Congratulations Casey!

I'm inspired by these athletes. I've been watching Ninja Warrior before it America stared doing it too. It's fun and gets me in the mood to workout.

still doing thrive...still having great energy and weight loss. Not nearly the aches and pains I used to have. http://sirbunch.le-vel.com/

Refrigerator location...save money....quick hack, and a better salad!

Ever shove something to the back of your fridge and have it get freezer burn symptoms? This is kinda obvious but it's a good idea to use it to your advantage. Store raw meats in the back of the bottom drawer of your fridge. That's the coldest place in your fridge.

It's the worst place for veggies. I was a bachelor for a long time and I can tell you that many of the evil creatures in my sci fi/fantasy novels were inspired by creatures I found in the "crisper" that I think were once vegetables. Simple reality is this: stick your veggies in front. Right in the way of all the stuff you shouldn't be eating. That's the only way they'll get eaten before they go bad. 

Go through your fridge once a week, I try to do it on Fridays. Tie a reward to it. Allow yourself something you've been wanting to do and you know you're going to breakdown and do anyway--as long as you spend the 12 minutes it takes to clean out the fridge. 

Bonus tip: Don't wash your veggies unless consumption is eminent. It's good to store veggies ready to eat but don't just wash them and throw them in the fridge. They can spoil fast when wet. Salad spinners are great because you can prep a salad and then spin off the water and store it nearly dry. 

The trick to a good salad is changing it up. For years I either bought a huge variety (my own salad bar) and then didn't do it because it's a lot of work, or I bought plain lettuce and didn't eat it twice because it's boring. So here's the balanced approach. Get two to three things you enjoy as a staple and then try adding one guest ingredient that's seasonal/local to keep you palate interested. 

Final tip. garden fresh lettuce is roughly 1,000,000,0000,0000,000 times better tasting than what you get in the store. Lettuce is easy to grow but prone to bugs, gophers, etc. It can be grown hydroponically or in raised beds. If you're serious about salads I recommend growing lettuce and sprouts. Those seem to be the most bang for your effort (in terms of health and taste). 

Okay, one final thing I've said before but feel I must yet again. If you hate the crazy lawn clippings they serve in fancy salads I do too. They say "Iceberg lettuce has no nutritional value, blah blah," but human beings don't eat salad as a source of nutrition. We eat it for roughage. So eat the lettuce that tastes good.

Finally, I've been experimenting again. I'm not do to talk much about it until I've been on it another few weeks, but I'm really excited by my results on Thrive so far. Here's a link to more info if you want to try it before I finish my grand experiment. Bare in mind, all my experimenting last year led to me losing 40 lbs of fat. So I've got a track record of discovering things that work. Well this is a step you can take that's simpler than anything else I've tried.  

Important hack if you're using audio book coupon codes: #mustread

Thanks to Fred Wolinsky for bringing this to my attention and thanks to Simon at Rocking Self Publishing for making the video about it.



 My own audio books are:

http://goo.gl/x8Cd5M

http://goo.gl/KiwYhi

http://goo.gl/Zfvagz

http://goo.gl/yzOFx

and http://goo.gl/4U2c63

Great post about hearing God's voice

Hearing God in Meditation    by Sam Williamson, 15 July 2014  "God speaks time and again-in various ways-but nobody notices" (Job 33:14). Most people I know have an innate desire to hear God; actually, more than a desire, an intense longing. We want to connect with the divine, to somehow see the face of God, to touch and be touched. It's inborn, an inherent ingredient of our humanity. Scripture says God is always speaking, but we miss it. We don't notice his voice because we don't recognize it. Oh, sometimes he breaks in through writing on the wall or thorough a speaking beast of burden, but mostly he speaks in a still, small voice. We miss his voice because it is drowned out in the sea of other voices. The cacophony of sounds, like an orchestra tuning, obscures that still small voice. Stomachs growl their hunger, bosses bark their orders, and that insult from twenty years ago still shouts its condemnation. How do we learn to discern God's voice? In meditation. Christian meditation trains our ears to distinguish God's voice--that one instrument--amidst the orchestra of others. And once we learn to recognize God's voice, we begin to hear it "time and again, in various ways." To hear God's voice, we need to learn to meditate. Unless, like Balaam, you have a talking ass.    [...]      Read more...

