Well that was fun.

Great class tonight! I really enjoy sparing and tonight I reminded myself of an important lesson I learned early in my training.  Keep my fist tight!

I like keeping my hands loose because it keeps my overall body loose which keeps my tension down.  However when I'm not actually sparing it's easy to think that I'm making proper fists when I'm punching nothing but air.  Well tonight I managed to jamb my left ring finger while blocking a side heel.  Then later on I bent the thumb nail back on the same hand while sparing with Sihing Bjorkquist. Looser hands are all fine as long as when I want to make contact they're proper tight fists.

Important lessons re learned tonight.

Mr. Repay

Green smoothie #9

A little update as it's been a while since my last post.  It's been almost four months since I started this journey.  Durring that time I've only missed a couple of days when I was in Mexico.  It's become part of my daily routine and I couldn't be happier.  

Some things I've noticed have been a nice flattening  of my blood sugar due to the high fiber.  I feel full a lot longer and my mental state has become sharper.  I never thought I'd consume the sheer amount of raw vegetables that I'm doing but drinking them makes it so much easier.  

Green smoothie I drank after last night's class

1 liter of water

3 cups of raw spinach

3 cups of raw kale

2 raw carrots

1 raw zucchini 

1 nub of fresh ginger

1/2 cup of frozen pear

Blend and enjoy

Earth Day & a little bit everything else

I was blown away with the turn out for Earth Day pitch in an clean up this past Saturday.  I've been with the school for a lot years and I've participated in this clean up but I've never seen so many people participate.  I really loved seeing everyone genuinely excited to be there and the interaction was awesome to see.  Outside of the obvious, I find the opportunity to intereact and develop realtionships with classmates a big bonus.  We don't have enough time before and after class to to interact with each other and Earth day gave me the opportunity to just chat while picking up cigarette buts LOL!.

It's been a while since I've blogged and there are a few reasons but there aren't any reasons at the same time.  I've slowly slid back and I could feel myself about to get onto that old well worn path.  However the Earth Day event this past Saturday was exactly what I needed.  I needed to reconnect, re engage and just get back to being with my classmates.  I'm the sort of person that needs in person interation to remain engaged.  The virtual world works for me but only for a limited time.  The past month has seen me ramp up my travel with work and as a result it hasn't allowed me to attend in person during the week.  I've tried to fight to against this but I've always failed so instead of getting discouraged I've just come to realise that it is what it is.  That however doesn't mean I've given up, it means I have to make some changes as best I can to my work schedule.  When I attend at least one in person class per week, it's enough to keep me engaged for the rest of the week to be virtual.

Mr. Repay

Starting again

I was fortunate to spend the last 8 days in Mexico on a business trip with one of my clients.  The event was amazing and I got to spend it with my wife as well. What didn't go well was my physical training, it was non existent.  

However I'm not feeling guilty about it..  I understand and accept that it didn't happen.  It wasn't a total loss of time as I was focused on spending some quality time with my wife who is a integral part of my life's journey.  

I'm now back on the path, push ups and sit ups are in motion this morning, some form reps completed and all of these are recorded.  In the past this week would've derailed me for an extended period of time.  This time around I refelected back on the blog post that I wrote on Feb 25th.  What's helped me this year is the habits that I developed when things were going good.  The mental strength I've honed this year but the biggest thing is no guilt.  The guilt was paralyzing and de motivating so much that I would retreat under that glass rock.  Not this year.

The only final thing that helped me this year is that one comment spoken to me at the start of the year at our first meeting. If you know, you know 😉.

Mr. Repay

New weapons

Spending almost two hours sparing is one of my favorite places to spend that time. What a great group of people we had out today, I learned something from each of them. I was sparing with Sidai Noa Csillag and she had a really strong lead hand. She'd parry my jab really well and it was something I had trouble getting past. After some thought I played with throwing my reverse hand toward her head first and following up with my left hand to her body.  It worked over and over and I don't think many people are expecting that.  Also I think a lot of us (me included) are too comfortable with head strikes instead of strikes to the body.  This was something that took a long time to get used to and be comfortable with.  It won't always work but it's a new weapon in my aresenal that I can add to my sparing style. 

That leads me to my next weapon and that's sparing style.  We all learn the school's style from white belt on through the rest of our journey. However as I've progressed through the years, I've picked up bits and pieces from so many people.  I've taken these pieces to develop my own style.  Sparing with so many different people has given me such a broad perspective to draw from. The biggest influence on my style comes from Sihing Lindstrom.  We've trained together for many years and we've traded more than a few strikes on each other 🤣.  I've always admired his style, It looks disceptively simple but it's far from that.  This afternoon we worked together and I picked up some pieces to add to my style.  Simple foot work, stance adjustments and what I call his "peek a boo" style of how he holds his hands.  

Today's two hours flew past and I swear the time change happened midway through open training LOL!  I now have some new weapons to play with because of these two hours. 

