The Craziest Workout Trends of 2013

Written by Lesley Cornelius on 30 January 2014. Posted in Health, Fitness & Wellness, Issues

It’s nothing new that people will do just about anything for their health. Some people have no limits! We are constantly being told about new trends for working out, and we’re always looking for something new that will help us stay fit, or in my case, get fit in the first place. From products to exercises, there is no end to the things people come up with to get in shape.

There have been some crazy workout trends in the past year. The kicker? Some of them actually work! The others, however… the only thing they’ll do is make you look silly. Here are some of my favourite crazy workout trends from the year, and just incase you partake in any of these, I’ll let you know what you’re wasting your time with.

Let’s start with some of the crazy products people have come up with. These are always entertaining because you really get to see the extent some people go to in order to avoid going to the gym.

Here are my top 5 favourite weird products of 2013:

1. Vibration Plates – I saw one of these pedestals that you stand on that vibrate under your feet at my gym one day, and spent a good half hour of my treadmill time trying to think of what it could possibly be used for. Then, a few days later, I saw an older man using it, and it was so loud and obnoxious I couldn’t think of what that possibly could do for your body. According to ABC News, the base is actually vibrating under your feet, which forces your body’s muscles to contract to keep your balance while you do exercises on it. If you want one of these badboys for yourself, you’ll have to fork over about $2,500. There’s a chance it might help with your circulation and bone density, but it won’t help you with weight loss, especially if you’re using it to shorten your workouts.

2. Sound Wave Technology – There is a product called Vaser that uses sonic waves to get rid of your unwanted belly fat. It acts like liposuction and sucks it out. According to ABC News the cost for this procedure ranges from $8,000-$20,000. Sure, it works, but for that much money you’re better off just getting liposuction in the first place, which has long-term proven results.

3. Leg Weights – Apparently you can tone your legs while walking around the office or at work with the invention of leg weights. They are basically weights that wrap around your ankles or calves with the intention of giving your legs a strength workout while doing everyday tasks. Do you really want to walk around all day with weights on your ankles, though? Skip these, especially if you work a job where you sit the majority of the time.

4. The Treadmill Bike – Just incase you can’t decide between running and biking, you can now do both at the same time! The treadmill bike is exactly what it sounds like: a treadmill on a bike. The bike looks like a giant scooter with a treadmill where the seat and pedals would be on a bike. The bike will cost you roughly $2,000CAD or $2,450USD, which is significantly more than a gym membership or running outside, and the medical bills this dangerous contraption might end up costing you are even higher. The best part of this, though, is that there is a side attachment you can get to “walk” your dog beside you.

5. The Entertrainer – According to Daily Life, this contraption is something you strap to yourself while you’re watching television. It monitors your heart rate, and when your heart rate drops too low, it shuts the television off until you do enough exercises to get it up again. These are perfect for those who can’t pull themselves away from the television for more than half an hour. It costs $139.99 on their website, which is less than the cost of your television, but this product is priceless for any couch potato.

Some people like to do the lazy version of things. That’s why we are hearing about products that shorten your workout time and use minimal effort to get you fit. But some people take it to the next level.

I am now going to share with you my 5 favourite crazy and weird exercise trends of 2013:

1. Backwards Running – This needs no description. Shawn Radcliffe of Men’s Fitness says that some people have reported that running backwards uses 30 percent more energy than facing the right direction. It’s also 100 percent more likely to get you seriously injured. And don’t try this outside.

2. Working out Barefoot – This has been a subject of much debate in 2013 especially, as more and more people are trying to live “like their ancestors did” or “as minimal as possible.” Working out in your bare feet is supposed to strengthen the muscles in your lower leg, feet and ankle as well as increase your balance. If you’re willing to get past the germs, bacteria, and overall dirtiness that comes from being barefeet in a public place, that is. Personally, I’d rather not put my barefeet on a disgusting gym floor just to increase my balance.

3. The High Heel Workout – According to Christine Egan of Blisstree, this workout is led by a professional dancer who leads you through a series of workouts while everyone wears- you guessed it- stilettos. It’s supposed to help you improve leg muscles and posture. To me, it’s just asking for a broken neck or ankle. If I can barely walk in stilettos I’m not going to risk injury (and loss of dignity) exercising in them.

4. Doga – Doga, or dog yoga, is apparently a real thing where people bring their dogs to yoga class. The dogs can either choose to participate or run around knocking the zen out of everyone. Shawn says that people who attend these classes claim that the dogs bring a sense of fun and lighten the mood of the classes. Just make sure you bring a poop bag.

5. Flirty Girl Fitness – This is the ultimate workout if you want to piss off a feminist. In these classes, which have been described as a “showgirl workout,” stripper poles are used as an accessory. Other accessories, according to their website, are pink feather boas and kitchen chairs. These classes teach you moves you’ll be able to practice at a nightclub if that’s what you like to do for fun.

Now I’m sure you’re wondering if there are some crazy exercise trends that actually do work. The answer is yes, some people aren’t just crazy- they’re actually getting a good workout! Here are some of the crazy workout trends that actually do work, if you can get past how strange they are. Try them out yourself and see how sometimes these crazy people are really on to something.

One of my personal favourites is drum fitness. Not just because I’m a musician, but because my personal workout mentality is that a workout needs to be fun or I’m not doing it. Drum fitness oozes fun from the name alone. In these workouts rhythmic drumming is combined with aerobics, like squats and lunges. It’s a full body workout focusing on your arms that’ll give you killer results (and a super fun time). If you’re interested, “Drums Alive” and “Pound” are the most popular drum fitness classes and you can look them up to see how you can get involved.

Jungshin is another of my favourites. It’s a martial arts workout that uses a sword. How can that not sound awesome? It’ll give you an amazing strength workout as well as a full-body aerobic experience. On top of the amazing results you’ll get, it will make you feel like a warrior and a badass. Who doesn’t like feeling like that? You can hit up their website to find out more information.

One of the most effective weird workout trends of 2013 is tabata training. Tabata workouts can be completed in 4 minutes. That’s right, you’ll have no excuse for not being able to fit it in. In the time that it would take you to drive to the gym you’ll have already completed your workout. Sounds crazy, right? The key is that tabata training uses high intensity interval training, or HIIT. HIIT is an effective way to structure your workouts because your body burns fat at such a high rate you’ll continue burning fat after you’ve stopped working out. This particular Japanese workout consists of 20 seconds of intense training, followed by 10 seconds of rest. This is repeated over 8 rounds. To find out how you can get in on this quick workout, visit their website.

