If you are obese (BMI ≥ 30) or more than 15 kg overweight your body has turned into a fat maker. Giving your body the worst possible fuel (fast releasing carbohydrates and lots of sugar) on a consistent and frequent basis has turned you into a fat maker. If most of the fat you gained is in your abdominal area it is a clear sign that you have lost blood sugar control and are accumulating toxic fat.

You reverse the process. You change the quality of [...]]]>

If you are obese (BMI ≥ 30) or more than 15 kg overweight your body has turned into a fat maker. Giving your body the worst possible fuel (fast releasing carbohydrates and lots of sugar) on a consistent and frequent basis has turned you into a fat maker. If most of the fat you gained is in your abdominal area it is a clear sign that you have lost blood sugar control and are accumulating toxic fat.

How can you change from a fat maker into a fat burner again?

You reverse the process. You change the quality of the food you eat.  Your body when given the slightest opportunity will do the rest. Restore energy, remove excess fat, do cell maintenance and restore health. Of course, you would need to do this on a consistent basis and you would need to assist your body by giving it the minimum exercise it needs to perform at its optimum levels.

The SIX steps to becoming a fat burner:

1. Control your blood sugar by only eating slow releasing carbohydrates. Slow releasing carbohydrates are whole grains, whole wheat pasta, whole rye bread, brown rice, oats, fruits and vegetables.
2. To reset your body’s ability to burn fat again by gaining blood sugar control avoid all sugar, alcohol and stimulants such as coffee and nicotine for at least the first three months. This is essential to turn your body’s ,metabolism up and get all the mechanisms to operate the way they should and start burning fat. After three months, you can start introducing limited alcohol, and limited sugar again.
3. Eat the slow releasing carbohydrates with protein as protein assist even more to stabilize the blood sugar.
4. Minimize saturated fat (meat, dairy and eggs), avoid all trans fats (any food containing hydrogenated vegetable oil, fast foods, baked foods) and get 25% of your calories from essential fatty acids (flax and pumpkin seeds and oily fish and fish oils)
5. Eat three meals and two snacks per day (consisting of a slow releasing carbohydrate and a good source of protein) with plenty of vegetables. Limit your slow releasing carbohydrates to a maximum glycemic load of 40 per day (an indication of what a carbohydrate or sugar will do to your blood sugar)
6. Exercise a minimum of 30 minutes three times per week

Benefits of the U-turn-for-Life eat plan

• There are no shakes and meal replacements, you will eat whole foods
• This is a  plan that will work in the short term (three to six months to remove the weight) and also for the long term (the rest of your life),
• You will not feel hungry because you will eat plenty of delicious and appetizing foods,
• It is enjoyable (no restrictions of only eating certain foods),
• It is safe because we work WITH the body and not against its natural mechanisms ,
• It will make you feel great (more energy, improved mood and concentration and better skin),
• There is no rebound weight gain (we are not REMOVING weight by restricting calories) and
• It is easy to follow because it is simple.

The rules of the U-turn-For-Life eat plan are based on sound scientific principles. The plan is successful as individuals incorporating the rules into their lifestyle removed excess weight and turned from overweight and obese individuals to healthy and happy individuals at normal body weight.

We also use our common sense. We look at nature.  We learn and we apply.

So what is next?

You need to make a decision to change. A U-turn means to turn around. Go the other way! Jim Rohn said : “Some people take better care of their pets than they do of themselves. Their animals can run like the wind and they can barely make it up a flight of stairs.”  Decide to change this. Decide to take care of your body. Decide to start moving. Decide to take care of your mind. Take care of your soul.

Take care of your body and your body will take care of you. Imagine waking up with energy. A clear mind. A constant flow of energy. Your mood is stable, you are mentally sharp and your concentration is good. This is how you FEEL. Now you also LOOK great. Your weight is more or less in line for your frame. You are toned. Your skin is healthy. A healthy body look and feel great.

Taking care of others is what moms do best. Taking care of ourselves is what moms do worst.  To have the energy to take care of your family, you need to take care of yourself first. You deserve it!

I have always looked at the marvel of nature and the intricate design, knowing that a very intelligent Person has created it. The design, detail, and balance in nature are just awesome.

When it comes to our bodies, I looked around me and I was confused. At times, I had my own frustrations wondering why everything in nature seems to have built in mechanisms for maintenance and optimum health, yet our bodies do not.

