Why Can’t I Lose Weight — Update

Posted on December 7, 2008 by Tricia Ransom

So, I’ve actually been losing weight. People are beginning to notice — not to brag but I’m up to about 25 lbs. They are asking me how I did it. Honestly, the answer is that I eat a little bit less, and exercise a little bit more! Seriously, I use calorieking, and track each morsel of food. I also do aerobics/weight dvds about 5-6 days a week for about 75 minutes a day (and yes, I do them in the morning before I go to work. It’s not easy, as I’m NOT a morning person, but it helps me think during the day).

Leslie Sansone Walk at Home: This one is my favorite for low impact. I have knees that are really touchy, and there are times when I can’t jump around. I find her very easy to modify, and still very effective. My absolute favorite is the Fast and Firm 4 Really Big Miles…but I just checked out her website, and there are some really interesting 5 mile walks. I “adjust” the 4 mile walk by doing Mile 1, 2, 3, 2, and then the first 5 minutes of Mile 1 again as a cool down. According to my heart rate monitor, that is about 400 calories or so.

The Firm: I’m all about the weights and circuit training, and these ladies deliver! I’m using the series before the Wave that uses light hand weights — I’m up to 5 lbs, and I can promise you a challenge each time you do these tapes. Currently I’m doing the TransFIRMation system.

Jillian Michaels Shred Away the Pounds: this one is rough, but oh-so-very effective!. I do Jillian before I do either Leslie Sansone or the Firm. Talk about a challenge!

Most importantly, I have created an Excel spreadsheet. This spreadsheet has two tabs: One for data entry, and one for the results in a graphical format.  Geeky, I know, but oh so important. I have one graph that shows the relationship between my weight and the calories I’ve eaten the day before. It’s a given, if I have over 1300 calories one day, the next day I’ve gained weight, regardless of the amount/type of exercise I do. Therefore, my answer is simple. I just need to control my calories below 1300, which is where calorieking comes in.

I have graphs that show total weight loss year-to-date (YTD), and some that show month-to-date (MTD). I have some that show planned vs. actual, and one most of them I have a trendline. It helps when I hit a plateau, to see that I have actually broken through the plateau in the past, and that I can do it again. Let me show you:

weight

Oh yeah, I’m a goal-oriented person. I’ve learned that I need attainable short-term goals in order to do my best work. Therefore, each week I set a goal of 1 lb. of weight loss. 1 pound a week. That’s it. Some weeks I lose more than one pound, and it is “saved” in my weight loss bank. Those weeks offset the weeks where I’ve hit a plateau. Since March, my average weight loss is very close to 1 lb. a week. The trick is not to think long-term. Most everyone can do 1 lb a week…it’s only ounces a day! And if you aren’t focused on a HUGE number like 15 lbs total, you’ll be amazed at how quickly the weight comes off.  Try it!

So, I can lose weight. I’ve proven to myself that I can do it. The trick is finding things that work for you. I use dvds, Excel, and calorieking, and really achievable (for me) goals. The trick is to find something that works for you, and update it as needed. Try it…it’s fun!

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Scared of Technology?

Posted on December 4, 2008 by Tricia Ransom

This entire post is inspired by the space station…and its technology. Mainly how they are proposing to create drinking water from the urine and sweat of the astronauts! I don’t know about anyone else, but that is a little off-putting to me. What am I talking about?  Ot grosses me out! OK, so my question is this: At what point do you stop trusting technology? In the case of the space station, how do they know that all the urine stuff is gone? What if machine is working at 97% instead of 100%? ugh

And that, I think, is what we have to face with using technology in training. Powerpoint is now accepted, but what about blogs, wikis, IM, facebook, etc.? How do we know that these will work at 100% instead of 95%? And is it bad if they’re are not at full potential? Unlike the space station, no one will be drinking the excretions of others. What are the ramifications if these new technologies don’t work? I think they are:

  1. Learners will have a bad experience. I cannot overstate how disastrous this is. I was reading the blog Tickled by Life, and found this entry called Why People Hate Training talking about this very thing. Think of it like this — if you have a bad experience at the dentist (root canal) or the doctors (mis-diagnoses), are you going to be anxious to go back, and have an open mind? Of course not! And that is what we have to fight against.
  2. Management will have a fear of the technology. It’s like the space station and the drinking water machine. If you promise that it will work, but it’s not perfect, then you taint the expectations of everything else you suggest.
  3. Learners won’t learn what you want them to learn. Think about it. If you spend their entire training time troubleshooting, or worse, if they have to spend their time with the help-desk, what are they really learning? They’re learning that you’re not to be trusted, and that every time they take your training it won’t work.

To me this means that the technology you use should work as you promise the first time, and you need to be very very clear about what it is that you want the technology to do. Of course, this won’t overcome the other issue — that of fear.

