Fitness Protocols

A Guide to Fitness Improvement

Many journeys to fitness improvement start with some form of fitness motivation. What usually happens is that an event or situation triggers the desire to engage in some form of fitness improvement. Unfortunately, in many cases, such events involve health issues, or even worst health emergencies. Disappointingly, unless you convert the initial motivation into lasting commitment, many fitness improvement efforts fail to last much longer after weight loss is accomplished. That means that people regain all, and in some cases, more weight than they originally started with.

To convert the initial fitness improvement motivation into lasting commitment, The Fitness Protocols guide to fitness improvement provides you with critical information and a series of exercises designed to build lasting commitment to fitness improvement. Fitness Protocols takes a balance approach to turning motivation into commitment. The first part involves ensuring you are ready to engage in fitness improvement. The reason for doing that is because many fitness improvement efforts fail prematurely due to lack of readiness. The second part involves ensuring development of a strong level of conviction towards your effort. The Fitness Protocols build conviction by helping you explore the drawbacks and benefits of better fitness. Ultimately it helps you build a strong case for engaging in fitness improvement thus energizing you to take it on and to sustain your effort. Fitness motivation is critical to success because nothing happens without motivation. Nonetheless, commitment energizes motivation to make it stronger and longer lasting.

Lasting commitment is one of the key aspects that makes The Fitness Protocols guide to lasting weight loss and fitness improvement so unique and effective at making lasting improvement a reality.

Four Consequential Dimensions of Fitness Improvement

Consequences are the positive and negative aspects that can result from your decisions or actions. Other terms used to describe them include after effects, aftermath, and outcomes. There can be both intended and unintended consequences from decisions or actions.

Thinking about, identifying, and evaluating potential consequences is very important in the process of making your decision and building motivational energy to pursue and sustain weight loss and fitness improvement.

Exploring consequences is a key part of the Fitness Protocols’ approach to help you build lasting commitment to weight loss and fitness improvement. The approach involves an exercise enables you to explore consequences thoroughly by looking at them along four key dimensions in the context of the following three key quality of life factors:

Fitness/Health
Relationships
Wealth

The consequential dimensions exploration exercise involves responding to the following questions:

What will happen to your health, relationships, and/or wealth if you improve?
What will happen to your health, relationships, and/or wealth if you do not improve?
What will not happen to your health, relationships, and/or wealth if you do improve?
What will not happen to your health, relationships, and/or wealth if you do not improve?

Exploring all four dimensions will provide a much clearer picture of what may happen, one way or the other. In the end the resulting effect of this exploration should produce additional motivational energy to help you develop critical lasting commitment to lose weight and improve your fitness.

Both our best fitness book and best iPad app provide readers and users an easy-to-use set of forms that make the process of exploring consequences very easy to complete. To learn more about the Fitness protocols approach please visit www.fitnessprotocols.com

Lasting Weight Loss Has Become Easier

According to the National Weight Control Registry Study statistics, fewer than 10 percent of people who lose weight are able to keep it all off for a prolonged period (over two years).

Until now, the best weight loss books have not been able to come up with a balanced approach to lasting weight loss and fitness improvement. However, The Fitness Protocols by Epi Torres is changing that. The book is based on the lessons Torres learned over nine plus years since he lost and kept off over 70 pounds.

What makes this one of the best weight loss books is the balanced approach Torres devised to help him become so uniquely successful, according to weight loss maintenance stats.

The Fitness Protocols focus is on three critical aspects that cause lasting weight loss to be so elusive:

Lasting commitment to lasting fitness
Proper preparation for the weight loss and maintenance effort
Lasting habit and lifestyle changes

Lasting weight loss and fitness improvement require much more than just a diet and/or exercise. To be most successful, you need to take a comprehensive and balanced approach that includes commitment building, good preparation, and habit and lifestyle adjustments. Otherwise, we may end up losing weight, but the loss is not long-lasting or even better permanent.

What The Fitness Protocols book does differently and better than prior so called “best fitness books” is guiding you through the process of building your commitment to lasting fitness, helping you better prepare to accomplish and sustain weight loss and better fitness, and guiding you through the habit and lifestyle changes necessary to maintain your improved fitness.

