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How Being Motivated Can Make You Fat

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About a month ago I decided to start focusing on losing weight and getting in better shape – AGAIN.

I’ve started the journey of losing weight and getting fit more times than I can remember, and I’ve actually had a lot of success with losing weight.

Losing weight is easy.

The challenge is that gaining it back is even easier.

Years ago, my primary focus and obsession with weight loss and fitness was figuring out what is the best, fastest and safest way to lose unwanted excess fat on the body and how to put on lean muscle mass.

Because I focused on that, I figured it out and I know exactly what to do and what not to do in order for me to lose weight.

However, this time around, I’m focusing on something different.

I’ve now been a lot more focused and obsessed with learning how to get fit, lose weight and KEEP it off after I lose it, and I’ve learned some very interesting things about that.

Here’s what I did first…

Discovering How Fit People Stay Motivated Long Term

In the past, whenever I would make the decision to lose weight, I would be highly motivated to produce results – and quickly.

I would either do a weight loss competition with one of my friends, or just make the decision to put energy, time and focus into losing weight.

And I would do it.  I’d lose the weight I wanted to lose and hit my goals.

Each time I would start highly motivated to lose the weight, however as time would go on my motivation levels would drop.

By the time I was hitting my target weight loss goal, usually my motivation was pretty low at that point…

… so after I hit my goals I would stop doing the things I was doing, and I would go back to eating unhealthy again…

… and the interesting thing I noticed was that when you’re in great shape, and you start eating unhealthy again, you actually don’t gain weight right away…

In some cases I would eat unhealthy foods for weeks or even a few months without gaining much weight, because my body was still in great shape and my higher set metabolism would just burn away any excess food.

Also, my appetite for unhealthy foods wouldn’t be that great – at first…

… but as I would start eating crappy food again, the addiction would start up again and slowly I would eat healthy foods less frequently and start eating unhealthy foods more frequently.

And then a few months later I would start to gain the weight back, but there was usually something else I was focused on in my life outside of health and fitness which held my attention and motivation.

Eating healthy and being fit was not a priority at all, and so I would start to gain the weight back.

And then of course a year or two later I’d be right back where I started, or even a bit heavier and wondering how the heck this happened and why didn’t I STICK with it!?

So this time around, when I decided to go on this journey I started thinking that what I need to figure out is how to stay highly motivated to be healthy and fit not just for a short period of time, but for a LONG time – like forever!

You see, I know when I’m highly motivated to do so, I can lose weight and get fit, but when my motivation goes down, I start gaining it all back.

So my thinking was that if I could JUST figure out how to stay motivated long term, I could keep the weight off forever.

So I started doing research, reading health and fitness and bodybuilding forums, reading articles, and seeking advice from various people who have transformed their bodies long term on how they stay motivated long term.

Surprisingly, what I discovered was kind of interesting…

Virtually NOBODY could answer that question.

NOBODY could tell how the heck they stay motivated to be fit and healthy for more than just a short period of time.

After a while I started thinking maybe people just don’t know what keeps them highly motivated to be fit and healthy long term because they don’t think about it, so if I can just figure out what questions to ask them I could figure out what’s going on in their heads and understand their motivations better.

After a few weeks of searching, I was honestly no further ahead than when I started.

I still had no idea how the heck these people keep their motivations high to eat healthy, work out and stay fit for long periods of time.

I was frustrated, because I couldn’t believe it was this hard to find an answer to seemingly such an easy question – “How do these fit people stay motivated long term!?”

Then during one of my sessions with my Retrofit coaches, I mentioned this and they recommended I look into the work of BJ Fogg.

BJ Fogg does lectures at Stanford and his area of expertise is understanding motivation.

The Truth Behind Motivation

After looking into BJ Fogg and after watching some of his lectures, I realized that the reason I wasn’t able to find the answer to my question on how to keep my motivation high for staying healthy and fit long term is because there is no answer!

Meaning, what BJ Fogg discovered is that it is impossible for people to stay highly motivated about something forever.  In fact he discovered that motivation is a VERY short-lived phenomenon in humans.

Our motivation levels are always going UP and DOWN like a roller-coaster, on a daily or weekly bases, and sometimes our motivation levels can even change throughout the day!

Here’s BJ Fogg’s lecture on this where he explains this phenomenon, why we are like that and what to do about it:

I absolutely LOVED this lecture.