Some people are just afraid of technology. Some are afraid of a negative impact on productivity. Some are afraid of a lessening of their power, since information will no longer go through them.  Remember when e-mail first came on the scene at work? What about IM?  Remember that the discussions were all about workers wasting time and goofing off.  Well, new technology is here — wikis, blogs, facebook, LinkedIn — the 2.0s. How can we get people to stop being afraid of the new technology?

For me, the best way to overcome fear is familiarity. In other words, get people to use the very technology that they are afraid of. However, you can’t really proscribe how they should use it. Just let them get familiar with it. It would help if you could set up a situation where the technology will help them solve a problem, or get them information quickly. Once people see that it works for them, and it’s easier than what they are doing now, they’ll use it.

I had started out with a specific direction for this post, and over the past couple of days, I’ve started to ramble. I’m going to refine on this over the next couple of weeks, and make it more coherent, I promise!

To close — will technology solve all of our training problems? Of course not. However, will it provide additional methods and alternatives to classroom training and the perception of information bottlenecks? I firmly believe that if done right, that the answer is YES!

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Day After

Posted on November 5, 2008 by Tricia Ransom

So today is the day after. The day after a day that I didn’t think would affect me as much as it did. As I said earlier, my mother always told me not to talk about politics, religion, or money. And I don’t, honest! However, yesterday was an extraordinary day in the truest sense of the word. So bear with me.

Barack Obama won!

So, is this going to change the world? It depends on what you mean. Will it change the way the world sees us? YES!! Will it change us as a nation? I think that depends on how you define change. Hopefully it will once again allow us to start talking about alternate viewpoints without being labeled “unpatriotic” or “undemocratic”.

I hope that one of the biggest changes will be that more of us will begin to model our behaviour on Obama. During the debates and the election, he was strong enough to agree with his opponent. He didn’t use words that have crept into our lexicon such as confrontation. Instead he used agreement as a point to explore differences. I can only hope and believe that more of us will begin to do this in our everyday life, and bring us back from such anger as we’ve been expressing over the past several years.

You know, I was doing what I call relationship research recently. What that means is that I comb the web looking for articles and stories on couples and how they resolved their crises or keep their relationships strong. My poor husband — he is my guinea pig in all of this!

 Marshall Fields Day of Music

OK, so where was I? That’s right, talking about relationship research and Barack Obama. I can tie this all together, I promise! In my relationship research, I read that instead of agreeing and then saying “but”, use “and”.  So, when my husband is talking about how he helps out with the chores (which he does), the conversation would normally go something like this:

Him: I vacuumed!

Me: You did vacuum, but you left the vacuum cleaner plugged in and in the middle of the floor!

Him: But I vacuumed…?

Now let’s see what it would look like using “and”

Him: I vacuumed!

Me: Yes you did, and next time can you please put the vacuum cleaner away?

Him: Ok.

One little word, and so much more happiness at home. How does this go with Obama? He uses “and”. If not the word, then the intent behind it. He finds something to agree on, and builds on that agreement. How much better will the world see us when we find commonalities between their countries and ours, and builds on that agreement rather than using “shock and awe” or the Bush Doctrine?

That is my hope, that as a nation we are seen by everyone, including ourselves, as being better. Better people, better neighbors, better individuals. I have a hope that we are better, and a belief that we can see it and others will too.

ps — it’s now exactly one month later (December 5th), and Obama has moved with unknown speed in stepping into his new role. I’m still excited and proud of being a part of this history being made! Even though we’re in the middle of an economic meltdown not seen since the Great Depression, and wars on many different fronts, I still have hope. Hope that Iwill be better, Hope that we will be better.

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The Death of Education but the Dawn of Learning

Posted on October 29, 2008 by Tricia Ransom

This title is a quote from a you-tube video. Click here to watch it….I’ll wait!

You’re back! So, what do you think? Have you started to notice trends of this in your workplace? I have, from the people born around 1980 or so. So how do we take what these educators are talking about and make it usable for corporate america? Is it the web 2.0 technologies?

Of course part of what we need to do is embrace these new technologies. But, as we’ve seen over the past 10 years, technology alone isn’t enough. What we need to do is change. We need to change how we see ourselves, how our learners see us, and how we see our learners.

First we need to change how we see ourselves at corporate trainers, instructional designers, facilitators, e-learning designers, whatever-you-want-to-call-yourself.

Will we continue to be the person who knows all, and who structures learning? NO!! I think our job will be to structure knowledge so when the learners come looking, they can find what they want.

Will we know all? NO!! Instead we’ll know where to go to find the answers, and we’ll teach our learners how they can learn for themselves. Heck, they already do it anyway, they just don’t know they do it.

Will we continue to lead stand-up training? YES!! I think the more the virtual tools come into play, the greater the desire for co-workers to see who they work with, and to meet face-to-face. I think our training sessions might not be structured as they are now, but more of a networking event.

