Filed under: Health and Fitness | Tags: fitness, health, Health and Fitness, HealthPointe, keep it off, lose weight, Nutrilite, weight loss
Last night we had our last conference call with the HealthPointe 2.0 Lean Team.
More good information was shared – far too much to remember, much less write down here! (I guess you just had to BE there!)
I know a number of people who have lost weight on other programs. But the vast majority of them wind up gaining most, if not all (or more!) of the weight back soon after they complete their program.
What’s struck me about HealthPointe are the reports I’ve been hearing; most of the people who truly follow the HealthPointe program lose the weight, and KEEP IT OFF.
The guest speaker on last night’s call was no exception. She’s an OBGYN surgeon who went through the HealthPointe program several years ago and lost 20+ lbs. And she’s kept it off. She talked a bit about a friend of hers who’s a nurse who lost close to 60 lbs. 3 or 4 years ago using HealthPointe, and she too has kept it all off.
She emphasized that when she said, “You can lose weight on all kinds of programs, but THIS program helps you keep it off.”
Then she gave a bunch of tips for keeping the weight off. Maybe some of these will be of help/encouragement to those readers who are on some other program.
- We all struggle with self-discipline. So, when you fall off the program, immediately get back on! Don’t wait for the next week, or the next day. Get back on with your next snack or meal – whichever comes first.
- If it’s not on the food list, don’t eat it… particularly when you’re working on the weight-loss part of the program. There’s intentionally quite a bit of variety in the food list, so choose from those things. That way you’ll get appropriate balance in your diet.
- Reward yourself for successes – just not with food. Find other things to reward yourself with. Suggestions: Makeup (not so much for the guys!), clothes (especially when you need to drop sizes), Jewelry, movies, games, recreation,.
- Stay connected with your Wellness Coach.
- Use the Personalized Health program to take care of your needed supplements – it makes the discipline of eating your nutients sooo much easier. (I can really vouch for this one. It’s much easier to tear off a packet of pre-packaged vitamins/minerals/phytonutrients that are personalized for my body, than to open up several bottles of supplements – trying to remember which ones to take at which time, and in which quantity. The convenience – without compromising personalization – can hardly be beat. No one can touch the quality of Nutrilite supplements, and with their Personalized Health, they’ve stretched their superiority even further.)
- If you tend to get rushed when you’re heading out the door, pre-package your meals from the groceries you buy. With all the salads, fruit, vegetables, and protein-foods you’re getting, it’s much more handy to bag them into individual servings that you can just grab and go to work/school/wherever with.
- Have protein snacks everywhere so you can grab one in a moment.
- Don’t stop journalling – even after you finish the weight-loss and metabolic-adjustment parts of the program. When you’re all done and ready for lifetime maintenance, by continuing to journal you’ll notice as soon as you start to get in trouble, and will be able to correct it very quickly.
- Eat more snacks to lose more weight. When they’re protein snacks, they help increase your metabolism and force your body to burn its own fat for energy.
Filed under: Uncategorized
Not much of anything.
I was there for the grievance committee meeting. But come to find out of the 4 people on the committee, 2 haven’t been showing up for their meetings practically since the committee’s inception. Of the 2 remaining committee members, only one showed. And the person who has the grievance against me didn’t show either. (Both of those people did show up for the regular meeting though.)
So, what happened?
The one person who did show up decided they couldn’t be impartial – they wouldn’t consider my perspective, at all. So it was determined that despite the fact that we both apparently agreed on what happened, yet disagreed on the implications of what happened, and the fact that there was no real harm done, there’s a “mark against me.” It was decided by one member of the grievance committee that I wronged the other (no-show) party. Next complaint, and I’m kicked out.
Funny (as in “strange” not “haha”), but when I checked with others in that industry – who had served as members of industry-specific and official grievance committees – they assured me there was nothing wrong, there were no grounds for lodging a complaint.
So, I’m left with being found guilty of a non-existent “crime”, and (most likely) subject to continued shunning.
Maybe it’s time to move on and “shake the dust from my feet” where I’m not welcome.
So frustrating. And sad.
No harmony.
It’s late.
I know I need sleep. God didn’t make me to stay awake all night long, nor to function well on too little sleep.
But my brain is racing worrying. Worried about tomorrow morning. It’s coming soon. And it will be over fairly quickly.
I hate conflict. Grew up with too much of it.
Now, all I really want is harmony. And if that means keeping or creating some distance, so be it.
But sometimes that means first confronting situations and ascertaining what’s really needed. And confrontation can be is tough.