Mr. Repay

Strength & Structure

My quantity of pushups and situps per set have increased by 33%.  I'm very happy to see this progression.   My strength is increasing which is allowing this.  When I started, I struggled to get many in before my strength waned.  I took to heart what many Sifu's/Sihings have mentioned to us and that's to focus on proper form first, quantity second.  By doing this I was improving my form and increasing my strength.   Proper push ups are much harder to do that incorrect ones.  

I focused on this advise and I really started to see that my form (yes pushups have proper form lol) was terrible.  As the reps increased with my mind focusing on form, my strength increased and so did the reps.  

What I've found also is that I needed to start my day with reps or I wouldn't get many in outside of the days that I'm in class at the kwoon. Structure/routine was missing.  I'm the person that needs to actively engage in structure, it doesn't come naturally.  I'm the sort of person that thrives in the moment and can work well under pressure.  This isn't always the recipe for success so I've started to implement some structure to my training in the mornings. I now get in at least one to two sets of push/sit (core exercises) ups, one rep of any form and some side planks for physical activity.  I add in reading Mastery with my one espresso to compliment my non physical requirements.  

The structure that I've impleimented has helped kick off my day in a posative way.  I've accomplished some tasks that put me in a posative mental state to start my day.  

Mr. Repay

Sliding and struggling.

Struggling and sliding.  The past few days have seen me slide a little.  There have been a couple of days where I did very little other than drink my green smoothie and not eat as clean as I'd like.  I'm feeling myself starting to slide backwards but I'm not feeling the guilt like I'd felt in the past.   

I woke up this morning thinking about this slide.  I thought about why I'm on this journey and what I'm looking to get out of it?  The answers were sustainability and good health.  I've struggled with both for a long long time.  I've relied on talent for far too long and when talent wasn't enough I'd retreat and go silent.  

Today was different, I woke up with a sense of purpose and wanting to stop the slide.  So before I went to work I made my smoothie, it's in the fridge ready for my lunch, I dropped down and did some pushups, core exercises and a rep of 18 temple motions. I went back and updated some numbers on my excel sheet and finally I blogged.  It's what I needed to get myself re engaged and start my day with posativity. 

Mr. Repay

Green Smoothie #9 - Blood work update

I got a call from my doctor's office this morning and I was preparing myself for a serious discussion with my doctor regarding the results.  To my surprise the receptionist told me that my blood work came back normal and the doctor didn't need to discuss the results with me.  

What we're doing is working and the tangible metrics, blood pressure (121 over 76 most recently) along with normal blood work is even more motivation to stay on the path.  

Green smoothie I'm drinking today

4 cups water

2 cups raw fresh spinach

2 cups raw fresh kale

4 mini raw cucumbers

1/2 cup raw fresh broccoli 

1 large ginger nodule

2 scoops - Healthy Heart + (supplement)

1/4 each frozen raw mango, pineapple, apple. 

Blend and enjoy.

Mr. Repay

Dietary Defense

A lot of my writing has been around mine and my wife's diet changes. It's been something I've known that we needed to change but never seemed to make it to the top of the priority list.  

I personally felt that what I (we) were eating had a profoundly negative impact on our health.  As I've been getting older the affects were becoming more and more evident to me.  Increased weight, inflammation, bloat, gassiness, reduced energy etc etc etc.  Finally I had enough but I was puzzled on where and how to start? 

I happened to be awake early one morning and (our radio is always playing quietly in the background) there was a interviewee discussing the benefits of green smoothies to overall health.  What really caught my attention is that when she's working with her clients and they have difficulties figuring out how to start her suggestion is to drink one green smoothie a day and give it three to four weeks.  She described the improvements her clients felt and they were the things I was looking for.  

That little snipet of a radio interview helped kick off our green smoothies and improvements to our health.  One other thing that's stuck with me over the years is something that Sihing Csillag said.  It went  something like this.  "I'd rather keep my health while I have it than to try and get it back after I've lost it.", Me too Sihing, me too.

Mr. Repay

Green smoothie blog #8 - Traveling and adaptability.

I travel a lot for work and it's not always easy to find a green smoothie that isn't loaded with a ton of sugar from fruit juice.  I like Jugo Juice with a substitution of coconut water for the fruit juice when I'm on the road in Canada.  We're noticing that we've become hyper sensitive to sweetness so we eliminate and sub out the fruit juice in our smoothies.

My wife is traveling to Denver this weekend for one of her business trips.  Jumped onto Google to see what's available to her and not surprisingly there aren't many options.  The places we've found are loaded with sugar/fruit juice along with whole fruits with very little veggies. 

We hoped onto Amazon and found a potential solution in the form of this powdered green smoothie.  It's not as good as our fresh blended smoothies but it's better than not having any or having ones load with sugar. Adaptability is key to ensuring that we find solutions to problems as they come up.  I'm very curious to how it's going to taste but considering there isn't any sugar makes me happy and it's made in Canada which is a huge plus for us.

Smoothie recipe

1 scoop Active Green Pro

200 ml water 

50 grams ice cubes

Blend or shake in a shaker bottle and enjoy.

Mr. Repay

Preparing for the invetible.

