A Perfectly Tuned Instrument

Hello, Its my turn finally :). This Is Tyra (I'm the wife), its nice to finally meet you. Brig asked if I would write a little today.

As I pondered what I should say I thought of how my morning was going. Poorly! Sunday mornings are stressful more than they should be. Trying to get 5 kids feed, washed and ready for church is no easy task. Not to mention getting yourself ready as well. Its not for the faint of heart! All I could think was "I'm so tired and hungry!" There's an unspoken rule that something has to happen every time mom sits down to eat. I'm ashamed to say I was grouchy and had already yelled at a few kids, and literally almost cried over spilled milk. "I should be feeling the spirit and preparing for the Sabbath, not being like this." I was a little frustrated. Then I realized why I was feeling like "this" and not spiritual and pleasant. My body was out of tune.

The body is an instrument. We are highly religious (we belong to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints aka the Mormons) so we believe the body is a gift and that we can communicate with our heavenly Father through personal revelation.  We often explain revelation using the analogy of a radio. The body is the radio and revelation being the radio waves.

My problem is my radio is slightly broken, because I have not been taking care of it. I get nowhere near the necessary amount of sleep (haven't for YEARS!). I  rush through meals and have been known to skip them entirely. Thanks to AdvoCare I've lost some weight and have energy enough to keep up with things but just barely. Most importantly my life is full of stress, I've let in too much noise. Its like a radio with broken speakers and bent antenna. I can find the right channel but while those things are out of whack, I will continue to get a lot of static.

Lack of sleep and stress take a major toll on the body, physically and emotionally. They drain energy making us cranky, irrational, and forgetful. Too much will make you anger. So as much as you eat right and work out, if you aren't getting the sleep your body needs and you have too much noise in your life, you won't see or feel the results you would like. So take a moment today to check your radio. Are you in tune? Or is your antenna bent? Ask yourself what do you need to do to fix your radio?

Trouble sleeping? Try Sleep Works and a warm bath.
Too much Stress? Try Oasis and learn to say no.
Not enough nutrition? Try Coreplex and meal planning.
Not enough energy? Try Spark or V16 and do some exercise.

But most importantly, eliminate the noise from your life. Find some quiet time, and put the basics in place first. If you can't be in tune with the spirit, what you do with your body will be of little consequence.

Day 24 Max Phase (This is just the Beginning)

Day 24

Well here I am at the end of my 24 day challenge. It’s been reveling. I have learned a lot of things about how I should feel. Before starting I felt like work outs were drudgery. I think I felt that way because that is the way I felt. I noticed that as I progressed through this process I felt better. Before when I had tried different style cleanses, I never felt much different, besides the feeling of an empty stomach, because sure, my body was clean and ready for nutrition but the nutrients weren’t put back in. With this challenge my body was receiving the correct nutrition immediately after being cleaned and prepped for it.

I recommend this to everyone. In fact after about 2 weeks I felt so strongly about the power of the program I bought one for my dad, because I knew that his strength and energy levels would receive a boost from the challenge. I have decided that I will be doing an herbal cleanse every few months because it makes we feel so good.

For all of you that have been faithful in reading, I thank you and promise you this is not the end. In fact this is only the beginning. I used the 24 day challenge to relaunch this blog. My vision for the future is to sue this blog to review work outs and products for y’all. My posts next month will not be as often but I plan on 2 to 3 a week. I will continue posting every day for the rest of this month.

In fact if you have any topics that you particularly want to read about let me know and I will do my best to research, test, and post. I am also trying to come up with some contests and giveaways for upcoming posts as well so keep coming baio.

My goal is not to tell you what to do but give you options and ideas so that you don’t get bored with doing. Exercise can get boring if you don’t throw in a few things that are different. The other day I saw the local high school cross country playing ultimate Frisbee for practice. That is the kind of change of pace we all need from time to time. 

Day 23 Max Phase (Nutrition Wars Something Funny)

Day 23

I saw this on TV and I had to show you all. Please don’t make nutrition a competition with other people. Find something that works for you and your goals and go with it. Tweak it as needed but don’t go overboard. This video illustrates what not to do.

“Live your life like you trying to impress yourself.”

Day 22 Max Phase (The Power of Music)

Day 22

What a day. As most of you know I work nights and to be frank it really stinks. There always seems to be some kind of crisis, or commitment during the day when I am sleeping that I have to wake up and deal with. And if by chance I go through a day without someone calling in the middle of my REM cycle, I can’t seem to sleep past 4:00 pm. Today was a call at 12:30 pm day. I can never get back to sleep after that.

After the call I naturally tried to regain my slumber to no avail. I was also a bit stressed about some other things in my life with which I will not bore you. So, I proceeded to stomp around the house and be cranky for the rest of the afternoon. Finally I decided that when I took my son to his scout meeting I was going to run around the parking lot while he was in scouts.

I started my run using my Zombies, run! App. There is nothing better than listening to the troubles of post zombie apocalypse survivors to make all your stresses seem small and insignificant. Anyways as I ran I started to “go numb” but I still wasn’t very happy, even with the woes of the zombie fighters playing in my ears, interspersed with some of my favorite tunes.

Then about half way through my run, it happened. A song came on that brightened my whole mood. If you have young children you may recognize the kids show “The Backyardigans.” Well last year my wife bought one of their episode sound tracks that we both really enjoyed and it started to place. You can hear it on the video in this post. For some reason that 1 minute and 20 second song changed my demeanor. I started to smile and my pace quickened.

