Welcome to My Body Of Knowledge
To watch all the videos from Volume 1 just use this video player below...
Welcome to My Body of Knowledge
Audio Version
Individualized Nutrition
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Body Alignment
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Empowered Mindset
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In this epic and very first edition of My Body of Knowledge we will cover the 3 Foundations of Fitness:
- An individualized approach to nutrition
Learn why there is no perfect diet for everybody, but there is a perfect diet for each body & how to discover what's right for You!
- The empowered mindset
Learn why most people fail when they try to take on their health/fitness. Hint: (It's not lack of will power)
- Proper body alignment
This often overlooked, essential component of fitness often sidelines most people with debilitating aches, pains and injuries before they even get started. Failure to correct body alignment limits how far you can take your fitness by making it usually impossible to train with the intensity and consistency you need to truly transform your physique.
In it you'll find FREE:
MP3 Downloads:
Will Schmidt talks about his 3 guiding principles that have helped thousands of his clients successfully incorporate their diet and exercise routines into their real life and stick with it successfully achieving the results they set out for.
Yoga Videos:
Functional Yoga for Beginners & lots of Yoga for Pain Relief Videos
Cutting Edge Nutrition Insight Videos:
Showing you tests you can run on yourself to assess your own body chemistry to start to discern what dietary approach is right for you.
Inspiration Videos & Images:
About weight loss the healthy way & making your Ideal your Reality.
And much more!!! :)
MP3 Downloads:
Will Schmidt talks about his 3 guiding principles that have helped thousands of his clients successfully incorporate their diet and exercise routines into their real life and stick with it successfully achieving the results they set out for.
Yoga Videos:
Functional Yoga for Beginners & lots of Yoga for Pain Relief Videos
Cutting Edge Nutrition Insight Videos:
Showing you tests you can run on yourself to assess your own body chemistry to start to discern what dietary approach is right for you.
Inspiration Videos & Images:
About weight loss the healthy way & making your Ideal your Reality.
And much more!!! :)
Foundation of Fitness #1:
Individualized Nutrition
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Whenever people ask me about what kind of diet I put people on, I always find myself using this analogy...
What would happen if you went into an optometrist's office and ask them to point out the pair of corrective glasses that are the best for everybody? The optometrist would probably look back at you funny and say something like: "You don't understand how glasses work, do you?" Or, if they weren't a smart ass doctor, they'd maybe say something more useful like: "Well, it depends on your eyes and their needs." That's how nutrition works too. The "ideal" diet is the diet that is suited for YOU! What dietary approach that will work best for you really depends on a bunch of factors, such as:
Yeah, lots of factors. The cool thing is that figuring all that stuff out for yourself is possible and, once you do figure it out, its epically effective and the plan you create for yourself will really, fully work. The disadvantage of caring about all these highly relevant factors is that it's not as easy as just doing a diet you read about in a fad book or magazine (e.g. Paleo, Atkins, South Beach, Green Juice Cleanses, The pH Miracle Diet, Body Ecology, Master Cleanse, Vegan, Lacto-Ovo Vegetarian, Jared's Subway Diet, The Only Eat Lobster Bisque & drink Serac Hip Hop All Star Diet). Whatever diet you try it is probably easier at first to just do what they say and see how it works than it is to actually take the time to discern your body's needs, but it's gonna suck because it's probably not going to work very well for you and it's also probably not going to be sustainable because it doesn't take into account your body's personal needs and, in time, that is a sure fire recipe for cravings and collapse.
The super rad advantage though of learning how to assess your body's needs and then tailor your diet to suit your needs/goals are:
Let's take a moment to watch an inspiring clip about this approach and what it has done for lots of our clients. This video is the trailer to our documentary on weight loss : Why Am I So Fat?
