Healthy High Achiever Blog

In all the years I have spent helping people improve their ability to perform "well", their health (energy and fitness), essentially their quality of their life; if there was one underlying quality I’ve identified in those who are more consistent at taking care of themselves and achieving their goals in a healthy way, that made the difference, it is this… emotional fitness: a resilient sense of self.

I can tell you first hand that it is overly challenging to live a lifestyle that works for you, if you have a fragile sense of self.

Think about it… a fragile sense of self combined with even the early stages of overwhelm and exhaustion and you could find your self knee deep in depression or food numbing the pain. 

A resilient sense of self, means you have emotional fitness.

If your ability to express your drives, needs and feelings are bound in shame and guilt, and your ability to endure change (frequently today) is weak, life today can be nerve wracking and chronically emotionally painful. Unless of course, you embrace emotional fitness. If you don’t, even simple changes can be hard to make and the reality is, this can’t be.

If you ever thought that changing your lifestyle is hard, then get ready for this:

In today’s day and age you will change your lifestyle, your routines, in small and significant ways, potentially dozens of times per day depending on your circumstances. This seems hard at first until you realize it is the status quo.

Today’s pace of life requires that we be nimble, agile and flexible, healthy, energetic, strong and enduring, empathic with ourselves and others and able to communicate… just imagine the handicap if you don’t have emotional fitness and the psychological strength that comes with it?

If you are feeling emotional or down as you read this, questioning yourself, consider this - you’re not alone. Actually you are part of a huge group of people (practically a population) who is sorting through their past as they try to cope, adapt to and thrive in the modern day endurance test we all face.

In other words, none of us is used to pace of life today, and we’re all building emotional fitness and psychological strength by default. The question is whether or not you are embracing this process, or, trying as much as possible to avoiding the pain of adapting? This has cumulative dire consequences, beginning with the downward trend.

Performance Lifestyle training teaches us how to adapt our lifestyle to meet and exceed the demands in our life and how to maintain quality of life, but Performance Lifestyle requires emotional fitness.

Personally despite my ability to feel the fear and do it anyway (at least a good portion of the time), I have often dealt with undue stress and struggle. Emotional fitness was not my strength.

Emotional fitness has always been a challenge for me until recently in my life. Actually it’s still a challenge, I’m just more confident now that I have embraced the need. Learning how to develop a resilient sense of self has been the journey of my life, and know for fact, I’m not alone in this journey.

We need to learn new lifestyle skills in order to thrive in the new environment we live in. We have to develop emotional fitness and psychological strength, learn how to manage our personal energy, eat nutrient rich foods, train or condition our bodies… to stay healthy and sustainable and maintain quality of life.

We need to learn how to bring it all together into a lifestyle that works for us, this is liberating. It’s not constructive or productive to view mental or emotional support, as needed only in crisis, or to have to be convinced to "live healthy". Today we have to perform at high levels and that requires full responsibility for ourselves.

Success psychology for achievement, only goes so far. Actually it can work against you, if your mental and emotional health (energy and fitness) are not strong to begin with. It can actually be a big cover up for you. At one point, it was for me, and I simply drove myself into the downward trend despite my success.

What I’m talking about, is getting free of past, changing your story, developing emotional fitness and the resiliency that comes with it. Facing your shadow, the aspects of yourself that you repress, hold back and deny, so that you can free yourself and lighten the load. Resiliency is a beautiful thing!

Funny thing is, these are the steps that enable you to function, day in and day out, to get free of "stuck".

A resilient sense of self is a big concept no doubt, but for starters it’s the ability to live a lifestyle that works for you, not against you, no matter what the circumstances and despite the inevitable obstacles you’ll face. To do this we need the ability to change - the energy and options for responding to the triggers, circumstances and events in our lives. With this development, we can move forward in a position of strength despite our vulnerabilities.

Emotional fitness doesn’t come from a simple workout either; it’s an ongoing process that you acknowledge, in spite of your past. Awareness of this need is half the battle.

