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Soooo Disappointed

So my stupid phone died again!!!!!!!!!!! My previous phone... the PALM Treo 650 half-died on me a few weeks ago... wouldn't ring outloud, which meant that any calendar notifications or the speakerphone (which I used often) didn't work either. So I got a new phone... the Blackberry 8100 pearl. It is a really nice phone to use but it pissed me off that I had to spend nearly $400 on this new phone because the store wouldn't exchange my old one, which was less than 2 months past the 12 month warranty period. Dumb. What's also dumb is that 'little' things started acting funny a few months ago - when I was still within that 12 month window - but because it seemed to re-set itself, I never worried about it.

So now, after my monsoonian bike ride yesterday, my new phone has completely died. Did it get wet in my closed and water-resistent pack? It was probably humid in the pack, but not wet. And my other phone rode with me in my pack in the rain... many times... and it kept working... PLUS, I had my digital camera in the same pocket and it works tickety-boo, thank you very much. Oh... I even had a motorola Startac (one of the original flip phones) about 5 years ago that I went swimming with! No kidding! I dove in the pool and forgot I had it in my pocket. DOH! Eventually I remembered and when I took it out, it was blank, so I opened it, popped the battery off, and let it sit in the sun for a couple hours. When it was dry I plugged the battery back in and it was perfect. That's a TOUGH phone! But apparently this new $400 phone is a piece of crap.

They had better not give me any grief at all when I bring it back today!

I See You Looking at Me Looking at You!

Okay... remember the classic scene from the re-made movie "I Spy" starring Eddie Murphy and Owen Wilson (the original starred Robert Culp & Bill Cosby). Well, there was a shakespearean-like scene where Owen's character (the Spy) had Eddie's character... Buddy (the Boxer) wear a contact lens that was actually a camera/transmitter and it allowed The Spy to see what The Boxer was seeing... and when The Boxer tried it out he said... and I quote... "I can see you looking at me looking at you".

Why do I remember useless bits of information like this?

Anyways... I have a new camera that I scooped with my Airmiles points. My bigger camera... a Canon PowerShot S3 with a 12x optical zoom really kicks! I use it for work, however I needed something small and compact to be able to take with me on bike rides and such... hence the nice little compact 5.1MP Fuji.

Going Postal!

I pasted the text below from a curent news story! The picture - of what is normally a 3' wide trickle, now 12' wide torrent - is one I took while we were out riding in it, as Maria and I continue to train for the Test of Metal! After 3 hours we were quite ready to dry out!

March 12, 2007 11:35:00 AM MDT

Water, water everywhere, as Pineapple Express drenches B.C. south coast

VANCOUVER (CP) - Southwestern B.C. is soaked after a huge weekend downpour left roads and fields flooded, and rivers threatening to spill their banks.

The rain let up early Monday but not before the River Forecast Centre issued a flood warning for Greater Vancouver and lower Fraser Valley rivers. The warning was expected to be downgraded as the streams started receding, said Alan Chapman of the River Forecast Centre.

RCMP said several roads were closed because of flooding and swollen roadside ditches, many in the low-lying areas of Surrey's Cloverdale area.

A flood watch was also in effect for Vancouver Island, with many rivers rising through the night Sunday - including the Cowichan, Chemainus and Englishman.

The saturated soil may have triggered a mudslide that closed the Trans-Canada Highway from Rosedale to Hope while falling rock closed the route through the Fraser Canyon to Spences Bridge.

The Trans-Canada was also closed in southeastern B.C. from Revelstoke to the Alberta boundary because of the high avalanche hazard and a mudslide east of Golden.

I Hate Commuting

I commuted for years to work & back... 100km round trip. Consequently, may car already has over 200, 000Km on it. That's okay though because I now work for myself and no longer commute back and forth to work every day.

Yesterday, my daily "driving profile", which is pretty typical, looked like this...

~ drove to rehearsal & back...
~ took my daughter out driving...
~ picked up my son from a birthday party...
~ picked up my other son from his Omi's...
~ took my daughter to work...
~ picked up my daughter from work...

Total Km's... about 110. Yep, I'm glad to don't commute any more.

I love my bike!

The posted pic was taken on Boxing day during our ride to the top of Sumas Mtn.

No, really... it IS soup!

