trigger your body to begin to relax. So when your boss calls, instead of your sympathetic nervous system turning your head into a pressure cooker, your body will automatically relax, allowing you to deal with what you need to from a proactive position of calm.

6. Remind Yourself to be Happy

Negativity is a feedback loop. A couple things go wrong, your mood starts to go south, and before you know it, you’re caught in a self-perpetuating cycle of GRUMP.

Being mindful about taking a few moments out of each day to remind yourself to be HAPPY (because, after all, happiness really is a choice) can work wonders in keeping your spirits up and ready to face the next challenge.

Schedule it in. Stick to it. And soon it will become a habit.

7. Two Good/Two Bad/Let Go

How a particular morning starts off often has a lot to do with how you closed down your day the night before. If you go out binge drinking in the evening, for example, you’re almost guaranteeing a rough start to tomorrow. It works in a positive sense as well.

At the end of each day, write down two good things that happened that day.

Next, write down two things you wish you’d done better. Forgive yourself. Commit to yourself that you’ll try better tomorrow.

Finally, write down two things you’d like to accomplish the next day.

Then close the book on the day. Let go of it all. It’s all history now and tomorrow is a new day.

Shut it down for the night, get a great night’s sleep, and then get up again tomorrow, one day closer to the calm, centered, healthy life you’ve always longed for!

The post How to Optimize Your Daily Routine for Optimum Health appeared first on Wellness Training Institute.

August 30, 2016

When people say they’re on a “diet,” what do they actually mean?

For most people it means losing weight. “Diet” and “weight loss” have been inextricably linked in our culture, mainly because of the last 50 years of advertising campaigns.

Which is really a shame.

Because what “diet” really means is whatever a species happens to be eating.

Get Real

The way it’s used commonly now makes it sound like a punishment. Like you’ve done something bad and now have to punish yourself through restriction.

The way we ought to approach diet is to look at what food we’re eating.

That sounds overly simplistic, but stay with me here, because there’s a significant distinction to be made when it comes to food.

Because a lot of what we eat as a culture isn’t actually food.

The actual definition of food is “anything that sustains growth and repairs tissue.”

So, an apple, for instance, is mostly comprised of food. Most of what makes up an apple can be broken down by your body for use in cellular growth and repair, or serves as roughage to keep all the different channels clean.

A Big Mac, on the other hand, is made up of a little bit of food. I’m sure there are some vitamins and minerals floating around in that small lake of secret sauce. Your digestive juices might happen upon a few stray protein strands. You might even find a complex carb or two that happened to fall out of the sky and adhere to a plastic poppy seed. But most of what’s going into your body isn’t food.

It’s stuff.

But not food.

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 One Question

The best way to think about food—and about diet as a whole—is to ask yourself this one question: If I eat this over a long period, is it going to bring me life or lead to death?

And as far as figuring out what to eat, if you let that question guide your dietary choices, you aren’t going to have to worry about cutting calories or drinking nothing but lemon-flavored water for the next three weeks.

It’s amazing how well the body adapts when you view food in the right way. The weight comes off. The belly fat disappears. The sicknesses you’ve lived with for decades begin to fade… and then disappear altogether.

The body is a miracle in a lot of ways. Its capacity to repair itself is one of the most magnificent.

You just have to feed it real food.

The post The End of Real Food: Hijacking the Word “Diet” appeared first on Wellness Training Institute.

August 23, 2016

There seem to be a lot of things out there these days that can kill us: Pollution, global warming, terrorism, super-bacteria… the list is long.

But if you look at what really poses dangers for us, statistically speaking, it’s how we choose to live day-to-day.

According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC) the top five preventable killers in the United States are heart disease, cancer, lung disease (like emphysema and chronic bronchitis), stroke and unintentional correctly-prescribed medication overdoses.

Each of these don’t just happen to us out of the blue. Instead, they are often a result of our habits. Smoking, obesity, lack of exercise, a diet high in…well, garbage.

So it makes sense that one of the first things you’d want to do to get yourself healthy and stay there is change the habits that pose the most risk… and replace them with healthier ones.