Tomorrow morning I’ll finally (get to?) confront a situation that’s been brewing for over two months. Someone’s got a grievance against me, and decided the best thing to do was to avoid me – ignore my offers of help, ignore any calls or emails, and dodge me whenever we were in the same meeting.
I finally chased them down before one of those meetings (two weeks ago) to ask what, if anything, was wrong. At first they denied anything was wrong, but when pushed accused me of something I didn’t do. Then when I responded in a completely perplexed manner, they explained a bit more, and demonstrated how letting anger, bitterness, and misunderstanding fester and boil inside for more than a month winds up making a mountain out of a molehill, and practically turning a misunderstanding into a federal offense.
Despite my apology, explanation, assurances, and offers to try to make-it-up-to-them, there was no forgiveness. And only a very slight change in behavior. (Calls are now being returned – reluctantly. But I’m still blacklisted.)
I ended up taking it up with a “grievance committee” that we’re both subject to. (The grievance committee is probably stunned – wondering why I would be coming to them when it’s someone else who has the grievance against me.) We all meet early tomorrow morning. And I have no idea what the result will be.
I know I want to realize harmony. I want to be able to work together with this individual. But it may be that they just are unable or unwilling to let it go, and work with me. If they can’t or won’t, then one of us will have to leave the group. I’m certain it should be them, but if it comes to that, I think I’ll volunteer to leave. Part of me will be sad to go. But another part of me will be grateful for the freedom. Whatever happens, I want to learn the lesson(s) God wants me to learn in all of this… even as hard as they are to learn.
Only a few hours to go.
I gotta go to sleep. And I better sleep fast. Lord, help me… please.
Filed under: Health and Fitness | Tags: Carbohydrate, carbs, diet, fitness, health, Health and Fitness, lose weight, weight loss
I learned something new last night… the difference between Net Carbs (also known as Usable Carbs) and Total Carbs.
Total Carbs is what is often listed as the Carbohydrate content in the nutritional label of food packaging. But your body doesn’t process all Carbs the same.
Total Carbs can be broken into three broad categories: Fiber, Sugars, and Sugar Alcohol.
Figuring out your Net Carbs from your Total Carbs is fairly simple. Just subtract the Fiber and Sugar Alcohol from the Total. What’s left (Sugars) is your Net Carbs.
When on a low-carb diet, what really counts is the Net Carbs.
So, while I’ve been on a low-carb diet and ignorant of this distinction, I’ve actually been getting less Carbs that count than I thought! And now I understand why Lettuce counts as a Zero-Carb food. (Its carbs are primarily fiber.)
Filed under: Health and Fitness, victory journal | Tags: fitness, health, Health & Fitness, HealthPointe, lose weight, nutrition, weight loss
Yesterday was the first day of week 5 on the HealthPointe 2.0 program for me. What that means is it was time to shift from the weight-loss part of the program (which can last up to 4 weeks at a time) to the metabolic-adjustment (or “add more food”) part of the program.
The objective of this phase is to ramp up your body’s metabolism without gaining more than 2 lbs. over the next two weeks.
The way this is done is by carefully increasing the amount of good carbohydrates you’re eating. So, instead of being on a moderate-protein and low-carb/low-fat diet, for this portion it’s a moderate-protein/moderate-carb and low-fat diet.
There was a wierd thing that happened though… although I raised my carbs, I lost more weight between Monday morning and Tuesday morning than I’d lost between last Wednesday morning and Sunday morning!
How to explain that?
It actually goes all the way back to the prior Thursday. (That’s Thursday the 7th of August.) At that time I’d gotten my weight down to one of my body’s “set points.” That’s a weight where it had previously been, and that I’d held for quite some time. My body wanted to stay there, thinking “oh, this feels good!” But I kept pushing it to lose more over the next week and a half. (Of course, I failed to push hard enough when on Sunday the 10th I splurged at two different parties.)
Well, yesterday (that’s Monday the 18th), I’d finally broken through that “set point.” And even though I increased my carbs, my body was “free” of that point, and just kept on losing weight. So today I need to increase the carbs even more, to avoid the loss.
This is the part of the program that’s both fun and strange. Fun, because you get to eat quite a bit more food. But strange because you can wind up feeling too full, but you have to keep on eating… in order to stabilize and/or lose more weight.
