Growing Into You

“Today is a gift; that’s why they call it “the present”.” -Unknown

I was sitting here tonight holding my daughter when a thought hit me. Tomorrow, she will be six weeks old! I just thought to myself, “Wow, where did the first six weeks go?” The time she has been here has gone by in the blink of an eye. It was just yesterday I was holding her for the first time.

For the past couple of weeks, I have been running around Bloomington like there is no tomorrow. I have been trying to complete my internship, finish my independent study class, finish my regular class, and have been trying to decide what I am going to do for money come summer time. I have not actually taken the time to just slow down and enjoy where I am at.

I am at a place in my life right now that I will NEVER get back. I have about a month until I graduate from college, I don’t have a lot of bills to pay, and most importantly, my daughter is still a baby. Today when I realized what I have been doing for the past few weeks, I wondered what it was all for. Why am I completely stressing out about things that will get done? Yes, it is very important that I graduate, but my stressing out about it is not going to make it happen any quicker.

It seems like my entire life I have been waiting on something to happen. I couldn’t wait to drive, I couldn’t wait to play college baseball, I couldn’t wait to…whenever I got where I wanted to be, I always wanted something more. Now, here I am, and I feel like all of the great things in my past flew by so quickly, and I never got the chance to appreciate or enjoy the moments I had until they had already gone by.

Now, I have the greatest thing in my life, Peyton, and I am doing the same thing. This time, it is not that I want more; it is that I am stressing out about what is going to happen in the future. If I do not break the cycle of looking ahead, I will one day be looking back on what I did not enjoy to the fullest with her.

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“After half a century in psychiatric practice, I know without a doubt that the source of addiction is spiritual deficiency. Irrespective of whether we are religious or atheist, all human being are spiritual by nature, and spirituality is the cornerstone of our recovery.” –Abraham Twerski

As I have now gone through Day 3 of my 40 day abstinence of solid food (the first 3 days are suppose to be the hardest), I have come to the realization that most of the “hunger” you or I feel is not really hunger at all. Ninety-five percent of the time, when we feel like eating, it is our mind that is “hungry”; or in other words you are just craving the food you are about to eat.

The Difference: Hunger vs. Cravings

It is very important to understand the difference between hunger and cravings. When you are truly hungry, it is a signal from your body telling you that it needs nourishment. Without the nutrients your body receives from healthy food, it would not be able to function properly. It would begin to wither like a flower from lack of water and soil.

Craving food is something completely different. When you crave something, it is your mind’s boredom or addiction to the food that you eat at work. Your mind is a very powerful, and many times destructive, tool. It is constantly working; rambling away while you listen to it. When your body is at rest, your mind becomes restless. It makes you feel as if you are hungry. Almost every time you feel hungry, you will crave junk food.

Your mind also can become addicted to the food you eat. As I have posted before, research has shown that foods high in fats and sugar allow your mind to become addicted. After eating these foods (mainly fast food or other junk foods) for a long period of time, your mind constantly craves them. If you then abstain from these foods for more than one day, you begin feeling withdrawal symptoms such as headaches.

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“Feed the soul, let the body fast” -Unknown

About a week ago, my significant other brought to my attention a detox diet that lasts between 10 and 40 days. Since I have known her, she has always researched nutrition, supplements, and detox diets in particular. For anybody that doesn’t know, a detox diet is one that helps rid the body of toxins. The benefits of this type of diet could include weight loss, loss of food cravings, having much more energy, and the general feeling of feeling better. The detox system she recently came upon is called the “Master Cleanse.” It is also known as the “Lemonade Diet.” She got me to research the diet and asked me if I would do it with her. After a few days of soul searching, I believe this is the perfect time in my life to cleanse my body. This diet will allow me to change the way I see food and force me to reach deep into my spirituality in order to get through it.

About the “Master Cleanse”

The “Master Cleanse” has three different components to it. The first component is the sea salt flush. Basically, I will be drinking a quart of water each morning mixed with two teaspoons of non-iodized sea salt. This is suppose to help push the waste through my system. The second, and most important, part of the detox is the lemonade drink. This lemonade drink consists of two tablespoons of freshly squeezed lemon, two tablespoons of grade B organic maple syrup, a pinch of cayenne pepper, and eight ounces of purified water all mixed together. Basically, this does a few things for your body. First, the maple syrup provides your body with all of the nutrients it will need. The cayenne pepper helps break up any mucus inside the body and provides many of the B and C vitamins. This drink is suppose to keep me full. It will not, however, keep me from craving the foods I am detoxing. I will be able to drink this mix between 6-12 times per day (as I get hungry). The third part of the cleanse is the laxative tea. The tea is taken at night and basically helps get things going for the next day.

Why 40 Days With No Food?

There are a number of reasons as to why I have decided to do this. First, and foremost, are the GREAT health benefits I will receive. Right now, like 99% of Americans, I am addicted to food. If I do not eat food, I get cranky. Without it, I have terrible cravings. I also get headaches on occasion. My food addiction has also been the source of my weight gain. Two weeks ago, I weighed in at 210 pounds (The most I have weighed in my life). Today, like the past few days, I was at 196 pounds. My goal is to get down to 180 pounds by May 20th. However, I do not want you to think that weight loss is my sole goal, or even my main goal. Weight loss is a goal in my short term, yes, but the benefits from this cleanse are far greater than any weight I may lose.

