So far in our journey we have learned a lot about nutrition, fuels, and some important exercise information. Each article has taught something that enabled you to create a small positive change. In the first article one we called these the “bricks” of change and that a lot of small changes results in a huge change.

Now we are going to spend a few days on the mental aspects of improving your health and fitness lives.

Today’s small change, our new “brick” of change pops out of a little snippet I saw a while back in the New York Post. It was a short article that referenced a study of young girls who knew they were overweight and had tried dieting. Since they really didn’t know how to diet properly, the more they started and stopped, the more weight they gained. The study drew the conclusion that dieting improperly is worse than not dieting at all. This makes perfect sense. And it holds true for adults as well as kids. One main reason for this resides about twenty-four inches above our bulging belly buttons, in our brains. If we try something and fail, often times we stop caring for a short period and actually do the opposite of what we had originally intended. Psychologically speaking, we are thinking too much about final outcomes and not enough about the process involved in getting there.

Back in the early 1980′s, one of the authors of this program did a lot of work with the Penn State football players. One player stands out in my mind. He was a place-kicker, Herb Menhardt. Read the rest of this entry »