Filed under: Health and Fitness | Tags: fitness, health, Health & Fitness, health point, healthpoint, HealthPointe, healthy, lose weight, natural, weight loss
Last night, before I headed for bed, I was reading in A Minute of Margin
It started with a quote from Ronald Reagan, a big fan of jellybeans:
You can tell a lot about a fellow’s character by his way of eating jellybeans.
A bit later, the author, Dr. Richard Swenson, M.D., in talking about reestablishing balance in diet commented:
Garden or buy direct. There are two ways to process food: God’s way and the factory way. God knows what He is doing; the factory often doesn’t. The ground, taking its orders from God, fortunately doesn’t process food the way factories do. And the less factory processing, the better the food. Always protect the most direct connection from the Father’s hand to your table.
That reminded me of one of the primary differences between the HealthPointe program I’m on and the Take Shape For Life program I recently blogged about.
HealthPointe uses real food primarily… recommending that one eats 3 good, healthy meals each day with at least 3 protein snacks in between (at least one between each meal.)
TSFL uses packaged food primarily… recommending that one eats only 1 meal at the end of each day using real food, but consuming prepackaged food for the other two meals plus snacks in between.
Certainly, you can lose weight eating calorie-restricted prepackaged foods. But how much more healthy is it to eat natural food in appropriate quantities? And as a lifestyle, by eating the natural food one is developing habits that are sustainable – whether or not the company stays in business.
I love the thought of losing weight naturally and being able to maintain a healthy weight – naturally!
Oh yeah… as of this morning I’m down to 154.0 lbs. Whoo Hoo!
Filed under: Business, Health and Fitness | Tags: fitness, health, Health & Fitness, Health and Fitness, health point, healthpoint, HealthPointe, lose weight, MediFast, Nutrilite, Take Shape For Life, TSFL, weight loss
I wanted to make this a separate entry, but it’s based on the conference I helped record. You see, my wife’s boss’ keynote address was for a Take Shape For Life conference.
He’s been on that program since he was asked to address the group last January, and he’s lost quite a bit of weight… enough so that those who know him, have really noticed.
Take Shape For Life seems to be really just a network-marketing company designed to provide coaching in the use of and sales of MediFast products. I don’t doubt that their products are good products. (How can you argue with over a million people who have used their products to lose weight?)
On an objective-level TSFL differs from HP in some significant ways (the info on TSFL is from my wife’s boss):
- TSFL – Prepackaged, dehydrated food packs with supplementation from the grocery store.
- HP – “Real” food that you buy from the grocery store with supplementation from Nutrilite.
- MediFast - 23% average profit margin on retail sales
- Nutrilite – 30% average profit margin on retail sales
- TSFL – No assurance that your “downline” won’t decide to shift to another line of sponsorship – taking all future profits with them. (This is supposed to be a “feature” !?! specially designed into the business model.)
- Nutrilite – 6-month “cooling off” period during which a ”downline” must have formally quit business before they can sign up under another organization – and they can’t bring anyone with them unless they can convince all their “downline” to quit for the same 6 months.
- TSFL – No apparent limits on being involved in other MLM or Direct Sales organizations.
- Nutrilite – Exclusive – you are not allowed to have multiple MLM or Direct Sales businesses.
My thoughts…
Prepackaged vs “Normal” – I’d much rather eat real food. I believe man can’t artificially improve on nature – at least not comprehensively. Scientists are still discovering new nutrients and figuring out important inter-relationships between nutrients. (How long have we known about Vitamin K? What about all the various Phytonutrients and Antioxidents?) Even the vitamin supplements from Nutrilite are from certified-organic farms – using real plant food as their basis.
Profitability – 23% profit margin isn’t bad. But given the choice, I’d rather have 30%.
Moveability – I’d rather know that what I’ve put together is stable and can’t be messed with easily by someone who happens to get disgruntled. People are people, and they can be fickle in their emotions. I’d rather have a business that’s not quite so much at the mercy of people’s emotions. Built-in instability of moving lines of sponsorship is not a feature – it’s a liability.
Related to moveability is exclusivity. If one can be in several competing businesses, there’s nothing that can stop someone from using (in the worst sense of that word) one business to benefit another. And it also facilitates moving lines of sponsorship – not just within a business, but from one business to another.
