Over the past few weeks I’ve had a couple of thoughts piling up in my head that I figured would make a quick little post.

1.  I am so blessed.

Having had my daughter only 17 weeks ago I can only say that this has been one of the most exciting times in my life.  Despite the 2am diaper blowouts and the sleep deprivation, every morning I get to wake up to this beautiful face.

2.  My wife is incredible

Lest you think I’m one of those guys who falls in love with his children only to forget the rest of his family, I really do have to give credit to my wife for becoming an outstanding mother.  As I said, I am blessed.

3.  The Body Saw is sick!

Last week Nick Tumminello posted this  exercise on his site which I think is an incredible anterior core progression.

4.  How do you determine success?

If you’re a trainer and you’re working with a person that came to you to lose weight and they weren’t losing weight would you consider them a success?  Your damn right you wouldn’t!  In fact, it isn’t all that common for busy trainers to consider “firing” that client in order to accomodate someone who was more “dedicated”.  To be honest, up until a while ago I might honestly have done the same thing.

Then recently I had the good fortune to attend a journal club meeting at which exercise researcher Dr. Bob Ross was presenting.  Throughout the course of his brilliant lecture, he presented study after study that demonstrated waist circumference and cardiorespiratory fitness are much bigger predictors of mortality than body weight.  In fact, a fit person who is obese has less of a mortality risk than an unfit person who is of normal body weight.  And both cardiorespiratory fitness and waist circumference can improve without ANY weight loss as long as they are physically active.

While the ideal situation would be to have our client lose weight, reduce waist circumference, AND increase their level of fitness, is it not still acceptable to help them become healthier an extend their life even if they aren’t as dedicated to their nutrition as they should be?  Or are we so vain that the only thing worth accepting money for is the change in physical appearance?

Personally, I’ve decided that I’d rather have them reframe their goals from weight goals to health goals so that they’re not expecting results that are never going to happen given their current level of dedication.  In this way, I’m not promising something for their money that I can’t deliver, but I’m not discouraging someone from physical activity (which is something I don’t think anyone should do given the state of affairs in North America).

Check out a 27 minute presentation by Dr. Ross HERE and let me know what you think.  He’s a great speaker and the time flies when you hear him talk.

5.  High Fructose Hype?

Last week a study released by researchers at Princeton University suggested that High Fructose Corn Syrup may contribute to obesity more than normal sugar.  But is the evidence convincing enough to suggest that we should entirely avoid HFCS?

A while back I read a blog by Alan Aragon suggesting differently and saying it generated a lot of discussion is an understatement.  It has 371 responses as I write this!  But if you want to go toe to toe with Alan you’d better come equipped with studies because he’ll take you to school (which he does with those who oppose his views in the comments).

If you’re deathly afraid of high fructose corn syrup check out the blog.  It is worth reading.

6.  Crush It…Should be Crushed

A while ago I heard a lot of hype about Gary Vaynerchuk’s book Crush It so I picked it up and read it in a little under two hours.  If you know nothing at all about social networking and internet promotions this book might be valuable to you, but I found it a little bit more like a rah rah motivational speech than anything else.

Gary suggests working until three in the morning and really “crushing it”.  To me, the whole idea of working countless hours and leaving comments on every blog possible to drive traffic to your own blog is working hard, not working smart.  Granted, Gary is a millionaire and I am not so he’s obviously done something right.  I guess I just expected more information and less of a cheering squad.

Oh…he did mention something useful in the book.  If you distribute videos you may want to check out Tube Mogul so you can share them with various video sharing sites at the same time.  Mind you, it took Mike Boyle to point this out to me because I probably just glazed over this part when I was bored.

7.  Lottery tickets are God’s punishment for people who are bad at math.

Consequently, they are also my punishment because I always seem to get stuck behind people who are buying them.

8.  What if you won 50 million dollars?

A couple weeks ago while I was waiting behind a lottery ticket picker (do they really need to select their specific tickets?) I wondered exactly what most people in the fitness industry would do if they won the 50 million dollars that was offered that week.

I realized that I would definitely travel and I certainly wouldn’t work nearly as often, but I’d still train people because this is my passion.  If you wouldn’t, perhaps you’re in the wrong job.

Thoughts?  Comments?  Leave ‘em below.

Last week I logged in to my Facebook homepage only to see  colors popping up all over the place.

Black, white, pink, red, blue, and so on. 

At first I was confused, but shortly afterward I was informed that this was a fun little game where women posted the color of their bra as status update to promote awareness of breast Cancer.  Although this possibly played into some men’s fantasy of women listing their bra colors as they danced around their rooms with friends having pillow fights, I’m curious to know how many of the women who participated actually did a breast exam that day.  Moreover, I’m curious to know how many of those women have done an exam in the past month.  My guess is that this little game (although fun) probably did little to actually help in creating awareness of breast Cancer among participants.  I would also hazard a guess that it didn’t generate much in the way of donations either.

I think the problem with this overall campaign is that, while it hit thousands of people, it didn’t force people to actually do anything that would force them to discover anything about themselves.  It didn’t remind them to do the two critical things…do an exam or donate.

But what if we could get people to spread the word about another global epidemic and learn something about themselves at the same time?  What if the game itself required the participants to do something that highlighted their own personal risk and alterted them to the problem with a brief dose of reality?

What I’m talking about is that we know now that men with a waist circumference greater than 40 inches (102cm) and women with a waist circumference 35 inches (88cm) are at greater risk of obesity related illness and death.

Can we as intelligent fitness oriented men and women create our own viral message to actually alert those to their own risk?

Even if this doesn’t apply to you, there are probably a few people on your Facebook who need a reality check.  Please post this as your status and let’s see how far this goes.

“Men with waists above 40 inches and women with waists above 35 inches are at risk of obesity related illness and death.  If you’re brave, list your waist measurement.  If not, please repost anyway and raise obesity awareness.  Mine is 32.”

If you’re on Twitter, please retweet.  Let’s change the world one click at a time.