How to become legendary? Just do it.

This is an article written by Jason Baptiste and it was posted on a site that I follow called OnStartups. 

The video alone is powerful enough, but Jason's overview of the 23 things that Michael Jordan taught him about entrepreneurship drives it home.

There is a posting for a conference that happened on December 7th underneath the post that I attended online.  The one common theme among all of the speakers was..

Get out there - and just do it.

Athletes have to look at their "game" all the time to find what works, what doesn't, what needs improvement, etc.  To be the best, you have to train to be the best.  If you think you know better, if you think that you got it all in the bag - not only will you be surprised to find that you don't, but you will be held back by arrogance and a know-it-all syndrome that will plague every life experience you have.

Rethinking how you think can be a very hard task.  It means taking a candid look at yourself, your life, your choices, your habits, your present situation, your knowledge, your experience and laying it all out on the table to find the areas of weakness.  The mentalities that are holding you back from achieving your goals - whatever they may be.

Or does it?

Maybe, you just do it.

=)

What is in your food?

Reading ingredient lists is now mandatory for me.

The other day hubby went to Giant.  I haven't purchased any food from major grocery stores for many months now as their organics departments aren't frequented enough for a good turnover of produce, but hubby doesn't like to drive out to Roots, so he still goes to Giant and Safeway from time to time.

I asked him to buy some Pacific Butternut Squash Organic soup if they had it.  In an effort not to disappoint me he bought Campbell's and V8 have partnered to make a Butternut Squash Soup.  On the front of the container they state:

- A full serving of vegetables
- No artificial flavors
- No preservatives


However, let's look at the ingredients list (we have to look at the container b/c they don't list their ingredients on their website:

Butternut Squash
Water
Potatoes
Carrots
Cream (Milk)

Contains less than 2% of:
Modified Food Starch - starch derivative prepared physically, enzymatically or chemically treating native starch.
Dehydrated Potatoes -not really sure why it has to be dehydrated.
Yeast Extract (can sometimes hide MSG)
Sugar
Salt
Butter (Cream (Milk), Salt)
Flavoring (No artificial flavorings.. but then.. what kind of flavoring is this?)
Dehydrated Onions -not really sure why it has to be dehydrated.
Maltodextrin - used in soda and candy
Celery
Onions
Corn Oil - Can cause cancer, we already know the risks of corn products right?
Dehydrated Parsley
Cornstarch
Lower Sodium Natural Sea Salt
Natural Flavoring (Soy)

First - none of the ingredients are organic.  Second do we really need butter and oil?  Last - why Maltrodextrin?  I am always floored by the amount of foods that I find contain this ingredient.

I have the receipt on the soup and it will be returned this week.

When you do something well and it works - rinse / repeat until it doesn't.

In this last season of The Ultimate Fighter 12 there was a fighter named Cody McKenzie.  Cody had an unbelievable ability to pull of a Guillotine Choke - on anyone.   From 2008 to 2010 Cody won 10 matches in a row using this technique.  Not only that, he did them all in under four minutes of the first round.  Four minutes - choke - done - win.  You would think by the third or the fourth guy - someone might catch on, but over and over again this worked for Cody.

Eventually Cody would be eliminated from TUF 12 by Nam Phan who used elbows to daze and exhaust Cody and in the end of the round was able to avoid the choke taking them into the second round of fights. 
Cody hadn't been to the second round in a fight since 2007. He became gassed and ultimately Nam Phan was able to get him by TKO (punches) in round 2.

Will the Guillotine Choke work for Cody again in his career?  Yup, it did on 12/04/10 against Aaron Wilkinson.  Sure, he will have to change up his game plan to train on avoiding being hit, increasing his cardio to make it to the second, third, and maybe someday for him - fifth round, but he isn't going to totally abandon what works for him.  Many called him a one-trick pony.  Well that pony did some awesome tricks that earned him a position in the house and advanced him all the way through Episode 9 of TUF 12.

There have been many times in my journey when I implement something into my routine that works great.  Then for some reason or another it falls by the wayside.  Later I find myself trying to reinvent the wheel over and over again to find something that works - when I had something in my arsenal of tools that worked before and only wasn't working - b/c I wasn't doing it anymore.

Obviously in life we don't generally have another guy trying to break our streak as viciously as a UFC fight. Usually the biggest opponent we have is ourselves.  So when you find something that works for you - do it again, and again and again until it doesn't.  If it works, and you stray away from it - find it again and do it again and again until it doesn't work.  When it doesn't analyze why, what happened, what can be changed to make it work again - and then try until it works. =)

How other people live

I want to go to there. =)

http://www.youtube.com/user/SuperchargeMe#p/u/15/jRurlbRCBe8

Figuring it out

Monday's are my weigh-in day.  I was sick with the flu earlier this month and weighed in at my lowest ever of 247.  I didn't want to celebrate too early as I knew that some of that was from water weight loss due to having the flu.  

I had been sitting between 255 - 250 for awhile now.  I realized at the beginning of January this was partly due to the fact that I had set Sparkpeople.com to have a goal of getting to 250 by 11/2 - my 40th birthday - which I accomplished.  But then the system kept me at 250 as my goal and so I was maintaining the caloric intake for a 250lb person.  Ooops! =)

After switching the goal earlier this month I got the flu a few days later.

While watching The Biggest Loser two weeks ago Dr. H recommended to one of

SunFoods

David Wolfe is one of the icons of the raw food movement.  He has a commerce site that is a quick way to expose yourself to some of the amazing super foods out there.

http://www.sunfood.com/

A quick video of food empowerment from David Wolfe.

http://www.youtube.com/user/SuperchargeMe#p/u/16/WYkLm7Le04Q

A&E's Heavy

If I am not watching comedic programming - I use cable and internet programming that teaches me more about weight, health and healthy eating and lifestyle choices.

A&E and the producers of their famed Intervention program have a new show called Heavy.

Heavy covers two people per episode for a 6 month period.  So far a man and a woman each episode who are in need of help.  They go to a controlled environment for 30 days, then return home.  If they are unable to continue their weight loss, they return to the center for another 30 days.  In the end the return to the center after 6 months for their final weigh in.

http://www.aetv.com/heavy/

They have full episodes on their site.  It's no Biggest Loser, or Intervention - but it gives a further glimpse into the lives of people who are food addicts and deal with depression and other crippling issues that have caused them to get to their weights and a high level look into what they need to do to take it off.