What's in Shakeology?

Shakeology has proven itself to be the best investment I have made in my health. It costs me 3.00 a day to drink this stuff (actually a few cents more than that because I throw in a banana and a spoon of peanut butter... oh, yeah.....). My cravings have been knocked wayyyyyyy back, and I am not eating nearly so much now, and my energy has soared. Honestly, this is the secret to my having lost 26 pounds since May of this year. Yes I have exercised, this is true, and that IS an integral part of my weight loss, but it ALL started with Shakeology. I know I sound a bit like an evangelist for BeachBody and Shakeology (we're not a cult - I swear!!!!!!  grin), but the plain and simple truth is I felt like crud and had no desire to exercise before the Shakeology revolution in my life. Within a week of drinking Shakeology every day for breakfast, my body was FINALLY getting the nutrition it needed, so it quit begging me for more food. I used to drink two pots of coffee a day. Why did I want that much coffee? Because I was dragging and needed the constant artificial pick-me-up that coffee provided. Within two weeks of starting Shakeology, I realized I had gone three days without thinking about coffee. Today, I will have about two cups of coffee a WEEK... because I really enjoy a good cup of coffee.

Folks - your body would LOVE this stuff. Look at the summary below and see all the incredible stuff that goes into this product. 

The Shakeology drink is made of super-food ingredients that provide a nutritious option for everyone, including:

• 140 calories per serving with 15-17 grams of whey protein
• 1 gram of fat and 100 mg of sodium
• 23 vitamins and minerals, including all the B vitamins and 500 mg of calcium
• Antioxidants and phytochemicals derived from whole plants and fruit sources
• No artificial sweeteners. Gluten free. Caffeine free.

With the nutrients in Shakeology, you get optimal nutrition. Combine it with an exercise program and you can also reduce blood lipids and disease risk factors and improve your overall health.

Here is a short list of the different nutrient groups and the Shakeology ingredients that are in those groups:

• Protein and Amino Acids – Proteins are the building blocks of life. Amino acids are necessary to build the various proteins used in your body tissues for growth, repair, and maintenance. Amino acids play many roles in your health and disease.
  Shakeology ingredients – Amaranth, Camu-Camu, Goji berry, Sacha Inchi, sprouted quinoa, whey protein.

• Phytonutrients – Known for prevention of cancer and heart disease, phytonutrients contain natural antioxidants that provide protection from free radicals. Other benefits include slowing down of the aging process and protection from cataracts and macular degeneration.
  Shakeology ingredients – Barley grass, blue-green algae, Chia seeds, Chlorella, flax, grape seed extract, Hydrilla, spinach, Spirulina, sprouted quinoa, wheat grass.

• Antioxidants – Offering excellent protection again those damaging free radicals, antioxidants promote the healthy cell growth and support the immune system.
  Shakeology ingredients – Açai berry, Acerola cherry, bilberry, Camu-Camu, Goji berry, grape seed extract, green tea, Maca root, pomegranate.

• Adaptogens – Used for centuries in Chinese medicine, Adaptogens help bring your body to homeostasis and help your body adapt to stress.
  Shakeology ingredients – Ashwagandha, Astragalus, Cordyceps, holy basil leaf, Maca root, Reishi mushroom, Schisandra, Suma root.

• Prebiotics – Known to improve colon health, prebiotics also help improve the immune system.
  Shakeology ingredients - Pea fiber, yacon root.

• Digestive Enzymes – Help with food digestion, brain stimulation, tissue, cell and organ repairing and generating cellular energy.
  Shakeology ingredients – Amylase, bromelain from pineapple, cellulose, lactase, lipase, papain from papaya, protease.

With over 70 whole-foods, Shakeology contains no caffeine, is gluten free and is certified low-glycemic.

Just felt "informative" today. Blessings!!!!

Paige

Rest.....

Here I am, resting.... on the day we call the Lord's day at my house. My wife is resting, I just woke up, and I am getting ready to do a bit of typing for college, drink a cup of coffee and simply chill for the day. I have walked the dog, said hello to neighbors and ahhhhh...... rest.

I said in an earlier blog that I am not training for an event  - but I am training for life. I am not training for a triathlon, pentathlon or any other kind of "thlon". I am training for health and to live as long as I can so I can enjoy all my God has given me - my friends, my family, my church - and yes, Millie, the Wonder-Dog.

 And this includes rest. Let's talk about this rest for a minute....

I need rest. But not just the "interval between workouts to allow my muscles recovery time so I can go full out the next workout session" type of rest. I have expanded my definition of rest a little. When I do something  that does not have ME as the central focus, I call it rest. My wife is exhausted after a day of teaching. So I get her to sit in the Lazy Boy, and I do the dishes and clean the kitchen. Rest. I see a pile of laundry so I throw it in the washer, so Glenda doesn't have to. Rest. A friend is sick so I bring dinner over. Rest.

