This evening marked the final day of my Weight Loss Challenge against Tyler Cruz.

As a quick recap, we started the weight loss challenge on May 24th and we each agreed to lose 14% of our starting body weight.

My starting weight on May 24th was 216.0 lbs, so my target weight loss was 30.2lbs for a final weight of 185.8lbs or less.

Final Weigh In Video

As you can see in the video, I weighed in at 1.0 lb less than my target weight of 185.8lbs so I made my weight.

Tyler made his weight too, so we both lost over 30lbs since starting this challenge.

Weight Loss Graphs

Here are our combined weigh loss graphs.

The Journey Up Till Sept 1st

For anyone just tuning in now, I documented my weight loss journey up until September 1st in these posts:

May 24 – Weight Loss Challenge – Paul vs Tyler – Rematch
May 29 – Weight Loss Challenge – My 2011 Strategy
June 12 – Weight Loss Challenge – Paul vs Tyler – Day 19
June 23 – Weight Loss Challenge – Paul vs Tyler – Day 30
June 29 – Weight Loss Challenge – Paul vs Tyler – Day 36
July 04 – Weight Loss Challenge – Paul vs Tyler – Day 41
July 06 – Dr. Bernstein Diet – Day 1
July 11 – Dr. Bernstein Diet – Day 7
July 18 – Dr. Bernstein Diet – Day 14
July 25 – Dr. Bernstein Diet – Day 21
Aug 01 – Dr. Bernstein Diet – Day 28
Aug 08 – Dr. Bernstein Diet – Day 35
Aug 15 – Dr. Bernstein Diet – Day 42
Aug 22 – Dr. Bernstein Diet – Day 49
Sept 01 – 30lbs Weight Loss Target Reached

The Last 3 Weeks

From September 1st until my update post today I didn’t do any updates.

I won’t deny that laziness was a big factor for that.  I got really tired of doing weekly updates.  I hit my 30lbs weight loss target on September 1st and I didn’t really want to talk about my weight anymore – to be honest.

A 120 day weight loss challenge is a long time to be focusing on your weight and weighing yourself every single day.  It got kind of old after a while, so I decided not to talk about it anymore after I hit my target.

During the last 3 weeks, in addition to continuing to eat healthy foods, I did a lot of experimenting with portion control and learning how to eat the foods I previously enjoyed and craved, like pizza, or McDonald’s or fish’n'chips, but just in smaller quantities. I also paid more attention to how eating those types of foods – even in small quantities – affected my mood, energy levels and of course my weight.

Some of these foods, in small portions didn’t affect me in any negative way that I could perceive.  I still had lots of energy, and was in a good mood etc., and my weight didn’t go up.  Other foods which tasted good, did affect me right away – making me feel sluggish, and in a down/depressed mood.

Another thing that I was monitoring pretty closely is the process of replenishing my glycogen levels coming off the strict portion of the Dr. Bernstein diet.  I knew that the process of replenishing those levels of sugar/water in my liver would cause my weight to go up by at least 3-5lbs – not in terms of fat gained, but in terms of glycogen/water retained by my liver.  If you missed it, I talked about the whole glycogen thing in this post.

This is where most people freak out and start panicking – when their body re-gains that 3-5lbs of glycogen/water weight.  It’s a natural process though and it’s how the body works.  It doesn’t mean that you’re gaining fat, it just means you’re replenishing your glycogen stores, so it’s to be expected.

From September 1st to the 14th my weight fluctuated between 186 – 190 lbs or so.

I knew that in order to hit my final weigh-in weight of 185.8lbs I was going to have to go back on a stricter diet and exercise program in my last week of the competition, however I ran into an unforeseen obstacle.

The Injury

My original plan for the final week of the competition was to significantly increase my exercise levels and run every day on the treadmill for at least 3-5kms.  I was going to start this 7 days before my final weigh-in and do it every single day.

However, after my first 4km run mid last week, I somehow injured my tailbone while running.  I didn’t fall or anything like that but I think I just over-strained myself somehow due to running with an improper posture.

