All entrepreneurs know that when they get sick with some kind of flu or other physical ailment, it kills their productivity.

“I don’t have time to be sick” is a common mantra of most entrepreneurs.

However, getting sick physically isn’t the only type of productivity killer that entrepreneurs face.

Yesterday I woke up in the morning feeling “off”, just like when you wake up with a sore throat or a sore back or some other flu-like symptom.  However, I had no physical symptoms.  I wasn’t sick in any way – at least not physically speaking.

What I had yesterday, I can only describe as being “spiritually sick”, “spiritually disconnected” or having a “psychic flu”.  I felt it when I first woke up, but it went away for about an hour or so while I was doing my coaching session with one of my students.  Whenever I do coaching/mentoring with students I always feel totally connected to source and spirit.

Shortly after my coaching session though, I felt disconnected once again.

This is not the first time this has happened to me, and I’m becoming more aware of it each time it happens so that I can try to deal with the situation instead of feeling frustrated.

Here are some of the symptoms I associate with being “spiritually sick” or “spiritually disconnected”:

• Feeling lethargic, uninspired to do anything
• Simple problems seem difficult to solve
• Bleak future outlook
• Symptoms similar to depression
• Physical Cravings (food, sugar, etc.)
• Lack of energy
• Don’t want to be around others
• Craving sleep
• Feeling spiritually disconnected

I am not sure if this has been happening to me more often lately due to the fact that I’ve been working on re-opening up my Clairsentient abilities, or if I’m just more aware of these feeling and realizing what they are instead of just blaming them on a “bad day”.

One of the biggest growth experiences I’ve been going through in the last month has been my growth in self-awareness ever since my wife, Drea, left on her trip across Atlantic Canada over a month ago.

Since Drea left on her trip I’ve had a lot of alone time, and it’s been an amazing experience for me because I’ve been able to really tune in and connect with my own energy.  I don’t think many people take the time to create alone time in their lives very often so they go through life largely unaware of their own energy, compared to the energy of others.

Now that I’ve become aware of what my energy feels like, it’s very easy for me to spot when I’m not connected to it – such as was the case yesterday.

I am still not sure why it happened, but I have a feeling that I “picked up” someone else’s energy, kind of like catching the flu from someone.

The energy I felt yesterday was definitely not mine.  Except for maybe enjoying food, my energy is exactly the opposite of all the ones I listed above.  I usually have a lot of energy, no problems solving complex problems, a positive future outlook, no symptoms of depression, lots of energy, like to connect with others, stay up late at night and feel spiritually connected.  Yesterday, it was the exact opposite of that.

By around noon I knew that something was off.  I actually had a scheduled psychic reading with my good friend Chris Landry at 1pm and was hoping that his reading might help me out.  Although the reading was insightful as always, I felt “off” and disconnected during the reading as well.

Afterwords I sat down and wanted to make a list of things to work on which I was previously looking forward to doing this Saturday, but when it came time to do them I had zero desire to even think about them.

Instead I decided to make something to eat and to watch some TV.

After watching TV for a while, I decided to try meditating a bit to see if I could gain some insight that way.  I ended up falling asleep instead, and waking up even more irritated.  Then once again I felt hungry, craving some kind of quick snack, and just wanted to plump my butt on the couch and do nothing but watch TV.

I did that for a while again, and then decided to try writing in my journal as that sometimes helps to clear my energy.  That didn’t help either, so instead I just resigned myself to watching pointless television and eating whatever I could find in the house.

Later on in the evening, around 2am my time I got a message from my wife to go online.  She woke up early in the morning (6am her time) and wanted to chat with me on Skype.  I told her about my day and she suggested that I listen to a meditation I received a long time ago from Angela Bear called the “Expansion” meditation.

I was exhausted and just wanted to go to sleep, but since I trust my wives intuitive insight I decided to listen to the meditation prior to falling asleep.  The meditation itself was good, but much the same way I felt during my reading with Chris, I just didn’t connect with it at all.  It didn’t make me feel better, or any more connected spiritually than I have been all day.

After that I just decided to roll over, turn off the lights and go to sleep – short of my morning coaching session with one of my students – having accomplished absolutely nothing worthwhile the whole day.

Waking Up This Morning

Waking up this morning was a totally different experience.  I woke up feeling connected, energized, excited, happy, and ready to take on the world.  I jumped out of bed and was ready to kick-ass and take names. (Maybe the meditation did work?)

I felt inspired to work on my wives site, so I did a marathon session working on her new design, re-jigging some of her SEO settings, installing plugins, and just doing some overall super-cool ninja stuff to make her site better.

