Sometimes pets can be very cute

Last night, as my wife was watching TV and I was putting my juices together, she heard our puppy scratching at some wicker baskets we have to keep the kids shoes and hats in. They are small baskets, probably 10 x 10 x 10 (inches) and we keep them under a bench that is barely 18 inches high. As she (my wife) gets up from her chair to see what is going on, she notices that the dog is not there. So she turns on the light in the hallway and this is what she finds.


Cute, very cute.

She somehow managed to get in and turn around in a very small confined space, plus there are shoes in that basket, which probably made it even harder to move around. Oh well, she did it and soon enough she'll be too big to do it again, but it was funny none the less.

Thyme, not on my side

No that is not a misspell of TIME, but the herb THYME. I have to say, why does anybody use it. It has been the cause of 2 of my juices tasting HORRIBLE. Last week's juice, which I thought was the tomatoes that was causing the horrible reaction turns out was too much THYME put into my juice. Again last night the recipe called for thyme and this time I put in less than asked for and today I'm having similar (not as strong though) feelings and effects from my juice. I'm almost half way through this juice and I SHOULD be able to finish it, but for future reference I will NOT be adding THYME to ANY of my drinks, or food for that matter. The stuff is strong tasting and really doesn't agree with me!!!

If you are wondering which ingredients are in my juices today, well, here they are:

Vegetable juice
==========
Tomatoes, Carrots, Celery, Garlic, Basic, Thyme, Parsley, Beet, Turmeric, Cumin, Dill, Cayenne Pepper.

Fruit Juice (which is more like a smoothie than a juice)
======================================
Oranges, Strawberries, Raspberries, Cranberries.

I've also drank a cleansing drink this morning to see if that helps remove some of the toxins from my body so that I may get healthier. It consisted of 2 tbsp fresh lemon juice, 2 tbsp organic molasses (made by my brother-in-law) and a dash of cayenne pepper mixed into 300ml of room temperature water (non-chlorinated). To my surprise it tasted great even though it wasn't cold.

Much better

Today's vegetable juice is much better. It consists of tomatoes, zucchini, garlic, basil, parsley, celery, beets, and I added coriander and cayenne pepper. Today's fruit juice, which I will drink later, consists of cherries, grapes and fennel bulb. I'm looking forward to it. Like I mentioned in my previous post, yesterday's was bad and it left my insides feeling funky into well after I ate my lunch. Because of that, and the heat we had yesterday, I didn't make it out for a jog at lunch. Today I have a work luncheon, so no jogging again. Hopefully tomorrow is nice enough to run, which would make it my first run this week. Not good.

Horrible

Today's vegetable juice is horrible. That is all I can say. I just tried to drink 1 L of it and after making it about 1/3 through, I almost brought it all back up. Not sure which vegetable is causing me to not like it, but I suspect it may be the tomatoes as they are the dominant taste in this mixture. Oh well, this will be a trial by error and when I get home I will make sure to make a note in the book that I don't like it.

In an hour I will drink my fruit juice, which I have already drank a bit of and liked it.

Doing it wrong

Just spent some time reading on juicefeasting.com and realized that I've been going about this juicing a little incorrectly. For the past 2 days I've been using my juices to control my hunger by drinking 8+oz every hour between my breakfast and my lunch. WRONG!

According the juicefeasting.com (point #8), I should be drinking 1 quart (1 litre for us metric people) as a complete meal, so in about 15mins, and then several hours later do it again. This *should* keep me full for several hours in between my 2 small meals.

This means that it is now time to drink my vegetable juice and then hopefully before I go for my jog at lunch time, I will drink my fruit juice. Should be interesting to see how I feel later today.

Feeling crappy

Woke up this morning and I felt like crap. Not sure why as when I went to bed last night I was feeling fine. I did lose about 30mins sleep last night as I went to bed a bit later than usual, but 30mins shouldn't affect me THAT much.

On another note (which may or may not be related), I drank over 2L of fresh juice yesterday. One liter was fruit and the other was vegetable. By the time I made it home for supper, I was starting to get hungry and a headache was forming. I will see how today goes to see if I need to increase my juice consumption in order to keep me full all day long. Keep in mind that the juice wasn't the only items consumed yesterday, as I had a small breakfast and lunch (they were much smaller than what I usually eat). My goal is to use the juice to limit my cravings throughout the day so that I my lose some weight while eating healthier. As for the juices, I do have to say that I'm liking the fruit juices much more than the vegetable juices, even though I'm using tested recipes (as oppose to just mixing a bunch of veggies).

