The Five Ps of Excellent Health.
In my personal development seminars, we teach the five "Ps" of excellent health: 1. Proper weight: This requires the regular exercise of discipline and willpower in order to achieve your proper weight and then to maintain it throughout your life, but the payoff is tremendous. You look good, feel good, and generally feel more positive and in control of your life.
2. Proper diet: As Benjamin Franklin said, "Eat to live, rather than live to eat." According to studies of Olympic athletes from more than 120 countries, the three factors their diets have in common are1. lean-source protein; 2. a wide variety of fruits and vegetables; and 3. lots of water, about eight gla.s.ses per day.
When you begin this "Olympic diet," you will feel more alert, awake, and aware all day long.
3. Proper exercise: The most important exercise for long life is aerobic exercise. This requires that you get your heart rate up to a high level for thirty to sixty minutes three times per week. You can achieve this through brisk walking, running, cycling, swimming, or cross-country skiing.
Exercise physiologists have determined that the "exercise effect" clicks in at about twenty-five minutes of vigorous exercise. At this point, your brain releases endorphins that give you a feeling of elation, or what is called a "runner"s high." This natural drug produced by your body can become addictive in a very positive way.
People who develop the habit of regular, vigorous exercise find that it becomes easier and easier to do. They begin to look forward to the feeling of happiness they enjoy as the result of exercising aerobically.
4. Proper rest: This is very important. More than 60 percent of adults do not get enough sleep. They are suffering from what is called a "sleep deficit." They go to bed a little bit too late, sleep poorly, arise a little bit too early, and go through the day in a form of "fog." This phenomenon of not being sufficiently rested leads to poor performance, more mistakes, industrial accidents, car crashes, short tempers, personality problems, and many other difficulties.
If you are living and working a normal life, you require about eight hours of sleep each night. If you get only six or seven hours of sleep when you actually require eight, you begin to build up this sleep deficit. By Thursday or Friday, when you get up in the morning, the first thing you think of is how soon you can go back to sleep again that night. When you start thinking about going to sleep again at the moment that you arise, you know that you are not getting enough sleep.
In addition to eight hours of sleep per night, you need regular breaks from work, both weekends and vacations. When you take time off from work, you allow your mental and emotional batteries to recharge. After a two- or three-day weekend, when you go back to work, you will be fully rested and ready to perform at your best.
5. Proper att.i.tude: This is perhaps the most important of all. The quality that is most predictive of health, happiness, and long life is "optimism." As you become more optimistic about yourself and your life, your health will also be better in every area.
People who are positive and optimistic usually have stronger immune systems, and as a result, they are seldom sick. They seldom get colds or flu. They bounce back quickly from hard work or fatigue. An optimistic person has a built-in "Teflon shield" against many of the diseases and ailments that affect the average person.
Get Your Weight Under Control.
The biggest single problem with self-discipline that people have today is overeating and becoming overweight. More than 60 percent of Americans are officially overweight, and more than 30 percent are obese, which is defined as being more than 30 percent above their normal weight. There is no area in which self-discipline is more necessary than in getting your weight under control and then keeping it under control for the rest of your life.
You have heard it said that "diets don"t work." What this really means is that when you starve yourself to lose weight, you will tend to put the weight back on almost as quickly as you lost it. There are many reasons for this.
Each person has a certain metabolic rate. This is the rate at which you burn energy. This metabolic rate is set over the course of your lifetime by the amount of food you eat relative to the amount of exercise you do to work it off.
In addition to your metabolic rate, you have what is called a "set point." This is where your weight is set, like a thermostat, and to which it returns no matter how much you take off as the result of crash dieting.
Change Your Set Point.
To lose weight permanently, you must change your set point to a lower number. To achieve this, the first thing you do is to create a clear mental image of how you will look when you are at your ideal weight. Get a picture out of a magazine of someone who has the body you want to have, and then paste your photo where their face appears.
You then begin a gradual process of permanently changing the quality and quant.i.ty of what you eat, with no intention of ever going back. Be prepared to work on this permanent change for at least a year. Remember, if you are overweight, it has taken you many years to get to where you are today. Be prepared to invest a lot of time in getting back.
The Fatal Flaw in Dieting.
Many people diet and lose weight with the idea that as soon as they have dropped a certain number of pounds, they can reward themselves by going out and having a fabulous meal or consuming unlimited desserts. In other words, they use the idea of filling up on food as the reward for losing weight in the first place. This approach is doomed to failure.
Instead, set up a reward system for yourself that does not include food. Decide instead to buy yourself new clothes that will fit you only at your ideal weight. Take yourself and your family on a vacation where you engage in fun activities. Make a bet with someone that you will take off the weight and keep it off for one year.
The Formula for Permanent Weight Loss.
The key to perfect health can be summarized in five words: "Eat less and exercise more."
The only way that you can lose weight permanently is to burn off more calories than you consume. There is no other way. Moreover, you can do this only over an extended period of time, especially if you have allowed yourself to put on a lot of excess weight.
In my program, "Thinking Big," we teach the importance of avoiding the three white poisons: sugar, salt, and flour.
Get Rid of Sugar. To lose weight permanently and to enjoy high levels of health and energy, you should eliminate all simple sugars from your diet. Simple sugars are contained in candy, cake, pastries, desserts, soft drinks, canned fruits, sugar in your coffee, and all other forms of sugar that people consume in large quant.i.ties every day.
The fact is that you require no additional sugar to enjoy superb levels of physical health. Simply by eliminating all sugar and sugar products from your life, by going "cold turkey" on sugar, you will begin to lose as much as one pound per day.