Here's what I'm working on to help push through those times.

1. No guilt

2. Blog

3. Record everything.

4. When I don't want to train physically, do something mental/spiritual.

5. Do something everyday, no matter how small. 

6.Celebrate the wins.

7. Don't get hung up on the numbers, embrace the spirit of the journey.

8. Communicate and commuincate some more.

9. Share my journey with my wife

1. No guilt - This has been my nemisis.  I'm very hard on my self as I have a  mentality of being the best at everything.  Now I'm embracing self gratitude and forgiveness.  

2. Blog - Write and write some more.  Writing helps me with #7 and helps me be accountable for where I am.  Re reading my blogs brings perspective to my journey and re focuses me when I'm not feeling it.

3. Record everything - I don't know where I'm going if I don't know where I started or how far along the journey I am.  I record everything including things that were never part of my original requirements.  I'm finding that the process of recording has a direct corolation to motivation and sucess.

4. When I don't want to train physically, do something mental/spiritual - I have many requirments for a reason, they all serve me as long as I reconginze this.  There have been days already when I didn't want to train.  Instead of feeling guilting about this I showed up and watched class, wrote a blog or read mastery. 

5. Do something everyday, no matter how small.  There been days when all is did was drink a green smoothie.  It was a small accomplishment and I recorded it.

6. Celebrate the wins - No matter how small it is I take some time to celebrate the win.  These posative wins are motivation and I can use all the motivation I can get.  I don't diminsh the power of celbrating my wins.

7. Don't get hung up on the numbers - This is a tough one I have a lot of goals I'm striving to accomplish.  However if all I'm focused on is meeting these numbers I'm going to miss the spirit of the I Ho Chuan journey.  This is a journey of mastery that none of us are ever going to achieve.  But by moving in that direction every single day no matter how fast or slow I'm still moving in the right direction.

8. Commuincate and communicate some more - This is a new one for me and arguably the most impactiful on my year so far.  In the past when I didn't like something, I'd withdraw and go silent.  Not this year, I've communicate more openly and more often then ever before. I've utilized "one on ones" with this and those conversations have been a great help.

9. Share my journey with my wife - In the past I did this alone.  This year my wife is a key part of my journey.  I share my blogs with her as soon as I write them, and I talk with her as much as I can.  She's my biggest cheerleader and I can't do this with out her.

I realized after reading what I've wrote, that all of these things are contributing to my engagement of which is what I've been missing.

Mr. Repay

Green Smoothier Blog #7 - Blood Pressure

My blood pressure 8 weeks ago was 130 over 76 and was considered pre hypertension by my doctor.  We have a blood pressure machine in our home to take weekly readings to monitor it.  Both my wife and I have reduced our blood pressure significalty just through diet change and adding in some exercise.  For her it's back to riding lessons and for me it's back to regular training at class and my I Ho Chuan requirments.  

We were discussing our blood pressure improvements this morning and the most significant change that we can attribute this improvement to is our diet.  Green smoothies have been an amazing addition to our diet.  The large amounts of raw leafy greens, raw broccoli, raw carrots, raw ginger, avacado with a low percentage of fruits has to be the #1 improvement to our diet.  The elimination of fast food is a close second as that food has been engineered with high amounts of salt, saturated fats and sugar.  And finally the last major change has been to reduce and almost completly eliminate processed foods such as salami's, crackers, store bought breads (I bake my breads weekly) etc.  The almost total emilimation of these foods has stablized our blood sugar levels, decreased our salt intake and the chemicals from processed foods have been decreased dramtically.  

Finally the last thing we've added into our diet routine has been intermitent fasting.  We no longer eat breakfast and stop eating around 8 pm and don't start eating until around 11am or noon.  We've found that IF has allowed our digestive system to have a nice little break.  In the past and before our sugar reduction IF was difficult to stick with.  I would have felt hungry and would have leaned toward being "hangry" when it came to my mood.  Now we're hungry but not "hangry" and I can stretch my fast well into the afternoon when I'm busy without much issue.

Green smoothies have become the cornerstore for our physical and mental health.  Our clothes are fitting better, we feel much more alert and our overall moods have stablized.  What an amazing feeling and it has everything to do with changing and improving our diet.

Green Smoothie recipe.

2 cups kale

1 cup spinach

1 cup shredded carrots

1 cup brocolli

1/4 cup frozen avacado (good fats and helps emulsify the smoothie)

1/4 cup each frozen apple, mango and pear

1 large nub of fresh ginger

750 ml's of water

Blend and enjoy.

Mr. Repay

My building blocks of sustainability

This has become my mantra for this year's I Ho Chuan year.  I've realized that it needed to be incorporated into my life more this year than in years past.  

What's different is how I'm going about it. I've started with the absolute basics.  I write everything down, no matter what it is and how many.  I've added six new trackable activities to my list of personal requirements.  I've found that recording them helps to realize that I've done something productive for the day.  It's kinda like a small task completed leads to bigger task completed by the end of the day or days down the road.