For reference, today's fruit juice consists of pears, apples and fennel, while my vegetable juice consists of tomatoes, carrots, apples, parsley, thyme, turmeric and cayenne pepper. Yesterday's fruit juice consisted of pears, apples, grapes, ginger root and cinnamon, while the vegetable juice contained carrots, celery, apples, yellow pepper, cucumber and zucchini. I do have to say that I really like the taste and smell of coriander (even though it is not in these juices) and will be adding it to many of my vegetable juices to make them more palatable.

And now for a lyric quote.

"The time that we kill keeps us alive"
Rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated, Rise Against (Siren Songs of the Counter Culture)

Back to back

Well if you thought yesterday's run was a good thing, then running again today must be considered AWESOME.

Did the same loop in the reverse direction with less pain and finished 1 min faster.

Very happy about back to back successful runs.

Little jog

I did it. I went for a little jog at lunch. Nothing too long, just 24mins of 1:1 (1 min jog, 1 min walk). My shins seemed to hold up, but the back of my left ankle was starting to tense up near the end. It could have been because the last 1 km + is mostly uphill.

Anyway I look at it, it was a jog and a step in the right direction.

Calmer?

So last night my 2 year old decided that he really wanted to sleep in our bed. Actually he decided that about 5 months ago and now the wife and I are getting tired of being kicked and hit while we sleep, so we are trying to break him of his habit. So shortly after 2am he stumbles into our room and tries to get into bed (we have managed to get him to fall asleep in his toddler bed, but at some point in the night he makes it over to our bed). My wife wants nothing to do with this so, through kicking and screaming, she puts him back into his room/bed. She then decides to sit there to make sure he gets back to sleep. Hey, whatever works. After 30mins of this she's had enough and comes back to bed. Well he follows along about 1 min after her and now it is my turn. He doesn't want anything to do with me, as he only wants his mommy. For the next 2 hours I am engaged in a battle to keep my son in his bed so he can spend the last few hours sleeping there. This is just great for me as once he does manage to fall asleep it's time for me to get up for work. Now if you are following along, I get up at 4:30am to go to work as I have a 1hr+ commute to my office every day. No big deal, I'm part of a carpool and we have fun on our way to work. Now getting back to this post. During the 2 hours I spent trying to get my son to stop crying/screaming I had a calm disposition going on. Don't get me wrong, I'm not an angry person, but after several hours of being tired and screamed at, people do tend to lose their patience, and I am no exception to that rule. This made me wonder if it's because of my recent change in diet, specifically juicing. I have read that getting the proper nutrients daily does tend to make you feel much better about things because of less toxins in your body. I'm not saying that juicing is why I'm calmer, but I do feel that it could very likely have that effect on me. I guess we will know more the next time (probably tonight) my son decides that his bed is not where he wants to be to sleep.

The Numbers game

So I took measurements last weekend to see where I stand in reference to being healthy. Let's just say that I'm not even on the chart. I weighed in at 288lbs and for a guy my height I should be weighing in between 148lbs and 195lbs. No way will I ever get that low. One website did offer me some kind of consolation as it listed 234lbs as an "ideal" weight. Now that I would be somewhat happy with. My Body Mass Index (BMI) is a whopping 37. Again, far above the standard 25. As for my waist size, it came in at a nice 45.5 inches which is higher than the standard 37 inches (for males). Now for my Blood Pressure, I don't feel my numbers are totally accurate as I was at the beginning of a cold (see previous post), but it came in at 143/86 which is VERY high and I'm on meds to control it. When my physician measured it earlier that week, he told me it was 128/82 and he was content with that. My resting heart rate came in at 86, which again is high, but previous results have been around 78. So I think my cold symptoms may have had an effect on the readings. When I do my numbers again in 2 weeks (I try to take my numbers twice a month), I should have a better reading.

Overall, I've set a high bar to try to get under and I'm really not happy about it. This definitely gives me more motivation to keep drinking the juices.

Sick or Detoxing?