It totally explained to me why I’ve failed to keep the weight off in the past.

You see, in the past, whenever I would decide to lose weight, my motivation levels would always be through the roof.

I’d be excited, I’d be pumped up, and I’d usually enter into some kind of competition with one of my friends to see who can hit their weight loss targets etc., so my motivation levels would be ultra high.

While my motivation levels were ultra high, I would find activities and action steps that I could take in order to produce results – fast!

In BJ Fogg’s motivation wave graph, these activities and actions would belong under the “Hard to Do” and “Requiring High Motivation” section of the graph.

Now, because my motivation was ultra high, the fact that those activities were hard to do didn’t matter, because when your motivation is high, things that are hard to do aren’t so hard to do!

And, typically when you do things that are hard to do, they usually produce results very quickly, which then fuels motivation even more, which in turn makes it easier to keep doing those hard to do things.

HOWEVER, once I would hit my goal, or I would finish a competition with my friends, my motivation levels would usually drop down – just a bit.

Not all the way down to zero, but they would drop from “Ultra High” to like “Medium”.  On a scale of 1-10, they might drop from 9 or 10, down to like 5 or 6.

This usually happened because I would get motivated by something else in my life.  Meaning, once I hit my fitness goal, I would move onto something else in another area of my life, such as manifesting a new car or increasing my income or something along those lines.

So then, while my motivation to do that OTHER thing would go up to like 9 or 10 out of 10, my motivation to eat healthy and be fit would drop down to 5 or 6.

The challenge with that was that ALL the activities and structure I put in place for eating healthy and staying fit while I was at level 9 or 10 were all HARD to do and required a lot of energy  or time to accomplish.  I guess you could say that those activities were a 9 or 10 out of 10 on the “easy or hard to do scale”.

So what happens when your motivation drops to 5 and the activities you are trying to do are at a difficulty score of 9 or 10?  Nothing!

You don’t do them!

Instead, what you do is you start eating crappy, and you start to skip workouts, and then you feel guilty for doing so, and you try find a way to get your motivation high up again.

Of course that doesn’t work, because you can’t fake motivation.  If you’re already highly motivated to be focusing on something else and that thing is already taking up all your energy, time, focus and attention, you can’t also be highly motivated to stick to a diet or fitness plan at the same time.

There’s only so much energy, time, focus and attention we all have in a day, and if you’ve already decided to invest that into something else you’re excited about, there just isn’t enough to also focus on a healthy diet and fitness plan which requires a high level of motivation.

So what’s the solution?

Creating a Variable Motivation Plan of Attack

Once we realize that motivation is not something we can fake or manufacture if it isn’t already there, the solution to how to deal with that is actually not that complicated.

The solution is to simply create a plan of attack which MATCHES your current level of motivation in any given moment.

Meaning, what we need to do is we need to create a plan of attack which moves us forward when our motivation levels are HIGH, but also continues to move us forward when our motivation levels are LOW – and everything in between.

For example, way back in 2009 I did a program called P90X.  Some of you probably heard about it.

When I started the program, my motivation was super high, and I had the time, money and energy to invest into it.

So when it came time to invest the 60-90 minutes to do the workouts, and maybe another 15-30 mins before / after the workouts, and the energy and will power to keep pushing through these insane workouts – it was no problem for me – because my motivation was high.

But 60 days later, when I had to shift my focus on my business, my motivation dropped a bit and I stopped doing the workouts and went from doing P90X every day to doing NOTHING.

This is because I had absolutely no plan in place as to what to do when my motivation goes down.

This is because when our motivation is high, we think that our motivation will ALWAYS be high – forever – so who the heck wants to plan for low-motivation situations when we are living in a fantasy that says that our motivation will never go down.

We think “No man, I’m done with being fat.  I want to be fit, I’m pumped up, I’m committed, and I’m never giving up!!!”

Yeah, right.  That’s a fantasy.

That might be our motivation in the beginning, but there will come a time when that motivation goes down – for any number of reasons.

The only solution is to have a plan in place which ASSUMES that at some point your motivation goes down, and it already gives you an exact plan of attack that you can easily accomplish even if your motivation is super low.

For example, right now my motivation to get fit and to lose weight is very high.  So for me to bang out a 60-90 minute workout today wouldn’t be that hard.

HOWEVER, I’ve already been working with my Retrofit coaches and we have a plan of attack in place where I have a 5 minute workout already in place, ready for me to implement on days when my motivation is low.

