Last summer on the Champions Body for Life Cruise I was asked to do a short program on the elements of doing a challenge, and just for the fun of it I threw in a few minutes about the differences between men and women–both generally and while doing a transformation. Well! That little few minutes ended up being hours of interesting discussion. Many of the people attending that group meeting came up afterward and asked great questions and gave some of their own feed back as well. Here is what I told them. See if you agree or disagree, and see if it might help you a bit in your dealings with members of the “other” sex. (Notice that I didn’t say “opposite” sex!)

When a woman says “I don’t have anything to wear”, she means that she doesn’t have anything new. When a man says “I don’t have anything to wear” he means that he doesn’t have anything clean! Just one example of the absolute TRUTH that men and women communicate differently. Not bad, not good, just differently.

If you ladies chose your mate carefully, because he is devoted to you rather than because of how cute he is or how much money he has, then you can be sure of two things: A. He probably won’t pick up after himself or be real big on intimate talks, and; B. If the opportunity required it, he would willingly die to protect you! This proposition illustrates that men and women show love differently. Women crave intimacy and romance, and men are hard wired to be protective.

A man’s deepest need is for respect. A woman’s deepest need is love. Not good or bad, just different needs–and both need to be unconditional rather than earned.

So, if you have read this far, it won’t surprise you that I also believe that men and women look upon fitness and diet completely different as well. Most women weigh daily–and if they are concerned about their weight, they may weigh several times a day. Most men don’t even know how much we weigh, and it’s not a concern unless we’re trying to “make weight” for some kind of a competition. Otherwise, to men, losing weight is really about “getting in shape.” We join a gym, start jogging, give up beer or switch to lite beer, throw some weights around, and thanks to all that hard work and lots of testosterone, we “get in shape” rather easily, it would seem. Women, generally speaking, gravitate to endless cardio, and long for the slim look rather than the muscled look. So, doing Body for Life can be a very frustrating thing for many women–because the scales don’t move and endless cardio is deemed off limits!

Now, put all these things together, and you can readily see why almost all couples’ challenges are crashingly unsuccessful! Different ways of communicating, different ways of showing affection and love, different ways of looking at fitness, it’s actually not surprising they don’t go well. In fact what IS surprising is that more couples’ challenges don’t end in murders!

The key thing to remember, ladies, (I am writing to ladies because most men won’t even ever look at this post and the guestbook is 75% women) is that neither the man’s approach nor the women’s approach is the right or wrong one–they’re just different.  And the TRUTH is, that because they are so different, a couple together have every attribute that is necessary to survive and thrive in this world!

Our former pastor, Emerson Eggerichs, wrote a marvelous book about this topic, and it is still available if any are interested. Even though it is written to and for Christians and from a creationist point of view, the book is a valuable tool to anyone who truly wants to find a better and less thorny path toward understanding how to interact with the “other sex. The first book is called “Love and Respect” Most of the material in this blog is a paraphrase of Emerson’s work–except for its application to BFL of course!

One of the most common reasons given for failing to successfully finish a challenge is peer pressure. Peer pressure is a real and powerful phenomenon. But it’s not as simple as it seems. Most people who feel what they say is peer pressure are experiencing a combination of peer pressure and low self-confidence. This is an important point, because the cure for one will not affect the other.

See, if you just lack self-confidence– which is a form of fear–you’ll always be tempted to take the way of least resistance, and others are always willing to allow you to do that, because it also makes life easier for them. For example, if you forced your spouse to do a transformation with you, once you lose confidence and decide to quit, that also relieves your spouse of having to do a transformation. It wasn’t your spouse who pressured you into quitting—it was your lack of confidence in yourself that did you in. The cure for all fear is right actions. If you do the next right thing in front of you for a while, you’ll realize that what you thought was all peer pressure was mostly just your own lack of self-confidence (fear) and others taking advantage of it.

If the peer pressure is real, that’s different. There, you need a few people who will be there for you, who are of the same mind you are. You need a small “community.” These should be BFL’ers who share the same goals and passions you do. This doesn’t mean they have to be there all the time, but you have to have people who can help you get through something with a phone call or an email or some other form of personal contact. With these like-minded people, you will not feel alone and vulnerable, and you’ll be able to resist the temptation that comes from your peers. You’ll feel like you’re doing something important and worth standing up for. This is the power of community. The stories of loners often make great movies, but in real life, loners get devoured!

Peer pressure never stops. It’s worset in your younger years, because you don’t have the experience to understand that being in with the in-crowd is not the way to happiness. But, even at my age, 62, peer pressure is here to stay. There are two ways for me to lose in a peer pressure situation, to give in to it, or to let the peers anger me. Either one diminishes my peace. Today, I choose to stay aligned with small groups of strong people who help me stay on track, and I choose to respect and accept people who disagree with me, without letting it bother me. It’s not easy to deal with others who are trying to change us, but it is certainly possible to do so. The key is to let them know that you are committed to what you are committed to, that they cannot change that, but that you respect them even though you do not agree with them.