It wasn’t until I realized that my penchant for extreme work ethic (workaholism), super achievement and blinded will, where not examples of emotional fitness, that I realized what I was missing.

Are you aware of this? 

Let me know your thoughts…

John Allen Mollenhauer is the Founder of Performance Lifestyle Solutions, the better healthier ways to achieve your goals in life, business and sport. As a former worn down workaholic turned healthy high achiever John Allen (aka “JAM”) will teach you how to Live Like a Pro, optimizing your lifestyle the way athletes do. He is the creator of the Healthy High Achiever - Unleash the Full Potential of Your Lifestyle to Perform, Look and Feel Better!

"Healthy High Achievers" are people who achieve their goals in life, business and sport, without trading health for success. Rather, with their personal wellness, energy, health and fitness powering the way.

Healthy "High Achievers" aren’t necessarily people whose goals are big. They can be and often times are, but you can have a paper route and still be a high achiever. A high achiever is someone who does things fully engaged, expects and achieves above average outcomes, and thinks bigger than others about the impact of their intention in the world. They bring character and passion to the service of others and it shows.

"Healthy" High Achievers are a rare breed. They are the top 3% of the population simply because they see things differently than most people. They see their lifestyle as the key to their success first and foremost, not success as the key to their lifestyle.

They’re core definition of lifestyle is grounded in personal wellness, health, energy management, fitness and goal achievement concepts, not money or material wealth alone.

They like to earn money, and be financially successful as this is important to a successful lifestyle, they just don’t like to trade their health for it. So they make sure the way they structure their lives, live their lifestyles and achieve their goals is in alignment… working for them, not against them.

Healthy High Achievers, stay out of the downward energy trend - overwhelm, exhaustion and the overweight condition. That trend hinders their quality of life, ability to achieve and experience the outcomes they want in life… for themselves, their families and the people they relate with.

"Healthy High Achievement" is a way of life, and learned in what we call Performance Lifestyle training. It starts with the training and essentially never ends as there is no end to "living" up to your full potential.

Healthy High Achievers, once they learn the performance lifestyle principles and practices, continue to learn and apply. New situations, require new lifestyle strategies. And since mastery is both an art and science they learn from every experience free of guilt and tension, for the most part.

Healthy High Achievers are excited about learning how to live better. They learn all health and wellness concepts in the context of personal performance and success because this is normal, natural and what they are focused on.

John Allen Mollenhauer is the Founder of Performance Lifestyle Solutions, the better healthier ways to achieve your goals in life, business and sport. As a former worn down workaholic turned healthy, high achiever John Allen (aka “JAM”) will teach you how to Live Like a Pro, optimizing your lifestyle the way athletes do. He is the creator of the Healthy High Achiever - Unleash the Full Potential of Your Lifestyle to Look, Feel and Perform Better!

You know, I get this question all the time and it’s not unusual because a Performance Lifestyle is a new concept. New concepts require explanation.

So today I am going to give you the "plain "explanation.

Simply put…

A Performance Lifestyle goes beyond health and fitness (sleep, eating and exercise) to also include personal wellness, energy management and goal achievement concepts to round out a successful model for living.

All concepts are taught in the "context" of performance and success, which are what people are focused on. Health and sustainable success go hand in hand, they are one and thus, should be taught and learned that way.

The main reason people don’t focus on their health, is because they are naturally not focused on their health. Weight loss and Health are not natural goals.

Goals are those things we achieve in life, business and sport. Having to regain your health… and lose weight,  are distractions from your natural inclination.

If we are to take action consistently, and sustainably and achieve our real goals, we had better take a lifestyle approach that maintains personal wellness, high levels of energy, is fueled by quality food, reinforced by strength and endurance, and is effectively focused.

None of these concepts is optional if we want to be effective and happy in life. Quality of life at the core, is the ability to enjoy the activities in life with little to no limitation, able to function at a high level.

That is why we call this Performance Lifestyle. It bridges the gap between health and success.

When you have these respective areas of your life working for you, your lifestyle works for you, and propels you forward in a
position of strength.

