Most everyone wants to lose at least a little weight. But fad “diets” aren’t the answer. Instead, you have to start in a completely different—and deeper—place to find real health.

I recently had a woman come to one of our Wellness Dinner Seminars. She’d been struggling with her weight and some other serious health concerns for a number of years. She was skeptical if anything would ever work for her, but she was desperate for a change. When she left the seminar, she was excited and ready to enter our Healthful Evolutions program.

But a few minutes after walking out of our office, she walked back in with a worried expression on her face.

When I asked her what was wrong, she said that she thought we had a great program but she was going to try to solve her health issues in another way. When I asked what she meant, she said that she’d talked to some people outside (who had just come to our seminar for the first time as well) and they had convinced her to try a diet they’d just read about. I didn’t press her very hard… but I did want to know what she was going to try. And honestly, I was worried she was heading down a path that would not get her to her goals.

“It’s called the Plant Paradox Diet,” she said. “My friends said it’s supposed to work.” I wished her luck and told her she was always welcome back.

That encounter has stuck with me. Honestly, it makes me sad. Why? Because I know she’s not going to find success with that—or any other—”diet.” (As an aside, if you’re interested in Dr. Stephen Grundy’s Plant Paradox Diet, as well as all the various “lectin blockers” he sells at a premium on his site, watch this—and then read this—first.)

All fad “diets” promise only one thing. That you’ll lose weight. And, often, people do lose weight… but only for a little while.

But, let’s actually dig a little deeper here.

Can losing weight help you’re overall health? Sure, in certain situations. But, does just losing weight mean that you’re healthy?

Not at all.

And that’s what made me so sad about this interaction with this woman. She needed to lose weight, of course. But the weight was just a symptom of deeper issues. And the “diet” she chose to pursue isn’t going to help with any of those underlying issues. If anything, in her situation, that fad diet is probably going to only exacerbate her underlying problems.

When you’re looking to get healthy, to be around longer for your kids, to find happiness and live life to its fullest, weight loss can never be your primary goal.

Why?

For two main reasons. First, going on a fad diet doesn’t work to begin with. And second, that’s not how we’re built as humans.

Reason #1: fad diets don’t work

For evidence why this first reason is true, take a look at the following statistics (all pulled from here):

• The average adult American attempts a fad diet four times per year
• One in four Americans give up after less than two weeks
• More than 97% of people gain the weight back within three years
• 65% of people who even “finish” the diet end up regaining at least as much back

From all of these statistics, a couple things become clear. First, Americans go on fad “diets” a lot. Now, couple that information with the fact that we are only growing more and more obese. Add in the following statistic and you’ll begin to get an idea of why weight loss can’t be your only goal:

The diet industry pulls in $61 billion annually.

Why don’t fad “diets” work? Because they’re marketed to us constantly… and then designed to fail. Every time.

Because, what would happen if they worked?

For one, we wouldn’t be, on average, trying a new one every three months. And, what’s maybe even more telling, we certainly wouldn’t be spending tens of billions of dollars on them if the first one got the weight off and kept it off.

Reason #2: Here’s How we, As People, work

For the second reason as to why weight loss can’t be your main goal when considering your options, let’s just take a quick look at how we all tick.

First, know that I have been there… so no judgement! Newton’s first law of motion goes something like this: For people sitting on the couch dipping into a family size bag of Sour Cream and Cheddar Ruffles, something has to make them get up and decide not to live that way anymore.

(I’m paraphrasing the physics here, of course, but you get the point.)

Meaning: There needs to be a reason you want to lose the weight. We need to connect to a purpose to give up the chips. Otherwise, why not? They taste good!

Now, let’s take a look at some of those potential reasons. For one, maybe summer is coming up, and you want to go to the beach. Or two, maybe that 35th high school reunion is just around the corner, and you want to shed some of the extra pounds before you see your old classmates. Whatever it is, there are plenty of (perfectly legitimate!!!) reasons to want to lose a little weight. Nothing at all wrong with that.

But here’s the question: What happens when that event is over? Nine times out of ten the answer is that you regain all the weight you lost and you’re no better—or healthier—for it.

Why? Because your goal had both a time limit and an expiration date. Once both of those are exhausted? You have no reason left to keep the weight off.

By the way, that’s what the diet industry is counting on. They love the short term. The myopic makes them tens of billions of dollars each year.

Getting back to Newton, the way we as humans work is that to change, we need a reason. And for long-term, life-long change to happen? That reason needs to be a big one.

Going on vacation matters. I totally get that.

But it’s not your ultimate WHY.

WHAT WE DO AT THE WELLNESS TRAINING INSTITUTE

That’s really what separates what we do in our programs here at the Wellness Training Institute from every other program out there.