I have a printed out sheet which tells me EXACTLY what exercises I can do on that day, which only take 5 mins or less.

That is actually what we started with – an exercise program which is easy to implement and easy to build a habit with.

On the diet side of things, I’m doing the same thing.

I have a plan of action for what to eat while my motivation levels are high, but also what small changes I can implement when my motivation drops.

In other words, I have a plan in place which encompasses all the motivation levels from Ultra High to Low.

Now, it’s very important to realize that I am not saying that the solution to losing weight and getting fit is some 5 minute workout program…

Why Making Things Too Easy Isn’t The Solution

When people skim over this stuff and don’t take the time to actually understand what BJ Fogg’s research reveals, there is a tendency for people to try to oversimplify a complex subject like this.

I want to be very clear with this.

I am *NOT* saying that the long term solution to losing weight and staying fit is to create a 5 minute workout for yourself, or some super easy dietary change to follow.

Creating a 5 minute workout plan, or having a plan to make a super easy dietary change are examples of activities that a person would do when their motivation levels are LOW – for whatever reason.

However, they are NOT examples of activities you would do when your motivation levels are MEDIUM or HIGH.

Meaning, it’s not just as simple as saying “Oh okay, I get it.  So what you’re saying is that I should just create a simple workout like to do 10 pushups per day and just do that forever, and I’ll be in the best shape of my life, right?”

NO!

See, the challenge is that doing activities that are TOO EASY as compared to your current motivation level will not work either.

Reason being is that if your motivation is high, when you don’t match that high level of motivation with higher difficulty level activities, you essentially dissipate that motivation and produce very little results with it and that doesn’t feel good either.

Meaning, if you’re pumped up, excited to get fit, and ready to do a 60 – 90 minute workout, then THAT is what you should be doing!  Not a 5 minute workout.

Make sense?

Because if you are pumped up and excited to do that, but then you stop yourself and think “Well, I want to do a good solid workout, but I think that I should start slow, so maybe I’ll just do a 5 minute workout today, and then maybe a 6 minute workout tomorrow and build it up from there…” that will kill your motivation levels instantly!

What BJ Fogg talks about in his lecture is that when your motivation levels are high, you need to apply that motivation to taking action at that level, and there are a whole bunch of different things that you can do while motivation is high.

Also, besides applying that motivation to doing something that is harder to do – diet or fitness wise – another thing you can do with a high level of motivation is to do things that  might be hard to do in the short term, but which will make it easier to produce results when motivation is low.

For example, let’s say that currently the only place I can work out is at a local gym which is 20mins away, but I have a room in my house that I could transform into a home gym, but it would take a lot of work to clean it out, set it up as a gym, and to buy the equipment to make it into a gym.

That process of transforming a spare room into a gym might be a good example of a HIGH difficulty level activity, AND it can also be a good example of an activity that – if completed – could make it easier to work out when motivation is LOW.

So if my motivation was Ultra High, for example, that might be a good time to utilize that motivation and to apply it into cleaning out a spare room, going out and buying gym equipment and setting up a gym.  This way, on days when motivation is low it will be easier to do a 5 minute workout in THAT room, instead of having to drive 20 mins to go to a gym.

That’s just one example.

Other things we may choose to do when motivation is high is to go grocery shopping for healthy meals, or to pre-plans meals, or to even pre-cook some meals ahead of time.  Or we might go and buy some gym equipment, or some new clothes, or some new shoes or sign-up for some kind of class.

Again, these are just examples, you have to figure out what would work for you.

The point, however, is simply to just be aware of what your current level of motivation is, and then to take action based on that level.

Don’t do LESS than you’re motivated to do just because someone told you that it’s best to “start slow” or they told you to not “overdo it”.

If you do that, you’ll get bored, you’ll get mad for not producing results quicker, and you’ll just give up on the whole program.

Match your CURRENT level of motivation to the activity levels which will move you towards your goals.

And don’t feel bad or guilty for not doing MORE, if your motivation levels are lower than what would be required to do some activity.

Just match your activity levels to your current level of Motivation.

That’s what I’m doing now, and it’s working out really well for me.

I started my new program on June 1st, and on some days I’ve had more time, energy and motivation to do more so that is what I did.

On other days my schedule was so busy with my businesses, that I had to fall back on my “easy” activities that still move me forward like doing a 5 minute workout before going to bed when I was really tired.