I started reading and studying with the need to understand my body, as I have always struggled with my weight. It was only then that I [...]]]>

I have always looked at the marvel of nature and the intricate design, knowing that a very intelligent Person has created it. The design, detail, and balance in nature are just awesome.

When it comes to our bodies, I looked around me and I was confused. At times, I had my own frustrations wondering why everything in nature seems to have built in mechanisms for maintenance and optimum health, yet our bodies do not.

I started reading and studying with the need to understand my body, as I have always struggled with my weight. It was only then that I discovered that our bodies have all the built in mechanisms to keep us lean and healthy.

Our body is a natural fat burner. It uses food optimally to give us sufficient energy, it uses the energy to maintain our cells and keep us healthy, it stores the excess energy and has intricate mechanisms to retrieve the stored energy and release it to our cells when we need it.

I was saddened to realize that I was my own body’s worst enemy. It was like taking a top of the range Ferrari, designed to give power and acceleration and joy and thrill and then stopping that Ferrari in front of the corner fish and chips shop and filling it up with spent oil. Do you think the Ferrari will still be able to perform? Of course not, it will misfire, it will not have energy, it will be slow and it will no longer look and feel like a Ferrari.

I have hope for you. Hope for anyone, any mother or wife that has accepted your lot of being overweight and carrying an excess of 20 to 30 kg because you have just given up on trying to lose weight with dieting.

If you change the fuel you put into your body, you can turn yourself from a fat maker to a fat burner in as little as 30 days. It takes the body about 30 days to re-adjust your metabolism if you give it the right fuel so that all the intricate mechanisms can operate the way God designed it to. Let me explain…

An incredible fat burning machine

Food is the fuel that your body needs to operate. Your body takes the food you eat (carbohydrates and sugar is the food your body uses for energy) and breaks it down in your digestive system to the smallest building blocks of body fuel namely glucose. The blood transports the glucose (body fuel) to all the different cells by circulating through the body.

The main tasks of the blood are to supply oxygen and remove carbon monoxide from the cells and secondly to supply energy to the cells on the cellular level. The cells use this energy for restoration (maintenance and repair), growth and for normal cellular activities to ensure you feel magnificent, energetic and healthy…

Glucose is a highly potent body fuel (the equivalent of high-octane rocket fuel) and it is harmful to the body if the levels in the blood go above a certain level.

One of the very important tasks controlled by the brain is to supply fuel to all the cells and the second task is to monitor the level of glucose in the blood to ensure it remains constant. If the glucose level in the blood goes above a certain level, the pancreas will release insulin to tell the body to move the glucose from the blood into fat stores. This is the reason we refer to insulin as the fat storing hormone, because the release of it results in the storing of glucose as fat.

If the level of glucose in the blood drops low in a healthy body, the pancreas will release glucagon that will increase your blood glucose level by telling the body to break down fat from the fat stores and burn it for energy. We refer to glucagon as the fat burning hormone as it tells the body to break down fat from fat stores. This is the situation in a healthy body where it receives good quality carbohydrates as fuel.

Constant blood sugar result in constant energy

Good quality carbohydrates are all slow releasing…meaning they take a while to digest and release energy to the blood over a long period. Slow releasing carbohydrates provide glucose to the blood at a slow rate resulting in no spikes in blood sugar. The rate glucose is released into the blood is in line with the rate the body uses energy and it is rarely necessary for the body to stop everything on the ‘energy front’ and dump the glucose as fat in order to urgently get the excess out of the blood stream. The result on the outside is a consistent feel of high energy and an energized, healthy and energetic body.

If the glucose should fall below the blood set point in a healthy body, it will simply increase the glucose by the release of glucagons to release glucose from fat stores. The blood glucose levels are fairly even in a healthy body with no sudden highs and sudden lows. The level will go a little higher and a little lower than the set point to activate either glucagons or insulin, but mostly it will remain constant. By design, the body keeps the blood sugar level constant in this magnificent fat burning machine. Given the right fuel, it is able to perform this task to perfection.

A stable blood sugar is at the core of a lean, energetic and healthy body.