Then I took a quick break, switched gears, worked on publishing some articles for some SEO projects I’m working on, mowed the lawn, did some errands, cleaned the kitchen, read some blogs, posted some comments, and wrote this post.

My productivity today was through the roof.  It’s like today I wasn’t even the same person I was yesterday, and there is absolutely no physical or mental/logical reason for it.  All I can explain it as is an energy thing.

Whatever this thing was that I woke up with yesterday morning, I’m determined to figure it out and stop it from happening again.

I am thinking that it may have been some kind of residual energy I picked up from someone while I was out on Friday night (and no I wasn’t out drinking), or perhaps something I tuned into during the night.  Whatever it was, it sucked and I just wanted to share this post with others in case you find yourself in a similar situation.

I realize that catching a psychic / spiritual “flu” is a strange topic to discuss on a Blog, but I’m willing to bet that I’m not the only one who’s suffered from this before.

Who else has had “psychic flu” before?

So, today was the final day of the Blogger Weight Loss Challenge I did with Tyler Cruz.

For anyone just tuning in right now, the challenge started on March 11th, 2010 and went on for 10 weeks, ending today on May 21st, 2010.  Each of us set a target to lose 6% of our body weight, or suffer the humiliation of having to pay the other guy $600 if one of us didn’t hit their target.

My starting weight was 212lbs and my goal was to lose 13lbs.  So my final target weight was 199lbs or less, otherwise I would have to pay Tyler Cruz $600 cash.

So, did I make it?

Here’s my final weigh in video for the challenge:

Final Results

So, as you can see in the final video weigh in, I weighed in at 197lbs which means I lost a total of 15lbs during the challenge.

Even though the challenge was 10 weeks long (70 days), I actually didn’t really do anything seriously until the challenge was half way done.  In fact, on day 35 of the challenge I was still 212lbs, so what’s exciting for me is that the 15lb weight loss really all happened in the last 35 days.

Here’s is my daily weight chart for the 35 day period of time.

This chart was based on weighing myself each morning between 9-10am.  My weight would fluctuate during the day usually by 0.5-1.5lbs throughout the day in either direction.  Even though I weighed 200lbs yesterday morning, I actually hit 198.8lbs at one point during the afternoon yesterday before hitting my final weight of 197.0 today at 10pm.

Here’s a chart of my body measurements as well:

As the chart shows, I lost inches all around my body.  Since there is no such thing as spot reduction when it comes to losing fat, the chart shows how fat melts off your body in sheets and not in spots.

My waist at my belly button actually went down by 2.5 inches which is awesome and my waist at the belt and my hips both went down by 1.5 inches as well.

Overall I’m very happy with the results so far.

The Challenge and Tyler’s Results

I spoke to Tyler shortly after my weigh-in and he also hit his target, so the bad news is that I didn’t win $600, but the good news is that I also didn’t lose $600.  What I did lose though is 15lbs of excess weight that my body didn’t need, so I’m super happy with that.  I’ll link to Tyler’s post with his results here, as soon as he publishes the post.

I actually had a blast doing the challenge.  Tyler and I constantly kept in touch via chat and text messaging and either egged each other on or trash-talked each other throughout the whole challenge.  It was great.

I would be out for dinner with my wife, and my phone would buzz with a new text message from Tyler after he set a new record around the lake.  Or I would hit a new low weight record and I’d message Tyler to piss him off, because I knew he would have no choice but to go for a run around the lake.  It was actually a lot of fun doing this, and I’m a little bit sad that it’s actually over.

The other funny thing is that a lot of my family and friends got to know about the challenge, so everyone’s been asking me how it’s going.  Some people thought I was nuts to stake $600 on a challenge like this, but most were really excited.

I think doing challenges like this is a great way to build your Blog audience too, and give people something to talk about, so I think I’m going to consider looking into doing other challenges like this in the future.  They may not be weight loss related, but it’s fun competing against someone.

My Before an After Photos

Here are my photos from before and after the challenge.

BEFORE

AFTER

I still have a ways to go, but I feel so much better than before.  My face especially feels thinner and my double chin is pretty much gone.  My legs around the thigh area feel a lot skinnier, and even though the belly seems to be the last place that men lose weight I have noticed that my belly doesn’t hang over my belt anymore when I wear my jeans which is awesome.

What do you guys think based on the pictures?

Where to From Here

Yes I did have a bowl of ice cream after the weigh-in.  I just wanted to celebrate with a bowl of ice cream after achieving my goal.  It actually didn’t taste as good as I imagined it would.

I’m going to take a few days off from pushing myself so hard to hit my target and I’m also going to think about where I want to go from here with my weight.  Obviously I don’t want to start gaining weight back, but I need to figure out what percentage of my time/energy do I want to devote to losing weight versus putting that time and energy into other projects I have going on such as getting my Blogging course finished.