The biggest workout trend this year has been mashing up different workout classes. You’ve most likely heard of piloxing, a mix of pilates and kickboxing. Then you’ve got zumba, a mix of latin dance and aerobics, and buti, a mix of tribal dance and yoga. Aqua spinning is another, which mixes swimming and spinning. These are awesome workouts because they change things up and give you something new to try.

Who does single-type classes anymore, anyway? That was so 2012.

Positive Thinking for Positive Profits

Written by Carla Rieger on 23 January 2014. Posted in Business, Career & Entrepreneurship, Issues

You wouldn’t think negativity was such a conversation-starter, would you?

When asked, most people want to believe they’re the type to focus on the positive things.

That is the ideal.

We all know consciously that it’s what we should aim for, but think about it the next time you’re talking to someone. How often does your mind jump to something negative, which you then bring up, even if it’s just to bond with others over complaining about that thing? It’s perfectly normal, enough so that we don’t usually think about it – but it’s also telling.

One of the biggest energy vampires in our midst is what I like to call “negative focus.” If you’re like me, you can get easily sucked into it.

Sometimes, it goes like this:

You see somebody you know well and you say, “How’s it going?” And they say, “Not so well, I have a cold.” And if you’re like me you might be tempted to say, “Oh yeah… I think I’m going to need a root canal.” And they reply with something like, “That sucks. Hey, did you hear that this coffee whitener causes brain tumors?” “No kidding? I heard this new carpeting is linked to foot cancer.”

And it goes on from there. You build a mutual bond of misery. And it can really drain your energy to have those kinds of conversations. It doesn’t mean you don’t take action when needed, but to dwell on the negative is a great way to adversely affect all areas of your life.

Research shows negative focus in one area of life can affect ALL other areas. A wide variety of university research studies have now proven that negative focus affects all areas of your life. For example, if you dwell on the state of the economy it might make you more likely to catch a cold. If you dwell on what you dislike about your boss, it can make you less resourceful when faced with a client issue. In other words, all kinds of negative focus adversely affects your health, productivity, creativity, and happiness. In fact, negative thinking is directly linked to digestive problems, allergies, moodiness, and ADHD. Over the long term negative focus has been linked to financial problems, poor relationships, depression, suicide, cancer, and dementia. And yet, despite all this research, many people still get stuck there regularly.

Why people let negative thoughts run their life. If you think a certain thought often enough it can become like a program in your mind. Then it can run on autopilot the rest of life until you change it.

The mind is full of programs for good and useful things, and also for bad and destructive things. For example, knowing how to tie your shoes or drive a car are both useful programs. Without the mind’s ability to go on autopilot like this you would have to relearn those things over and over again. The down side is that your mind can also store programs that undermine your success in life and create phobias. For example, if you once forgot your lines in a school play and the other kids made fun of you, this may have stored a program in your unconscious about fear public speaking. As an adult, when you have to speak to a group you freeze up, which affects your health, your career success and on it goes.

Consciously imprinting a better program changes everything. The human mind tends to be like Velcro for negative experiences and Teflon for positive ones.

Neuroscientists say this is a primitive brain response.

Our brains are not totally evolved to be in synch with modern times. For example, if you touch fire and burn yourself, the brain imprints that experience deeply so you don’t do it again. If you see a great sunset, the brain doesn’t see this as necessary for your survival so it won’t imprint it so deeply. The problem with this kind of mind system is that humans tend to remember many more negative experiences than positive ones, giving you the overall impression that life is dangerous and unpleasant. Whereas, if you imprinted the positive memories as much as the negative ones you would notice they probably far outweigh the negative.

The mind will base expectations about the future on past experiences. So, if you have more positive memories imprinted, you expect a better future. If you expect a better future you are more likely to be confident, relaxed, and creative about how to deal with challenges.

3 tips for breaking free:

Luckily, the brain is very malleable and you can remold itself as necessary. That is best done by installing new software, or positive memories, in your brain that will override the old programs. Here are 3 tips for doing just that:

1. Look for the silver lining: The next time something challenging happens ask yourself, “What’s good about this situation?” Every challenge has a good side if you look for it.

Questions like this will direct your mind away from just the negative and allow you to view it from a positive perspective as well. This can be an invaluable habit that leads you to a better life because you will see opportunities that other people are missing.

For example: Someone hacked my Gmail account and sent a message saying I was mugged in the UK and needed money sent to a bogus email address. It was sent to all the people I had ever sent a message to on that account, so at least 500 people. I had to spend hours dealing with it. I finally asked myself, “What’s good about this situation?” My answer? I got to reconnect to people I had been out of touch with for a long time, which I loved doing. 2. Really think about what’s good: Put a notepad next to your bed, and each night before you go to sleep write down 8 things you appreciated about your day.

It only takes a minute and can imprint the good memories in your unconscious.

Hundreds of people have reported to me that after just 21 days they noticed symptoms such as moodiness, low motivation, and even physical pain in the body decrease significantly.

For example: Just write out 8 things you appreciate about yourself, others or life circumstances each evening, such as:

My relationship with my kids
De-cluttering my desk
Managing to fix my computer problems
My health is better today
My recent vacation was wonderful
My job is interesting right now
Seeing my hockey team win
Having a roof over my head

3. Choice Repatterning: Doing the activities above can produce amazing results. And, if you want to make sure your goals manifest in a big way as soon as possible, I highly recommend listening to the guided meditation everyday. This is a recording that you would listen to for 15 minutes every day for 30 days. It helps you imprint positive programs in your unconscious mind and dissolve away limiting beliefs, so that you are more likely to achieve your goals.

These can be goals such as:

a health or weight loss goal
improved sales and performance at work
more clarity about what’s next in your life
a better relationship with a key person in your life
moving on from a setback in life

…and much more. Chances are that if you have an issue in your life it is because you have an unconscious program working against you.

Choice Repatterning is like installing better software in your internal computer so that it overrides the bad programs—creating a life that is more fulfilling to you.

So don’t let negativity permeate all areas of your life just because our brains are wired for it.

Negativity isn’t inevitable!

Wiring can be faulty, and when it is, it’s rewired for better functionality.

You can do the same for yourself! Make the healthy choice to root out those negative impulses when they come, and consciously turn your mind to focus on the positive silver linings instead. Soon, that will become the new normal for you – you actually will be the kind of happy, positive person you want to be, and you won’t ever look back.

*Repurposed by Amy Kisaka, a staff writer for Goddess Connections publications Women Who Run It and How to Put the Fun Back Into Dating.

So…Are You a Food Addict?

Written by Emily Bennington on 16 January 2014. Posted in Health, Fitness & Wellness, Issues

Often the holidays come with some awful setbacks.