Turning a fat burning machine into a fat making machine

You can take this magnificent fat burning body that by design has all the mechanisms built in it to keep you lean, healthy, and energized and change it into a fat storing machine. You do this by giving it poor quality fuel on a consistent basis to the extent that your body loses the battle to maintain blood sugar control and you have your fat storing machine. It will be sluggish, it will be either obese or very overweight and will look and feel unhealthy, it will have sugar highs for too long (causing damage to arteries and organs) and it will have incredible blood sugar dips resulting in cravings for stimulants and refined sugar and refined carbohydrates.

Let me explain….

Suppose you consistently give your body mainly fast release carbohydrates in the form of refined pastries, cakes, chips, white bread, white paste and fast foods and sugar. These carbohydrates and sugar will be broken down and released into the bloodstream as glucose. Refined carbohydrates and concentrated sugar will supply the glucose as an immediate surge into the bloodstream, resulting in a huge spike in the blood sugar that goes way above the body’s set point. The body immediately releases insulin to activate the body to dump the excess glucose in the blood as fat. While the insulin is high, the body moves all glucose out of the blood into fat stores to lay down fat and the body is not able to burn any fat from fat stores as it already has an excess glucose at this point so will not allow you to burn fat stores for energy.

If this situation occurs many times during a day due to eating refined carbohydrates and sugar consistently, your body must release more and more insulin before the body responds to escort the glucose out of your blood as quickly as possible and into storage. Over time the cells become “deaf” to the action of your insulin and it requires more and more insulin to be released before the body  ‘listens’ to  move the glucose out of the blood. The blood glucose stays at elevated levels for longer and longer periods before the body can manage to get it down again and as explained before elevated levels of glucose damage arteries and organs internally.

Insulin resistance

Your body needs to produce more insulin to get rid of blood sugar peaks. We refer to this condition as insulin resistance. Due to the resistance your body will allow you to eat more carbohydrates before your body says “stop”, the late release and extra release of insulin will cause the blood sugar levels to go from very high (dangerous) to very low (lethargic)  and you will again crave something to give you a lift. The cycle starts all over again as you open your mouth to consume the next lot of fast releasing carbohydrates and sugar.

The bottom line is that the body and brain’s sensitive mechanisms for keeping your blood sugar in balance cannot cope with a daily onslaught of sugar and other fast releasing carbohydrates and snacks topped up with stimulants such as coffee and nicotine. The resulting spikes and troughs in your blood sugar levels, shows your body has lost the battle to control the blood sugar, you will feel exhausted most of the time…and you have turned into a first class fat making machine.

One of the first signs of the loss of blood sugar control and insulin resistance is an increase of fat over your waist. Measure your waist and if it is greater than 34 inches (87 cm) you are probably insulin resistant and need to make a U-turn-For-Life.

Some things you have to do every day. Eating seven apples on Saturday night instead of one a day  is  just not going to get the job done. Fasting for three days before a weigh in is not the same as eating nutritious and healthy meals five times a day, every day.

Success is nothing more than a few simple disciplines, practiced every day; while failure is simply a few errors in judgment, repeated every day.

Think about it. A few simple disciplines that you know about and apply have resulted in 1 to 2 pounds fat loss per week. [...]]]>

Some things you have to do every day. Eating seven apples on Saturday night instead of one a day  is  just not going to get the job done. Fasting for three days before a weigh in is not the same as eating nutritious and healthy meals five times a day, every day.

Success is nothing more than a few simple disciplines, practiced every day; while failure is simply a few errors in judgment, repeated every day.

Think about it. A few simple disciplines that you know about and apply have resulted in 1 to 2 pounds fat loss per week. Whereas, a few errors in judgment like eating whenever you feel like it, eating more than you know you should, snacking on unhealthy sugary foods late at night repeated every day, brought you to your current reflection in the mirror.

I am referring to our habits. We are all slaves of habit. We succeed if we manage to be a slave of good habits and we fail if we are a slave of bad habits.

Aristotle said, “We are what we repeatedly do”.

This thing called habit

A habit is something you do without consciously thinking about it. These are the rules you follow automatically like how you eat your breakfast, what you do when you wake up in the mornings, what you do when you get home, how and when you brush your teeth.

If we had to think consciously about every step of each ordinary task, our lives would grind to a halt. Our minds assist us with the mundane tasks by the formation of habits. To stay sane and to allow us to do these things every day, we no longer ‘think’ about doing them. Our ‘control box’ or our subconscious mind controls them. We are like a ship on cruise control.