I’ll have to meditate on this for a bit.

I do plan on writing a Blog post soon, sharing some more details of what I did exactly to lose the weight.  My main strategy was based on 80% dietary changes and 20% exercise, but there are some really cool things I learned on the diet side while doing this that I think people will benefit from.

I’ll save that for another post though.

So we’re coming into the final stretch of the Blogger Weight Loss Challenge I’m doing with Tyler Cruz and it’s time once again to step up my efforts.

My Progress So Far

My progress so far can really be broken down into two stages in the competition:

Days 1 through 35 – The “Everything in Moderation” Plan

The first thirty five days in the competition I basically followed a “gradual improvements” type strategy where I tried to just make some small minor changes in my diet and to increase the amount of exercise I was doing.

I wasn’t tracking my weight daily, I didn’t have a specific diet or exercise plan in place, I was just trying the “moderation is best” approach instead of my typical “go hardcore or go home” approach.

After 35 days of yo-yo dieting where I would have “good days” and “bad days” I got tired of watching my weight go up and down on a daily basis but not really going anywhere.

In fact, by Day 35 (April 14th) my weight was 212lbs which was basically my starting weight so I hadn’t lost ANY weight at all.  During certain times within that 35 day period, my weight did go down about 2-3lbs here and there but on April 14th I was no further ahead than I started!

Days 36 through 48 – The “Hardcore Diet Changes” Plan

On April 12th I went in to get Live Blood Analysis done as part of my plan to get some major leverage on myself to motivate me to make huge changes to my diet.  After seeing the results of how crappy my blood looked under the microscope, all clumpy, stuck together and not very healthy looking I did a major overhaul on my eating habits.

I also started to track my weight daily and keep a very detailed tracking sheet with my weight, average weight and projected weight.

Although I don’t want to give away the exact diet I’m following yet as I don’t want Tyler Cruz copying me, I can share that I’ve basically cut out pretty much all “bad” foods and I’m mostly eating just healthy wholesome foods including a LOT veggies and fruits.  Since April 15th, the only thing I’ve been drinking is water (no pop, no alcohol, no juice, nothing).

I’ve also cut out chicken, beef and pork and have only been eating seafood.  About the only “bad” thing about the meals I’m eating is maybe the ranch salad dressing (which I’ve now replaced with something healthier) and that white penne pasta I had one night.

Here are some pictures of the type of foods I’ve been eating:

Also, as I mentioned above, I’ve been tracking my weight daily and recording it in a spreadsheet.  Here is the progress so far with that:

As you can see, I have a column where I’m projecting what my weight is going to be on May 21st based on my current pace.  It’s not the most accurate calculation but at least it gives me an indicator as to how I’m progressing.

For example, yesterday I dropped down to 206.8lbs which put me on track to hit 200lbs on May 21st, but today with my weight jumping back down to 208.2lbs I’m nowhere near on track to hit the 199 lbs target for May 21st.

Now, any person’s weight does fluctuate from day to day due to the amount of water in the body (usually related to how much salt you eat ) but as a rough indicator based on this tracking sheet I am seeing that diet alone isn’t going to be enough to win this competition.

At best I’ll be able to hit my target of 199lbs barely squeaking by, but that’s not very comforting.  I’d rather try to hit a weight under the 199lb target so that I have some wiggle room just in case I have a “heavy day” on May 21st.

So, based on this “evidence”, starting tomorrow I’m going to be implementing some form of daily exercise into the program.

Most likely I’m going to run on my treadmill as soon as I clean up my exercise room.  When I re-arranged the furniture in my computer room a few weeks back to make it more conducive to filming The Paulymath Show, I ended up making a big mess in my exercise room so I’ve got to get that cleaned up.

That in itself is going to be a workout.

Stay tuned for more.

Tyler’s Progress

Whereas I’m posting my daily weight on my Blog, Tyler is being a lot more sneaky with his weight.  When I talk to him via chat he’s always telling me that he’s not losing weight, that he keeps gaining weight, but then somehow miraculously when he does a weight loss update on his blog he somehow shows a weight loss of 5lbs (as of April 20th).  I could have sworn the day before that he told me he was above his starting weight.  Sure, sure.  I think he’s just saying that stuff on chat to make me think I’m ahead of him in the competition.

It’s been 8 days since his last update and I’m not believing what he tells me via chat anymore.  I’ll wait for the next update on his Blog to see where he’s at.  Yesterday he was whining to me that he’s fat and not losing weight, but I bet when his next Blog update comes out he’ll once again “miraculously” lose weight.

