In a world where we define our lifestyle mostly by things we own, what we can afford to do and our personal preferences – true, true and true – it is only through a PerformanceLifestyle that we can build a mindset and the skill sets we need to live in balance, with vibrant health and peace of mind. These skills all function as our core lifestyle while enhancing our ability to achieve even our most ambitious goals – all without sacrificing our quality of life. This is the mission of living a PerformanceLifestyle.

I acknowledge the tall order of living this mission, but your lifestyle is what drives and serves you as a foundation that enables your capacity for achievement – and so I ask you now – why not think bigger, smarter and with a more proactive perspective?

This perspective shift can also begin answering practical questions that we all want answers to – such as “how do I live at or near my ideal weight all year round!”

Having a firm grasp on “your style” of eating, thinking and living enables you take a much greater, proactive stance on improving your life each day. By addressing you life from a PerformanceLifestyle perspective, you are improving your whole life – not simply living one more day on the latest “program” or having information change you that does not provide any real practical context.

When you truly understand your lifestyle, you will have something tangible to work from, develop and improve. Without understanding your lifestyle, the word itself is nothing more than an abstract concept. Even though your mind may be filled with motivational and insightful ideas, it ultimately has nothing to attach any new insights too in any organized way so any long-term advancement becomes almost impossible.

The more you align your life, your lifestyle (choices) and your goals – which ultimately ARE your mindset – the better you can achieve your goals and maintain a quality of life you want and desire or aspire to live.

We never use the term “mindset” and “skill set” loosely in PerformanceLifestyle training and coaching. We take lifestyle design seriously and understand the difference between life structure, style and goals.

A fundamental question is whether your personal “mind set” in your own lifestyle works for you or against you? Remember your lifestyle – no matter how you decide to address it, manage it or modify it – is inherently yours. Our exclusive PerformanceLifestyle training and coaching helps you identify your lifestyle and begin a process to live better.

So with that in mind, here are 10 predictions for the coming decade:

1) Our fast-paced and demanding performance culture has become inadequate to support self care, personal energy management, health maintenance and physical fitness. We will inevitably begin to develop and adapt to a new lifestyle structure, mindset and skill set that protects us from being overwhelmed, exhausted, over weight and riddled with health complications. We will begin a culture that learns how to thrive!

2) People will come to the conclusion that they don’t have the time, focus or energy to have to deal with year in and year out weight loss and lifestyle-induced health complications. We will learn how to live the healthiest lifestyle possible so that we can function and perform at our best at or near our ideal weight range all year round.

3) People will realize that 95% of all health problems – from diabetes to heart disease – are lifestyle induced and avoidable! As a result they will begin improving their own lifestyle – how they eat, think and live, every day.

4) Quality of Life will be the new measurement of success, and bragging rights; not money, power or influence alone. Lifestyle will no longer be seen simply as what you own, what you can afford or your personal preferences. Nor will it be defined by how much you sleep, eat or how much you exercise. Your Life at the next level will be the alignment of how you’ve structured all aspects of your life around the goals you aim to achieve and the quality of life experiences you desire. The most important characteristic of your new lifestyle will be the energy levels you can sustain over time.

5) Personal Energy Management becomes the new big thing and we all begin to realize that managing personal energy is tied into making all our life decisions – from psychological and emotional decisions to what foods we eat and how we train, work, focus etc. Everything we do and experience will consciously depend on how well we manage our personal energy.

6) We will become less and less “creatures of habit” with positive change being seen as a tangible reality. We will develop a greater understanding of our life “Style” and how to adapt effectively even in shifting circumstances. Our personal lifestyle will be seen as the missing link between health and success and we will learn how to change our lifestyles with proficiency in the skills we learn and integrate on a daily basis.

7) People will eventually stop outsourcing their lifestyles to rigid programs and rather learn from those who have identified proven and successful principles, practices and lifestyle strategies. We will incorporate and adapt them to “My Lifestyle” and we will begin to challenge ourselves to improve regularly. This transition will free us from the burdens of constantly “sticking to a program” as our way of life, to making our healthy lifestyle our way to a better life.

8.) People will begin to live their lives more like athletes do in the performance culture we live in. We will become far more discerning about how we drive ourselves, how we manage, spend and recuperate our own energy and the quality of the food we choose to eat as well as understanding how our lifestyle works with achieving our goals.

9) It will become very un-popular to ignore your own wellness and your body and your lifestyle will be held accountable to whether or not it supports the environment. People will begin to change to “save face” as we push to save our planet. What you eat over a lifetime, could save a town’s size piece of land from being ravaged and depleted.