With regards to the Master Cleanse fast, I mentioned in an earlier post how my body felt it was "done".

Well... it's official; I am now done my Master Cleanse!

Considering that I have been on a liquid mono-diet for the past week and a half, I felt it was necessary to come off my cleansing fast in a gradual manner – systematically and carefully introducing food back into my system over a prolonged period of time - so that I don’t throw myself into a state of shock. You taught me that, Dave. The book recommends nothing but orange juice for the first two full days, gradually introducing vegetable soup broth by noon on day 3, then introducing a few (not too many) vegetables in some more broth by the evening.

So...

~ At 6PM I had a bowl of organic vegetable soup broth…

~ At 8PM I had another bowl, this time full of wild rice, barley, and vegetables…

~ And at 10 PM I had two pieces of whole wheat pizza.

WaaaOOOgaaa!

It is now almost 11:30, I feel great, and I realized something about 30 minutes ago; my hands are HOT! This is so interesting to me because last night I was very chilly... and I never get chilly. I actually wore a toque while sitting in the living room (I am a shorts and t-shirt kind of guy in the middle of winter) and thick warm socks to bed.

The book states that one can "fast" for 10 days or more, but I strongly believe that if you listen to your body, it will tell you when you are done. For some, you may require less than 10 days, and for others... more. For me, during the first week of the fast I could clearly feel the benefits and necessity of doing it. I felt good and the cleansing process was working well. Then slowly, around day 8, something started to feel "off", and by last night my extremities were cold and my teeth "hurt". I knew I had completed my cleanse.

I find it intriguing that in the same way that I felt "balanced" for the first week of the fast, that after entering into the final phase of the fast and feeling "off" - that now that I have introduced food back into my system, that I feel balanced again.

Yes, I know that I have probably jumped back into eating with a little too much gusto, but I'm resilient!

LOL! I'm hungry now again, but I'll wait until morning. :-)

Well, Aren't I the Cunning Linguist!

Day NINE!
Weight - 215lbs
BF - 18.4%
Tongue - Almost back to normal

According to the book, The Master Cleanser, your tongue is a good indication of where you are "at" with the whole cleansing process. The pic on the left is from Day 2, and you can see how I've got this yellowish fur on my tongue. Fast forward to the pic on the right, taken this morning, and my tongue is pretty much back to normal.

My body feels different too somehow. I don't really know how do describe it other than to say it feels like it's "done". It's like it is saying, "Okay... nice work Arne, but now that we're clean lets get back to some real food again".

I've been fighting a cold these past few days too, which has sucked. I'd like to think that what with all the lemon juice (and vitamin C) that the duration was shortened... who knows. It hit me hard last Friday (it's Tuesday today), and went through the sore throat, runny nose, and now stuffy nose phase in a matter of about 4 days. Is this good? My feet were cold last night, which is odd for me, and I had to put some warm socks on while in bed last night. A result of the cold or the fast?

Technically, I will have reached the completion of my fast this evening. They say in the book that you can begin the fast mid-day, after eating breakfast and whatnot... and that this beginning-day would be "Day 1". Well, if that's the way they look at it, I started "Day 1" the night before (Sunday Evening - the 4th), as I ate early in the evening and didn't have breakfast the next morning, going straight into the Lemonade.

Like I said, my body feels like it's done, so I think I shall "break fast" by having a small bowl of soup this evening. "The Book" recommends that one live on orange juice for the first day, but I'm border-line hypoglycemic, and as such a little Dennis Leary about subjecting myself to such intense sugar hits. I don't get that from the pure maple syrup because it's a balanced, much less processed form of sugar, rich in minerals. Ergo, I'm going with the soup.

I've prepared for this moment buy purchasing a couple liters of "Pacific Foods Organic Vegetable Broth". It's pretty light, containing only 15 calories per 250ml... so the whole liter is only 60 calories. Okay, so maybe that's not really a "small bowl", but I'm good with that! The idea is to gently wake up the digestive system and prepare it to go back to work. By eating this soup in the evening, and having the night to let my body play with it, I should be ready to start eating lightly tomorrow morning.

I'll keep you posted!

In God We Flush!

So... Day 8... I'm almost done!