There are so many things that bring us down don’t let fitness be one of those things. Select music that inspires you, or that make you happy. You deserve to have your stress melt into smiles and music can do that. I believe that music is one of those things that are underestimated.

Be careful in you selection because it can work the other way as well. For example, I listen to a group called “They Might Be Giants.” They are an alternative education rack genre. It’s kind of weird I know but, in one of the songs that I had on my playlist for a while, there was a phrase, “You can’t run away. Your feet won’t help you run.” I notice that throughout that whole song my pace dropped and it literally felt like I was running in honey. It’s not a bad song, just a bad song to listen to while running.

I feel like I say this a lot but, you are different from everyone else. You have to do what works for you. The music that one person finds inspiring might make you fall, flat when it comes to your work out.

“I accept 100% responsibility for all my data entries.”

Day 21 Max Phase (Using Workouts the Battle Stress)

Day 21

Stress is bad, very bad. That is what we have all heard for pretty much our whole life, and some in our society have bought into this false notion so deeply that we try at every turn to calm ourselves with pills or boos, or whatever. In don’t know where this idea of stress being inherently evil comes from but today we are going to turn stress into our ally much like a kite uses the opposition and stress the wind places on it to fly. Now, I’m not advocating that we go on a quest seeking for the fountain of eternal stress because that would be evil, and our kite would be ripped to shreds. All I am suggesting is that you take the stress that naturally comes to you and use it to your benefit.

In my life I have identified that when I get overly stressed I eat. This obviously doesn’t help my fitness, or my waistline. Like the other day when I was woken up early and couldn’t get back to sleep, and the house was crazy with toys and kids and fruit flies. By the way fruit flies are just about the most annoying thing ever, because they never go away. If you have the silver bullet against them let me know in the comments. Anyways that day my wife taught me something as I went to the fridge to find something to eat, and she probably had no idea she was teaching me. All she said was, “Why don’t you go for a run?”

I took her advice and when I came back I felt so much better and I’m sure I was much nicer to be around. My wife can verify that in the comments if she likes. The point is once we find out what our unhealthy stress reliever is we can use fitness to fight it. This way you can avoid yelling at your kids or the dog or life in general and you can channel that frustration in a way that will better you. Next time you feel like you are about to lose your mind, try it.  If possible excuse yourself from the situation, get ready for a workout and go.  If you can’t get away do some push-ups or sit-ups.

Fitness is all about feeling good and balanced. When we are overly stressed it is usually because that balance is off, and I believe you will find that exercise will clear your head and when finished the stress will be gone, smaller and more manageable, or you will have had time to sort out the problem while working out. This is have we turn negatives into positives.

Day 20 Max Phase (Weekly Binge Day)

Day 20

I want you to picture the classic visual of a knight’s sword. Straight blade that measures about 3 ½ feet in length and has a groove or depression that runs the almost the full length of the blade on the flat between the two edges.  Or if you don’t want to think about it just look at the picture. Now focus on the tip of the sword. It has 2 edges. Those 2 edges are what people mean when they talk about a 2 edged sword.

I am sure some of you have already stopped reading because you thought this post was about fitness and nutrition, but for you faithful few our topic is a double edged sword. This means is can help you or destroy you. The topic as you can read in the heading is “The Binge Day!”  The announcement of this day is either accompanied by cheers or boos.

First the concept behind the binge day is fairly simple. Once a week a person that is keeping close tabs on their nutrition can eat whatever they what and as much as they want. The rationale behind this concept is fairly simple as well. By eating an increased amount of calories one day a week your body will keep a higher metabolism throughout the week because once a week you trick it in to thinking that it needs to burn a lot more energy. On the mental side of things it gives you the ability to sustain will power throughout the rest of the week because you know that anything you crave can be eaten on the binge day.

The dangerous side of this sword is that it really doesn’t help to create good eating habits. The reasons that I gave previously are very valid I have used this technique and lost weight this way but I have to say that like I said I slipped back into my bad eating habits. I believe there are other ways to keep you metabolism high like exercise, and certain types of foods that I will let you research.

One tip that I would give you if you are going to use the binge day is that you should start your day by eating a grapefruit. The grapefruit acts as a sugar inhibitor and will help your body push the sugar through without storing a lot as fat. Another product that I use is from Advocare, it’s called CarbEase™ Plus. This product acts like a grapefruit but you take it immediately before you eat a large carb based meal. Now it won’t block all carbs that you eat so it’s not the silver bullet. The silver bullet is proper nutrition and moderation.

Whichever side of the sword you use, just know both can and will work. It’s time you decide for yourself which works best for you. Once you find something that works stick with it. Go an take the day.

“The better I think about myself the better I act the better I preform.”

Day 19 Max Phase (The Scale is not my Friend)

Day 19

While at my parents house today I stepped on the scale and to my dismay I was a few pound heavier than I was the last time I weighed myself. I was a little upset because that is obviously the wrong direction for me.

Sometimes we have to stop looking at the scale and start focusing on feeling healthy. if you have never gone through this you have to realize that in the process of getting fit you will put on a certain amount of muscle weight which isn't bad. Just keep a close eye on things.

There are other ways to track you progress like taking measurements around your biceps, thighs, belly and neck. If you are tracking all of these things then you will be able to gauge your progress even if the scale is giving you fits, because your muscle gain is giving you false positives.