That is why The Fitness Protocols approach makes lasting weight loss so much easier to accomplish!

Get a Perfectly Balanced Fitness Book

Health and fitness books are a dime a dozen. There are thousands of titles available out there. However, few if any, offer a complete and balanced solution to the challenge people who want or need to improve their fitness face. The Fitness Protocols, by Epi Torres is an exception. According to the National Weight Control Registry’s statistics, Torres is one of the few individuals who have been able to achieve lasting weight loss and fitness improvement. In his comprehensive and balanced book, Torres shares the weight-loss and fitness tactics that helped him accomplish lasting weight loss and fitness improvement.

According to the world’s toughest book critics at Kirkus Indie, “Torres is a convincing authority on exercise and diet—he reduced his waist size by 10 inches and has maintained a 70-pound weight loss for nearly 10 years.” Moreover, they call it “a comprehensive book that details and outlines how to achieve optimum fitness and improve one’s quality of life.”

In the book, Torres takes a balanced approach by breaking down valuable information into four sections: commitment, preparation, change and maintenance. He takes readers through the complete weight loss journey to help them achieve the maximum level of success. Each section contains important information as well as exercises to be used in each stage of the journey.

In the section about commitment, Torres helps readers develop a dedication to exercise, nutrition and a healthier lifestyle. The second section helps the reader prepare for improving their fitness, while the third section, change, helps the readers complete the actual actions. After readers hit their fitness and weight loss goals, Torres explains how to maintain the changes and improvements made for years to come.

In addition to the book, Epi is also developing two iPad Tablet Apps for those who prefer to use an electronic medium. Both the Fitness Protocols and FitnessPlanner Apps will be available in the near future on the Apple® App Store.

A Strong Sense of Conviction Helps You Build Lasting Commitment

Your sense of conviction is a strong feeling resulting from being highly convinced that you REALLY want to accomplish weight loss and fitness improvement. Conviction results from the process of evaluating and building a strong rationale for what you want to accomplish. To be most successful, you should ensure you build the strongest case possible.

Following we will briefly describe the key aspects of conviction we use in the Fitness Protocols approach to help you build your case. In order to help you produce the highest possible amount of energy we focus on two key aspects:

Things you don't want
Things you want

The things you do not want include current and future negative aspects associated with your current fitness condition such as:

Poor fitness drawbacks
Poor fitness risks
Poor fitness impact
Other things you don't want

These are all the things you want get rid of, or avoid. The things you really dislike or hate about being out of shape and would do almost anything to get away from!

The things you want include the positive aspects of improved fitness such as:

The possibilities of better fitness
The benefits of better fitness
The needs better fitness meets
Other things you want

These are all the positive things you want to obtain by improving your fitness. The things you want badly and would do almost anything to get.

In both our weight loss and fitness improvement book and best iPad App, we provide with an easy-to follow systematic approach to help you identify these aspects. Doing so should produce a high level of conviction that can add to your lasting commitment to lose weight and improve your fitness.

Four Consequential Dimensions of Fitness Improvement

Fitness/Health
Relationships
Wealth

The consequential dimensions exploration exercise involves responding to the following questions:

What will happen to your health, relationships, and/or wealth if you improve?
What will happen to your health, relationships, and/or wealth if you do not improve?
What will not happen to your health, relationships, and/or wealth if you do improve?
What will not happen to your health, relationships, and/or wealth if you do not improve?

Habit Change is Pivotal to Accomplishing Lasting Weight Loss and Fitness Improvement

Eventually each one of us should decides to adopt a healthy lifestyle. You read top fitness books and then adopt a fitness regimen. Controlling your diet and exercising are the essentials of almost all the fitness books and so you follow these mantras. However, unfortunately, many of us do not go through with the regimen after sometime and return to our diehard habits. The truth is that unless you change your habits and develop some better ones, you are not likely to succeed in your desire to look and/or feel better.

Designed by Epi Torres - Pittsburgh businessmen who incredibly lost 70 pounds and has keep them off for over 9 years, Fitness Protocols is the comprehensive, easy-to-follow and unique guide designed to help you achieve your fitness goals. It is a practical guide for those wanting to accomplish lasting weight loss and fitness improvement. The book will help you build commitment, prepare, and change your habits so that there is no going back and you remain fit throughout your life. Unlike the other so-called top fitness books, Fitness Protocols helps accomplish lasting weight loss and fitness improvement in three steps including building commitment, preparing for change, and changing habits.