Sneaky bugger.

This Monday I went to visit Dr. Shelly Wade at the Westgate Wellness Centre here in Maple Ridge for my live blood analysis.

Although I’ve been fascinated with live blood analysis ever since I heard about it back in 2002 through the Tony Robbin’s “Living Health” seminar, I couldn’t find anyone locally here in the Vancouver area that did live blood analysis back then.  Last year my wife went in to see her chiropractor, Dr. Nima, at the Westgate Wellness Centre and saw that live blood analysis services are offered there so I put that on my list of things to get done.

I was really excited about this appointment as I wanted to get a visual picture of what my blood looks like in its “before” state.  Meaning, I know that the standard North American diet I’ve been following for pretty much my entire adult life is crap, and I’m ready to make some major changes to it, but before I make those changes I wanted to see with my own eyes what this diet has been doing to me at the cellular/blood level.

It’s one thing to know that drinking pop is not good for you, but it’s a totally different thing to see the sorry state of your own blood cells as a result of eating and drinking all the things we know we shouldn’t.  It’s one thing to hear that we’re supposed to be drinking 6-8 glasses of water to stay properly hydrated, but it’s another thing to see your own blood dehydrated, with cells sticking and clumping together.  I’m getting a bit ahead of myself though.  Let me walk you through what happened at the appointment.

The Live Blood Analysis Appointment

I arrived at the appointment and Dr. Shelly did a short consultation with me before diving into the live blood analysis.  She took a small droplet of blood from one of my fingers for the live blood analysis and several other small droplets for the dry blood slides.

For those of you who hate needles or are scared of blood, I assure you this is nothing like the standard blood tests you’re accustomed to.   This is not a test where she had to draw a vial of blood or anything, but rather just a tiny droplet from my finger similar to the process diabetics use to test their blood glucose levels on a daily basis.  You don’t even feel the prick of the tiny needle.

The blood samples are then placed directly under the microscope right in front of you, so it’s not one of those tests where you have to wait weeks to get results.  The microscope has a digital camera hooked up to a computer screen that brings up a live feed of your blood just as if you were looking into the microscope directly.

Dr. Shelly then adjusted the settings on the microscope, brought the sample into focus and we started looking at my blood cells as they swam around.  Definitely one of the coolest things I’ve seen in a long time.  Maybe I’m weird, but I think it’s fascinating to see your own live blood cells floating around under the microscope.

What I Saw

Viewing your own blood under the microscope while it’s still alive is definitely very cool.  You get to see all kinds of things that a regular blood test which spits out numbers and figures on a piece of paper can’t show you.

One of the first things Dr. Shelly showed me is how a lot of my blood cells had dark spots in the middle.  In the picture below you can see how a lot of the cells look like they have holes in the middle, similar to a doughnut.

These are called “target cells” (or codocytes), and they are red blood cells that are most likely deficient in iron.

I also saw that my blood cells were clumping together and sticking to each other instead of moving around freely.  In some parts of the sample (see bottom right of the picture) I saw that the blood was totally clumping almost looking like sludge.

These pictures are definitely not doing the live blood analysis justice but in this appointment I wasn’t able to get video for you guys to see on the Blog.  Hopefully I’ll be able to capture some video for you guys next time.

Parts of my blood were also starting to exhibit signs of Rouleau.  When you see Rouleau under the microscope it looks like the red blood cells have stacked themselves together, one on top of another, like a stack of coins.  This can indicate excess dietary protein combined with poor protein assimilation, eating too much animal protein, dehydration, and too many toxins in the blood.

It’s very hard to describe what the blood looked like in words, but to me it just looked very unhealthy, clumpy, congested and tired.  Definitely not the type of blood I want to have in my body, and since all the organs, muscles, bones and even the brain all rely on the blood to bring them oxygen and nutrients, I now see that eating my current diet is equivalent to “body abuse”.  It happens from the inside so you can’t see it, but every time I drink a pop or eat a crappy meal it’s like physically abusing myself.

The Horror

The only reason I didn’t get freaked out by what I saw next is because I already knew to expect it.  Dr. Shelly panned around the slide and showed me several instances of organisms (parasites) living in my blood, that most people who follow the standard North American diet will have in theirs as well.

Although I know this kind of thing would probably freak out most people, especially in the sterility obsessed society we live in today, I thought it was really cool to see what kind of little bugs have been living in my blood and tissues eating up my nutrients, causing havoc and further polluting my blood with their waste matter/excrement/feces.