After the dust (or glitter) settles you’re left with credit card bills, returns, hangovers, and the prospect of another year of work. Not to mention the worst setback of them all: weight gain.That dreaded feeling of excess usually kicks in right after New Years.

During the holidays it’s way too easy to indulge with desserts and baking, huge dinners, a few too many cocktails, and plenty of fatty/salty/sugary hors d’oeuvres. Not to mention all those gifts you got that include chocolate, candy, baked goods, and wine that are so easy to gobble up in the blink of an eye.

I know how it starts. Believe me, I’ve been there. You have a bite, and then another, and the next thing you know, the entire box is gone and you feel like shit. And this isn’t the first time this has happened.

You’re disgusted, ashamed, embarrassed, guilty, and – even through the fog of a sugar high – you know you’re SO much smarter than this. So why can’t you stop eating?

Here’s your answer:

It’s not actually about the food!

It’s about numbing and distracting yourself so you can avoid something unpleasant. It could be anything that’s bothering you or that you don’t want to deal with. The boss from Hell, the distant spouse, trying to forget something from the past, avoiding the future…

My own food addiction in college stemmed from a deeply internalized fear of entering “the real world” with no job, no money, and $40,000 in student loans. Rather than face these fears head-on, I’d hit up three different drive-thrus, eat my weight in greasy sandwiches, hate myself for a few hours, go to bed, wake up, hit the gym, and let the cycle begin again.

Sure there was some greedy appeal in the deviously, chemically-addictive food itself, but the added appeal was that the more time I spent focusing on how out of control I was in this area of my life, the less I had to worry about the other parts. So the distraction was subconsciously intentional.

To be honest, I didn’t think I’d write about this topic again. I’ve already been there, done that and I recovered a long time ago. Long enough ago that the Backstreet Boys were still together.

While I didn’t use this word at the time, I know without question that I got my life back through mindfulness.

In fact, the day I started to heal was the day I (finally) admitted I couldn’t change what I couldn’t acknowledge. Once I opened myself up to observe what was making me use food to escape my life, I began to learn that the root cause of my binge eating was actually stress.

Here’s the disclaimer: You don’t have to be a food addict to recognize the pattern of emotional eating. We’ve all reached for the ice cream at some point to soothe the pain of a broken heart or a broken dream. The difference is that addicts can’t stop. While mending a broken heart with ice cream happens on occasion, and then you move on, a food addict can’t move on and remains stuck in the same patterns.

I was definitely an addict.

Being mindful created a space for me to “kill the monster when it’s little.” In other words, I was able to catch myself being triggered LONG BEFORE I showed up at 7-11 like a junkie – and by catching myself I was able to choose a different response.

Waking up to that choice saved me. Do I still have moments where the monster returns? I’d be lying if I said no. The Holidays in particular is rough, with the candy and snacks being unavoidable and constantly in your face.

Still, just being aware of my triggers means I can be smart about avoiding old habits. I don’t keep junk food in my home, I don’t go to certain restaurants, and I have lots of handy excuses for those cute little Girl Scouts who sit outside my grocery store. Removing temptation has been my first choice, but it’s not foolproof. There are occasional times when the ugly monster rears his ugly head, and in those times turning towards the feeling has become my second.

Mindfulness means asking yourself, “what is this really about?”

An addiction is not something that anyone would wish on anyone else and it’s something that needs to be taken seriously, but a very important lesson came out of this particular addiction. You need to start to respect yourself, and the more you do it, the easier it will become to do so.

Respecting yourself is the first key to being happy and in control of your life.
Choose yourself because you are the only person who can control it, and no one else is going to choose you if you don’t give them a reason to.

With the above tips you can truly tackle your weight loss goals for the New Year and conquer it for the rest of your life.

*Repurposed by Lesley Cornelius, a staff writer for Women Who Run It.

Are You Learning From Your Mistakes?

Written by Bonnie Marcus on 9 January 2014. Posted in Health, Fitness & Wellness, Issues, Relationships, Dating & Sex

In the business world it’s easy to be blindsided when you’ve got your nose to the grindstone.

The problem is that the only person you have to blame is yourself.

When it comes to your career, you are the one responsible for your progress.

So when you don’t get that promotion, or don’t receive the accolades that you were expecting, there’s no need to point the finger anywhere but back at yourself. Instead of assuming that everyone else is wrong, it’s time we tried learning from these failures.

If you’re worried about a mistake you’ve made, or think you might make, you are not alone. We all make mistakes every day; some are big mistakes and some are minor ones. It’s part of life. If you Google “learning from failure,” you will get about 129 million results. So you are not alone. We can’t avoid our missteps, but we can learn from them.

One of the biggest mistakes I made in my career was believing that my track record and performance alone would get me promoted. I failed to understand the workplace politics, and I lacked strong relationships across the organization with key stakeholders and decision makers. As a result I was passed over for a promotion I thought I deserved. The lessons I learned from this experience now help me to coach other professional women. It allows me to help them avoid the landmines and successfully navigate the reality of the workplace. But I didn’t learn this lesson overnight.

A huge first step for recovering and learning from my mistake was accepting the fact that I could have changed my behaviour and mindset to influence the decision-making process.

It took some time to detach from the situation and understand that the assumption I had made, that my talent and hard work would be sufficient enough for the promotion, was incorrect. After all, there is no such thing as a meritocracy. The reality is that people are not promoted solely based on their performance. It takes a lot more than just the minimum for you to be noticed and considered for a chance to move up the ladder. It’s a requirement, and expectation, that you perform well to maintain your title and status, but good performance alone doesn’t land you a promotion.

One of the key aspects that set you apart and designate you as someone with leadership potential are the relationships you have with key stakeholders and influencers. Your great track record needs to be shown alongside your ability to work the politics in a positive way and build critical relationships. You need to be on everyone’s radar and create visibility and credibility for yourself and your team. Unfortunately, I had my head down focused on my work and not on building these relationships.

Next, I needed to get over my anger and frustration before I could learn from the experience.

After clearing my head to reflect on the situation, I realized that I had avoided connecting with key people in the organization. I had no understanding of how the decision for this position would be made. I didn’t even have a solid relationship with my boss, who was new to the organization!

Once I reached this awareness, it was much easier to evaluate the situation and look at it objectively.

What did I do right? Well, I did ask for the job once the position was available. I did lobby for the position and 18 of my direct reports at the time recommended me for the job.

So where did I go wrong? I had no idea how the decision to fill this position would be made. I had no idea who the decision makers were and who would influence the decision. I didn’t have any relationships with anyone who had an influence on the position.