What would happen if you went into an optometrist's office and ask them to point out the pair of corrective glasses that are the best for everybody? The optometrist would probably look back at you funny and say something like: "You don't understand how glasses work, do you?" Or, if they weren't a smart ass doctor, they'd maybe say something more useful like: "Well, it depends on your eyes and their needs." That's how nutrition works too. The "ideal" diet is the diet that is suited for YOU! What dietary approach that will work best for you really depends on a bunch of factors, such as:
- Your digestive capacity
- Your insulin response
- Your electrolyte levels
- The state of your cell membranes
- Your metabolic tendencies
- Your autonomic nervous system
- Your blood type
- Allergens
- Your personal goals
- Your activity level (type, frequency and intensity)
- Even the weather around you.
Yeah, lots of factors. The cool thing is that figuring all that stuff out for yourself is possible and, once you do figure it out, its epically effective and the plan you create for yourself will really, fully work. The disadvantage of caring about all these highly relevant factors is that it's not as easy as just doing a diet you read about in a fad book or magazine (e.g. Paleo, Atkins, South Beach, Green Juice Cleanses, The pH Miracle Diet, Body Ecology, Master Cleanse, Vegan, Lacto-Ovo Vegetarian, Jared's Subway Diet, The Only Eat Lobster Bisque & drink Serac Hip Hop All Star Diet). Whatever diet you try it is probably easier at first to just do what they say and see how it works than it is to actually take the time to discern your body's needs, but it's gonna suck because it's probably not going to work very well for you and it's also probably not going to be sustainable because it doesn't take into account your body's personal needs and, in time, that is a sure fire recipe for cravings and collapse.
The super rad advantage though of learning how to assess your body's needs and then tailor your diet to suit your needs/goals are:
- It totally works.
- You won't place any unnecessary restrictions on yourself because you'll know what you truly need to cut out and what you can very well keep in your diet.
- You won't have cravings because you're body will really be getting all that it needs.
- Lots of your health goals can be accomplished in the same process. (E.g. With this approach you won't only burn fat, you will also simultaneously correct digestive issues, improve mental performance, enhance mood and emotional stability, drastically strengthen your immune system, increase natural energy, naturally resolve a wide variety of symptoms and dis-ease states.)
Let's take a moment to watch an inspiring clip about this approach and what it has done for lots of our clients. This video is the trailer to our documentary on weight loss : Why Am I So Fat?
Yeah, it's freakin awesome. Let me describe / show you a quick example of what it did for me. I originally started studying holistic nutrition because I was in tons of pain. I had severe eczema for years, but way worse than that, I was haunted 24/7 by mysterious, gnawing pain and constant involuntary low grade clenching and cramping in my extremities (hands, feet, calves, thighs) and often in my pelvis and low back. I literally couldn't sit still because my legs and feet were always contracting and I could barely focus in conversation because I was in so much pain all the time. I'd have to sleep in fetal position to minimize the pain in my legs and I'd often wake up at night with nightmares of being electrocuted because jolts of nerve pain shot down my legs.
I went to Kaiser and many other doctors, got a bunch of blood tests, nerve tests, physicals, even a full spinal M.R.I. - nothing looked even slightly unhealthy. No nerve impingement, no bulging discs, "perfectly health" blood - the doctors were clueless so they just started writing one prescription after the next seeing if something might help, but none of it did. I don't blame the doctors. They were trying their best. The problem is that they work in a system that generally fails to think of nutrition as a factor. Even worse, that same medical system has actively and intentionally discredited legitimate, powerful insights that profound doctors and scientists have made over the past century because those revolutionary insights did not fit the profit model that has been established.
I eventually found one piece of the puzzle after the next and found what I needed to do for my body to completely rid myself of all those awful symptoms, and in the process, I also found keys to powerfully transforming my physique and having tons of natural energy.
This blog, My Body Of Knowledge, is going to walk you through the process of how to assess your body chemistry, identify possible causes of symptoms you may be facing, and custom tailor your diet/nutrition plan to suit your needs. It'll take a little while to get started, but that's ok because the results will soon be apparent and awesome.
But First...Correcting Digestion!
Before we can really even get into individualizing one's nutrition based on your body chemistry we have to first make sure digestion is working well. There are a lot of aspects of digestion in total to examine but the first and most important two points of digestion I want to cover in depth here.
These two fundamental aspects of digestion our stomach acid and bile flow.
