Healthy High Achiever Blog

As you know, Performance Lifestyle was born in the Athletic community, and not surprisingly. Athletes unlike crazed parents, business people and students have a more accurate understanding of what it means to perform well. It is about productivity and winning, but first and foremost it’s about making sure you can perform "well", and that’s a matter of lifestyle.

Well, as I was reading a conference summary for cutting edge sports nutrition information, from the annual meeting of the American College of Sports Medicine and the results from over 5,000 exercise scientists, sports dietitians, physicians and coaches who gathered in Indianapolis in May to share their latest research; I always look for ideas that will help Healthy High Achievers who are not sports athletes perform, look and feel better.

There was one insight in particular that really stood out… it was about the elite athletes’ ability to recover (soccer players in this case).

Here is one of the sports nutrition highlights. 

How long do elite soccer players need to recover from a game? In one study, they needed five days for sprinting ability to return to pre-game level. That’s four days longer than most athletes allow…

Think about this for a second. These are elite athletes we’re talking about here and they need 4 days to recover?

Now take the average business person who is working 10 -12 hours per day or more who is trying to train intensely or consistently every day and consider why they my run into obstacles and stall periodically.

In other words, most people set their expectations too high, don’t have the lifestyle to support their training success and don’t factor in everything else going on in their life that is drawing down on the same energy and time, need to recover. This needless to say, affects the results you experience.

Healthy High Achievers know how to gauge their activity levels… it’s all part of the science of Personal Energy Management.

Here are some of the other findings from the conference as written by Nancy Clarke.

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!

I was on a coaching call this past week with a number of my associates when an idea I’ve been developing over the past several years got a major pat on the back.

It was just one of those moments in time when it was recognized by virtually all, that there is a big difference between how most fitness professionals and healthy, high achieving people live their lives and how the average person who is wanting to increase energy, lose weight or get healthier… live theirs.

This is no small difference. You can say it in a few words but the origin of this difference is BIG. Big in the sense that it is a lifestyle difference and it is powered by a "mindset", not a better workout routine or a better way of eating alone. It is a better way of thinking about how we live particularly at a time in history when the demands on our time and energy have never been greater.

It’s clear that people don’t stick with their "programs" not because they are unmotivated or lazy,  they get derailed in their plans simply because they get worn down.

The best of intentions can change when you get overwhelmed, or exhausted from working a ten-hour day or more, or when the fiscal demands in our lives force us at times to shift our priorities, even though taking care of ourselves, STILL IS our priority.

As a lifestyle Trainer and Coach, I work with people who talk about what’s really going on their lives and it’s not seen as an excuse. Understanding what’s going on is part of the solution.

What we find is that the majority of the ’solution’ is learning the skills to navigate the not so obvious aspects of our lives and lifestyle, which is the real focus. It’s a conversation that INCLUDES what you eat and activity but also includes so much more of what make the best of intentions possible and the results you want probable.  

This gets back to the original point.

What makes the real difference between those who’s lives are ‘firing on all cylinders’ without the struggle around food and fitness and those who are struggling?

That difference is in the gap between how athletes and former athletes think and live and how the person who is just trying to los.e wei.ght thinks.

The former lives a healthy lifestyle possible because they want to perform well and achieve their goals, while that later thinks their going to achieve their goals and then live a better lifestyle.  They’ve got it backwards and that’s why they struggle with food and fitness…

The former coordinates all aspect of their life and lifestyle around the personal and professional outcomes they want, including how they eat and exercise, while most other people are trying to achieve their goals with a lifestyle that promotes poor performance.

It doesn’t make any sense, but that’s how we’re trained by the very industries that purport to be solving the problem.

If your lifestyle is not healthy, it’s hard to perform well and even if you force yourself to perform at high levels in spite of a lifestyle that’s leaving you fatigued and deconditioned, the trade is health for success and that… is a bad trade.

When you are busy and facing demands that can easily ware you down, to the point that you are making poor lifestyle decisions, it’s time to shift gears and take a new approach. From living a depleting lifestyle that leads to all poor lifestyle decisions, to living "athletically". At the end of the day, this is what it comes down to.

You don’t have to be into sports or even a fitness enthusiast to live athletically, "like a pro" so to speak. All you need is to understand the mindset and the lifestyle skills that healthy high achievers know and live by and you too will get free of the struggle.
 

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 Proä; 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