It's not what you know, it's what you do with what you know that matters most!

I apologize for the delay since my last post, however, as I mentioned my wife and I just had our first child (beautiful daughter)!  This is a tremendous blessing and we are truly grateful, but combined with my work schedule, consultation business and ongoing deadlines surrounding my PhD time has been quite short with respect to being able to sit down and blog.  Thanks for tuning back in.  Anyway, here we go with this week's post.

Knowledge is great.  Heck, it's the new currency!  However, there is so much of it today (via the internet) that we often suffer from knowledge overload and specifically misinformation overload!!  Anyone, who has a product to sell, can put together an add that, to the untrained eye, will look like a respectable informational report or scientific publication, when in reality it's nothing more than an add for their product!

The other side of this, is that we can at any moment find answers to our questions by using our favorite search engine and asking the question.  Quite often, it's been asked before and often results in thousands or more of hits once entered.  The challenge is: 1) to find respectable, factual information and once we've found a correct and scientifically valid answer, then we need to 2) use the knowledge we gain to somehow make our health and lives better!

When dealing with health and lifestyle information, hopefully you will learn to trust my information that is all well researched and thought out.  Sometimes, it takes me longer to publish a new post, but I would honestly rather publish something that's valid and factual and well researched vs. just publishing a post fast to keep active (especially if it's garbage of BS).

Anyway, when attempting to change your health or lifestyle for the better, it is critical that we convert any knowledge or concepts we learn into practical daily and weekly behaviors.  In other words, it's not what we know, rather it's what we do with what we know that leads us to success or failure.  Here is an example of some of the positive lifestyle behaviors we've discussed in prior posts or will discuss in subsequent posts and how to create a behavior checklist from them.  I know it seems 3rd grade, but do it and you'll be able to track your progress daily and accurately assess/predict if you are heading towards your goal or not.  Much better than waiting for weekly weigh ins, waist measurements, etc...  You would simply check off the behaviors as you do complete them.

Example of Success Behavior Checklist

Success Behavior	Achieved
Eat 6 times/day (every 3-5 hours)
Consume adequate amount of PRO/day
Consume PRO at every snack/meal
Moderate calorie restriction (20-30% below)
Moderate Carb restriction (Adequate Fibre daily)
Eat 7-10 Fruits and Vegetables / day – 4 servings from Fruits + cooked starchy vegetables.
30-60 mins min daily exercise (3x/wk cardio + 2- 3x/wk Resistance)
Adequate Fluid intake (3.7 L/d men; 2.7 L/d women)
Did I do 80% the right stuff today?

So what behaviors are musts for you to achieve your goals.  Figure them out, then work backwards and map them out into a specific daily / weekly plan for yourself.  Only then, can you know how you are doing and make adjustments on the fly!!!

Anyway, please see my prior posts and stay tuned for future posts for more specifics as to the behaviors that you should be working into your daily life in order to truly transform your lifestyle into a healthy one!

Be sure to check back regularly for more information!!!  You can also follow me on Twitter.

Have a great weekend!  Plan and adopt a healthy lifestyle now!!

Dan