How can habits help us?

Good habits are the key to our success. Bad habits are the unlocked door to failure. This is so because we become what we repeatedly do. Our habits will either move us away from our goals or move us closer depending if it is a good or a bad habit.

The secret for success is therefore to make sure your habits are bringing you closer to your goal and not taking you further away from it.

To transform your body, form good habits and become their slave. To remove your excess weight, develop systems to accomplishing your daily disciplines like exercising and eating five nutritious meals. A daily routine built on good habits and disciplines is what separates the most successful amongst us from everyone else.”

Undoing the bad habits

It is impossible to remove a habit. It is not quite the same as pulling out weeds. To get rid of bad habits we need to substitute them with good habits.

If the job of our minds is to control the mundane tasks for us, our job is to ensure we program our minds for tasks that are necessary and required and that will bring us closer to our goal. We require discipline to establish new habits as we need to do it long enough until our subconscious can start assisting with it. A task or discipline becomes a habit once we have repeated it long enough for our brains to form a new pathway. Only then can we say it is a new habit.

To succeed therefore identify your bad habits and find an alternative good habit that you can start to do daily and make part of your daily routine. If you can continue to do this task for three weeks, you have allowed your brain to form the new neurological pathways. Only after three weeks will you start doing it in the cruise control mode i.e. without consciously thinking about it. It will become so much easier to do and your course is set for success.

While you are forming this new habit you need to rely on the desire to reach your goal, the strength of your believe and your willpower to succeed. This is exactly why it is difficult for anyone to change his or her lifestyle. Once you start with your new plan, you will run head on into your old habits. Unless you replace these old habits with new habits that will bring you closer to your goal, the old habits will automatically take you away from your goal until you are overwhelmed and will eventually quit.

It is much easier to go on a magical diet that will fix decades of habitual errors in two weeks (or so we think) than changing our lifestyle. The truth is, if you identify your  bad nutritional habits and replace it with good ones, it is just as easy to change your lifestyle than it is to continue on the old path. After three weeks, you have the magic of the ‘control box’ on your side. You must stick it out for three weeks at least. Hang in there.

These bad habits will slow you down

Here is a list of bad nutritional habits that will take you further away from your weight removal goal:

• Always adding lots of sugar on you porridge or in your tea or coffee.
• Nibbling on unhealthy snacks when you watch TV.
• Making excuses to exercise.
• I you overeat one meal, you tend to binge for the rest of the day.
• You eat very fast without properly chewing your food.
• You do not drink water during the day.
• You always snack late at night.

These habits will help you

• Adding fruit to porridge to sweeten with a little honey or use natural sweetner like xylitol
• Watch less TV and become more active
• Keep your mind more active with reading or a hobby.
• Learn to snack on healthy snacks like jerky or a handful of peanuts or crudités (a carrot, celery, pepper, cucumber)  and hummus.
• Plan to exercise three times per week first thing in the morning and stick with it.
• Realize that one mistake is not what makes you fat but what you do 80% of the time.
• Learn to put a bad meal behind you and eat right form the next meal.
• Learn to eat slowly and chew your food 10 times before you swallow it.
• Learn to drink a glass of water before each meal. It will still your hunger and allow you to eat slower.
• Learn to eat five smaller nutritious meals per day instead of three big meals.
• Learn to focus on progress rather than perfection.

John C. Maxwell said, “You will never change your life until you change something you do daily. The secret of your success is found in your daily routine. Go on, find the bad habits and find good ones to replace it with. You will then be on cruise control to reach your weight removal goal.

A goal is a specific thing that you have decided you need to accomplish within a clearly defined time.

Dreams are things we wish for. Things you enjoy thinking about but you are not sure when and where or if they will happen.

Your goals come from your dreams. Most woman have stopped setting goals because they have stopped dreaming. We cope with our lives and stop designing and living it. We exist.

We focus on the present, we get through the day. We feel the best part of our life [...]]]>

What is a goal?

A goal is a specific thing that you have decided you need to accomplish within a clearly defined time.

What is a dream?

Dreams are things we wish for. Things you enjoy thinking about but you are not sure when and where or if they will happen.

Transforming your dreams into goals

Your goals come from your dreams. Most woman have stopped setting goals because they have stopped dreaming. We cope with our lives and stop designing and living it. We exist.