No doubt, TSFL is helping a lot of people. They’re getting healthier (a very good thing!), and wealthier as they’re willing (and able) to grow their business.
TSFL is also very good for those who lack the self-discipline to control their portions, and like the convenience of buying virtually all their food from one source and re-hydrating/microwaving/cooling it. (Makes me think of what it must be like living in the ISS.)
HealthPointe is for people who are not in a hurry to lose weight, want to lose the weight using real food, want to learn self-control/self-discipline, and (for those who want to be involved as business-owners – helping others with healthy products) make more money.
Filed under: Health and Fitness | Tags: fitness, health, Health & Fitness, Health and Fitness, health point, healthpoint, HealthPointe, lose weight, weight loss
Last Monday we started back on the HealthPointe program. It’s designed to get you living in a more healthy manner, and includes a plan for losing weight (if you need to.)
Well, despite what others might say, I do need to lose a little weight. My ideal weight is somewhere in the range of 147-150 lbs. When I weighed-in on Monday morning I was 159.6.
Not too bad, you might say. But my body says otherwise. About three years ago I was all the way up to 167 and my body’s reaction showed that it thought I was obese at that level. (I was diagnosed with NASH after a normal physical showed slightly elevated liver enzymes, and followed by several months of testing, retesting, and finally a liver biopsy. I had no “symptoms” that would indicate anything was really “wrong” with me – I felt fine.) My Gastroenterologist gave me the option to lose 10% of my body weight – using whatever diet/exercise program I wanted to - between mid-September and mid-December. I chose to use HealthPointe. Despite the temptations of Halloween candy, Thanksgiving meal-celebration, and various holiday parties/meals, I lost 15 of the 17 lbs. All the indicators of NASH dropped back into the “normal” range – shocking the Dr. (He asked what I’d done/used. Then declared that it was the “perfect” program – better than the one they’d been “satisfied” with at their last gastroenterological association gathering. He said he’d recommend his other patients to contact me – but I never heard from any of them – and at my 6-month follow-up appointment, the Dr. expressed his frustration that none of his other patients followed through to contact me…. maybe that’s why their likely to continue on having physical problems – they won’t even follow the advice of a licensed professional!) But I digress…
Back to the present.
Last Monday we (my wife and I) got started on this program. The first 1-3 days you’re encouraged to kick-start your body into higher metabolism by restricting your diet to almost exclusively proteins with as little fat and carbohydrates as possible. My carbs were about 40 for the day. After 1 day of that, I’d had enough. I only got in 6300 steps according to my pedometer. (Goal is: 8-12,000 steps per day.) And I drank about 42 oz of water – quite a bit less than their recommended amount. (Either 80 oz per day or 1 oz for every 2 lbs of body weight. Both seemed a bit low, but I figured I’d do better Tuesday.
So, Tuesday I shifted to the weight-loss part of the program. That includes eating 3 healthy meals a day – Low fat, Normal protein, and Low Carbohydrate (between 50-100g of carbs – preferably complex carbs – per day.) I tried to keep it as close to 50 as possible, and managed 73. Steps were up to 6600, despite my concerted effort to walk more – started to think something was really wrong with my pedometer. Water was up to 64 oz. Good improvement, but still room to get better.
Wednesday I continued working on things, but was a bit discouraged by the apparent shortfall in my exercise. I ended up eating just over 100 g of carbs. My pedometer registered only 4650 steps, which didn’t surprise me too much since I knew I hadn’t been walking around quite as much as the previous two days. But when we went out for a walk in the neighborhood I confirmed that not all my steps were being registered. (I checked the count, walked 100 steps, and checked again. Only 95 steps were registered… and that was with making a concerted effort to assure each step counted.) The brightest spot was that I finally got my water intake up to 80 oz. That evening we had a conference call with some leaders/coaches in the program. They gave lots of inspiring and helpful information. Much of it I’d heard before when I was dealing with my NASH. But one thing stood out to me: Optimal weight-loss seems to be achieved when carbs are in the 80-90 grams/day range. This really surprised me. By trying to be an “overachiever” I was actually hurting my progress toward my goal! And my 101 grams of carbs for the day really weren’t all that far out of line. So I had another thing to be encouraged about!
