Ya know, it’s interesting.

Once in a while when I talk with a person who doesn’t appear to be healthy and fit, they’ll say: “You know, I only live once. And we’re all going to die anyway so what’s the point of my weight loss efforts?”

There is a reason they are saying this, and it’s not as obvious as you might think. I’ll go into that next week.

Instead, let’s tackle head on the point of us only living once so what’s the point of our weight loss efforts.

**

I talk and write a lot about our short term/irrational mind versus our long term/rational mind. Our long term/rational mind is where our true dreams and desires are. Our short term/irrational mind doesn’t care about the future. It wants pleasure…and it wants it NOW!

Our short term mind is constantly sabotaging us in the form of thoughts like, “You deserve this cookie, go for it. You only live once!” “Why bother exercising?” “Don’t you want to be happy now?” “You work so hard!”

Here’s the challenge we all wrestle with: Balancing living for tomorrow with living for today.

**

The reason why I’ve been able to stick with MBT since February of 2007 is because I truly believe in what we’re doing, and I know what I offer works. I believe in what we do 1000% and my belief only gets stronger each and every day…

Persistence isn’t about doing the same things over and over. It’s about wanting the same thing over and over. (I believe our short term/irrational mind is constantly trying to chip away at what we really want because it’s easier to maintain the status quo.)

And something I’ve wanted for as long as I can remember – and something I’ll always want – is to live the happiest life I can, and to help others do the same.

One fact remains constant and it’s what drives me:  When I eat healthfully and exercise, I feel better. In other words, happier, than when I don’t.

BELIEVE ME! I love cookies. I love ice cream. I love hamburgers. I really do. It’s a constant battle. And I indulge. But, I try to only indulge for the right reasons.

Even when I do indulge, I still don’t feel as good as when I eat healthfully.

Which brings me to the question we always ask our selves, “Why am I not enjoying NOW?”

“We’re all gonna die anyway!” some people say. YOLO! (You Only Live Once!)

Which circles us back to the…

NOW versus later debate.

“Screw Adam, screw MBT, screw the Daily Feedback! I want to enjoy life now!”

That’s the devil on our shoulder talking to the Body Tutor. That’s our irrational, short term mind yelling at our rational, long term mind.

So try this thought on for size:

Why not enjoy life now, even if it means more health problems later?

Really.

Go for that cookie! Go for that burger! Go for that ice cream!

BUT! It seems to me, unless you are already doing heroin then you aren’t being true to your own philosophy. Why not enjoy a good high now? Who cares what happens later!?

Interestingly, all of us have always thought about later on, and not now.

Think about the first 20 or so years of our life. Everything we did in school was to set ourselves up for a better future.

The one downside of planning ahead is that we may enjoy today a tad less. The upside is that our future might be a bit better! Maybe, A LOT better!

I’m not saying my thinking here is the best, but I think you get my point.

I don’t think it’s fair to call the “you only live once aka YOLO” approach any kind of philosophy unless you’re also quitting your job, doing heroin, living at your favorite restaurant, and only doing what feels the best every minute of your life.

Junkies have a philosophy. We have rationalizations.

Now there’s always a twist:

1. It turns out, we actually enjoy today MORE when we eat and exercise for the future. We’ve all had days when do nothing but eat and watch TV – at least I have. I always feel better when I’m eating right and exercising. Always! I know you do too.

2. I’ve never done drugs. Had/have no desire. I’m not saying you should. It was just to make a point. Actually, as a public service announcement I’ll write it: don’t do drugs!

3. It turns out that when we live and plan for the future it’ll also make us happier TODAY!

Why not make it a happier week?

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P.S. I’ve thought and written a lot about the subject of happiness because I think that’s our end goal. You can read all of my posts on happiness on my other blog here.

HA HA! I gotta laugh using Mike Tyson for blog post fodder…

But as crazy as he is, he’s also a pretty deep guy.

Below is a story of his which I really like:

**

His then trainer Cus D’Amato, says to him, “Listen you have the chance to change your life, your family’s life, you can be very special. Don’t you want to be champion? You can be champion of the world”.

I didn’t pay no attention.

He said, “Really, you could be champion of the world. You could devastate the world. No man can take what you did, you got to believe it”.

I looked at this guy and then I started thinking, I said, this guy is really crazy, that’s what I said, this guy is really crazy. [Funny how Mike Tyson thought someone else was crazy!]

“You do what I tell you to do, and if it doesn’t work then, then you can leave”.

So I said OK.

I did everything he told me to do and I won, I won every championship. From the amateur championship, all the championships, so I won every championship because he told me what to do. And I started believing in this old man.

I stopped being a little thief. I use to go back to New York and rob people and come back upstate and hide out.

The day I stopped doing all that I changed my whole life. I said I’m gonna stick to this boxing sh*t.

I turned my whole life over to boxing. I turned into a complete animal, I turned into a disciplinarian.”

**

My words now…

I love how he says the day I stopped… Because, ultimately change happens in an instant. We decide (that’s the hardest part) and then we fight like heck for the rest of our life to back our decision – unless, of course, it’s not a worthwhile one.

But we all know pursuing our health and fitness goals certainly is. Or to borrow from Mike Tyson — we all know sticking to this health and fitness sh*t is worthwhile. (Pardon my French!)

That day Mike Tyson decided he was going to be the best in the world. That he’d do whatever it took to be the best. That’s he’d employ an army of people to support him. That he’d be the baddest man on the planet.

What would happen if you decided right now that you’re not going to eat any junk food for the rest of this week? Or the rest of the day?

What would happen if you decided right now that you’re going to exercise every day for the rest of this week, no matter what it is?