Dr. Shelly was kind enough to take a snapshot of these.  Take a look at these little monsters:

Most of these parasites thrive in an environment where the body is toxic, nutritionally deficient, pH imbalanced and physically run down.  Dr. Shelly said that luckily we didn’t see any of these parasites still alive or in large numbers so my body is doing its job in destroying these before they become an issue, but seeing this still motivates me to make changes to my diet so that I am not providing these parasites the toxic and unhealthy environment that they thrive on.

Not to freak you out or anything, but unless you’re really taking care of your body through proper diet and nutrition already, it’s almost certain that you have these and many more parasites like them in your body/blood too.  We all have parasites in our tissues and blood, and there’s very little we can do to prevent them from getting into our bodies, but what we can do is to support our bodies with proper nutrition and hydration so that our immune system keeps these in check and we can also deny them the toxic and nutritionally deficient environment they need to thrive.

Dried Blood Analysis

This next picture below represents a different type of blood sample analysis called “Dried Blood Analysis”.  Unlike the live blood analysis, this blood sample was allowed to dry and it is used to identify slightly different things compared to live blood analysis.

Based on some of the charts I’ve seen on dried blood analysis, the white lines, spots and the outer perimeter show antioxidant and mineral deficiency as well as some oxidative and adrenal stress.

Dr. Shelly told me that these are not issues that have just showed up.  Based on what she saw it was clear this is something that’s been around for a while.  That makes total sense since I haven’t really been taking care of my body for a long time.

What Does It All Mean?

Now, besides looking at your own blood in its live state, what kind of value can we get from having live blood analysis done?

Well, first of all not all live blood analysis is the same.  Dr. Shelly does a specific type of live blood analysis called Bloodscan™, which is a patented program that combines live blood analysis with a proprietary reporting software that generates a personalized report/analysis which tracks the current state of well-being in your body and compares it to optimal levels and previous analysis to track progress.

If necessary, the report also makes recommendations for specific types of supplements which can be used to bring the body back into balance but the system does not endorse or specifically recommend any one brand of supplements over another.  In other words, the report may tell you that you would benefit from taking a multi-vitamin supplement as an example, but then you’re free to go purchase that supplement from your favorite supplier.

The Bloodscan™ Report

The Bloodscan™ report I received from Dr. Shelly a few days after my test was a 13 page report (partly shown above) which I found very informative.  The report provided me with information on:

• Nutritional Imbalances
• Degenerative Processes
• Cellular Fatigue
• Anti-Oxidant Imbalances
• Mineral Imbalances
• Iron Imbalance
• pH Imbalance
• Metabolic Disturbance
• Immune System Imbalance
• Inflammatory Processes
• Oxidative Stress
• Adrenal Stress
• Liver Stress
• Kidney Stress
• Anemia
• Lymphatic Congestion
• Dietary Insufficiency
• High Fat Diets
• Bowel Toxicity
• Bowel Inflammation
• Chemical Toxicity
• Metal Toxicity
• EFA Imbalances

As you can see this is an incredible wealth of information and it will be instrumental in helping me to make the necessary adjustments I need to make to get my body back to optimal health.

Here’s a video that explains a bit more about what Bloodscan™ is.

Who Can Benefit From Live Blood Analysis?

The way I see it, there are really two main types of people who will benefit from this type of analysis.  First of all, anyone who is suffering from any ailments and who hasn’t been getting anywhere with the treatment prescribed by their doctors, or if they simply want a second opinion.  Regular doctors don’t do live blood analysis and they know very little (if anything) about proper nutrition, so getting something like this done could potentially shine a new light/perspective on any “conditions” you may be suffering from right now.

The second type of people who can really benefit from this are people like me, who don’t have any major symptoms or conditions yet.  It can be hard to take care of your body, and put in the effort and energy to maintain a healthy diet and exercise plan when you aren’t sick, and you don’t have disease or pain. This is why most people don’t make any changes until their poor eating habits and lack of exercise do manifest in some kind of condition or disease.

For this type of person I think live blood analysis and especially the Bloodscan™ report can be very useful because it can show you exactly where you’re at in terms of health and give you an opportunity to make changes and improvements before they become a “condition” you have to deal with.

Final Words

For me, live blood analysis added a totally new dimension to my understanding of nutrition and biology.  I was finally able to see some of the things I’ve only read about in my nutrition studies in the past, and I thought the whole thing was fascinating.  I’ve even considered looking into purchasing the type of specialized microscope needed to do live blood analysis so that I can study this stuff in more depth, but that’s just the scanner part of me thirsting for more knowledge and wisdom.

For now, I’m going to utilize what I’ve learned from this to help me make the changes I need to make in my diet so I can get my body back in optimal health and to lose some of this excess weight I’ve been carrying around.