This put a huge dent in my exercise plans as I was basically bed-ridden for a few days and I wasn’t able to actually run until Monday – with just 3 days left in the competition.

In the end I just ended up doubling up on some runs, running 2x/day on Monday and Tuesday and then once on Wednesday and I hit my target weight.

My Advice

I will end this post with two pieces of advice for anyone looking to lose some weight.

Firstly, before you go looking for the next diet, or exercise program or some shake that will make you lose X pounds in X days, start with your beliefs.  Everything starts with your beliefs – especially the subconscious ones you’re not even aware of.  PSYCH-K can be of huge benefit here.

Secondly, invest in a diet program with a proven track record.  Losing weight is hard enough even when you’re doing things the right way.  There’s no need to try to stumble your way through trial and error dieting strategies you pieced together from various places.

After having gone through it, I recommend the Dr. Bernstein weight loss clinics.  If there isn’t one near you, find an alternative that has the same proven track record.

Today is Day 100 of my Weight Loss Challenge with Tyler Cruz, and Day 59 of being on the Dr. Bernstein Diet.

As a quick recap, our competition is for each of us to lose at least 30lbs by Sept 21st.  Whoever doesn’t weigh in at least 30lbs lighter by Sept 21st, has to pay the other person $650 if they hit their goal – or $325 to the BC SPCA if neither of us hit our target.

My starting weight at the beginning of this competition, on May 24th was 216lbs.

Eight days ago, on August 22nd, I weighted in at 190lbs.

Now, even though I still had until September 21st to drop down to my target weight of 186lbs, while writing my update post I decided to set a goal for myself to lose the remaining 4lbs and to hit 186.0 lbs by today – September 1st.

I’m happy to report that I hit my target weight today – weighing in at 186.0 lbs.

Now, I’m not out of the woods yet as far as the contest is concerned as I still have to take into account a couple of factors:

1. Morning weight vs evening weight.  Typically I weigh-in a little bit lighter in the mornings on an empty stomach, than in the evening after dinner.  My final weigh-in will happen on Sept 21st at 10pm, so that will be my “evening weight”, which means I have to allocate at least 0.5 – 1.0 lbs extra for that.
2. Weight in clothes difference.  For my final weigh in I will be wearing slightly heavier clothing than I normally do for my morning weigh-ins.
3. Camera.  I have to allocate about 1lb extra for the camera that I will be holding in my hand while doing my final weigh-in, since that is what I did for my starting weigh-in.

These three factors combined mean that I still have to lose at least 1-2lbs minimum in order to weigh in at -30lbs on Sept 21st.

Of course with $650 on the line, there is no way I’d cut it that close anyways so I want to make sure I’m weighing in at a much lower weight than 186lbs on that day just in case.

Having said that, I’m not worried since I still have just under 3 weeks to lose enough weight for the “buffer”.

My Plan So Far

My plan in losing this 30lbs so far has been split up into two Phases.

Phase 1

During Phase 1 of my plan I actually made almost no “physical world” changes of any kind in my plan.

For the first 42 days of the challenge I simply focused on two things in Phase 1:

1. Aligning myself spiritually with manifesting a healthy, fit and energized body.
2. Aligning my mental beliefs with manifesting a healthy, fit and energized body.

Those were the two things my intuition told me to focus on first.

Meanwhile, my competitor – Tyler Cruz – who doesn’t believe in concepts like aligning yourself spiritually or mentally and pretty much mocks it as “woo woo” stuff, jumped straight into making physical world changes to his diet and exercise regime.

Ten years ago I was just like him, and I too thought that “success” is all just about taking action in the physical world.

Then I learned that 90% of “success” in any endeavor has nothing to do with the physical world, or the actions you take.

Without spiritual and mental alignment, action accomplishes nothing long term except one thing – burnout.  I learned that the hard way 10 years ago.  Today I know better than to ignore the spiritual & mental realms.