We focus on the present, we get through the day. We feel the best part of our life is over. All the exciting things like obtaining a degree, getting a first job, a wedding, a first pregnancy, the birth of a first child have already happened.

During the child rearing years, we sacrifice our careers for our children. In the process, we also neglect our self-care and our bodies and we start to live only for the present and only for our children. Neglect starts out as an infection then becomes a disease. We stop dreaming. We stop setting goals for us.

It is never too late to make a U-turn for Life and to live again. To start something new. Study something, start a business from home, transform your body, find yourself again. Just start living and stop existing.

Start with your body and set a goal to obtain health and remove the excess weight. This one area affects all other areas of our lives.  Set a goal to change from overweight, unhealthy and inactive, to active, in-shape and healthy.

To transform a dream into a goal, you MUST write it down. You must be able to measure the goal. Write it in the present tense as if you have already achieved it.

Why are goals important?

The difference between people achieving success and those that fail or at any task is goals. To quote the words of Earl Nightingale. “People with goals succeed because they know where they are going. It is that simple. Failures, on the other hand, believe that their lives are shaped by circumstances… by things that happen to them … by exterior forces. Think of a ship with the complete voyage mapped out and planned. The captain and crew know exactly where the ship is going and how long it will take — it has a definite goal. And 9,999 times out of 10,000, it will get there. Now let’s take another ship — just like the first — only let’s not put a crew on it, or a captain at the helm. Let’s give it no aiming point, no goal, and no destination. We just start the engines and let it go. I think you’ll agree that if it gets out of the harbor at all, it will either sink or wind up on some deserted beach — a derelict. It can’t go anyplace because it has no destination and no guidance. It’s the same with a human being”.

Unless you state a goal for anything you wish to achieve, it will remain just that, a wish or a dream. The only known way of achieving any task is to set it as a goal i.e. what you want to accomplish in what time.

If you can see it, you can achieve it

Everything happens first in our minds just like an architect designs a building first in his mind, then in reality. Similarly, great lives and healthy in-shape bodies do not simply happen. You design them. You have a picture of you at your goal weight in your mind and then you build it. You follow a plan that will bring you to the goal. You realize that you can achieve it because you can SEE it.

Keeping your goal alive

Once you have created your goal, don’t just write it down and put it away. You need to keep the goal alive in your mind. Get this goal and this new picture into your subconscious mind.

• Read your goal every morning as you get up.
• Read your goal every evening just before you fall asleep.
• Remove any doubt and fear from your mind when you think about your goal.
• Read your goal with confidence and assurance as if you have already obtained it.
• Find a photo of you before you gained the extra 20 kg and put it where you can see it.
• Think about yourself at your goal weight often. Feel the pride and the satisfaction and the self-confidence and the joy.

Program your mind for success

The real secret to success with weight removal is the ability to visualize success. Use your imagination to dream and visualize all of the positive benefits you can gain by losing the forty pounds that you are overweight. Bombard your non-conscious brain with these pictures so that your entire brain (conscious and non-conscious) is working towards the same end.

Start to see in your mind the things that you will be able to do after you have removed the weight. Start to visualize all the benefits of achieving your goal.

If you can continue to imagine and visualize your goal for 30 days your brain will have created enough new neurode connection patterns so that it will automatically (without you being aware of it) take the steps necessary to reach your goal.

You have just programmed your brain for success.

Move to remove

Finding a goal, focusing on it and programming your mind for success is half the battle won. The other half is actually doing it. You still need to start the plan, eat nutritious meals five times per day en start moving your body to remove the weight.

If you want to change anything in your life, you need to start on the inside. Darren Hardy editor of Success magazine says it like this in one of his recent posts “Like it or not, how you show up on the outside says a lot about you on the inside. Our body advertises our personal development. All the habits, behaviors, choices, disciplines (or lack there of) are made physical (literally) in your physique.”