First, watch this video where I describe in detail the role of stomach acid and bio flow and how do identify problems here on the justice system related to these two stages of digestion; then take the digestive issues quiz and see what aspects of your own digestion you may need to give special attention to.
These two fundamental aspects of digestion our stomach acid and bile flow.
First, watch this video where I describe in detail the role of stomach acid and bio flow and how do identify problems here on the justice system related to these two stages of digestion; then take the digestive issues quiz and see what aspects of your own digestion you may need to give special attention to.
Digestion Explained
Digestive Issues Quiz
Stomach Acid Insufficiency
Do you have any of the following indications of insufficient stomach acid production?
- low blood pressure
- acid reflux / heartburn
- constipation
- undigested food in your stool
- burping or bloating in your upper abdomen an hour or less after meals
Bile Flow Insufficiency
Do you have any following possible indications of insufficient or impaired bile flow?
- Loose stool / diarrhea
- gas
- bloating in your mid or lower abdomen
- nausea, especially after eating fats
- chronic skin issues
- light colored stool (as light or lighter than the color of cardboard)
If any of those digestive issues are a common occurrence in your body then you may have some digestive issues that need to be addressed before any diet will really work for you. This may take a little more ground work than me just typing out some fad diet and saying "here, do this...", but the good thing about this approach is that it will actually work. So, I apologize that it's not as simple as just going vegan, or paleo, or whatever, but once you fix your digestion every dietary approach that you take will work a whole lot better for you.
Because digestion is such a fundamental foundation of fitness, and really the key cornerstone of your inner health, my friend / mentor Tony Hale and I have created a free course on correcting digestive issues. In future editions of my body of knowledge I will cover different digestive issues and talk about how to correct them in more detail, but you can blaze ahead if you like by working your way through this course at your own speed.
Because digestion is such a fundamental foundation of fitness, and really the key cornerstone of your inner health, my friend / mentor Tony Hale and I have created a free course on correcting digestive issues. In future editions of my body of knowledge I will cover different digestive issues and talk about how to correct them in more detail, but you can blaze ahead if you like by working your way through this course at your own speed.
Foundation of Fitness #2:
Body Alignment
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Without good alignment you will not be able to train with intensity or consistency due to injuries, aches and pains.
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I learned about the importance of good body alignment the very, very hard way. I suffered a knee injury in high school football which bothered me on and off for seven or eight years but then when I tried to gain a lot of weight as a personal trainer it started to hurt again worse than it ever had, but what was even worse was that I couldn't bend or straighten it all the way or walk or downstairs or walk at all more than half a block without having to stop and take all my weight off of it. This was not helpful in my job as a personal trainer. I could benchpress 305 pounds at the time but I couldn't bend or straighten my knee all the way and, strangely, I all of a sudden developed a rotator cuff impingement and couldn't raise my right arm above my head AND I started getting TMJ (chronic jaw tension/tightness).
It seemed so crazy because mine he had apparently healed years ago to the point where I had run the Boston Marathon without any issue at all but no I started to get all sorts of pains even worse than before plus new injuries, seemingly out of nowhere. What was happening?
It took me a long time to figure out, so long that one chiropractor I had worked with three times a week for eight months filed a workers comp case for me stating that my knee was permanently disabled. Sometime later, after much searching, I found a amazing company called The Egoscue Method. It was through them that I learned that all of my injuries were related to misalignment in my posture and poor movement patterns (biomechanics).
After just two sessions with The Egoscue Method all of my aches and pains and injuries and functional limitations had disappeared. I could hardly believe it when I took a hike for an hour and a half and was literally jumping and skipping down the steep hill trying to make knee hurt but it just didn't. I was overjoyed. I was in love. I was so excited about it that, instead of going back to work for the gym that I had worked for, I sought employment with The Egoscue Method and found tutelage under one of it's best practitioners, a man named David Smith, who still runs the San Francisco Egoscue Clinic.
I ended up working for them for years then was hired to work for several companies in India training their personal trainers and yoga therapist the benefits of the method. To this day I still use what I learned to the Gosche method with everyone of my personal training and exercise therapy clients. Personally I would get injured pretty much every other day in the gym without using what I've learned about body alignment though this method and my own personal application of it's principles.