During my Phase 1 spiritual and mental preparation phase, Tyler was all excited checking in with me on a daily basis seeing yet another day of him losing weight and me accomplishing “nothing”.

In fact, if you look at a comparison of our weight loss graphs from May 24th to July 1st, here’s what they looked like:

Imagine how excited Tyler must have been on this day, seeing me weigh in at 215 lbs – having lost virtually no weight in the first 40 days or so in the competition.

On the same day, he weighed in at 204.4lbs which meant that he had lost 8.4lbs in the same time period.

That is typically the type of results you see if you jump in and make “physical world” changes ignoring everything else.

You see fairly quick, physical world results which can be very exciting.

This is also why 99% of weight loss programs out there IGNORE the spiritual & mental side of things. They know that the only way to get people to buy a program or diet is to show them instant, physical world results IMMEDIATELY after starting the program.

That is also why most weight loss programs out there fail.

Phase 2

For Phase 2 of my plan I was intuitively guided to start the Dr. Bernstein diet, which I started on July 5th – just 4 days after the 215lbs weigh-in I just mentioned.

Now let’s take a look at another graph.

This one shows what has happened up until today – Sept 1st. In this graph we’re also looking at the number of pounds lost, instead of just actual weight since Tyler and I weighed in at different starting weights.

As you can see I have not only caught up to Tyler’s weight loss, I have surpassed him as well.

I am now 9.2 lbs ahead of him in the competition, whereas on just two months ago on July 1st I was 7.4lbs behind.

Now, the funny thing is that for anyone who doesn’t believe in “woo woo” stuff like making the spiritual and mental shifts necessary for weight loss, they’ll just look at my results and point to the Dr. Bernstein diet alone as the source of my results.

They’ll say that the reason I’ve lost 29lbs in the last 2 months is because I just took “action” and stopped eating crap and started eating the Dr. Bernstein diet.

And while it is true that I did take action, and I did make dietary and exercise changes in the last two months – those things are not the CAUSE of the weight loss. They are the EFFECT of the Spiritual & Mental changes that preceded the actions.

The false belief that the true source of weight loss comes from physical world changes (like diet & exercise) is about as accurate as saying that the true source of electricity is your wall outlet, or that the true source of water is your tap, or that the true source of money is an ATM machine.

Before and After Pics

Here’s my before / after pics from May 24th and today.

As you can see, even though I’ve lost 30lbs, I still have some weight to lose. I’d guesstimate around 20 lbs more to really hit my ideal weight range.

What’s Next?

Well, I’ve still got 3 weeks to go in the competition, so I’m going to continue losing weight as I want to make sure I have a nice buffer for my Sept 21st weigh-in.

I also have some ideas for what I want to do next after Sept 21st, but I am being intuitively guided not to worry about those things until after the Sept 21st weigh-in, so for now I’m just focusing on that.

It’s been two weeks since I’ve launched my new project – TabletopGamer.com.

I have to say that this is by far the most exciting website project I have ever worked on.

In the last two weeks I have hardly been getting any sleep, most nights working on the project until 4:00-4:30am and enjoying every second of it.

Most of that time has been spent on launching and building the website itself but some of it has been spent on actually building and painting miniatures as well.

In this post I just wanted to do a quick update on the project so far, as I think it might help to inspire some of you who have a passion for something in life and have been thinking about launching a Blog or Website around it.

The Site

As of right now, this is the site design I have for TabletopGamer.com.  I chose this WordPress Theme because it has a nice picture slider up top where I can highlight my featured posts, and a listing of recent Blog posts.

From there people can navigate to the specific content that they want, or visit my forums etc.

I also designed a very basic Logo and created a slogan for my site as well, which is “Build it. Paint it. Play it.”

I setup a newsletter which allows people to sign-up to receive regular updates from me, and have 108 subscribers on that list as of today.

The Forum

I also decided to setup and launch a forum for Tabletop Gaming.

The forum has only been up for just over a week or so, but it’s already starting to build up in terms of new members, threads and posts.