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When I first started this website, my vision with what I wanted to do was hazy. I knew that I wanted to create a website where I could help people improve their lives. That is the one thing I have been focusing on with each article I have written so far. After that, I was not sure what else I wanted to do with the website.

With my college graduation quickly approaching, my goal for the past year has been to start my own business. I have never been exactly sure as to what kind of business I wanted to open; the only thing I knew of was I wanted it to involve physical training and improving the body physically.

As I have briefly mentioned in previous articles, throughout my baseball career, I was constantly researching how the muscles worked. My research included how to eat right, how to put workouts together to effectively reach my goals, and how to supplement my workouts and diet in order to reach maximum gains. Since I was a freshman in high school, I have been putting workouts together in order to help me reach new heights in my baseball career. As I wrote more programs, I began to understand what exercises needed to be linked together in order to get the most out of my workouts. Along with my research, I have had the opportunity to have trained under some of the best weight-lifting coaches in the country.

Kerry Rosenboom at Wichita State University is highly regarded as one of the most knowledgeable fitness instructors in the nation. He has trained many All-Americans, NBA players, and MLB stars. When I transferred to Indiana University, I had the opportunity to train under their weight training staff. They were also very knowledgeable, producing some of the best athletes in the country year in and year out. The difference between the two coaches varied greatly. Kerry was very focused on getting his athletes as big and strong as possible, while IU was more focused on becoming lean, flexible, and explosive. These differences has allowed me to further understand how to create a very effective workout.

I would like to give a brief outline as to where I would like to go with my website. The reason I am publishing this before I begin the creation part is to get feedback from you. While you read this, I would like you to think if this is something you would be interested in. Also, I would like you to tell me if there were other services I could add to be more effective.

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“The journey of a thousand pounds begins with a single burger.” –Chris O’Brien

Every day, millions of people around the world stop by their local McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Burger King, and Taco Bell. These people are in a rush, looking for convenience, or just do not feel like fixing any food in their own home. They order value meals with Biggie Fries and a Biggie drink, paying $5 or more per person.

These people understand that they are paying for convenience, but they do not understand the other high costs associated with eating at these fast food establishments on a regular basis. Eating at fast food restaurants diminishes a family’s “togetherness,” makes them psychologically dependent on the food , forces them to spend more time and money than they are expecting, and destroys their health.

The first added cost that fast food chains give to their customers is the fact that customers lose valuable family time. The fast food industry makes being in a rush a very acceptable part of everyday life. Instead of waking up in the morning and sitting at the table eating breakfast with your family before work and school, everybody wakes up at the very last possible second; quickly taking their showers and then heading off in their different directions; stopping to grab food on the way. Then, on the way home, one of the parents usually grabs a to go order from the nearest place to bring home for the family. Then, the family will grab their own order and go eat in their own individual rooms.

There are very few times throughout the day that families have the opportunity to be able to spend any kind of quality time together. I understand the busy lifestyle of families these days; kids have their extra-curricular activities and parents have long work weeks. Each day, these families should make it a goal to eat at least one meal together. Instead of trying to get as much sleep as possible, these families could wake up 20 to 30 minutes earlier and plan on having a good healthy breakfast. If the kids are old enough, another possibility would be for every night of the week, have a different member of the family cook the dinner. This would be a great, and sometimes adventurous, way to spend 30 minutes together as a family. On top of that, it would teach children cooking skills they need in order to live a healthy life.

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“Blessed are they who have the gift of making friends, for it is one of God’s best gifts. It involves many things, but above all, the power of going out of one’s self and appreciating whatever is noble and loving in another.” –Thomas Hughes

About four months ago, I decided to begin my quest to improve all aspects of my life. In doing so, I have found my way onto many forums and blogs. For the first month and half or so, I sat back and just read all of the posts, soaking in all of the information I could take. Then, about two and a half months ago, something inside of me changed. It was not enough anymore to sit and watch people have conversations about topics I could join in on.

I finally decided to take the plunge into the online world of communication. In the past, I had sent e-mails and IM’s with my friends and other acquaintances I had in my personal life. I had not, however, ever actively gone out of my way to talk with people I did not know. This was definitely a new but exciting experience.

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First, I would like to thank EVERYBODY who has subscribed to my blog over the past week. Seeing my subscriber numbers go up as quickly as they have has really come as a shock to me and it tells me I must be writing about something that is clicking with you.

I have been having some problems with my RSS Feeds. So to fix these problems, I just went ahead and started a new feed. So in order to fix the problem and get everybody on the same page, I am asking any person with a subscription to re-subscribe to the new address. Here is my new feed. The one that I had previously was http://feeds.feedburner.com/growingintoyoucom.

I am unsure what caused these problems. Being so new to blogging, I still have quite a few wrinkles to work out. I am learning quickly though.

So in a nutshell, could you please unsubscribe from the old feed and re-subscribe to the new one located above. I am TERRIBLY sorry for this inconvenience, but I want to make sure everybody is able to receive the articles. If you have any questions just e-mail me at tad@growingintoyou.com. I really enjoy hearing from each and every one of you. I hope you all have a great weekend.