I was so tired that I didn’t even want to do that workout, but because it was only 5 minutes though, and it was already pre-planned for me and I didn’t have to think about WHAT I needed to do, I just did it.

Only took 5mins and I felt great! 🙂

If you’ve been struggling to lose weight and get fit, or more importantly to KEEP the weight off and to stay fit, I highly recommend looking into this concept and the research/lectures on motivation from BJ Fogg.

Then, once you understand the concepts, focus on creating a plan that assumes that some days your motivation will be HIGH and some days it will be LOW – and have a plan in place for the entire spectrum of motivation levels, not just one or the other.

-Paul

P.s. Incidentally, if you haven’t already realized, this entire concept of matching activity to current motivation levels can be applied to EVER area of your life, not just fitness and health.  I’m just using health and fitness as an example, but it applies to everything.  Now that I’ve learned this simple but powerful concept I’m starting to implement it into other areas of my life as well and I recommend you try it out yourself as well.

Where I’ve Been Hiding the Last 7 Months and The Future of FreeYouNow.com

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Those of you who used to follow my blog – FreeYouNow.com – and maybe some of it’s previous incarnations might have been wondering where I’ve been for the past 7 months or so.

My last blog post was from October last year, and then I kind of disappeared.

I originally started blogging way back in April 2006, when there were much fewer blogs around and people didn’t live on Facebook and smart phones weren’t even around yet.

I really enjoyed blogging as both a kind of personal journal and as a way I could give back to the world.  The three main things I blogged about were entrepreneurship/making money online, personal development and fitness.

About five years ago now I also started offering one-on-one coaching and helping people to become entrepreneurs and to make money online for those who could afford my help one-on-one, and my Blog was my outlet to also offer some of that help and advice for new entrepreneurs for free.

At the beginning of 2015 I decided to really step things up and to put most of my one-on-one coaching on hold in order to instead offer and reveal a lot of the strategies and secrets I learned as an entrepreneur and personal development nut over 20+ years, totally free on my blog and YouTube channel.

I wrote hundreds of blog posts and released dozens of free videos.

By October, however, I had come to the realization that even though most people criticize coaches and mentors for not offering any of their advice for free to those who can’t afford to pay for coaching / mentoring, VERY FEW people out there actually value and utilize that advice, when offered to them for free.

This became even more apparent to me on multiple occasions when I was asked for advice on certain questions from someone who was a paid coaching client, and I had already answered that exact same question not even a week prior to that on my Blog.

Even when I would send them a link to a blog or video I recorded which answered their question exactly, they didn’t read it or watch the video – they would rather pay me and have me re-answer it or re-explain it to them on the phone and only then they would value the advice and take action on it.

I also started looking at the track records of my students who I had previously mentored one-on-one, and had now shifted over to giving them an abundance of awesome content, totally free on my blog, and it was completely obvious that they weren’t putting any of that advice into action.

This was one of the primary reasons I decided to put my blogging on hold, as the amount of time and energy I was putting into it was incredibly disproportionate to the amount of value people were actually willing to take from that content.

What I decided to test out and re-focus my energy towards was a different strategy.

Instead of trying to teach people what to do, how and why to do it, I decided to just start applying what I know works as an entrepreneur into starting and building a totally brand new business, part time.

The new business I started is in the tabletop gaming niche, a hobby that I’m becoming very passionate about, and so I re-launched an old blog I had called TabletopGamer.com and also launched a new ecommerce store at TabletopGamerStore.com.

I figured that by applying what I know about personal development, entrepreneurship and marketing to an actual project, I could teach people to be successful using a strategy that Abraham/Hicks beautifully summarized in this quote:

“Teach through the clarity of your example.” ~  Abraham/Hicks

Meaning, instead of trying to TELL people what to do and how to do it, instead I’ve been simply focusing on SHOWING them what I’m doing and using that as a tool to stretch their imagination, their beliefs and to hopefully inspire them to do something similar in their lives as well.

Shifting my focus to teaching in this way has had a HUGE shift on my life.

It is SO much easier to just go out there and DO what I know how to do, and to just produce results myself and then have my example be the teacher instead of me trying to teach what to do and how to do it.

Of course in hindsight this makes total sense.

Our world is becoming more and more inundated with an over-abundance of information, and so people are paying attention less and less to information until you show results, and even then they derive more inspiration from just watching you DO something, than from you teaching them what you’re doing.

