THROUGH HIS EYES

Yesterday I had this experience that I want to share with you guys. It’s not fitness related but, it has made an impact on my life just like fitness has. This is going to take a second so please bear with me. Saturday, I decided to make my dog an appointment to get his monthly grooming. Yes, I groom my dog, and yes he needed it :-). My groomer lives next to me and I see her all the time, but when I went into her shop there was an older white gentleman sitting behind the desk. He looked up and said hello and came from around the desk. He was in a wheelchair. He called my dog over and started petting him, while my silly dog started licking him all over the face. He looked at me and grabbed my hand really tight. He was acting like I was the only person he had seen since he was born. Then he told me I was handsome and started rubbing my arm. At this point I was like “What the hell?”.  I tried to get my hand back but he wouldn’t let me go. He said come with me, I want to show you something. He takes me by my hand to the front of the shop to look out the windows. He said “Isn’t the sky just beautiful?” It was really big puffy white and black storm clouds, with just small hints of blue sky showing. To me it wasn’t pretty at all. It was about to be a mess out there. My groomer comes from the back of her shop and tells the man that I am one of the neighbors. She then tells me that the man is her father. I told him that it was nice to meet him and that he is one of the nicest people that I have ever met and he is welcome at my place anytime. I said to him that when he sees me out in the neighborhood to please say hello. He said that would be great, but he doesn’t know how much longer on this earth he has. He then pulls this cord up from his side and sticks this thing up under his nose. He then proceeds to tell me that he has terminal lung cancer and he’s not going to be here too much longer. I looked up at his daughter and her eye’s start to tear up and her face started to get a little red. She told her dad to let me go so I could go on about my day. He smiled with the biggest smile and said it was it nice meeting me. As I was heading out the door I heard him say to his daughter how beautiful it was outside today.

There are lots of lessons to be learned in life but human beings seem not to get them at all. This man taught me one. Sitting in my car I started to think about how I would feel if I knew that I was not going to be on this earth much longer.  Imagine what it would be like if you knew you would never see another sunrise or sunset. If you’d never get another chance to eat your favorite food, hug or kiss the person you love the most, talk to your parents or parents talk to your children. If you’d never play your favorite sport, have a glass of wine, go shopping at your favorite place, read a book, see a movie, smell the air, see another black person, see another white person, see another Latino, see another Asian, SEE ANOTHER DOG, SEE ANOTHER STORM CLOUD, SHAKE ANOTHER PERSONS HAND, etc. This list goes on. If we knew the end was near, we would appreciate everything we came across and that’s exactly what this gentleman was doing. In our society today we have so many things that are separating us as a people. Things like money, poverty, race, religion, politics, gender, social status, etc. It’s just plain stupid and we can’t seem to figure it out. I’m telling all of us this because it would be a waste of life to get all the way to your last days on this earth and realize that what I am saying is true and then finally start to live for once. This man, in that quick interaction taught me that. I just wish that I had the ability to let every human being experience what I did and be able to view the world through his eyes. Until next time…..

What kind of student are you?

One day this past week I was working out with a client of mine and she spoke about a lady in her weight loss support group that had started at the same time as she did and has lost more weight than she has. She seemed disappointed. I asked her one simple question. “Are you doing your homework?” She asked what I meant and I shared this little story with her. When I was in high school I had this history class that I did not like at all. I felt it was repetitive. Besides, I had heard all that stuff before. For a whole semester the teacher would give us assignments and I would not do them. I would just wait until I got in class and do whatever work I had there. If we had a test during class I would take it and do really well on it, but other than I wouldn’t do any other work. At the end of the semester I got a failing grade. I went to the teacher and said it didn’t make any sense because I passed all the tests I had taken in class. The teacher laughed and asked me how in the world did I think that those few A’s I had gotten on the tests would make up for all the bad grades I had gotten on my assignments for not turning in my homework. It was at that moment I realized he had a point. Haha!  We had homework every night and tests once a week. I had to bust my butt for the rest of the school year to get that grade up.