What would happen to your psyche if you decided on something right now that would benefit you?

And the best part? The best part is that when we do things that benefit us, we feel a lot better too.

We feel like the…

Champion of the World!!!

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Starting a diet is easy. Sticking with it is very hard.

When was the last time you stuck with a diet?

MBT helps you actually stick with your diet and/or exercise plans by providing daily support like no other service in the world. This is why we get the results we do. Learn more now by clicking here.

I used to love playing dominoes when I was a little kid.

Not so much the game, as much as setting up the dominoes meticulously, in anticipation of getting to knock over the first one and watching them all fall down perfectly….or, so I hoped.

Let’s envision what might happen to you when you get into great shape…

Your clothes fit awesome, your confidence is obvious, the compliments don’t stop, you’re more productive, you’re more energized, you’re happier, you’re more balanced, you feel sexy, you feel vibrant, you can run for long periods of time, you love the way you feel, you can walk up the stairs without having to stop, you sleep better, you smile when you look at yourself in the mirror, you feel that you’re in control of yourself, you feel powerful, you feel like you’re living again as opposed to existing — each as a series of dominoes of different sizes and shapes.

It turns out that if we start with them all at once, we’ll fail.

And if we start with the BIG one, we’ll fail.

But if we line up all the dominoes one by one, we may just have enough energy to push over the first one.

That one, of course, adds momentum so that when we crash into the second one, that one goes too. All the way down…

That seems obvious right? Sure. Common sense but certainly not common practice.

Why is it so often ignored? Why do people always get stuck trying to do everything all at once.

We’re not going to run the 10k and we’re not going to love the way we look naked and we’re not going to love the way we look in a bathing suit and we’re not going to love the way we feel all at once.

Did we graduate high school in 10 days?

The most successful people I know don’t try to attack everything at once.

They pick out a few dominoes instead. And topple them. And they do it again. They do this so often they create momentum, and most importantly, a sense of inevitability.

Think about each meal, each workout, each extra 3 reps you do, each “no thank you!” you say, each drop of sweat, each extra 5 minutes on the treadmill, each time you choose to skip an indulgence, as a small domino.

Each one matters just as much as the next one.

We never succeed when we try to topple every domino over all at once.

Creating that momentum creates a sense of inevitability.

A sense of when…not if.

Meal by meal. Workout by workout. Day by day. Daily Feedback by Daily Feedback. THAT is how we make success inevitable.

##

Starting a diet is easy. Sticking with it is very hard.

When was the last time you stuck with a diet?

MBT helps you actually stick with your diet and/or exercise plans by providing daily and personal accountability like no other service in the world. This is why we get the results we do. Learn more now by clicking here.

This past January marked two years since Jack Lalanne passed away. I dedicated an email to him when he did pass away. It’s the least I could do.

Well yesterday marked 17 years since Larry LaPrise passed away.

Larry LaPrise was the man who wrote the “Hokey Pokey.” He died peacefully in April of 1996.

Of course, the most traumatic part for his family was getting him into the coffin. They put his left leg in, and then the trouble started…

In all seriousness, I think a little (or a lot of) goofiness is important. A little (or a lot) of fun is important too. After all, that’s what this is about.

As much fun as eating junk and lounging around is, it’s way more fun to eat healthfully and to be active. It really and truly is, and I know you agree.

So that’s my assignment for us this weekend.

Let’s aim for fun!

What do you love to do? If you don’t know what you love to do, it’s worth thinking about it. (And no, eating doesn’t count.)

When our mind isn’t occupied, usually our mouth is, or at least, it wants to be.

What do you do for fun? And when will you do it this weekend?

Need some ideas…

What did you love doing when you were a kid?

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Here was the email I wrote for Jack Lalanne back in January of 2011.

I’ll never forget watching Jack Lalanne on TV when I was little kid. Whether it was his juicer infomercials, his exercise segments on talk shows or his insane feats of strength like towing boats while shackled, I was always so inspired by him.

I vividly remember watching him on talk shows and TV thinking how unbelievable he was. I remember getting so inspired after watching him, I’d exercise right then and there.

I mean if HE could do a gazillion push ups (a 70+ year young man at the time), how can’t I at least do some?

Jack LaLanne was known as “The Godfather of Fitness.” He believed that our health account is our wealth account.

He often said, “I can’t die, it would ruin my image.”

Ernest Becker’s classic, The Denial of Death reminds us that when it comes to our mortality, there is no uncertainty principle. We will die, he reminded us. We cannot not die.

Yet, it is what we do in a doomed attempt to refute the irrefutable first principle that defines us and gives our lives meaning.

Becker believed that each of us makes sense of our existence through an “immortality project” – a personal mission that allows us to cheat death. Whether it is by turning out babies or books or blog posts or students, creating companies or helping to build them, or collecting model trains or Facebook friends – whatever they might be – we all have our immortality project(s).

If anyone wanted to be immortal and believed they actually could be; it was him. Jack was doing things in his late 80’s that many of us can only dream of.

But because, sadly, even Jack isn’t immortal – the only thing we can do to keep him living on is to spread his work.

In honor of Jack, and from what I know about him, he’d be thrilled if we all exercised today.

However, not just exercise because Jack wasn’t about just exercising. He was about going above and beyond. I mean, his feats of strength are amazing!

So, if you were planning on exercising, I’d like you to do a little extra for Jack. And if you weren’t, let’s make time – even if it’s for 5 minutes (yes, that counts!).

I bet Jack would get a kick out of it. After all, if we want to honor those we loved and admired and were impacted by, we have to keep their memory alive.

Jack, no one pulled off a track suit quite like you. Your enthusiasm and belief in what you do will always inspire me. Thank you!