Quite harsh, but the truth. If you prefer the couch above your running shoes, or the chocolate above the apple or the TV above reading [...]]]>

Weigh loss by definition say you want to lose some weight…and then find it again. When you lose your keys, you try everything in your ability (energy, focus and effort) to find it again. Most people lose weight and then by means of bad habits allow the weight to find them again…

Look at the size of the weight loss industry.  According to the International Journal Of Obesity, weight loss is currently a $150 billion dollar industry in the United States and Europe combined. So losing weight, finding it again and then trying another way of losing it again, [...]]]>

Weigh loss by definition say you want to lose some weight…and then find it again. When you lose your keys, you try everything in your ability (energy, focus and effort) to find it again. Most people lose weight and then by means of bad habits allow the weight to find them again…

Look at the size of the weight loss industry.  According to the International Journal Of Obesity, weight loss is currently a $150 billion dollar industry in the United States and Europe combined. So losing weight, finding it again and then trying another way of losing it again, has become big business.

Weight removal in principle say you want to lose the weight and do not intend to find it again. The only way that it is possible, is to change your lifestyle by replacing bad habits with good habits and change the way you are thinking about your body. You need to apply the power of the subconscious mind to change your mental set point.

Removing weight and becoming fit and healthy have two essential components. The first is the mind body connection, what do you think about when you diet or eat. The second is the knowledge to understand how the body works and how you can assist your body to be in shape. The body has been designed to do it all by itself, but it needs the correct fuel. Understanding nutrition is to learn what is good fuel or bad fuel and to learn how to give your body good fuel 80% of the time.

For permanent weight removal you need to follow these steps:

1. Change your mind: Real change ALWAYS starts on the inside.Change your mind and change your body. It is possible to completely transform your body, if you can get it right to completely transform your mind. We become what we think about. The first step is always to change the mental picture you have in your mind of yourself and replace it with a new picture. This new picture, is the new you. You need to zoom in like a lazer on this new picture and do not allow any thoughts or negative moments to mistify your picture. Clarity is essential.
2. Determine where you are – do a stock take: We measure, weigh and determine BMI and body composition to ensure we have a starting point and we do not fool ourselves If you are more than 15 kg overweight you are very likely to have a BMI that will fall within the obese category for your weight and height. Did you know that?
3. Set a goal for 3 months. Unless you state a goal for anything you wish to achieve, it will remain just that, a wish or a dream. The only known way of achieving any task is to set it as a goal i.e. what you want to accomplish in what time.
4. Identify bad habits taking you away from your goal: We are all a product of habit. Our habits are what we do without even being aware that we are doing it. Many of us have bad habits relating to food and nutrition. We need to change that.
5. Improve good habits that will take you closer to your goal. Exercising is a habit that will take you closer to your goal of removing excess weight and becoming healthy and fit.
6. Learn to understand your body and proper nutrition: The biggest problem today is that we do not understand our bodies and have become our own worst enemy. We work against our body’s ability to do what they were designed to do i.e. be at optimum health.
7. Implement an action plan that will change your body and health: For success the plan needs to be simple, it must be science based and it must be successful with weight removal in normal overweight people. I also believe it must have some commonsense build into it.
8. Monitor progress and adjust: We monitor because we do not want to fool ourselves, but we have to realize that we are the easiest ones to fool.
9. Learn to stick to your plan 80% of the time: Learn that you can still enjoy life. Delicious food is one of the great joys in life. Learn eat the foods you love 20% of the time. The other 80 % stick to good nutritional discipline and you can have the best of both worlds.
10. Have ongoing support and re-enforcements to stay on course: It is difficult to do anything alone. You will need encouragement and you will need to be challenged. Surround yourself with support.

Follow this blog for details and practical advice on each step. Have fun!

Does it feel like your life is out of control? Are you frustrated with yourself? Is that which is staring at you in the naked mirror a cause of great distress and anxiety in your life? Do you struggle to find energy, struggle to remain positive, struggle to get through the day while part of you echo “ I can’t carry on like this anymore? “

Perhaps you have forgotten: The only difference between a rut and a grave is the DEPTH.

If you are not being the best you can be, [...]]]>

Does it feel like your life is out of control? Are you frustrated with yourself? Is that which is staring at you in the naked mirror a cause of great distress and anxiety in your life? Do you struggle to find energy, struggle to remain positive, struggle to get through the day while part of you echo “ I can’t carry on like this anymore? “

Perhaps you have forgotten: The only difference between a rut and a grave is the DEPTH.