So that is what I’ve been mainly focusing on.

My Tabletop Gamer business has taken off to a great start, generating sales almost immediately after I started applying some of my ninja marketing strategies and in February of this year I launched my first ever Kickstarter campaign for a new line of tabletop terrain I had designed.

It was a small, very specialized project which I had only expected to sell about $1000 – $1500 worth of terrain through, but I was very excited to see the campaign hit over $17,000 in orders in 30 days.

The project did so well that I am actually still in the process of producing all the tabletop terrain to fill all the orders that came in right now as I write this post.

So for anyone looking for an example and some inspiration for making money online with your own business, just follow along with my TabletopGamer.com blog and see what I’m up to there and then just apply it to whatever niche you’re passionate about.

Which now brings me to this Blog, and why I decided to write THIS blog post today.

The Future of FreeYouNow.com

With my tabletop business being there for anyone who wants inspiration or an example of how to build an online business part time, I’ve been thinking about what direction I want to take this blog.

What I’ve decided to do is to re-focus the direction of FreeYouNow.com to be more of a personal development and fitness blog.

I’ve just recently started a new weight loss and fitness plan, and this gives me the perfect opportunity to once again teach through the clarity of my example, by sharing the successes and failures I experience on my path towards getting fit and healthy.

I’ve already been learning some awesome new things that I’ve never talked about or shared in blog posts or videos before, which I’m hoping to share in future blog posts and to mainly focus on just going through my journey towards health and fitness and maybe hopefully inspiring someone else to take on that same journey in their lives as well.

So stay tuned, I’ll be blogging about my new fitness and health journey very soon.

Paul

Manifesting Body Diet and Fitness Plan – Day 103

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Today I wanted to do a quick update on my diet and fitness plan, and more specifically to share my updated stats from my Aim Skulpt device.

For those of you who are not familiar with the Skulpt Aim device, it’s basically a device that allows you to measure each one of your major muscle groups and test individual “MQ” scores for them.

Here’s a quick chart which explains what “MQ” is.

As you can see from the chart above, an MQ of 80 falls under the “Needs Work” category and looking at the silhouette of the person at 80 MQ we can tell they are obese, and on the other side of the spectrum we have an MQ of 160 which is someone who is completely skulpted, with an MQ of 100 being an average person.

The main benefit of using a device like this is that it allows you to see changes in your body composition which are more accurate and more specific than just weighing yourself on a scale.

I’ve taken two full body measurements so far with the Skulpt Aim.

The first measurement was taken on Day 1 of starting this plan, and the second measurement I took a few days ago on Day 100 of the plan.

Here is a side-by-side comparison of the two reports for the muscle groups on the front of my body.

Skulpt Aim

 

As you can see I’ve had improvements in my “MQ” all across the board.

The MQ of my shoulders was 97 (right) and 99 (left) on Day 1, and now it’s at 100 for both.

The MQ for my chest (pecs) was 98 (right) and 100 (left) on Day 1, and now it’s at 101 (right) and 102 (left).

As you can see in the chart, pretty much every one of the numbers went up.

This makes sense to me because the biggest part of my plan so far has been focused around strength training with my personal trainer Sam.

Now, let’s look at the stats from the back of my body:

From the muscle groups in the back of my body, the biggest improvement showed up in my glutes as well as my calves.

You can see the exact numbers in the graphic above.

Now, the final chart I’ll share is just the total body average snapshot between the two days.

 

As you can see form the chart above, my average MQ for all the muscle groups was MQ 90 on Day 1, and as of Day 100 I was at MQ 96.

Now, some people may think to themselves “Yeah, but so what?  This device showed you that you had an MQ of 90 and now you’re at 96… what does that tell you?”

Well, depending on what your goals are, to some people these numbers may seem insignificant.

For example, if someone was just looking to lose weight and wasn’t doing any strength training, then tracking their MQ wouldn’t probably be a useful measure.

You could simply just step on a scale and measure your weight and see how much weight you lost.

However, since I’m mainly focusing on strength training with my program right now, psychologically I need to track some sort of measure of progress BEYOND just my weight.

The reason for this is because building muscle kind of works against you in the beginning of a fitness program if all you’re looking at is your weight.

Meaning, by doing strength training I’m actually building muscle tissue which is actually pretty heavy as compared to fat for example.

