Being Too Busy

Calgary View Nose Hill Park

There is nothing worse for creating new habits than being too busy.

Life is busy, isn't it?

All that being busy gets in the way of change. We have our routines and those routines are how we manage. Change means we have to disrupt the routines.

My routines prior to making these changes on May 1st were all BAD. Yep. No nice way to say it.

I got up as late as I could. I tried to squeeze the last few seconds of sleep out of my night and that caused pressure on my overall performance, but that was my habit. I was protective of that rest and would argue I needed my beauty sleep. Even though there was absolutely no evidence to support that it was somehow making me more beautiful, and perhaps there was even evidence to the contrary.

I would stagger down to the kitchen and let the dog out and then with my eyes half open I would feel my way around the kitchen and get a coffee into my miserable self. I would stand at the counter feeling gross and try to stir myself up to face the day.

The day then got very busy.

I would go up to my computer and try to get as much done as possible in an hour, get everything packed into my briefcase and rush out for the appointments, the training classes I would teach, or the schedule that I had set for myself. I was very busy. That amount of busyness was keeping me from reaching any health related goals. My days were going from one appointment to another. No time for exercise and no time for thinking about what to eat.

I didn't eat breakfast which kept my body in starvation mode. Then I was so hungry I would eat a heavy lunch that fed my soul. On cold days I wanted something hot so in the restaurants I was ordering the burger and fries with gravy and Reuben sandwiches . I smothered everything with cheese and sour cream. I didn't order salad because it was cold. Ew... cold...

I did not take the stairs. I did not like exercise.

When I finished up my appointments I went home and right back to the computer to do more work. My ass was getting bigger and bigger. Sometimes I was having trouble fitting into a chair in a restaurant. I did not like that feeling, but habit was keeping me there.

Working with my habits coach Rael Kalley has opened up my eyes. I realize now, I am my own worse enemy. I have this big gang in my head that has sprayed my thoughts with ugly graffiti and as soon as I try to clean it off or repaint they show up with bats and swear at me. They try to take back their territory. I have to fight for it every day. One of their tactics is to remind me just how busy I am. I have no time for exercise.

Whispering Walkway
Nose Hill Park

Since I started the 100 day program I am no longer responding to those gangsters. I am making time for exercise every day. We have been visiting the parks all across the city and taking pictures and videos of our experiences. We go for a walk either early in the morning, or in the evening, and we have been fitting it into our busy lifestyle with more ease than I thought possible. I am actually really enjoying the exercise. I would not have believed that was possible.

Following a plan for what I eat is also easier than I realized. It just requires some pre-planning. Once you get into the habit of buying fruit a couple times a week, it is not hard to juice each morning. Once you buy a few bags of meal replacement protein powder from Arbonne you have something around for those times when you are too busy to make good choices. Making a new plan priority is not hard once you have made it priority. The difficulty is in our mind before we get started. Once we get started it gets easier.

What are you too busy doing? What do you do now to overcome it?

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Proper Fruit Consumption

There is a lot of controversy about fruit. Some people say that it is very good for you. Others will say that it is full of sugar content and that it is bad for people with diabetes and that we should all watch our fruit intake.

Fit For Life talks a lot about proper fruit consumption. Until I read this book and started applying it I had no idea that fruit could be eaten in a way that is not good for the body. For example if fruit is cooked obviously it changes the chemical composition of the fruit. Cooking fruit makes it very high in sugar calories. That makes sense because we all know if we sit around and eat apple pie or cherry cobbler all day it's going to definitely add some pounds to the waistline. I had not given it much thought before reading that book but having canned fruit in a little cup, would be the same as eating it in a pie. It is cooked. I grew up on home made jams, and we put fruit into all kinds of food that we cooked. It is sweet and delicious. In my early years I never thought about it.

Orange juice that you get out of a can, or even in a carton, or a jar, from the fridge at the grocery store is concentrated. That's a big fancy word that means cooked. When any kind of fruit has been cooked it turns into a sugary acid.

When Health experts tell people with diabetes that they should not be eating fruit, they would be correct if they were talking about fruit that is cooked. It is actually pretty nasty. When you think of a food that will spike your blood sugar level, that one is pretty guaranteed. What if they ate it raw though? Is it the same? The calories are similar when you compare concentrated orange juice to fresh squeezed orange juice, but what if it is not just about calories? The Canada Food guide does not distinguish any difference in cooked or raw fruit so I thought they must be the same. Now though I believe they are not the same because of what I experience in my own body when I consume them.

