WILLPOWER

Telling yourself that you do not possess enough self-control to achieve a goal can be a self-fulfilling prophecy that may be holding you back from reaching your potential. Set challenges for yourself and practice your willpower skills like paying attention, mindfulness, and staying on task. The same goes for getting fit, with physical discomfort, we think, my body is telling me to stop because this is too hard, and actually, it's exactly the opposite. The only way to change those [inner] experiences is to go through them with a sense of commitment to your goal. Exercising on that treadmill or staying on that bike in spin class does get easier each time you do it. But it only gets easier when you're willing to tolerate that initial discomfort. With temptations everywhere it's hard to constantly say no and leave it all up to willpower. 

If you're ready to make your healthy lifestyle a priority, you've got to start with a strong foundation. Indulgences are necessary from time to time, but staying committed to a routine will help habits stick for long-term success. It may be a little bit of a struggle at first, but once you get into the groove, you'll wonder how you lived any other way. Feeling guilty about giving into the impulsive part of your personality or criticizing yourself after making a mistake is not going to help you attain your goals. Instead, celebrating your amazing strengths, like all that you are capable of handling, will help get you feel successful. The ability to say no to something is the hardest form of self-control. Turning your focus toward the positive by saying yes to what you most want to achieve gives you the power to keep moving towards your goal even when you are exhausted.

A great place to start when you're strengthening your willpower muscles is to first, set clear and meaningful goals and create a plan to achieve those goals. Start with the smaller goals to build your confidence and then move on to the bigger goals. Staying organized is the best way to be successful. Make a definite schedule for your workouts, free time and work time and stick to it every day. It's easy to miss workouts when fun plans pop up or you get busy at work. Having your schedule planned for the week will help you stay motivated and excited to exercise while knowing when you can spend time with friends and get your work done. Planning ahead will help you to make healthy choices naturally.  

How Not To Cook Broccoli

F.Y.I.

Microwaving broccoli can destroy beneficial flavonoid chemicals,as well as some of the vegetable's nutrients, in particular vitamin C and folate.

Flavonoids left after:
Steaming       100%
Boiling             34%
Microwaving     3%

JUST DO IT!!

An excerpt from The Power of Discipline by Brian Tracy

Why are some people more successful than others? Why do some people make more money, live happier lives and accomplish much more in the same number of years than the great majority? I started out in life with few advantages. I did not graduate from high school. I worked at menial jobs. I had limited education, limited skills and a limited future. And then I began asking, "Why are some people more successful than others?" This question changed my life. Over the years, I have read thousands of books and articles on the subjects of success and achievement. It seems that the reasons for these accomplishments have been discussed and written about for more than two thousand years, in every conceivable way. One quality that most philosophers, teachers and experts agree on is the importance of self-discipline. As Al Tomsik summarized it years ago, "Success is tons of discipline." Some years ago, I attended a conference in Washington. It was the lunch break and I was eating at a nearby food fair. The area was crowded and I sat down at the last open table by myself, even though it was a table for four. A few minutes later, an older gentleman and a younger woman who was his assistant came along carrying trays of food, obviously looking for a place to sit. With plenty of room at my table, I immediately arose and invited the older gentleman to join me. He was hesitant, but I insisted. Finally, thanking me as he sat down, we began to chat over lunch. It turned out that his name was Kop Kopmeyer. As it happened, I immediately knew who he was. He was a legend in the field of success and achievement. Kop Kopmeyer had written four large books, each of which contained 250 success principles that he had derived from more than fifty years of research and study. I had read all four books from cover to cover, more than once. After we had chatted for awhile, I asked him the question that many people in this situation would ask, "Of all the one thousand success principles that you have discovered, which do you think is the most important?" He smiled at me with a twinkle in his eye, as if he had been asked this question many times, and replied, without hesitating, "The most important success principle of all was stated by Thomas Huxley many years ago. He said, 'Do what you should do, when you should do it, whether you feel like it or not.'" He went on to say, "There are 999 other success principles that I have found in my reading and experience, but without self-discipline, none of them work." Self-discipline is the key to personal greatness. It is the magic quality that opens all doors for you, and makes everything else possible. With self-discipline, the average person can rise as far and as fast as his talents and intelligence can take him. But without self-discipline, a person with every blessing of background, education and opportunity will seldom rise above mediocrity. "DO WHAT YOU SHOULD DO, WHEN YOU SHOULD DO IT, WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT!!!!"

Snacks and Veggies

Snacks and Extras

Turnip Fries -(Phase 1-4)

1 Turnip

1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

1/2 teaspoon onion powder

1/2 teaspoon sea salt

1/4 teaspoon paprika

2 tablespoons olive oil

Preheat oven to 425°F.

Peel the turnips, and cut into sticks or wedges.

