Peyton Manning walks up to the line of scrimmage. He deftly surveys the defense and their formation. The crowd noise blisters his eardrums. The linebackers are showing blitz. One of them is glaring at him homicidally. Manning quickly glances at the play clock. He starts his cadence. “Green 48…Green 48! Hut, hut!,” but where is the ball? He doesn’t feel it snap comfortably into his large hands. In fact, he doesn’t even see the center. He’s got no line, no receivers, no backs. He is out there all by himself.
On the third hut he grabs the ball and runs the only play he can – a one man quarterback sneak. With only one man, it is not very sneaky, and 11 men jump angrily on his back driving him to the turf. Football, as you see, is a team effort.
Your health, as we say at Fantasy Healthball, is also a team effort. Re-learning how to eat and following our nutrition and exercise guidelines won’t be simple. If it were simple, everyone would be slim, trim, and live to see their grandchildren’s children. The word “liposuction” would never have been invented. The world would have been spared ever seeing Richard Simmons in spandex yelling, “Come on girls, shake those buns with me, you can do it!” But improving your health, losing weight, re-learning how to eat, and exercising takes work. And as they say, “many hands make light work.”
Re-learning how to eat is much easier if you can get support from other members of your household: spouse, family members, roommates, etc. If you are dedicated to eating right, and your roommate is constantly stocking the kitchen shelves with bon bons or high-calorie, high-fat super sugar fun cakes or whatever, that isn’t helping anybody. You can change your eating habits on your own, but it is a lot easier with support. You can run through and over would-be tacklers, but it is a lot easier if you have some blocking!
We recommend talking about your health goals to the people you live with and/or the people you work most closely with or spend the most time with. Will power is much easier if unhealthy food isn’t around you to begin with. Speaking from my own experience, if the unhealthy food is right in front of me, it is hard to pass it up. But if it is not there, it is much easier for me to grab an apple or banana or raisins or any of the World’s Healthiest Foods.
Building up your team of supporters will also help you in other ways. As teammates, they will help you achieve your goals, whether that is giving you time to walk around the block for 30 minutes a day or keeping their high-cal, high-fat, super sugar fun cakes in a special place away from where your food is, or work colleagues bringing you fruit instead of Costco cookies. They can give you moral support to and cheer you on. Hey, they might even join you. Be a workout partner. Make healthy meals together. Try new recipes! Or, if they play fantasy sports, make it a friendly competition by playing Fantasy Healthball!
So remember, you can do this alone. Email us for some more tips on how to do it alone. But the going is much easier with a team around you. People who care and want you to achieve your goals. Don’t run three quarterback sneaks and then punt on 4th down. Use your team for a balanced and high scoring offense. – Jim Ballard
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