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}

 

Darkness

 I pulled back farther than I've ever pulled back these past three months.  I didn't attend class, didn't answer texts, and I even deleted Might Networks.  I was in a very dark place and the darkness felt good.  At least for the first while.  Then it got lonely which manifested into inactivity fueled by depression.  I could feel it consuming me, changing me in ways I didn't like.  However I couldn't, no wouldn't take the steps to make the changes I knew I needed.  I felt a ton of resentment.  Resentment toward the changes at the school, changes in my own work and personal life.  That resentment grew and and grew and instead of addressing them I withdrew.

I'm still struggling with a lot of things.  Resentment, jealousy, envy and anger.  I don't like these things in my life and I really don't like how they've changed me.  I've become pessimistic when before I was extremely optimistic.  I've let the smallest things set off my temper.  It's affecting relationships all around me and it needs to stop.  

Recently a friend of mine has been experiencing some personal depression.  He's having a hard time doing the little things like answering the phone, responding to text messages etc.  It's so bad that I'm afraid it's going to get him to a place that he can't come back from.  I found myself talking with him this very morning.  Sharing my experiences with withdraw, resentment and that oh so familiar glass rock.  I heard myself reassuring him that there are people that care about him, would never judge him and would do everything to help him.  Then it hit me like a tone of bricks.  I was looking directly in the mirror image of my own struggles.  I was giving advice when I needed to be taking it.  

I'm taking the first step by writing.  It's hard to admit these things but as I'm typing this blog the weight has started to shift.  I can feel it getting the slightest bit lighter.  There are two things that I that I think a lot about and have helped me lighten the load.

• Life is like a scale, it will always balance itself out.  However if you ignore it you won't like how it balances.  Or you can balance it yourself and you'll like the result.  This was shared with me by David Hawkins who at the time was the youngest president (35 years old) of the company that I worked for.  He took me on what I called the "walk to no where" on sunny fall day.  That bit of wisdom has stayed with me and will always be with me until the day I'm no longer here.
• A journey of a thousand miles starts with the first step.  Many people have been credited with this quote and to me it doesn't matter who, it's the wisdom that counts.  I've started this journey so many times and I'll continue to keep taking that first step as many times as I have too.  I know that there are going to be times when I need help and the difficult part will be to ask for it.  I am going to need that hand, that motivation to keep taking that step to keep moving forward.

Mr. Ian Repay  

Consistency

I've struggled with this for a very very long time, actually as long as I've know myself. I get on a cycle where I have the best intentions and I can see the goal but I start to fail mid way through the journey. We've discussed it over and over as a team and I've gone over and over this with myself and with many Sifu's over the years. Yet I'm still on that cycle.  

I've recently come to realize that I'm more focused on the end result but I'm unwilling to put in the work/struggle to get there. Everything starts with big highs and the best of intentions.  Then along the way I miss a class, skip my daily pushups etc etc. One day turns to two then three then all stop.  It's a cycle that he perpetrated my life for too long and I really really need it to stop. 

I've also realized that in order to break this cycle I have to first be aware of why and I've finally think I've discovered/accepted that. Secondly I've forgiven myself and I'm moving on. Lastly its about the journey not the destination. This is going to be the hardest for me as I've liked to live my life based on this quote, "I just want the baby, not pain". 

When I reflect back on this quote it's been with me for a very long time. Subconsciously it's always back there, whispering to me and leading me down that we'll worn path.  Time to work on changing the path, it won't be easy but if I want to change my life I must. 

Mr. Repay

I'm still here, darn you glass rock!

 I'm still here, getting out from under that glass rock once again.  It's been a rough ride recently for a number of reason most of which I won't be sharing here.  

The one thing that I've struggled with once again is consistency.  There are lot of reasons why I haven't been consistent with my training or attendance and most every one of them comes down to choice.  Choice of where I place my priorities and choice as to what I choose to do with my time.  There have been a lot distractions recently.  Job is busy and taking me away from home a lot but this isn't anything new for me.  I have more opportunities to stay engaged because of the pandemic than I had in the past.  The classes are online, the one on ones are all virtual.  

What it's coming down to for me is choice.  I've been actively choosing other priorates over my Kung Fu.  It's hard to type that because there isn't an excuse to make rather its an admission of where I am right now.

What's keeping me going is everyone's blogs.  I'm reading them and seeing my teammates both succeeding and struggling just like me.  There are some blogs that I think are written just for me which I realize isn't the case.  However they speak to me in such a way that it brings me back, back from under that glass rock.

I can't say what the future holds for me but I can say that I'm grateful for all of my teammates.  You guys are my rock and you all are a HUGE part of my life even though I may not always make that known.

Mr. Repay

I am alive

I can feel the warmth of the spring sun on my face.

The gentle breeze across my cheeks.

In the distance I hear geese making thier arrival known.

The woodpecker looking for a late breakfast.

I hear the rustling of last year's grass and leaves in the breeze.

I feel alive

My friend you can't feel any of these things but,

Your all of these things around me.

I am alive. 

Mr. Repay