As a personal trainer I look at my job as if I am A teacher. When you come to work out you’re in my classroom. I’m going to give you a lesson every time that you show up. You’ll work hard and feel accomplished when you leave. The only thing is that when you leave, you do the assignment that I give you. Now, the assignment will consist of very simple things for you to do. You need to eat healthy meals, drink plenty of water, and exercise. I know that if you do these things you’ll have success. It’s great that you do well when you are in class with me, but just like me not doing my assignments outside of class, you are destined to fail if you don’t complete your homework. 4,5, or 6 hours a week of exercise will not make up for eating bad unhealthy food and not drinking enough water all week. You will never be able to “out train” a bad diet. I wish that I could follow every one of my clients around and make sure they eat healthy and exercise all the time, but we all know that’s not possible. Since it’s not, an individual most take personal responsibility and be diligent about doing what they are supposed to do outside of the gym to reach their goals. You get out of your program what you put into your program. If you do the bare minimum, then you will get the bare minimum results. If you find yourself not making as much progress as you want, you may have to ask yourself this question. “What kind of student am I?”  

THE REWARDS OF 25 CENTS

I realize I can never just have a normal day. The fact that I understand that is the reason why  nothing ever surprises me that much. Luckily, I use my blog from time to time to share it with you guys. This is my event from today and I just had to tell the people who read my blog about it. I hope you enjoy it, just as much as I did experiencing it.

Today, like ever Sunday,is my food prep day! I gotta eat! In order to keep myself from blowing up I have to have food prepared during the week for me to eat so it takes all the guess work out of trying to figure out what to eat thats healthy. One of my favorites places to go to shop is Aldi. If you've never been you need to go at least once. The cost of the food there is very reasonable, and their bottled water is very cheap. This store is different in the fact that when you go to get a shopping cart you have to put a quarter in it to get the cart free to use. You get the quarter back when you return the cart  to the place where you got it from. Normally, when I leave out from that store I try not to get the quarter back and just hand off my cart to a person that is on their way inside. I always say to the person I give the cart to "This is a gift from me to you." I always get a big ol smile and a thank you. Well today something different happened. I came out with my cart and I saw an elderly lady coming up with her 25 cents. I stopped her and told her that she could have my cart. She tried to give me her quarter but I refused and told her it was a gift from me to her. The lady asked me why I was being so nice and I told her I was always this nice. She said she needed someone to be nice to her today and starting crying a little outside the store. I was so confused but I wanted the lady to stop crying because people were looking at me like I did something to the lady. So, me being the silly person I am, I told her I really wanted to be nice to her. I pulled out one of the bananas I had bought and said here is a gun for you to have. Haha! She smiled through the tears and laughed a little. I asked her why she was so sad. She told me that she is a mother of two adult children. One was living in Texas and the other was living in California. They were supposed to come and spend the weekend with her but her daughter has a sick child and couldn't come and her son's job had some sort of emergency so he couldn't come either. I said they will just come next weekend then. She said that today was the anniversary of her husband's death. He passed last year on today. I was speechless. I told her I was so sorry. She said it has been rough on her all day and that me being nice to her really just made her lose it. She asked my named and I said it's Emmanuel. Her eyes filled with tears again and she said that that was her late husbands name also. I told her to hold a second. I went and put my groceries in the car and told her I would go with her in the store to help her shop. I had stuff I needed to get done, but I felt like that I bumped into this lady for a reason...

The point of me telling you this story is to hopefully show that even the smallest random act of kindness can mean the world to someone. I gave this lady a shopping cart and ended up feeling just as good or better than when I work out. I look at the news lately and see all this killing and people being angry at each and it's like we all have turned into wild animals. We've forgotten how to show empathy and love one another. We are all human beings, even though we've forgotten how to be human. I challenge everyone who reads this to do some small random act of kindness for your fellow man. I don't care if it is just as simple as holding a door open for someone when you go in a store to shop. You never know whose life you can affect in a positive way. I helped this lady to the car with her stuff and she gave me a big hug. We will probably never see each other again, but doing something nice for this lady made me feel as good as I figure I made her feel. The rewards of 25 cents can be awesome. Until next time people.. Rest in peace Mr. Emanuel...