I don't need to get into my long personal/professional experience with it, but I did want to tell you that story to help illustrate effectiveness and usefulness of the Egoscue Method and validate the worth of what I have to share with you about body alignment.
So, now that we talked about it's importance, I want to give you a useful first step to begin working on your body alignment. Incoming additions of My Body of Knowledge we will talk more about how to assess your own posture, how to eliminate particular pains, remove functional limitations (restore physical capacities/functionality), and improve sports performance, balance, flexibility, poise and even self-confidence. For now, IF AND ONLY IF you do not have any acute injuries, severe pain or damaged physiology, then you may want to try this General Alignment video. If you do have any particular injuries, aches, pains or functional limitations that you would like to address you can click here to visit the spot specific pain relief videos I have made, or contact me with a request for a personal consultation or with a simple request to make a video addressing a particular ache or pain you may be dealing with presently. I will try my best to answer all requests with as useful info as I can.
Please know that this video is purely for educational and demonstrative purposes. I have to present this disclaimer for legal reasons: you are entirely responsible for your own health and I am not responsible for any injuries or lose that may result from performing this video or following any of the information presented on this site. You are hereby advised to consult with your physician and licensed healthcare professional before beginning any exercise routine and I request that anyone reading this article or watching any of the content I share first read this disclaimer.
And now, provided you don't have any injuries, an awesome general alignment routine to help you take the first step in correcting your body alignment...
It seemed so crazy because mine he had apparently healed years ago to the point where I had run the Boston Marathon without any issue at all but no I started to get all sorts of pains even worse than before plus new injuries, seemingly out of nowhere. What was happening?
It took me a long time to figure out, so long that one chiropractor I had worked with three times a week for eight months filed a workers comp case for me stating that my knee was permanently disabled. Sometime later, after much searching, I found a amazing company called The Egoscue Method. It was through them that I learned that all of my injuries were related to misalignment in my posture and poor movement patterns (biomechanics).
After just two sessions with The Egoscue Method all of my aches and pains and injuries and functional limitations had disappeared. I could hardly believe it when I took a hike for an hour and a half and was literally jumping and skipping down the steep hill trying to make knee hurt but it just didn't. I was overjoyed. I was in love. I was so excited about it that, instead of going back to work for the gym that I had worked for, I sought employment with The Egoscue Method and found tutelage under one of it's best practitioners, a man named David Smith, who still runs the San Francisco Egoscue Clinic.
I ended up working for them for years then was hired to work for several companies in India training their personal trainers and yoga therapist the benefits of the method. To this day I still use what I learned to the Gosche method with everyone of my personal training and exercise therapy clients. Personally I would get injured pretty much every other day in the gym without using what I've learned about body alignment though this method and my own personal application of it's principles.
I don't need to get into my long personal/professional experience with it, but I did want to tell you that story to help illustrate effectiveness and usefulness of the Egoscue Method and validate the worth of what I have to share with you about body alignment.
So, now that we talked about it's importance, I want to give you a useful first step to begin working on your body alignment. Incoming additions of My Body of Knowledge we will talk more about how to assess your own posture, how to eliminate particular pains, remove functional limitations (restore physical capacities/functionality), and improve sports performance, balance, flexibility, poise and even self-confidence. For now, IF AND ONLY IF you do not have any acute injuries, severe pain or damaged physiology, then you may want to try this General Alignment video. If you do have any particular injuries, aches, pains or functional limitations that you would like to address you can click here to visit the spot specific pain relief videos I have made, or contact me with a request for a personal consultation or with a simple request to make a video addressing a particular ache or pain you may be dealing with presently. I will try my best to answer all requests with as useful info as I can.
Please know that this video is purely for educational and demonstrative purposes. I have to present this disclaimer for legal reasons: you are entirely responsible for your own health and I am not responsible for any injuries or lose that may result from performing this video or following any of the information presented on this site. You are hereby advised to consult with your physician and licensed healthcare professional before beginning any exercise routine and I request that anyone reading this article or watching any of the content I share first read this disclaimer.
