www.youtube.com/watch

I love music. And even though I know that the outward body does not make or break ones vocal ability I have to admit that when I saw this lady come out to perform I thought they were doing it as a joke. She does not look the part we have been socialized to expect to perform well.

I was humbled and amazed. Like everyone else who has watched it. I hope you enjoy it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY

I had a few really weird dreams last night. One of them was about solving Rubik’s cubes. I was watching a competition where people were solving the mind bending puzzle in just a few seconds. After the competition the competitors were showing the audience how they did it. The problem most people had solving the puzzle was learning that you had to break down your success in order to move forward.

 Too bad the other 5 sides are a complete mess. But who cares we got the green and the yellow down!

In order to really solve the puzzle you have to let one area of success break down in order to move forward. We cannot obsess over one side not being completely done all of the time. In fact some areas might even get a little more chaotic before they get better. But we are not focused on just the completion of 1 or 2 sides. That cannot be our goal. We need to have a complete life, and if the goal is a complete life, a complete cube we need to focus on that and not on just one side.

I’ve been writing a lot this week on this topic, and I’m doing that because I think that it is extremely important to get into our brains. We have to focus on the whole.
 

I’m not talking about giving up on a side. That is not solving the puzzle either. If we get the gree right, and then destroy it in order to get the blue right, did we really accomplish anything? Not at all.

Life has to be solved in tandum.

I found this video on the net as well about how to solve the cube. Sorry I cannot embed it. He had disabled that feature. He says he is going to help you solve the cube problem in less than 3 seconds. He does so by throwing the cube away. Not exactly a solution, but that is what some of us do about life as well. If we cannot solve it all. Or be happy with only a few sides solve then they just throw it away.

The other thing about the cube is it always seems to get messed up again. No matter how many times you solve it – one of your kids will come around and goof it up again, or your boss, or life in general. But if we learned to solve the whole puzzle once we can do it again and we will do it faster this time. We get better and better at handling all the circumstances life throws at us.

My ecncouragement to you today is to not throw it away. Nor to focus on just one side. But to live a whole life so that in the end we are complete and get better and better at solving the messes life can throw at us.

Be Healthy – Enjoy Life!

Matthew Stearmer

One of the greatest days in a weight loss regime is hitting the end of a belt and needing to punch whole in it in order to make it still work for you.

I’ve got this great belt. I really like the way it looks, the texture etc. I bought it at the hight of my fatness – 44/46 inches around the waist. When I bought it I was in the middle of the holes. I then gained enough pounds to where it was tight at the very end of the belt. Now, 3 months later I’ve had to put 3 new holes in it for a total of about 7 inches lost.

For the first time in years I can fit (tightly still) into my size 38 jeans. I was originally hoping to get down to just 36 inches, but I think at this point I’m going to shoot for 34.

Overall, not too bad for less than 4 months worth of work!

Be Healthy – Enjoy Life!

Matthew Stearmer

Guess what?! I did not do anything “productive” – weight loss wise – this week. And the last time I checked the world did not stop spinning. The sun still came up over the mountains and still woke up in the morning. Isn’t that great! Life goes on.

I found this little zinger from The Onion. I love The Onion News Network. For the 3 or 4 of you in the world that might not know what that is, it is a parody news network that just gives absolutely hysterically sarcastic social commentary. They can be a little irreverent and are always over the top. So I can only cautiously recommend them – it might now suite everyone’s tastes.

Ok, do disclaimer out of the way, I found this video on their website about weight loss. It is both hysterical and frightening.

Diet Book Author Advocates New ‘No Food Diet’

After I finished laughing I started thinking about my blog, my attitude and where I was headed – or at least where others might think that I am headed.

I know I have a tendency to go on crusades. I’m a sucker for them I guess. But I want to make sure that what I’m trying to do here does not end in this type of result.

I’m not on a “diet”. I don’t want anyone to go on a diet. I don’t even want you to go through a lifestyle cange. This is not a cult movement and there is absolutely no eating furniture. I hope that what I’m getting across at this site has much more to do about health than some insane weight loss regime. There really is nothing off limits – ok phone’s in general are off limits. I don’t want you eating any of them. Or pillows as well. The brocade will not be good for you. Although the fiber may help:)

Seriously, I hope that this weekend will be an example. I did not do anything that I planned on doing. There was just too much going on and the first thing that tends to go for me is diet and exercise. I honestly wish that that it did not work that way for me, but it does. I get overbooked, stressed and tired just like everyone and poof I’m back to looking like a couch potato.