An interesting thing that fit for Life brought to my attention is what happens to a fruit that is eaten raw, but then has other food added into the stomach at the same time with it. This is something I had never heard any health experts say, but by experimenting in my own body I would definitely agree there is something to be said for this. Fit For Life tells us that if we eat fruit by itself but the fruit remains alkaline, and that alkaline is basically good for us. That lines up to other things that I have read that suggests that too much acid for instance in the system is a contributing environment in our body for diseases such as cancer. I think most experts would agree that alkaline is preferable.

How do we prove that it stays alkaline in the body when it is eaten raw? I am not a scientist, so I don't have a test I could run. I could however do an experiment in my own body. I could test how I feel after I consume these things on separate occasions. I could even log the results in a journal and see long term if there is any difference in anything that is measurable.

We have been trained to eat all kinds of things with fruit. My father told me for years that fresh squeezed orange juice, or any kind of orange juice would give him an immediate heartburn. That would suggest acid. So I had him do a little test. He knew that if he drink orange juice as he normally did, quickly followed by coffee and with breakfast that he would have heartburn. So I asked him to try it with only orange juice that is fresh-squeezed, and to have nothing else for at least an hour and see what that did to him. The result was he had no heartburn. In fact he realized afterwards that he could enjoy fruit by itself on an empty stomach first thing in the morning without any painful side effects. He could even drink grapefruit juice that was fresh squeezed. He also noted that if he ate anything else within 45 minutes of putting that fruit of his mouth that he would then be sick immediately. He definitely could not drink concentrated orange juice and concentrated grapefruit juice was even worse.

You've been eating fruit all your life. Try this. One morning eat fruit the way you've always eaten it. Put your bananas on top of your cereal, take your vitamins and meds with your oranges, have fruit inside of a protein shake, or put strawberries on your waffles with whipped cream. After you eat these things go sit on the couch quietly and think about how you feel. What does your stomach feel like? How is your energy level? Is there any gurgling going on? Could you go outside right now and go for a brisk walk?

Tomorrow morning have only fruit. Don't cook your fruit, don't add sugar to it. Don't drink coffee with it. Don't have toast with it. Don't take vitamins or medication at the same time. Just have fruit. Raw fruit. You can squeeze oranges for real fruit juice if you want. You can eat pieces of watermelon, or handfuls of grapes. After you have eaten your fill go sit on the couch. And think about how you feel. Does your stomach hurt? What is your energy level like? Could you go outside and go for a brisk walk or a run right now.

There is one side effect eating fruit, and you might find it to be a little inconvenient but it is very healthy for you. You're going to have to go to the bathroom more. You are also going to be hungry faster. That's not really a problem though, just take a mandarin orange or a banana with you. They travel real well.

I find weight loss to be very easy if I eat fruit all morning. It gives me lots of energy, and my mind is very sharp. I don't even feel like I need coffee.

In the past when I took off a lot of weight, I kept it off for 10 years, and I hardly did any exercise. The one thing though that I did do continuously, is that I ate a lot of fruit in the morning that was raw, and I didn't eat anything else. I ran on 4 to 6 hours a night sleep when I did that. I didn't seem to need any more sleep. I just naturally woke up after 6 hours.

I have recently gone back to doing this, and the weight is coming off. I feel great. I would encourage you to try it out. Tell us how you feel?

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Measuring Progress

Apparently if you are trying to reach any goal, measurement is important. My habits coach Rael Kelly says that you will only manage what you measure. Therefore it is important to measure everything that has anything to do with your goal. In business I measure how many prospects we had out to meetings, and how many appointments we had. That makes sense.

Once I lost the weight I wanted to lose, I think I stopped measuring. I have not been on a scale in years. I think this is one of the reasons why people don't keep off the weight that they lose. I know myself whenever I have reach the goals I set in the past concerning weight loss, I stopped paying attention to any of the measurements. I also went out and celebrated by eating pizza, drinking beer, stocking up on wine, and indulged in huge plates of cheese. I had achieved what I wanted so it was time to be FREE again! All of that FREEDOM led to more BONDAGE of weight gain, so maybe some ongoing habit changes are in order...

I was not very committed to measuring during weight loss in the past. Even recently when I wanted to lose 20 pounds, I didn't even have a scale in the house. I just simply guess because I had size 22 clothing in the closet, and when I was able to wear size 20 or 18 clothing I knew I had made a difference. This time I decided that was not enough. I not only need to measure what my weight is, I need to take other measurements as well. I also need to do an assessment of the size of clothing that I'm wearing, and I also downloaded an app onto my phone that measures things like how many steps I walk in the day.

