Started Shakeology

It actually a lot tastier than I expected. I like the green berry more than the chocolate, and have been using the recipes provided. I'll talk more on it when I have spent more time with it.

Getting Ready to Fast

I fast pretty regularly. I would say, about once a month or so. Now, by fasting, I mean a juice fast, which is to abstain from eating solid foods, and only have fresh fruit and vegetable juices and water. With the Gracie diet, I know there are plenty of juice combinations I can follow. If I'm not being too strict with the fast, I can follow the recipes from the Juicing Bible. If your curious about the proper way to do a fast, and how to come off of a fast, then i recommend reading Juice Fasting and Detoxification. Keep in mind that this book does not contain any recipes, it is strictly a guideline book.

So, to kick off the fast I have planned for this week, I intend to do something a little different. I will use Shakeology for my fast. So, for one of the juice concoctions I will follow the Shakeology recipes. I will also kick it off with a salt water flush. The mixture I use for this is 1 quart (thats 4 cups), and 1 teaspoon of sea salt (not table salt, as this contains iodide). The site linked said use 2 teaspoons, so try both and see which ones work for you.

From experience, I already know that the first day I won't feel a thing. By Day 2 I get "hyper-focus" as everything gets really clear, and by the end of Day 2 I get really bad headaches, and by Day 3 all I can think about is food. After Day 3, its easy sailing. But those are my results, and your mileage may vary.

Interview with Ryron Gracie about the Gracie Diet

We recently had Ryron Gracie do a seminar for us at our Jiu-Jitsu academy. Since I am a big proponent about the Gracie Diet, I used that as an opportunity to ask him about its history, what its central ideas area, and what was it like being a kid growing up with it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dRdKdVMiNw

More information about the Gracie Diet, including the book written by Rorion Gracie that can get you started with the theories behind it, some recipes, and whats safe to order when your out and about at restaurants, can be found on the Gracie Diet website.

Rener Gracie Explains How To Tie Your Belt

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-shq5oDSCs4

Juice Bags, What Are They, and Where Do You Get Them?

One of the dietary practices I have assimilated into my routine is juicing. Not shooting steroids and becoming some meat head, but rather the process of extracting juicing from raw fruits and vegetables and consuming those in place of meals. In some cases I will do this as a fast, and do nothing but juice for a week or more, but for the most part I just replace a meal out of each day with it.

While I will save the topic of which juicers to consider buying, and believe me, I have and use a lot of juicers, from the Breville Juice Fountain, to the Omega Juicer, and on the low end the Juiceman Jr. This discussion is around juice bags.

Juice bags are basically serve as a filter for manual juicing of fruits, by either squeezing by hand, running through a blender, or using an old fashion citrus juicer. Once done, you run the sludge through a juice bag, filtering out the pulp and just getting the nutrient rich juice in its place. You can get an idea of the process by watching this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCd_H8xn7VA

This process works very well when juicing watermelon, grapes, oranges, lemons and limes.

So the next question is, which juice bags are the best. I have a wide range of bags, from the nylon nets, to hemp fiber bags. You can even substitute a juice bag for the kind of bag they use in home made beer making. Each one has its advantages. For citrus, I prefer the hemp fiber bags available from Vermont Fiddleheads. They do make smaller bags if the 12x12 is too expensive for you. I also use the nylon bags for watermelons and grapes, which is available also from Vermont Fiddleheads, as well as the Gracie Diet Store. If your a jiu-jitsu person, the Gracie Store also offers discounts on the bags if you buy their other products, such as gi's or tshirt's.

Plenty of good recipes come with these types of juices. Any citrus juice needs to be done alone since it is acidic. If you juice grapes, you can mix with acai and you get a really nice, wine tasting type shake. With watermelons, you can mix with bananas and acai for one of my all time favorites mixes. My wife is pretty fond of drinking the watermelons juices straight with meals.

Keep in mind, its better to drink the juices right away, do not juice then store them in the fridge, as they lose potency pretty quickly, and spoil really fast since there are no preservatives in them. But you wouldn't want preservatives anyway since you want maximum potency of nutrients.

P90X: Week 5 Day 1

Starting off on Month 2 with Chest, shoulders, and triceps. This is a much more difficult routine than I remembered it being. By the end of month 1 I was breezing through Chest and Back, and Arms and Shoulders. Must be because different muscles are being worked.

With that, I will give a good tip. If your struggling, lighten the weight, or lower your reps. If its push-ups, consider using your knees. By the end of this workout, I had to shift to the using the knees, and had to drop the weight, especially when it got to the pours for shoulders. Just don't give up!

Tilapia

So, I had some extra Tilapia. I needed a couple of recipes for seasoning, so I tried these out:

• paprika,
  
• garlic salt
  
• pepper

and

• melt some butter
• squeeze some lemon juice
• baste over the filet
• sprinkle on a small amount of brown sugar, salt, black pepper
  

Neither of these work on the diet, since lemon juice is a Group D item, and doesn't mix with anything, but it came out great. If you want it Gracie diet, drop the paprika, lemon juice, and sugar, and eat with rice which is a starch.