Weight Loss Tip – Bouncing
Another quick weight loss tip I would like to share is “Bouncing”.
What I mean by bouncing is to get your body moving in some way, shape or form that creates a bouncing motion in the body.
The human body was designed to bounce in a slight up/down motion. The lymphatic system especially relies on this to function properly and without the lyphatic system being engaged it’s very difficult to lose fat and virtually impossible to detox.
Some examples of the bouncing motion are walking, jogging, running, dancing, rebounding, stair climbing, or virtually any sport you can think of.
By getting your body bouncing, you activate the body’s digestive processes and especially the detoxing functions of the lymphatic system.
I did a lot of walking and jogging during my weight loss and I always felt great afterwards and my weight loss results were significantly better than just focusing on diet alone.
It may sound simplistic, but it works.
If you want to lose weight make sure you get your daily dose of bouncing. Even just a few minutes a day are better than nothing.
Most people think that the only type of activity that helps with weight loss is anything that burns a lot of calories but that is not true. Anything that gets the body moving and bouncing is a huge help.
Weight Loss Tip – Pimp Your Salad
Today’s weight loss tip relates to salad dressings.
One of the mistakes I have made in the past, when trying to lose weight is to listen to “weight loss guru” advice on salad dressings.
Most weight loss “gurus” out there make a huge deal about choosing low-fat or low-calorie salad dressings.
The challenge is that if you’re not used to eating salads, and your typical meal comes from a fast-food restaurant, eating a salad with a low-fat or low-calorie dressing is going to taste like crap.
Instead, here’s a little secret I discovered…
Bad Dressing, Bad Salad. Good Dressing, Good Salad.
I discovered that when I was trying to use low-calorie or low-fat or just generally “good for you” salad dressings, my salads would taste like crap.
And when your salad tastes like crap, what do you do? You never eat salad.
So instead of trying to shave an extra 10-50 calories off of an already healthy, and low-calorie salad, and making it taste like shit – I instead went out there and found a salad dressing that I actually enjoy!
My favorite lately has been Kraft Three Cheese Ranch dressing. Yes, I know that it is 110 calories for 2 tablespoons of that dressing – however, by choosing a salad dressing that I actually enjoy eating it makes it a lot easier to eat salads on a regular basis.
Also, if you look at the nutritional profile – most of the calories in that dressing come from fat and not sugar which signals your brain to stop eating.
Contrary to what mass media has tried to lead us to believe for decades now, eating fats doesn’t make you fat – it is actually starches and sugars that do that to us.
When we eat fats, we get full faster so we eat less.
It’s not the fat in fast-food meals that makes us fat, it’s all the sugar we eat with it.
Anyway, I won’t go into too much of a discussion on fat vs sugar intake as far as weight loss is concerned, because what I really want to focus on is salads in this post.
Other Ways to Pimp Your Salad
There are so many cool things you can add to a salad to make it taste so much better.
A lot of people who say that they don’t like eating salads make the following two major mistakes:
- They think that a salad is made up of lettuce – and that’s it.
- They choose crappy, low-fat, low-calorie dressings.
A real salad should be made up a LOT more than just lettuce. Most of the salads that I made during my weight loss were only about 20% lettuce.
Some of the things that I love to add to my salads are:
- Red Peppers
- Green Peppers
- Cucumbers
- Radishes
- Green Onions
- Red Onions
- Pumpkin Seeds
- Hemp Seeds
- Sliced Almonds
- Dried Cranberries
- Baby Spinach
- Cauliflower
- Broccoli
- Sesame Seeds
- Flax Oil
- Egg Slices
- Grilled Chicken Breast
- Grilled Salmon
- Steak Slices
- Avacado
- etc.
The more stuff you add to your salad, the more variety of flavors there will be for you to enjoy. By mixing things up with your salads, you’ll actually ENJOY eating them and not see them as something you eat instead of “real food”.
The bottom line is this.
Forget about trying to eat the “perfect salad”. Instead, learn to make GOOD salads that you’ll actually ENJOY eating.
Every person who wants to lose weight, needs to have at least a couple of salad recipes under their belt that they actually enjoy eating.
I’ve personally got about a half-dozen different types of salads that I like making now and I actually enjoy eating them.
When I’ve had guests over who don’t typically eat salads, I’ve made my salads for them and they were shocked how good they tasted.
If you learn to make good salads, you’ll start to prefer them over a fast-food meal.
That is the bottom line.
It’s not about making a “perfect” salad that has virtually no calories but tastes like saw-dust!
It’s about making a GOOD salad that you’ll actually enjoy eating.