I use the Samsung Health app. It works very well. I just carry my phone with me when I go for a walk and it tells me that my goal should be 6000 steps for my age and my weight. And it measures every step that I take. It is also able to record my heart rate, and the oxygen in my blood, and a few other things.

I have never been much of a calorie counter, because I've always used the Fit for Life Principles of Food combining to lose weight, and then to maintain weight. This time however I decided that in the spirit of measuring everything, even though I am sticking to those principles, I would measure every calorie as well.

The Samsung Health app is awesome because it tells me how many calories I should be consuming if I want to be in weight loss mode. Apparently it is 1800 calories a day for someone my age and size. That is why the 400 calorie Starbucks lattes were not contributing favorably to a healthy lifestyle. Who knew?

By using Fit for Life principles, I only eat fruit in the morning. Usually I start out with fruit juice that is freshly squeezed with nothing else in it. Then for lunch, and for dinner I usually only have 25% of the plates covered with something that is not salad. It works best if there's only one thing at a time. For example chicken breast with salad is not only delicious, the chicken is about 25% of what is on the plate and the rest is raw salad items.

A couple of times a week I make a cleansing soup. It can be the cabbage soup from the cabbage soup diet, or different kind of cleansing soup like lentil soup with only onions and lemons and seasoning in it. As I've been recording my measurements, I have found that I typically eat 1200 to 1300 calories a day, so that is working well.

22 days into my program I had lost 14 pounds. It's nice to actually know because I have stood on a scale.

There are many different kinds of programs that one can use to lose weight, or to maintain weight, but the important thing is that you measure frequently. Start conditioning your mind now to keep getting on the scale everyday even after you have attained your goal weight. It took me a while to get the affirmations to kick in so I would want to exercise, so I am starting now to program myself for weight maintenance before I need that skill. I may change how many times a week I exercise once I have all of the weight off and I may let myself eat some foods occasionally, but measuring will need to become a lifestyle change. Otherwise a treat is not a treat anymore, it becomes a daily ritual. Daily rituals of Italian pasta with cream sauce and cheesecake for dessert quickly takes one back to where they started. My new bathroom scale is now a friend for life. I named her Nancy. She is my accountability partner. I want to manage, so I will measure.

What are you measuring? Write something below in the comment section, or share a link to your blog. You can also subscribe to mine up in the right hand corner.

Why I Use Fit For Life From 23 Years Ago

I had to get on a weight-loss program so I decided to go with what I know has worked in the past.

The interesting thing about diet is that everybody has a different opinion. Many of those opinions back them up with what they believed to be scientific fact. Everybody has different facts though. Facts and studies can be produced was just about any outcome that you want. Just get on the internet start searching. You can support your opinion, even if the majority would say that your opinion is crazy. Somebody is out there that has some kind of documentation that would support crazy.

Rael Kalley my habits coach says that whatever book you read about nutrition and weight-loss you should stick to if it works for you, because if you go back to the book shelf and buy another one it will tell you all different things. Which one is true? Now you are just confused. The reality is that there are different paths to the same end. You could cut your portions in half. That works. You could eat nothing but lettuce. That works. You could walk 10 km a day. That also works. Diet books come and go but what works in your body? Can you create a lifestyle with that knowledge? Go with that.

I'm going to share with you my opinion about a book I read over 20 years ago called Fit For Life, and I would encourage you to try a little experiment in your own body to see if you might feel the same way. Why use other people's opinions? Try some things out and see what your opinion is after you try something different.

Many years ago when I was in my early twenties I was very sick, a lot of the time. After I ate I had pain, and bloating. I also got headaches a lot, and they were really intense and sometimes I had to be hospitalized. Doctors had differing opinions of what was causing these problems. In the end it seems that perhaps there were two causes (although no doctor actually contributed to that opinion because they could not seem to agree on anything.)

The headaches were likely unrelated to the stomach problems. They were likely caused from food coloring, preservatives and MSG. I started going without these things and diligently reading labels and I immediately seen an improvement in the frequency of the migraines.

The stomach issues were a little bit more complicated, and many tests were ran. The doctors were unwilling or unable to come up with any satisfactory diagnosis. One suggested that it was probably irritable bowel syndrome, but at the time they seemed to not be certain of that either. All I knew is that I felt gross a lot of the time. I had little energy, and pain in my lower abdomen almost constantly, and more so after I ate.