And now, provided you don't have any injuries, an awesome general alignment routine to help you take the first step in correcting your body alignment...
But let me say it one more time: DO NOT PERFORM THIS VIDEO IF YOU HAVE ANY PREEXISTING INJURIES. For those of you with preexisting injures, you may want to check out these pain relief videos first before trying the Functional Yoga (Essential Sequence Level 1) video.
Beginner's Alignment Video:
Functional Yoga (Essential Sequence Level 1)
Foundation of Fitness #3
Empowered Mindset
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You Don't Lack Will Power.
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He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying.
- Friedrich Nietzsche
And so we begin our quest for perfect health and our ideal physique where we should: at the beginning. You may have come to this text having spent many years and much effort already vested in improving your health or working on your physique, but like most sound approaches, we will begin by focusing on the fundamentals. What's unfortunate about most health/fitness programs is the the fundamentals we will layout here, which are absolutely critical to your successfully creating great health and your ideal physique, are often largely, or even completely overlooked, which is why so many people fail, either early on or eventually, when they set out to transform their physique.
I believe that most people are ambitious when it comes to transforming their physique and passionate about their health. I honestly believe that most people do not lack will power and are not innately lazy.
Yeah, really. From my twenty plus years of personal and professional involvement in health and fitness I've seen thousands of individuals with earnest interest in massively improving their personal health and attaining their ideal physique. People are willing to invest massive amounts of time, energy and money into their health and fitness.
So why aren't more people crazy fit and super healthy?
After decades of life immersed in the health and fitness arena I've come to know something important:
Most people don't reach their fitness goals for a few primary reasons...
Throughout the posts of My Body of Knowledge, we'll offer valuable advice to help you shape your consciousness to an empowered, efficient state that will have the motivation and workable strategies necessary to make your ideal you your reality. Stay tuned for more tips on strategy and motivation.
To begin our fitness path of mastery, I want to offer you these general guidelines that I've found help people incorporate changes in an effective, mature and lasting way. These are guidelines (NOT RULES!) that I have found help people escape the sense of being "on a diet" - with it's inevitable failures, endings, crashes and short lived results. I use to run cleanses and recommend very strict protocol that people would try to follow and so many people were thrown into such unnecessary restriction and strain, guilt and sense of failure.
Using these guidelines I personally, as well as my clients, now have a much more sustainable, functional methodology to incorporating change into your diet, exercise and lifestyle.
These awesome guidelines are...
1. Nothing's Off Limits
2. Check In
3. Be Charmed
Please let me elaborate upon each...
1. Nothing's Off Limits
By holding the principle that “nothing is off limits” we, all of a sudden, enable our mind to feel free, unrestricted by dietary rules or “I must do this...” sense of obligation. When you first hear this guideline you may think “oh s#it I’m going to go buck wild crazy following this guy's advice!”
The truth is you very well may run wild for a bit, especially if you have been forcing your self into a highly restrictive diet for years. This temporary tangent of indulgence is just a stage as you start to mature in your approach to your health and fitness.
Once you get through the stage of indulgence you will soon realize that just because you can do something doesn’t mean you want to all the time...so that box of donuts and extra large extra pepperoni pizza soon lose their insane appeal and you start to authentically want, and freely choose foods that make you actually feel good and that help create the results in your health & physique that you truly crave.
As long as you make up rules for yourself like, “I can’t have this for another 3 months” or “I can only eat this once a week”, you will always feel restricted and never at liberty to do as you please, leading to a perpetual sense of strain and dissatisfaction (when you're doing things "right", i.e. sticking to your restrictive plan) and a reoccurring sense of failure and frustration when you inevitably give in and break your rule(s).
Conversely, if you adopt the guideline that “nothing is off-limits” you instantly recognize you are in a perpetual state of liberty. In this state of liberty you can make wise choices informed by empirical results and driven by your bliss.
2. Check In
By "check in", I mean pay attention to how your choices are working for you. How do you feel? How is your energy? Is your physique changing in the way you desire to? Do you feel better or worse after doing something in particular? How's your digestion and what can you learn about it to make it run better?
