Trivial Opinions

I have a few websites I check everyday to give me a brief glimpse of what is going on in the world. Most of my time is spent surfing ESPN.com and SI.com to keep me updated on the world of sports. Every once in a while, I run into stories like this that don’t really have much to do with sports, though. The stories are really touching and I am glad ESPN chooses to run them, however. Please take a little bit of time to read the story and then come back to finish reading my post; if you’d be so kind.

Ah, you’re back. Here’s a tissue to wipe that tear from your eye.

Obviously, the story itself is very touching. Man dedicates his life to something he is passionate about even though the pay isn’t great. His passion pays him back by giving him a wife and subsequently 3 children (talk about awesome fringe benefits!). Then, one day his passion causes him permanent disfigurement and almost takes his life. Instead of becoming angry at the world, angry at God, or angry at whatever he felt he should be angry at, his passion acts as a conduit for people to reach out to him and help him. I would not be surprised to see this story as the subject of a Disney movie someday.

The story doesn’t stop there, though. The man has decided to pay forward the good will he has received. “He plans to take an active role in Wounded Warriors, an organization that supports the families of injured or deceased soldiers.” He chose a very worthy organization to dedicate his time to. Too often our soldiers risk their lives so that we don’t have to, and very rarely do any of us reach out and thank them. Rai Henniger is going one step past that and working with an organization that helps soldiers and their families cope with problems similar to what he is going through.

Thinking about it some more, I doubt Disney will buy the rights to this story, because the audience would find it too unbelievable, even for Disney’s standards.

It has been a week since I broke my master cleanse fast early because of dehydration. In case you haven’t read my previous posts about the fast, the dehydration came about because I helped my cousin move and didn’t drink enough water, not because I was on the fast, although being on the fast did speed up the dehydration process. Anyway, a week after the fast I feel great and I have kept off the weight. This morning i weighed in at 179 pounds, which is a little bit more than what I ended the fast at, but I think that is attributable to my body gaining back the water it lost when I was dehydrated.

I haven’t gone to the gym yet (finals are over this week, so I will start going next week), so the main way I have kept the weight off is by eating more healthy than I used to. I have had more chicken breasts than I normally would, but they taste good so I don’t feel like I am missing out. I have gone out to eat thrice since I ended the fast and enjoyed the meals all three times. There are two pieces of advice I can give when eating out to help you eat better. One, stop eating when you feel even the slightest bit full. You will find that most restaurants give you enough food for dinner and lunch the next day, so make sure to not eat too much and get a doggy bag to take the rest home. Two, know what foods are high in fat and try to avoid them. If you know what restaurant you are going to, try to do some research online to find what meals they carry that are healthy and delicious. I didn’t have to eat one salad at any of the places I went to because I looked over the menu and was able to tell what meals would be healthy and good (hint: grilled chicken and fish are usually pretty healthy; things with lots of cheeses and sauces generally are worse for you).

The one thing I have found that has been most helpful is I haven’t completely eliminated unhealthy foods. When I was at Applebee’s I ordered one of their dessert shooters after my meal, and when I went to the movies I had a small buttered popcorn. The trick is to order small servings of the things that aren’t very healthy, so you can still enjoy them, but not ruin all the benefits of your hard work of sticking to the fast.

So, you completed the Master Cleanse Fast and you want to try to keep the weight off. Here are a few things I learned when I walked around the grocery store comparing a variety of things to see what my healthiest option(s)  for lunches at work would be.

-Condiments/sauces are usually the biggest source of fat in a meal, but they are also what makes most meals taste so good. What to do?! Fear not, there are some low/no fat choices. I looked at a lot of barbecue sauce, ketchup, and mustard packages and all of them seem to be fat free no matter what flavor or brand you get. Also, mayonnaise and a lot of salad dressings (I looked at ranch and thousand island-my personal favorites-and noticed at least a few others) that have no-fat and low-fat options. I haven’t actually tried any of these yet, but I imagine if they even taste different from their regular-fat counterparts, they would be an acquired taste that wouldn’t take long to get used to.

-Some companies are retarded, but I say that in the nicest way possible. Basically, make sure to look at the serving sizes when reading the nutritional labels on the backs of foods. Some packages have a serving that is fairly intuitive, but others make a serving quite confusing. I noticed this when I was looking for meat patties I could heat up in the microwave and put on a bun to make an easy sandwich for lunch at work. Some packages would say “1 serving =1 chicken breast” whereas other packages would say “1 serving=4 ounces of chicken.” I didn’t really want to figure out how many ounces were in a package and how many chicken breasts were in a package and have to do complex math to find out how many ounces of chicken were in a patty and then figure out how many grams of fat that equaled. So, I bought chicken breasts from the smart company; the company that made it easy for me to know-every time I eat a chicken breast, I am intaking 2.5g of fat.

-If you really like the taste of chips, you will probably think baked chips taste like cardboard, which isn’t a good thing. I’m not going to try to tell you that you need to switch from regular to baked, because I don’t think I can, and that is pretty much the exact definition of hypocritical. I will say, however, that baked Cheetos don’t taste too bad, and I doubt it will even take me a week to acquire the taste of them. Don’t just take my word for it, though. Who knows? Maybe you will like the taste of baked chips and you can turn over a healthier leaf without having to sacrifice something that tastes good. If you do try baked chips for a week, and you still find yourself really not liking them, then the best advice I can give is limit your servings. Find out how many chips and how many grams of fat are in a serving, and if your daily intake of fat for that day was a little high, only eat one serving of chips. If you haven’t eaten many fatty foods that day, maybe you can have two servings of chips as a treat. The biggest thing you need to do though, is actually count out a serving into a bowl, or, better yet, onto a paper towel, so you can soak up some of the grease that comes inherently from the chips making process, and put the bag away, so you are less tempted to eat more than one serving.