I woke up a few days ago and felt kinda crappy. I made a comment to my wife that I felt like I was hungover, which was kind of funny since it had been over a week since my last drink of alcohol. My throat was sore and I was fully congested. I did have some body aches and pains, but as the day went on, things went back to normal. By the time our company had left after supper, I was ready for bed as all my symptoms had quickly come back. I did have a few beers (2) with my friends, but that wasn't the reason. I thought I had a cold coming on so I went to bed early (10pm) and slept until 9am the next morning. I did wake up around 7 but felt even worse and my wife told to go back to bed. God love her for being so nice to me. The rest of the morning was spent relaxing as my symptoms weren't getting better. I wasn't taking any meds as generally a cold last 7 days on meds and 1 week off meds. I did make a vitamin C loaded juice (2 Oranges, 1 Grapefruit and 1/2 Lime) and that seemed to help with my congestion. As the day went on, I felt better until, again, after supper I had no energy. I went to bed before 10pm this time and knew I wouldn't be making it into work the next day. When I finally woke up at 7am, I again felt horrible. Same thing, different day. This cold was not going away without a fight. As the day went on I did managed to feel better and by the time I went to bed last night, I felt I could go to work today. 6 hours later, I was regretting that decision. This time I decided to take some cold medication to hopefully help me get through the day. Unfortunately they are not working. As I write this, I feel the worst I've felt over the past couple of days.

Now to the interesting part of this post. Earlier today I have spent some time looking for "green juice" recipes on the web and a common theme has come up. Many "green juices" are detoxifying juices. BINGO! Over the past several days I've been loading my body up with many varieties of vegetable and fruit juices that have been putting my body through some form of detoxification. I wasn't planning it, but I knew when I started that juicing is a great way to rid your body of all the bad stuff in it.

Don't get me wrong, I could very well be sick, but from reading about detoxification and it's symptoms, you are suppose to feel pretty crappy during this stage and should begin to feel better once most of the toxins have been removed from your body. I guess I will know more in a few days/weeks when everything is finally out. In the meantime, it is really hard to focus on things when you can't breath and you have a headache. The joys of juicing!

A new addition

Well the wife finally convinced me to get an addition for our family. Say hi to "Bailey".


She is a 7 week old Golden Retriever. She is very cute, but aren't all puppies cute? She seems to be partially potty trained as she has not had an accident in the house (yet), and she whimpered last night to go out and do her business. I think it helps that were we picked her up, she was outdoors and probably was disciplined if she had an accident when in the house. I guess time will tell if she is or not.

This will be my 6th dog, but only my 2nd puppy. My first came to us as a puppy when I was just a young lad, but all our other dogs came into my life at least 1 year old.

The kids love her and are constantly fighting for her attention. We are looking forward to years of fun with her.

As she gets bigger, I will post more pictures.

Still juicing

It has been a couple of days now and I'm still enjoying my juicer. Can't say the same for my kids. My oldest daughter and youngest son are very picky eaters, so they haven't embraced the juicer yet. We even had them make a juice of all fruits (that they like) and only my middle daughter drank it. Actually she (the middle child) has liked most of the juices made, including some of the vegetable ones. Either way, daddy gets to finish them. Oh well, it works for me , as it was my idea to begin with. We did have 1 juice that my son liked, the 1st one, as did my oldest daughter until she found out there were carrots in it. The funny thing is that she likes carrots. Kids can be funny at times.

Over the weekend I tried 7 different juices and liked them all. The fruit ones are much easier to drink do to their sweetness, but the vegetable ones can be refreshing if you find the right combination. I started today off with a mixture of 2 fruit juices that were almost finished, but I did not bring any vegetable juice to work (I didn't have any made).

I'm finding it to be a bit of time and work to get the juice made, but the clean-up has been very quick. The machine we bought is very easy to clean and that makes it much easier to do. My plan this evening is to make at least 1 good size vegetable juice so that I may bring it to work and drink throughout the day. I will probably make a fruit juice for the kids and for my breakfast tomorrow morning. Just need to find one that everybody likes.

Juicer has arrived

I'm very excited. Our juicer has come in. Now to clean it, set it up and start juicing. In anticipation of getting the juicer, I picked up "The Juicing Bible" today. It is full of articles about the benefits of each fruit, vegetable and herb, and has over 300 recipes.

Well that is all I wanted to say. Now I'm heading to my kitchen to start juicing.