My next step was to add in activities a little by a little.  For me that was simply having a green smoothie every single day.  I haven't missed a day in the past 42 days.  I've been recording it in my spreadsheet so I actually know how many days it's been, exactly.  I used this as a litmus test to see how sustainable this could be for me before I added more.  Turns out it's been quite sustainable which lead me to the next block which was reaching out to Sifu Brinker just prior to the banquet.  I've added in more and more over the past two months all the while keeping a keen eye on sustainablity.  

My point here is that for me sustainability had to be built upon, one block at a time.  It's helped me to build some amazing habits.  It's helped me level out the highs and lows that have plagued me in the past.  It's provided motivation to do things when I don't want to do them. It's also helped me when I've faltered this year.  I can move past it and accept it for what it was, a temporary set back.  The next moment is an opportunity to keep moving forward and I've done that with simply recording my drinking of a green smoothie.

Mr. Repay

Green smoothie blog #6 - Espresso

I LOVE coffee, specifically espresso soooooo much that I've been obsessed with brewing the perfect shot.  So much that I have developed my own recipe for the amount of beans and water, I time the brew of the shot and measure (in grams) the brewed espresso.  I have a seperate Italian burr grinder, digital scale, de clumping tools etc.   I'm that obsessed with a great shot of espresso LOL!

Now that my diet has changed I don't crave or need espresso like I used to.  In the past I'd make myself at least two double shots (I have never added sugar to my espresso) in the morning and usually a double shot in the afternoon.  Now I'm having a double shot in the morning and that's all for the rest of the day.  If I have more than this, I'm irratiable and the caffeine really bothers me.  

I've been noticing these subtle changes in my pallate and how my body is adjusting.  The thing is I LOVE espresso so much that I've been switching from my regular caffeinated beans to testing some new de caffeinated beans. I don't need to give up espresso I just need to keep adapting which is so familiar to my Kung Fu training.  

Green smoothie from today.  

P.s We've been prepping, slicing and freezing our own fruits and veggies.  It really cuts down on the cost of the pre frozen, pre packaged ones.

3 cups water

1 bunch fresh broccoli

3 cups spinach, beet and kale greens

1 cup shredded fresh carrots

1/2 cup frozen zucchini.

1 large nub of fresh ginger

1/4 each of frozen apple and pineapple.  

Blend and enjoy!

A little bit of this and that.

This is the first week that I've been away from the kwoon in a couple of weeks.  I wasn't "feeling" like I wanted to attend Monday's class.  My wife tried her best to convince me but it still wasn't working until she said "why don't you just log in and watch the class".  I did exactly that and eventhough I didn't participate in class I didn't break the posative momentum that I'd built over the past couple of weeks.  Tonight I logged in and participated in class from my hotel room.  It wasn't the best situation as I didn't have a lot of room and it's been tough learning the sword form in person so it was even tougher over Zoom.  However it was sooooo good to participate and getting some hand form reps in and some sword form reps.  I really liked the intensity of the warm up tonight as well.

I had my first one on one with Sifu Rybak this week and it was great just chatting.  I'm finding that I need to actively engage if I want to progress and keep moving forward.  

It's been a pretty good week so far with some ups and downs but I'm happy to keep moving forward.  I didn't have a great eating day today but it's only one day and I'm not beating myself up over it.  I recognize that there will be days like today but they won't de rail me like they did in the past.  I keep asking myself these questions, "why am I on this journey? Why have I changed my diet? Why am I a Kung Fu martial artist?".  I can finally say that the answers are more about the journey than the destination. It's never been like this for me but I've come to realize that the journey has become more important.

Mr. Repay

Green Smoothie #5 - Gut Health

This has been the most surprisingingly posative result that I wasn't totally expecting.  My gut health hasn't been the greatest.  I've struggled with gassiness and bloating along with an irritated bowel for many years.  

When I changed my diet to remove sugar and add in the green smoothies I was astonished to see the affects it's had on my gut.  The gassiness has gone down 90 percent. I've attributed alot of this to excess sugar that was being fermented in my gut.  The bloatiness was also a by product of the excess sugar.  Previously my diet was low on both soluable and insoluble fibre which is essential to a health gut.  The good bacteria and microbes feed off of this fiber and without it my gut was in a constant state of irritation.  

I can't stress enough how important gut health is to an overall healthy body.  A diet low in fiber, high in sugar, salt and refined foods (our western diet) is horrificaly bad to our digestive system.  I'm pleased to see that the changes to my diet have been fairly easy and it quickly changed the health of my gut.  The next step is to add in some fermented foods like naturaly fermented  sourkraut and spicy kimchi.  I'm not a big fan of dairy so it may take a little while to add in yogurt etc.  I do enjoy kumbhucha but I need to find someone willinging to share a healthy scobi with me, hint hint!

Smoothy recipe from last night. 

3 cups of water

2 cups of fresh kale

2 cups of fresh spinach

1 large bunch of fresh brocolli

1 large nub of fresh ginger

1/4 frozen avacado (healthy fats and emulsifies the smoothie).