10) We will rise and change the world for the better not by looking towards any outside entity to change so that we can change but by changing ourselves first. “Be the change“is what comes to mind and it starts from wherever you are right now and the lifestyle choice you make!

I hope these predictions provide some insight for improving your own lifestyle and inspire you to begin making changes today. You can live at a new level.

One of the greatest discoveries I found when leading the development of the Performance Lifestyle Formula, was this:

The very same set of lifestyle skills that will enable a person to get out of the downward energy trend and increase their energy, will enable someone to dramatically improve their health and get their weight under control, as well as achieve peak performance and the goals they have set, ultimately improving quality of life. The power is in how the skills are applied (tactics) – what skills you apply, how  you do it and why.

For example: if a person is training for a transformation challenge or sporting goal, when you Activate and Strengthen Your Body in a Performance Lifestyle, your lifestyle would include more sport specific training than someone who has ambitious life or business goals and does not require fitness training at that level.

So here are a few way in which a Performance Lifestyle can apply in your life:

1. It’s how you live a “healthy lifestyle” successfully – this is one of my most common answers because a healthy lifestyle has many definitions and is very subjective. Meaning, anything can be deemed “healthy” even if it’s not. For example; in a Performance Lifestyle we eat nutrient rich foods, and when you know what a nutrient rich food is, the guess work is taken out of  it and you actually learn how to eat for health, which is a skill. We take the same “best practice” approach to each of the 12 fundamental skills you learn in the lifestyle, each of which enables you to function and perform better and live a healthy lifestyle, successfully.

• Get out of a downward energy trend and restore yourself – underlying almost all diseases of lifestyle (not genetic diseases, but those driven by choice and by the environments you subject yourself too), is overwhelm, exhaustion, fatigue, over stimulation, under recuperation, over consumption, under nourishment, over busy (over trained) limited physical inactivity, all of which give rise to the overweight condition and health complications and what we call “diseases of lifestyle”. In a Performance Lifestyle, staying out of this trend is top of mind.

• Get free of Performance Addiction – some people just can’t stop themselves, yet they are trying to live in balance, with vibrant health and peace of mind and they have anything but “peace of mind”. They have so many stories floating around in their head, most of which are unsupportive, that they can’t stop moving, doing, being better, striving, proving themselves etc. If they want to get free of performance addiction the answer is to get into a Performance Lifestyle.
  

• Overcome fat loss resistance and “metabolic syndrome” - how many times have you felt like you are doing it all, but just can’t get things to change, like your weight? The specific reason why is not also easy to identify, but the one thing is simple to clarify, there is some aspect of your lifestyle that is holding you back and causing problems. In a Performance Lifestyle you will learn how to overcome fat loss resistance by making a whole lifestyle change and that means taking steps back far enough so you can make changes at the needed level to move forward in a position of strength.

• Set a big goal (life, business, sport) and achieve it with the support of your lifestyle. The purpose of your lifestyle is to achieve your goals, and goal achievement requires performance; that’s why it’s called Performance Lifestyle. The whole idea of eating, thinking or living better is to achieve something greater and bigger than health itself. Health is your birthright, success isn’t!

• Prepare for a Personal Transformation or Fitness Challenge (coming next) – it’s one thing to live the healthiest lifestyle you can, it’s another to transform or challenge yourself in a highly regimented period in your life. This is a time period when you are following a proven training program or system that is planned and only lasts for a period of time. Your lifestyle then helps you maintain your results. If you want to prepare for a personal transformation or fitness challenge, then get into a Performance Lifestyle to get ready, and learn how to do it right!

• Get the most out of our life – how do get the most of your life without life getting less than the best from you? You must stay out of that downward energy trend which will do more to negatively affect your energy, attitude and outlook than anything else. You also need to align the structure of your life, your lifestyle and your goals so that you start “firing on all cylinders” so to speak. This is a tall order no doubt, but whether you know it or not, that’s what we are all striving for. Having a lifestyle that is sustainable; that works so well, it’s an amazing ride with the best quality of life possible each step of the way. If you want that, then Performance Lifestyle principles and practices to work for you.
  

Each lifestyle skill in a Performance Lifestyle is clear. You learn how to manage your energy including the quality of the food you eat and your activity levels so that you can challenge yourself and stay fit consistently in a Performance Lifestyle and achieve your goals. To do that, we need to develop a resilient  mindset and skills set and that’s what you learn in Performance Lifestyle training and coaching like the LS 365 Training at The Lifestyle Coaching Center.