SYTYCD

Season 5 Top 20 started last night and I have to say I was impressed with all the dancers. If you are unsure, SYTYCD spells out So You Think You Can Dance. Now you know. To me, this is the best talent\reality show on TV. I know that AI is the most popular, but in all the season's of AI, never has there been a top 12 where all 12 have a legitimate shot a winning. Usually, early on, most people have a strong indication as to who will be the top 4. SYTYCD has 20 dancers who all have a legitimate shot at winning the competition, especially this year. Unfortunately, it comes down to popularity (as in AI) rather than talent, so the best dancer doesn't always win. None the less, the winners over the past 4 seasons have all been excellent dancers. What really separates SYTYCD from AI is that no matter the style, the dancers seem to be able to pull it off. Not only that, but the women are HOT (hey I'm a man, and men notice those things. plus my wife thinks several of the guys are good looking and have nice abs, whatever). Not so much the case in AI, especially when it comes to the different music genre. For example, some of the rockers try to do country or when the country singers try to do rock doesn't always work and the judges really let them know. Don't get me wrong, some can do it, but only some and not all.

Bottom line, I'm really looking forward to this season to see who will emerge as the favourites. I have some thoughts, but I will wait a few more weeks to see how they do with the different disciplines of dance.

Making a Change

Before I get into my change, let me give you a little history as to how I got here. Warning, long post ahead.

Currently, and have been for years, I take 3 different medications to control my blood pressure. The pills work, my numbers were much higher before I started taking them. The problem is that I don't want to be on meds the rest of my life. So 4 years ago, I began jogging. At the time I was overweight and out of shape. I could tell because my then 3 year old would run circles around me. I know, most kids have more than enough energy to spare, but becoming winded after just playing for 5-10mins was not cool by my standards. So I started jogging. At the time one of my friends was doing a lot of running and actually training people for the various level of runners that belong to the Running Room. This made it easier to get advice so that I could make jogging enjoyable. Believe me when I say, I never really liked running in my younger years, so taking it up in your mid 30's is not always a fun tasks. I was excited to run and that I did. Unfortunately, injuries, mainly shin splints, followed. Between being determined to lose weight and some good sports medicine\therapy, 10 months later, my shins didn't hurt anymore. I also managed to lose 20 lbs, which helped. I then ran my first half-marathon successfully . It was not a fast run, but none the less I trained by myself and finished the event by myself. I felt awesome that about 1k before the finish line, I almost began to cry. I continued to run afterward and have since completed 3 more half-marathons and several 10k events. My goal has always been to run a full marathon, but with 3 kids, it is hard to devote 8-10 hrs of training each week for 18-20 weeks, especially when almost 1/3 of that training time is done on the weekends. Eventually I will complete one, just not anytime soon.

Now back to my health issues. About 18 months ago, I began a 7 month parental leave. It was great as my wife was also off for part of it, so both of us were home to handle the 3 kids (on the days that my oldest wasn't in school). With the extra help, plenty of time off, and after watching Dr. Oz on Oprah one day (hey, what else is there to watch during the day), I became motivated to read his "You on a Diet" book. It was an eye opener, and so began my 7 month journey of making proper food choices and before going back to work, found myself 30 lbs lighter. I felt great, was beginning to look better and my running time was becoming faster, to the point I was hoping to set a PB on my next scheduled half-marathon later that year. My wife also mentioned that with the weight off, I rarely snored, which meant she was getting better sleep each night. Happy wife, happy life. Then I went back to work. I didn't think it would make a huge impact on me, but slowly my food choices were no longer the right ones, I was finding it hard to get my training in, as now there was work and/or meetings to get to during my lunch time. Finally over 1 year later (today), I've gained all the lost weight and more. During this time, about 3 weeks before I was planning on running another half-marathon, I went on a business trip. I didn't run on this trip and pretty much lost most of my interest to run. I wasn't happy about it and felt that I wouldn't be able to complete the event, so I didn't go. From that point on, factoring in the extra weight I was gaining each week, my runs started to become more and more difficult. I was getting the shin splints often to the point where I just wouldn't run for weeks at a time. Also, my snoring is now keeping my wife up every now and then, making her less happy with me.

That brings me to within the past few weeks. I've been feeling unhealthy to say the least. I'm feeling tired more and more each day, and generally don't like the way my body looks and feels. I've been trying for the past month to make better food choices, but I don't seem to be losing any weight. My exercise has consisted of running for 30mins about once a week, and maybe rollerblading for about 30mins once a week. I'm not consistent, so in all honesty, I'm not helping myself with this poor training. Then a few days ago, I met with my physician who told me that my cholesterol levels were above normal. He said I should start paying attention to what I eat or he will be prescribing meds to control it. Great, more pills each day. I don't want that!