Great post about hearing God's voice

Hearing God in Meditation    by Sam Williamson, 15 July 2014  "God speaks time and again-in various ways-but nobody notices" (Job 33:14). Most people I know have an innate desire to hear God; actually, more than a desire, an intense longing. We want to connect with the divine, to somehow see the face of God, to touch and be touched. It's inborn, an inherent ingredient of our humanity. Scripture says God is always speaking, but we miss it. We don't notice his voice because we don't recognize it. Oh, sometimes he breaks in through writing on the wall or thorough a speaking beast of burden, but mostly he speaks in a still, small voice. We miss his voice because it is drowned out in the sea of other voices. The cacophony of sounds, like an orchestra tuning, obscures that still small voice. Stomachs growl their hunger, bosses bark their orders, and that insult from twenty years ago still shouts its condemnation. How do we learn to discern God's voice? In meditation. Christian meditation trains our ears to distinguish God's voice--that one instrument--amidst the orchestra of others. And once we learn to recognize God's voice, we begin to hear it "time and again, in various ways." To hear God's voice, we need to learn to meditate. Unless, like Balaam, you have a talking ass.    [...]      Read more...

Coffee and Workout???

Original Story

Story at-a-glance

• Coffee, when consumed in the right way, can in fact be used as a health and fitness enhancing tool
• In one recent study, athletes who consumed caffeine pre-exercise burned 15 percent more calories for three hours post-exercise, compared to the control group
• Other functional benefits of a pre-workout cup of coffee include improved microcirculation, pain reduction, improved endurance, muscle preservation, and improved memory
• When used before exercise, coffee will give you a good boost, and will work to optimize the benefits of exercise; stimulating energy production and fat burning
• Taken after exercise, coffee is more likely to inhibit recuperation and rather continue mimicking the effects of exercise on your body
• If you exercise in the evening, you may want to skip the pre-workout cup of coffee however, as it can disrupt your sleep cycle by keeping you alert well into the night

What I recommend before bed is a good book. I'm trying to read before bed each night and drink more water. So I've redone my schedule for the dozenth time this year.

My nightly ritual:

7pm Jeopardy

7:30 Prep Stop

8pm 2hr TV & snuggling with K

9pm watch a comedy & drink 1 glass H2O

9:30 TV Off, Cup of Tea

10pm in bed (Forgive/Be Thankful)

I managed to work water in like this:

H2O	Start time to 6:30?
2 glasses	after waking up
1 glass	30 mins before meals
1 glass	before taking a bath
1 glass	before going to bed

Christian Hypocrisy

I’ve noticed that most of the people who have a bone to pick with Christianity focus on its hypocritical devotees or the paradoxical nature of theology. They sometimes go to extremes to quote Old Testament strictures that seem ridiculous in the context of today. But very few people really have a problem with Jesus.

Whether they think of Him as a historical figure, or a literary character, or a wise prophetic voice speaking a truth that was needed at that time and place, most of the non-Christians I speak with don’t really have a problem with Jesus the man. He seems like a selfless person who only got angry in defense of other people. Some folks have even expressed a mild curiosity over how counterculture Christ was to His own time and to the Christian culture that claims to be inspired by Him.

The most frequent explanation for this I hear in the church is that Jesus didn’t come to start a religion, He came to re-establish a relationship. Somehow that doesn’t resonate with a lot of people. There’s a lot of ways to view Christ’s sacrifice and they’re probably all true. For example the legal view—the wages of sin is death and Christ died in substitution for us. But you can look around and still see people dying. Life after death in any form is a tough sell to an agnostic. The worst part of that explanation is that it makes God seem blood thirsty. Why didn’t a loving God just let us off the hook?

Even the relationship view is a tough one at first. Sin separated human from God, Christ’s death removes that barrier. But who wants to have a relationship with a bloodthirsty God? If He wants to start a relationship, He should just walk up and say hello.

I don’t have answers for all this, but I can address the hypocrisy issue. And this is not an explanation that most Christians are going to embrace right away.

Romans 8 says this:

Verse 5 For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit…9 But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.

This means that a person who claims to be a Christian and does not act like one does not have the Spirit of Christ! Well that’s what it says. But back up a tad and consider the context of the verse.

Verse 1 There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. 3 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin…

So in a nutshell—Christians are continuously faced with the option to live out of the accumulated wounds and scars they’ve acquired through life OR to live from the Spirit of God which is given to them freely by God. Most days we do both.

We do so for many reasons:
1) Habit/familiarity (you have to be transformed through controlling your thought life to not use autopilot.)

2) Fear (living according to the Spirit means facing situations you don’t feel equipped to face, loving/forgiving/etc.)

3) Lack of example (there are examples of Spirit living all around but almost everything we see is of the flesh.)

4) Distraction (Lots of attention demands, denying flesh is an act of will.)

Fortunately, the answers are simple. We’re perpetually forgiven when we realize we’ve drifted away and decide to return. God is less hung up on our failures than we are. 

Brought to you by "On Becoming a Man"