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