Recently Joe Stankowski shared with me some of his secrets for getting people into shape and helping them to stay that way. Joe is one of the top fitness experts in the country and is a regular contributor to Men's Fitness and Muscle & Fitness Hers magazines.

To learn more about Joe visit his websites joestankowski.com and morningcupofjoe.com

To Listen Just Click Play On The Little Audio Player Here:

And here's a transcription of the interview:

CM: This is Chris McCombs of SoCalWorkout.com and I'm here
with Joe Stankowski of JoeStankowski.com and MorningCupOfJoe.com. Joe is
one of the top experts in the country when it comes to getting people
into shape. Joe, how you doing buddy?

JS: I'm doing great. I'm just glad to be on the call today.

CM: Awesome. Well we're glad to have you. Can you tell us a little more
about what you do and who you are?

JS: That's a good question. I don't know what I do sometimes. I was
just at the eye doctor the other day and they ask you, as far as insurance
and things, as far as what your occupation is. And whenever people ask
that I just say I'm in the fitness business.

And the nurse or nurse practitioner that checked me through first, she
asked, "What does that mean? Do you fix treadmills?"

I was like, "I guess I could." But what I do is I write, I talk, I
coach private clients, I work with large groups. I go on the radio and talk
about fitness, I go on TV and talk about this stuff, and I just try to
help people get it. Because there's just so much information out there
I try to help people really get it and understand what fitness is and
how it applies to them and how they can take the rules that they think
are out there that they have to follow and maybe bend them to fit their
lifestyle. So simple answer, I'm in the fitness business. Beyond that,
I kind of do everything but I enjoy it all. So I don't know, I'm in
the fitness biz.

CM: That's a great answer. I might default to that one myself in the
future. How important is mindset when it comes to getting into shape?

JS: Where the mind goes the body follows, I think they say. Right? So I
don't know if there's an exact percentage that could be put on this. I
suppose if your body is the weak point and your mind is strong, you
have to go with your strengths and that will help carry everything up. Or
you could flip it around and say work on your weaknesses. It goes
either way. They're definitely tied together. I can't say how much one is
more important than the other, but like I say, where the mind goes, the
body will follow.

Good example of that in the real world, I remember back when I was in
high school playing football and doing track and things, I noticed when
the wrestlers would do their practices it always seemed to be about
controlling your opponent's head. If a wrestler couldn't control his
opponent's head and kind of push him where he wants to go, his entire body
has to go that way. If someone's wrenching your neck and turning your
head, you're not going to let your neck snap. You're not going to want to
get hurt. So where your head goes, whether it's in the real world with
wrestling or just mentally, where your head goes, your body will go
with it. Always.

CM: So what are some habits that people can develop that can help them
stay in the right state of mind so they can lose fat and tone up?

JS: I think the first thing that's important to do really is just to
keep yourself in the right circle of friends, or in the right circle of
websites, or in the right things you read; just really surrounding
yourself with the stuff that helps you get where you want to go.

If you say, "I want to get in shape," but you're hanging out in the
fast food line of your local restaurant row, like we have here in
Delaware, that's not putting yourself fin that right situation. It's not
surrounding yourself with the right kind of people that are trying to go
where you say you want to go if fitness is your thing. If you say you want
quick food really cheap, then you're in the right place.

But if you've got that fitness aspect to it, you need to be surrounded
by the kinds of stuff that supports what you want to do. It might be
audio books, things you listen to in the car when you're driving. It
might be the videos you watch. I might be the people you hang with. It
might be just the places you go to on weekends. I really think that most
important habit is probably just surrounding yourself with the right kind
of influences.

CM: Are there any books or CD programs that you can recommend to
people?

JS: As far as a general mindset book, this has nothing to do with
fitness specifically but just general mindset. I love Jack Canfield's stuff.
He has that book "The Success Principles" which is both a book and he
has a CD program, like a 30 day success transformation type program,
which I'm actually on CD 3 right now — when I'm in the car, actually, I
should say. It's a great program for anything. Anything in life, if you
need mindset, I think Jack Canfield has it down.

Fitness specifically, I don't have any one favorite. To me this is part
of the whole surrounding myself with the influences; I like all of
them. Mel Siff, he passed away a few years ago but he had a great book.
It's good for people in the fitness industry but I think it's equally
good for just general consumers, the fitness buffs of the world, "Facts
and Fallacies of Fitness." It's kind of a mindbender when it comes to
fitness because it challenges a lot of things people think they know about
fitness. It has a lot of science in there but it's written really
lightly, compared to his other things anyway. It's written for a general
audience as well.