Secondly, we need to change how our learners see us. No more will we be the person who demands an hour, or a day, or even an entire week of their time so they can learn something. No more will they see us and shudder and run away. Instead, we’ll be seen as their ally in finding the information they need to do their job.

Will they still see us standing in front of a training class. Of course.

Will they hear us saying things like, “is everyone on the same page? Are we altogether?” NO!! That’s because they’ll determine what page they need to be on, and they’ll determine whether or not they all need to be together.

It’s a different way of seeing us. Instead of seeing us as trainers, they’ll see us as the knowledgable person in the cube next to them that answers questions directly, honestly, and efficiently.

This brings me to my third point, how we will see our learners. How do you see your learners today? As people who can’t learn anything no matter how many times you teach them? As smart but bored by your classes? As people who’ll do anything to just get through the training session? I am convinced with every fiber of my being that we need to believe that each and every person in our training session is an innate learner. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t be there, right? Not only that, we need to see that desire in each of them to learn something new. It’s there, but we need to see it in each of our learners, even the one sleeping in our classes.

We need to connect to our learners, and their world. It may be that what they want to learn has nothing to do with our learning objectives. But, if we can teach them what they want (or show them how to learn what they want), they’ll be back.

Think of it like this. Remember the best salesman (or sales person) you’ve ever encountered? Did they try to sell you what they wanted, or what you wanted? What if what you wanted was counter to their offerings? The best salespeople will send you to a competitor, because they know if they give you what you want, you’ll be back. So as trainers, let’s give our learners what they want. It may not be our learning objectives, but they are learning, and that is our goal. And if they are learning, they’ll be back.

They’ll be back because they’ll trust you, and the truth of the matter is that you have something they need. If you’re in corporate america, you’re not teaching these classes just for the fun of it. You’re teaching them because your learners need them in order to do their jobs. So let’s not get caught in a power struggle. Give them what they want, and they’ll give you what you want.

Soon, very soon, our training world is going to undergo some major transitions. These transitions are being driven by the learning styles and preferences of Gen Y, or the Millenials, technology, virtual teams, and globablization. Training is going to change. In that change, my arguement is that we as trainers need to change our perceptions of ourselves and our learners, and that our learners need to change their perception of us. 

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My Mom is Wise

Posted on October 28, 2008 by Tricia Ransom

On LinkedIn the other day, Dan Galloway asked the question, ”

If you were given just one opportunity to speak in front of hundreds of people, what three life lessons would you want the audience to embed in their brains?

Good question, huh? So here is the response I wrote:

In no particular order:
1. If you don’t ask, the answer is always no. If you don’t try, you’ll always be where you are.
2. “You can do anything you want to do, you just have to face the consequences of your actions.” Facing consequences, be they good or bad, is one of the best attributes a leader or team member can have.
3. “You’re never too old (senior, important, junior, young, etc.) to learn.” The corollary to this is that you must listen to everyone, because you don’t know where you’re going to learn about that next great idea.”

 I wish I could say that I thought of these, but it was my very wise mom who came up with the answers.  In my class about Adult Learning Theory at Roosevelt University, we were talking about what makes someone wise. To paraphrase a Supreme Court Justice, I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it! Here’s a picture of my mom and dad on their 46th wedding anniversary…

Mom and Dad -- 46 years of marriage

Mom and Dad -- 46 years of marriage

So, those three “Life Lessons” that were pounded into my head. You can do anything you want to do, you just have to face the consequences of your actions. I was probably the only 3 year-old who would recite that on cue 🙂

 

Seriously, that was the start of my thinking. My mom taught me to think with that one sentence. I thought about it. I thought about making my little brother disappear. I realized that I could do it, but what would the consequences be? I would go to jail (mom was…and still is…very good at explaining and dispensing consequences), and I decided that I didn’t want to do that. I was thinking.

So, how can I apply that to my learning courses? You can do anything you want to do, you just have to face the consequences of your actions…in corporate america. Of course, if you don’t listen/learn/participate, you won’t be able to do your job, and the consequence could be termination. But what I really want to get to is making my learners think, not just sit on their backsides and wait for the class to be over. Think about the consequences of using whatever it is I’m teaching, or not using what I’m teaching. That’s really the point of corporate training, isn’t it? I mean, imagine the possibilities if we can get them to think about using whatever it is we’re teaching! Imagine the feedback to the organization if they decide not to use it…the reasons they could give, and issues/concerns/problems they could unearth. Of course, acting on those is a different topic altogether!  

hmmm. If my learners truly think about my subject, then I feel they should be allowed the luxury of deciding for themselves if they will use what I’m teaching or not. After all, they’re adults. As long as they fully understand the consequences of it, good or bad. Right? Or wrong?

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