For more information about Bloodscan™ live blood analysis and the services Dr. Shelly provides, check out her website at DrShellyWade.com or at WestgateWellnessCentre.com, or if you’d like you can ask your questions here and I’ll try to get some answers for you from Dr. Shelly.

In this episode I cover Time Management and Rapid Weight Loss.

For over 10 years I’ve been searching for a good, solid, time management system that isn’t cumbersome and that fits in naturally with how I like to use intuition to choose which tasks to get done at any given time, instead of scheduling things weeks in advance.

The closest I’ve been able to come to that was Anthony Robbin’s “Time of Your Life” program that I bought and used 10 years ago to plan out my life, but even though I loved the top level philosophy behind the program I was never able to stick to the bottom level day to day task management process Tony teaches in the course.  I read a few other books on time management but nothing really resonated with me until now.  Take a look.

The Paulymath Show – Episode #02 – Time Management and Rapid Weight Loss

Rapid Weight Loss

After trying to lose weight the “slow and steady” way that most doctors recommend for the last 30 days, I’ve come to the realization that it’s not something that will work for me.  I tried making some changes to my daily habits, such as for example cutting down the amount of pop I drink and increasing the amount of water I drink, but it’s just too hard to do it this way.

For me, I have always found that the drastic, hard-core, rapid weight loss path works much better.  When I’m talking about rapid weight loss I don’t mean anything unnatural or unhealthy, but simply instead of improving your diet by 5% or 10%, I prefer to try to improve my diet 100% and then let my body shed the fat that it naturally wants to get rid of.

As I mention in the show, I equate it as being similar to quitting smoking.  If I was a smoker (which I’m not), I don’t think I would be able to quit smoking by trying to cut down on the amount of cigarettes I smoke per day.  I think I would be much more successful quitting cold turkey.  I can’t really wrap my head around how someone quits smoking slowly, and it’s the same thing I can say about improving your diet.

On Monday I’m going in to get Live Blood Analysis done for two reasons.  Firstly to see what my blood looks like under the microscope right now so that I get a clear visual indication of how my diet affects my blood so that it hopefully lights a fire under my butt to make some drastic changes, and also to help me identify the specific dietary changes I need to make moving forward.

I am hoping to be able to get a video of the Live Blood Analysis and some pictures to share in my next show.  I think that stuff is fascinating, what do you guys think?

I’m super excited to announce that the premiere episode of The Paulymath Show is now live on YouTube.

In this episode I cover the idea and meaning behind the word “Paulymath”, discuss the “scanner / polymath” personality type, review the book “Refuse to Choose” by Barbara Sher and the Kodak Zi8 HD Pocket Camera.  I also did an update on the Blogger Weight Loss Challenge I’m doing with Tyler Cruz and announce an opportunity for you guys to enter into a draw to win some cash.

The Paulymath Show – Episode #01

Feedback and an Opportunity to Win Cash

As I mention in the show, if you subscribe to my YouTube Channel by clicking the yellow Subscribe button just above the video on YouTube, and leave a comment with some words of encouragement for me or some words of discouragement for Tyler Cruz I’m going to enter you into a draw to win some cash if I win the Blogger Weight Loss Challenge.

I’d also love to hear your feedback about the show here on my Blog.  Let me know what you guys think of my first episode, what you’d like to see more of, any kind of suggestions you may have of how I can make the show better for you, any kind of books or products you’d like to see reviewed, any kind of topics you’d like me to dive into etc.

Also, I’m going to try to apply for YouTube’s partner program which would allow me to upload video’s that are longer than 10 minutes in length so I don’t have to split my episodes into multiple videos like I did with this one.  The more views, subscribers and ratings I get on my videos the higher the chances I’ll get approved so if you’d like to help out, sharing the videos with your friends, embedding them on your Blog or just rating them and leaving comments would really help me out.

Making the Videos

I’m relatively new to working with high definition video, and I totally underestimated the amount of time it takes to work with the format.  It took me over an hour to render the intro for the show, and over two hours for each of the 6 minute videos to encode in 1280×720 HD format.  Then, once the encoding is done it takes another 30-45minutes/each to upload to YouTube and another 30mins/each for YouTube to encode the videos.

That’s just the amount of time to basically export and upload the videos once they were 100% finished and ready for publishing.  Working with video is definitely more time intensive than whipping up a quick Blog post, but I have to say that even though it was a lot of work making this first episode, I really enjoyed making the videos.

Future episodes should be a lot faster for me to make now that I’ve got all the pieces in place for shooting the videos, the intro scene done and a lot of the settings for encoding figured out.  I’m sure I’ll eventually get faster at this and maybe in the future I might get a second machine with an even faster processor for encoding the videos.