John Allen Mollenhauer is the Founder of Performance Lifestyle Solutions, the better healthier ways to achieve your goals in life, business and sport. As a former worn down workaholic turned healthy, high achiever John Allen (aka “JAM”) will teach you how to Live Like a Pro, optimizing your lifestyle the way athletes do. He is the creator of the Healthy High Achiever - Unleash the Full Potential of Your Lifestyle to Look, Feel and Perform Better!

Feeling Overwhelmed, Exhaustion and Being Overweight Go Hand in Hand

Why are so many people tired, stressed and overweight? It seems the majority of people have a motivation problem; overeating and lack of exercise are implicated as the causes of the overweight condition.

You could say we are overweight because we eat too much and live sedentary lives and that both are causes of obesity and you would be right, at least in part, acknowledging the obvious.

But what is not so obvious, are all the hidden causes of obesity and overweight that are by far more influential in the rise of the obesity epidemic, that reinforce our food and fitness habits to begin with and many motivated people fall prey.

These are matters of lifestyle. How we manage time, spend and recuperate our energy, including but not limited to, the quality of the food we eat and our activity levels every day as we achieve our goals are things that factor into this equation.

Physical inactivity plays a major role in gaining weight, but the reason we are physically inactive most of the time, is exhaustion. How often have you said “I want to exercise” but you find yourself simply too tired throughout the day to get anything done. We’re overwhelmed and tired, lacking time, space and energy to do what we need for healthy bodies. Inactivity is a result, an effect, but not the original cause.

What about the claim that overeating is to blame? We are overeating, yet the primary reason, long before discussing a market saturated with addictive fatty foods, is that most people faced with relentless demands on their time and energy, are worn down and looking for a quick pick me up.

In that besieged state, not only do they eat more for the stimulation they crave and more of the addictive fatty foods that are extraordinarily convenient, but the combination of excessive stress and nutrient-poor food virtually guarantees they will overeat. Overeating is a result, an effect, but not the original cause.

Overwhelmed and exhaustion is the greatest threat to our wellbeing and our weight. They go hand in hand. Look at your life for a moment and think of the ways you feel overwhelmed or exhausted. How often do you feel this way? What makes you feel this way?

Where are you putting your focus - cause or effect?

Are you combating the negative effects of your lifestyle by eating less and exercising more? Or, are you addressing the lifestyle that is promoting over eating and inactivity…?

You can only deal with the primary causes of weight gain at the level of lifestyle. Everything else is an attempt at manipulating your current condition for a short term gain and the results of this approach are well documented.

Do you ever wonder why diets and fad exercise programs don’t work for you? Do you wonder why you start off good for a week or so but then the big plan fails and you feel even worse than you did before?

The high protein/low carbohydrate fad was the classic example of manipulation. Millions of overweight people, addicted to super stimulating junk foods, stopped eating refined carbohydrate and started eating no-carb animal protein to manipulate the storage of carbohydrate in their body to lose weight.

This so-called “solution”, while beneficial in the sense that less junk food was being consumed, replaced an already unhealthy way of life with another (consuming large amounts of high fat, nutrient poor animal protein) to lose weight. In the end, this does not lead to a healthier person. You are replacing one bad habit with another and this doesn’t really get you anywhere further into the downward trend.

Where in this grand misdirected project was there any talk of the lifestyle that was giving rise to the consumption of junk food to begin with? Or talk about food quality? The discussion was about weight loss and was non-existent. Meanwhile millions of people struggled, got sick, including Atkins himself (who died) and gave up. This is discouraging to anyone who hopes they can break free of this downward trend. But there is hope out there- once you discover the real problem.

The Real Problem

What is the real problem? Most of us are not managing our energy well. We are overwhelmed, caught up and overcommitted and this excessive energy expenditure promotes the downward trend – exhaustion, over consumption, physical inactivity and being overweight.

The addictive, stimulating food and drinks all around then purport to give us more energy and they don’t. Over stimulation by its very nature is exhausting. These nutrient-poor foods then drive us to over consume in an effort to get our nutrient needs met and it doesn’t happen. Our now overwhelmed and exhausted bodies are no condition to be active. And the answer is eating less and exercising more? You could not assemble a better trap for staying stuck.