1/4 each of mango, pineapple and apple all frozen. 

The addition of ginger on Sifu Brinker's recommendation is AAMAZING!  

Hint - fresh ginger helps fight inflimation ☺️.

Mr. Repay 

The wedge.

We've been learning about this in so many I Ho Chuan classes over the years but today it clicked.  Sihing Lindstrom and I were sparing and he kept hitting me with an intercepting overhand right.  When he stepped back and explained it to me it really clicked.  He was intercepting my straight punch but at the same time re directing it off target.  I got to see and feel the tecnique in real time and in a real life application.

This connection wouldn't have been possible if I hadn't attended the open training class today.  Many people have written about how invaluable this time is and I must concur. Spending time helping Sidai Csillag with the nunchucks was awesome.  I love teaching and to see her progress as far as she has in a short time is amazing.  

Sparing with Sidai Csillag , Mr. Raw and Mr. Carreau was a blast.  Everyone was learning from each other and as the session progressed so did our sparring.  Sitting around after and discussing it as a group was such a powerful time.  Relationships building and strengthing of bonds between teamates is so important to me.

What a great day with a bunch of like minded people!

Mr. Repay

Green smoothie #4

Satiety is the satisfied feeling of being full after eating.  It's been a long time since I experienced this.  Before I scrubbed out a ton of added sugar from my diet and replaced it with green smoothies, real foods (foods that resemble thier original state) and very little to no fast food for the past 7 weeks I'd feel snacky less than 30 minutes after eating. It would be sooooo frustrating and I couldn't really understand why?

What I've come to realize (I'm not a doctor) that I was probably Leptin resitant.  I'm going for blood work soon to test for my leptin and fasting insulin levels so I'll know for sure.  What I've read is that Leptin is the hormone that tells my brain that I'm full so stop eating.  When I'm leptin resitant, that single to my brain is very weak and that hungry feeling is almost omnipresent.  

I no longer eat after 8 pm, don't eat breakfast (one double black espresso) and my first meal is lunch around 11:30 ish.  I'm not actually hungry between these hours.  I've also noticed that the portion size of my meals has significantly decreased. When I have one of our green smoothies for lunch it helps that felling of satiety.  The green smoothies that we've been having has had such a massive impact on our physical health.  

This is the smoothie I made today.  

2 cup's of water

1/2 a fresh zucchini

1/3 of large English cucumber

1 cup iceberg lettuce that was starting to turn.

2 cup's fresh kale

2 peeled fresh oranges

1/4 cup frozen apple, kiwi, pineapple.

Blend until smooth and enjoy.

Four consecutive classes.

Yesterday was my fourth straight class.  To most people this isn't a big deal and some may even be thinking "what's the big deal?".  It's a big deal for me as it's been a tough couple of years.  I travel a ton with my job which makes it really difficult to be in person for class.  The live streaming option has been a big help but I didn't utilize this enough in the past.  

All sorts of excuses come to mind but none of them are valid, they're just excuses.  Last evening some negative thoughts entered my mind and I was actually battling myself mentaly on attending class.  It shouldn't be like this but for me it's been this battle for far too long.  What changed for me and helped me move forward was my teammates good natured "trash talking".  Sihing Csillag was in my head with her comments from last week.  I'm not going to disappear, I'm going to be engaged and I'm going to keep progressing. I also loved how Sihings Csillag and Lindstrom poked and jabbed me after class.  I loved this, I need this.

Cautiously and neavously things feel different for me.  I'm putting repition and accountability into my life.  The more consistently that I take action the easier it is to battle the dark side that's inside me.  I feel I'm more equipped mentally to win this year.  I'm going to keep my head down, keep taking action daily, record everything in my excel file but I'm taking the time to smile and be happy.  

Mr. Repay

Sustainability

I've been writing a lot about my diet.  It's been the biggest change I've made in the past decade.  It's also had the most tangible and posative impact on anything that I've done for my physical health in that same 10+ years.  

I feel extremely motivated but I'm also concerned about sustainability.  I feel that I've been on this path before only to fall off it.  I'm concerned that I'm experiencing one of my past "highs" and that soon it will be another epic "low".  My wife and I've discussed this at length this past Saturday at breakfast.  Looking back, these past journeys we're mostly lonely ones.  I didn't share openly, and when I struggled I pulled back and withdrew.

What I've done more of this year is communicate openly and often with my wife.  What are the things that going well and what are things that are contributing to our current sustainability?  We share the things with each other that are having the most posative impact and potential negative.  Things like the huge reduction in inflammation, less joint pain, less bloating, mentally clearer and my favorite, no longer hungry all the time.  We're talking about how these changes are making us feel both good and bad.  

We're also becoming accountable with each other.  I share my blogs with her and she shares back the smoothie recipe she's just made.  We check in with each other, how's our energy levels, mental clarity etc etc.  This "pulse check" helps me ensure that we're both still engaged/motivated.  

Writing about this journey has been extremely important.  It's helping me capture where I am and how I'm feeling.  It's a snapshot in time,  something to look back on to see the progress I've made.  To see some of the mile marker's of the journey so far.  