Special Thanks

Lastly, I just wanted to send special thanks to my friends at Amped Media for sponsoring the Kodak Zi8 HD Pocket Cam that I used to film the videos.  I wanted to upgrade my Flip Mino to an HD cam so that I could film the episodes in high definition and so that I could capture audio through an external microphone.  I spoke to Amped Media about the show and they were nice enough to sponsor the purchase of the camera.

For those of you who don’t know, Amped Media is the main affiliate network that I used last year to generate my affiliate income.  I have accounts with over a dozen networks, but the majority of my income last year has only come from two networks and Amped Media was the largest of them.  They have also sponsored a couple of affiliate marketing contests on this Blog in the past as well, and I’ve always enjoyed working with them since signing up with them last year.  So, if you’re an affiliate marketer and you haven’t signed up with them yet I highly recommend them.

Now that the Blogger Weight Loss Challenge with Tyler is on, I’m working on my preliminary strategy.

I know Tyler is probably already making changes to his diet and trying to get outside to run around that lake he loves so much, but I’ve got a totally different approach.

I think this quote says it best:

“If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend six hours sharpening my axe.”

- Abraham Lincoln

Instead of putting my running shoes on, or hitting the gym or even making any changes to my diet, I’m putting my energy towards getting my mindset right first.  I’m a big believer that if you get the mental side of things figured out first, the rest falls into place.

In this video I’m going to go over the first two steps I’m taking in this challenge.  One is a life planning process I’m going to follow and the other is a neat little product I got sent for review a few weeks ago.

Yesterday I had an interesting chat with Tyler Cruz, a friend of mine who’s also a Blogger and an Internet entrepreneur like myself.

Since we both make money online and work from home, we chat online a lot and one of the things we talk about from time to time is how crappy we eat and how we put on weight due to our bad eating habits and mostly sedentary lifestyle.

Last year Tyler did a Weight Loss Challenge on his Blog and asked me if I wanted to participate, but at the time I was still planning on getting back to my P90X workout schedule so I declined the invitation.

Yesterday Tyler informed me that he’s planning on doing another Weight Loss Challenge and asked me if I wanted to participate.  This time I decide to accept the challenge and take him on.

What is the Challenge?

The challenge is between Tyler Cruz and I to see who can lose a certain amount of weight over the next 10 weeks.

Since there is a slight difference in starting weight between Tyler and I, to keep things fair we’re going to have a slightly different target for me and Tyler.  We’re both going to try to lose 6% of our total body weight, which means that with Tyler’s starting weight of 201 lbs he is going to try to lose 12lbs (about 6% of his body weight), and with my starting weight at 212 lbs I’m going to try to lose 13lbs (about 6% of my body weight).

So Tyler’s target goal is going to be to reach 189 lbs, and mine is going to be to reach 199 lbs.  The 10 week Challenge starts today and ends on May 21st, 2010 at 10pm PST.  Here’s a link to Tyler’s post for this challenge.

Loser Has to Cough Up $600

To make things interesting we’re wagering $600 each on the challenge.  Meaning, if I don’t hit my target weight as of May 21st at 10pm then I have to cough up $600 and send it to Tyler to do with as he pleases.  However, if Tyler doesn’t hit his target by the same date then he has to cough up $600 and send it to me to do with as I please.

If both of us or neither of us end up hitting our targets then nobody pays, but if one person reaches target and the other doesn’t then the loser has to pay $600.

What are the Rules?

We have set a number of rules for this challenge so that Tyler doesn’t cheat there is no cheating.  Here are the rules:

• Each challenger must post an official post announcing the challenge on their Blog which talks about the challenge, explains the rules etc.
• Each challenger must post “Before” and “After” photos at the beginning and end of the challenge, as well as a video of themselves “weighing in” to prove their weight.
• Each challenger should also post regular updates (1-2/week) on their Blog showing regular updates throughout the challenge.
• Challengers are not allowed to use dietary supplements or weight loss pills that have “Weight Loss” as their primary advertised benefit.  Healthy nutritional supplements such as vitamins, protein wonders or bars, meal replacement shakes, etc. are all fine but “fat burners” or “metabolism booster” pills or any of the other unhealthy crap that unnaturally tries to induce weight loss is not allowed, nor are colon cleansers.
• No starving yourself, or dehydrating yourself or any unhealthy tricks like that, just old fashioned natural weight loss.

Why I’m Doing This

So why am I doing this?  Well, there are five main reasons why I took on this challenge when Tyler contacted me.