This approach of self analysis and empirical analysis opposes the dogmatic fad diet style approach of just doing something because an expert, or your friend who had success achieving what you want to achieve, told you to do it. The fact is that, because everybody is different, different approaches will work differently for different people, so you have to pay attention to what really works for you.
During the course of the articles throughout My Body of Knowledge I will teach you more in-depth ways to check in on your own body, such as self tests to evaluate your own body chemistry, quizzes to help you understand your personal symptoms/struggles, teaching points about how to assess your own body alignment and even tips on how to evaluate your thinking patterns and mindset.
When you start to check in on yourself in these ways you will develop continually more refined sense of what is and what is not working for you. The more you do this the more your conscious and subconscious mind will naturally start to choose those things which progress you towards your goals and the things that make you happy.
3. Be Charmed
By beach armed I mean choose the things that you are excited to do. When you allow yourself free reign by holding that nothing is off limits and you continually check in on how things are working for you you cannot chili refiner choices towards the things that you desire most. Since nothing is off-limits we naturally choose the things we are most attracted to, but if we are also paying attention to how those choices work out for us our conscious and subconscious mind will continually refine our attraction and lead us to make choices that will bring us closer to our desired outcomes.
Further, the more we bring to mind/heart that which we are charmed by - our goals, visions, ideals for our body, our health, and our life as a whole - the more excited to become about those things. We often forget the things that were really excited about and unconsciously settle into smaller indulgences that just come to us day to day.
Author C.S. Lewis said it perfectly when he said:
Yeah, really. From my twenty plus years of personal and professional involvement in health and fitness I've seen thousands of individuals with earnest interest in massively improving their personal health and attaining their ideal physique. People are willing to invest massive amounts of time, energy and money into their health and fitness.
So why aren't more people crazy fit and super healthy?
After decades of life immersed in the health and fitness arena I've come to know something important:
Most people don't reach their fitness goals for a few primary reasons...
- The approach they take with diet and exercise isn't right for them personally because it wasn't right for their body chemistry, so it fails to produce results and people become discouraged. There's a saying that it is insanity to continue doing the same thing and expect different results. Most people aren't insane, so in the spirit of common sense, they quite their diet and/or exercise program because they recognize that it wasn't producing the results they hoped for. Watch the trailer to our movie "Why Am I So Fat?" to catch a glimpse of how powerful it is when people learn that THERE IS NO PERFECT DIET FOR EVERYBODY, BUT THERE IS A PERFECT DIET FOR EACH BODY. The results of embracing this knowledge are shown in relation to weight loss, but whether your goal is weight loss, weight gain, digestive issues, skin problems, anxiety, depression, diabetes, cancer, heart disease, etc. knowing what foods and nutrients are right, and wrong, for you is critical because every physiological issue has a strong connection to imbalanced body chemistry. Whether or not nutrition mistakes got you there, an intelligent, individualized nutritional strategy can pretty much always serve as an essential component of getting healthy again and taking your fitness to the next level.
- They have injuries or incur injuries due to improper movement patterns, so they have to "take it easy", or even entirely abandon their exercise routines. Without good body alignment, healthy, sustainable movement patterns (biomechanics) your body will suffer injuries and excess strain on joints and connective tissue, especially when you start trying to exercise with the intensity and consistency it takes to create your ideal physique. If you get injured every time you try to step up your workouts, you're not going to reach your goals. Instead, you'll be nursing injuries and spending time in physical therapy offices or surgery rather than powerlifting and body sculpting. Not cool. The much better alternative is to learn about proper body alignment, take the time to train your body into healthy movement patterns and structure your workouts to reinforce great biomechanics. If you train your body to have sound biomechanics, you'll develop a much more balanced physique, avoid injury, and naturally, as a side effect, massively increase your balance, flexibility, self esteem and aesthetic prominence. Great posture is a side effect of biomechanic optimization, so not only will you be able to restore lost function and improve athleticism, but your poise and presence will be naturally enhanced by good posture, making
your physique look even better. So watch the videos we provide you in this post about improving body alignment, or if you're in pain check out our pain relief videos and start working your way naturally out of pain and into greater and greater levels of athleticism. It all starts with this essential step of correcting alignment.