Sustainability feels a lit bit easier when I'm sharing this journey with someone else.  Be it with my wife and my I Ho Chuan teammates, a shared journey is a sustainable one.

Mr. Repay

Green Smoothie #3 - Equipment

We started on this journey with a regular Kitchen Aid blender and were able to get our smoothies to blend ok.  However it took a long time and we ate our fair share of wooden spoon 😳.  Because our old blender didn't have that much power and it didn't come with a tamper to push the ingredients into the blade, we used the end of a wooden spoon.  

Overall it was getting the job done, just not that well.  I also stripped out the gears in the bottom of the blender base and I'm pretty sure based on the acrid electrical smell it was getting close to melting the motor.  

My wife and I've made smoothies an absolute necessity in our daily diet so it makes sense to look at a Vitamix. Now let me be clear, you don't need a Vitamix to get into and enjoy green smoothies.  It's an expensive blender that for some people may be cost prohibitive. 

The power that a Vitamix has is like trying to win the Indy 500 in a Toyota Prius instead of in a purpose built Indy race car.  The Vitamix is that powerful!  

Smoothie recipe that we made this morning. 

3 cups fresh water

2 cup fresh kale

2 cup fresh spinach 

1 cup mixed salad greens

1 cup fresh grated carrots

1/4 cup each frozen pineapple, mango, kiwi, apple

1/4 frozen avacado

Blend until smooth and enjoy.

Mr. Repay

My journey is not the same as yours.

My journey is my journey, it's not yours and yours isn't mine.  I've been reflecting on this lately. I've come to realize that the journey I'm on isn't about anyone else than me.  Like this quote says if we're on the same path let us encourage each other.  

Being that I'm a competitive person I've lived most of my life feeling the need to compete with others.  To be the best at everything and at a high cost that I had to pay at times.  I've struggled with this competitiveness but the difference now is I don't let it be the only thing that drives me. It's a motivator for sure, but it's not the sole thing that drives me daily.  I still want to win but I want to win the right way.  The right way to me is to win as a team and to win fairly.  

I've also come to realize that I have to be on this journey for me.  I'm not on this journey to impress anyone (ok maybe my wife ❤️).  I write to tell the story of who I am, who I was and who I want to continue to evolve to be.  I'm not writing to impress my teachers, my friends, my teammates and I believe this realization has unshakled me.  It's allowed me to write about and be accountable to who I am not who I want people to see me as.  Writing this way can be scary if I only cared about what most people thought instead of being who I am and need to be.  

I've taken a lot of years to become comfortable in my own skin.  To be able to write freely about who I am and this journey.  Writing has become freedom and freedom has developed into gratitude and into happiness.

Mr. Repay

Need more edge.

I'm a very competitive person in a lot of regards. I do my very best when I'm challenged and in some way "smack talked".  I'll go back deep into the time tunnel when we used to have the San Shou classes on Tuesday nights. One of the requirements was that we had to post some good natured "smack talk" prior to class.  I must also say that Sifu Lindstrom was the best at it!  The Sifu running the class was tasked with judging the best smack talk and awarding points.  We had a running points total that culminated with a San Shou winner at the end of the year and it was an awarded at the banquet.  

What I'm getting at here is that I personally liked the competitiveness of the class.  It was motivating to me and we kept score.  I believe that in life there's a lot of "score keeping" that happens and for sure life in general is competitive.  

Last night was the first time in a very long time that I felt that "edginess". At first is sort of pissed me off, then it brought clarity and finally it brought motivation.  I can only speak for myself here but I miss that in our school.  I miss the good natured "smack talk" the competitiveness that drives me to do a little extra.  I can't thank Sifu Sharida Csillag enough for bringing that back and directing it toward me😃.  

Mr. Repay

Motivation

It can manifest itself in so many ways.  Last night's meeting was one of those instances. Learning a little bit more about each of our team mates, laughing, good natured fun and a little smack talk from my teammate sitting next to me.  

It was some of that good natured smack talk that got me little extra motivated last night. Thank you Sihing Csillag, you've given me a little extra motivation this year 😊.

Mr. Ian Repay

I can outrun a bad diet, right?

Calories in equals calories out is what I've understood to be the way to lose weight.  Seems simple enough, nope.  A calorie isn't just isn't a calorie and a bad diet will undo whatever amount of exercise I've done.  

I've been thinking a lot about this for a very very long time.  When I was younger I could eat anything and everything I wanted and in massive quantities.  I was growing, developing and I needed this amount of energy in my diet.  As I've aged my body has changed but my diet hasn't.  I've come to the realization that I've been poisoning my body for a very long time because a "calories in equals calories out" equation is flawed.  

Let me explain. It’s true that all calories have the same amount of energy. One dietary calorie contains 4,184 Joules of energy. In that respect, a calorie is a calorie. I could eat 1,000 calories worth of cotton candy and 1,000 calories of steak.  So if they produce the same amount of Joules energy my body should treat them the same, right?