Too many times I see people who put themselves through extremely hard workouts and yet still find a way to waste it with their lifestyles. They think that by working out hard, this gives them a justification for eating and drinking whatever they want throughout the rest of the day and the days that follow until the next workout.

The crazy aspect is they expect to see results at the same time. Now this philosophy may work for a small percentage of people in this world that are very lean and that can pretty much eat whatever they want (who are probably not reading this article), but for the majority of people that continually battle with their jeans from 5 years ago, this is not the thought process that needs to occur in order to see results from their workouts.

The alternative solution (if this person is you) is to think ‘Don’t waste your workout’! Whether your goal is weight-loss, rehabilitation, or sports performance, your lifestyle outside the gym is just as (if not maybe even more) important than the workout itself. The average fitness enthusiast spends about 1 hour 3 times per week working towards his or her goal by performing cardio-respiratory training, strength training, or a combination of both each week. This means that out of a possible 168 hours in a week, a workout totaling 3 hours is less than 2% of the total hours available for that week.

I’m not the smartest person in the world but I know I wouldn’t expect to see any results doing something only 2% of the time. Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t expect clients to have the ability to commit more than 3 hours per week to their workouts but what I do expect is for individuals to make the most out of those workouts and don’t be counter-productive with the lifestyle outside the gym (see my next article entitled The Performance Lifestyle Model.

‘Don’t waste your workout’ is the quickest but most precise way for me to get my clients to understand that it’s not only the workout that matters but what they do after that might make or break their results. When I say ‘Don’t waste your workout’, I mean the following:

* Following properly advised nutritional guidelines
* Getting the proper amount of sleep to aid in recovery
* Limiting the amount of empty calories (pop, alcohol, sports drinks)
* Being more active in your daily life (sitting less and being more upright)

Just following these tips will definitely help aid in faster and more desirable results. I know these may be elementary to most of us but just seeing them written down sometimes helps one to focus better. Now go kill yourself in your respective workout but keep in mind ‘Don’t waste your workout’ to see those results that you most definitely deserve.

*Andrew Wallen is the president/CEO of Integrated Movement. He has a Master’s Degree in Exercise Science while holding numerous professional certifications. Integrated Movement is a personal training and sports performance training studio located in Valparaiso, IN. Integrated Movement strives to achieve success through science. Here’s a link to another great article by Andrew (Dude, Where’s My Core?) where he says… “Your performance lifestyle (nutrition, sleep, workouts & supplementation) plays the most important role in getting those wash-board abs.”

JAM and Rosie in San Diego - Biking at Dr Fuhrman's Health Getaway

JAM here,

I am here in San Diego taking a quarterly vacation, that is “much needed” to say the least. On day one, it felt like I was withdrawing from crystal meth, as I started to pay back my accumulated energy debt from prior months and the past couple weeks.

Paying back energy debt and knowing how to do it is a key lifestyle concept you need to know if you are going to manage your energy well.

Whew! It’s no surprise to me why most of us eat our way through the day most of the time to stimulate ourselves for vital energy.  On Friday night all I wanted to do was eat to buffer the feeling of fatigue which was more extreme than usual because of my travels last week, where I virtually missed an entire night sleep.

The combination end-of-quarter fatigue, the missed night sleep and the intensity of launching the new NutrientRich.com (Tuesday the 13th) all played into a very tough Friday which took experience and fortitude to handle right.

That feeling of extreme fatigue is nothing new for most people especially people who like to be peak performers whether they say that or not. You know, we all need to be peak performers in today’s performance culture whether you’re a soccer mom or a CEO, or both.  It’s just the way it is these days. We know we can’t live at peak all the time, but to be at peak when we need to, you need to know how to manage your energy.

It’s why most people will tell you that they need a few days to wind down before they can actually get into a vacation. The key is to handle energy debt (fatigue) right and plan to handle it ahead of time, if not you end up needing a vacation after your vacation.

Unlike my trip to New Orleans two weeks ago where one decision ended up having a profound impact on my energy for the week; this go around, we ( my business partner and dear friend Rosie Battista and I) left 2 full days before the start of the conference we are attending  – Dr Fuhrman’s Health Getaway here at the Rancho Benardo Resort in San Diego, which is going to be a very relaxing yet chock full week.

My priority is getting out of energy debt and fast not only for the start of the conference, but so that when I come back from the conference, I’m powered up with reserves for the next quarter which I will need.

The only way to do that is to do what we call “facing your true condition“. It’s the process of embracing fatigue for what it is, the process of getting your energy back, by engaging in a focused period of rejuvenation.