Become a Phoenix (Life as I see it and motivation to keep going)

Normally, I try to keep most of my blogs about fitness and eating healthy and within that there is another hidden meaning. Well, this time it's going to be mostly motivational stuff because I think that is what's needed this time around. What made me want to write this is something that happened when I was at a store recently. I was in line with my stuff and there was a conversation going on at the counter. The guy who was checking out was talking about how July 2015 was a horrible month for him. The guy who was checking him out said "It was bad for me too". The next guy in line said the same thing. There was a lady pushing a cart by and heard the conversation and said me too. I started thinking to myself about how this past month was for me and to be damn sure July was horrible for me also. It got quiet and we all looked around at each other. It was just like a scene from a movie when something dramatic happens and everyone gets a chill. If you're reading this, think about this past month and ask yourself was it unusually crappy for you. Did that girl/guy you love start acting kind of funny? Did that co-worker that was getting close to getting on your last nerve finally reach that last nerve? Was your boss acting like that had lost their mind this month? Did you get fired or laid off? Family members acting crazy? Car broke down? Spouse do something stupid? Etc.. I know it happened because it happened to damn near every person I asked over the past of weeks. It came in waves. If you heard about something bad happening to someone, the next thing you knew it hit you. A lady in that store said that Venus was in retrograde and that's why all this stuff was happening. I don't know that much about all that astrology stuff, but I do have a different insight on what's really going on.

Try to follow me with this one. If you don't get it, it's totally fine. I know someone will get it and that's the most important thing and hopefully it will help them through this tough time. "Life!" Life is a beautiful thing. If you are living and breathing then it's a miracle that you are here. It takes so many different biological and chemical reactions to make life, and it has to be damn near perfect for it to succeed. My personal belief is that we were given the life that we have because we were chosen to be happy.  We were also given free will to make decisions and do things. All living things experience pain, and when that pain happens it throws off our happiness. In order for us to make that happiness return when we are in pain things must be corrected. Look at our planet for instance. Our big huge lovely planet. Believe it or not, it is alive. We don't take care of it like we should and do things to harm it at times. When we don't take care of it and do bad things to throw off it's happiness  natural disasters occur. Floods, earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes, tornadoes, etc.. These things have been known to take out whole cities at times. Once it's done our planet is back to being happy. Blue skies and sunshine all around. It corrected the mistake we made on it. Take yourself for example. You go about your daily routine and lets say a fly flies around your head. It annoys the crap out of you so you swing at and it goes away. It may even sit on you and you never even feel it. Now, let say a mosquito sits on you. If it sits on you for long enough, you're going to get bitten and it's going to hurt. That mosquito just threw off your happiness, so what do you do? You swat that sucker and brush him off! You put some ointment on to keep it from itching too bad and then your happiness is restored. You corrected that problem.

I tend to look at life itself like living human being versus something I can't see but i know it exists because I'm living it. We go about our lives making decisions here and there not knowing that we are causing harm to our self  and putting into place things that are going to upset our happiness. We think we are doing the right thing but, we can't be sure. We just use our free will and go forth. For example, we took that job that seemed really good, we started dating that guy/girl we thought we could have something with, we kept taking that co-workers crap etc. Then all of a sudden life steps in and changes things because we made choices that are going to disrupt the happiness in our lives. When this happens it just like a natural disaster to some, but there is no need to worry. The reason why this is happening is because life has your back. When your life has burst into flames and turned to ashes, that is when you should BECOME A PHOENIX. A Phoenix is a mythical bird that bursts into flames and turn to ashes but miraculously arises from it's own ashes just as strong and powerful as ever. That is what we must do in order to survive and live a happy life. As I stated before that's what I was believed it was designed for anyway. So, when life seems to be tough for you, don't get all sad and down. You should feel thankful that life is correcting your mistakes in order to put you back on track to a happy life. How do I know this is true you may ask? Are you not just fine
now that all that bad stuff has happened? :-)  Until next time....

THE CRYING BABY EFFECT

It's been a little while since I've posted anything, but I got an email from someone who  had read some of my blogs and found them interesting to read. It's kind of scary that someone finds my babbling interesting. Haha! Since they were so ready to read some more I decided to write something for them and anyone else who cares to read it. If you've been around me for a while you have heard me talk about this before. If you haven't then here goes.