But you know what? I actually enjoyed the weekend. I don’t feel guilty about it. I’m not sad. I’m just really ready to fix my elliptical and get started again. I’m ready to move on. I’m really, really, really happy. Really.

I so totally do not want to sound like a diet nut case.

Bottom line for this post is enjoy life – seriously, not some one elses version, just enjoy YOUR life. If you do you’ll lose weight permanently and people will want to be around you at the same time. If we just go insane and lose weight we will likely not do it in any sort of reasonable fashion – and when all of our friends have left use alone because we ate their love seat last month, it will be all too easy to abandon the diet in favor of friends.

So this weekend I did a lot of work, played with my kids, helped at a church activity, went to a movie with my family (Kung Fu Panda was hysterical). I went out to eat with some friends. Never left the church building/assignments for about 12 hours on Sunday. Did not get nearly enough sleep, and did not exercise very much. I look at that and laugh. From a diet perspective I probably could have been worse. But who cares!

I will exercise today and be right back where I was over the weekend. I enjoyed life. I hope that you will as well.

Be healthy – enjoy life!

Matthew Stearmer

I thoroughly enjoyed the weekend!

This was a great weekend for several reason. First off it was General Conference for my church. I honestly wish we could do that more often than twice a year. I certainly need the upliftment and encouragement more often, but I supposed absence makes the heart grow fonder in all sorts of odd ways.

I also got to sleep! I got about 8 hours each night and I even managed a few naps. I hope I do not have to wait another 6 months for that to happen.

I was able to get in some exercise as well and the food was great!

I still had to work in between all the sessions, so it was not as relaxing as it could have otherwise been, but all things considered it was very very nice. I’ll just have to make up for now – since I’m a little behind where I wanted to be.

Shrimp Scampi: This is the recipe that I’ve been writing about. This is the final result. I really think that making it looks nice makes it taste better. Not sure why – but it does to me! And for a weight loss recipe you can hardly beat it. I’ll save extolling its virtues again – you can just read the post if you want to see it. But trust me. It will help you lose weight and you will love every bite of it!

Perfected Pork: This one – well it will not help you lose weight, but it is the most delicious pork I have ever had. I know – shameless self bragging, but there are many independent taste buds that will verify this opinion for me!

And this is what the kids think of it

Super Salad: I truly believe that salad should be required by law to taste delicious. I vary my salads all of the time, but this is one of the combos that I like. I’ve included the food picture below so you can see it as well if you want it give it a try. I’ll include it as one of my recipes one of these Wednesdays.

Ingredients

How’m I looking? I’m down 70 lbs of fat here. I lost 2 lbs from Friday to Monday. I was not really expecting to make any progresses because I really kind of over indulged, But I did try to get rest and some extra exercise to make up for it as well. It just goes to show that if you take care of your body that you can enjoy some of the finner things in life and still lose weight. This is a picture after one of my workouts this weekend.

I’ll include some of the before pictures in another post. You can see some of them from face book. It was only 3 months ago that I was over 270 lbs! It has been a long time since I wanted any pictures taken of me at all. Generally I tried to avoid them at all cost.

Now, Well – I can tollerate them. And I hope to enjoy them again some day.

Matthew Stearmer

Well, last week I rated myself in the B-ish range for reaching my goals. I’m feeling better about things this week so I’m not feeling the need to get over zealous this weekend. I have a tendency to do that as you may have noticed.

This is going to be a slow and steady weekend I think.

It was my oldest son’s birthday on Thursday and since it was in the middle of the week the party celebration have lingered on a little, and I’m sure there will be a littlre more parting this weekend as well. Now, I feel like I’ve done pretty good so far. He got to pick a place to eat out, and I got online and looked at the menu and decided before hand what I would order to stay on track. And then I only ate about 2/3 of that amount anyway (and still felt crappy afterwards). It’s funny, the more you get into shape, and the more you could actualy afford to endulge – the less like you are to actually do it.

I think that is going to be another law of weight loss dynamics.

By I digress for this post.

I’ve already put in about 7 miles for the day. Tomorrow I’m going to work around the yard and move a lot of dirt. But I will not be doing quite as many miles. So here are the goals.

1) 15 total miles

2) 3 lbs weight loss

3) 3 gallons of water

4) 8 hours of sleep! – I’m really going to do it.

The drinking of water is one of the easiest. I already do about 2 in that same time frame, so I only need to drink a few more bottles a day to get there.

In order to get to 15 miles I am going to have to walk to church. And in order to walk to church I’m going to have to get to sleep on time. If I can accomplish goal #4, I will have the time to get out of the house early and still make it to my early morning meetings (7am!). Life and weight loss result are always doing to be tied together. The way we diet will effect how and what we eat. When we sleep will effect what we can accomplish the next day etc.