First, we find your WHY.

And second, we focus on every part of your health. Health is more than weight loss. In fact, weight loss is really just a tiny part of it. If you’re ready to make the changes you need to make, and you do the hard work of making the changes you need to make, of course you’re going to lose weight.

But that’s not ALL you’re going to get. That’s honestly just the start.

Instead, you’re going to take a journey that will change you forever. And along the way, you’ll find happiness, life, health, and community.

Going on vacation matters. I totally get that.

But it’s not your ultimate WHY.

You’ll get out of the dieting loop. You’ll have the freedom to know what your body needs—and why.

All without depriving yourself of anything. All without having to starve yourself.

And all without having to finish your next fad diet only to have to start the cycle once again—and feel the shame the diet industry knows will bring you back, once more, with your wallet open.

You need a plan. You need support. You need a guide.

That’s how real change happens. And that’s what we offer.

The post Why Weight Loss Can’t be Your Only Goal appeared first on Wellness Training Institute.

We’ve all seen it. A very smart person who does very dumb things. The question, though, is why?

I have a friend who is a very smart, very successful guy. He’s a professor at a major university, has a successful practice on the side, and has spent his life accruing knowledge and providing guidance for everyone around him. But when it comes to his health, though, he hasn’t spent much time on himself.

A few years ago, as a result of this lack of care, he developed a form of prostate cancer. Now, of course, any cancer is a problem. But the type he developed has been shown in numerous studies to be reversible with some simple lifestyle changes.

He had two choices. He could make those lifestyle changes and, playing the odds, have a very high probability of healing himself. Or, he could have the prostate surgically removed.

When I heard about his condition, I told him that the smartest choice would be to change his lifestyle. But, ignoring me, he decided to have the prostatectomy instead. He knew the risks of the surgery and, unfortunately, is now living with those side effects.

My friend now has erectile dysfunction. He’s incontinent. He has to wear adult diapers. And his health is still poor across the board.

Side note: I recently talked to a young urologist about the complications of a prostatectomy. I asked him if a lot of people become incontinent afterward. He replied that no, most people don’t become incontinent. When I pressed him for percentages, he said, again: “Not a lot. Only about 40% have those issues afterward.”

That’s success? Three out of five people won’t have to wear Depends for the rest of their lives? I found the whole conversation even more shocking when I thought about the options again: You can have the surgery and have to work adult diapers into your weekly shopping list from now until you die…or you can just eat some vegetables.

The Answer

So, why do smart people make such stupid decisions when it comes to their health?

Here’s my honest answer…

I don’t know.

I wish I knew, but I don’t. Part of me is convinced that some really smart people think they’re overweight and sick simply because that’s the card life has dealt them. They eat like everyone else but they’re the only ones who are getting cancer or heart disease from it.

Another part of me, though, is sure that deep down everyone knows that they don’t know what they’re doing, that they really aren’t eating well even though they claim to.

I also think that there’s a disconnect between our hearts and our heads. We might understand on a rational level that we ought to make some changes so that we’re not miserable and riddled with disease. But knowing it and allowing ourselves to feel it on a level deep enough to prompt us to change are different things altogether. We make a lot of decisions—including the decision not to make a decision—out of nothing more than fear of the unknown. We tell ourselves that we’d rather die than, say, give up cheese, even for a little while.

Rationally, that’s a dumb thing to think. But emotionally? It has real power.

Whatever the answer happens to be, it is going to depend on the individual person. We’re alike in many ways. But the internal forces that drive our decisions—the big fat “WHYs” of who we are and how we choose to live our lives—can be markedly different from person to person.

And until we’re able to answer that question for ourselves, health is going to elude us. We’re not going to live freely. We’re not going to allow ourselves to be happy, to be healthy. We’re going to continue to make stupid decisions—opting for surgeries instead of eating something green with dinner, for example—and those decisions are going to steer us, quite literally, toward death.

One of the things that sets the Wellness Training Institute and our programs like Healthful Evolutions wholly apart is that along with teaching you how to live free, healthy, happy lives, we know that to get there you have to dig down and find your WHY. You have to understand why you make the choices you do. You have to identify the root of the emotions that influence the decisions you make. You have to learn habits that allow your mind to communicate with—and listen to—the rest of your body.

And you have to learn those habits in a community. You can’t do it on your own.

Built into our programs are tools to get in touch with the things that drive you. Because that’s where health starts. You need to reconnect with yourself. Because, once you do that, the future is suddenly bright. You find freedom. You find happiness. You find health. And you can begin making smart decisions about how to live the one and only life you have to its fullest.

The post Why Smart People Do So Many Stupid Things appeared first on Wellness Training Institute.