If you are new to facing your true condition, it can be  one of the most challenging situations to be in and it requires some real understanding of physiology and energy management; if, you want to get back to your peak performing position sooner than later.

I just faced it on Friday as I arrived and all through Saturday and I’m still working on it today. Actually I will be rejuvenating all week, but the worst is over. As I said earlier it was like withdrawal. But here is Sunday and I already feel like a different person.

The ultimate secret to peak performance, is knowing how to get your energy back either proactively or re-actively given your circumstances.

I’m feeling really good about my tact these past couple days. Today I’m near ready to begin the conference starting tonight and I just finished a great workout down at the spa.

Quick Story: I was on the elliptical while listening to Meeting of the Minds on The Future of Technology, and I looked into the TV glare and saw a great reflection of the shirt I was wearing. It was my friend Shawn Phillips’ T-Shirt for Strength for Life, and on the front it says “Time for Change”. I thought to myself, “yeah it is” and proceeded to think about the changes ahead for me. It’s all a matter of lifestyle; a Performance Lifestyle that is. 

Now kicking my feet up and watching the second half of the World Cup Final.

You don’t have to live healthy, just live while you’re alive and sleep when you’re dead!

Only problem is, you’re dead too soon.

I hear this all the time. Matter of fact, I used to hear this from my X wife, every single time I ate nutrient rich foods (that I enjoyed) but in her mind was “healthy”. She ate junk food because she was naturally beautiful and didn’t think that preserving her body was necessary. Now she’s at the doctor every 3 months being treated for “pre-cancer”. She’s also sick quite often and has a litany of drugs to choose from.

Here’s my opinion on this.

I do not wake up on any given day trying to live the healthiest lifestyle possible and nor do I expect to live forever with no calluses on my hands. I have plenty. I live the lifestyle that enables me to function and perform as best I can, and it just so happens to be the healthiest lifestyle you can live. Of course, I’m taking about Performance Lifestyle and believe me, you are really living your life when you are achieving your goals!

Why eat nutrient poor food that will break my body down just cause it tastes good, when I can eat Nutrient Rich food that tastes great too?

So, after you wake up and realize that the title of this blog post does sound cool, but it’s an early death sentence for most people, you’ll realize how really uncool it really is. The people I know who follow this philosophy, are overwhelmed, exhausted, some are fatigued, they are over weight and have health complications. Performance is usually an issue too, as they try to deal with the hangover from skidding into each day broadside, all used up and worn out.

I personally proclaim, WOW, that is dumb!

I submit, that you can live your life to the max, do not have to be health obsessed, and can still live the healthiest lifestyle anyway, without even knowing you’re doing so, IF you are into a Performance Lifestyle and focused on achieving your goals.

As we say in Performance Lifestyle training, it’s all about getting your lifestyle working for you (propelling you forward) not against you, so you can achieve your goals and live with the quality of life you want, at or near your ideal weight all year round. That’s the purpose in learning balance, health, energy and fitness concepts. It ‘s all so you can perform better. Who doesn’t want to arrive safely in a well preserved body; you do your best to arrive safely in a well preserved body simply because you don’t want to break down on the journey.

Believe me, there is plenty of room for living less than ideal, and really, do you really need more than 3 junk food meals per week?
If you don’t, then you are already saying that you eat healthier 90% of the time!

We need to visit rally cry’s like the long title of this blog post, and get real with it. At face value it would seem like you are the intelligent one who is “living in moderation” and not too extreme, when the reality is, that’s one extremely poor way of looking at the world if it means you’re not going to live healthy, just because you can’t break free of your addictions and need to fall back on that rationale.

Be careful what you buy into; a story, even one that sounds good at face value that is really unsupportive  is “The Curse” of a capable person.

Now, live it up! and perform like a champ. It’s a lifestyle, learn the skills and apply them in your own life.

~JAM

Here I am with my good friend Cindy McCormick who introduced me to the organization I spoke at.

Ironically, after just giving a talk on “story” and how your stories affect your lifestyle just hours before, I strangely, and highly unusually, did the opposite of what I know would have worked allot better in the night ahead. Maybe it was the beautiful women at the table . Here’s what I do know, when it was time to make the decision about how I was going to handle Monday night, I let other people’s stories over rule my own and here it is on Wednesday and I’m still paying the price.

As I got up to catch my plane back to Jersey Tuesday morning, on 2.5 hours of sleep, I was grateful that I had prepared for a social night, but the truth is, and while I’m not beating myself up much at all, I am also not thrilled with the decision I made to extend my night out.