In other words, since my boss was new to the organization, who did he ask for input? I didn’t know. I neglected to build allies and champions across the organization; I knew no one in the office who could confirm my qualifications and leadership potential.

I was truly blindsided when I did not receive this promotion. This experience is now the subject of a popular keynote, “The Anatomy of A Blindside,” that I present across the country. The lessons learned from this experience are now used to help other women avoid this mistake.

Here are the 5 critical steps to help you learn from your mistakes:

1. Accept: Accept that you made a mistake and don’t cast your blame on others.

2. Detach: Detach yourself from the emotions surrounding the situation and adopt an objective perspective.

3. Reflect: Once you have taken the time to detach, replay the situation step by step to get a better idea of how you could have avoided your misstep. At what point did things begin to go wrong?

4. Evaluate: What went right? What went wrong? What factors contributed to the failure of the situation? What could you have done differently?

5. Learn: Once you can objectively look at the situation and assessed what went wrong, think about how you could have approached this differently. What will you change going forward?

Today’s work requires a new leadership paradigm. Vulnerability is now considered a core competency for leadership. A real human being is vulnerable and has the potential to do something wrong. We all make mistakes. No one can possibly know everything. Admitting we don’t have all the answers and that we make mistakes is now considered a strength for today’s leadership. Admitting our own vulnerability inspires others, especially when we share our mistakes and the lessons we have learned from them.

It’s easy to blame others for our mistakes. It’s easy to become paralyzed by our emotions of anger, frustration or disappointment. We can expend a lot of energy beating ourselves up for making a mistake. That’s just wasted energy.

No matter what you do or what industry you’re in, there’s a window for failure. But there’s also a window for success. For every mistake you make, your window for success gets bigger. So you can take the risk and accept that things can go wrong, or you can stay behind and wonder what could have been. It’s your call. It’s your choice to use your mistakes and errors as a learning experience. It’s your choice to grow from it professionally, as well as personally, and keep moving forward.

Teaching our Children to Fail in Life

Written by Thomas C Corley on 2 January 2014. Posted in Business, Career & Entrepreneurship, How To, Issues

What are the chances that your son or daughter might strike it big one day and start raking in the millions? I think if they did, for every parent it would be like our biggest goal being brought to fruition – if you can’t be the millionaire in the family, your child being one is the next best thing – and you’d probably love knowing that you did everything to help them get there.

What if you found out that you not only didn’t help them, but you actually hindered them from being rich?

Not just you, but your child’s teachers, the school’s curriculum and its values… Kind of wrecks the daydream, doesn’t it?

When I travel the country speaking to high school and college students about exactly what they need to do to become financially successful in life I always begin my presentation by asking three questions:

“How many want to be financially successful in life?” “How many think they will be financially successful in life?”

Almost every time I ask these two questions every hand rises in the air. Then I ask the magic third question:

“How many have taken a course in school on how to be financially successful in life?”

Not one hand rises in the air, ever.
This happens every time I have asked this third question. Clearly every student wants to be successful and thinks they will be successful, but none have been taught by their parents or their school system how to be financially successful in life. Not only are there no courses on basic financial-success principles, but there are no structured courses on basic financial literacy.

Children are being raised to be financially illiterate, to be poor and to fail in life.

Is it any wonder that most of us in North America live paycheck to paycheck? That most of us accumulate more debt than assets? That many people are losing their homes? Is it any wonder that most Americans cannot afford college for their children and that student loan debt is now the largest type of consumer debt?

According to The Institute for College Access & Success’ Project on Student Debt, the average student loan debt is $25,250. This debt forces college graduates to postpone buying a home and starting a family.

The second worst thing about this problem is what children are being taught by their parents and the school system. They are being taught that rich people are bad.

You think I’m wrong? Just ask your child if they have ever read Robin Hood in school. Most likely the answer will be yes. Then ask them if Robin Hood is a good guy or a bad guy. Most likely your child will say “good guy”. In fact, they very likely consider him a hero. The fact that Robin Hood was a thief who stole from others is irrelevant. He took from the rich and gave to the poor. That, children are taught, is okay because poor people are good, rich people are bad, and poor people are thus “entitled” to that rich person’s money and wealth. Our schools are teaching children that striving to become wealthy in North America is bad.In other words, the American Dream is a bad thing.You see manifestations of this “financial success is bad, the 1% are bad and the 99% are good” mindset in things like the Occupy Wall Street movement and the Buffet Rule. You cannot pick up a paper these days without seeing some article on the wealth gap. Clearly this wealth gap needs to be addressed. But current measures to address the disparity between the rich and the poor are poorly thought out and simply will not solve the problem of poverty. The real solution is to equip our children through education at home and in school with tools that enable them to become financially successful in life.

1) Set limitations: Limit T.V., social media and cell phone use to no more than one hour a day. And limit junk food to no more than 300 calories a day. Punish children when they lose their tempers so they understand the importance of controlling this very costly emotion.

2) Teach children the importance of relationship building: Have them phone friends, family, teachers, coaches etc. on their birthdays and send thank you cards for gifts or help they received from anyone. And parents and children need to set aside at least thirty to sixty minutes a day to talk to each other. By talk I do not mean through Facebook, or on the cell phone, but face-to-face, real talking. The only real quality time is quantity time.

3) Teach children to manage money: They need to learn this. Require your children to save at least 25% of their earnings or gifts they receive. Open up a checking account or savings account for them and force them to use their savings to buy the things they want. They need to learn that they are not entitled to things like cell phones, computers, fashionable clothes, flat screen T.V.s, etc.

4) Teach children that education is not limited to school: Require your children to read one to two educational books a month, outside of school-mandated reading. Have them participate in at least two non-sports-related extracurricular activities at school or outside of school.

5) Teach children how to manage their time: They should be required to create daily “to-do” lists and these lists need to be monitored by parents. The goal should be to accomplish at least 70% of their tasks on their daily “to do” list.

And through formal education at school, the curriculum should be made to include:

1) Goal-setting and goal-reaching: Require that children set monthly, annual and long-term goals. Reassure them that mistakes made in reaching (or not reaching) these goals are good, not bad. Children need to understand that the very foundation of success in life is built on learning from our mistakes.

2) Work ethic: Work ethic is critical to success in life. Require working-age children to work or volunteer at least ten hours a week.

3) Exercise: Have the students exercise aerobically 20 – 30 minutes a day. This improves their health, burns calories and delivers desperately needed oxygen to the brain and vital organs.

4) The value of financial success: Teach students that seeking financial success in life is good and a worthwhile goal. Children need to learn what the American Dream is (unlimited opportunity for financial success) and taught that it is a great thing.