But really just all of them, anything that comes out I like to read it,
absorb it, learn about it, and know something about it because it just
kind of adds to my total package of fitness and the way I understand
things, which helps me create my own systems and my own ideas and
develop from there. But just fitness wise, all of them. Otherwise, Jack
Canfield's got some good stuff.

Another one I'd even go with too, one of my first business coaches, one
that really opened my mind to a lot of ideas I would have once called
"out there" but now I call them "normal," is Debbie Cohen. And she made
a name for herself in the fitness industry for the last few years. Her
middle name is Happy which everyone always is sure to mention Debbie
Happy Cohen. She had a book out a few years ago too called "Reach Your
Stars." It's a simple guide to kind of reaching your height to getting
as good as you want to be. And I don't know if it was Jack Canfield or
Mark Victor Hansen, but she was actually mentored by one of the two
Chicken Soup guys. You know the Chicken Soup for the Soul series? She was
actually mentored by one of those guys too. She's another great
influence on me as far as general mindset towards all things life and business.

CM: What about habits? Are there any habits you do on a regular basis
besides reading and surrounding yourself with the right people? Do you
do any kind of meditations or anything like that?

JS: Oh, absolutely. I know we've talked in the past about this one,
even. Centerpointe has a meditation program because for years, several
years, and this goes back to working with Debbie Cohen, I tried to
understand meditation, tried to learn it. But it's one of those things I just
never knew if I was doing it right. I never knew if I was doing it
enough or too much. I didn't have any clue if I was doing all things
meditation correctly. I would get books on it and I'd read it and I'd try to
learn it, but I just don't think you can learn — or at least, I can't
learn meditation very well from a book. There's no feedback in there.
But that

Centerpointe program, it's audio. The thing is all done with sound so
there's no way you that you can meditate incorrectly, as far as the way
I understand it and the way I've been applying it since early this
year, early 2007. So that's one of the things I do daily. I might miss one
day every two weeks and if I do that more than twice in a month, it's
probably a crazy month where I've missed it more than a couple times.
But as far as consistent habits and patterns, that's one of mine that I
really cling to.

Another one that's staying on the topic of fitness that I like to stick
with, and this is one thing I coach my clients right off the bat. As
soon as somebody contacts me, whether it's through a website or a phone
call, or meet me in a store or on a street or wherever it might be, is
to develop the habit of regular activity. And in the fitness industry
we're kind of trained to create the best programs. "Here's the
biomechanical aspect of this, a couple of the physiological aspects of something
else, and the mental aspect of this." In the beginning you just need
to create the habit.

Even if it's not a perfect workout you're developing for yourself, if
you can start by just doing five hours a week of something. If you want
to Thigh Master yourself for five hours or do crunches or jumping jacks
or whatever your exercise is that you actually like enough to do for
five hours in a week, that's a great start. You're going to have to
obviously fix some things then because Thigh Masters are going to build some
imbalances and have some limitations and everything else, as will the
other ideas I talked about. But just creating the habit first and
getting to where you actually enjoy the idea of exercise more than focusing
on the goal itself or the outcome you're after. If you do things right,
the goal becomes a really pleasant side effect of just doing the things
that you enjoy. You don't have to worry about it.

So like I say, for my clients and for myself one of the goals I set
every week is five hours of intentional activity.

CM: That's a good one, especially if it's something people enjoy. It's
hard to do something if you don't like it.

JS: Yeah. I've gone back and forth on that for years as far as people
say walking is a good exercise. I go, "Walking is not intense enough.
It's not good enough." But you know what? If you're brand new to the idea
of exercise and just don't like it and can't get yourself past that
concept, you have to do something. You have to start with something.

I don't remember if it was Alwyn Cosgrove or somebody else I was
talking to, somebody well known in the fitness industry, at some conference
it must have been a year or two ago. They had a similar idea with
breakfast with their clients that will not, do not, cannot, whatever it might
be for breakfast it's just breakfast is not in their vocabulary.
They'd have the clients get up in the morning and say, "Have a Snickers.
Have a bowl of Coco Puffs. Have something that's so sugary and so sweet
you just can't so no to it."

And it's counterintuitive for everything fitness and weight loss and
fat loss and all these other things that we work with. But if you start
to develop the habit of getting up in the morning and eating when you
haven't been doing it before, once you get that habit of eating your
Snickers bar in the morning it's a little easier to change it from a
Snickers to maybe oatmeal and egg whites, than it was going straight from
nothing to a better breakfast. So it's baby steps and just developing
those habits is really the key I think.

CM: Where do you think most people drop the ball when it comes to
getting in shape?