Side note: Last time my wife and I went through this program and got to this stage, there was one evening meal where I just broke out laughing. It looked like she’d barely touched her plate – there was so much food on it – and she looked at me with sad eyes and said, “I’m FULL. I don’t want to eat any more.” And I had to insist (with a smile, and then a laugh), “Look, you’re trying to lose weight. So you’ve got to finish everything on your plate!”
Whoever heard of stuffing yourself to lose weight? Or to keep it off? So strange!
But it works!
Filed under: God at work | Tags: Bob Bennett, healing, heart cry, Lord, Lord of All, Lord of the past, prayer, The View From Here
This song has kept coming to mind recently. It’s not just a beautiful, soothing song, but an anguished cry. And it hits me right where I am. So I’ve been listening to it over the last few days. And yesterday’s message has now brought me back to it once again. So, I’ll share it here – in the hopes that maybe these words will help someone else. (If it really speaks to you, please support Bob Bennett by buying his album here.)
Lord Of The Past - By Bob Bennett
Every harsh word spoken
Every promise ever broken to me
Total recall of data in the memory
Every tear that has washed my face
Every moment of disgrace that I have known
Every time I’ve ever felt alone
Lord of the Here and Now
Lord of the Come What May
I want to believe somehow
That you can heal these wounds of yesterday
So now I’m asking you
To do what you want to do
Be the Lord of the Past
Oh how I want you to
Be the Lord of the Past
All the chances I let slip by
All the dreams that I let die in vain
Afraid of failure and afraid of pain
Every tear that has washed my face
Every moment of disgrace that I have known
Every time I’ve ever felt alone
Lord of the Here and Now
Lord of the Come What May
I want to believe somehow
You can redeem these things so far away
So now I’m asking you
To do what you want to do
Be the Lord of my Past
Oh how I want you to
Be the Lord of the Past
Well I picked up all these pieces
And I built a strong deception
And I locked myself inside of it
For my own protection
And I sit alone inside myself
And curse my company
For this thing that has kept me alive for so long
Is now killing me.
And as sure as the sin rose this morning,
The man in the moon hides his face tonight.
And I lay myself down on my bed
And I pray this prayer inside my head
Lord of the Here and Now
Lord of the Come What May
I want to believe somehow
That you can heal these wounds of yesterday
So now I’m asking you
To do what you want to do
Be the Lord of my Past
You can do anything
Be the Lord of the Past
I know that you can find a way
To heal every yesterday of my life
Be the Lord of the Past
Filed under: God at work | Tags: Bodacious 80s, C3, C3 Church, C3 Orlando, Livin' On A Prayer
What a fantastic message!
This morning at C3, we had the first in a several-week series of messages. The series is called “Bodacious 80’s.” I don’t know what Pastor Byron and the rest of the leadership team have stored up for us. But this morning Pastor Byron talked about Prayer, and he had the band go retro with “Livin’ On A Prayer.” (Although they started the service by having Josh Wilson play Guitar Hero – the intro to Guns ‘N Roses’ “Sweet Child O’ Mine” – and then have the rest of the band blend in and take over. It was a pretty cool way to take us from NOW back to THEN.)
The music was fun, but the message… what can I say? God was using Pastor Byron to really communicate His love and His desire to have us really talk with Him – to truly pray.
The thing that struck home the most with me was the analogy that talking with God is supposed to be like talking with your spouse.
Pastor Byron compared many typical prayers to talking with his wife, Angie. “What if,” he said, “I got up every morning, got Angie’s attention, and then reeled off three or four standard requests then left for the day and never spoke to her again until that night, when I had one or two more standard phrases to repeat to her with included more requests. And every day I did the same thing. What would our relationship be like?”
I thought about that with my own wife. If I did that it would make for some very rough times in short order. And it probably wouldn’t be long before our marriage would be over. Ouch! Same thing would be true if I set the requests to poetry or said them in a “Ye Olde English” way and repeated the same things to her every day. She might appreciate the effort at poetry or the translation into an old tongue, but she’d still miss true communication which is one of the bedrocks of realtionships.
I’ve heard sooo many people pray to God with pre-scripted rhymes or rote messages. Other’s adopt a “King’s English” or “holy” vocabulary. And still others get into this… I don’t know how to describe it other than to say it’s their own special “prayer language.” And I’m not talking about those who speak in “tongues.”
What I am talking about is prayers like, “Oh Lord, I just really want to just really pray that you would just really touch me, Lord, in a special way right now and that you would just really take the words ‘just’ and ‘really’ out of my prayer vocabulary.” Or how about, “God, thank you, God, for today, God. God, You’ve blessed us so much, God. And God, we’re humbled, God, to come before You now, God, and worship You, God.”