But change is hard. Or, at least, it is if you don’t have the right information. You can’t take any steps toward forming new habits unless you know where to start.

At the Wellness Training Institute, we teach our members to begin at the beginning. Which is: Nutrition.

Why Nutrition?

What do you think of when you hear the word nutrition?

Most people’s minds jump straight to food. Which is true.

But that’s not the whole story.

Nutrition, at its most basic level, is defined as the act of getting sustenance from what’s around you. And it’s not limited to just food. Breathing, for instance, is nutrifying yourself with the things in the air that sustain you. Cultivating a sense of awareness around both your body and your environment works to nutrify your thoughts.

Before you begin figuring out how to replace your bad habits with good ones, you need to understand that everything you do for your health has to be a step toward nutrition.

Nutrition is about creating a relationship with the earth’s energy. It’s also about connecting with your own body.

What’s interesting about viewing your health in this way is that it makes it very clear that, within every moment, you are always either moving toward life or toward death. There is no middle ground. That kale leaf is a signpost toward life. That cigarette moves you three more inches towards death. There’s no such thing in life as stasis. Everything is moving, all the time, one way or the other.

When you learn to gain sustenance from gaining energy from the earth, from your food, your breath, even your thoughts, you are effectively choosing life over death with each passing second.

You don’t consciously choose to do this, or at least not all the time. Often, you make choices without even thinking about them.

What I’m talking about are, of course, habits.

Habits dictate whether you are working toward life or toward death.

Which brings up the question: How do you form the type of habits that can get you healthy and keep you there?

Here are three great suggestions to get you started:

1. Awareness

One of the most valuable things you can do for your health is to create a sense of awareness. What this means, in its simplest form, is that you let the world quiet down around you and listen to what your body is telling you.

The reason for why this is important is simple: You don’t know what your habits are unless you take a little time and figure that out.

And you can’t identify the bad habits until you know what they are.

The best way to begin building this awareness is to start a journal. Write down what you do every day. Write down what you eat. Write down how the food makes you feel. Write down your thoughts. Start each day writing three things you’re grateful for in a gratitude journal.

This seems like a small, insignificant thing. But we’ve found that documenting what you do and how you’re feeling each day gets your mind right—and your thoughts nutrified—in ways that can’t be accomplished in any other way.

You’ll be amazed at how many things you do without even thinking about it.

You’ll also be amazed at how easy this habit is to form and how effective it is as a foundation for building better habits upon it.

2. Surround Yourself with Nutritious People

This is not a call to become a cannibal. I promise.

(You shouldn’t even be eating meat, let alone people meat.)

Instead, it’s the idea that negative people and toxic relationships can have a huge impact on your ability to start and maintain healthy habits.

Just like you would eliminate certain foods that might be wreaking havoc with your digestive system, in the same way you should put a little distance between friends, family members, and co-workers (to the point that that’s possible) for a little while. You’re not shunning them entirely and forever. Instead, you’re just giving yourself a little space to begin to let your emotions heal and seeking out more positive people to spend time with.

After a while, as with an elimination food diet, you can begin adding those negative people back into your life after you’ve gotten healthier.

And, who knows? Maybe some of your positive energy will spark a desire to change in them as well!

3. Find What Energizes You

One of the problems with starting out on a “diet” or trying to get healthy is that it can often feel like you’re reinventing the wheel. You’re eating different, strange food. You’re forcing your body to move in ways it’s not used to. You’re cutting out all the things that gave your life structure before and sort of flying blind.

The end result, as you’ve probably experienced, isn’t health. Instead, it’s frustration.

One of the ways you can prevent this from happening—and form some great habits along the way—is take a look at what you documented in the first step above, find what healthy actions you are already doing, and then just double down on them.

Chances are, those healthy habits are going to be things that you enjoy. If you eat a salad three times a week, start eating six instead. If you take a walk a few times a week, begin working a walk into your routine daily. If you find yourself vegging out in front of the TV every evening, take a half hour of that time to sit in silence and practice awareness.

