Category: Weightloss

Gail’s Green Touch:Transforming the Front Porch with Kale

Craig

In a quaint neighborhood where each house boasts its unique charm, my late mother Gail’s residence stood out with a front porch that was both eye-catching and inspiring.

It’s not just the vibrant colors or the meticulous arrangement that caught the eye, but the unusual choice of her decorations – Kale.

Gail, was a longtime Annex resident and a creative soul, who had taken to using kale, a leafy green cruciferous vegetable to adorn her front porch.

This choice was not only aesthetically pleasing to her but also spoke volumes about her commitment to sustainability and health.

The Aesthetic Appeal of Kale

Kale, with its deep green hues and ruffled leaves, adds a touch of natural beauty to any setting. Gail skillfully arranges the kale alongside other plants, creating a tapestry of green that brings life to her porch. The kale’s robust nature means it can withstand various weather conditions, making it an excellent choice for outdoor decoration.

Health Benefits of Kale

Kale is more than just a decorative plant; it’s a powerhouse of nutrients. It’s packed with vitamins A, K, and C, along with minerals like calcium and potassium. Kale’s health benefits include improving bone health, aiding digestion, and contributing to a healthy heart.

Sustainability and Environmental Consciousness

Using kale as a decoration was a testament to her commitment to sustainability.

Kale is easy to grow and maintain, requiring minimal resources.

This porch choice appeared each fall around Thanksgiving reflected a deeper awareness and responsibility towards the environment, promoting a lifestyle that is both eco-friendly and health-conscious.

Personal Reflections

As I stood on Gail’s porch, admiring the kale decorations, I could not help but feel a sense of admiration and puzzlement.

The kale, in its simple elegance, represents a lifestyle choice that’s both healthy and environmentally conscious.

Looking down at my stomach, I was reminded of the importance of healthy eating and living, a lesson subtly imparted by the kale-adorned porch.

In conclusion, Gail’s use of kale to decorate her front porch was not just a testament to her creativity and aesthetic sense but also a reflection of her values.

It’s a unique blend of beauty, health, and environmental consciousness that inspires and reminds us of the simple ways we can incorporate these healthy eating choices and elements into our lives.

Have you had your eyes checked lately?

Craig

How is your eyesight?

Do you need glasses to drive at night?

I used to but don’t anymore.

Every two years I drive down to Toronto to have my eyes examined by my optometrist.

I was one of his first patients when he opened his practice in downtown Toronto in 1987 at the age of 25 years of age.

Quite possibly the best decisions I had ever made.

I look forward to my visits to get my eyes examined for several reasons.

The cool machines I look through to check my eyes are fascinating to me. 

I especially like the one that blows air in your eyes to check for glaucoma with the little farmhouse in the back room.

Plus I get to chat with my optometrist Jerry who I’ve known for 30 years.

We talk about family and sports for an hour first before he examines my eyesight.

He always asks how my eyesight is doing. 

It’s really a rhetorical question because he already knows how my eyesight is before he checks me.

I always ask him how his eyesight is doing.

Not only are we the same age but we also have the exact same vision.

There was a big difference the last time I went to see him from the previous time.

 I had trimmed down and made some drastic changes to my life.

He told me that he had good news and bad news about my eyesight.

The good news was that my eyesight had improved.

I laughed and asked “ how is that even possible?”

He explained that pressure exerted on the optical nerves to my eyes had become less because of my weightloss.

And I wouldn’t’ need glasses to drive at night anymore.

I found that difficult to believe after driving with glasses for almost 30 years.

But he was right. I didn’t.

How is the optometrist always right?

Then he gave me the bad news.

I would need glasses to read in the not so distant future.

It was fascinating to learn that losing weight could actually improve my eyesight.

That was something I was not expecting to hear on my visit.

Your eyesight is important.

Having your eyes checked regularly is an important part of health and fitness plan.

I look forward to my next appointment.

Summer, and the livin’ easy

Craig

It’s another hot summer day and I live for summer.

And a bowl of spicy guacamole too of course.

Did you think it was going to say something else?

I thought so.

What tastes better with guacamole than a nice cold glass of fresh homemade lemonade.

During my travels to Mexico, I have discovered a healthy homemade lemonade at the organic joint I have dinner at before hitting the dance floor.

This tasty cocktail came in handy when I stayed out a little too late dancing and followed by tacitos after and developed gout.