Now, granted, those are perhaps (perhaps!) a bit over-the-top. But I honestly have heard a few that are pretty close to that. What’s wrong with that? Nothing really, especially if that’s the way you normally talk with your closest friends and family.
Do you normally use words like “just” and “really” over, and over, and over again in normal conversation with your friends? If so, then, go ahead and talk with God that way.
Do you normally remind your closest friends that you’re talking to them at the beginning and/or end of each sentence? Or is it that you have to remind yourself that often who you’re talking with? If so, then, of course, there’s nothing wrong with talking with God that way.
Even if you don’t normally talk with your friends or family that way, truly, God understands. If you’re just meeting Him, or just getting to know Him, of course He’s patient and understanding. He LOVES you!
But, if there’s such a difference in the way you talk with your friends and family, and the way you talk with God, maybe it’s appropriate to ask how close your relationship with God is. As I just said, if your relationship is just getting started, then it’s not at all unusual to fumble and stumble a bit when talking with someone so AWESOME. (I just think of how many people get nervous, and “forget how to talk” when they’re in the presence of a “great person” or one of their heroes.) But those who’ve been growing closer to God, how about trying talking with God.
He’s big enough to hear your true words, thoughts, feelings. Try reading Psalms – you’ll see David didn’t hold back; just laid everything out before God. You can too. And, as Margaret Becker says in her song, Honesty, off her Immigrant’s Daughter album, “God’s not afraid of your honesty.”
Lest you think I’m all high and mighty, thinking I’m somehow “better” than others in my prayer life…
I’m not.
I happen to have grown past the rote prayers, the longing to be able to speak “God’s language” (the king’s english), and the silly verbal “twitches” people go through when they are asked to pray publicly.
But I still have a looonnnggg way to go in my prayer life. Sure, I can talk to God conversationally. But, just as I ignore most all of my other friends too much, I tend to ignore God as well. And I just don’t talk with Him anywhere near as often as I should want to want to. And I really struggle with listening to Him. I think I just lack the patience, and the quiet. (I’ve too often got music playing in my head. It’s not as bad as it once was, but it’s still there quite a bit.)
So, this morning’s message was one more encouragement by God (through Byron) that He wants me to talk with Him more – both in terms of time spent talking as well as frequency of conversations.
Filed under: Health and Fitness | Tags: diabetes, diabetic, fitness, health, Health & Fitness, HealthPointe, lose weight, nutrition, supplements, vitamins, weight loss
Last night we had another conference call with the Lean Team. (The Lean Team is a large group of people from all around the country who are going through the HealthPointe 2.0 program “together.”) The call last night included input from a Dr. who was able to step out of Urgent Care for a three to five minutes to talk to us. And I thought I’d share some of his insights as well as some of the other tips provided by other coaches.
After congratulating all of us for sticking with it (we’re in the middle of our 4th week), and a brief mention that he’s helped hundreds of patients lose weight using HealthPointe – including one lady who lost over 100 lbs. – he gave a few tips as well as talked about some of the studies he’s followed/read that relate to weight loss.
His first point: You don’t have to lose a lot of weight nor get to your “ideal” weight to obtain health benefits. Even losing a few pounds can cause good things to happen. Now, that’s not to say that you should ignore your doctor’s advice to lose “X” pounds. If s/he says you need to lose “X” pounds, you would do well to follow his/her advice. And along the way to losing all the weight you can expect to experience some health benefits… possibly within a fairly short amount of time and long before you’ve lost all the weight. (What a cool thing!)
He backed that up by relating some of the details from a study. (I didn’t memorize or even write down all the details.) What caught of what he said about the study was this:
It was a study of people who had diabetes, and compared 3 different plans/treatments as well as a group using a placebo.
Those who changed their lifestyle on average lost 5% of their body weight over the same timeframe.
Those on a drug called Metaformin (sp?) on average lost 3% of their body weight over the 3 years that the study continued.
Those on the 2nd drug (I didn’t catch the name) lost less than 3%. And those on the placebo gained some weight.
Now, even with these modest changes in weight, here’s some really exciting news!
Those who lost 3% had an average 31% risk factor reduction for diabetes! To put that in pounds: If they started out weighing 200 lbs, and lost 6 lbs over the three years, they reduced their risk factors for diabetes by almost 1/3!!