Therefore, let’s say that I lose 3lbs of fat and gain 3lbs of muscle in a certain period of time, if all I looked at was the scale then my weight wouldn’t even change.  There would be no difference.

And when we don’t see any difference on the scale, we get demotivated!

However, if we could somehow measure that we’ve gained lean body mass, in addition to losing fat, then it becomes more motivating.

Now, technically we can measure total lean body mass by using body fat percentages, but with the Aim Skulpt device it just gives me that extra level of detail and tracking so that I can see how each individual muscle group is responding to my strength training program.

For a gadget geek like myself, this is uber cool stuff.

I love tracking stats and seeing graphs and sleek looking graphics, and if that’s what I need to do in order to get myself motivated to work out, then that’s what I’ll do.

Based on the stats above I have to say I’m very pleasantly surprised.

During my first 100 days of strength training I’ve only done 14 one hour work out sessions with my trainer or on my own so far, which comes out to – on average – about one workout per week.

In addition to that I’ve also done quite a bit of yard work and landscaping outside as well, so I’m sure that contributed to this as well, but in terms of actual strength training workouts, I’ve only done 14 so far!

I definitely still have a long way to go, but I have already lost about 10lbs of fat, my clothes fit better and I’m feeling WAY stronger than I was when I started this journey.

If I can increase my average number of workouts to 1.25 or 1.5 or 2 or 3 workouts per week I’m sure I’ll start seeing results coming in even faster.

But, even if I just keep doing what I’ve been doing so far, I’ll still see results, it’s just that they will take longer to achieve.

For the first time in my life though I’ve been CONSISTENTLY working out for more than 3 months in a row, which is super awesome, and I have to thank my trainer Sam from Ivanco Fitness for that. 🙂

Are People Vested in Your Success or Failure?

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Yesterday I was having a chat with my Mom about my new fitness program.

She stopped by shortly after my personal trainer Sam left, and I was just telling her how the workout I did really whooped my butt, but I felt so great having accomplished it.

So we got talking and she was asking me if this was one of my first sessions, and I told her that no, I’ve been working out now for over two months now.

Now, as soon as I said that I thought to myself “Holy crap, I’ve been working out for over 2 months now!”

The reason why that’s significant to me is that in the past, I have never been able to stick to a workout program for more than 1-2 months.

For example about ten years ago I joined a local gym with about three other friends of mine who all wanted to get in better shape.

We picked a gym that was more or less the same distance for all of us to go.

After a few visits to the gym, a few of my friends quit, and then after a few more sessions I gave up as well – mostly because the gym was always so busy during the times I wanted to go, and I had zero desire to work out at 5am in the morning! LOL.

Since then, I’ve tried various different exercise programs, both at home and at gyms.

Last year I joined yet another gym, fairly close to my house, and this time around I found a gym that was open 24 hours a day, so that I could go at night if I wanted to when it was really empty.

I found myself only going a few times, and just not really liking the experience.

Back in 2009 I did the world-famous P90X program for almost 2 months before giving up on that, firstly because of sheer exhaustion and feeling completely run down, and secondly because my business working hours changed and I didn’t have the time to dedicate to working out for 1-2 hours every single day.

Bottom line, I’ve never been able to stick to a strength training program for more than a month or two.

Perhaps you can relate? 🙂

Now here’s my point with this.

So I’m sitting there and talking to my Mom, and I’m thinking “Wow, it’s already been two months and I’m still going strong!  Why is THIS plan working where others have failed?”

That’s when it hit me.

Setting Up Plans Where People Have a Vested Interest in Your Success

See, in all the other plans that I was on before, the success of other people depended on me FAILING.

Meaning, other people technically had a VESTED INTEREST in my failure – energetically speaking.

What do I mean by that?

Okay, well, let’s use the gym scenario as the first example.

Most people don’t realize this but virtually EVERY gym out there oversells their memberships by like 90% or more.

Meaning, if the maximum capacity of a gym is that 200 people can work out at the gym at one time, they will sell 2,000 or more memberships EASY.

Why?

Because they know that 90% of people will not show up to the gym.  They’ll just pay for membership and never show up, or at the very most they’ll show up sporadically.

Gym owners know that they can easily sell hundreds, if not thousands of memberships MORE than the gym can handle because they know that most people will give up.

Their entire business plan, and the economics of the business ASSUME this to be true and if everyone they sell a membership to actually showed up and used their membership, the gym would be overcrowded, too full and they would have some serious issues to deal with.