Of course there are times for me to be alone, no music, no exercise, no tv - just me and a book and a glass of iced tea on my porch on a sunny summer night. Rest.

My point is this - my life, in order to be successful, can't be all about me. There are many motivations for me to exercise, but there are several that have to do with others. I want my Grandchildren to have their own stories about their Boppa, and not have to rely on stories their Dad (my son) tells them. So I change my eating and exercise habits - so I can stick around long enough for them to have their own goofy stories about their goofy Boppa. Much of what I am doing now is outward - focused. I want to see others get healthy. I want to be able to help others when help is needed.

Believe it or not, helping others gives me joy and a sense of completion and rest. It's all a break from me concentrating on ME.

So there you have it. A wandering, slightly scattered view of my philosophy of rest. We all need it. We all need our quiet times away from the noise and confusion of the day. We all need to be involved in someone else's life - not just our own. We all need rest.

Enjoy your day of rest....
paige50plus

Perfect Practice Makes Perfect... right????

Ok... first of all, a new milestone for me today. For some reason, I have been "stuck" at 236 lbs for an entire month. I have been doing what I have always done, ChaLEAN Xtreme, eating as healthy as I know how, but the weight just wasn't going down. Today?

Here is a shot of a scale showing the breakthrough!!!! Not my scale - I didn't think to take a picture as I was rushing around getting ready for work - so I found this on the Internet. But it tells the truth! So on the way to work, I was ruminating over the significance of the new weight (btw - I honestly cannot remember the last time I saw 234 lbs on my scale...). I was thinking about how this so perfectly illustrates the last blog I made about how if you do the right things long enough, right things happen. I don't understand all there is about the human body and its cycles, but I know this... build muscle mass, more calories get burned. Eat healthy with less calories, and the extra calories kicked to the curb will add up to weight loss. Even when the scale doesn't show the results you think it should, if you are doing the right things, eventually the scale HAS to bow in submission. So on the way to work, those thoughts were in my head...

All this got me to thinking about how perfect I HAVEN'T been in my exercise routines. And yet I am seeing results. Have you ever heard that saying "Practice makes Perfect"? Well, as a music teacher, I modify that to say "PERFECT Practice makes Perfect." That is fine for music... but I have tried to apply that everywhere in my life and frankly, it doesn't work in many other places. When I decided to start doing the ChaLEAN Xtreme workout, I was so embarrassed that I could not do the routines flawlessly, in fact the first time I hit play on my DVD, I was so humiliated because I felt so stupid and awkward just doing the warmups, I turned it off and went walking instead......... but...I came back the next day and stumbled through the workout, feeling awkward, clumsy - ugh. It wasn't until the 3rd week that I started to get the hang of the workouts, and be able to do most of the exercises relatively correctly. I remember talking to my coach (also my son) about thinking about repeating the first phase of ChaLEAN Xtreme because I felt I had done so poorly... that was me trying to apply the Perfect Practice Makes Perfect thing... Matt told me to continue on the next phase of ChaLEAN Xtreme, because as he said "Dad - you stumbled... you didn't do all of the exercises as well as you would like, and I know you felt stupid and awkward... but look at the scale, look at your functional fitness (the current buzzword between my son and I) - Dad - you LOST WEIGHT!!!! You made it a point to sweat multiple times in a week". And he was right. I did do my best when working out - but I am not pretty when I exercise - not like Chalene Johnson - and sometimes I even missed a workout.... but I sweated and the weight loss happened, So - don't worry - just sweat. Perfection is not the goal. Sweating is.
Gotta run!!!!!
Have a wonderful day....
Another step on the Journey!!!!!
paige
p50+

If you do the right things.....

I have been saying for a long time that if you do the right things long enough, right things will happen. For me, there are three "right things" I must do.


1. I must have my Shakeology at least once every day. This product is the secret to controlling my addiction to garbage foods built up over years of indulgence. I am so surprised I haven't gotten a letter from Wendy's or from McDonalds begging me to come back.... surely they realize what an important part of their food chain I occupied this last 20 years or so! I have learned that when we are hungry, our body is telling us it is missing something and it wants us to feed it what it's missing. But I am sorry - vanilla frosties, sea salt encrusted french fries and a triple cheeseburger isn't what my body was asking for!!!! When I am drinking Shakeology every day, everything my body is needing (almost) is provided.

2. Eat "lean and green". For me, this mostly means chicken and salads. I love chicken, no matter how it is cooked, and I love salads! Many days, my day of eating will consist of Shakeology in the morning, salad with chicken strips for lunch, and a chicken breast or two with green vegetables for dinner. I am fortunate in that I do not require a huge variety of foods to be happy. I am happy with a piece of meat and a salad. Instead of chicken, I will sometimes have a chopped steak (hamburger patty, with no bun, to be technical) or a small real steak.... and a salad.