But it gets even better. Those who changed their lifestyle instead of relying on drugs to lose weight had (on average) a 58% risk reduction!! Again, putting “real” numbers to that: If they started out at 200 lbs, over the course of the 3 years they lost (on average) 10 lbs which resulted in cutting their risk factors for diabetes by 58%!!! (That’s more than 1/2 off but not quite 2/3 off.)
Pretty amazing stuff!
The doctor continued… he explained to us the critical importance of supplementation while on a weight loss program. What he’s found most critical is taking care of micro-nutrients including getting a good balance of Omega-3 fatty acids, Phytofactors (that come from plants), and assuring you’re getting the nutrients of real fruits and vegetables.
The goal of weight loss is to lose fat – not to break down body-functions. As such, it’s very imortant to get adequate (not excess) protein in your diet. That helps your body rev-up its metabolism and burn off its excess fat. If you consume too much carbohydrate, your body will burn that and/or convert it to more fat. And if you consume too much fat, well, that’s just packing in more of what you’re trying to get rid of.
One of the Lean Team participants had written in asking about how to stop constipation or diarrhea. The recommendation was to take a combination of Calcium and Magnesium. Apparently those help with “regularity.”
Finally, someone asked about weight fluctuations and plateaus. They were concerned about going days without losing any weight, or even gaining 1.5 to 2 lbs. They wanted to stop weighing themselves daily, and check weight only every 2-3 days so as to not get discouraged.
The answer was: Don’t worry about temporary weight stagnation or slight increases. There are quite a few potential causes for that: full bladder, bowels, water retention/bloating, hormones, or a few other possibilities. The example was given that 1 liter (about 2 quarts) of water weighs just over 2 lbs., and 1 quart is just over 1 lb. So it’s very easy to have your weight fluctuate as a normal course of each day. The key is: You should see a gradual downward trend in your weight as you’re following the program.
I found that encouraging since I gained just over 2 lbs last Sunday (due to breaking out of the program when we went to two parties and consumed ridiculous amounts of carbs – lasagna, noodles, veggies, salad, chocolate cake, mashed potatoes, ice cream, brownies, etc.)
I lost just over 1 lb of that the next day. But since then I’ve been stuck at the same weight – it’s now 3 days… maybe tomorrow it will continue back on the downward trend. Or maybe not, since this is one of my body’s “set points.” We’ll just have to wait and see. (And I’ll have to be “good.” 
)
Filed under: Health and Fitness | Tags: fitness, health, Health & Fitness, HealthPointe, lose weight, weight loss, Weight Watchers
I was just reminded of Weight Watchers yesterday. My Mom went through their program years ago. I think it worked for a while, but she “fell off” as I recall and gained all the weight back. Then she found another program – that included spirituality in it – and by working on not only her body but her mind and spirit as well, she finally got all the weight off… over the course of quite a few months.
She would post a graph of her falling weight on the refrigerator showing only a 10-20 pound range, and not the real weight – so as to avoid broadcasting her real weight to the family, and anyone else who came into her kitchen. (I think she used some sort of a “big” mark at the 10s, a smaller mark at the 5s, and hash-marks for the individual lbs. So, instead of reading: 190, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195, etc. her chart might read: X, -, -, -, -, x, etc. down the left side of the graph.) Sometimes it would get discouraging as she’d hit plateaus or even move back up a pound or two. But by looking at the overall downward trend, she was able to get encouragement.
But I digress…
Weight Watchers. Yeah, that’s what I wanted to write briefly about.
Weight Watchers, as far as I know, looks to be a good program for a lot of people. Clearly, they’ve helped many many people lose a lot of weight.
Two things I really like about it:
1) It encourages personal discipline and growth in terms of learning how to eat in a more healthy manner – both quantity and quality/type of foods.
2) It includes weekly encouragement from others. Losing weight is soooo much harder when you’re working alone. You can easily get discouraged. But with someone (or a whole group of people) encouraging you on, and giving tips and tricks to overcome challenges, you’re far more likely to succeed.
There is one danger, though, that I’ve heard about WW. That is, with their point system and the freedom to choose anything that fits in point-wise, there can be a temptation, if not tendency, to fall into the trap of eating less of the really healthy and metabolism-stoking foods, and more of one’s comfort foods.
With a good coach/mentor/group, and brutal honesty about what you’re putting in your mouth, you should be able to avoid this trap.
We are (physically) what we eat. And, as Zig Ziglar says, “I never accidentally ate anything.”
When we eat the right kinds of food, in the right quantities, we’ll have the body-shapes we were meant to have. And programs like HealthPointe, and Weight Watchers are great for getting us re-aligned to what is right for us.