Place into a large bowl, and toss with olive oil to lightly coat. Place seasonings in a resealable plastic bag, and shake to mix.

Place the oiled turnips into the bag, and shake until evenly coated with the spices.

Spread out onto the prepared baking sheet.

Bake in preheated oven for 10 minutes, turn over then bake for an additional 10 minutes or until golden brown.

Serve immediately.  

(Walden Farms Ketchup Optional)

Zucchini Chips -(Phase 1-4)

3 medium zucchini, sliced into 1/4-inch chips
2 Tbsp. lemon juice
2 Tbsp. olive oil

1 teaspoon sea salt, pepper to taste 

*Phase 3 and 4 you can add 2 oz. grated parmesan cheese.

Preheat oven to 450°F. Toss zucchini slices with lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper. Spread out on in a single layer on a jelly roll pan. Roast 7 minutes. Turn zucchini over. Roast another 7-8 minutes.  

Kale Chips -(Phase 1-4)

Pre-Heat ovento 250°F

Rinse Kale and pat dry

Cut rib out of Kale

Lightly coat with olive oil

in mixing bowl 

Arrange on a baking sheet

Season with any of the following: Sea salt, Pepper, Paprika, garlic, ginger or Cyenne pepper, Red pepper flakes.

Bake for 30 minutes

(Kale contains 3.5 carbs per half cup)  

Mango Sunrise - (Phases 1-4)
(raspberry mango gelatin)
Ingredients:
1 packet of Ideal Protein Raspberry Gelatin
1 packet of Ideal Protein Peach Mango Drink

Preparation:

Mix the Ideal Protein Raspberry Gelatin and the Ideal Protein Peach Mango Drink in a bowl. Refrigerate until solid. Will separate into 3 'Sunrise' colors  

Oatmeal Zucchini Muffins -(Phase 1-4)

1 package of Ideal Protein Maple Oatmeal
1 egg – beaten
1/2 tsp baking powder
Pinch of salt
1 tsp of Stevia or Splenda
1-1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2-3/4 of small zucchini finely grated (squeeze out excess juice) 2-3 oz water

Beat the egg in a bowl. Add Maple Oatmeal, baking powder, salt, Stevia, cinnamon, and zucchini. Mix and gradually add water until you have a good batter. Bake at 385°F for 20 minutes. Makes 3 regular muffins or 12-bite size. 

 

 Key Lime Tarts -(Phase 1-4)

4 + 1 packets of True Lime flavoring (approx. 1 level teaspoon)

A little Splenda or Stevia to taste

1 packet of Ideal Protein Vanilla Pudding

1 packet of Ideal Protein Maple Oatmeal

1 egg white

Mini-muffin baking tin

Non-stick spray  

For the filling: Dissolve one teaspoon of True Lime flavoring in approx. 3 oz. of water. Add a little Stevia or Splenda to taste. The taste should be sweet but tart. Add the contents of one Ideal Protein Vanilla pudding and mix well until smooth. No lumps. The consistency will be thicker than your normal pudding. Cover and refrigerate.

For the crust: Pre-heat the oven at 350 F. Mix 1 packet of Ideal Protein Maple Oatmeal with the egg white and 1-1 ½ oz (30-45 ml) of water, just enough for a stiff but manageable dough to form. Lightly coat your muffin tins with non-stick spray. Moisten your hands (if you don’t, the ‘dough’ will stick to your fingers) and form little balls using approx. 2-3 teaspoons of dough. Place one dough ball in each baking cup. Press dough down as thinly as possible across the bottom and the sides forming a little ‘cup’ (the dough will “poof” a little during baking). Bake for approx. 5 minutes or longer, if necessary. For crispy tart shells, remove them from the muffin tin and place them upside down on top of the tin and bake for a few more minutes until golden brown. If the cup cake shells are too thick, don’t bother as they will be too hard. Cool on a wire rack.

Take key lime filling out of the refrigerator and stir in the last packet of True Lime flavoring to give you’re filling an extra tangy Florida key lime bite.

2 egg whites whipped for meringue (optional) 

(3 tarts equal one IP serving) Recipe makes 2 servings

Rutabaga Fries - (Phase 1-4 1 Large)

1 large Rutabaga, peeled and cut into wedges or french fry sticks

1-2 tbsp olive oil 

2 tsp dried onion flakes

1 tsp dried garlic flakes

sea salt and cracked pepper to taste

Directions

Preheat oven to 400° F

Placed peeled and sliced rutabaga in a large bowl and add the remainingingredients toss together until the fries are thoroughly coated with seasoning.

Spread fries on a non stick baking sheet



 Place in oven for approx 25 minutes, turn fries on baking sheet after about 12 minutes continue to cook until golden brown. 