It was interesting; I woke up this morning and as per usual, checked my vitals - weight and BF (see earlier post). I weighed in at 216.5lbs (up 1/2 a pound from yesterday), with a BF of 18.8% (down from yesterdays 19.5%).

Considering that I haven't eaten anything since Sunday evening... the 4th... I found it strange that my weight had gone up from the previous day. Then I realized that I probably run a little less-hydrated after leaving a couple water bottles worth of sweat on the floor (Saturday) after teaching a cycling class, and that I had "replentished"... hence the drastic drop in weight from Saturday to Sunday, and the slight gain from Sunday to Monday. Makes sense to me.

So, about that title. As per usual I drank my liter of salt water... but this time, as I had to do some work today at 10AM, I needed to get the "flush" over with before heading out. So I woke up bright and early at 7:30... mixed and drank the SW... drove the kids st school... and pinched the butt-cheeks together as I madly raced back home, barely making it to the toilet!

It's absolutely amazing that there is still "stuff" left inside me to come out, after voiding numerous times a day and not eating anything for the past 8 days! Incredible!

My teeth hurt today! Not really... but I really miss chewing something. I was thinking of putting together a plate of something... I don't know... chicken & ribs maybe, and just start chewing away. I wouldn't swallow any of it of course; I'd have to spit it out. Okay, just thinking about it has my teeth feeling all... "chewy" again! Damn!

Time to Retire

I had to bite the bullet today and spring for some new tires. I can't complain; I've owned my car since new, purchasing it in 2000, and have driven 205,000 kms so far. I'm currently on my second set of tires, which I won - conveniently when the original set had 95,000 km's on them - by sticking my name in a draw at a classic car show. That was pretty cool! But the other day, just after arriving home from picking the kids up at school, my left front tire goes flat. Upon closer inspection I look and see that the actual tire has degraded to the point of failure... and the remaining three can't be far behind.

Like I said, I won this set, so really I have to be okay about the fact that I am spending $600 on a new set ($150 per tire when all is said and done - mounting, balancing, etc..). It makes it an easier pill to swallow when I think about the fact(s) that (1) My daughter will be getting this car in a few months and I want it to be safe for her (I put a new clutch & new brakes all around earlier in the year), and (2) that I seem to have no problem spending $150 on a new pair of running shoes.

Master Blaster or Master of Disguise?

I am now nearing the end of DAY 7 of the Stanley Burroughs’ Master Cleanse (or Lemonade Cleanse, or Maple Syrup Cleanse). Here’s the deal… No food whatsoever, as this cleanse is designed to give your digestive system a complete rest, as well as clean out the pipes and toxic mucous from your system. So what have I been drinking? Lemonade!

Here’s the recipe: 6 – 12, 10 ounce glasses a day, made as follows…

~ 2 tbsp of lemon juice, squeezed from (preferably organic) lemons

~ 2 tbsp of pure maple syrup (grade b+, preferably organic)

~ 1/10^th tsp cayenne pepper

~ The remainder is purified water to the 10 ounce mark

To make things simpler, I took a used protein container and marked 100 ounces on the side. To this empty jug I add 1 tsp of cayenne pepper, 10 ounces of lemon juice, 10 ounces of maple syrup, then fill to the 100 ounce line. Cap it; shake it; I’m done. This is my daily amount, which I then pour into empty bottles and seal tight.

I have read that it is preferable to mix each individual drink separately when needed, as the beneficial enzymes in the freshly-squeezed lemon juice basically become inert (read “die”) when exposed to air for too long. This just isn’t practical for me, so to get around this I fill the bottles to the brim and seal them with no air pockets in the top. They wait in the fridge until needed.

Additionally, as this is a “cleansing fast” designed to CLEAN, you are instructed to drink an herbal laxative tea each night (to loosen things up) and “flush” each morning by drinking a liter of warm water with 2 tsp of UNIODIZED sea salt. Let me tell you, this works!!! If you do this, just allow yourself at least an hour before needing to be anywhere else. I don’t usually laugh when going to the bathroom, but it is quite amusing! ‘Nuff said.

If you’d like more detail on the Master Cleanse and HOW it does what it does, the following article describes it best:

The Master Cleanser - Therapeutic Fasting to Alleviate Toxemia

June 16, 1991, marked the passing of Stanley Burroughs, a pioneer in the field of alternative health care. Author of Healing for the Age of Enlightenment, and The Master Cleanser, Stanley was a man renowned for his research into the role of toxemia in disease.