Here’s how the experience unfolded.

After a well planned and delivered day, I knew I had a few hours to socialize before I had to get to sleep Monday night because a) it was a Monday night (normally, I speak later in the week with time to recover if I stay out) b) I had to get up at 4:00 am to catch a plane back to Jersey, and c) it was the start of the peak performance period of my week which is Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday and d) I had a 12:00 pm meeting on Tuesday to start, an hour after I got off the plane with the leader of a national organization I am part of called The Mankind Project.

So, I went out until about 9, and was ready to go back to my hotel room, when the group I was with, asked if I would like to go to dinner and out for a few drinks. Right there was where I needed to make some key lifestyle decisions in line with my objectives and goals.

Sure, it was one of the few times I was in New Orleans recently, and I had GREAT company to hang with, but going was not a good decision and one that I knew I would pay for big time.

First, I had a great time in downtown New Orleans that included a fine dinner at the famous Arnauds’ Restaurant, where at least 5 Presidents have eaten along with a who’s who list of celebrities, and a few rounds with new friends around the Carousel Bar at The Hotel Monteleone.

But looking back would I have stayed out for the second half of the night knowing I had to leave the Hotel at 4:00 for a 7 o’clock flight? HECK NO!  I would have been grateful for the time I had with my new friends and carried on, and probably thought about how I could have planned for such an event better; but because of the way things were already set up, staying out wasn’t in the cards that night.

But noooo.

That’s not how things played as I made a lifestyle 101 error.

I listened to the people around me, who said basically “your only in New Orleans once, c’mon…”. As if I am only going to be in New Orleans once. Now I love that they wanted me to come, love and do not fault them. That’s not the point here, they did exactly what I would have wanted which was to ask me to join them and I am grateful for that. But, this was my responsibility, they don’t know my situation only I do, and they certainly they would have understood.

In a Performance Lifestyle, if I was going to have that experience on a Monday night without the negative consequences, then I would have needed to plan for it, so that there was enough recovery time, and I hadn’t planned for that. It’s one thing when you’re 20 with little responsibility and seemingly unlimited stored vitality, but I fit in neither of those categories so this was careless spontaneity.

I can already hear the spontaneity worshipers saying “He’s a stiff“, but nothing could be further from the truth.

So here I am today, reconciling my experience.

Unlike any other lifestyle skill, the skill to keep your story straight and supportive is invaluable, especially when we face circumstances that are not “usual” for us, and outside our normal lifestyle routines, that require we make all kinds of adjustments in order to compensate. This requires some resiliency and emotional fortitude as does all change and that can only be gained when you ground your new story in experience.

That I know how to control my internal story teller from generating stories about “how I shouldn’t have done that“, “I’m going to hit the wall“, “I fell off my diet“, “here we go again” etc, the types of stories you hear from someone who doesn’t know “the lifestyle”, is reinforcing my peace of mind, despite feeling really lousy today.

That I have a blog like PerformanceLifestyle.com to metabolize my experience and get clear helps me move forward in a position of strength. This was all a great experience and now, what I am grounding in experience is how I handle the aftermath and prepare for when I face that situation again.  That too, is “Performance Lifestyle”.

Staying out cost me most of Tuesday, and still on Wednesday I am feeling the loss of performance and that balanced and healthy function I’m used to. As I said, if it had been a Thursday or Friday night and not the eve of the peak of my week, I would have let the night play on, and maybe even still if I could have slept in until at least 9:00, but in retrospect, it was not a good decision to stay out the second half of the night.

I had a great time, and because it’s past, I wouldn’t change a thing; but it is a reminder to me, why 90% of the time, “the lifestyle” mindset and skill set serves me incredibly well. I’m glad that I have other aspects of my lifestyle that are helping me through this experience by minimizing the consequences. Yeah, there are some trade offs when making smart lifestyle decisions, and I like to have fun like the best of them, but I don’t think I made the right decision here, now that I am grounded in the experience of nearly two peak performance days lost due to being tired and the fun that would have come with them to boot. Being tired when you need to perform is not fun in my book.

Today, I feel great inside (a hallmark of a Performance Lifestyle, regardless of how you feel on the outside) knowing my experience in New Orleans was time well spent with good people. It was intense peak performance period that I had prepared for and enjoyed. But like any major event, a period of recovery follows; in this case an unusually long one.

Lifestyle training really pays off during times like these.

What decision would you have made?

Share your thoughts.

~ JAM