The point is this: You don’t have to change everything all at once. In fact, you shouldn’t, because that’s not how we as humans are built. We have habits for a reason. The goal is always to maintain what’s good and then add more of that.

Health is not a baby-with-the-bathwater proposition. It’s gradual, deliberate, and—baby step by baby step—transformative.

I hope these three ideas for beginning to form healthy habits meets you where you are on your health journey. I also hope you’ll take them to heart.

Health isn’t an end goal. Instead it’s a path toward wholeness. And every little habit counts along the way.

The post How to Develop New Habits that Transform Your Life appeared first on Wellness Training Institute.

July 19, 2016

Sugar is addictive. Science is clear and in agreement about this.

A researcher named Dr. Serge Ahmad did an experiment a few years back where he gave mice sugar water and water with dissolved cocaine in it.

In that study, 94% of the mice continually went back for more…. of the sugar water.

You read that right.

Sugar is at least—if not more so—addictive than cocaine.

And above and beyond being simply addictive, it’s also one of the main things driving the obesity, autoimmune, and heart disease epidemics currently running roughshod through our culture.

So, it’s probably pretty obvious that cutting down on our refined sugar intake—or eliminating it altogether—would be a good thing for our health.

But, that’s easier said than done. We’re addicted to it, after all.

So, here are six ways to kick sugar—and take back your health.


PUNT ON PROCESSED FOODS
Back in 1977, the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) published their “low-fat diet guidelines” and recommended it to all Americans. The graph below shows pretty clearly that this was the EXACT MOMENT that the obesity epidemic in this country started.

Why?

Because when the food industry began to produce foods that were low in fat, the public balked because the food tasted terrible.

So, to make it palatable— and, oh right, profitable— they filled in the gaps where the fat used to be with two things: Salt and sugar.

And the epidemic started in full.

Which is why you should give up processed foods for good. If it comes in a bag or a box, don’t eat it. When you go to the grocery store, shop only around the perimeter of the store. That’s where they keep the healthy stuff.

READ THE LABELS
If you’re going to ignore my last point and still find yourself wandering toward the inner aisles of the grocery store, at least go in there with a little knowledge. You should at least know how to identify how much sugar is in what you’re buying. That’s what the labels are for.

So, it should be easy. Look for “sugar” in the print and then make sure there’s a only single digit before the “g” in grams. Simple, right?

Except… labels aren’t always exactly as forthcoming as we’d probably prefer.

For example: There are fifty-six names for sugar.

Fifty-six.

It’s nuts how far the food industry will go to hide the fact that they’ve got you addicted to sugar, and that they only make a profit by making you more and more addicted to it.

Here’s a great infographic from Woman’s Health… use this as a guide the next time you’re looking for what to buy at the grocery store:

You know what liars do? They call a particular thing by different names. The list above is a way to decode those lies.

Because, as you learned when you were four, lying is decidedly not sweet. Not sweet at all.

IDENTIFY YOUR TRIGGERS
In your quest to avoid refined sugars, one of the most important things that you need to understand from the start is that certain things are going to trigger the craving.

It’s going to be different for everyone, but here are a few common triggers:

+ Coffee
+ Tea
+ Anything high in saturated fats
+ Dairy
+ Stress
+ Etc.

Knowing what’s going to set off your own cravings is an important step. So, identify these as early in the process as possible, and thereby set yourself up for success.

PRIORITIZE YOUR FRUIT
All fruit is not created equal. Fruit contains sugar, of course, but it also contains a lot of other good stuff. And, just like with any other decision that you make in life, you need to find the right balance.

So, in deciding which fruit to eat, it’s a good idea to figure out which fruits are giving you the most good stuff—and the least bad stuff.

Here’s a great list of fruits—ranked from 32 to 1. It factors in calories, sugar content, fiber, antioxidants, and specific levels of vitamins and nutrients.

(Here’s the sneak peak: Blackberries, raspberries, avocados, guava, and strawberries are at the top, meaning “good”; grapes, figs, and bananas round out the bottom, meaning “not-so good.”)