Protein calories are less fattening than calories from carbs and fat, because protein takes more energy to metabolize. Whole foods also require more energy to digest than processed foods.  Increased protein can lead to drastically reduced appetite and cause automatic weight loss without the need for calorie counting or portion control.

So a calorie isn't just a calorie when for years I believed they were. I can't excessive my way to health if I'm eating a diet high in fructose and added sugar.  The sustainable changes to my diet with the addition of regular exercise is a much more potent formula to health and the traditional "calorie in equals calories out" one.  

It gets me to thinking about the why?  Why have we been taught that this is the answer to getting healthy Vs improving our diet with less processed foods and limiting the amount of sugar we eat?  

The only thing I can boil it to down to is corporate profits/greed.  Multinational food corporations have systematically changed our diets so they can make more profits. Sugar, salt and fat are extremely cheap ingredients to add to thier highly processed foods.  Not only this but they are extremely addicting to our human brains.  They re wire our brains so slowly that we don't even notice the detrimental effects they're having until we get to the point of obesity and type 2 diabetes.  

I've pulled back the curtains and I'm astonished with what's been hiding behind them.  Now that I can see clearly for the first time my focus is lazer sharp.  

Mr. Ian Repay

Green Smoothie Blog #2

I've been doing a lot reading and listening to doctors who've spent a lot of time and energy studying sugar.  It's quite fascinating to see how the sugar industry and food companies have radically changed our diets over the past 40 years.  And none of it for our benefit.

What's been most interesting to me is a hormone called Leptin. From what I've understood so far this hormone was recently discovered in the late 90's. What it does is trigger the brain to say that you've had enough to eat.  Pretty simple job that it performs inside the brain.  However what research has shown is that with a diet high in sugar it weakens or blocks this signal to my brain.  With a diet high in sugar and time, my body has become leptin resistant similiar to insulin resistance.  I couldn't understand why I was always feeling hungry?  I had just ate a full meal but yet shortly after I was feeling snacky and hungry.  

When I got into green smoothie's I started to notice that first of all I was feeling full longer.  But the biggest thing I noticed was that my body's blood sugar was starting to level out.  Green smoothies are packed full of insoluble fibre.  There's some sugar but the amount is diluted with way more fibre making my body take a lot longer to absorb it.  This in turn resulted in less high and low spikes and ultimately less of those snacky cravings.  

I feel that my body has started to balance it's self out and my leptin resistance is going away.  The test I gave myself to confirm this was drinking water when I felt hungry.  In the past it didn't do much for me.  Now when I drink water when I'm hungry I almost instantly don't feel hungry and as long as I stay hydrated with water filling my stomach the hungry goes away and stays away.  I can now easily maintain a fast from 8pm to almost noon. 

I've used the green smoothie as crutch to help get me where I wanted to go.  Now that I'm there I'm there I'm using it feed my body and to feed me mentaly.  I've developed this habit that's helped me feel better and I can actually feel it!  It's helped me apply lazer focus and I'm using this focus on other areas of my life.

Recipe #2

600 ml water

1/2 cup fresh cucumbers

2 cup's fresh spring salad greens

2 cup's fresh spinach

2 cup's fresh kale

1/4 cup frozen avocados 

1/4 cup frozen pineapple

1/4 cup frozen pears. 

Blend and enjoy.

Mr. Repay

Hard not to be motivated!

Tonight was the annual (first in person in three years) SRKF Chinese New Year's banquet.  Congratulations to our new five black belts, amazing job and your all an inspiration to me.  Congratulations to the Tiger I Ho Chuan team, amazing demo and the skill each of you demonstrated was off the charts!

In some ways it was tough not to be there in person due to illness but a big thank you to Sifu Brinker and my team for setting up the live stream through Zoom.  The positive energy was felt through my screen and that's why I titled this blog the way I did.  

I wish I could bottle this evening up and un cork it when I'm not feeling it this year.  The best way to do this is to blog for me. Writing about where I and and how I'm feeling is going to be the way that keep the posative energy in front of me.  

I'm inspired and motivated to kick off the year of the rabbit with a group of posative and like minded team mates.  

Mr. Repay

Green smoothie #1

This series is going to be all about my green smoothie journey. Almost two months ago I had my first one. I was looking to make a change in my health/diet and everything I read about green smoothies was I was looking for.  Low sugar, high insoullable fibre, raw vegetables.  I was reluctant to try them for a long time as I though they'd all taste like raw broccoli which I hate.  Wow was I in for a pleasant surprise, the one I chose didn't taste anything like raw broccoli.  It was high in raw kale, spinach with some pineapple, green apples and mango in it.  It was absolutely delicious!  

What I loved about these smoothies was what they started to do for my hunger.  First off they are almost devoid of sugar so this helped balance out my blood sugar.  They are packed full of fibre which helped me feel full longer.  One week of having one a day I started to feel mentally sharper and my inflammation was going away.  At the same time as I started my green smoothie journey, I stopped eating fast food and cut out add sugar.  These things had a massive posative impact on my mental and physical health.  Inflammation was the number one things that I noticed.  I would wake up in the morning with back pain, not anymore! My joints were constantly swollen, not anymore!  Gassiness was always a problem, not anymore!

