Health and Encouragement

I'm the worst person to tell people how to get healthy from the standpoint of a successful track record. But I can research and I can tell you what hasn't worked. I can tell you, your answer isn't the same as the person next to you. I can tell you that most of what "pop culture gurus" tell you will work only works for some people and they only show you the results of those that do.

Anything worth doing is going to cost you. You're going to pay with effort, confronting fears, discomfort and pain. Mostly pain. You've got to be willing to have things change, and you've got to keep trying even when things don't seem to be working. But before you can pull a "never, ever, ever give up," you need to be ready to change at any cost, and you need to have a plan you can believe in.

Every big project must be achieved one inch at a time, and that means planning. Planning I can do. Better than anyone I know.

My next phase in becoming healthier will involve HIIT & Intermittent Fasting, Thrive by level, and sitting less. Here's the short description of each, with more detail on each in the coming month, along with results from my attempts. (Journaling is another success factor.)

HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training)--Working out full speed for 30 seconds, resting for 90 second, for 10 to 20 minutes.

Intermittent Fasting--either reducing to 1/3rd calories for 3 days a week or compressing my eating to an 8 hour period. (The method I'm going to try)

Thrive--Capsules at waking, shake 20 to 40 minutes later, wear a patch all day. http://sirbunch.le-vel.com/

Not sitting--I'm going to get up every hour and walk around when writing or watching TV.

Here's more detail on not sitting.

Story at-a-glance

• Evidence shows that prolonged sitting is devastating your health. It actively promotes dozens of chronic diseases, including overweight and type 2 diabetes, even if you are very fit
• As a general guideline, if you’ve been sitting for an hour, you’ve sat too long. At minimum, you should not sit for more than 50 minutes out of every hour
• Better yet, try to keep your sitting to a minimum; the less the better. I personally strive for less than an hour a day of sitting
• Studies looking at life in agriculture environments show that people in agrarian villages sit for about three hours a day. The average American office worker can sit for 13 to 15 hours a day
• Beneficial molecular effects are activated simply by carrying your bodyweight upon your legs. Those cellular mechanisms are also responsible for pushing fuels into your cells
• I also recommend challenging yourself to walk 10,000 steps per day with the help of one of the newer fitness trackers. This is over and above your regular fitness routine

What happened to the dollar?

If you haven't read "The Creature from Jekyll Island," you may be hunting bear without a bullet in your gun. Just saying.

Thanks inflation watch! http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-09-13/inflation-watch-how-much-1-used-get-you 

Rejoice is a choice

Rejoice as Choice

9/22/2014

1 Thessalonians 5:16 – 19, 23 – 24

¹⁶ Rejoice always, ¹⁷ pray without ceasing, ¹⁸ give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. ¹⁹ Do not quench the Spirit.

²³ May the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound^[f] and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. ²⁴ The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do this.

Rejoice in every situation? I’ve only recently come to see this as a cornerstone of life. I kept waiting for my circumstances to reflect the changed reality inside me as I grew as a person. Sometimes I found myself in just such a situation.

Once I took up weightlifting with a friend and ended up taking a step aerobics class. I wouldn’t have chosen to do the class, but I really enjoyed the break from college and the combination of both workouts caused me to drop weight without a great deal of stress and will power. Eventually an injury caused me to give up weight lifting and I got out of the habit of hitting the gym.

Now in my 40’s I’m taking up health, both diet and exercise, and though I feel my stamina and strength returning I’m not dropping pounds at all. I can even see results in the mirror—I look and feel better than I have in years. I have more energy. BUT the scale doesn’t move.

I can choose to believe that the first time I exercised I was doing the right thing because it worked. I can look at what I’m doing now, which takes way more effort and I can get down on myself because it’s not working. If I do that, I’m unseated from the place of peace that is mine in God. I lose connection to God and soon I give up entirely, or worse.

