Before and After

As my very first article, I decided to introduce myself, and show you what I plan on teaching in my future articles. You can clearly see the change in me, and it didn't involve any membership in any weight loss program. I'm 36 in the before picture and 46 in the after one. I used to hurt all over, be lactose intolerant and hypoglycemic while blackheads and large red pimples plagued me on a regular basis. My hair refused to get longer than the top of my shoulders, and my fingernails peeled and tore off very easily. Plus, as you can plainly see, I had quite a few extra pounds.

I will teach you all my secrets in a wide range of articles. Actually these things aren't secrets as I found most of it through research; but I also have very sensitive skin forcing me to experiment to find the most gentle, toxic-free way to clean my skin. My transformation came from several areas in life involving body, mind, and spirit. Through my series of articles, I hope to teach you how to transform your body, mind, and spirit too.

Please don't get me wrong; I'm not perfect by any means. I will confess I have my hang-ups and bad habits but not because I want you to have or keep your bad habits. I know they are bad and zap great amounts of energy from our lives. I just want you to know there is hope to overcome aging regardless of how deep you get involved. The closer you get to perfect habits, then the closer you get to total energetic health. Even going halfway will give great results, and then you'll be inspired to go further.

Sometimes in life we develop bad habits as a crutch to carry us through. We get in such a habit making it seem we'd suffer more without our crutch. No matter what it is, if you give it to yourself on a regular basis, it will become a habit. We can really mess up our life or make great strides using this same principle. Any time it involves a substance toxic to our body, our heart rate will speed up to quickly remove those toxins. When we function at an elevated heart rate for a while, then experience the slowdown when the toxins are gone, we will feel let down or even depressed. So guess what, we tend to reach for that substance to bring us back up. Imagine what the body goes through after years of this abuse.

Other ways to abuse our incredible body involve depriving what it needs. Not eating enough healthy foods while pounding in the junk or just not eating at all zaps away your needed energy. I have to shake my head every time a new product pops up claiming to be healthy when it's not. How do we really know what's healthy? I'm not a research expert and will not be telling you anything that harms the reputation of a manufacturer of any product. I plan on giving you information in a more generic way so you can read labels and judge for yourself. I'll also include links for great information to help you decipher through all the rhetoric.

I ask people all the time if they ever thought about cleaning the inside of their body as well as they keep their outside world clean. We wash our clothes, skin, and hair; and we keep our home and car clean and maintained. Not many people think about internal cleansing; in fact most people ask "how do I do that?" Wouldn't it make sense that while we're taught everything else about society, we'd be taught how to best care for ourselves. I think that would solve the health care crisis in a heartbeat but would also stop the flow of many markets. Part of the reason both good and bad products sit side by side on our store shelves rests in the fact that we're willing to blindly buy and consume these things.

Another favorite question I love to ask is "have you ever wondered why a chicken has both white and dark meat while duck or wild turkey is all dark?" It has to do with whether they use the muscle or not. Chickens don't get to fly, so their breast muscles never get used. Only the muscles we use will be full of the substance which makes it dark meat. We've all heard of hemoglobin and how it carries oxygen through the bloodstream; but once it reaches the muscle, it's the myoglobin that takes the oxygen into the muscle for the production of energy. Myoglobin makes the dark meat in a chicken and in us, but muscles that aren't used will have little to no myoglobin leaving them as white meat. Then I ask "how much white meat do you think you have?" That question can be a real eye-opener. You're goal would be to have all dark meat giving every part of your body oxygen from head to toe.

Although there are many more areas I'll cover in my future articles, the last I'll mention here involves posture. Compare my before and after photos looking at the distance between my chin and the top of my shoulders. Before my chin sat level with my shoulders, but in the after picture notice there are inches between. I believe our spinal column provides our own internal fountain of youth, so keeping it strong and healthy becomes goal number one and the topic of my next article.

Follow me through a journey of transformation where achieving a healthy life costs little more than changing some habits and learning some basics. My pleasure rests in your success, as I do all things with love and gratitude.