Another thing I added to the forum is a gallery plugin which allows people to upload pictures of their miniatures to showcase their work.

The Contest

To kickoff the launch of the website I also started a miniature painting contest where people are able to win prizes by painting their miniatures and participating on the site.

My new friends over at Battlefoam were gracious enough to sponsor the grand prize in the contest – a Battlefoam P.A.C.K. 216 Paint Pot Load Out Bag.  It’s basically a super high quality bag for organizing all of your miniature building and painting supplies.

I also sponsored some T-Shirts and Warmachine / Hordes Badges as prizes myself.

As an announcement for the contest, I made this video:

The YouTube Channel

Another thing I did is I took all the videos from my Paulymath channel that related to Warhammer 40k and I moved them over to my new TabletopGamer channel on YouTube.

The channel was launched on August 10th, and so far in the last two weeks I have built it up to have 143 subscribers, 912 friends, 1,809 total upload views and 588 channel views.  Not bad for two weeks.

The Traffic

The traffic on the site has been growing pretty steadily as well.

So far in two weeks time I have had 481 visits from people other than myself (614 visits – 133 from me).

My other stats like page views, average time on site, pages/visit and bounce rate are doing really well as well.  I know that my own visits do affect some of those stats, but even if I filter out my own visits the stats are still pretty impressive.

Spare Time Effort, Shoestring Budget

Everything I’ve done on this site in the last two weeks has been done in my spare time, outside of my regular “work” I do on all my other projects.  My other projects, including this Blog take up around 50-60 hours a week, so TabletopGamer.com was built on time I invested in it on top of that.

I only mention this because I have had some of my former mentoring students use the excuse that they don’t have the time to work on projects they’re passionate about because they have a full time job.

They say that “If I didn’t have to work at my job then I’d definitely be able to do what I love.”

Well of COURSE that would be the ideal scenario, but in most cases it is just a fantasy you’ll never reach unless you DECIDE to do what you love IN SPITE of your full time job.

Don’t wait for your life to organize itself in the perfect way to give you everything you need in terms of resources to pursue your passion.

Of course you could have more time.

Of course you could have more resources.

Of course you could have more support.

But are you willing to pursue your passions even if you don’t have life throwing all those things at you?

The attitude you have to foster when pursuing your passions is “I don’t have the time to do this, I don’t have the money to do this, and I definitely don’t have the support I need to do this… but I’m going to do it anyways.”

If you can do that, then the Universe and everything within it will bend to your will.

And you WILL manifest the time, money, resources and support you need.

My total monetary investment into this project so far has been under $200.

Even then, the $200 I invested in the project so far just kind of showed up.  I didn’t have it set aside prior to starting the site.  All I had set aside was the $8 to register the domain.

Well, a bit more if you count the cost of the Warhammer 40k/Warmachine miniatures themselves, but I would be buying those regardless of this project.

Being Impatient

For the most part I have been pretty happy with the results I’ve been able to produce with this project so far in the first two weeks.

However, last night I was feeling a bit depressed about this project.

For some reason I was just feeling like the project hasn’t been taking off as quickly as I would like it to.

I found these feelings rather odd, considering how much I’ve been able to accomplish on this site in a short period of time but nonetheless I was feeling that way.

I did some awareness exercises while doing some journaling and I realized that the reason why I’m feeling my site isn’t doing as well as I would like it to be is because I’ve been comparing myself to some of the most successful sites no the Internet in this niche market.

I visit their sites on a daily basis and I see all the cool content they produce and all the traffic they are getting on their forums etc. and it’s so easy to feel crappy about your own project when comparing yourself to these sites.

In reality though, these sites are being run by much larger companies with 5-10 or more full time employees each, with budgets of well over $100k – $500k/year easily spent on their projects.  Some of these sites have also been around for 5+ years, with over $1Million invested in them over that time frame.

Making that realization at the conscious level helped me to feel a lot better about the project and what I’ve been able to accomplish by myself with my spare time efforts in just 2 weeks with less than a $200 budget.