October 16, 2017

Looking to do a detox? Start here first…

Detoxes have become popular over the last few years. Every celebrity out there seems to either promote one that they use or sell one they’ve branded themselves.

These detoxes can take a lot of forms. Juice cleanses, pills, grabbing a few things from the back of your cupboard, mixing them up, and consuming the resulting solution—and only that—for days, weeks, even months. These detoxes can range from the mildly humorous to the grossly (and dangerously) absurd.

Even though some of these take things way too far, for the most part, their creators’ hearts were in the right place. Each is designed to be a solution to a big problem we’re all facing.

Namely, our increasingly toxic world creates a significant burden on our bodies.

Exposure to the air we breathe, the stress we feel, and the food we ingest can add up to over 14 pounds of pesticides, herbicides, food additives and preservatives per year for the average American.

Out of more than 100,000 commercially used chemicals, more than 25,000 (that’s 25%) are known to be hazardous to human health.

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

The liver and the gastrointestinal (GI) tract are responsible for removing these toxins.

But if the liver is not working at full strength, every other system in the body is at risk because fat-soluble toxins, which are hard to get out of the body, instead get stored in the process.

So this is why doing a detox at least once or twice a year is so important.

What’s the Best Detox?

But what separates one detox from another? Your Pinterest board is full of them, and they’re all wildly different. It can be hard to know which ones work, and which ones don’t.

Well, the key to a good detox—and by “good,” I mean one that does what it’s supposed to—is to find one that doesn’t just deal with your liver, or your GI tract, or any other single system. Instead, you need a detox that doesn’t just focus on your body but also takes into account the importance of your mind and spirit in the process.

Keep These in Mind

Here are a few things to keep in mind as you choose your detox.

1. You need a detox that views you as a complete human being.

2. It needs to be long enough to allow your body and mind to reset—usually, 20+ days is ideal.

3. The detox shouldn’t claim to not “flush” your body of toxins. Instead, it needs to support your natural detoxification systems.

4.It should NOT make you miserable. If the detox covers the first 3 of these checkboxes, this point should take care of itself.

So, if you’re looking to do a detox, each of these boxes needs to be checked off.

But, whichever one you find, remember this: Detoxing is a wonderful thing to do for yourself. Take that next step confidently.

Watch this next:

Or listen below!

The post Why You Should Start a Detox… Today appeared first on Wellness Training Institute.

February 9, 2017

I always knew I wanted to work with people but wasn’t sure what was the best fit. At one point, I decided that I wanted to be a physical therapist. I loved to exercise, I’d spent a lot of my childhood training as a figure skater, dug science… it seemed like a pretty natural fit.

So, I started working with physical therapists and then figured out that I didn’t like it.

And the reason I didn’t like it wasn’t the work itself or any of the people I worked on or with. No, all of that was great.

The issue was because a physical therapist is only allowed to work on the one part of the body that the patient has come in for.

If you came in for PT for a sprained ankle, I would be able to treat it. If the rest of you was on fire at the same time? No dice. I had to concentrate only on the ankle.

So, after talking with many physical therapists that had transitioned into working as personal trainers, I went out and became a personal trainer. At least then I could help people with their whole bodies, right?

Right. Except…

You weren’t allowed to talk about nutrition. At all. So, if one of my clients was working out five days a week while eating three boxes of Cheez-Itz simultaneously, I could only focus on the exercise part of it. I might have been able to make a case that he quit getting crumbs all over the Nautilus machines, but that was about the extent of it.

All of which, once again, left me frustrated.

So, the happy ending to this story is that I now have the opportunity to work with Dr. Dangovian at the Wellness Training Institute, where our literal job description is to help people live a better life through a fully holistic process. There’s the body itself, the mind, the soul—and all the subcategories that include cultivating awareness, diet and movement, breathing and yoga, stress reduction, and, in fact, even relearning how to sit, stand, and stroll!

It’s a focus on the parts, with the whole always in mind.

And that’s where true change happens.

Not in silos, where everything is completely compartmentalized and common sense has to take a back seat to compliance or regulatory issues.

True change happens when one of our members finally understands that the key to health is simply one thing: Nutrition.

Because nutrition is whatever fortifies us, preserves us, grounds us inside our own lives, and helps us grow. Nutrition is whatever gives us life.

Breath is nutrition. Mindful movement is nutrition. Actual food, yes, is also nutrition.

Once you realize that—that there are no parts, only the whole—you’ve just taken a big step forward in understanding why your habits matter and that every day gives you another chance to choose death…. or choose life.

And that’s what gets me out of bed every morning.

Also, this is EXCITING:

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 The Sum of Our Parts: Why Nothing Short of Holistic Health is Health at All appeared first on Wellness Training Institute.