AVOID SUGAR SUBSTITUTES
The main workaround the food industry has given us as consumers for avoiding the sugar that they put in everything is the introduction of “sugar substitutes.” These artificial sweeteners come to us under a variety of names: saccharine, aspartame, and sucralose, to name just a few.

While the medical community, as recently as the the mid-1990s, saw the potential for using these substitutes to get us all off sugar, the real dangers of these chemicals are now coming to light.

New evidence, for example, shows that people who frequently consume sugar substitutes may be at an increased risk of excessive weight gain, metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.

Oh, and also… these chemicals are LITERALLY neurotoxins.

Which means: Artificial sweeteners are actually worse for you than sugar.

Blue? Pink? Yellow?

The color doesn’t matter. They’re all killing you at the same (rapid) rate.

UNDERSTAND YOUR SWEETNESS EXPERIENCE
Your tongue experiences five specific types of taste: saltiness, bitterness, umami, sourness, and sweetness. But that doesn’t mean that all sweetness tastes the same.

It’s incredible to talk to people who’ve gotten off refined sugar entirely. They all say the exact same thing:

Not only do they no longer crave sugar, they also understand “sweetness” in a different way.

Compared to a Dairy Queen Ice Cream cake, a carrot isn’t all that sweet. But once you kick the sugar habit, carrots (and so many other vegetables) taste incredibly sweet.

The skinny here is that our bodies have been evolutionarily set up to want sugar. The reason for this is because our ancestors—that is, the humans who survived without getting gored by an angry pack of woolly mammoths—sought out the highest energy sources. And those were the sweetest fruits and vegetables they could find. The ones that went for the foods with lower-sugar levels didn’t have the same level of energy— and paid for it evolutionarily.

But—and this is a big but—even though our bodies need sugar to function, that doesn’t mean that we were designed to take in the levels of refined sugar that we currently do.

In 1900, for example, the average American consumed 5 pounds of sugar per year.

In 2000, that number jumped to 150.

That has to change. We’re literally killing ourselves.

But also know this: giving up sugar doesn’t mean that you’ll be craving it all day long for the rest of your life. Instead, you’ll discover that the cravings go away after a week or two, and that the healthy foods you’ve put in as replacements will taste better than you could’ve ever imagined.

I hope you’ll take these simple ways to avoid refined sugar to heart as you look to get out of the rut of negative, destructive habits. Your future—and I’m not exaggerating this in any way—depends on it.

If you need a little guidance, or just want some company as you continue on your health journey, I invite you to join us for a FREE and highly informative dinner.

The post 6 Sweet Ways to Shake Off Sugar appeared first on Wellness Training Institute.

July 6, 2016

Let’s do a little thought experiment:

Let’s say you eat really well—a wide variety of plants, avoiding sugar, dairy, and all the stuff that would otherwise be killing you slowly.

Let’s say you exercise for forty-five minutes a day.

Your body is working fantastically.

But…

You are also essentially the modern equivalent of an early 20th century robber-baron. You are a jerk to people. You cheat your customers. Your main concern is your own bottom line.

Are you healthy?

The answer, of course, is no.

And here’s why: health—wellness—is a holistic thing. No matter how many good, healthy habits you’ve developed, if you’re an asshole to the people around you, it’s going to catch up with you.

This, of course, is just one example. But it’s a powerful one.

Your physical health is just one cog in the system. You thoughts, emotions, and spiritual condition are just as important in the health equation.

In the same way, the process of change is equally all-encompassing.

You can’t just change your diet if you want to be healthy. It just doesn’t work. Going straight to the “diet” category when you’re looking to take back your health is skipping the first—and most important—step.

Which is: Cultivating Awareness.

Here’s why:

SEEING THE WHOLE PICTURE
You are a person. Which means that you live in this universe. Which, in turn, means that you operate according to its laws, whether you want to or not. So, to truly operate on a healthy level, you have to find balance. Within yourself. Within this universe.