3. Exercise HARD - at LEAST three times a week... five times is preferable. Currently I use ChaLean Xtreme three days a week, and will do Cardio in between the heavy lifting days. Sometimes I will do ChaLean's cardio, sometimes I will do Tabata drills on the off days instead. I don't lift every day, because I am lifting heavy  to failure each time I lift weights, and my body needs time to recover. I am in no hurry to become the next Ahhhhnold. I just want to be stronger, more limber and more fit. I am not training for an event. I am training for life.

Hmmm.... I just looked at what I just wrote, and I can hear a certain friend of mine telling me "that's so restrictive!". But I wish I could communicate exactly how liberating it is when I feel as good as I am feeling right now. I wish I could explain that I am learning the pure joy of how to eat to live and not "live to eat". I wish I could explain how incredible it feels to push so hard during a workout that you are almost in tears, and the rush I feel when I finish. My body is tightening up, I am discovering that behind the pony keg that used to be my waist is a six pack waiting to emerge.
         But I can't explain it to someone who is not ready to listen. That morning when my son, almost in tears himself, took a chance to tell me to my face that he was afraid for me. And afraid that his son, my grandson, might one day have to experience grief earlier than he should have to because his Boppa (me) would not take charge of his health when he (me) had the chance. In the face of such a risk-taking moment of honesty, I had to listen. And I did.

     The part of the transformation that is taking place in me right now that has surprised me the most is that I began this journey for the sake of my wife, my kids and my grandchildren. But somewhere along the way, I started doing it for myself. I enjoy feeling good. I enjoy waking up refreshed. I enjoy seeing God in so many different ways because I am so much more cheerful and de-stressed. I am in a good place right now. I am on a journey, and I do not see the end of it. But that's ok. Right now, I think in the case of my health, the journey's the thing. The end of the journey? No biggee. God and I have worked that out.

Join me in my journey!
Paige

One Thing.....

     One day a bazillion years ago, a gentleman named Abraham was told to leave where he was... to go somewhere else. Where? He didn't know, exactly. He  knew a direction, from what I have gathered, but not where he would end up. It was promised to him by God that it would be a good place for his descendants to settle down, so it kinda got the nickname of "the Promised Land". On little more than a promise from a God he could not see, Abraham changed one thing. He changed his attitude about where "home" was. Once he got that attitude changed, he then DID something about it. He took his first step away from where he was towards where he was going. And everyday he took more steps away from where he was towards where he was going. It took him a long time, this journey, but in the course of this journey, Abraham's life was completely changed. But all this change started with him changing ONE THING.

       This is a GREAT story. There is a great deal of spiritual significance to it, but the part I want to concentrate on and apply to this conversation is that ONE THING thing. Every journey begins with a first step... every elephant-eating project begins with the first bite.
      This is also a blueprint for my story as it has unfolded since the last two weeks in April of this year (2011). Just prior to the pivotal moment that sent me on my journey, my son (Matt) and I had a conversation. His daughter was within a month or so of being born, and we were having one of those "wow-this stuff makes us think big thoughts" kind of discussions as we thought about his second child being born. The nuts and bolts of the confab came down to Matt asking me to PLEASE consider losing weight. At that time I weighed close to 260 (I had been higher than that not too long ago), and he expressed a desire for me to be around long enough to see my great grandkids. I asked him for advice as he had experienced some phenomenal personal changes in his own life since hooking up with Beachbody, losing  close to 50 lbs and becoming stronger than I had ever seen him. He said something to the effect of "Dad - there is no mystery... exercise + diet change = weight loss". We then talked about the exercise programs offered by BeachBody... and to be honest I was not excited about that. I was frankly intimidated like nothing else by this Tony Horton character, by Chalene Johnson etc - these "perfect people in their perfect exercise clothes".  And I thought I had an excuse for this Shakeology product Matt then told me about. I remember telling him "Son - that's around 100 bucks a month... pretty pricey for my budget..." To which my son replied (and I never saw the trap he led me into....) "But dad - how often are you going to McDonald's?" I responded that I got breakfast there 6 days a week on my way to work. MAtt then put the hammer down... "Dad - you're already spending 120.00 a month then on breakfast. What if you replaced that meal with Shakeology? You would then be SAVING money. Why not try THAT for a month?" He had me.... But I had already taken that first step. I KNEW I had to lose weight. But I could not look at all I would have to do to pull that off. But here is what I could do. I could do ONE THING. And that is what I told my son. I told him I could not commit to exercising ... yet, but I would drink Shakeology every morning for my breakfast.