Financial success is not a secret. Wealthy people do certain things every single day that sets them apart from everyone else in life. Wealthy people have good daily-success habits that they learned from their parents. These daily habits are the real reason for the wealth gap in our country and the real reason why the rich get richer. Unless we teach our children good daily-success habits, and level the playing field, the rich will continue to get richer and the poor will continue to get poorer.

Yet we frequently don’t teach them these “rich” habits. Fact is, the values in place in our society, the ones currently taught in our schools’ curriculum and backed by parental guidance, make it more of a lucky gamble than anything that children will be financially successful in life. If they’re lucky, they’ll learn these critical skills on their own, outside of their regulated education, and they’ll appreciate the value of said skills when they’re still young enough for these habits to take hold in their behaviour and become permanently ingrained. Only if they’re lucky… and that shouldn’t be the case!

Ten Deadly Business Mistakes

Written by MaryEllen Tribby on 26 December 2013. Posted in Business, Career & Entrepreneurship, Issues

One mistake- that’s all it takes to crash your life down around you.

One dumb move… that’s all it takes.

And I absolutely hate it when I see smart people do dumb things!

You can spend your entire life building up your business and working your butt off just to see one dumb mistake cost you everything and leave your career derailed from its tracks. Or overlook one little thing and it could cost you your business, and it can be almost impossible for businesses to recover from failure. Your reputation is on the line, and not only is it vital to your success, but it can be easy to blow with just one screw up.

Unfortunately, it happens all the time in business. For example, you see smart marketers who never leave enough time for a proper launch. I’ve seen content providers who continually blow all their money by building out a product without any research or testing only to find out it is NOT a sellable product. This one is my personal favorite – entrepreneurs who think they know it all and can do it alone. And, to me, this is one of the saddest scenarios. Why? Because so often their ideas are great! And they work hard, but they just don’t know what they don’t know. So instead of being widely successful, their businesses fail. I have seen this a countless number of times over my 25 years of working with and watching hundreds of entrepreneurs. I thought about how I could help you prevent these stupid mistakes, so I put together a list of…

Ten Deadly Mistakes that Entrepreneurs Make That Destroy Their Profits, Morale and Reputation:

1) You Do Not Have Clarity of Vision: If you do not understand why your business exists, then how can your customers, your team, vendor and joint venture partners? You need to create a mission statement. Your mission says why you do what you do. Your statement needs to pass the t-shirt test (when people would proudly wear it on a t-shirt). And never subordinate your mission in order to get money!

2) You Do Not Create Core Values for Your Company and Employees: Your core values dictate how you do business everyday. Remember to never subordinate your core values in order to get money. You need to keep your morale in check and never stray from it.

3) You Do Not Understand the Need for an Org Chart: An organizational chart not only adds structure and efficiencies to your business, but it clarifies who and where an employee should go to solve a problem or present an idea. You’re wasting your time and everyone else’s if no one knows this. I know so many entrepreneurs that have an entire office full of employees, yet the chart below still represents their hands on work responsibilities.

4) You Do Not Create Job Descriptions: Entrepreneurs tell me all the time that they need help. Yet when I ask them what the person would do, they look at me like a deer caught in headlights. You cannot possibly hire the right person if you do not know what you want them to do.

So before you can initiate your search, you have to come up with, and write, a job description for the person you want to hire. If you have never done this before, start by writing down everything you think you want your new employee to do. List their responsibilities. And next to each responsibility, write down the necessary skill. Be specific.

Once you know the characteristics of your ideal employee and can define the job and the skills that employee needs… you start looking.

5) You Confuse a Passionate Idea for a Sellable Idea: When people ask me for advice on what their business should be, I tell them two things:

Something you have experience in
Something you are passionate about

Once you have narrowed that down, you must confirm that your idea is sellable. Just because you love it does not automatically qualify it as a good idea. Your idea must be sellable – meaning, do people want what you are selling? To answer this, just do some simple keyword research. If you have at least 10,000 look-ups a month, then go for it.

6) You Do Not Pay Yourself: Most entrepreneurs do not factor their own income into their financials and business plans. They live with the attitude that they will take whatever’s left at the end of each month. Don’t develop that attitude and make sure you’re giving yourself an income.

7) You Do Not Know Your “Keep The Doors Open Number”: Most entrepreneurs have no idea of the “real” cost to run their business. This is a big problem because it leads to never understanding the health of your business. Are you growing? Is your business succeeding the way you want it to? Sit down right now and write out EVERY fixed cost you have, including paying yourself. Once you have done this divide that number by 365. And there you have it – the amount of money you need to bring in each day to keep your doors open.

8) You Suffer from Shinny Penny Syndrome: If you have a tendency to bounce from one “cool” project to another, you are not alone. However, this will break your business faster than anything else. You see, when you have several projects 50% done, that yields you zero revenue. However, one project 100% done brings money in the door. So wait until a project is fully done before moving on to the next one.

9) You Don’t Understand the Value of Giving Away “Ownership” of the Company: Now this does not mean for every person. It means for someone (or a couple) that will take the business to the next level. Think about it- you can’t get past that 2 million dollar level. If someone could come in and take you to 5 million the first year, it would be completely logical to give up 50%. It’s a numbers game, my friend! Just remember 100% of nothing is still nothing. Don’t let your ego prevent you from having a real business.

10) You Avoid Confrontation: Too many entrepreneurs are way too concerned about being liked and have a hard time being proactive when it comes to uncomfortable situations in their business. If there is a problem you need to confront it. Better yet, if there is a potential problem, jump on it before it comes a problem. Letting problems fester tends to lead to:

Bad Deals
Bad Employees
Bad Company Morale

Remember, it is business and there are always ways to handle even the most uncomfortable situations with tact and respect.

If any of these situations sounds familiar to you you need to get yourself out of there as soon as possible. If that means bringing someone in to help you, then take advantage of the options you have available to you. Once you stop making these mistakes, all of which are completely fixable if you catch them in time, you’ll see an increase in your business success. People will want to work with you, your company’s morale will get a huge boost, and your profits will increase.

What Your Body is Trying to Tell You

Written by Amy Kisaka on 19 December 2013. Posted in Health, Fitness & Wellness, Issues

Fiona Fine Interview with Luanne Pennesi

It’s such a basic first step, and yet it’s the one we forget to take every day. “Take good care of yourself,” advises Luanne Pennesi, RN, MS and founder of the Metropolitan Wellness Centre in New York City. “We’ve got to take good care of our minds, of our bodies, we have to process emotions in a healthy way; we have to manage us first.”