Thursday, when I woke up and was resetting my pedometer, I noticed it had a garbled number on the LCD readout. I tried to reset it anyway, and it wouldn’t change. So I took out, and reinstalled the battery. That cleared it all right… the screen went blank! Nothing I did would get it back in order. My wife ended up giving me an old pedometer. The only problem with that one was that it didn’t count steps but rather tried to calculate distance – based on the estimated size of my steps. I was right on track as far as eating and drinking was concerned… at least, until some friends (who just moved back to the States from India) invited us out to dinner at Sweet Tomatoes. The salad bar was fine, and I forsook their delicious strawberry-lemonade for some diet-coke. (I wanted something flavored to take my vitamins with.) But later, I gave in to the temptation of their blueberry mini-muffins, lime mini-muffins, and lava-carrot-cake-with-cream-cheese-frosting. I think dinner alone was at least 75 grams of carbs – even with reasonably small portions of the desserts. I could only guess at the number of steps I took. But I downed 64 oz of water – and didn’t count the diet coke.
Friday we spent the day staging our house for sale. It was a very long day. (Got to bed after midnight.) Carbs were 76, pedometer read 9.6 miles (seemed rather high – but I had mowed the lawn), and water was 64 oz.
Saturday we had to get up extra early to help out at a conference – I was to help record my wife’s boss as he was the keynote speaker. That evening we had a fish-fry with a group of friends from church. Again, like Thursday, I totally blew it on following the program… hotel food for lunch, and fried food with sugary dessert for dinner. I’m sure I was well over the 100g of carbs – even though I didn’t record it all. The pedometer wasn’t registering – although I had been walking around signficantly more than earlier in the week, it said I’d only gone 0.2 miles! And I hardly drank any water – probably no more than 36 oz all day.
Sunday was quite a bit better.
My weigh-ins each day reflected how I’d done the day before in terms of eating, drinking, and steps:
- M – 159.6
- Tu – 157.6
- W – 157.2
- Th – 156.0
- F – 156.6
- Sa – 156.2
- Su – 156.6
- M – 154.6
So, after 1 week, I’ve lost exactly 5 lbs. despite falling off the program a couple of times and still trying to get steps and water in alignment. (I’ve got a new pedometer on order, and (hopefully) on the way.) One week down, and I’m already about halfway to my end goal. But I know my body has at least 1 set-point between where I am and where I want to go. So I’ll probably hit a wall or two soon.
Filed under: God at work | Tags: C3, C3 Church, C3 Orlando, Hey Jude, in it not of it, Jude
Yesterday we heard the first message in the new series at C3 Orlando. This series of messages are called, “Hey Jude!“ This is the first time in a while that Pastor Byron has done a series based just on a book of the bible, as opposed to a topical series which is all about one subject and seeing what the bible has to say about it.
As the first message, he dealt with the first few verses of the book of Jude. (It’s not a long book – only one chapter with 25 verses!)
What jumped out at me was his discussion of the intentional ambiguity of one particular word that Jude used. Whatever the greek word was, it can be translated into english three different ways: “by”, “for”, and “in.” The phrase it’s used in says we are “kept by/for/in Christ.”
Each way it can be translated has a fairly different meaning and very different, but cool, ramification.
We (followers of Christ, or as Jude says, “the called”) are kept by Christ. That means He is the one keeping us. And due to His position and power – that means we are safe and secure in our position/place/keeping. I love the assurance and confidence that brings!
We are kept for Christ. That means we are not our own. We belong to Christ. I’m challenged by the strong sense of responsibility that implies. We each have a purpose for our lives, and visions to pursue, and missions to accomplish, that are all to glorify Him.
We are kept in Christ. That means we have a relationship with Christ. I embrace the comfort and encouragement that comes from the knowledge that I am not alone.
As a side note, he also reminded me of a “cute” poem by John Fisher titled, “The Ins And Outs Of It” that’s sad and funny - pointing out how far too often we mis-read what the bible says. It plays off the verse that says we, Christ followers, are to be in the world but not of the world. But what we here is: “not in it, nor of it” or “in it, and of it” or “not in it, but of it.”