Remove from the oven and serve immediately

Just don't buy the stuff!!!! This is SERIOUS!!!! 40 million people are clinically defined as obese. Among children, the rates had more than doubled since 1980, and the number of kids considered obese has shot past 12 million. 

The Sweet Lowdown: Exposing the Unhealthy Truth About Sugar

By Stephanie Schomer
Oprah.com   |   From the January 2013 issue of O, The Oprah Magazine

What the doctor leading the charge against one of our biggest dietary enemies—sugar—wants you to know.
When you hear about a viral video on YouTube, you hardly expect it to feature a pediatric endocrinologist giving a biology lesson on high-sugar diets. But in the three years since the lecture "Sugar: The Bitter Truth," by Robert Lustig, MD, was uploaded to the site, it's had more than 2.9 million views and made Lustig, director of the University of California, San Francisco's Weight Assessment for Teen and Child Health Program, the pied piper of healthy eating. Now, in his new book, Fat Chance: Beating the Odds Against Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity, and Disease, he explains why he believes the massive amounts of sugar and processed food we consume each day are making us not only fatter but sicker, too. Today's generation of American children may end up being the first with a shorter life expectancy than their parents, but the problem isn't confined to the young: Obesity-related conditions like type 2 diabetes and heart disease are now among the leading causes of preventable death in adults. We talked with the doctor about how our diet is harming us—and how we can take back our lives.

Q: Was there something particular that inspired you to spread the word about the dangers of sugar and processed food?

A: In 2003 a 6-year-old named Juan came into my clinic in California. He weighed 100 pounds—he was wider than he was tall. I asked his mother what he was eating and drinking, and among other things she said he consumed many glasses of orange juice every day—which she thought was healthy. But when you're drinking glass after glass of orange juice, you're getting a lot of sugar with no fiber to help limit its absorption. Having to explain to Juan's mom that eating fruit like oranges is good but drinking sugary juices in large quantities is bad made me realize that someone needed to dispel our food myths in a way people will understand.

Q: Roughly 80 percent of all packaged foods in the United States contain added sweeteners. Sugar is everywhere—is it all that bad?

A: The problem is "refined sugar"—that is, the stuff like high-fructose corn syrup and regular table sugar, made up of glucose and fructose—which has been stripped of any nutritional value. Processed food is full of refined sugar, and it has detrimental effects: The fructose in it gets turned into liver fat, which can prevent the liver from processing insulin properly. This may lead to insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome, which puts you at greater risk for type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and stroke.

Next: The root of our sugar problem

Q: How did we get hooked on sugary foods to begin with?

A: We're biologically programmed to like sweets—our tongues and brains know that no food on the planet is both sweet and poisonous. It was a test for our hunting-and-gathering ancestors: If a food is sweet, it won't kill you. It's ironic because that's exactly what sugar is doing to us now.

Q: In your book, you say the widespread belief that "a calorie is a calorie" is one of the driving factors behind the obesity crisis. Why?

A: A calorie burned is a calorie burned, but the calories you eat don't all have the same impact on your body. Different foods can be either helpful or harmful depending on what they're made of and how much fiber they contain. Consider fats, for example. All fats release nine calories of energy per gram when burned, but omega-3 fatty acids can help lower your risk of heart disease, while trans fats may lead to heart disease and fatty liver disease. So one calorie of omega-3 is not equal to one calorie of trans fat. The same goes for proteins and carbs. It all depends on whether you're eating healthy or unhealthy forms of them.

Q: But isn't the bigger problem that we're simply eating more total calories than we were 30 years ago?

A: Not exactly. If you look at our fat intake as a percentage of total calories, it's actually decreased as the obesity pandemic has grown, largely because so much of our food these days is "low fat." Our protein consumption has stayed pretty level over time. But our fructose consumption has risen because of all the processed food we consume. When we eat a lot of sugar, liver fat accumulates and our body releases insulin to compensate. Higher insulin levels promote fat storage, which can lead to obesity and a host of other, potentially lethal, diseases.

Q: Why aren't our bodies better at regulating appetite?

A: Studies indicate that when we produce excess insulin as a result of our high-sugar diets, the insulin prevents leptin, a hormone that helps control appetite, from telling our brain that we've taken in enough energy. So in our head, we think we're hungry long after we're actually full. And we don't crave just any food—we go for the tasty stuff that's high in fat and sugar. It's a vicious cycle. Leptin resistance is what keeps people obese. Research suggests that this isn't about a leptin deficiency, because blood samples reveal that most obese people have plenty of it. The issue is that their leptin isn't working properly—if it were, they wouldn't be obese.

Q: Does stress eating play a part?