Since his research and writings have influenced my own life and work to such a great extent, I feel compelled to share with you some of the highlights of one of his most important therapeutic tools the Master Cleanser Lemonade Fast.

It was in 1979 that I under took a specific type of cleansing program in order to prove to my room-mate it would not work! This program involved the Lemonade Diet, developed by Burroughs in 1941. It initially came about in response to his need to find a better method to treat ulcers, and it was some years later that he realized that this diet treated many other diseases successfully, and he named it the Master Cleanser.

This cleansing program worked so well for me that I went on to study all of Stanley Burroughs work and through 1980 I did 100 days in total of the Master Cleanser program and never felt better in my life.


Specific Procedures

The Master Cleanser is a liquid mono-diet that cleanses and detoxifies the body as it stimulates healthy tissue growth. It consists of fresh lime or lemon juice, maple syrup, and cayenne pepper mixed with water and drunk 6-12 times a day. A herbal laxative tea is taken twice a day, and no other food is consumed.

This regimen that can be followed for 10 days, and may also be safely extended to 40 or more days, depending upon a person’s physical condition.

Toxemia and Disease

To understand why this therapeutic diet works its necessary to understand what disease is from a holistic perspective. Dis-ease is simply the accumulation of wastes, toxins, or poisons in the body, which in turn creates the myriad of symptomatic illnesses we are seeing so prevalent in people to day.

The glands and organs of our eliminative systems can easily become overwhelmed by wastes from poor diet, lack of exercise, tension, air and water pollution etc. As much as several pounds of waste can literally become impacted in the colon, adhering to the walls. Over time, the waste will then begin to leach into the blood stream. causing it to be re-circulated throughout the body, and settle into the tissues and cells. This settling of toxins is the final step that acts as a precursor to disease because its constant presence weakens the cells and eventually the entire immune system.

It stands to reason, then, that cleansing the body of this accumulated waste serves to rejuvenate the innate healing mechanisms of the body. so that they can function at optimal capacity to restore health and vitality, the less toxicity that is present in the body, the greater our vital force becomes.

Physiological Process

Because the act of digesting food consumes our energy on an ongoing basis, it follows that the elimination of solid food for short periods of time will make the energy normally used for digestion available for the process of detoxification. Thus the first step is to stop eating food so that the lemonade drink can commence Is work.

Because the lemonade drink is easily assimilated, it places little or no demand on the digestive system. Fresh squeezed lemon juice is a powerful cleanser for the body, and is also high in vitamins. Additionally, it is the only fruit or vegetable to contain cationic and anionic minerals.

Lemon also helps loosen and break up mucus in the body. Mucus is one of the body's defenses to protect it self against irritations. When too much mucus settles in any one area, dis-ease is the natural outcome.

Those of you familiar with colour therapy will also know that lemon, when consumed fresh squeezed, releases the colour that stimulates the body to cleanse itself.

Cayenne pepper, another key ingredient of the diet, breaks up this mucous and acts as a cleanser for the digestive, respiratory, and circulatory systems. It is used by herbalists to treat a wide range of problems and to enhance the effectiveness of many other herbs.

The maple syrup provides energy from an unprocessed sugar which still contains many of its original nutrients.

On the subject, the absence of minerals and vitamins in processed sugars makes the digestive system rob the body of these precious nutrient stores in order to metabolize the sugars. If too many processed foods are eaten, the pancreas seems to one of the first organs affected, often resulting in hypoglycemia and then further deterioration of the pancreas.

The herbal laxative tea is used to stimulate peristalsis of the colon, since the only other way to do it is to eat a diet high in fibre. The lemonade drink, or Master Cleanser, having no fibre, must use a laxative to remove the waste as it is being shed from the colon wall, otherwise it will stay in the body, leading to tiredness and any number of problems.

I want to reinforce that this is no starvation diet. At 6' 2" and 227lbs (starting weight) I'm a fairly big man; it's safe to say I don't eat like a bird! LOL! And while the first day was the toughest for me - I kept going to the fridge and opening it, only to have to 'check' myself and close it again (you wouldn't believe how many food commercials are on TV!!!), it has gotten much easier as the days go on.