Ingredients:

  • Juice of one fresh organic lemon
  • 1-2 tablespoon Braggs Apple Cider Vinegar
  • 2 teaspoons organic honey
  • 8 ounces of clean fresh water
  • Ice

Directions

  • squeeze the juice of one fresh organic lemon into a glass and remove the seeds
  • Add 2 tablespoons of organic honey
  • Stir the organic honey and fresh lemon juice together
  • Add fresh cold water stir in the ice and enjoy

Since the lemon juice and the Apple cider vinegar are acidic they can soften tooth enamel.

What a difference a decade can make

Craig

Happy New Year!

It’s hard to believe that it’s 2020.

It’s going to be the best decade ever.

The last decade was a life saver and a game changer and will only get better.

Back in 2010, I was a 46 year old, unhealthy and overweight graphic designer living in Toronto.

My daily routine consisted of going for a short walk in the morning and then driving to the office to sit in a chair all day.

I would have a big bowl of oatmeal and eat a dozen or two TimBits with an extra large triple triple before arriving at the office.

The hour long drive was stressful so the drive through was my best friend.

There certainly were no chocolate avocado smoothie’s or green juices for my breakfast back in those days.

I had reached 300 pounds

And by 2010, I had reached 300 pounds, was wearing big and tall clothes with a 44 inch waist to prove it.

Exercise and proper diet were not part of my life like they are now.

It is now January 2020 and I am healthy and fit 56 year old man with a 32 inch waist, weigh 175 pounds with a BMI of 24.

I no longer take a plethora of medications when I wake up in the morning

Wearing skinny jeans and slim fitting shirts has become normal.

I am now an entirely different person, in more ways than you can imagine.

In 2015 I started to take yoga classes and then spinning and circuit training classes. From there how to eat clean and do juice and vegetable cleanses.

That is when my weight loss really accelerated.

My pants fell right off

One day my pants literally fell right off while I was walking out of the yoga studio. I needed to go buy new pants and a belt that day.

And in 2020 and beyond I plan to continue to get healthier and fitter.

Staying motivated to get up and go to the gym every day is hard work.

Keep investing in yourself. After all, you are worth it.

Nobody said it was going to be easy.

Staying positive, having attainable goals, a personal trainer and a proper support team in place to achieve your fitness goals is important.

But most importantly, remember to have fun.

Dehydration may cause gout

Craig

People going through a lifestyle change can and will face something called a setback.

This year has been the most difficult for setbacks for several reasons but gout has been the main reason.

If you have never experienced gout then consider yourself lucky.

This year I have had four separate acute gout attacks.

Gout was taking control of my life and it sucked.

I had to find a solution to this before I went off the deep end.

When you get gout, life comes to a standstill.

Not only is gout extremely painful but you can not walk, sleep, exercise or think properly.

Worst of all, your sex life comes to an end when you have gout and that sucks even more.

The onset of an acute gout attack

Gout started to appear when I was in my early thirties, overweight and leading an unhealthy lifestyle.

Usually gout would appear after a night of too many beers and eating rich foods like T-bone steaks, ice cream and roasted cashews.

Since I am a healthy man now, I wondered why the hell this was still happening to me.

What I noticed was my gout attacks were occurring after hot yoga classes, high intensity work outs and after drinking coffee.

Sometimes I drink coffee after working out or a hot and sweaty yoga class.

Could drinking coffee after hard work outs or hot yoga classes be causing the problem?

When I work out or do hot yoga I leave puddles of sweat behind.

It never occurred to me that those puddles of sweat would cause trouble.

And then I would usually go for coffee at Starbucks.

So instead of replacing the essential nutrients, I was drinking coffee and not replacing the nutrients. My bad.

So I got onto the inter-webs and did some research.

I was sweating out magnesium and magnesium deficiency has been known to cause gout.

Full blown acute gout attack

Magnesium deficiency will increase uric acid levels.

Increased uric acid will cause the kidneys to produce excess uric acid which can cause gout.

Right away I ran to the health store and started to take magnesium supplements.

And wihin a few days my gouty arthritis symptoms started to recede, slowly.

Everything is slow when you have gout from walking, showering and even your clouds your thinking.

Receding

So instead of drinking coffee and hyper hydrating after a super hot and hard workout, I changed my pattern.

Now I drink copious amounts of water or an electrolyte drink to replace all the salt and essential minerals

From now on I will continue to take magnesium supplements and see if that helps to keep the gout away.

The health store owner told me that eventually gout will be a distant memory.

I hope he is right.

Weight Loss with a High Speed Blender

Craig

Green Juicing helped me lose weight

Do you want to change your life, get healthy and lose weight like I did?

It’s important to be positive, set goals, and start taking baby steps.