One of the things to realize about these other larger sites is that even though they have success on a larger scale, and more assets/resources, they also have more liabilities and challenges than I do.

For example, they have employee payroll’s to worry about and much larger overhead costs of running their businesses and websites, whereas my overhead is extremely low.

Keep this in mind when building out your projects.

If you’re comparing yourself to a larger, much more successful competitor, realize that they also started somewhere – like everyone does, so you don’t have to feel bad if you’re just starting out.

Look for the benefits of being at the “just starting out” phase of your project.

They’re there if you look for them.

I’m making a fairly significant change to my Bernstein diet plan this week.

Today marks Day 35 of being on the diet which also makes it Day 76/120 of my Weight Loss Challenge with Tyler Cruz.

This past week I had my 2nd appointment with my Dr. Bernstein clinic doctor and we went over my blood test results and weight loss results so far.

I was happy to hear that all my blood results returned normal.  I never go to the doctor so I honestly had no clue what to expect.  I was a bit worried that perhaps my cholesterol levels might have been a bit high due to my weight gain over the years, but they were normal.

Switching to Maintenance Mode

When you go on the Bernstein diet, there are two sets of weight loss targets that you set.

The first weight loss target is set by them, according to what they consider a “reasonably healthy” weight range for your body type / height etc.

For me, that body weight is anywhere in the range of 185-195lbs.

The second weight loss target is set by you, based on whatever weight you would like to be at.

As part of the program, they allow you to be on the diet up until you reach the lower end of the range that they set for you, and then the doctor approves your weight loss below that level in 5lbs increments.

So for example, if I wanted to set my target with them to 175lbs, then I would be able to stick to their diet plan until I reached 185lbs and then the on-staff doctor would have to approve me to lose the extra 10lbs on top of that.

I guess they do this to prevent problems with people who want to lose way too much weight and become underweight.

Anyway, one of the benefits of dropping your weight within their target range (once again 185-195lbs for me) is that once you reach that goal, you’re allowed to switch to “Maintenance Mode” if you’d like.

Of course you can stick to the diet and keep losing weight, but as long as you’re within that range you “qualify” for “Maintenance Mode”.

Last week on my Wednesday visit I weighed in at around 196lbs which puts me very close to the 195lbs I need to be at to qualify for “Maintenance Mode”.

So I had a chat with my doctor and he asked me what I wanted to do – keep losing weight or switch to maintenance.

Now, obviously I want to keep losing weight, but at the same time there is the $600/month cost associated with going in for my 3x/week appointments with them.

Also, there is the drive there and back I have to do 3x/week which costs me time as well.

On top of that I have also been noticing that eating healthy the way I eat now has become a habit for me and I don’t really need the 3x/week accountability anymore like I did in the beginning.

So after meditating on it a bit, I have decided to switch to “Maintenance Mode” on the diet.

The cool thing is that the first month of maintenance is free of charge.  Right now they include it as part of your start-up costs to get started on the diet.

So by switching to maintenance mode, I’ll be saving myself $600 plus the time to drive to the clinic an extra 2x/week.

On maintenance mode they basically increase your daily calories, allowing you to have some of the foods that were originally taken out of the stricter diet back.

You also no longer go in for your shot 3x/week, instead you now only go in once a week.

So you still get the accountability of weighing in and talking to someone once a week, and your weekly shot, but it’s not as hardcore as going in 3x/week.

Since I still want to lose a lot more weight, what I’m actually going to do is switch to “Maintenance Mode” and go in for my shot/appointments once a week, but I’m still going to follow the diet pretty strictly like I am now.

I kind of wondered if my energy levels would drop if I stopped going in for my shots 3x/week but so far that hasn’t happened.

Last week I only had one single shot on my Wednesday appointment.  The clinic was closed on Monday and I canceled my Friday shot because I told them I’m switching to “Maintenance Mode”.

So essentially I’ve already dropped down to having one shot per week and so far I feel totally fine.