Therefore, when the owner of a gym sells you a membership, they are ASSUMING that you won’t actually even show up.

The gym I signed up for, I prepaid for a whole year and I didn’t show up after the first month, and they NEVER called once to find out why I wasn’t showing up.

Why would they?  They probably have 1,000 other members also not showing up.

So my point with this is that the way the typical GYM business model works is that they make the MAJORITY of their money, selling gym memberships to people who don’t show up.

People like me. 🙂

Again, if everyone who they sell a membership to actually showed up to work out on a regular basis, their business would be in trouble.

Therefore, the gym has a vested, financial and business reason to HOPE and PRAY that you don’t actually show up to take advantage of the gym membership you purchased.

In other words, they are energetically VESTED in your failure to get in shape.

If you go to the gym and work out, they get paid, but now you’re using their machine and taking up space at the gym.

If you don’t go to the gym and you don’t work out, they STILL get paid as most gyms get people signed up to longer term contracts.

Now, contrast that with my current setup with my personal trainer.

My personal trainer shows up to my house, and we train.

When he shows up, and we train, he gets paid!

If he doesn’t show up, and we don’t train, he doesn’t get paid!

It’s a different setup as compared to something like a gym membership.

My trainer has a VESTED INTEREST in my success because he knows that he only makes money when I’m training, and so guess what?  He always shows up, and whoops my butt! 🙂

Which is awesome and exactly what I need to achieve success.

He also knows that if the workouts are too easy, and I don’t produce results, I’ll get discouraged, and if the workouts are too hard, that won’t work either, so they have to be personalized to ME.

Again, even when it comes to what kind of workouts I do when he’s here, he has a VESTED INTEREST in me having a successful workout.

Which is an awesome thing as well.

In the past, when I bought various exercise machines, the company that sold them to me wasn’t really vested in my success.

They were just vested financially in selling me the machine.  Once I bought it, it’s my problem if I get results with it or not.

Same with exercise DVDs and training programs.  Once they sell you the program, whether you succeed or not is mostly irrelevant to them, as the sale has already been made.

Now I’m not saying that gym owners and exercise equipment stores or exercise DVD producers are bad people, or that they don’t care about their clients.

I believe that they DO want their clients to succeed…

…HOWEVER, most of their business models are specifically organized on the assumption that you WON’T succeed.

It’s kind of like a dentist’s business model…

Dentists make money when people don’t brush their teeth, and don’t floss.

They don’t really make a lot of money on people who have perfect teeth – right?

Same with doctors.  Doctor’s make money by treating people who are sick, or hurt.  Their business model and the way that they get paid and put food on the table is based on treating people who are sick.

It is not structured in a way where they PREVENT people from getting sick in the first place!

Again, I’m not saying that dentists or doctors are bad people or anything like that.

I’m just saying that the business model they are involved in is NOT based on getting paid for preventing disease, it’s based on treating disease.

There are so many situations like that in life, where we do business with people and in some situations those people make more money when we succeed – and so they are VESTED in our success – and in some situations they actually make more money when we don’t succeed – and so they are VESTED in our failure.

Does that make sense?

So going back to my conversation with my Mom and my personal trainer, what I realized is that I have now setup a situation where my personal trainer is VESTED in my success, and this is helping me tremendously to stick to my program!

For example, yesterday I accidentally double booked my schedule with a slight overlap, and I wouldn’t be able to do my regular training session with my personal trainer from 11:30 am to 12:30 pm because I had to leave for another appointment at 12:00.

So I made the suggestion to my trainer to postpone my session until Friday instead.

If this was a gym membership and I called them and said “I can’t come to the gym today, but I’ll show up on Friday” what would they say?  They would be like “Sure, we’ll see you Friday, or whenever, or never…:)”

What did my trainer do?

He just showed up 30 minutes early, so that I could still do a workout and be done by 12:00 pm on the dot and make it to my appointment.

I don’t usually double book like that, but when it did happen, he still had a vested interest in showing up and training me, so that’s what happened.

When people have a VESTED INTEREST in your success like that, you get that extra little push that you don’t get from people who are vested in your failure.

Make sense?

This is also why I love the Empower Network business model for Blogging.

Do You Have Someone VESTED in Your Blogging Success?

What’s cool about the Empower Network business model is that it’s setup in a way where your sponsor / mentor has a VESTED INTEREST in your success.

