Are your choices conscience ACTS or are you a mindless consumer?

When I first meet a new client most of what they tell me is how frustrated they are with themselves and their inability to lose weight.  Then they tell me that they have done these major calorie restrictive diets (like 800cal a day) or they have spent mucho bucks, ($800) to have their food packaged and delivered to them.  But after they give in of course we all know what happens, they gain it back.  When I ask about their past exercise or training experience, they tell me how they run or walk, maybe did some boxing or some boot camp.  But here they are, standing in front of me with a clinically obese body composition telling me how all of these things failed.

I don't judge, I listen.  I explain how kettlebell training and the kind of training I do is very different from their past experience.  I want to help them change their metabolism by adding muscle.  You know one pound of muscle burns an extra 500 calories.  My kind of training doesn't involve HOURS in the gym, it can be completed in 30 min or so.   I am not selling you a scam, I am telling the truth.  A Russian, centuries old system of movement that results in strength, mobility and a lean body that helps you age well.  You will be able to perform anything better without injury.

After listening to dozens of these stories from people I know, I just think about the book by Charlie Reich called The Greening of America.   It has been called a hippie book, I missed the whole hippie era.  But I do identify with this book.  I had to read it for one of my classes in college.  It talks about how the Green Machine (economy) separates us from our true thinking selves.  We make non thinking choices because in this huge marketing culture, we don't ACT, we just give into what TV and marketers tell us and consume mindlessly.

It makes me sad to see people making non-thinking choices about what they are doing to their bodies. Mindlessly giving into marketing or making non-thinking habit choices gets you nowhere.  When it comes to making healthy lifestyle choices, you have to ACT.  Make a real choice, not a mindless re-run of past choices that get you nowhere.  Think about who you really are and the choices you are making.  Are you really choosing?  Or are you mindlessly consuming? Is that really who you are, an unhappy over consumer?  I think you are more than that, maybe as Charlie Reich puts it, "You have been separated from your true self."

So the next question I ask is, "Do you really want to lose weight and get stronger?"  You tell me those are your goals.  Are you going to THINK and ACT?  I know it is not easy, but look at the real consequences.  Not just the scale.  We know the results of high fat diets and low activity levels.  Is that really what YOU want?  More of the same frustration? Is that really who you are? I think to myself and say, "I want you to be a person who is really in charge of your choices."

I can't ACT for them.  I can teach them healthy choices, but YOU and only YOU can make those choices for yourself.  Maybe I should get them to read the Greening of America.   Is that Chick-Fil-A really your choice you are making?  Do you really want it or is it the result of a master marketing?