When I got married to my first husband I wanted to impress him with my culinary skills and did a lot of home cooking. This included foods like homemade bread, and perogies and cabbage rolls, and lots of meat and potato dishes. I quickly gained 30 pounds in less than 6 months losing my trim figure and adding a little depression to my diet.

On a trip home to Saskatchewan my aunt had told me about her experience with reading a book called Fit for Life and how she had been planning to have a hysterectomy because of female problems and pain in her abdomen continuously but once she had being on this diet for about six weeks the symptoms had disappeared. She had also lost about 40 lb. I quickly went out and bought the book and began to apply everything in it.

The result was that I quickly lost the 30 lb but there were some other interesting side effects. The pain that I had been experiencing after I ate stopped entirely. My energy level went up significantly. In fact, from that point to this day I have always had a high energy level. It seemed to replenish vitamins and minerals in my body in some very visible ways. For instance, I had always had weak fingernails and suddenly they were strong, hard and growing. My hair was glossier and also began to grow faster, requiring to be cut more often. My skin became more clear and even my eyesight sharpened up.

Reducing the artificial enhancements to food had reduced the amount of headaches that I had had significantly. When I was in my late teens I was having a migraine headache at least once a week and sometimes three or four times a week. With those dietary changes I had reduced the amount of headaches to about once a month. I had started making those dietary changes when I was about 20. When I read the book Fit for Life I was managing the monthly headaches and I had truly believed that life was as good as it was going to get. However at age 25 when I started applying the principles of Fit for Life the headaches completely disappeared. To this day I rarely have any kind of a headache, and I think I've had two migraines in the last 23 years.

I'm a Believer in the Fit for Life principles because I have used them myself to take off weight, to feel better and more vibrant, and it has given me back my life. Over the years I have encouraged other people who had struggled with health issues to try it out. I'm not a doctor and I can't make it prescription however I can hand somebody a book and say listen if you don't believe it, just try it for 6 weeks and see if you feel a difference.

I've seen people with colon problems, diabetes, irritable bowel syndrome, and a variety of undiagnosed issues, work themselves back from the brink of distress, in a matter of 4 to 8 weeks. Over the years when I have followed the program I had long periods of weight maintenance. When I stopped following the program I rapidly gained weight and then uncomfortable symptoms and stomach pains began to reappear.

These days Fit for Life can be found in a second hand store usually for about $2. Some people say it was a fad diet and that there was not enough science behind it. There are lots of other more recent diet books that are on the shelf next to it in the bookstore. Over the years I have read some of the more successful ones, mostly out of a point of interest or because some friend of mine was trying a new program. We all know how zealous our friends can be when they are trying a new program. They want to tell everybody about it, and anything that you might know prior to they're reading this new great book is irrelevant because this new great book has new information. After reading many of these books with new information I have concluded that most of them that actually deliver results have stolen all or most of the program that was actually originally printed in Fit for Life. That's why they work. Don't take my word for it, go ahead and read Fit for Life, then read the Atkins diet, then read the South Beach Diet, then read whatever diet is trending right now, and you tell me if I'm wrong. There's always some variations but the core is about combining food in a way that better results happen, even if they don't tell you that is what they are doing. The Atkins book for example tells one to remove all carbs from their diet. That naturally leads to food combining because without any carbs in your diet you can't improperly combine a carb and a protein. It takes the carb off your plate.

In summation the Fit for Life program it suggests that you should never put meat and potatoes, or meat and bread, or meat and pasta, on the same plate. Fit For Life calls that a "bad combination." The reason is - it takes two different kinds of chemicals in your stomach to break them down. Starch requires alkaline, and meat is a protein which requires acid. If you remember your days of chemistry in high school what happens when you put alkaline and acid into the same container? They neutralize one another and therefore digestion is impeded. Which is why when you eat a nice big turkey dinner on Thanksgiving, you feel really slow and sluggish for several hours. All of that food of mixed combination working against each other in the same confined place takes a lot of energy out of your body and never actually properly digest the food, because alkaline and acid have been pumped in together into the same space.