As humans, we tend to compartmentalize things. We think about what we eat as being separate from how we breathe. We think about our physical health as something different than our mental health. We think about all these different things as pieces of a puzzle, ignoring the gorgeous, breath-taking landscape they make when all those pieces are put together.

So, the first step in developing healthy habits is to cultivate awareness.

OK, GREAT. HOW DO I CULTIVATE AWARENESS?
Here are two simple—but very effective— way to begins cultivating this awareness.

1. First, watch yourself for a full day. In the morning, first thing, close your eyes and take a deep breath. When you exhale, the exercise starts.

Imagine yourself floating above yourself, observing. When you eat breakfast, observe what you eat and ask, “Why am I eating this?” As you go about your daily routine, question why you are doing a particular thing at a particular time. When you talk to others, listen to what you are saying: Why do you say what you say? How do your words affect the other person? How do their words affect you? What are you really trying to accomplish with what you’re saying?

When you do something—anything—ask yourself, why are you doing this? How does it make you feel?

Do this for one whole day. I promise that you’ll be surprised by what you find out about yourself—and your place within the universe.

The second exercise to begin cultivating awareness goes like this:

2. Find somewhere quiet to sit. Keep your back straight. Close your eyes. Now, take a breath.

As you inhale make a cartoon image of that breath. Give it shape and color. Now, watch as that breath fills your lungs. Let it expand throughout your body, from the top of your head to the tips of your big toes. Let that image fill you.

Savor that breath as if it’s a $10,000 bottle of wine. Appreciate it for everything it is.

This is your life force, the one thing that you can’t live without for more than a few minutes.

It’s essential in a way nothing else is. Your breath is the first thing you take in when you are born. It’s the last thing you let go of when you die.

Then, as you exhale, watch as that cartoon breath leaves your body—up from your toes, down through your neck, back in to your lungs, and then out through your mouth. Imagine that breath escaping, leaving your body and flooding out across the room, through the window, out across the lower edge of the sky, touching hills, fields, lakes and streams, moving out across the world like an echo. Watch as the breath slowly dissipates, losing shape slowly, the edges going first. Then watch as it disappears slowly, but completely, its molecules joining with those of the universe itself.

Then repeat.

HEALTH IS A HABIT
Developing a habit of health is really, when you get right down to it, developing a habit of excellence. And that only happens when we are able to synchronize ourselves with the rhythms of the universe.

In our modern culture we’re conditioned to move quickly. There’s always something to do, some distraction, some obligation. We’re in a car traveling 80 miles per hour.

But what happens when we slow that car down to, say, 3 miles per hour? The world comes into a focus. We see things the way that they are. The blur clarifies. We notice things. Beautiful things. Wonderful things.

Here’s another way to look at what cultivating awareness really means.

Imagine you are in a forest. You are surrounded by trees. As you walk you hear birds, but don’t see them. As you walk you hear birds,

But then you com to a clearing. You sit down. You keep very, very still.

And then it happens:

A few squirrels scamper past, closer than you’d imagine. A few rabbits appear. And then a fawn, reddish-brown and still wobbly in its newness, wanders into view. It looks at you and you look back. And that moment is filled with wonder.

Good things happen when we slow down. It’s literally the first step in cultivating healthy habits. The reason for this is because it forces us to see us how we are—what we are, what we say, why we do what we do without even thinking about it.

Change can only begin when we identify what needs changed. Simply trying to “eat better” won’t get us very far. But understanding what we eat—and how it makes us feel—forces to own up to a lot of things that we normally wouldn’t even notice.

The great thing about awareness is that once a bad habit is identified—and we understand the why behind it—we can change it, slowly, step by step. And after awhile, that good habit become the thing we do without even thinking about it (which is, I guess, the same thing as saying that the good habit becomes your habit).

Awareness, at its core, allows us to figure out what’s good. Knowing what’s good allows you to choose good.

And it is a choice.

If you’re interested in learning more about cultivating awareness and developing good habits, come join us for a free dinner. Here at the Wellness Training Institute we’ve made it our mission to teach people to get out of the cycle of disease and dysfunction and take back their health.

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