Countless weight loss programs are sold as lifestyles and what’s really being said is, “lose weight for life” and of course it just doesn’t happen. Human beings are not robots, we want the natural experience of life and living on a weight loss program is not natural. It’s not that these weight loss solutions don’t or won’t work; it is that they don’t work alone, forever or in some cases, at all.

And so the cycle continues…

Few solutions address the real problem; your lifestyle – why you are tired and overeating, and physically inactive to begin with and the downward trend stays in play. It is this trend, complicated by all the solutions that do not solve the problem that give consistent rise to obesity statistics, even though we spend billions of dollars per year on weight loss.

This graphic above illustrates the downward trend on a population basis and it makes the point that the weight loss industry is not working. Eating less of foods that don’t serve you and exercising a fatigued body even more does not work. You will not see success and any illusion of success will be short-lived.

How you look, feel and perform ongoing are the direct result of your lifestyle, not the result of “eat-less” diets or “exercise-more” workout programs created for the express purpose of losing weight. There are many different factors that go into this lifestyle and contribute to the “downward trend”.

Looking, feeling and performing better is about avoiding becoming overwhelmed, exhausted and overweight. The only way to do that successfully is to manage your energy, including the quality of the food you eat and your activity levels in the process of achieving your goals. That’s means live athletically!

When it comes to your weight, it comes down to your lifestyle and until your lifestyle reinforces your both your health and success, you will find yourself in an extended stay on the downward trend, wondering how to turn it around with the latest weight loss program. 

John Allen Mollenhauer, known as John Allen or “JAM”, is the lifestyle coaching columnist for MyWeightLoss.com. He is a premier lifestyle trainer and coach, and is the founder of Performance Lifestyle Solutions, www.MyTrainer.com and www.PerformanceLifestyle.com, where thousands of people are learning how to achieve their goals in better, healthier more practical ways – like Pros!

Do you have a Performance Lifestyle? If not, it’s probably about time you get one!

Copyright © 2008 Custom Media Communications, Inc, Performance Lifestyle Solutions All Rights Reserved Worldwide.

In Train not Drain part 1, you learned what happens when you subject a body under major stress to the stress of high intensity training.

I want to emphasize the point that I love high intensity training and espouse all of it’s benefits; that’s why I used terms like "warranted hype".

There are so many benefits to high intensity training there are too many to list; not the least of which is this - 4 minutes of high intensity interval training is equal to about 1 hour of regular low intensity aerobic training. And it is great for conditioning and fat loss, because of a principle called EPOC. More on that later, but for now just know that it’s the workout that keeps on working for you.

For busy people that’s a big deal.

Here are some examples: I was at a local gym when I did these, but the truth is, you can do a high intensity workout anywhere, at home or outside.

  The principle of the 4 minute workout was discovered by a Japanese researcher named Tabata. Doing more than 4 minutes can have additional benefits, but not if your body is in a depleted state, overstressed.

We don’t need a research study to figure out what happens when you subject a depleted body to high intensity training. It can have a destructive "catabolic" effect. In other words your body will break down, not build up.

If you ever wonder why your body is not responding to your training its usually because your body is in a depleted state, overwhelmed and exhausted, for some, fatigued.

The Performance Lifestyle formula solves this dilemma in a successful way. When it comes to training, here are some key tips to keep in mind…

1) If you are not seeing an anabolic "building" effect, from your training, it doesn’t mean you can’t engage in high intensity training.

Just remember you only need 4-8 minutes of high intensity training. Then it is all about "recovery". Subject yourself to too much training and you are working against yourself.

2) If you are feeling strong, for sure, engage in high intensity training, just remember more is not always better. What matters is what you can recover from successfully. That’s how you gauge a successful plan.

3) Reduce uncomplimentary stress, if you want to begin training more.

4) If dealing with a great deal of stress, switch gears to a less intense form of exercise to get your energy back in balance or greatly reduce the duration of your training.

The thing to keep in mind, especially today, is recovery. It’s the key to success.

More to come on this fascinating subject to come.

JAM

John Allen Mollenhauer is the Founder of Performance Lifestyle Solutions, the better healthier ways to achieve your goals. As a a former worn down workaholic turned Healthy High Achiever John Allen (aka “JAM”) will teach you how to Live Like a Pro; how to look, feel and perform better optimizing your lifestyle the way athletes do. Achieve your goals in life, business and sport and take your life to the next level!

Learn more at www.PerformanceLifestyleSolutions.com

Stick - with - the - program!

Since when was "living" relegated to this kind of programmatic thinking? Programs are for computers and even there they don’t run right!

Case in point:

Here you have Joe and Jane, they are living their lives in a certain way right now and the results, the consequences of their way of life, or their "lifestyles", are evident in how they look, feel and perform.

If Joe and Jane are overwhelmed, exhausted and overweight… logic would tell you that their lifestyle is not working for them and that this is likely not boding well for the achievement of their goals either. In other words, lack of energy, endurance, stamina, strength, emotional poise etc, make goal achievement hard.

So what do we do?

We put Joe and Jane on a diet or a fitness program to deal with the most obvious symptoms and engage them in the stick-to-the- program paradigm for better results enforced by well intended professionals, who themselves, simply have more successful lifestyles. They don’t need to stick with a program, they just do it because they are inspired to, educated and supported.

But this is not the mindset of most people, which is why most people fail. They are focused on relieving symptoms "overweight…" and that’s how the program was marketed. They don’t embody the whole lifestyle that the program represents and only make very small changes. Making small changes are normal and natural but this is not what the average weight loss program requires.

Lifestyle change is all about making small changes over time to adapt to changing circumstances so one can thrive. But because weight loss programs are more about getting great testimonials, you have to make big changes fast. This is not normal or natural.

Today, lifestyles are sold like widgets, like units sold from a business. So for best results one should embody the whole lifestyle and fast. Problem is, change doesn’t happen that fast, hence the focus on manipulative touch points like low carb, or creatine ingestion and the influence of big rewards, like cars and money, that give the appearance that things have changed, of success. 

Healthy High Achievers don’t think that way, and that’s why they are almost always successful.  

Here’s what you’ve got to know, a "program" is a lifestyle (albeit usually addressing fragments of a whole lifestyle) and changing a lifestyle overnight, depending on how big the change is, is not an easy thing to do.

Notice I didn’t say "lifestyle changes are hard", they are actually easy, but changing whole aspects of your lifestyle like the way you eat and your activity levels (which is what most "programs" focus on) is not easy given all the preceding influences of poor quality eating and inactivity.

"Sticking to the program" is an outdated vernacular the whole concept is like Swiss cheese. You can poke so many holes in it, it doesn’t hold up as a mindset for success. Programs are a businesses way of describing their offerings.

For consumers we have to look at our engagement as the development of a new lifestyle for a bigger purpose, and recognize that unless you are addressing and coordinating all aspects of your lifestyle as you make change, you will not experience the sustainable results you are looking for.

The average diet, weight loss or fitness program is only going to address parts fo the equation at best. This is important to know so you can set expectations accordingly.

Consider the fact that most (not all) diet and exercise programs ask you to exercising more a fatigued body, and eat less of foods that don’t really serve you to start. This is a formula for staying stuck to begin with addressing only two important, albeit only two, components of your lifestyle.

There is a crazy focus these days on getting others to stick to programs, when in reality people don’t stick to programs, they live their lives by default, all things considered. Changing a lifestyle has to be an inspired, educated and supported personal endeavor, and those changes need to be made within the capacity constraints of the individual and considerate of that persons circumstances.

Hey, I’m all for a person making big changes in a single bound if it works, but not when it doesn’t with expectations that it should. This is major flaw in our approach to improving fitness, health and well being today. Healthy High Achievers don’t think this way, it’s usually the desperate and obsessed that do and I’m not just referring to the client.