Fitness Protocols addresses commitment-building and changing habits, as both are the most important and challenging aspects of any weight loss and fitness endeavor. All fitness books concentrate on the kind of food that you need to consume and the exercises that you need to do but, before you jump to that stage, Fitness Protocols stresses on developing a strong sense of commitment and habit change without which your fitness level cannot be maintained.

The Fitness Dynamic

Your fitness condition is the result of a number of decisions and behaviors. The dynamic process originates and ends in the mind. However, the mind and the body are tightly connected and interrelated; thus, they cannot be separated per se.

A number of internal and external factors influence our decisions and the behaviors and actions that result. Understanding this dynamic is critical to your success. Therefore, we have developed a model to clarify how it works, which we refer to as the Fitness Dynamic Model™.

The model, shown in the next page describes the six key factors that influence what, when, where, and how much we eat and do. Our behavior leads to the level of nutrition, activity, and energy balance that results in how well we do, look, and feel on a daily basis.

Understanding how this dynamic works can make a big difference to you!

Ending My Weight Loss Struggle: The Book's Preface

The Fitness Protocols is a practical guide for people who want help accomplishing lasting weight loss and fitness improvement, and are ready to do it.

This is not a typical weight loss, fitness, or diet book — it is a unique, comprehensive, and easy-to-follow guide designed to help you overcome the common issues that make lasting weight loss and fitness improvement so difficult to accomplish.

The content is primarily based on the lessons I learned, and the knowledge I acquired over the nine years since I lost, and have successfully kept seventy-five pounds off.

I had struggled because of my poor fitness for a while before l lost the weight. I was a typical yo-yo dieter. My weight struggle started about one year or so after I quit smoking in 1984. I remember joining my first diet program when I was living in Connecticut around 1986. Thereafter, I remember entering into what I recall were bi-annual yo-yo cycles. I would typically lose weight during the summer and would regain it all back and then some during the winter. I did that year in and year out.

I reached my tipping point at 250 pounds and a 44-inch waist to boot. It was not pretty. My fitness was very poor. I had low energy, not much strength, poor flexibility, and little to no stamina. My day-to-day life was not very joyful. I had a hard time just doing the basic things like bending down to put my socks on and tying my shoes.

Then one day, fed up with my fitness condition, and disgusted with the image I saw in the mirror, I made a decision to make a change for good. One year and a few months later, I had dropped 70 pounds of body weight and ten inches had come off my waist.

In order to find a long-term solution, I did a lot of homework and sought the help of a number of professionals. I read many books and articles, and I hired a fitness coach, a dietician, and even a psychologist to help me find the best way. In the process, I learned a lot about nutrition and the human body and the mind. Just about a year after I had lost the weight, I started to write a book about it. I have finally completed the book after nine years of experience maintaining the original weight loss. This is a claim that apparently very few can make. I hope what we have put together will help you conquer your struggle with fitness.

I wish you the best of luck!

The book is now available on Amazon. Click on the book cove on the margin for the link.

Are You Ready?

Readiness is a critical success factor in most endeavors. However, it is absolutely critical when it comes to fitness improvement efforts

Your sense of readiness is the powerful feeling that you are ready to take this task on. Determining readiness should be the first step in any fitness improvement effort. Yet, so many delve into such efforts before they are ready. Low readiness is a common cause of many failed attempts at fitness improvement.

In order to increase your chances of success, you must feel a strong sense of readiness. Otherwise, you may end up wasting your time and money and getting disappointed.

The Fitness Protocols approach helps you evaluate, and if necessary build your sense of readiness for fitness improvement before moving on to the next step of building your conviction to improve.

Readiness for fitness improvement depends on four key aspects:

• Power and control aspects
• Economic aspects
• Health aspects
• Support aspects

Power and control aspects involve a number of areas related to your capability to make and sustain key decisions for the effort. Economic aspects involve a number of areas related to your capability to afford and pay your best attention to the overall effort. Health aspect involves areas related to your capability to perform physical activities and make adjustments to what and how you eat. Finally, support aspects refer to areas related to your capability to get and retain the support of key individuals and to set up and maintain supportive environments. The figure below shows how these four aspects align to drive a strong sense of readiness in you. Click on the image to enlarge it.