The real YOU is not overweight and unhealthy

If you are not being the best you can be, having a body that closely represents YOU, then in principle you are dying. I am not talking about striving to get the body of a celebrity or a bodybuilder with carved abs. I am talking about striving to become YOU again. The YOU inside of this unfamiliar, unhealthy, overweight and uncomfortable body are not YOU. The real YOU have a normal weight like you used to, can buy normal size clothes like you used to and run and jump without being out of breath like you used to.

To fail to plan is to plan to fail

We do not plan to get fat, to become inactive, to become unhealthy and to have little energy. Just as no one plans to get lonely, unhappy and poor. It does not happen overnight. It takes years to happen and is a result of having no goals in our lives. Between the rut of our daily living, falling pregnant and raising kids and coping with a job on top of that, we give up on ourselves. We give up on our dreams and we stop setting goals. We just get by….and life goes by.

If you do not intentionally plan to become healthy, fit and in shape, then you without knowing it, unintentionally plan to get just that…unhealthy, unfit and out of shape. To fail to plan is to plan to fail. True for you? If you do not built healthy eating habits and exercise into your life and set goals for those areas of your life you are by absence of the plan, planning for the exact opposite. Failure. Just look around you and you will realize this is true.

The way out

Is there a way out? Off course there is.

• Real change ALWAYS starts on the inside. Decide to change. Make a commitment to yourself to make a U-turn. To become the real YOU again.

• Set a goal to lose the excess weight, become fit and healthy and to start to take care of yourself. Set a deadline to achieve the goal and honour it.

• Learn to understand how your body works and what is good nutrition

• Learn why and when do your body store fat so you can replace the bad habits with good ones

• Learn what is good nutritional habits and focus on improving them

• Spend time daily to think about you want to become and start to see it in your mind

• Learn that weight removal is easy if you work WITH your body and its intelligent design.

• Make yourself priority and realize by changing your body you will also change your life. Our bodies are a reflection of our internal world. It shows either our lack of discipline, self-care and mental toughness or it shows our positive reflection, self-care and discipline. Everything counts. As Jim Rohn said All disciplines affect each other. Mistakenly the man says, “This is the only area where I let down.” Not true. Every let down affects the rest. Not to think so is naive.

It does not matter what  type of  industry or business you are in. Look closely and you will notice that successful people in any industry do a few daily things different to unsuccessful people.

We are all slaves of habits. Successful people are slaves of positive habits and unsuccessful people slaves of negative habits. This is so because good habits are the key to all success. Bad habits are the unlocked door to failure.

If you want to be a leader become a slave of these seven steps. You will discover the power of positive habits.

Online marketing has the benefit that the world is your available market. The internet population has grown to 1.7 billion users making this a huge market. The disadvantage is that the personal contact between people is lost. People are no longer real. Your face becomes a gray mass between the millions of others.

Zig Ziglar said: “ If people like you they will listen to you, but if they trust you they’ll do business with you.”.

If you want to grow your network marketing business, it boils down to trust. People will join your business if they trust you. People [...]]]>

Online marketing has the benefit that the world is your available market. The internet population has grown to 1.7 billion users making this a huge market. The disadvantage is that the personal contact between people is lost. People are no longer real. Your face becomes a gray mass between the millions of others.

Zig Ziglar said: “ If people like you they will listen to you, but if they trust you they’ll do business with you.”.

If you want to grow your network marketing business, it boils down to trust. People will join your business if they trust you. People will start to trust you if they know you. They can only know you if they interact with you.

How do you create trust in an online world build with walls of emails, auto-responders and broadcasts? You engage. You conversate. You use social media solutions to paint your face!

You can use social media as a lead generation tool where the sole purpose is to drive leads. I have written several articles on how you can use Facebook and LinkedIn to generate new business leads. However, social media works best as a method for retention and engagement with an existing lead list when you have started to gain increasing trust.