I haven’t had any lack of energy or anything like that, which is encouraging.

In the last week I have also only had one appointment and haven’t needed the extra 2 days of accountability.  I’m sticking to my diet pretty well every single day without any exceptions or cheat days or cheat meals.

Tomorrow I’m going in for my “Maintenance Mode” consultation where they will teach me what foods I can put back into my diet to maintain my weight.

I’ll take that information and keep it for later on when I actually stop doing the diet.  For now I’ll probably just stick to what I’m doing right now, since it’s working.

We’ll have to wait to see if my results change over the next few weeks.  If I stop losing weight, I’ll switch back to the hardcore diet mode with 3x/week shots etc.

Dr. Bernstein Diet – Results So Far

As of this morning, I weighed in at 193.8lbs.  This means I’ve lost a total of 19lbs in 5 weeks on the diet.

This also means that I have lost a total of 22.2lbs since starting my weight loss competition with Tyler Cruz.

Here’s my updated graph for this week:

As you can see by the blue line, I’m well below my “pacer” line to lose 30lbs by September 21st.

In fact, it’s exciting to know that I only have another 7.8lbs left to lose to hit my 30lb weight loss target. Yaay!!!

So how is Tyler doing?

Not so good.

This graph pretty much says it all.

As you can see, Tyler’s weight loss has turned into a battle of sorts with him struggling to keep losing weight.

He’s going on all these super long walks, walking and walking for 10kms or more, exhausting himself and thinking that it will somehow help him lose weight quicker.

In the meantime though, he’s constantly in a mental battle finding it hard to stick to eating healthy foods.  The other day he polished off 6 cabbage rolls (about 800 calories) and a bowl of popcorn as a late night snack.

Who knows what other snacks he hasn’t even mentioned to me.

In his last few weight loss update posts he claimed to have some kind of secret weapon for weight loss, but it doesn’t look like it’s working very well.

I’ve tried to tell him many times that if you don’t have the right mindset and beliefs all aligned properly first, you won’t be able to stick to the physical world action steps required to reach long term results.

You can’t fight your subconscious mind forever.  Eventually will power runs out and the subconscious mind wins.

Unfortunately his beliefs don’t include believing in things like beliefs.  He thinks it’s all “mumbo jumbo woo woo” stuff.

So, on he goes, walking, and walking, and walking…

… then it’s back to binging on cabbage rolls or worse, and the cycle continues.

I hope he figures it out pretty soon, we only have 43 days left and he still has almost 14lbs to lose.

I’d really hate to have to take his hard-earned $650 at the end of this competition.

Dr. Bernstein Diet Review – After 5 Weeks

Every week that goes by I am liking the Bernstein diet more and more.

It’s become a habit for me so eating this way is easy and the pounds just keep peeling off.

My appointment with the doctor this past week was very positive and I felt like he totally had my best interests at heart.

The doctor and the nurses at the center didn’t try to talk me into sticking to the 3x/week appointment schedule, instead of switching to the maintenance mode.

They were super cool about it, no pressure tactics of any kind were involved.

They told me what my options were and let me decide what I wanted to do.

After having just the one shot this past week, I still feel like I have a tonne of energy so I don’t think it will be a problem sticking to the 1x/week maintenance mode while still losing weight.

In fact, this past week I have lost 3lbs, which is up from the 1.8lbs I lost the week before.

My weight loss progress on the diet so far looks like this:

Week 1 – 7.6lbs
Week 2 – 3.4lbs
Week 3 – 3.2lbs
Week 4 – 1.8lbs
Week 5 – 3.0lbs

I’m very happy with this.

What do you guys think?

As always, my latest body pics are available on my Body Transformation page.

This is an update post on the BlackTieMagic.com Ecommerce site I launched last week.

The first thing I worked on is implementing an inventory management system to keep track of my inventory, costing, pricing etc.

For inventory management, I am using a software called AmberPOS.