(1) To Improve My Health

One of the biggest reasons I want to lose the excess weight is to improve my health.  Even though I am currently “healthy” with no real challenges on the surface, I am very aware of the fact that appearances can be quite deceiving.  Just because I’m not experiencing any symptoms of disease, that doesn’t mean that my body is operating at peak condition.

In fact, in the last five years I’ve watched as my belly has grown and grown and I want to make a change before my poor eating habits and lack of exercise manifest some kind of disease.

(2) To Have More Energy

Another big reason I want to do this is to improve the amount of energy I have.  From previous experience I have found that the amount of extra energy I had from exercising and eating healthier made up for the extra time required to exercise.  Meaning, if I spent one hour per day exercising, the amount of extra energy I had from that exercise has more than made up for any productivity loss in my business by having to exercise.

I also found that when I was eating healthy and exercising I didn’t feel as sleepy all the time so I got more done when I was working on projects or just going about my day.

(3) To Ground Myself Spiritually

For about a year now and especially in the last six months I’ve really been working on opening up my sixth and seventh Chakras.  I’ve been studying psychic development courses, taken a Reiki Healing course and have worked with several spiritual mentors to help me develop my intuitive abilities.

About a month ago one of my mentors did a reading for me and told me that I need to take a rest for a while from intuitive development and to ground myself.  I guess I’ve been really pushing myself to open up my higher Chakras and kind of ignoring the lower ones.  Yesterday my wife came home and had yet another message for me from a psychic that said the exact same thing.  She told me I really need to ground my lower Chakras.

So, in addition to some meditation exercises I will be working on, I have always found that exercise and eating a healthy diet is very grounding for me.

So the third reason I want to do this is to help me get more grounded spiritually.

(4) To Test Out My Weight Loss Theories

I’ve been on many different types of diets before and I’ve got dozens of weight loss books and programs on my bookshelves.  I’ve also taken various nutrition courses and got my diplomas in Advanced Nutrition.  However, I’ve never really implemented the stuff I’ve learned in my courses in my own diet.

Last year when I went on the P90X exercise program I wanted to follow their diet because I wanted to document my progress without changing what they suggested.  I wasn’t overly impressed with the results I was getting from the nutrition plan.  I was happy with the increase in muscle strength and my cardio levels, but honestly I wasn’t very happy with the P90X nutrition plan.

I think I can do better and I want to test it out.  So part of this challenge for me is applying some of the theories I have for weight loss to see if they work.  I’m sure I’m going to learn a lot either way.

(5) To Challenge Myself and Have Some Fun

Another big reason I wanted to do this is to make losing weight, improving my health and exercising fun.  I love friendly competitions and challenging myself, especially when I’m competing against someone else.

I’ve Blogged my weight loss progress on several occasions before but I never did a challenge against another Blogger and I never had  financial penalty for not achieving my goal.  I think it’s going to be fun to see how motivated I am considering I’ve got $600 and humiliation on the line.  I’ve known Tyler for a while now and I know he’s going to rub it in my face if I can’t lose the weight so I’m not going to let that happen.

The “Before” Photos

Here are my “before” photos.  As humiliating as it is to take photos without my shirt on I have been doing that ever since I started taking “before” and “after” photos so that I can compare what I look like.  When I wear a shirt (as in the video) I find it way too easy to hide the fat.  Taking photos without the shirt allows me to see the truth much more accurately.

The Weigh In Video

Here’s my weight-in video showing me tipping the scales at 212 lbs as proof of my start weight.

I’ll keep this post brief since I already wrote most of what I wanted to say in my previous post ( Oh Oh! Woo Woo Stuff ), but I just wanted to let everyone know that I have now launched the second site of my new two-part project.

The first site was InspiredPsychic.com which I launched last month and my second site is InspiredEnergyHealer.com which I just launched a few days ago.

Originally I was going to launch just one site which dealt with both topics and anything else related to spirituality, energy healing etc. , but then I decided to split them up and launch two separate sites that focus on each topic more tightly.  I’m pretty sure that most people who are into one topic will probably be into the other topic as well but I felt inspired to split things up anyways.

You can check out my new site at InspiredEnergyHealer.com

For the last few days I’ve been planning out some changes I wanted to implement in the structure, layout and look of my Fitness, Health and Healing Blog.  One of the changes I wanted to make to that site was to re-structure it more as a “website” with a blog attached to it, than just a pure blog.

The reason for this is because I want to be able to start writing more health and fitness related articles, but I want to make them much more extensive than just a blog post which typically gets buried in the archives a few days or weeks after it’s written.  Both my blog posts and articles are going to be much less time sensitive than what I’ve written before, so I wanted a design that could feature more content on one page.

I’m not finished with everything yet, but here’s what the design looks like so far: