Which are you, a Fit or a Fat Entrepreneur?

No one knows better how to put their nose the grindstone and achieve results than an entrepreneur.  Unfortunately, our singular focus and desire to excel often come at a high price.  One area most impacted by our get it going, get it done attitude is our personal heath.  Most of my friends and colleagues are business owners and most, if not all of them, are out of shape and over weight.  The most common reasons: no time to eat right and no time to exercise. 

I can tell you from first hand experience that letting business impact your weight and health is one of the worst mistakes you can make.  I learned the hard way, that skipping meals, eating junk food, not drinking enough water, and not exercising were all recipes for increased stress and weight gain.  During the first 3 years of my business, I gained a whopping 30 pounds.   

One day, I was about to get on an important phone call and noticed that I felt more stressed and tense than I thought I should have given the moderate importance of the call.  As I thought through the situation, the client, my position, the only thing that was out of line, was that it was 3pm and I had not eaten anything since 7pm the night before.  I called a local sandwich shop and had a sandwich and a bottle of water delivered.  After eating, I immediately began to feel my stress dissipate, as well as, felt empowered and ready for my call.  It was like a light bulb went off in my head.  I immediately saw the correlation between my diet and my ability to achieve peak performance.

For the next 5 days, I tried an experiment.  I added 2 full meals and a snack to each day and committed to drink at least 8 glasses of water.  Being the systematic organization guy that I am, I created a simple process that could be easily replicated throughout my day.  I found a local sandwich shop that prepares and delivers healthy low fat sandwiches.  I called a local bottle water company and ordered bottled water service for the store. (It was a great convenience for me and my employees really appreciated it as well.)  I purchased a supply of meal replacement drinks and kept them under my desk in case I did not have time to grab a real meal.   After those first 5 days, I saw longer lasting results, my production increased, my stress decreased and I began to feel so much better about myself and my business.

With my diet on its way to normalcy, I began to focus on exercising.  I had always been a gym work out kind of guy.  Unfortunately, as I have gotten older, the traditional gym workout just wasn’t cutting it for me.  I needed a workout that I could do anywhere, anytime and on my own schedule.  So I bought a bicycle, a jump rope, a chin up bar, a set of dumbbells and a set of push up bars.  I invested in a home work out video program and committed to doing at least 30 minutes per day of push ups, sit ups, chin ups, bike riding and light dumbbell work.

I am happy to report that over the past 3 years, I have lost all 30+ pounds, reduced my waist size from 38 to 34, lowered my blood pressure and feel much more empowered in my work and business responsibilities.   Start making a small change today in the way you eat and manager yourself and your business and like me, you can slowly erase all those years of fat and stress. I want and wish for every entrepreneur to feel the way I do each morning, fit, empowered and ready for a brand new day.  Best of Luck!