A: Yes. God knows I'm a stress eater! Researchers aren't sure excactly why the brain goes nuts for high-energy, dense food when we're stressed, but it does. So the more stressed out you are, the hungrier you get, and the more carb-heavy foods you eat—which in turn causes your insulin levels to rise even more. At the same time, the hormones released in response to stress direct your body to build up visceral fat, which you end up storing in the worst place possible: your belly.

Q: So what's the fix?

A: The obvious solution is to eat more fiber and less sugar, but exercise is important, too. It's not only the best stress buster there is—it's also something every single person can do to improve metabolic health, even if weight loss doesn't come along with it right away. For every molecule of sugar you absorb, you can either burn it, which doesn't require your body to make more insulin, or you can store it, in which case you need insulin. Burning it is the best option, and that's exactly what exercise does.

Q: What should we be eating?

A: Real food! That's it. If it came out of the ground, or it's from an animal that ate what came out of the ground, you're good to go. But if a human processed it in between, either something was added, usually sugar, or something was removed, most likely fiber and micronutrients like vitamins and minerals. The key for most people is reducing insulin, and to do that, you have to put back fiber into your diet and cut back on refined carbohydrates and sugar. If you're buying food that has a nutrition label, it's been processed. And if any form of sugar is one of the first three ingredients, consider it a dessert. When I was a kid, we had dessert once a week. Now we have it once a meal, and it's almost always processed. That's the problem. 

Moving Forward

10 Things You Must Give Up to Move Forward

If you want to fly and move on to better things, you have to give up the things that weigh you down – which is not always as obvious and easy as it sounds.

Starting today, give up…

1. Letting the opinions of others control your life. – People know your name, not your story.  They’ve heard what you’ve done, but not what you’ve been through.  So take their opinions of you with a grain of salt.  In the end, it’s not what others think, it’s what you think about yourself that counts.  Sometimes you have to do exactly what’s best for you and your life, not what’s best for everyone else.
2. The shame of past failures. – You will fail sometimes, and that’s okay.  The faster you accept this, the faster you can get on with being brilliant.  Your past does not equal your future.  Just because you failed yesterday; or all day today; or a moment ago; or for the last six months; or for the last sixteen years, doesn’t have any impact on the current moment.  All that matters is what you do right now.  Read Awaken the Giant Within.
3. Being indecisive about what you want. – You will never leave where you are until you decide where you would rather be.  It’s all about findingand pursuing your passion.  Neglecting passion blocks creative flow.  When you’re passionate, you’re energized.  Likewise, when you lack passion, your energy is low and unproductive.  Energy is everything when it comes to being successful.  Make a decision to figure out what you want, and then pursue it passionately.
4. Procrastinating on the goals that matter to you. – There are two primary choices in life: to accept conditions as they exist, or accept the responsibility for changing them.  Follow your intuition.  Don’t give up trying to do what you really want to do.  When there is love and inspiration, you can’t go wrong.  And whatever it is you want to do, do it now.  There are only so many tomorrows.  Trust me, in a year from now, you will wish you had started today.
5. Choosing to do nothing. – You don’t get to choose how you are going to die, or when.  You can only decide how you are going to live, right now.  Every day is a new chance to choose.  Choose to change your perspective.  Choose to flip the switch in your mind from negative to positive.  Choose to turn on the light and stop fretting about with insecurity and doubt.  Choose to do work that you are proud of.  Choose to see the best in others, and to show your best to others.  Choose to truly LIVE, right now.
6. Your need to be right. – If you keep on saying you’re right, even if you are right now, eventually you will be wrong.  Aim for success, but never give up your right to be wrong.  Because when you do, you will also lose your ability to learn new things and move forward with your life.  ReadThe 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
7. Running from problems that should be fixed. – We make lifeharder than it has to be.  The difficulties started when… conversations became texting, feelings became subliminal, sex became a game, the word ‘love’ fell out of context, trust faded as honesty waned, insecurities became a way of living, jealously became a habit, being hurt started to feel natural, and running away from it all became our solution.  Stop running!  Face these issues, fix the problems, communicate, appreciate, forgive and LOVE the people in your life who deserve it.
8. Making excuses rather than decisions. – Life is a continuous exercise in creative problem solving.  A mistake doesn’t become a failure until you refuse to correct it. Thus, most long-term failures are the outcome of people who make excuses instead of decisions.
9. Overlooking the positive points in your life. – What you see often depends entirely on what you’re looking for.  Do your best and surrender the rest.  When you stay stuck in regret of the life you think you should have had, you end up missing the beauty of what you do have.  You will have a hard time ever being happy if you aren’t thankful for the good things in your life right now.  Read The Happiness Project.
10. Not appreciating the present moment. – We do not remember days, we remember moments.  Too often we try to accomplish something big without realizing that the greatest part of life is made up of the little things.  Live authentically and cherish each precious moment of your journey.  Because when you finally arrive at your desired destination, I guarantee you, another journey will begin.