Weight Loss Tip – Soda Water
After completing my weight loss challenge with Tyler Cruz, where I lost over 38lbs in 5 months I have decided to write a number of short weight loss tip articles to share some of the ideas I’ve implemented in my life to help me lose weight.
The first tip relates to replacing your drinking calories with alternatives.
When starting my weight loss challenge, I realized that a lot of my daily calories come from drinking pop (soda), such as Coca Cola and similar products.
Many people think that fruit juices you purchase at the store are better, but almost all juices you buy at the store are full of sugar and they are pasteurized which kills almost all nutrients you would get from fresh fruit.
Coffees and teas, sweetened with sugar or artificial sweeteners are not good either as they either contain sugar or artificial chemicals/sweeteners.
For years now I’ve been trying to get rid of my pop/soda addiction and replace it with drinking plain water, however it’s not that easy to do as I don’t really like the taste of plain water.
There’s just something about a carbonated beverage when you are really thirsty that tastes good and feels like it’s cutting through the thirst.
When I drink plain water, I don’t get that same feeling.
So what I discovered this time around is a machine from a small company called SodaStream that allows you to make your own carbonated water.
A SodaStream starter kit will set you back about $75 and will allow you to create up to 60 Liters of carbonated water with one cartridge. The refills will only cost you about $18 and will produce 60 Liters of carbonated water.
If you were to replace just 2 cans of pop/soda per day with carbonated water instead, that would shave almost 10,000 calories from your monthly diet which is the equivalent of about 2-3lbs of fat per month.
Some people attempt to save those calories by switching from soda/pop to diet soda/pop but the challenge with diet soda’s is that they are sweetened with artificial sweeteners which do more harm than good.
Here are a couple of articles on why I don’t recommend artificially sweetened beverages:
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2000/12/03/sucralose-dangers.aspx
As Dr. Mercola states in these articles, artificial sweeteners like Sucralose and Aspartame can have side effect symptoms ranging from dizziness, blurred vision, depression and weight gain in the short term to who knows what kind of long-term side effects on the body if you continue to use them long term.
For this reason I would highly recommend staying away from any kind of “diet” products.
I really like my SodaStream machine and I love drinking the carbonated water. My only complaint against SodaStream as a company is that their flavor packages are artificially sweetened. This is why I don’t recommend purchasing them.
Of course you can flavor your carbonated water yourself by simply squeezing some lemon into it or other natural flavors or even adding in some freshly squeezed juice you made.
The easiest thing to do, however, is to just simply drink carbonated water with no flavor.
At first, the lack of flavor and lack of sugar in the carbonated water may taste weird (bad) to you, but after you drink it for a few days it will actually start to taste really good.
This is one of the little “secrets” I’ve been using during my weight loss – drinking carbonated water instead of pop/soda or any kinds of juices.
You cut out a LOT of calories from your diet with this very simple change and once you get used to the water, you will start to prefer it to sweetened juices and drinks.
Even if you continued to eat exactly what you’re eating right now, just by switching from 2-3 cans of soda/pop/juice to carbonated water you could cut 20-36lbs of fat from your body in just one year!
Weight Loss Challenge 2012 Final – Paul vs Tyler
Today I completed my 2012 Weight Loss Challenge with Tyler Cruz, with just 3 days left in the competition.
Tyler and I started this challenge almost 5 months ago and we decided to increase the amount of weight we each had to lose as well as the penalties for not hitting our weight.
Here’s a recap of what the challenge was for each of us:
Money on the Line: $675 / each
Start / End Dates: Jun 16th – Nov 16, 2012 (5 Months)
Paul Starting Weight: 227.8 lbs
Paul Target Weight: 189.0 lbs (38.8 lbs — 17% of starting weight)
Early Completion Clause: Yes
Tyler Starting Weight: 210.8 lbs
Tyler Target Weight: 179.2 lbs (31.6 lbs — 15% of starting weight)
Early Completion Clause: No
Penalties: If I don’t reach my target weight, and Tyler does, I have to pay him $675. If Tyler doesn’t reach his target weight, and I do, he has to pay me $675. If neither of us reach our target weight, we have to donate $340 to BCSPCA.
As you can see above, my target was to drop from 227.8lbs to 189.0lbs or less.
I completed the challenge, losing a total of 39.2lbs, finally weighing in at 188.6lbs.
I had until Nov 16, 2012 to do it, but I also had an “early completion clause” in my agreement with Tyler.
What that means is that I was allowed to hit my target weight at any point in time during the 5 months, but he has to hit his weight actually on November 16th.