One of the most important tools that I found to help with weight loss was a high speed blender.

The Personal Trainer mentioned she had a cleansing program to try.

I would need to have a high speed blender and a nut milk bag.

After I did some research and came across two high speed blenders that would work, the Vitamix and Blend-Tec Four Side blender.

I decided buy the Blend-Tec and have it was the best $400 I have ever spent.

When I got my blender home and started to make green juices and smoothies righ

That was three years ago and have used my blender more than 3000 times now, dropped 125 pounds and 10 inches off my waistline.

The Blend-tec makes healthy juices and other foods that are essential for someone who wants to improve their health.

If you want to add a tool to lose weight and get healthy adding a high speed blender is a great start.

Yoga changed my life

Craig

Yoga helped me change my life
Before and after photo

There was once a time not long ago when I would be sitting staring out the window of my local watering hole on Queen Street or from the picnic table in the park where I spent afternoons doing my multimedia work while waiting to pick up my son from school.

I would see people walking or biking past carrying their rolled up yoga mats.

Being a die hard hockey and football fan my entire life, I thought yoga was a sport for women but,  I was wrong…

Once I moved to Collingwood, I met a woman who was a yoga instructor. She was the first yoga instructor I’d ever met and suggested we attend a yoga class together.

I was very reluctant because of my closed-mind and limited beliefs about yoga but decided to give it a try and took my first yoga class in January 2014.

It was not exactly what I had expected it to be, it exceeded my expectations and I loved going to this place, lie down on a rubber mat and do strange movements with unusual names like Happy Baby, Cat Cow, Downward Dog or Shavasana! A place where I could get a quick nap in seemed like an awesome place!

Not long after I started practicing yoga, I began to notice that I was losing weight, my thinking was clearer and more focused, my mood had improved, my balance had improved. Something was happening to me by coming to yoga classes, something great.

I had found a cool place to go where I could clear my mind, meet women and get healthy and fit and I was accepted. It become a part of my daily routine and was a great place to go each morning instead of my regular routine.

What I didn’t realize until many years after was how grateful I was to the woman who took me to my first yoga class when I was overweight and in desperate need of a change to my lifestyle.

Changing how I thought about yoga lead me to experience new things, opened my mind, my body to relax, breathe, stretch, be in the moment, meet new people and challenged me in ways I could never have imagined and it was helping me lose weight.

Once I had improved at yoga, I joined a more advanced yoga class and from there I noticed people taking spinning and circuit training classes and signed up for those and loved it. The classes were high energy, fun and full of amazing people, just what the doctor ordered.

That lead me to become a personal trainer and help other people like myself to lose weight and make changes to their lifestyle.

If you have never tried yoga before, I seriously recommend that you do.

Yoga changed my life for the better and it might do the same for you.

Dead Man Walking

Craig

When I was 48 years old I was overweight and needed to have my wisdom teeth removed.

I don’t know if you’ve had your wisdom teeth removed but it’s one of those life experiences that I never wanted to experience and had avoided.

Luckily for me at that time I knew a parent from my son’s hockey team who just happened to be a Dental Surgeon. He offered to remove my wisdom teeth and I gladly accepted his offer.

On the day of my surgery, the nurse took x-rays and then escorted me into the surgery room and administered anesthetic.

The Dental Surgeon went to work but after a few minutes, I woke up and looked up at the doctor while he was pulling a tooth out of my mouth with a big pair of pliers.

The kind doctor looked down at me and said “Craig, you are a dead man walking and there’s a good chance you will die before before the age of 50 if you do not lose weight.”

He made me promise that I would have to make a serious effort to lose weight or he would not finish operating.

I reluctantly promised that I would change my life and lose weight and he finished removing my wisdom teeth.

That was a day that changed my life forever.

 

 

 

 

 

Lemons Helped me Lose Weight

Craig

In 2010 I was over weight and had numerous health problems.

My doctor sent me to get my internal organs examined to learn if something was wrong with me.

The technician was from Syria and shared her family secret with me to help with my weight loss.

She told me to drink a half an organic lemon squeezed in warm water every morning and wait for half an hour to have breakfast.

She explained that when the visceral fat surrounding the liver  dissolved from the lemon, my liver would begin to work better and help with weight loss.

The acid in the lemon and Apple Cider Vinegar may have negative effects on the enamel of teeth and a good idea to rinse your mouth with warm water but do not brush your teeth after taking this Elixir.

Hopefully this post will reach people who may be suffering from Fatty Liver Disease, High Blood Pressure or Gout and need a solution like I did.