This is Bill…

He’s my step grandpa.  Here he is playing my wife down the isle at our wedding. 

He’s dying…

Aren’t we all?  Yes.  But, he’s been told it’s terminal liver cancer. 

Jeremy, why are you sharing this?  It seems like a big downer. 

Because, I think his story will provide inspiration to us all that we CAN change!

The Story:

Bill has always been called Bill by us grandkids.  They were married before I was born.  In my heart he’s grandpa but we all call him bill because he didn’t see himself as a grandpa type perhaps. 

Before the blessed moment that he met and married my Grandma.  He was an alcoholic.  Not like a functional alcoholic either like a stumbling alcoholic.  The first 30-40 years of his life were a mess.  I’m sure on more than one occasion he said.  “This is just who I...

I need to let you know something....

 

I gained weight back 3 times.  20-30 pounds after losing 60 lb.  I say this to you not ashamed or not to scare you but to offer you hope and to help you find grace in the journey if you are sitting in that spot right now. 

 

Here is an interesting little tid bit.  Did you know that RELAPSE is PART of RECOVERY!  Yep, truth.  You don’t just decide to change and boom you change.  It’s a process of highs and lows and boring in between.  Relapse is expected in the initial recovery period.  This does not make you a failure this makes you HUMAN.  No one starts something and the first time – ta-da you’re perfect at it.  Think of how many times a baby falls learning to walk.  Your journey towards health is a lot like that – you just have to keep getting back up.

 

THIS YEAR HAS BEEN HARD!  So much pain, loss,...

We’re smiling with our eyes, can’t you tell. Super hard with a face-mask right! Trying to smile extra with your eyes is a new 2020 skill we are trying to master.

The most common lie about Fat and Muscle in the fitness industry.

I hear this one so often I get angry that people are being lied to so regularly and I am embarrassed to be in an industry that still does this. 

Please watch the video below.  You'll be able to hear my tone as I explain this. 

I'm telling you this now because I came across a video selling some fitness program online.  It was by some Doctor who helped some of the Marvel characters get in great shape.  "Supposedly", I don't trust a word he said now.  His first two sentences were straight up lies!  I guess it was sentence two that was the biggest part of the lie. 

At Least watch 15 seconds of the video to see what I'm talking about. 

(I'll talk to you through there!  The visuals are worth it.)

If you are looking for our help please call 585-260-4235 or email [email protected]rainer.com.  

Two strategies to survive a storm. 

We had a wind storm last night.  We’ve had them before too.  We live on a hill so we HEAR it.  The power is pretty amazing for something you can’t see.  You can’t see the wind but you can see its effects.  We have another storm going on that you can’t see at least not with regular vision.  I wish I had virus vision.  That would be easier. 

I didn’t see this coming, I don’t think most of us did.  How can we weather the storm?  There two ways that I noticed in the wind blowing around us. 

The Grass

The grass survives every wind storm.  I don’t notice much grass blowing around.  It survives the storm because it is flexible.  When the wind blows it moves with it.  It bends down all the way to the ground.  Laying flat if necessary and the wind blows right over. 

That’s one strategy...

The "official talk" starts about 5 minutes in.  Walk and listen since the visual is just the side of my head.  

You can’t teach an old dog a new trick

False.

Most people aren’t consistent enough for the dog to learn the trick. 

We had a wonderful Old Dog named Stella.  We moved into a new house just a couple years before she died.  She learned the new habits of the house and yard fairly quickly.  She could have learned any trick at any time if we would take the effort to teach her. 

How about you?  Do you lean on this classic American folk statement as a reason you at 60 can’t get a handle on your eating or exercise habits?  Many do. 

If you believe in this falsehood you won’t try the 10^th, 11^th, 12^th, or 34^th time it takes to learn the new habit.  In my experience most adults only allow themselves 2 times to try something new.  If they don’t get it in the first 2 they say, “I’m no good at that.” 

Your brain is just confused on how the world...

This is most likely the key phrase for mastering any physical skill.  But I think it relates well to our weight loss attempts too.  The phrase may most often be used in shooting where being jittery is no good.  Slowing yourself down so you can do it right means you get it faster.  And once you get good at it the results are repeatable. 

If you’ve ever been in a panic trying to do something fast you might have experienced this.  It’s raining outside and you are trying to unlock the door fast.  In your attempt to do it fast you drop the keys twice, find the wrong key once, and miss the lock three times. 

It takes you WAY longer than if you had decided to just go slow. 

I think our weight loss can sometimes look like this.  We lose weight fast on some CRASH diet frantically striving only to gain it back.  Accepting a slower rate of weight loss that will transition better into “real...

Growth ain’t for wimps

We are in a “growth” season right now as individuals, society, and world.  Growth is most often uncomfortable.  We have an 11 month old baby right now as I type this.  She is cutting teeth right now.  I use that phrase because the teeth have to cut through the skin (gums) inside the mouth in order to emerge.  This makes for a cranky baby sometimes. 

Growth can be painful and uncomfortable. 

Thinking about the spring break we are all missing right now I thought of the palm tree.  The palm tree simultaneously grows and part of it dies.  It was actually difficult to find a picture of a non-trimmed palm tree to show you. 

There are beautiful fan like leaves on a palm tree that wave in the wind and a towering trunk.  An unpruned palm has a mass of dead palm leaves hanging underneath it.  The new leaves grow out of the top and the old leaves droop below. 

...