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.

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 14, 2016

I recently ran across a series of articles profiling former contestants on the CBS weight-loss “reality” show The Biggest Loser. If you’re not familiar with the show, here’s the skinny (see what I did there?): Obese contestants, with the help of celebrity fitness trainers and what basically amounts to starvation diets, attempt to lose more weight then their competitors. The winner is (presumably) the person who’s able to make it to the end with far less of themselves than they started with while simultaneously not going bat-poo crazy.

So, a lot of people have a lost a lot of weight on the show. That’s a fact. What’s not talked about as much is how many contestants, after going back home, back to their real lives, gain most—if not all— of the weight back.

It got me wondering: Why is this?

The answer is that health doesn’t happen in isolation. Health happens in community. Also, weight loss does not equal health.

LOSING THE WHY
Without the support of the other contestants (and the trainers alternating between yelling at and loving on them), it’s ridiculously hard to maintain that level of focus and discipline. They lost their “why.”

Health should never be measured on an individual level. Instead, health is a communal process.

I work with people every day whose main problem with getting healthy—and staying that way—is their friends and family. After all, misery loves company. And that’s why many people struggle with getting the sort of support they need when they’re working on swapping their bad habits for good ones.

That’s one of the reasons that we here at the Wellness Training Institute put such a high level of focus on community. It’s super hard to get healthy in a vacuum. We’re social animals by nature and it’s so, so, so vital to surround yourself with others going through the same things that you are when taking those baby steps toward health.

BETTER TOGETHER
Humans don’t like being alone.

It’s a fact that people in a good marriage live longer than single people or those whose marriages aren’t so good.

It’s also a fact that when sociologists have looked at the reasons that people live past one hundred, two of the top five reasons are one, a good diet, and two, community.

And it makes sense.

With community, when you stumble, others are there to pick you up. When you get a big victory, others are there to celebrate with you. You are held accountable. There’s no pressure quite like social pressure, which can certainly be a negative in certain situations, but can also be one of the most powerful driving forces in going from disease and dysfunction to a life you couldn’t have even dreamed of before you made the choice to begin building healthy habits.

I see miracles every day. And every last one of them happens within a group of people spurring each other on toward a life worth living.

If you are struggling to change your life for the better—losing belly fat, trying to reverse an autoimmune disease, working to stave off heart disease, or if you just want to feel better—I encourage you to come eat dinner with us. We’ll share with you the latest science behind healthy living, as well as give you some simple, practical tools to implement right away! And, most importantly, you’ll be with a large group of people that are experiencing the same things that you are. A free dinner is always a good thing. A free dinner together is even better!

The post The Secret Link Between Health & Community appeared first on Wellness Training Institute.

December 8, 2015

WTI hosts PBNSG Small Group Meeting!

Come join Dr. Dangovian and I at WTI to discuss the importance of plant-based nutrition.  We will share our experiences with plant-based nutrition and talk about how making small changes in your diet will impact your health and the world!

Whether you are new to plant-based nutrition or have completely adopted the lifestyle, this is the place for you!

Monday, December 28th at 5:00pm

Call us at (586) 554-7515 for more information!

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