For example, I have a growing team of bloggers who I work with daily and I’m ALWAYS doing whatever I can to help them succeed as bloggers!

Why?  Because THEIR success is MY success.  I am mentally, emotionally and financially VESTED in their success.

I’m not just selling someone a WordPress Blog or hosting solution and then ditching them to figure everything out on their own.

No, I’m constantly focused on trying to help everyone on my team to be more and more successful as bloggers.

I share from my own experience, I help them out, I constantly visit and read my team member’s blogs and offer suggestions on improvements, etc.

When one of my team members makes their first $1,000 blogging, I will be compensated for that by Empower Network, just because of the way that the compensation structure is setup.

It’s virtually IMPOSSIBLE for someone on my team to become ultra successful and make a lot of money, without me also making a lot of money in that process as well.

Therefore, I have a VESTED INTEREST in the success of every team member I sign on!

This may not seem like a big difference to some people who think to themselves “Well why would I join Empower Network?  Can’t I just setup my own Blog on like WordPress or something?”

Sure, you can do whatever you want, but will that put you in a position where you have someone like me having a VESTED INTEREST in your success???

No, it won’t.

You’ll have a Blog, but you won’t be a part of a team, you won’t be a part of a group, you won’t have other people cheering you on and wanting to see you succeed, and you won’t have a mentor who has a vested interest in your success working with you.

You’ll have a Blog, but you’ll be setting yourself up for failure, right off the bat.

This is why for people who want to start a Blog or who want to make money online, or to develop a second income outside of their job, I recommend that they sign up for empower network now and get the support they need.

Manifesting Body Diet and Fitness Plan – Day 73

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Today I decided to do a quick update on my progress with my “Manifesting Diet and Fitness Plan”.

It has now been 73 days since I started this plan on April 20th.

My main goal was to create and follow a plan which would allow me to lose approximately 65 lbs of fat, and to get stronger and more fit physically, while at the same time integrating this diet and fitness plan into my entrepreneurial lifestyle in a way which enhances my ability to make money with my business.

In other words, I want to lose fat, get fit, and do it without it taking over my entire life and distracting me from building my online business.

Here’s a chart of my progress so far:

So as of this morning, so far I have lost 8.4 lbs of fat.

I’m actually quite surprised by this number as I really don’t feel like I’ve been dieting at all.

I’m been eating pretty much the same foods I’ve always eaten.

There are only three main changes that I’ve made.

Firstly, I’ve replaced about 50-70% of my soda/pop drinking with these healthy vitamin/mineral drinks which I just love:

Previously when I would be thirsty and would have a craving for a bit of sugar and/or caffeine, I would usually turn to drinking a can of Coke or having some black tea with sugar, but now instead I turn to these drinks.

Secondly, I’ve been doing a lot more exercise by working with my personal trainers from Ivanco Fitness as well as working outside doing landscaping work on my yard.

Thirdly, I’ve been doing some PSYCH-K subconscious belief balancing and visualization work to help me visualize my new body and to program my mind to help attain it.

To help me with my visualizations and with tracking my progress I actually find it a lot easier to plot my weight on a chart, rather than just looking at a number, as a line graph shows me a trend over time.

Here’s what that chart looks like:

It’s pretty easy to see that even though my weigh fluctuates day to day, I am on a downward trend with my weight which which is pretty exciting.

In fact, based on my current stats, I’m currently losing 0.12 lbs of fat per day on average, and at this pace I should be able to reach my target weight of 177.5 lbs by November 27th, 2016 assuming I maintain this pace.

I know that’s more than a year away from now, but that’s only if I continue to do what I’ve been doing so far with my diet – which hasn’t been much. 🙂

If I want to speed the process up I could add in some more changes to my diet which would help me to reduce my fat much faster, but even if I did nothing more than I’m doing now it’s still really exciting to see that I will eventually hit my target.

And what’s probably more exciting about this than any other diet / fitness program I’ve been on in the past, is that I can actually see myself sticking with this plan indefinitely.

This is not a radical / fast / drastic weight loss plan where I make huge changes to everything I do and then 3 months from now end up quitting and going back to my old habits.

This is a program that I think I can EASILY follow.

It’s not hard replacing a few sodas a day with some healthier drinks, and I’m quite enjoying my workouts with my personal trainers, so I can see myself sticking with this long term which is something I could never really say about any other diet / fitness programs I’ve been on.