Here is a list of methods to use social media to build trust:

1. Provide amazing content – Learn to develop amazing and original content. Be educational, inspirational and uniquely YOU. Give your current lead list something that they will want to talk about. Make your content pertinent to the current problems your target audience may face in online marketing.
2. Social media listening – Eavesdrop on twitter and other forums by evaluating what people in your niche market are tweeting and writing about. Create conversation that is relevant to the product or business you provide. Publish content that will address the concerns, issues and questions of people in your target market.
3. Viral questions – Encourage existing prospects on your lead list to spread the viral word about the current issues, questions and solutions. One method is to ask open ended questions on Facebook. Friends can provide answers for all (their friends) to see.
4. Social media conversation – Take part in the conversation yourself. Be proactive on commenting on people’s status, re-tweet their posts if it makes sense and share any useful information they provided.
5. Social media promotion – Promote your social media channels on your website and in your email signatures and lead capture pages. This will give new leads the option to look for you and find that you are real.
6. Open ended questions in blog articles – Find a way that people can signal to you that they are raising their hand to talk business. One example is for you to ask a question at the end of a blog post of how you can help solve a related problem they may have.
7. Make self selection possible – Provide relevant information and always enough information that your prospect can self select through the information you provide. This puts the prospect in the driver seat and they lose the feeling of being chased by a hunter. You increased your chances that they approach you to engage with you.

You can use social media for home business lead generation. Its greatest value is to increase the retention of your prospects and to engage with them through the various social media channels.

It is through conversation and social media listening (eavesdrop on the social media conversations) that you will learn the problems and needs of your target market and will give you the opportunity to solve these problems for your prospects.

I would like to say to you: Yes! It does. I realize this is a bold statement. And you may even object by saying, but I have been as positive as I can possibly be, yet, I still have problems in my life. I am still struggling to get my business of the ground. I still struggle with my marketing and I have not made the major breakthrough that I was waiting and hoping for and positively expecting!

Positive thinking does not change the reality you face. If you are struggling to generate leads for your network [...]]]>

I would like to say to you: Yes! It does. I realize this is a bold statement. And you may even object by saying, but I have been as positive as I can possibly be, yet, I still have problems in my life. I am still struggling to get my business of the ground. I still struggle with my marketing and I have not made the major breakthrough that I was waiting and hoping for and positively expecting!

Face reality

Positive thinking does not change the reality you face. If you are struggling to generate leads for your network marketing business, you are struggling and that is a fact. If you deny yourself the opportunity to evaluate your results, you are being like an ostrich. You are burying your head in the sand. Failure still exists. To ignore it will not make it go away.

Do not dwell on failure

A positive thinker does not refuse to recognize the things that go wrong. He refuses to dwell on it. He refuses to let the failure drag him down into a pot of negative emotions that drains creativity, energy and zest for life from him. He does not spend his energy and emotions thinking about the negative. He spends his energy on positive feelings and positive self talk. He can do this despite setbacks.

A positive thinker sees failure for what it is. A method that did not work exactly as planned. He has the ability to look at the results, take what works from it and to be creative to adjust a failed method or look for another method that will succeed. This anonymous quote defines a positive thinker “Success is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.”  .

Failure is a normal and natural part of achievement. When failures comes a person that has learned the skill of positive thinking will learn from it and then move quickly along.

Gain from failure

A positive thinker always gains from failure, because he does not take it personal and he insists on learning from it. Zig Ziglar so rightly said “Failure is an event, not a person. Yesterday ended last night.”

It is possible to evaluate your results and say, this did not work as well as I thought it would. It is possible to then critically look at the results and find the best factors that did work and use that as a foundation to improve on. Failure is only a temporary change in direction to set you straight for your next success. A positive mind knows that.

Expect the best

Positive thinking is a form of thought. It is a habit to look for the best results from the worst conditions. It is always possible to look for something to build on. It is possible to expect the best for yourself, even when things look bad. The remarkable fact is, that if you seek good, you will surely find it. A positive thinker knows that.

Know your roots

The world and the marketplace will not always offer you encouragement. Especially after an event of failure. A positive thinker has learned to find his own encouragement.

You may have good reason to feel sorry for yourself.

A positive thinker knows that it is a choice. He knows that he must avoid feeling sorry for himself. He has learned to choose to feel encouraged. This will make him ready for the next task.

A positive mind comes from failure feeling upbeat and encouraged and can therefore be creative. It can see opportunity and is ready to jump in with all the newly learned skills.

Positive thinking tips

Remind yourself often that you are worthy and relevant, effective and capable of the very best.

Remind yourself that when your efforts meet with failure, you know you are on to something. On the other side of failure lies accomplishment.

Seek not to avoid failure. Seek instead to do your best and to allow failure when it comes. Use the failure to keep you moving on the path to greater success.

Positive thinking will always work to get you there. There where you will meet with expected success.