I'm having a ton of fun playing with different recipes and I want share my OG.

1 cup of water

1 cup of fresh kale

1 cup of fresh or frozen spinach

1/2 cup of frozen green apples

1/2 cup of frozen avocados

1/4 cup of frozen mango

1/4 cup of frozen pineapple. 

Blend everything well and enjoy!

Mr. Repay

Sustainable progression with intent.

I've joined the Rabbit team and I'm cautiously excited. I've built some really good momentum in my personal life and I want that momentum to be sustainable for the rest of my life.  It gets me to thinking about intent.  My intent is to live a mentally, spiritually and physically healthy life.  If one is out of balance it will throw off the other two.  So if my intent is to be healthy and balanced for the rest of my life it also needs to be sustainable.

In my intent to be physically healthy, I'll feed my body the best quality food as I can afford. To continue to feed my body green smoothies daily, reduce or eliminate added refined sugar and eat nutrient dense foods.  If my intent is to be sustainably healthy I will do these daily.  For this to be sustainable I won't deny myself any foods.  To deny myself these things would rob me of some of life's greatest treats. It would also lead to guilt which is so destructive.  What I do know is that these are treats, not meals.  To do this sustainably it also have to be fun and accessible. It's not easy to eat right when I travel, it's much easier to hit a drive through.  I've found that it's easier when I feel the results of eating well.  Some of the things I've started to do is plan.  When I'm in a new city I google smoothie shops and I see what's out there.  I visit thier web sites to see the ingredients and I make note of them in Google maps to make routing easier when I get to that city.  I also like Save On Foods protein box of fresh veggies, hard boiled eggs and humus.  I pair that with fresh cut fruit and it's a great lunch.  It's take time and some planning but I've found the results are worth the effort and time. 

My intent is to live a spiritualy balanced life.  I'm not religious but I do believe in spirituality.  This is an area that has been neglected for a long time. Meditation, self reflection are two tools that I use to focus my intent on my spirituality.  More time is needed but since it was so out of balance in the past, the scales are tipping in the right direction.

Finally my intent is to live a mentally healthy life.  This is the area that has been out of balance the most.  I've carried a lot of baggage over the years.  I've chosen to be happy.  Seems simple enough but it wasn't that easy.  My intent is to choose happiness and doing so my mental well being has drastically improved.  It's going to be a battle for the rest of my life but with my intent focused on happiness everyday feels brighter.

Mr. Repay

Dietary Defense

_{Dietary Defense.}

 

_{It’s been about six weeks since I made voluntary changes to my diet. I’d been unhappy with how my health had been for a very long time. I’ve felt bloated, gassy, foggy mentally and just play awful. I decided to make a change by cutting sugar.  I  starting with implementing a green smoothie every day.  I started with picking them up at Jugo Juice as I didn’t really know if I’d like them or not.  I have a real aversion to raw broccoli so I put off trying them because of that. The smoothie I choose was mostly kale, spinach, mango and pineapple with coconut water instead of fruit juice. It was amazing and it kick started my transformation. After five days of drinking this smoothie for one meal replacement and cutting out added sugar and fast food I could feel the change. No more gassiness, brighter mentally and the inflammation in my joints was almost gone.  I now make them at home and I have a pitcher in the fridge at all times. My wife has also started to follow the same diet and she’s also very very happy with the results.}

_{Water. It has to be the elixir of life.  I’ve drank water fairly consistently for the past year but I’ve really upped my intake to between two and three litres a day.  What a huge difference this has also made in my life and how I feel.  Nothing feels better than to be properly hydrated.  Now I don’t drink anything other water, a couple of black espresso’s in the morning, sugar free green smoothies throughout the day and a cup of un sweetened tea in the evening.}

_{I was and still am intermittent fasting from 8pm to noon.  Not so much to lose weight but to give my digestive tract a break and cut back on snacking in the evening. Putting all these things together over the past six weeks has changed my physical and mental health dramatically. No longer am I waking up with a sore back, sore joints etc. I’m waking up with a renewed amount of energy and clarity.}

_{The improvements to my mental health has also been such an amazing feeling.  I now don’t feel like I’m in such as dark place, life is brighter than its ever been for a long time. I never new my poor diet had such an effect on me mentally. I always knew I needed to change my diet but I wasn’t ready. I needed to get to that point in my life where I had enough. I want to be here for my family and if I didn’t start making changes I knew wouldn’t.  I also needed to feel the results to help with the motivation.  I sure do feel them and I can connect the dots easily.}

_{The change in diet, increased water intake and intermittent fasting along with changing my attitude to accept happiness have made such a massive change in my life.  I’ve stepped back on a lot of things in order to take the time to fix the things that needed fixing. I feel confident that I can continue to move forward with these sustainable changes and add more things back into my life.}

 

_{Mr.  Ian Repay}