AmberPOS is a point of sale / inventory management software which integrates with the Interspire Shopping Cart software I’m using on my website.

I’m still working on getting all the inventory sorted out and put up on the website.  For now I have about 15-20 items online.

Building Traffic

Besides getting more inventory up online, the next most important aspect of building up the site is to start getting some traffic to it.

There are a number of different things that I have done so far to help with that.

Getting the Site Indexed in Google

Interspire has some pretty cool features for marketing your Ecommerce website online.

The first thing I setup was a Google sitemap feed to let Google know whenever I add or update content to the site.

Luckily, Interspire makes this really simple.  You simply click on Marketing > Google XML Sitemap and it shows you the link to your sitemap.  If you don’t know how to take it from there, there are step-by-step instructions on how to setup your sitemap in Google Webmaster Tools.

Secondly I also setup a Google Base Product feed.  Once again, Interspire makes this really easy.  You go to Marketing > Google Base Product Feed and follow the instructions for setting up a Google Product Feed.

This gives Google a live feed of all the products in your store for indexing in their Google Product Search engine.

With a Google sitemap feed and a product feed setup, Google should have no problems indexing my site.  Google Product search is still in beta, and I don’t know if it gets any real volume of searches but since it only took a few minutes to setup, any exposure I get from it is better than nothing.

Looking Into Free SEO Traffic

Next I wanted to do some preliminary SEO keyword research to check how competitive the market is for magic stores.

My initial research shows that the more common keywords in this niche are fairly competitive.  The major players have fairly highly ranked websites with high Page Rank and domain authority.

To get some traction I will have to go beyond the obvious keywords like “magic tricks”, “magic books” etc. and try to optimize for more long-tail keywords.

In the meantime though, I want to start getting some kind of traffic to the site since SEO can often take months before getting any real results.

Luckily, SEO is not the only way to get traffic to a site.

Pay-Per-Click traffic such as AdWords is one way to go, but for now I decided to start with a different source of traffic.

Connecting to the Magic Community

A great, but often overlooked source of traffic is to purchase banner ads on highly targeted Forums and Blogs.

One of the most successful online forums in the magic community is called The Magic Cafe.

There are a LOT of magicians around the world who hang out on that forum.

So as a starting point, I purchased a small 110×80 banner ad on the forum as a test to see if I can get some traffic to the site.

It’s nothing huge, but since the website gets a fair amount of highly targeted traffic I don’t need a lot of traffic to potentially start generating sales.

Also, since I’m liquidating my inventory at 30-50% off retail prices, I’m hoping the word will spread once a few people check out the site.

I designed the banner to be simple, direct and to more or less fit in with the colors of the forum, while at the same time hopefully grabbing people’s attention.

Before purchasing the banner I took a quick look at the Compete.com stats for TheMagicCafe.com to see just how much traffic they get.

They’re averaging around 22,500 unique visitors per month, with just over 136,000 visits per month.

They also offer bigger banner placements as well as other promotional opportunities, but for now I wanted to just start with a small banner and track how much traffic I get from it before committing to something bigger.

Starting small will also give me a chance to get a lot more inventory up on my site.

That’s pretty much all I’ve had time to do on the site for now.

I’ll write more update posts as I make more progress.

Today is Day 28 of me being on the Dr. Bernstein Diet, and Day 69/120 of my Weight Loss Challenge with Tyler Cruz.

Besides the weight loss results, one of the best things I like about this diet is that I always seem to have a lot of energy.

On other diets I’ve been on, I have always felt tired or weak while dieting, but on the Bernstein diet I haven’t experienced any of that until the other day.

On Saturday, my wife and I had a family brunch at our house and instead of eating my typical Bernstein diet type foods I had Reuben sandwiches with corned beef and sauerkraut.

Calorie wise, the amount of food I ate on Saturday wasn’t any more than what I eat on a typical Bernstein day, but I did forgot to take the multivitamin and potassium/calcium supplements my Bernstein diet recommends.