I have been very strict too, as I figure that if I am going to subject myself to this measure of discipline, I want to be damn sure I get the full effects from it. The ONLY “cheating” I have been doing – if you can even call it that – is one cup of black coffee in the morning. I enjoy my coffee and as I get a wicked headache if I don’t have a cup in the morning, have to admit to being addicted to the caffeine. Were it a FOOD, and a load on my digestive system, I would most definitely tough it out and skip it… but as it is not a food (it’s basically coloured water with caffeine – a colourless, odourless chemical), I can’t see that one cup of BLACK coffee is going to change anything as there isn’t really anything for my digestive system to ‘process’.

How have I felt? In a word, “Much better than I thought I would… great in fact!” Okay, that’s a sentence… but you get the idea! Me and 799 of my friends will be racing in a 67 kilometer mountain bike race called The Test of Metal (www.testofmetal.com) in June. Consequently, LOTS of training is in order. I already teach a group cycling class at the Apollo Athletic Club in Abbotsford, but have added some long distance mountain biking to the menu to build up some big base & endurance. While I was initially curious/concerned how my ol’ bod would react to such as drastic change in diet in relation to my training, so far I have not had to cut back on the intensity or regularity of my training, which I'm glad about! I figure I am still getting at least 1000 calories a day from the maple syrup in my lemonade (about 120 ounces a day), which is obviously enough. I have my 3 hour long ride coming up on the weekend and was just planning on stocking my ‘Wingnut Gear hydration bladder’ with my lemonade, probably cutting back on the cayenne for this mix, and hoping this would suffice energy-wise. I think it will.

I'd like to add that I am not doing the MC to lose weight - and I think that this is where many get mislead about it. While losing weight is an added bonus (if you have the weight to lose), I am doing it to clean myself out! I'm 42 years old and figure that I have been storing up all kinds of toxins in my body for years. I never used to be allergic to anything, but now many types of beers (except for the most pure, unpasturized and no added preservative varieties) and many types of wines cause my nose to completely stuff up like I'm having some kind of allergic reaction. This isn’t supposed to happen! Also, I have had problems with my sinuses for a few years now, and the steroidal spray that the doctor gave me only seemed to make my throat sore which, as a singer, doesn't help. The MC is designed to clean out all the old mucous - along with the toxins - from your system, REMOVING all the causes for these adult-onset allergies and the like. And so I thought, what the hey… I'll subject myself to a 10 day experiment to see if it works!

I have to say that so far so good as I haven't needed any sinus meds at all, and my head is feeling "clearer" than I can ever remember it feeling. I've also dropped 11 lbs and 1.5% body fat, but as I said... that's just a bonus for me because I am already so svelte! Haha!

So here’s a quick daily breakdown so far:

* I weigh and measure first thing in the morning after I go pee, to get a consistent reading from day 2 day.

Day 0 – Super Bowl! Food & drink galore! Buuuurp!

Day 1 – 231lbs

Okay… I’m going to record myself as weighing 227lbs simply because I ate and drank SOOO much at the Super Bowl party, that this weight just isn’t realistic. I know I weighed 227 the morning prior, so that’s what my official start weight shall be… 227lbs.

This has to be what is to go down in record as the hardest day! I don’t know how many times I went back & forth to the fridge!

Day 2 – 224.5 lbs (21% Body Fat)

I ordered an electronic body fat monitor so I could chart more than just what the scale reads. I know that I will not be losing “water-weight” during this cleanse as I’m super-hydrated all day (I drink about 4+ liters a day when you consider the lemonade, the tea, and all the water I want), but I do want to get an idea how much of what I lose is lean mass and how much is fat. The BF monitor didn’t arrive until day 2, which is why I don’t have a measure for day 1.

Day 3 – 222.5 lbs (20% BF)

Day 4 – 221.5 lbs (19.6% BF)

Day 5 – 220 lbs (19.5% BF)

Day 6 – 219.5 lbs (18.8% BF)

I taught a group cycling class at the local club today and felt GREAT. I had tons of energy.

Day 7 – 216 lbs (19.5% BF)

I couldn’t tell you why my BF increased while my weight dropped. We’ll see what happens tomorrow.