Clearly I can’t take my self-esteem from the situation around me. It’s got to come from inside. I think the reason I was so challenged by this in the past is because it seemed like a command. “No matter how bad it get’s Andy, you’re Christian duty is to put on a brave face.” It was so inauthentic I couldn’t believe it was from God. We’re assured that all good things come from God (James 1:17). So my very reason for rejecting the notion that I’m to suffer with cheer is the very reason I am able to do it now—it’s all in how you look at it. God doesn’t command ME to be cheery in bad times, He’s offering to give me joy despite any circumstance.

My wife has a saying, “happiness is an emotion: Joy is a choice.” It’s very true. Our situation can impact whether we are happy, angry, sad, depressed, etc. but if we live from inside out we can choose to be thankful and joyous no matter what’s going on externally. Joy is part of the character of God, along with Love, Peace, Understanding, Long Suffering, Gentleness, Kindness, and Meekness/Humility. Any of these things are yours for the asking. They are your inheritance.

As a bonus, when we remain true to the inner reality despite our external situation we become increasingly more impactful on our external circumstances. When we live from outside in we can never know peace, love, joy or any of it for longer than a second or two. If we live from inside out, relying not on our own strength, we can experience a centered, aware, peace and joy that confounds any attempt to take us out.

In the movie Click, Adam Sandler’s character is given a remote that can fast forward through the tough relationship areas of life. It starts skipping anything emotionally difficult times automatically, which jumps further and further ahead into some really rough situations. The character eventually learns to appreciate the bad with the good because if he avoided it he lost opportunities for relationship with the people he cared about. That’s exactly what’s going on in our lives with God. If we try to zone out the hard stuff we lose connection with the one who loves us perfectly.

Rejoice is a choice at all times. Have a great day…or not, you decide.

HD Mini-copter you control from your cell phone.

This thing is totally cyberpunktastic. I love it and am creeped out by it at the same time. Gotta check it out.

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/3d-pocketcopter-the-flying-camera

Amazing typewriter art!

It's Friday and its time to see something amazing. Check out the video below.

My newest book is out and doing well

I eat meat!

I'm a meat eater. I grew up SDA (Seventh Day Adventist, which is not Mormon, or Jehovah's Witness). About 50% of SDAs are vegetarian. It's an interesting story to look into--Kellogg, Post and the lot at Battle Creek Michigan, but not the topic of this post.

I grew up eating meat some and not-meat whenever we were around other SDAs. So I have some experience on both sides of the fence. I've known my share of Vegans, etc. as well. But I still believe in eating meat. We eat too much meat in our society and we're too far removed from the act of killing, which is probably why. Another side effect of paying others to do our killing is that we are wasteful. I've caught fish, killed and ate them. I've mercy killed a couple small animals and my friend and I once bought a goat and BBQ'd it. I'm not a big hunter but only because I've not found time to take it up among all the other hobbies I've got. I didn't enjoy killing any of the animals including the fish.

There's a relationship between death and life. It's not something that can be commuted from one person to another. It's an unwelcome lesson we must learn along our journey. Washing our hands of the acts that bring us our meat has created a stunted maturity in western adults. Worse than that, its created an environment of ignorance about how animals are raised. So most mass produced meat is not healthy for us. I can't compel anyone to go face the realities of death as a factor of life--I can only make a suggestion and move on, but I am making that suggestion.

In an interesting twist of fate, the meat substitute market has also fallen to greed and created unhealthy monstrosities in the pursuit of an alternate to killing animals. Watch the video for more information. Thanks Dr. Mercola.



At a glance:

• Quorn is a fungus-based ferment used in food production as a meat substitute. It was originally developed by one of the largest chemical companies in Great Britain
• The fungus Fusarium venenatum is first grown in large fermentation vats. Once the water is removed, what is left is a paste-like biomass, which is then processed into various food products
• Since its launch in 1985, several studies have raised concerns about Quorn’s safety—especially in people with food and/or mold allergies
• Reported adverse effects from Quorn include nausea, cramps, diarrhea, forceful vomiting, and anaphylactic reactions
• While factory-farmed meats are best avoided, organically raised, grass-fed or pastured animal products provide valuable nutrients that have no equivalence in the plant kingdom