Pa.s.s on the Salt. In addition, you should eliminate all additional salt from your diet. Although the average American gets sufficient salt in all the different foods he eats, he consumes an extra twenty pounds of salt each year by eating foods with high salt content and by then adding additional salt to meals.
When you consume excess salt, your body retains water in order to hold that salt in suspension. When you stop consuming excess salt and simultaneously drink eight gla.s.ses of water per day, your body releases all the excess fluid and you can actually experience weight drops of as much as four or five pounds in the first day.
Avoid White Flour Products. Finally, eliminate all white flour products from your diet. This means all breads, pastries, pastas, buns, rolls, and anything else made with white flour.
White flour is actually an "inert substance" from which all nutrients have been removed and then bleached out. When you see the words "enriched white bread," it means that the white flour, which is essentially a dead food material, has been fortified with artificial, chemical vitamins, almost all of which are then destroyed in the baking process. There is no food value in a white flour product.
A SIMPLE CHANGE OF DIET.
Not long ago, I got a letter from a thirty-two-year-old man in Florida. He told me that he had read my books and listened to my programs for years. He had achieved a higher level of financial and career success than he ever imagined possible. But he was still carrying an extra twenty pounds of weight that he could not get rid of, no matter what he did.
Then one day, he listened to "Thinking Big," and he heard my comments on the three white poisons. Fortunately, he was both disciplined and determined. He used his willpower to slam the brakes on these three foods and discontinue them completely.
He said that what happened next was nothing short of miraculous. Within six months, he had dropped twenty-two pounds. When he wrote to me, he had kept them off for two years. He said that he looked different, felt different, was more attractive to women, and had higher levels of self-confidence and self-esteem. His whole life had improved since he dropped the excess weight.
Live to Be One Hundred.
Your goal in life should be to enjoy the highest levels of health and energy possible. This requires that you eat the right foods and fewer of them. It requires that you get regular exercise and move every joint of your body every single day.
To enjoy superb physical health, you must get lots of rest and recreation. Above all, you must maintain a positive mental att.i.tude in which you look for the good in every situation and remain determined to be a completely positive person.
In each of these areas, the exertion of self-discipline and willpower will give you payoffs that are far beyond the effort that you put in. By practicing self-discipline in your health habits, you can live longer and better than you ever imagined possible. Chapter 17 provides even more ideas, specifically focused on exercise and becoming physically fit.
Action Exercises:.
1. Idealize with regard to your health: If you could wave a magic wand and make your health perfect in every way, how would it be different from today?
2. Resolve to make the rest of your life the best of your life. What is the first thing you should change or do?
3. Get a complete medical examination and ask your doctor for advice on how to enjoy superb levels of physical health. Then follow that advice.
4. Determine your ideal weight and set it as a goal. Use the goal-setting process you learned in Chapter 4 to make a plan to achieve it and keep it there for life.
5. Use mindstorming (described in Chapter 4) and write out a list of at least twenty answers to the question, "What can I do every day to enjoy superb levels of health and energy?"
6. Review the health habits and research discussed in this chapter and give yourself a grade ranging from one to ten on how well you are practicing them.
7. Decide on one specific action that you are going to take immediately to ensure that you live to be age eighty, ninety, and beyond.
Chapter 17.
Self-Discipline and Physical Fitness.
"Mental toughness is many things and rather difficult to explain. Its qualities are sacrifice and self denial. Also, and most importantly, it is combined with a perfectly disciplined will that refuses to give in. It is a state of mind that you could call character in action."
-VINCE LOMBARDI.
For you to achieve and maintain high levels of physical fitness requires a lifetime of self-discipline and willpower. The good news is that physical fitness is its own reward. Not only do you feel good while you are exercising, but you feel wonderful about yourself the rest of the time.
If your goal is to live a long, healthy, happy life and be fit and trim physically, there is no subst.i.tute for regular exercise. Fortunately, you do not have to train for the Olympics or a triathlon to enjoy superb levels of physical well-being. By building exercise and physical training into your daily routine you can achieve physical fitness just by making a few small modifications to your lifestyle.
Listen to the Experts.
Physical fitness specialists generally agree that you need to exercise 200-300 minutes per week to enjoy the maximum levels of physical well-being that are possible for you. This means that you need to exercise between thirty and sixty minutes, five to seven times each week.
At the low end, if you simply went for a thirty-minute walk each morning before you started off for work or each evening when you got home from work as well as each weekend day, you would be one of the healthiest people in our society.
If you increase your exercise level to sixty minutes each time, five times per week, you will be in the top 1 or 2 percent of physically fit people in the world today.
Get Started First Thing.
The best time to exercise is first thing in the morning. People who get up each morning and exercise for thirty to sixty minutes are much more likely to make exercise a permanent part of their daily routine.
On the other hand, people who put off exercising until later in the day, until after work, almost invariably find that they are too tired or have too many other things to do.
They procrastinate on exercising until another day, which often never comes.
It takes tremendous discipline to get into and follow a regular exercise routine. But it is easier if you can discipline yourself to get up in the morning and start exercising immediately.
Trick Yourself.
Many people, including myself, trick themselves into exercising in the morning by putting their exercise clothes right next to the bed so that they trip over them when they get up. Before they are even awake, they find themselves pulling on their exercise clothes and running shoes and starting off around the block. Before they even know what has happened, they are halfway into their exercise routine, their heart rate is up, their lungs are puffing away, and they are feeling good about themselves.
Whenever people come back from a morning run or any other form of morning exercise, they are always happy and smiling. This is because of the "exercise effect" that kicks in after twenty-five or thirty minutes. Their brains release endorphins and they feel exhilarated.
Increase Your Intelligence.