These are only three ideas I came up with while walking around the grocery store looking for healthy food ideas that wouldn’t sacrifice taste. I know there are a billion more on the internet, so go to Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc and do a search to find more ways to eat healthy. The biggest reason people speak up against various diets is because the weight lost during the diet usually comes back because the dieter goes back to their old eating habits. A few changes here and there with most people’s eating habits would go a long way to shutting up all of the detractors.

My dehydration I mentioned yesterday didn’t go away all day Sunday, no matter how much water I drank. I was able to go to work and finish what I needed to get done, so that was good, but I was really fatigued the whole time. When I got home, I just moped around the house, feeling like a truck hit me. Around 9:00 PM my wife came downstairs and told me she wanted me to break the fast because I was doing nothing but hurting myself. I agreed so she made me a bowl of chicken broth. We went to bed an hour later, and I was just about to get into deep sleep when the chicken broth decided it didn’t like being in my stomach so it forced its way back out the way it went in.

I went back to bed feeling a lot better in my stomach, but I now had a headache, which caused me to toss and turn most of the night. I woke up yesterday morning, still having a headache and feeling pretty weak, so I decided I would just go to class and skip work and hopefully get some sleep. When I weighed myself, I found I had lost another 3 pounds, most of which was probably from throwing up the chicken broth. At the urging of my wife I decided to eat a nutrigrain bar for breakfast and see if I could keep solid foods down. Much to my surprise and delight I was. When I was driving home from class I decided to try something else solid, so I stopped at Burger King and got a cheeseburger. While I don’t recommend jumping straight to solid foods once you decide to break the fast, it worked for me, so it might work for you too. I do highly recommend breaking the fast the way I broke my first one, with chicken broth the first day or two, then moving up to adding some vegetables to the broth for another day or two, then eating lighter solid foods. The only reason I jumped straight into solid foods was because my dehydration was causing my stomach to get to full on the chicken broth and regurgitate it back up.

To those of you who are thinking about doing the Master Cleanse Fast, the most important thing I learned from this fast is make sure you don’t exert yourself too much and drip plenty of water. Getting dehydrated is no fun. You feel really weak, your joints hurt, your head feels kinda fuzzy, and your vision gets a little blurry, at least for me. Not only that, but trying to beat dehydration is a pain in the rear. I actually got to the point where I checked which hospitals were covered by my insurance in case I needed to go to the emergency room and get an IV put in to help me regain my fluids.

As I mentioned 2 days ago, I was helping my cousin move because that’s just the type of guy I am. And really, he is more than just a cousin, he is a good friend and my wife and I hang out with them in a social setting quite often, which is even more of a reason for me to help out.

Usually when people ask me to move it is to help carry the big furniture, not because I know how to pack a truck so that everything fits nicely and won’t shift during the drive. So, that is what I did. There were four guys that lifted the heavy furniture, but I know I did more than fair share of lifting. I’m not telling you this to brag, but to give you the back story so you will understand what I felt like last night and this morning.

Last night I was really tired and sore. So tired and sore, in fact, that when I got home from helping with the move I took a hot bath for close to an hour. I chalked up the tiredness and soreness to the fact that I just got done lifting heavy furniture for seven hours, and I thought I would probably have been just as worn out if I hadn’t been on the fast.

Then I woke up this morning and felt kind of like I was hung-over. I had really nasty-tasting plaque in my mouth, was super-weak, and my muscles were really sore. I rinsed with mouth wash and brushed my teeth when I got up and still had all the symptoms mentioned before, although the bad taste was a little less nasty. I took a hot shower and was barely able to move. It helped out a little bit with my fatigue for about five minute but by the time I got to the kitchen to pour my “lemonade” into my water bottle I take to work, I felt like I was going to pass out. I drank a little bit of water and that made me want to throw up. Nothing I did helped my situation.

It turns out I was super dehydrated, because my wife, in her brilliant wisdom, told me to sit on the couch and drink a twenty-ounce bottle of water before I even attempted to drive to work. Sure enough, it worked. I sat on the couch for forty-five minutes sipping my water and when I stood up to go to work I felt ten times better. I still didn’t feel great, but I felt good enough to be able to drive to work without having to worry about passing out or having my muscles stop working.

When I weighed myself this morning I had lost 1.8 pounds (for a total just over 10 pounds), which is quite significant considering I didn’t have a bowel movement. Basically, I lost almost 2 pounds of water because I didn’t keep myself hydrated yesterday. I also lost almost 3/4 of an inch on my waist (for a total of over 3 inches) between yesterday and today.

The moral of the story is that if you are helping someone move, or doing some other strenuous activity, make sure to keep well hydrated, especially if you are on the Master Cleanse Fast. I would probably take the severely dehydrated feeling I had this morning after the I’m-so-sick-I’m-puking-my-guts-out feeling you get when you have the flu.

*I didn’t post this yesterday because I felt so crappy.*