      So that is what I did. I changed only ONE THING. Now here is what happened...
1. Within one week of taking Shakeology every morning, I found myself not even thinking about food until around 2:30 or so in the afternoon! That was VERY unusual for me.... you think I made it to 260+ by NOT thinking about food? This was a HUGE event for me....
2. After about two weeks, I noticed my coffee intake was down from a pot (or two) a day, I was only having a cup or two every OTHER day! And not by design - I just didn't think about it.
3. I started to sleep uninterrupted sleep through the nights more and more. I was starting to wake up REALLY early in the morning... raring to go! One Saturday (on a day I got to sleep in) I woke up at 6:30 am... and couldn't go back to sleep.
4. At the end of three weeks, I had lost about 5 lbs. I called my son up and said - "Son I gotta exercise somehow... I have so much energy I am about to explode!"

       So that is how I started with ChaLean Xtreme on May 1st instead of the June 1st date I had originally promised Matt as a starting date (confidentially, just between you and I - I just said that hoping he would forget about it between April and June). The results of that experience is fodder for my next blog entry.

        But here's the point of this blog...  all Abraham knew was if he went in the direction God told him to, good things would eventually result. He didn't know exactly all of the parameters of that promise, but he trusted the plan (and the One Who gave it to him).

      Like Abraham, I started down a path foreign to me, only knowing that if I followed that plan, good things would result. I really had no idea what that would look or feel like. And frankly, since the thought of the whole deal overwhelmed me, I only promised Matt to change ONE THING. I drank that Shakeology stuff every day for breakfast. You have already seen where that ONE THING has taken me so far in the previous post. There's more. The journey isn't over by a long shot.
     Is there ONE THING you can change in your life to start you towards better health? How about... put down that diet soda and drink water instead? Or how about stepping off the porch and walk around the neighborhood every night? Change one thing - just one. Who knows what may happen? My journey began with having a chocolate shake with a banana and a spoon of peanut butter every morning instead of some egg McMuffins....        Join me on my journey....

On a Journey...
Paige
p50+

Hello!!!

Welcome to my blog! Why the name p50plus? Simple... my name is Paige (hence the "p") and I am 55 years old... (hence the 50+). I am using this blog to document my journey to fitness and health that started in April of this year (2011).

In this blog, I will share the parts of my journey that I feel are applicable to others who are where I was - overweight, tired and hurtling towards illness. If I had stayed on the road I was on, I would have been flirting with adult onset diabetes, heart problems and who knows what else. I was eating poorly, fast foods were a daily part of my life and exercise? Nonexistent. I had not exercised in over 30 years.

To give you a quick glance at where I was and where I am now, three months after I started drinking Shakeology and exercising (doing the ChaLEAN Xtreme workout program) I have posted some pictures below. I am not proud of where I was when I started, and the "Before" picture still causes me to wince. I hope I never forget the embarrassment of seeing myself in this picture taken by a student. I can't believe that is how I looked every day. The "after" picture  I am much more comfortable with, as I had lost 20 lbs and my fitness level had skyrocketed during my first run-through of the ChaLEAN Xtreme program.

 This picture really does tell a story - this was taken in January of 2011. I was wearing my long sleeved shirt unbuttoned because even though it was a XXL, I was too big to button it down the front. All my shirts were like that, so I took to wearing Tshirts with funny pictures or pictures of guitars on the front and leaving my long sleeve shirt unbuttoned, calling it a "fashion statement". It was really me hiding the fact that I could not button the shirt because I was too big. How did I get to this (260-ish lbs) from the days when I was 180 lbs or less and could run 3 miles in 18 minutes, and trained bodybuilders in the Pacific Northwest in the 1980's? Easy. Lots of McDonalds and Wendy's. In fact this last five years, I would stop at McDonald's every morning for breakfast on the way to work. Do you see those pants? 42 inch waist. Remember them - I have another picture to

show you later.

Ok - to the right is where I am right now.  My weight is 236, roughly 20 lbs lighter. My pants size has dropped from a 42" waist to a 36" waist between the last half of April and the end of July. I have gone from not being able to do a single pushup to doing 72 pushups in four minutes recently. I ran up the stairs at my house recently with a 20 lb sack of dog food in my arms, and when I got to the top of the stairs I wasn't even breathing hard.  I was stunned. All this was accomplished using Shakeology (a Beachbody product... a meal replacement drink) and doing the ChaLEAN Xtreme workout, a 90 day program.
So that is where I am at as of this moment. I am doing the 90 day ChaLEAN program one more time, then I will graduate to P90X in December. I will post more pictures as I progress.



Remember those pants I told you about in the picture above? Here they are again.... Did I actually WEAR these things?