That is the first thing you need to do in order to take charge of your health, and by extension your life. Pennesi had to learn this herself, the hard way. Currently a leading name in the field of natural health medicine, she has built her career on the melding of new-age, alternative and holistic Eastern health therapies with the conventional, diagnostic science of Western medical practice. But she was working as a nurse administrator in the oncology unit of a large hospital when she first hit her tipping point.

“I was working all the time. I had chronic fatigue syndrome,” she explains. “I used to drink thirteen cups of coffee a day!” This was common among her fellow co-workers, but after sixteen years, the stress of her lifestyle took a devastating toll. She started developing thyroid imbalances and breast lesions due to all the tension and caffeine. And the conventional pharmaceutical treatments she was being given by her doctors were just barely suppressing her symptoms. As an alternative, she started taking classes in holistic medicine, a field in which treatments are focused on the “whole person,” rather than just the illness itself. She was able to reverse every one of her issues through those classes when she realized: “I [still] wasn’t living my true potential as a woman.”

“What happens so often is that people will jump into a cause, and they’ll lose their whole identity to the cause,” she says. “I lost my whole identity to my work as a nurse administrator. It was who I was, and I was terrified to think, ‘If I left there, who am I?’”

This is the Achilles’ heel of many, many career-driven women.

It’s never a bad thing to be focused on your career or your personal causes, but it’s easy to give ourselves over to them so completely that we forget about ourselves in the pursuit of the goal – which is ultimately self-defeating, for our health and even in terms of said goal. It’s hard to succeed when you’re sick.

Avoid the Trap to Begin With

“Women have grown up to be ‘The Nurturer,’” says Pennesi. “We have it in us. It’s what we do, we nurture. And sometimes, well, there’s a thin line between nurturing and martyrdom. Many times, depending on our religion, or our peers, or the profession we go into, we might get pushed into doing-doing-doing – and then we come last. And when you have that kind of mindset, where you constantly feel like you have to be doing [stuff] for other people in order to feel worthy, and to get their acknowledgment – that, combined with an unhealthy diet is the perfect storm for cancer.”

She gives the Eastern alternative explanation for what happens. “When you’re that kind of person … cancer, on an energetic level, is always about some kind of imbalance in the liver. And the liver area, in Chinese medicine, is where we hold on to anger, frustration, and resentment.

“The breasts are the organs of nurturing, of feeding, of giving. If women develop breast cancer – these are the women who are always taking care of everyone else, and put themselves last. People with cancer in the lungs – the lungs are where we hold onto sadness, grief, and resistance to change. But fibroids, ovarian, and cervical cancer – these are about anger, frustration, and resentment because you’re living someone else’s agenda. You never get to give your own life meaning. We just adapt to other people’s expectations of us.”

Don’t rely on pharmaceutical therapies; they treat the symptoms, not the problem

For Pennesi, it took a journey of self-discovery and growing disillusionment with the Western medical industry to find the real key to restored health and longevity.

“Hospitals, and the whole corporation of medicine, are like a business,” she claims. “There’s no incentive to keep people healthy. It’s an illness-based system – [they] need to keep that business going in healthcare. [They] depend on people to eat bad food and get stressed out. The more people get cancer, the more money they make on pharmaceuticals and surgery and radiation. I have witnessed people who have reversed dozens of conditions that conventional medicine has failed miserably at reversing, in spite of the millions of dollars of research that go into studies controlled by the very pharmaceutical companies that are selling the drugs to suppress the symptoms that our bodies manifest in order to beg our attention.”

And Pennesi numbers herself among this statistic: “I had hepatitis B, I had chronic fatigue syndrome, I had cytomegalovirus, I had acne, breast lesions, ovarian cysts, I suffered from mycoplasma pneumoniae – and with perseverance, knowledge and with determination I reversed every single one of these issues.”

She started bringing this up at the leadership meetings at the hospital where she worked. “When I would speak up about the hypocrisy of what we were doing, and looking at other things we could do, [the hospital] wanted to suppress me.”

Her boss told her she was dispensable, and she retorted that they could just dispense of her, then.

“So I got myself fired,” she laughs, “and I went out and got my Master’s degree in Natural Health, and shortly after that I went on to get a four-year degree in Chinese Medicine. I became a certified AMMA therapist: it’s a specialized tendon and muscle massage [therapy] that you do with the hands, where you connect all of the acupuncture pressure points. It was kind of funky for a nurse coming from administration and oncology to go into something like this, yet I was very excited because, for the first time in my career, I saw people actually improving, actually getting well.

“The next and crucial step for me was: how can I recreate my life so I can be more to people, to help them be the best they can be? The first step was me being the best me I could be!”

Live for Yourself

“In the Healing Arts literature, there’s a specific order that we have to invest our energies in ourselves,” Pennesi explains. “Take good care of you. Once you’ve got that down, then and only then are you going to be able to draw in healthy, like-minded people for healthy romantic relationships, friendships, acquaintances, and so on. Now you have your inner and outer circle of good friendships to support you on your journey while you’re taking good care of you, [that’s when] you’re ready to go out and start doing things on a broad, community level.

“This is some pretty heavy stuff for some people to take,” she warns. “When you say ‘what do I need to do to deconstruct my life?’ – what’s going to happen is you may not get acknowledgment. We strive, not just women but people in general, we want to be acknowledged, loved, and recognized. And when we stop doing the things that get you that recognition, you have to be okay with disappointing people, with people saying ‘I don’t like you in this [new] way’.”

Are You Addicted to Being Average?

Written by Lesley Cornelius on 12 December 2013. Posted in Business, Career & Entrepreneurship, Issues

So you’re stuck.

Settled in to a career where you know you could be doing better, but you stay where you are because it’s comfortable. You put in so much time, but you don’t get rewarded for your efforts. In fact, your efforts are almost unseen. You feel bored at work because you settled for a job that didn’t challenge you enough. You ran into some troubled times and didn’t want to risk going through that again, so you stuck with a job you feel safer with. You made some sacrifices, but it was worth it because you’re getting by and managing with what you have. And that’s enough for you…

You are addicted to being average. When you get into the habit of your addiction, it’s hard to get out of it. You become comfortable and you remain settled in your average job while you let your hopes and ambitions become merely a dream. This ends here. Make those dreams your goals and complete them. It’s time for a challenge. Rise above your average life and start living to your fullest potential. Take that leap you’ve never had the guts to take. Break your addiction today and become exceptional.

Deborah Dubree is an expert at breaking away from average. She went from being a receptionist with just a high school diploma, to being CEO and owner of a successful construction company. Excelling in climbing the corporate ladder, she’s even written a book called AVERAGE IS AN ADDICTION, From Mediocre to Millions! aimed to help people get out of the lives they settled for. Deborah Dubree spoke with Women Who Run It’s editor-in-chief, Fiona Fine, and shared her secrets and advice. Steal her top five pieces of advice and break away from your own average!