I originally wanted that clause as I thought I would lose the weight much sooner than the 5 month deadline, but I ended up procrastinating for so long that I ended up losing the majority of the weight in the last month or so in the competition.
In a way, a 5 month long competition is really tough because it makes you think that you have all this time to do the weight loss, and so it’s really easy to procrastinate and then soon enough the last month or two are here and you start to panic. 
Here is my weight loss chart showing the 38.8lbs of weight loss over the 5 months:
As you can see, the last 2 weeks in the competition were very challenging for me. I was on an insanely strict diet and doing a LOT of running every day. The last three days were really hard, but I managed to pull it off.
Below is my before/after pictures. Unfortunately somehow I forgot to take “before” pictures when I was at 227.8lbs. The closest thing I have to a “before” picture is from Sept 6, when I was 217lbs. Even though that’s 10lbs lighter than when I started, you can still see a pretty big difference just between those two weights.
So, did Tyler Cruz make it?
Well, we don’t know yet. He has until November 16th to either make it or not.
We will see what happens.
Here’s a video of my final weigh-in:
e84 Challenge – Day 1
Today is Day 1 of my e84 Challenge from Evolv Health.
It’s been a long time since I’ve been this excited to start something like this.
There’s just so much I love about Evolv Health as a company and it’s mission to transform the lives of 8.4 Million people with the e84 Challenge.
It’s so exciting for me to start my very own first ever e84 Challenge.
e84 Challenge
This is my official weigh-in / Day 1 video for the challenge.
As I stated in the video, my goals for this challenge are to lose at least 25lbs and to walk, jog or run at least 50kms in the next 84 days.
What is the e84 Challenge?
The e84 Challenge is a fun and rewarding, transformational challenge created by Evolv Health.
The e84 Challenge helps people to achieve their individual health and fitness goals – whether they be to lose weight, get toned, improve energy levels, build muscle, or to simply just get into the best shape of your life.
Each e84 Challenge is customized to the specific needs and goals of each individual doing the challenge.
In the pictures below you will see some of the products that Evolv Health created to help people achieve their e84 Goals.
In this first picture we see the Evolv Shake, which is the foundational product for each challenge. The shake is made from all natural and organic ingredients, and contains absolutely no artificial sweeteners.
In the same picture you also see the Evolv Limitless supplement, and the Evolv C-Prime bracelet. I’ll dive into more details on those products in future posts.
In the next picture we see the Evolv Thin and Evolv Energy drinks.
And finally a picture of the Evolv Water which is a pure alkaline spring water with Archaea Active™.
What Does the e84 Challenge Cost?
A few people have asked me about the costs associated with doing the e84 Challenge.
The cool thing about the e84 Challenge is that there are several ways in which the e84 can cost you absolutely nothing!
Let me explain.
Firstly, as I mentioned in the video, the idea here is to replace 1 – 2 meals per day with an Evolv Shake. So for example, I will be replacing my breakfasts and most likely my lunch with an Evolv shake.
I typically spend at least $3-$4 on breakfast, and at least $6-$8 on my lunches. That adds up to about $9-$12/day for breakfast and lunch, which is about $250-$336 every 28 days.
Now I realize that not everyone spends that much money for breakfast and lunch, but most people spend at least half that amount. Now, each Evolv Shake costs around $2.64 so if you replace your breakfast and lunch with an Evolv shake for 28 days, that would cost you around $150/month – which is still a huge savings over eating regular meals.
Secondly though, even if you’re a super frugal Ninja and you spend much less on your breakfast and lunches each day, you can still qualify to get your e84 Challenge products free.
Here’s how.
Evolv Health has a program out called “1-2-Free”. How it works is that if you simply refer three of your friends to the company to do the e84 Challenge with you – your products in the following month (of equal value) are free!
Getting your friends on the e84 Challenge with you is an awesome idea anyways as it’s always more fun to do stuff like this with friends, but with the added incentive of qualifying to get your products for free, it’s an even better deal.
It only took me a few phone calls to find three friends who wanted to do the e84 Challenge with me, so my product is pretty much free. And since I was previously spending about $250-$336/month (or more) on breakfast and lunch, that is all extra money in my pocket just for participating in this challenge.
So really, depending on your specific situation – the e84 Challenge might not cost you very much, it could be free, or it could even put MORE money in your pocket versus not participating in the e84 Challenge.
More Info on e84
This video shows more info about the e84 Challenge. Which e84 Challenge pack fits with you best?
If you’d like to join our team of e83 Challengers, click here.
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