- They are attached to disempowering stories that they believe are facts that prevent them from creating and sticking to a corrective course of action; or images in their subconscious that have energetic gravity pulling them towards a less than ideal reality. Once these stories, and their often outdated origins, are uncovered and put into plain view of the conscious mind, they often lose their grip and can be discarded and replaced by new, empowering stories; as the old images can be likewise uncovered, discarded, and replaced by ideal images that empower you to make your ideal your reality.
Throughout the posts of My Body of Knowledge, we'll offer valuable advice to help you shape your consciousness to an empowered, efficient state that will have the motivation and workable strategies necessary to make your ideal you your reality. Stay tuned for more tips on strategy and motivation.
To begin our fitness path of mastery, I want to offer you these general guidelines that I've found help people incorporate changes in an effective, mature and lasting way. These are guidelines (NOT RULES!) that I have found help people escape the sense of being "on a diet" - with it's inevitable failures, endings, crashes and short lived results. I use to run cleanses and recommend very strict protocol that people would try to follow and so many people were thrown into such unnecessary restriction and strain, guilt and sense of failure.
Using these guidelines I personally, as well as my clients, now have a much more sustainable, functional methodology to incorporating change into your diet, exercise and lifestyle.
These awesome guidelines are...
1. Nothing's Off Limits
2. Check In
3. Be Charmed
Please let me elaborate upon each...
1. Nothing's Off Limits
By holding the principle that “nothing is off limits” we, all of a sudden, enable our mind to feel free, unrestricted by dietary rules or “I must do this...” sense of obligation. When you first hear this guideline you may think “oh s#it I’m going to go buck wild crazy following this guy's advice!”
The truth is you very well may run wild for a bit, especially if you have been forcing your self into a highly restrictive diet for years. This temporary tangent of indulgence is just a stage as you start to mature in your approach to your health and fitness.
Once you get through the stage of indulgence you will soon realize that just because you can do something doesn’t mean you want to all the time...so that box of donuts and extra large extra pepperoni pizza soon lose their insane appeal and you start to authentically want, and freely choose foods that make you actually feel good and that help create the results in your health & physique that you truly crave.
As long as you make up rules for yourself like, “I can’t have this for another 3 months” or “I can only eat this once a week”, you will always feel restricted and never at liberty to do as you please, leading to a perpetual sense of strain and dissatisfaction (when you're doing things "right", i.e. sticking to your restrictive plan) and a reoccurring sense of failure and frustration when you inevitably give in and break your rule(s).
Conversely, if you adopt the guideline that “nothing is off-limits” you instantly recognize you are in a perpetual state of liberty. In this state of liberty you can make wise choices informed by empirical results and driven by your bliss.
2. Check In
By "check in", I mean pay attention to how your choices are working for you. How do you feel? How is your energy? Is your physique changing in the way you desire to? Do you feel better or worse after doing something in particular? How's your digestion and what can you learn about it to make it run better?
This approach of self analysis and empirical analysis opposes the dogmatic fad diet style approach of just doing something because an expert, or your friend who had success achieving what you want to achieve, told you to do it. The fact is that, because everybody is different, different approaches will work differently for different people, so you have to pay attention to what really works for you.
During the course of the articles throughout My Body of Knowledge I will teach you more in-depth ways to check in on your own body, such as self tests to evaluate your own body chemistry, quizzes to help you understand your personal symptoms/struggles, teaching points about how to assess your own body alignment and even tips on how to evaluate your thinking patterns and mindset.
When you start to check in on yourself in these ways you will develop continually more refined sense of what is and what is not working for you. The more you do this the more your conscious and subconscious mind will naturally start to choose those things which progress you towards your goals and the things that make you happy.
3. Be Charmed
By beach armed I mean choose the things that you are excited to do. When you allow yourself free reign by holding that nothing is off limits and you continually check in on how things are working for you you cannot chili refiner choices towards the things that you desire most. Since nothing is off-limits we naturally choose the things we are most attracted to, but if we are also paying attention to how those choices work out for us our conscious and subconscious mind will continually refine our attraction and lead us to make choices that will bring us closer to our desired outcomes.