To review, look first within yourself to see if the perceived peer pressure is coming from your fears rather than from others. If it is from within, keep doing the next right thing in front of you, and you’ll conquer your fears. If it is from others, begin by accepting them and respecting them without allowing them to change you, and stay close to your small community.

They are just one letter apart, two of the most important words in the English language–”think” and “thank.”  From my perspective, most people do far too much of one, and not near enough of the other!

Trust me–I’m not an anti-intellectual! Believe it or not, I once ran a think tank in Lansing Michigan, an organization that produced radio programs, white papers for the legislature on public policy issues, and brought in speakers with experience in the esoteric issues we often dealt with. Yet, when it comes to self-improvement, I am not on the “let’s think about this” side of the argument at all! Here’s why.

When someone asks me a question about fitness and I answer it in terms of what they should implement to change their life, I’m often met with a “that’s really interesting–I’ll have to think about that a bit.”  Well, that is just a polite way of saying “I’m not going to do that in a 1000 years!” Most people simply use thinking as an excuse to avoid action, at least as far as self-improvement is concerned. And if it’s not about self-improvement, they use group think (meetings!) to avoid personal responsibility.  Mulling things over has become more popular these days than doing anything about it.

So, what about “thank?” Thankfulness is a mindset, an operating system for your life. Maintaining a thankful attitude means being focused not on self but on others. It means not figuring out what you can get, but calculating how much you can give–and then doing it!

Thankfulness of necessity comes hard. Few just naturally have thankful personalities.  Look at how little children behave. We all yearn for the day when it will become something other than just all about them! It is learned, but not necessarily taught. Usually, a truly thankful mindset comes as a gift from a deep and abiding faith in a power greater than ourselves.  A realization that we were created for a purpose, and that our purpose is giving, not getting, comes from realizing the great truth of the Golden Rule. The joy that comes from that practice is a gift to us, and that produces even more thankfulness and selflessness.

Body for Life has imbedded in it the way to a thankful heart. It is called the universal law of reciprocation in the book. Done simply, it is helping others without any expectation of a return. In my opinion only, the rule can be done perfectly by not only helping others without expectation, but helping others who don’t even have the ability to pay you back, and keeping your involvement in it absolutely anonymous. This will produce so much joy in your heart that you’ll absolutely feel like you need to tell someone before you burst!  And, if you’re a person of faith, you can tell God, and He will simply answer by giving you yet another opportunity to do good. Soon enough, you’re almost a full-time “do-gooder!”

So, how does this impact a body for life challenge?  Two ways. One, those with thankful hearts finish far more often than those who are “in it to win it.”  Selfishness is a self-defeating activity. And, two, you not only want to look better physically, but you want to end up better emotionally and spiritually, and nothing does that like an action-oriented thankful heart!

The Few, The Proud, The Persistent!

The title here is the beginning of the Marines’ recruiting slogan. The Marines’ slogan ends with, of course, “the brave,” but it didn’t seem to fit here, because I’m talking about those who do BFL!

As much as I would like to say that bravery counts in a good BFL challenge, it is pretty much minimal. Oh, there are those “brave” moments when we do things we should have done all along, such as standing up to the morons who continually try to sabotage our challenge by bringing us chocolate chip cookies and Krispy Kreme donuts.

Truly, to become the transformed person we want to be, what it is really going to take is persistence. Persistence is simply gutting it out, and continuing to do the same positive type of activities over and over and over again, whether you feel like it or not. It is working harder, not longer. It is eating right, not skipping meals to make up for those little binges. It is writing notes in a diary, even when you really feel like you don’t have much to say, and even though the exercise routine changed very little.

Persistence is accepting the fact that much of a challenge is just plain mundane. There is little glory in this, getting up early to sweat alone in a dingy basement, or knocking out a resistance training workout while your friends are all watching the game down at the local bar after work!

So, why do it then? The money? It doesn’t last, and the IRS gets a big chunk of it anyway. The jacket? I’ve got to admit that is pretty cool, but I’ve probably worn mine about a grand total of twenty times since winning it a couple of years ago! The trophies and the big party at the Expo? That was pretty cool, but that too has long faded away! The body? Well, that isn’t something you get to keep–it still needs that persistence thing.

I don’t know “for sure” about the rest of you, but I do it for the love of the entire Body for Life program. That means YOU! I do this, and keep doing this, because it excites me to see you change! It excites me to see you all catch a vision, to act on it, and to become completely empowered by it! I do it to see great things like the terrific transformations that many of you are just winding up now. 

And I hope that’s why you do it, too. Actually, I know that is the case for most of you, and that’s why you are the FEW and the PROUD, because you have hung in there, and your PERSISTENCE has paid off, not only for yourselves, but for others as well! Way to go, readers, way to go!