Knowing this one thing about how food breaks down, empowers me to make better choices. If I want to have a steak, then I should enjoy a steak with some very nice salad. That keeps the steak without a heavy starch carbohydrate that requires alkaline. If you don't believe me, I don't blame you. I would ask you though to run an experiment. Have steak for two nights in a row. The first night eat your steak with a nice big baked potato with sour cream on it, and make sure you have a piece of bread with the steak. After you are done go lay on the couch for a while. Think about how you feel. How does your stomach feel? Consider your energy level. Do you feel like getting up to go do something outside? Write your observations down. Continue your evening doing the things that you normally do. The next evening prepare the steak again but this time, eat it only with salad. Make sure everything that is with the salad is raw. Raw lettuce, raw tomato, raw cucumber, and use a light dressing. Eat as much steak and salad as you want, but don't have any bread, or quinoa, or potato, or rice or, or pasta. After you're done your meal go lay on the couch and think about how you feel. Ask yourself the same questions.

Try this experiment with Fish and Rice one night. Then try it again with fish and only salad.

Try this experiment with chicken baked in the oven, and mashed potatoes and gravy. Then the next night make a nice salad and put chicken on the salad.

I encourage you to form your own opinion. Don't believe everything you read from any source, including Fit for Life. Try these things out in your body and write out the results in detail. See how you feel or if you notice the difference. This is why I believe this is a great program, because I can feel a difference. I think you will too if you stop and think about how you feel after you eat.

Tell me how your experiment worked?

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A New Plan

I have not written a blog here in about two years. I have been writing, just not here on my personal page. My business has been growing and I have had a lot of things to contribute to the blog on my website www.cibnconnect.com as well as on my LinkedIn profile.

I am going to start writing here again to talk more about personal matters as well as to track my ongoing weight-loss program and then weight-maintenance. I have discovered that weight-maintenance is actually even more important than weight-loss. I am making a new plan to take me forward to May 2019 one year from now.

Did you know that television programs like The Biggest Loser have a hard time planning reunion shows because the people gain the weight back? In fact, many weight-loss programs and dieting centers have the same problem. People do lose weight. Then they gain it back.

I too, have had some of these challenges, so I have been on the hunt to find out why and make some positive changes. I think I have learned a few things. I want to share them with you and maybe you can join me on this journey for a healthier life-style.

A pretty accurate picture of what I look like

Let's start with a recap. I gained weight for the first time as a newly wed. I was 25. I put on 30 pounds trying to impress my new husband with Ukrainian food and fresh baked bread. My aunt gave me a book that was popular at the time called Fit For Life. I applied the principles increasing fresh fruit and fresh vegetables and I lost the weight. Irritable Bowel Syndrome also vanished. I was back on track for several years. I also got rid of the husband. He was bad for my figure, my financial figures, and for me in general.

I was slender until my third child came into my life in my early thirties. That was my first real challenge. I think many women experience weight gain with having more children. After a few years of unhappy struggle I had a couple of girlfriends help me out by encouraging me to go back on the dietary plan I followed before and they got me out walking. I lost the weight and kept if off for about 10 years.

Many people talk about yo-yoing. I never really seen it as yo-yoing. I knew when I worked at it, I lost weight. When I stayed focused I kept it off. When I stopped eating healthy and stopped exercising, bad things happened. There was no real mystery about it. I knew what I was doing. I was making choices.

Lately I have realized most people are not thinking about it like that. They are not seeing daily small choices as being the leading cause of where they are at now. They seem to not see the correlation. Whenever I gained weight, I knew exactly what I was doing. Every time I put food in my mouth I knew if it was a good idea or a bad idea. Every day I opted for no exercise I understood I was adopting a Body By Pizza Hut attitude. Maybe that was even worse than not knowing.

When I hit 40 I suddenly found it harder to take weight off and keep it off. The metabolism was changing. It was even easier to gain weight. To make matters even more challenging I started a new business that was very demanding. It was hard to think about meal planning and even harder to plan exercise as part of a daily or even weekly routine. That was enough to start packing on the pounds but I had an even bigger problem. My business took place every day in restaurants. Suddenly I was eating in a way that was very different to my regiment. There was lots of salt, lots of sugar, and some places didn't even serve a proper salad. So I gave in to eating what my tongue desired, when it desired it. To top it off, I also began to enjoy more beer and wine. Yum. My taste buds were ecstatic. The rest of my body was screaming.

Fast forward to 6 years later. I have gained about 70 lbs. No joke.

My knees hurt. It is hard to exercise. My grandson who is 2 is outrunning me. I think it is time to make a change.

My business is no longer in a learning curve. We've got this. I don't have to be in a restaurant 5 days a week anymore, nor am I too weak-minded to create new strategies. So I have run out of excuses. I am making a change.

Over the next days and weeks and months and years I am going to be blogging here, because this is a life-long project. If you want to join me in the journey make a comment below. I will be sharing what is working and what is helpful. You can share your tips too. Let's do this together!

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