About a week and a half ago I had to opportunity to spend some time with this beautiful little baby girl. She is so cute! She's probably the happiest baby I've ever seen. Kids at that age are so sweet, but they are so helpless. When she gets hungry someone has to feed her because she can't feed herself, nor can she move fast enough to cover long distances in a short period of time. Someone has to come and physically pick her up to move her. Even though she is helpless she still lives her life care free. If you don't keep a close eye on her she may pick something up that could be dangerous to her and start playing with it or put it in her mouth. She may crawl under something that may fall and crush her, but it's not her fault because she knows nothing of the dangers that this world has to offer. She's just happy to be moving around. Then the inevitable happens, the baby poops on itself. Infants hate that feeling! They hate it so much that they start crying and pitching a fit until what? Mommy or daddy rushes in to change the diaper and drys the baby's tears and then that care free life that baby once enjoyed is restored. Not so bad being a baby huh?

Even though we are adults we like to act as though we are baby's sometimes. What do I mean? We try to live our lives care free just as we did when we didn't know any better. We go places we know we shouldn't go even if it is dangerous. We put things into our mouths that shouldn't be there. We act like we are unable to do certain things(for example workout) when all we have to do is just do it. Then the inevitable happens, we end up in some shit. Just like the baby, some of us adults like to sit there and cry about it like we didn't know what was going to happen when we knew full well what was going to happen. You know if you go places you are not supposed to, something bad will happen eventually. You know if you put bad things into your mouth and not doing enough physical activity you're going to gain weight or get sick. An adult looks at the situation and says "I'm in this situation, I need to do something!" The adult that is having the "crying baby effect" will just sit there and whine and cry about how life isn't fair and want to blame everybody else except themselves. The sad part is they will sit there like a baby and hope for someone to rush in and save the day. It just isn't going to happen. You are the adult, you have to take responsibility for your own actions. I'm not saying not feel sorry for yourself and shed a tear once you get into some shit. God knows that I can throw some real good pity parties myself. Hahaha! The difference is I don't throw them for very long. I set forth a plan of action to clean the mess up. The whole point is to take responsibility for the decisions you made that had you end up where you are. When that helpless baby is sitting in its own poop it's so pitiful to see. When an adults sits in its own mess and has the ability to clean himself/herself up and just sits there like they cant, its not pitiful. It's disgusting! If you sit in for too long...... Just like the baby would, you'll end up with a rash... CLEAN UP YOUR MESS! Until next time....

Experiment over!

I'm going to get right on into it since I'm writing this on 1 hour of sleep and I'm irritable right now. In celebration of the new year that's coming I decided to conduct a little experiment on myself. I had this brilliant idea to see what it's like to eat a little junk food and have minimal exercise for a week. I wanted to see how it felt. I was trying to recreate what it's like for a person that half way does what they are supposed to when it comes to their health and physical fitness. The first couple of days were ok. No major change. I even got out and ran on the 3rd day just for the hell of it. I ran just 3 miles to get the blood pumping a little bit. I decided I was going to take it all the way to the 1st of    2015. Well, I did not make it! Last night was the worst night ever. First, I had a stomach ache, then I caught the mother of all cramps in my foot, then I couldn't sleep, every negative thought or feeling I could think of was in my  head. It was so bad I had to get up and pray and hope I could go to sleep. It didn't work. I got up at 4a.m. and put on my clothes and went for a jog in the pouring rain to try to wear myself out. I only made it 3 miles and the time was so slow I'm embarrassed to say how long it took me. I just had to get out and do some form of exercise to try to make myself feel normal again.

Our bodies in my opinion are similar to a car. If you drive it, put proper fuel in it, and keep it serviced it'll last a long time. Now imagine taking that car and sitting it in the back yard and letting it  stay there for years at a time. Then when you finally do decide you want to crank it and get it moving you put some fuel in it that has trash or water in it. Do you think that car is going to crank if the battery isn't already dead? If you answered yes then you are fooling yourself. I put bad fuel in my body and let if sit for a week and I feel like garbage. I can just imagine how a sedentary non health eater feels. Look at some of the people that you know around you. Do you know anyone that is constantly in a bad mood or depressed and always in pain and aching? I can almost guarantee that they are mostly sedentary and eat horribly. If they aren't then they just like to complain. In this situation do like I would and tell them to grow up because I'm sure their life really isnt that bad.

The whole point of all this is that bad food and no activity equals a bad attitude and poor health. Good food and activity means better attitude and better health. Plain and simple! Im going to go because I'm starting to feel sick again. Experiment over!!