1. Be Courageous and Gutsy Dubree managed to work her way up to own a construction company, and now she runs a coaching business, as well as a regular talk show on Kwammie Lassider Sports Talk. How did she do that? As she puts it, “I bet on me.” Dubree credits her ability to ask, “Why not me?” instead of, “Why me?” The difference between these questions will give you the mindset for pushing yourself up the ladder. Believe in what you offer someone, instead of doubting why they would want to choose you. Stop worrying about what other people are thinking or saying about you and do things for yourself. Don’t doubt yourself. Just do it. “I said, ‘I’m doing this for me,’ and I went after it,” says Dubree.

2. It’s Not all About Qualifications Dubree says she sees people all around her who are intelligent and talented who remain stuck at their average jobs in their average lives. They reach excellence, briefly doing something great and worth the recognition, but then they come back down from it. She notices that they all take a familiar pattern, which always ends with them settling for the position they are currently in. They choose comfort instead of risk. Dubree didn’t have a degree or any technical training before she entered the construction business. But she had confidence, and she took the risk. While education is always a benefit, it’s not going to secure you anything. You could be smarter than a rocket scientist, and as educated as one, but if you never take a risk you’ll be addicted to average forever.

3. Find Your Self-Identity Moving up the ladder is not entirely about your intelligence or talent. You need an edge. Dubree says, “We all have an edge, and the edge is really who we are. The problem being is that most people have forgotten who they are.” When you’re stuck at average, you lose track of who you are. Figure out what your edge is. Your edge is your leverage to get ahead in the world. Look at what areas in your life you can leverage and which areas need to be improved on to include leverage. Within your self-identity, you have an edge that will put you ahead of the others. Find it. Dubree named her coaching company “Clear Edge” because of this. She says it was the edge that moved her forward.

4. The Six A’s The six A’s are Dubree’s steps to take for the process of moving your life up the ladder. If it’s time for a change, follow these steps first. This is where she says you need to make a decision about where you are and where you want to be. If those two don’t match up, you need to break away from average.

The first A is admitting what areas you’re average in.
The second A is asking what you need to do to start breaking away from the average and how you need to be behaving, thinking, and feeling to achieve this. Changing your behaviour and your way of thinking is one of the most effective things you can do.
The third A is to access your imagination. Open up your mind and see what you want to see. Create the end result you want in your imagination before you start, so you can visualize what you want it to look like.
Then act in the real world to make it match up. This is the fourth A: action. Take action and start the steps to success. Take any action that has held you back in the past and act on it.
The fifth A is assess. Take a look at what you’ve done so far and figure out what worked and what didn’t. You need to be doing more of what went well. The things that didn’t go so well need to be looked at and you need to figure out what you should be doing differently.
The sixth and final A is to appreciate. Dubree says you need to step back and appreciate everything, even what didn’t work. If it went right, appreciate that it did. If it went wrong, appreciate that you had the opportunity to do so and you have the opportunity to make a difference.

5. Emotions as Signals Emotions are always labeled as good or bad. But Dubree says, “emotions are not good or bad. Emotions are just signals.” And you can use emotions in a beneficial way when you’re moving up. “If you’re having a negative type of emotion,” says Dubree, “it’s a signal that you need to make a change.” Analyze what caused your emotion, whether it was negative or positive. You need to change what makes you feel bad. It sounds like a simple concept, but it’s important. Then, manipulate your brain into generating a positive emotion. This can be done through first deciding what state, mentally and physically, you would like to be in. Dubree says next you need to ask your mind a question, because your mind needs something to focus on so it doesn’t wander off into negative thought territory. Think, “What would it take for me to be at my best right now?” The answer your mind will come up with will encourage you. Dubree’s advice for this is, “the mind will give you negative responses if you ask it negatively.” So feed your mind positivity and you’ll power through all those stressful situations.

Don’t let your life fall through the cracks. Take control of your life and keep moving up. If you’re sick of being in an average life, rise above it and get to the place you want to be. Dubree did it, so you can too!

How Do I Stop Overreacting?

Written by Lisa Haisha on 5 December 2013. Posted in Health, Fitness & Wellness, How To, Issues

What if you found out that you not only didn’t help them, but you actually hindered them from being rich?

Not just you, but your child’s teachers, the school’s curriculum and its values… Kind of wrecks the daydream, doesn’t it?

“How many want to be financially successful in life?”

“How many think they will be financially successful in life?”

Almost every time I ask these two questions every hand rises in the air. Then I ask the magic third question:

“How many have taken a course in school on how to be financially successful in life?”

Not one hand rises in the air, ever.

This happens every time I have asked this third question. Clearly every student wants to be successful and thinks they will be successful, but none have been taught by their parents or their school system how to be financially successful in life. Not only are there no courses on basic financial-success principles, but there are no structured courses on basic financial literacy.

Children are being raised to be financially illiterate, to be poor and to fail in life.

Is it any wonder that most of us in North America live paycheck to paycheck? That most of us accumulate more debt than assets? That many people are losing their homes? Is it any wonder that most Americans cannot afford college for their children and that student loan debt is now the largest type of consumer debt?

According to The Institute for College Access & Success’ Project on Student Debt, the average student loan debt is $25,250. This debt forces college graduates to postpone buying a home and starting a family.

The second worst thing about this problem is what children are being taught by their parents and the school system. They are being taught that rich people are bad.

You think I’m wrong? Just ask your child if they have ever read Robin Hood in school. Most likely the answer will be yes. Then ask them if Robin Hood is a good guy or a bad guy. Most likely your child will say “good guy”. In fact, they very likely consider him a hero. The fact that Robin Hood was a thief who stole from others is irrelevant. He took from the rich and gave to the poor. That, children are taught, is okay because poor people are good, rich people are bad, and poor people are thus “entitled” to that rich person’s money and wealth. Our schools are teaching children that striving to become wealthy in North America is bad.

In other words, the American Dream is a bad thing.

You see manifestations of this “financial success is bad, the 1% are bad and the 99% are good” mindset in things like the Occupy Wall Street movement and the Buffet Rule. You cannot pick up a paper these days without seeing some article on the wealth gap. Clearly this wealth gap needs to be addressed. But current measures to address the disparity between the rich and the poor are poorly thought out and simply will not solve the problem of poverty. The real solution is to equip our children through education at home and in school with tools that enable them to become financially successful in life.