Further, the more we bring to mind/heart that which we are charmed by - our goals, visions, ideals for our body, our health, and our life as a whole - the more excited to become about those things. We often forget the things that were really excited about and unconsciously settle into smaller indulgences that just come to us day to day.
Author C.S. Lewis said it perfectly when he said:
"Our passions are not too strong, they are too weak. We are far too easily pleased."
Vision Board
To make your Ideal life your reality, you first have to figure out what your Ideal life is. I've found that vision boards are a fantastic, possibly even magically effective way of manifesting your ideal reality. Having super clear, vivid images that dictate exactly what you would like to create and fill you with enthusiasm does powerful things to your conscious and subconscious mind impacting the choices you make day today. Those choices you make day to day add up and end up creating reality in which you live.
So to help plant the seeds of your ideal reality in your subconscious and conscious mind it is profoundly helpful to create a vision board. Vision boards are easy and fun to make, especially with how easing technology these days makes it. My favorite way to create a vision board is simply to search the Internet using Google to find images that bring to mind and heart that which I desire to create. Images you may choose for your vision board may be of your ideal physique, an activity you like to be doing more, an ideal mate you would like to call into your life, or success in any which way you desire. There is also a free online tool called Pinterest upon which you can create vision boards and store them privately or share them with your friends to share enthusiasm over your goals.
However you choose to create your vision board, whether you use Pinterest, or images you just copy and paste from Google, or even old fashion magazines that you cut and paste to cardboard, however you choose to do it just do it because without that your ideal reality will be somewhat vague and less likely achieved.
So to help plant the seeds of your ideal reality in your subconscious and conscious mind it is profoundly helpful to create a vision board. Vision boards are easy and fun to make, especially with how easing technology these days makes it. My favorite way to create a vision board is simply to search the Internet using Google to find images that bring to mind and heart that which I desire to create. Images you may choose for your vision board may be of your ideal physique, an activity you like to be doing more, an ideal mate you would like to call into your life, or success in any which way you desire. There is also a free online tool called Pinterest upon which you can create vision boards and store them privately or share them with your friends to share enthusiasm over your goals.
However you choose to create your vision board, whether you use Pinterest, or images you just copy and paste from Google, or even old fashion magazines that you cut and paste to cardboard, however you choose to do it just do it because without that your ideal reality will be somewhat vague and less likely achieved.
Like what you read?
Whew, that was a whole lot of stuff for one blog post, but all that stuff seemed so critical explain from the get go. The 3 Foundations of Fitness are all big, big pieces of the puzzle and it's going to take a lot of work to master each of them, so don't feel at a loss if you're not sure what to do about all that stuff you just learned. There's tons to discerning the right diet for yourself and there's tons to remodeling your consciousness AND there's also tons to optimizing your biomechanics/body alignment. My goal for this edition was simply to lay out what the Foundations are and to try to give a useful starting step in each, as well as to point out some resources to make further headway with as we go.
In coming editions of My Body Of Knowledge I will introduce more fun sections like Myth Busters, Recipes, Workouts, Pop Quizes and more.
Your comments and feed back are super welcome and will be received in a spirit of gratitude and used to make each edition of My Body of Knowledge as relevant, useful and enjoyable as possible. Thanks for reading and, if you liked it, sign up for notification of further editions and tell your friends about on on Facebook, Instagram and stuff. :)
Thanks and Much Love,
Will Wolfgang Schmidt
Mwah!
In coming editions of My Body Of Knowledge I will introduce more fun sections like Myth Busters, Recipes, Workouts, Pop Quizes and more.
Your comments and feed back are super welcome and will be received in a spirit of gratitude and used to make each edition of My Body of Knowledge as relevant, useful and enjoyable as possible. Thanks for reading and, if you liked it, sign up for notification of further editions and tell your friends about on on Facebook, Instagram and stuff. :)
Thanks and Much Love,
Will Wolfgang Schmidt
Mwah!