If Joe or Jane are attempting to stick to a way of life that is not their own, they will forever stay stuck. Stick with the program are the 4 dirtiest words in the fitness industry. They are part of a misguided, keep-you-stuck vernacular that is outdated and take the joy out of living. A program is simply meant to help you build some new routines in your life, but how those routines actually play out in your life will change.

Learn the language of lifestyle and things begin to change naturally, this is what Lifestyle Training is all about.

There is a time and place for a "program", but only when you are aware and set expectations accordingly. We’ll talk more about that.  

I’d like very much to read your comments.

Hi All,

It’s a snowy day here in New Jersey. I haven’t seen snow in three years!, It’s exciting. And its Friday… a buffer day for me… meaning I take it slow. I operate from a lightly driven place, so I can start to recuperate my energy from the week and prepare for the weekend.

Yes, you need energy for the weekend. If you’re ever wondering why you’re yawning with the family, or unable to slow down, it’s because you don’t have a performance lifestyle yet, and didn’t recuperate from your week.

So, I’ve gotten questions about Performance Lifestyle and how I describe it in one sentence.

The answer is this…

"A Performance Lifestyle is about how to achieve your goals with your health and well-being intact."

Of course, I could expand on this by adding ideas like, living at or near your ideal weight, sustainably and successfully, fit for the challenges ahead, etc… But if you understand what health and well being means, it’s all included.

What Performance Lifestyle does for you is expand your idea of what it means to live successfully.

Its more than fitness, food and sleep, there’s a much bigger picture and that bigger picture will determine how fit you are, how you eat, how you sleep and more… that bigger picture also needs to be discovered, learned and acted upon.

It’s amazing to me, now at least, how we beat ourselves up at times for not doing this and that better, or sticking to the XYZ program, when our lives and lifestyles are all out of whack. What’s happening is not a lack of motivation; it’s a lack of time, space and energy, and knowledge.

It’s what we call the Achiever’s Paradox - In this “age of achievement,” where we have access to more information and opportunity than at any other time in history, we can accomplish our goals seemingly faster than ever before.

However, we get a paradox… the busier we are, the less time we have to take care of ourselves.

Performance Lifestyle is for achievers – those people who want to get the most out of life and produce their best in everything they do, but not at the expense of their health and wellbeing.

It’s for people who know the many aspects of their life impact on each other and each one needs to be carefully planned and managed if all their goals and aspirations are to be realized.

More soon,

Let’s discuss,

JAM

1.Focusing on performance enables you to make the healthiest and the most successful decisions in life, business and sport.

2.You acknowledge that health is not a goal. Maintaining it, is an objective of every day life and you’ll gain new perspective.

3.It’s the healthiest lifestyle there is because it focuses on more than fitness, food and sleep alone, and focuses on how to manage your energy like a pro…

4.It’s practical to the pace of life that we live. All health and wellness concepts are learned in the context of performance and success. You won’t make more out of things than they need to be.

5.You don’t have to roll your eyes back every time someone tells you to “live healthier”. Your performance will tell you that daily and you can choose to listen to yourself and take action.  

6.You’ll have energy left over to train and condition your body

7.Your quality of life will get better and better…

8.You’ll see your lifestyle as the way to achieve your goals with your heath and wellbeing in tact, not merely something to improve to lose weight.

9.You can save 20 years discovering what Healthy High Achievers know and live… by desire

10.You can start anywhere and fill in the gaps.

Oh yes and you will lose weight…look and feel better. ;-) 

I’m often asked how the Performance Lifestyle model was developed. Well this past Monday, I talked with Lissa Bergen Bowles of www.SoulFulfilled.com and she asked me that very question along with a host of others.

I found myself reveal allot about my own personal process that was valueable for me to hear and may be valueable for you too.  

We had such a great gellin’ jam session on the subject I want to share the conversation with you.

If you are trying to solve your puzzle, get clear on your purpose and calling, and or have a nagging feeling insight you that is creating anxiety, you want to listen to this audio.

Enjoy
JAM