So how do we do this? Parents and our schools need to work together to re-educate our children, both through formal education in the schools and informal education at home. In the home, parents could teach their children in the following ways: 1) Set limitations: Limit T.V., social media and cell phone use to no more than one hour a day. And limit junk food to no more than 300 calories a day. Punish children when they lose their tempers so they understand the importance of controlling this very costly emotion.

And through formal education at school, the curriculum should be made to include: 1) Goal-setting and goal-reaching: Require that children set monthly, annual and long-term goals. Reassure them that mistakes made in reaching (or not reaching) these goals are good, not bad. Children need to understand that the very foundation of success in life is built on learning from our mistakes.

2) Work ethic: Work ethic is critical to success in life. Require working-age children to work or volunteer at least ten hours a week

3) Exercise: Have the students exercise aerobically 20 – 30 minutes a day. This improves their health, burns calories and delivers desperately needed oxygen to the brain and vital organs.

Paleo: The Diet You Were Born to Eat

Written by Amy Kisaka on 21 November 2013. Posted in Health, Fitness & Wellness, Issues

Interview with Nell Stephenson

“Eating good food makes you feel good.”

These are the words that every great diet is founded on. And so spoken by Nell Stephenson, nutritional consultant and author of the book Paleoista: Gain Energy, Get Lean and Feel Fabulous with the Diet You Were Born to Eat, during her exclusive interview with Women Who Run It. Her words are the pathway to healthier eating and living by way of a diet so old it has literally stood the test of time.

“The Paleo diet is what our Paleo[lithic] ancestors ate,” says Stephenson. “It is food we have in today’s culture. You do not need to start hunting and farming your own produce – but you cannot eat anything refined and inflammatory. It is a 60/40 diet; 40% being carbohydrates from primarily vegetables and fruits and 60% being from wild protein and healthy fats.”

The modern world is no stranger to revolutionary dieting in various different forms, so what is it that sets the Paleo diet apart? For Stephenson, it began as a cleanse of her diet at the time: a typically healthy diet that one can assume is implemented by every reasonably health-conscious North American – but one that was nevertheless making her ill.

“The reason I started the Paleo diet is that I was tired of being sick!” she explains. “When I was a child, they thought I had a sensitive stomach. This evolved later into multiple trips to the emergency room, and to seeking specialists. Whenever I went to the ER, no one would ask what I was eating.”

“I always ate healthy and was brought up on a healthy diet, but I was also eating my fair share of peanuts, raw dairy, legumes, and whole wheat bread. All in balance, but [it was] enough to cause a problem. I finally found a doctor who gave me a test for Celiac disease. It came back negative and I was told I had a latent allergy [hypersensitivity] to gluten. I was relieved – but the doctor told me there was no reason to stop eating gluten.”

Stephenson stopped eating gluten anyway. “In only three days I felt better. I had more energy, my sleep improved. I lost extra weight, making me leaner. Cutting out gluten then planted the proverbial seed: if the food I thought was good for me was making me sick, what else was I eating that was making me sick? I began to omit soy products, dairy, etc. And I went from feeling okay to feeling fantastic.”

“This is not magic – it is simple. Eating good food makes you feel good.”

But Really, What Is the Paleo Diet? After all, the cultural standard for a good healthy diet includes eating lots of whole grains, legumes, soy, peanuts, lean meats and chicken, doesn’t it? These are all things we are constantly advised to eat by healthcare professionals, so for many, cutting them out of your diet might seem a bit extreme. Not to mention hard! But when you think about it, this is merely the diet you were born to eat. The Paleo diet is based on years of scientific research and study conducted by Dr. Loren Cordain, and it reflects the fact that in the Paleolithic era, the human diet was built on what could be foraged, scavenged, picked or hunted – just as it was, in its natural state. Grains and legumes grown from the ground were avoided because the fact is, they have always carried anti-nutrient properties; somewhat detrimental to the human digestive system because of those very properties which serve as their protection from pesticides and predators. The Paleo diet merely suggests a return to eating good food: fresh vegetables, fruits, wild fish, grass-fed meats, free-range poultry and healthy processed fats. Avoid processed carbohydrates from grains and legumes, as well as other acid-forming foods (like dairy products).

Tips on Paleo-Dieting Because a diet is a diet – when you’re just starting out, sticking to it is always a tough, trial-and-error process. It was no different for Stephenson, and she has a wealth of advice to offer because of it.

“I was a vegan for two years, partially for ethical reasons and partly to see if it would make me feel better after all of my health issues. After 6 months I started craving fish – so bad I would go to bed and dream about fish. I would wake up feeling guilty for being a vegan and for ethical reasons, but I knew it would continue to be a struggle. I found fish to be the ‘gateway protein’. Gradually over time, I found a balance where I could consume protein and support animal rights simultaneously. I do this by buying my meats only from reputable sources – the best way to do this is to eat locally. I am blessed to live in LA where you can have fresh strawberries and blueberries at any time of the year – but you know they are not coming from natural environments or being shipped over without help. [So] eat locally! Visit farmers’ markets; look for seasonal meats and produce and stick with them. And ask lots of questions – ask if the meat is wild, what they specialize in – get to know the vendors.

“This is a completely individual process,” she advises. “Some people do not start at 100% right away. Some people prefer to start with a week of no dairy, then add a week of no dairy and no legumes. Then finally they can add all three and go completely Paleo. My personal suggestion is [to] try going Paleo 100% for at least 30 days. It takes at least a month to reap the benefits, and this way you can know what it is like and consider undergoing it for good.”

Perks of the Paleoista Life Why not? For Nell Stephenson, who coined the term “Paleoista”, is living proof that a “caveman” diet and the modern-chic, high-energy lifestyle of a fashionista are in no way mutually exclusive. In fact, just on the results yielded by participants of the diet, one could argue the two are symbiotic. Eating real food and feeling healthy and newly invigorated because of it goes hand in hand with style and confidence – you’ll look the part because you feel it.

“I absolutely encourage my clients to implement this diet because it is suitable for everyone,” says Stephenson. “I had an elderly woman in South Africa who could stop taking her medication for high blood pressure. A Paleo diet helps make you healthier and stronger, and this helps some taper off their medications. Of course there are always exceptions, but they are easily modified – you adjust your protein intakes, you factor in allergies – it is all easy.

“My personal philosophy is one of ‘Attitude and Gratitude’. We have so much to be thankful for and a lot of us take life for granted and do not live in the moment. It can be a real energy drain [that] prevents you from being productive. Of course we all get stressed and wind up in bad moods occasionally, but if you wake up every morning and think about what you are grateful for, you carry that with you throughout the day.”

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