Now comes the point of this post.

About a week ago, a fellow employee came back to work after being of for parental leave. He came back over 50 lbs lighter. He wasn't even a big guy, but now he looks great. I'm envious of him, as I want to be able to do that too. His secret, juice feasting. Now, I've been reading about it and it is some extreme stuff and I honestly don't think I can feast for 92 days (my co-worker did 52 days), but if I can incorporate many of the concepts into my daily diet, then maybe I can start losing some weight and become healthier. So I've talked to my wife and she is partially on board. I say partially as she has no intentions on giving up food to do the 92 day detox program found on the juice feasting website. Actually she doesn't even want to go 1 day without food. I on the other hand, haven't totally dismissed it yet, time will tell if I take the plunge into the raw only world. She is interested in trying many of the juice drinks (mostly fruit, but some vegetables ones too) and incorporating them into her daily food intake. Because of this, we have purchased a decent juicer by Breville and anxiously wait for it to arrive. Our goal is to start making fresh fruit and vegetable juices daily and have our kids enjoy them with us so that they too can live a healthier lifestyle.

We have also purchased the Wii Active and I have been trying to do 20 minute workouts every other day. Eventually I plan on doing the 30 day challenge so that I can tone up and get into a better shape. If you haven't had the chance to try the Wii Active, give it a go. For me a 20 minute work out leaves me drenched in sweat and I am truly enjoying the exercises. Along with the Wii , I plan to get back into running. I think I will wait until I can lose a few more pounds in hopes that my shin splints act up less due to the lower weight.

So I'm looking forward to the journey ahead and feel that I am focused on succeeding. Time will tell. This weekend, in anticipation of the juicer arriving and me beginning to use it dialy, I will try to take all my measurements so that I have a baseline to work from. I may, or may not, post them here, depending on how good/bad they are.

In parting, I will leave you with a quote from a song I like.

"life's a gift and not a given right"
If today was your last day, Nickelback (Darkhorse)

Welcome to my blog

This is the 1st blog on this site, but not my 1st blog. I've been blogging for almost 1 year now and my other blog is poker related. You won't find any reference to my other blog here, nor there, as I wish to keep the 2 separate.

Now if you are reading this, you have found this site clearly by accident. My intentions with this blog aren't to 'tell it to the world' but to just have a place to put down some random thoughts about my life and life in general. Kind of a way to clear my head. If you like what you read, please follow along.

And now a bit about myself.

By the end of 2009, I will hit the BIG 4-0! Crazy that I've probably lived over half my life. That being said, my grandfather (dad's side) just passed away at the nice young age of 94. So there is hope that my genes will carry me far into my life expectancy. Now the reality is that I am currently overweight (over 80lbs), have high blood pressure (128/82) and borderline high cholesterol. These contributing factors, and the fact that my mom's parents both passed away from illnesses shortly after entering their 60's, tells me that if I don't make some life changes, I may not last long enough to enjoy a full life.

My interests include poker, reading, jogging, rollerblading and NFL football. I no longer play competitive sports, but did spend a good deal of my late teens up to my mid 30's playing basketball, softball, flag football, and volleyball. I also enjoy the game of golf, but now have problems finding the time to play. Since I took up jogging 4 years ago, I have completed 4 half-marathons and several 10km events. Unfortunately, during the past 8 months, my jogging has become non-existent, and that bothers me. Most days I'm motivated to run, but I have been dealing with shin splints that usually cut my jogs short. Personally I think it comes down to being overweight, and the undue pressure I'm putting on my legs.

As for work, I'm employed, and have been with the same company for 8 years now. I enjoy what I do, but there are days that the interest is just not there. I won't bore you with the details, just know that it has to do with computers.

On a personal side, I have been married now for almost 6 years (later this summer) and have been together with my beautiful wife for 11 years in total. We have 3 beautiful children, 2 girls and a boy. Our oldest daughter (7) is adopted, from a cousin of mine who had a child too young, while my other daughter (4) and son (2) are our little creations. Together, between soccer, swimming lessons and ballet classes, we make our lives interesting and fun.

Now onto this blog.

For me, the title is two-fold. First it can be taken that with no matter how much you want to stay the same, your life may change, or that you will purposely do things that will change your life. Either way, the title works. My goal here is to talk about my life changing moments and the changes that I make in my life so that I may live a long happy one.

Hope you follow along.