 My mom and I were recently talking about whether or not someone who is trying to lose weight should weigh themselves every day or not.
She took the new popular position that no you shouldn’t. And I get why. True weight loss is pretty slow (maybe dropping 1 or 2 pounds per week if you are doing it healthily and normally). Seeing moderate changes along the way are discouraging for her and others who don’t want to see the slow progress of weight loss. Or worse, people who give themselves cheat days don’t want to see the damage that their 6 beers and basket of fries did to their goals. I’m quite different. If I have a weight goal, I want to know exactly what is happening. Was my day of eating good or bad? Am I eating something that is making me hold on to weight the days I am eating it? If I sleep less does it affect my weight drop or gain overnight? If I cheated and ate something bad how much did it set me back? And there are numerous other questions that I can only know the answer to if I am gathering data.
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 Without the proper tools, slumps can drag on for far longer than they have to. For those that don’t watch sports, Adam Vinatieri is a 46 year old kicker in the NFL who is widely regarded as the greatest kicker to ever play the game. Much to my town of Indianapolis’ chagrin, the last two games he has missed a career worst number of kicks. Out of 8 kicks, most of them being routine kicks, he has only made 3. That would be bad for a struggling high school kicker, let alone the best to ever play the game.
Most people think that Vinatieri hit some age wall where he suddenly can’t make a routine chip shot - as if his leg deteriorated to the point of being inaccurate from short distances overnight. As such, many think it’s time for him to retire. In reality, if you go grab Vinatieri when he is 60, I bet he’ll be able to kick 10 extra points in a row without the kind of problems he is having now. It’s not his age. It’s just a typical slump. Slumps happen to everyone, but when you are a baseball player or a kicker in the NFL, your slumps are obvious, measurable and compounding. The real question is - why do slumps happen and how on Earth do we make them stop? What is the role of stress in your life? Do you have too much of it? Do you manage it well? Do you avoid it all together?
Stress, left unmanaged and misunderstood, is both a silent killer of the body and the spirit. Stress, in the proper amounts and combined with the appropriate rest, is also the source of all your mental and physical growth. Spending time with my 3 month old baby Francis is like getting to a watch a growth machine. A baby’s life is rapid growth and a constant cycle of physical and mental stress and rest leading to extreme amounts of growth from a blob to a functioning human being. Watching him struggle with basic tasks like raising his head and rolling over and even just moving his arms and legs reminds me that stress isn’t something to be avoided, but something to embrace. Master stress in your life by doing two things.
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Andrew WarnerYour life coach. The Andrew Warner Podcast:
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