Tanuu Blog

It seems there are two schools of behavior patients follow after gastric bypass surgery:

The first are the patients who realize WLS is a second chance to make right their nutritional wellness and they exchange the eating habits and poor food choices that made them obese for a smarter way of eating. These patients become champions of healthy ingredients and wholesome eating making conscious choices for how they fuel their bodies. They are non-stop learners in constant quest for information to aid in their health and wellness. They are actively engaged in their own nutrition to improve their health and make strong their bodies against disease. These patients have tremendous success in long-term weight maintenance following massive weight loss.

The second are the patients who rely solely on the restrictive and malabsorptive nature of the gastric bypass to lose weight. They half-heartedly follow the program during the phase of rapid weight loss and little by little the old habits that made them obese sneak back into their daily living. You’ll hear these patients say, “I can eat anything I want, just less of it” and they laugh. But the joke is on them because sure enough, these patients will regain weight and suffer from poor nutritional health.

Perhaps the people in the “old habits” school think it’s a waste of effort or energy to try and eat healthy - after all, we eat such little portions. Perhaps they think health food is seaweed and tofu and icky stuff like that. Perhaps they simply don’t have the information necessary to affect positive healthy change in their diets.

Dr. Bernard Jensen in “Guide to Body Chemistry & Nutrition” writes, “The old saw “what you don’t know can’t hurt you” just isn’t true when it comes to body chemistry, nutrition and a healthy lifestyle. Ignorance leads to poor nutritional choices, chemical deficiencies and the kinds of diseases that prey on an undernourished body and shorten the life span. Heart disease, cancer and diabetes all take a terrible toll on life in this country, and all three of them are strongly influenced by food patterns and lifestyle habits. . . The right kind of knowledge can always lead us to a better life.”

Dr. Jensen writes, “Hippocrates said, “Let your food be your medicine, and let your medicine be your food.” In my opinion, the kitchen is more important to our health than the doctor’s office or the local hospital. If food selection, preparation and cooking are done wisely, intentionally and properly, very little time will need be spent visiting health care facilities.” Dr. Jensen, by the way, wrote “Guide to Body Chemistry & Nutrition” at age 92.

Before WLS surgery I believe it is fair to say many of us “let food be our comfort” and indeed we were well comforted - that’s why we needed surgery. If we can change that thought to “let food be our medicine” and treat it as such, perhaps our relationship with food will improve, our bodies will become healthier and the quality

A number of sales “Gurus” have promoted the theory that states, “concentrating strictly on your top level premier accounts (some even quantify that by stating your top twenty) will provide you with as much growth and profit as you can possibly handle.” This is often stated regardless of individual and corporate strategic initiatives. This position is based on the following facts and assumptions.

Your top twenty accounts have tremendous growth potential that you have not taken advantage of fully. It is easier to sell an existing account than to generate new business. It is also less costly.

The total potential of your top twenty accounts equals your S.A.M. (Served Available Market) potential.

Salesmen are too costly to waste time making cold calls and prospecting.

Inside sales can handle all other accounts not listed in your top twenty programs.

Although there is some basic truth to those points, there is also some fallacy of assumption in them.

1. There aren’t many salesmen in all of distribution that handle twenty true premier accounts. By definition, a top account should be in your highest 10% ranking based on annual revenue, profit margin and potential.

2. Most accounts will not put 100% of their eggs in one basket.

3. Generally speaking, the total volume purchased by an account does not equal your S.A.M. that you specifically can supply.

4. It is a fact that accounts have life cycles. You WILL lose some accounts for any number of reasons regardless of who you are or what you do. Lack of prospecting will eventually cause your territory to die a slow painful death.

5. Vendor relations can suffer dramatically as your salesmen drive by an account while riding with a manufacturer’s representative explaining that he is not allowed to call on that account as it is not on his top twenty premier list.

6. What does the salesman do with his spare time - since most accounts don’t want to see salesmen more than every couple of weeks? That means seeing twenty accounts every two weeks gives you an average of only two sales calls per day maximum.

7. Salesmen get bored, creativity is suppressed and they even get angry when they have to incorporate too much administrative time into every one of their accounts. The kind of paperwork nightmare associated with this type of program can get out of hand. Unlike the T.L.S. program that differentiates each level of five accounts with regard to administrative time, this type of program requires identical, sophisticated tracking of every account and every activity. That answers the question of what the salesman does with his extra time. Paperwork. Paperwork that often requires trying to document, “What you don’t know you don’t know.” GIVE ME A BREAK! I have actually seen that question listed as a requirement in a program of this nature.

A number of years ago, I actually reviewed a program built on these principles. I looked at the top twenty listing of accounts for 167 salesmen. It turned out that over 30% of the accounts I

When you stay at home and work, either at a stay at home job or at a home based business, it’s easy to start feeling isolated and lonely. This is especially true if you worked in a large company with a lot of people before you decided to stay at home and work. It really is possible to go days without seeing anyone but family members when you work at a stay at home job or home based business. After a while, the isolation can get to you and make you long for the old days, as bad as they were.

So it’s important to take breaks from your stay at home work or home based business and find opportunities to interact with people. One of the best ways to avoid feeling lonely and isolated in your stay at home job is to join a professional group in your area. Your local Chamber of Commerce is a good organization to join and take part in. Not only will the meetings give you the chance to be with other people, they can also be a great way to network your home based business or to pick up projects for your stay at home job. Best of all, you’ll be able to spend time with people who also have small businesses, many of them home based businesses, and you’ll be able to pick up some great ideas for your home based business.

Another strategy for coping with the loneliness that goes along with a stay at home job or home based business is to find other people in your area who are also working at stay at home jobs or home based businesses. You probably already know many people who are in similar shoes. They’d love to get together and shake off the stay at home loneliness for a couple of yours. Get in touch with them and see if you can’t set up a once-a-week breakfast. Again, this will give you the chance to talk with people about stay at home job and home based business issues. You’ll get a lot of good ideas and maybe even be able to co-op some work for your home based business of stay at home job service.

And here’s another thing you can do to beat the home based business and stay at home job “lonelies”join your local Y. Too often stay at home workers and home based business owners spend way too much time at their desks, staring at the computer screen. You need to have some exercise. And one of the advantages of having a stay at home job or home based business is that you canor should be able to!make your own schedule, at least to some degree. Yes, you have to met your stay at home job and home based business deadlines, but you can plan to spend time a little time exercising at the Y several morning or afternoons a week. Going to the Y has the advantage of letting you be