If we try to set goals without understanding how the rest of our life will integrate into it, we will be setting ourselves up for failure.

That will be another law of weight loss dynamics.

On the difficulty side there are two things that come to mind.

1) It is still my son’s birthday, and tomorrow he will have a donut cake. Normally I might be tempted by the donuts, but I am still recovering (gastrointestinally speaking) from that one. So more fried food just isn’t that appealing. But if I do get the urge tomorrow I will simply cut it in half and enjoy a little indulgence.

2) Getting enough sleep will be critical.

So with that in mind – I’m off to bed. At this point I may only get 7 before I have to get my son up for a Scouting hike – but maybe I can slip back into bed before the girls get up! If not there is always that small – ever so unlikely – chance that I might get a nap!

How are you going to control you’re weekend?

Matthew Stearmer

Generally speaking I’m fairly please with my weekend results. I was not perfect, but I did have some good success.

Here is the run down on the goals.

Run/Walk 33 miles: I only made it 24 (73% completed). I was not able to do anything on Sunday. I will get those last 10 in today.

Lose 3 lbs: I only made it 2 (66%). I will likely drop 1 more after these last 10 miles are done, so falling short here is not to bad considering I basically missed a whole day of intense exercise.

Drink 3 Gallons of water: 100 %. Yeah! This is good to help weight loss and also ensures that any weight I lose will not just be water weight.

No Spinach Cheese Dip: 50% complete. Well, I got a little overzealous in my determination to lose weight. And my wife sort of convinced me that a little break is good. So I did make the dip – and it was delicious! I did however control the portions really well. I ate only 2 oz maybe. So it was a good appetizer, but not overly indulgent. Since I did not exercise I should have eaten a little less on my meals and then I would feel a little less guilty here. But it was really really tasty:)

I wanted to get 9 hours of sleep, each night but barely managed 7. So this is just right in line with the average. So I made 0% progress here.

And finally on the back. I have started to work with it a little more to make sure that it stays healthy. I even helped move a piano over the weekend for a friend and did that without any sort of hitch developing, so I consider this a success. I’ll score it at about 80% because I need to give it more rest and I need to specifically do a few more exercises to keep from re-injuring myself.

So the average success rate over the weekend was about 65%. If this were a football team – I would not even make it into the playoffs. But if it was a batting average, I’d be the greatest hitter of all time. I’m not sure which is the better comparison – likely it is neither – but it does cause one to reflect on how to judge progress.

I did not accomplish my goals from an absolutest stand point. But since I do not believe it is possible to be perfect, I want to concentrate on being perfected. Which is a much longer process and allows for ups and downs and partial successes are even rewarded.

So here’s to the success that I had, and here’s to hopeing for a better week!

Matthew Stearmer

Now, Herbie the love bug is not going to get any Zen master scores, but I actually saw demonstrated two great life lessons from watching a Herbie movie lately.

1) We are not as good separate as we are together
2) Machines never replace heart

Herbie apparently cannot drive completely on his own and win a race. He needs a driver. The drivers although good in a race – are not necessarily the best racer out there. Each team player brings a unique talent set to the table. It is the combination of these talents that causes them to be a winning team.

I actually read a few comments in the IMDB forum on this movie where one person argued that Herbie as a sentient being was an “cheat” to the system and should have his medals stripped and given to the loser of the race. I thought about that and remembered a scene where the nemesis was turning on all of his electronic gadgets and computers to make the car perform at its optimum peak. I wondered why is it that we are more than willing to put our trust in machines and technology than in intuition, drive, tenacity, and innovation?

I’m not sure what the answer may be, but we have bought into the technology bug hardcore. We truly believe that there is a magic pill, a supercharger, a resume trick that will solve our problems and give us what we want.

Reality is that what most of us need is a kick in the pants so we will just get out and do the work.

I’ve been tracking my diet, exercise and supplements for about 8 weeks now. I’ve been trying different methods, recording the results and trying to discover what is the most powerful way for me to lose weight.

Well, my experiments are not done yet, but Let me give you an update on where I am thus far.

In the last 2 months I have lost a total about 40 lbs so far. Not too bad:)

I have lost on average about 1 lbs a day that I was actively exercising and following my diets (I had 1 vacation and then about a week of being sick in the middle of all of that). But there have been a few methods and supplements that have let me use 3-4 pounds a day in very short burst.

I’ll be posting more on each method and result as I go.

40 down – only 50 more to go. I’m about halfway there!

Matt S