The Dynamics of Commitment

Building your commitment to improve and maintain your fitness involves managing the dynamic tension between two key forces:

· Drivers

· Pushbacks

Drivers are the forces that compel you towards commitment and pushbacks are those that deter you from it. This type of dynamic tension is often active in most decision-making processes. The bigger the decision is, the more complex its structure and the stronger the tension that builds between these forces. The diagram below illustrates how this dynamic works in this context. Click on image to enlarge.

Driving forces on the left-hand side of the diagram include those factors that drive your sense of readiness and conviction and any other factors not included in the first two.

Pushback forces on the right-hand side of the diagram include those factors that drive a weak sense of readiness and or conviction, and any other factors not included in the first two.

To build highly sustainable commitment, you will first need to eliminate or mitigate as many pushbacks as you possibly can. Once you feel ready, you will identify the most meaningful set of highly energizing drivers possible.

Fitness Protocols can help you manage this seemingly complex dynamic!

Ending the Fitness Struggle

Why is fitness improvement such a struggle? Why does changing habits seem so hard to do? Let us begin by examining some of the key factors that contribute to the problem. Let us examine the contributing factors to our struggle with our fitness. First, most people do not truly understand the powerful impact and multiple benefits of fitness. Therefore, they may not feel as motivated to pursue fitness improvement with the fervor, priority and energy it requires and deserves. As in most situations, when we attempt to go after something without a wholehearted effort we fail. Without commitment based on a strong conviction built on a solid foundation of understanding the connection between the benefits of improved fitness and a much higher quality of our life, we will fail to realize success and the realization that better fitness can enable better health, relationships and wealth.

Second, the current approaches to fitness improvement are fragmented, and they lack a comprehensive approach. Most of these approaches (plans, programs, etc.) are based on a very narrow view of the problem and the challenges faced by those struggling with their fitness conditions and the consequences thereof. All these companies offering "solutions "to our fitness struggle seem to just want to sell us books, memberships, food, medications, treatments, surgery, and or some type of equipment. It is a multi-billion dollar annual market and with no end in sight. Many of them have one mission: to take your money and run. Moreover, they usually leave you right where we started, and sometimes-even worse: Out of shape and struggling all over again, if we had even stopped doing so.

Let us examine a typical approach to getting in shape. Many motives drive us to attempt to get in better shape. So whatever the motive is we tend to jump right into some kind of action after we make a decision we want to do something about it. We, in most cases, get into some diet (of the month) and/or start doing some form of exercise. Some of us may seek professional help and others just ask a friend or family member what worked for them. Some may buy books or seek information on the web to help them along the way. So what happens? We may or may not lose weight because of our effort. If we lose it, we may or may not keep it off for the long run. Typically, we tend to bounce back to our old habits and routines over some time and slowly but surely, we gain some, and sometimes more weight than that we lost. We are unable to sustain the strange diets we get into and/or the exercise routines that we start. The equipment we purchased ends up becoming a storage apparatus in one of the rooms in the house. In addition, some of the special food we bought for the diet becomes a lab experiment in the fridge or kitchen pantry. Then many of us tend to repeat these cycles repeatedly. The struggle continues and we, in most cases, get bigger or get stuck in a heavy weight and out of shape condition.

Ultimately, in order to end our struggle successfully, we need to adjust the way we live our life. Simplistically speaking, we just have to develop a better approach to enable us to eat better and be more active. The challenge we face is that over time we have developed a set of habits and routines by which we live our life. These are so engrained in us thus, we are oblivious to them. Thus, they are rarely examined because they are mostly unconscious to us. It is a human version of an autopilot. What we do, when we do it and where we do it, etc. tends to have some routine and/or habit associated with it.

In order to develop a successful better approach we need to examine these routines and habits we live by and we need to evaluate their impact on us and on those we care most about. Once we understand that, we need to determine which need to be adjusted, which need to be eliminated, and what new ones need to be created, to better serve our new approach.

Improve Your Fitness and Enjoy Your Life