The first leads to christians who are stuck in the past or some other alternate reality – keeping themselves isolated and unrelatable for most of those who’ve never set foot in a church.
The second leads to christians who are indistinguishable from those who’ve never set foot in a church.
The third leads to christians who have their own “cool” cliques, idols, heroes-to-worship, fashions-to-parade, stations-to-listen-to or watch, etc. They look, sound, and act like they want to be just as cool as the “hippest” of those who have never set foot in a church, but they insist on having holier idols, fashions, and music – that’s only holier because they’ve included “christian” labels and/or words.
I’m not doing the poem justice… why don’t you just go read it for yourself… it’s MUCH better than my ramblings.
Yesterday, for some reason I can’t quite remember, I got to looking online to see if an old, very obscure LP was available in CD format. It was an album by the first Christian Punk Band – Ishmael United. (To the best of my knowledge they were the first, having put out their album “If You Can’t Shout Saved” in 1979.) That ultimately led me to the website for the founder of the band, Ishmael Smale, who is now involved in children’s ministry, and since April has been fighting Acute Myeloid Leukemia.
As I read through some of the stuff on his site, one thing jumped out at me - ”Ish’s Weekly Proverb” – and reminded me so much of C3 Church and what they’re trying to do.
The proverb for this week is:
Sometimes in Church life we are warned to ‘not rock the boat’. That might be the time to get out of the boat and try walking on water!
A couple of years ago, the Pastor of the church that was to become C3, felt called to reach out into the surrounding community in a way that hadn’t been tried before, at least not by that church. At the first suggestion of switching from Sunday School classes (they called them “Lifegroups”, but they were really nothing more nor less than Sunday School classes) to Home-based studies, he got an overwhelming response of “NO!” (If they weren’t in church, I suspect they might very well have said, “Hell NO!” Or maybe even used the “F-word” or the “S-word” for even more emphasis. But since it was on a Sunday and they were in Church, they cleaned up their language from the other 6 days a week.)
His response was, “Fine. We’ll mothball that for a year – and spend that time teaching you the value of moving the more personal teaching, growth, interaction, and relationship building into homes. But we’re going to make the change, because we need to be more effective in reaching those in our community who neither understand our church-culture, nor are willing to set foot inside a formal church building.”
That started a huge uproar. And was the beginning of a large exodus. The funniest thing to me was to hear people say, “I hate change, so I’m going to leave” – particularly when they said it before any change had been enacted, and the proposed change was only going to affect one aspect of their churh experience.
Which is a bigger change?
A) Moving from meeting in a Sunday School classroom to meeting in a Home, while still retaining all relationships, same familiar worship service and sanctuary, etc.
or
B) Cutting off all your relationships with everyone at Church, uprooting your family, moving all meetings to other places, etc.
Filed under: God at work, positive | Tags: garbage, God working, neglect, pineapple, something good, thankful
Sunday afternoon I was out mowing the yard and happened to stoop down by the Pineapple plant I’d planted a while back. I don’t remember if it was two or three years ago that I’d planted it there. But it’s been growing.
I got the idea from a party I’d been to with J. Some friends had just taken the tops from whole pineapples they’d eaten – you know, when you buy a whole pineapple at the store and you first hack off the top with the spikey leaves before carving down the sides to remove the somewhat prickly “skin” – and just stuck them in the ground in their back yard, in the shade of some trees. They said it’d taken a few years of neglect, but those tops had grown into plants. And those plants eventually started producing pineapples!
Well, Sunday, as I stooped over my pineapple plant – that I started in much the same way… taking a pineapple top that was headed for the garbage, sticking it in the ground, and neglecting it, and that has been growing in the shade despite my neglect – I saw what looks like a tiny pinapple ball starting to grow out of the center of the leaves. Whoo Hoo! We may have a really fresh pineapple to eat before we sell the house and move!
Sometimes, I guess, good things can come from our garbage plus our neglect. We just have to have taken the first necessary step of planting our garbage. Then God may use that action to produce wonderful results in His time, with His care, and within His plan. He can take our garbage and turn it into something good. He doesn’t always do that, or at least He doesn’t always do it in ways we’ll recognize as good, but when He does, it’s so sweet, and it’s amazing!
Thanks, God!
