The Little Red Hen

This is the story of the little red hen. What does this have to do with fitness? It’s a fantastic parable for anyone considering a body transformation. Here’s to you becoming the little red hen in your journey.
One day as the obese red hen was mindlessly Google searching, she found The Leanness Lifestyle Bootcamp and knew immediately it could transform her life. She was a little disconcerted about the amount of chicken on the menu, but nonetheless decided that she would give it a shot and share it with her friends. “This is the answer we’ve been looking for” she said. “Who will join with me?”
“Not I,” said the duck. “I react poorly to many of these foods, cannot stand fish and get panic attacks if I try to reduce fats, salt or refined sugar.”
“Not I,” said the cat. “I have a non supportive family and a lot of negative peer pressure. Besides which, there are three birthdays, an anniversary and four social events in my family over the next month. I don’t have time to cook all these meals, and find it just too inconvenient to carry all these meal and snack baggies around with me.”
“Not I,” said the dog. “I can’t control my cravings and need to pound down garbage when I’m under stress. I think it relates back to issues from my childhood.”
“Not I”, said the cow. “My seven stomachs get upset and I suffer from headaches when I try to cut junk from my diet. My body is just not programmed for it.”
“Then I will do will do it with the support of Coach Dave and his assistants.
Soon the hen started to lose a few pounds, and found that she could actually tolerate (and enjoy) a little exercise. “I’m going to the gym this morning” said the fat-but-no-longer-obese red hen. “Who will join me?”
“Not I,” said the duck. “The webs on my feet have plantar warts, I have a bad back, and my chronic fatigue syndrome kicks in just at the thought of it. You don’t know how much I would love to, but I was not blessed with a strong constitution and sadly I am just too sick to walk.
“Not I,” said the cat. “I have too many other things that I need to do, and can’t clear enough time to do this. By the time I’ve finished fulfilling all my obligations I just don’t have energy left for cardio”.
“Not I,” said the dog. “I find that at this point I cannot sleep properly if I exercise. If only I’d been brought up to exercise when I was a child, I would be more used to it and better able to tolerate it.”
“Not I,” said the cow. “It is just not me. I’m a cow, and was not built for exercise. I can’t suddenly start now, no matter how much I long to.”
“Then I will go it myself and make new friends at the gym” said the fat-but-no-longer-obese red hen. She began lifting weights, taking long brisk walks around the barnyard, continued to lose weight and ended up lean and looking great.
Several months later, the animals got together to compare their progress, they all looked more or less the same, except for the little red hen (no longer the obese red hen) who had undergone a massive transformation.
“I wish that had been me,” said the duck. “She was lucky. I was too sick to make it work. Besides which, my thyroid is shut down so I couldn’t have lost the weight no matter what I did.”
“I sympathize with you,” the cat replied. “As for me, I had too much going on to revolve my life around this plan. I mean, it’s fine if you can live in a bubble, but HELLO?? This is the real world. Nice if you have all that time and nothing else to worry about in your life”.
“That’s true,” said the dog. “She didn’t have to deal with all of the issues and stresses as the rest of us, and didn’t grow up with a mother who trained her to view food as a reward. If she had my mother and a life as stressful as mine, she would have had no more success than I did”.
“For me it just was not meant to be,” said the cow. “Maybe she was obese, but she wasn’t genetically programmed to stay that way. Not like a cow – I was genetically doomed to be fat from the moment I was born. It would have been impossible for me to achieve the same results no matter what I did”.
“So the animals all concluded that the little red hen was just one of those lucky few who had the constitution to be able to become healthy, the stable emotional background and genetic programming required to make it possible, and a slack enough life that she could devote all of that time and energy to being healthy and fit. How many people in the real world have all of that going for them at the same time?
The little red hen went on to live a long and fulfilling life, do all the things that she wanted to do and strutted her stuff.
The duck did nothing, and got fatter and sicker until it lost its job, spent everything it owned on doctors and pills, and ended up living in a trailer on disability.
The cat ate every time food was put in front of it and was pitied by its family, friends and co-workers, whom the cat quietly resented and blamed for her continued obesity.
The dog never did resolve the issues with its mother, binged disgracefully every time even the most trivial and normal of life stresses came along, and was so increasingly whiny, dependent and emotionally needy that she eventually drove her husband to drink.
The cow – well, she just stayed obese, as I suppose she was “genetically programmed” to do, and was eventually eaten by ICK lovers who appreciated her excellent marbling.
Success belongs to those who decide to be successful – those who just do it. Failure belongs to everyone else – those who sprout reasons as thick as weeds why they can’t do it, those who call themselves victims of situations and circumstance, those who blame family members or their childhood, and those who decide from the outset that the effort is ultimately futile and doomed to fail.
The inventory of what you need to succeed is no more than this: a resolved decision to do so, and some guts. The resolved decision is required because this take times, and therefore will require an unchanging purpose throughout the required time period. Guts are required in order to face personal hurdles of all sorts – be they issues of health, lifestyle, cravings, addiction, psychology, or genetics. The hurdles are different for everybody; however, if you face them with some guts and do not let them intimidate you then they are never insurmountable.
(Submitted by LLU member Marilyn Groce – thank you Marilyn)
http://www.leannesslifestyle.com/bootcamp/