JS: Getting in shape or getting anything in life, they just give up and
they start blaming something. They blame the weather. They blame the
traffic. They blame their spouse, their kids, whatever their situation
is. They just give up and they look for who can they blame rather than
taking control of the situation and saying, "Okay, I fell off the
bandwagon? How can I get back on? What's the next step? Where do I go next?"
Just giving up. That's the only time people really fail is when they
give up.

CM: What would you say for people who struggle to make the right food
choices? Is there any way you can get them to associate more positive
feelings to the right foods, or what ideas would you have? Because this
is a real stumbling point for a lot of people.

JS: Like exercise, and again all this stuff carries over to everything
in life, but with nutrition, keeping with that, then I'll say one meal
at a time. Right now it's 3:30 in the afternoon here, so I'm not
worried about breakfast tomorrow, what I'm going to eat. I'm not worried
about what I had this morning. I'm worried about what my next meal is; or,
I should say I'm thinking about what my next meal will be. Even there,
I prepared ahead so I don't even have to think about it. But if you
just take each meal or each opportunity to feed yourself and become better
at that one instance and not think, "Oh, my god, I blew that meal
once. Now I just have to let my whole day go to crap." Just take things one
at a time. If you fall off, you get back on the next meal. It's not a
big deal.

Again, this might be pulling from Alwyn Cosgrove. This should be the
Alwyn Cosgrove interview in some ways I think, but I'm pretty sure it was
him that also wrote once too that, "It's not what you eat between
Christmas and New Years that makes you fat; it's what you eat between New
Years and Christmas." So it's not the two weeks out of the year, it's
the 50 weeks that make a difference.

It's what you do consistently that makes you or breaks you. Wnd
whatever you're doing all the time is what you're going to become. So if
you're always eating fast food, you're going to look like you're always
eating fast food. If you do it once in a while it's not going to be as bad
as if you're doing that lifestyle.

CM: Yeah. What common traits do you notice about people that get in
shape and stay that way?

JS: I just posted a blog today about becoming a nutrition guru and kind
of what it takes to make a fad diet. And I don't think there is
anything as simple as blood type that makes somebody in shape or out of
shape, or as simple as their hair color or the car they drive or anything
else like that. I think it's just the people that stick to it. They may
have been athletes that are used to it. They may be business people that
are just used to sticking to it. They're just people that have some
way or another figured out a way that they've got to tough things out.

And as much as it might suck to get up in the morning and prepare a
good meal or prepare several meals for the day in the beginning, there's
that perception of "this really sucks." But once it becomes a habit and
becomes part of your lifestyle, it's just what you do. It's not
anything worse than brushing your teeth or taking a shower. If that's just
what you do, it becomes part of your life.

There's not magic formula where I can just look at someone and say
"they're going to get in shape," and "no, I don't think they've got it,"
because of any trait that just jumps out. They're people that have proven
to themselves and to everyone else that they can see things through
and stick to it.

CM: What question should I have asked you but didn't?

JS: Oh, man.

CM: I love that one.

JS: How can I send Joe all my money? No, I don't know. One thing I like
to get across to people is some people refer to me as an "expert," or
whatever the term might be. But I'm always learning too and I think if
you could ask me a question it would be where do I learn? Where do I
continue to learn? Where do I grasp these things from?

I'm not a genius. I'd love to say I'm in Mensa and have the top two
percent of IQs in the world, or whatever, but I don't. Like I said
earlier, I immerse myself in stuff. I surround myself with the right kind of
resources, the right kind of influences, whether it's the people that I
talk to, the blogs that I go to, the websites that I check out,
magazines that I read. It's just surrounding myself with people that know more
than me. And that's kind of my thing as far as how I keep learning
stuff.

And that's what I think as far as a piece of advice to anybody else:
don't go to somebody who doesn't have a clue. You could learn from people
that have made mistakes, definitely; but I think it's far easier and
really cuts the learning curve a lot shorter if you go around to people
that know what they're talking about. Just between the conferences I go
to and everything else that's in my world, I just try to stay around
the best so I can hopefully become somewhere near the level that they
are.

CM: I agree 100 percent, Joe. I want to give everyone that URL to
Centerpointe. I looked it up really quick here. It's Centerpointe.com. And
Joe, where can people learn more about you?

JS: About me? I don't know. What do you people want to know? I guess if
they want to see kind of my sarcastic side and get a bit for what the
real Joe is, there's my blog which is MorningCupOfJoe.com. Or just
general all things fitness, articles, whatever else that I kind of throw
together, it would be my name JoeStankowski.com.

CM: Joe, we really appreciate you being with us today.

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