An Open Letter to My Team of Coaches:
The subject line of this blog, which comes from a CNN headline, is representative of the type of email that you get from a friend who wants to prove to you how our politicians are wasting money. “Scandalous. How could they waste our money like that”. Then they tell someone and that person tells someone else and so forth.
When you click on the story, it reveals that the economic stimulus package contains $75 million for smoking cessation programs, still seeming to be a waste of money. But if you read down, it states that Senator Tom Harkin’s office cited figures that smoking is the leading cause of preventable deaths in the U.S. and causes $110 billion in heath costs every year. So funding stop-smoking programs will save billions of dollars and Senator Harkin believes prevention will go a long way to boosting the health of Americans while boosting the health of the American economy.
What does this have to do with us? In an article in the New York Times, it states, “Obesity is near to overtaking smoking as the No. 1 cause of death in the United States. A report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that tobacco use was still the leading cause of death in 2000, killing 435,000 people, or 18.1 percent of everyone who died, but poor diet and physical inactivity caused 400,000 deaths, or 16.6 percent of the total, the report said.”
Beachbody spends $90 million a year on infomercials promoting workout DVD’s that are fun and effective and actually come with a money back guarantee. I don’t know how stop-smoking programs work, but I do see commercials occasionally and the numbers of smokers is declining. Many laws have been passed either moving smokers into designated areas or banning them altogether. Since eating too much doesn’t have the same stigma as smoking and people who overeat aren’t forced to eat outside or not at all in public places, the challenge of lessening the obesity epidemic is significantly more daunting.
That is where we come in as Team Beachbody Coaches. Our annual stop obesity budget is $179.40 (plus $25.00 for the Coach Kit) or $334.88 if you are also a Club member. Since talk is cheap, I won’t figure in its cost, so that means that for less than a dollar a day, we can join the army of the health and fitness revolution and get paid to tell people about the benefits of exercising regularly, eating nutritiously and adopting positive lifestyle choices.
In my morning ritual of reading positive things, I came across something entitled, “The Hudson River Miracle Mystery“, which of course I had to click on. It is a video from Martha Williamson, the Executive Producer of “Touched By An Angel”. The caption under the video says, “From the amazing story of the US Airways plane crash on the Hudson River, Martha Williamson reminds us that each day is a gift and a chance to make a difference.”
We as coaches have the opportunity to make a difference and we can be the “angels” that touch people’s lives. Can you even begin to imagine what an enormous difference we can make on our budget of less than a dollar a day?
Please be an “angel” today and touch someone’s life…