By Saturday evening I found myself being so tired.  I had zero energy to do anything, except sit on the couch and watch TV.  Even watching TV wasn’t relaxing enough, and I ended up falling asleep and having a nap.  Later on in the evening I went to bed early as I was so tired.

Holy crap I could totally tell the difference between eating my typical healthy food low-calorie meals I normally eat now, and the not so healthy low-calorie meals I ate on Saturday.  I think not taking my supplements also made a difference.

So the next day I went back to eating a lot more vegetables and healthy foods, took my supplements and my energy returned.

Dr. Bernstein Diet – Results So Far

After 4 weeks on the Dr. Bernstein diet I have lost a total of 16.0 lbs so far.

This also means I have lost a total of 19.2 lbs in my Weight Loss Competition against Tyler Cruz.

Here is my weight loss graph so far in the competition:

Tyler is still lagging behind at 15.4 lbs lost in the competition and it looks like he had another 5-6 day setback this past week again.

Here is a comparison graph of my weight loss vs Tyler’s.

Exercise Update

As far as exercise is concerned I’ve been continuing to do my runs and walks 3-5 times a week, although this past week I found myself so busy launching my new project that I didn’t do any runs.

This is something I plan on correcting today.

So far in the last two months I walked/ran around 25 km in June and around 38 km in July for a total of 63 kms in both months.

Free Gift From Amped Media

My friends over at Amped Media sent me a free gift the other day to help me with my runs.

It’s a new pair of Nike Free Run+ 2 Running shoes.

My previous Nike running shoes are still in pretty good shape, but they do have almost 500 kms on them now and I have been thinking about getting a second pair of running shoes for running outdoors.

So this new pair of shoes from Amped Media came at the perfect time.

I’ll probably use my current pair for when I run outdoors, and save these new shoes for when I run on the treadmill.  I can’t wait to try them out.

Thanks Amped Media!

For those of you who don’t know, Amped Media is an affiliate network who I have been doing business with for years.  In fact, they are currently one of only a small handful of networks I do business with and by far the one I have had the most success with.

When I was first getting started with affiliate marketing back in 2008, they were extremely valuable in helping me to build profitable affiliate campaigns and I’m still running campaigns with them to this day – although on a much smaller scale than I did back in 2008/2009 due to the affiliate restrictions that Google brought in for their Adwords advertisers at the end of 2009.

Dr. Bernstein Diet Review – After 4 Weeks

This past week I only dropped from -14.2 lbs to -16.0 lbs while on the Bernstein diet.

That’s a loss of only 1.8lbs, which is a bit more than half of what I lost in the previous two weeks (3.4lbs in week 2, and 3.2lbs in week 3).

As I already mentioned above, this weekend I didn’t fully follow the diet 100% in terms of the type of foods I ate on Saturday, but I did eat roughly the same amount of calories I should have eaten.

Also, I had a really busy week with projects overall and with the launch of my new project, so I didn’t do any runs/walks this week.

So I can’t really blame the Bernstein diet for a lack of spectacular results on a week where I didn’t follow it 100% and when I didn’t do any exercise.

At the end of the day, losing 1.8 lbs in a week isn’t bad at all, although with the strict nature of the diet, the costs and the vitamin shots that I’m taking I expect to lose 3-4lbs/week for it to be worth it.

As always, you can see my updated body pics on my Body Transformation page if you’d like.

With four weeks completed on the Dr. Bernstein diet, what do you guys think of my results so far?

Back in 2008, as with many other Bloggers, I used to reveal some of the ways that I make money online.

Today, most Bloggers – myself included – don’t reveal their sources of income or how they go about generating it as so many lazy, unethical and unoriginal copy-cats rip off your ideas and destroy them.

In the past I actually really enjoyed doing my monthly income report posts as I received some really positive feedback from other like-minded entrepreneurs who were trying to get started online.

By sharing what worked, and what didn’t for me, they were able to learn from that and try some of the strategies out for themselves.

However, at some point, as the word spread that people were making money online Blogging and Affiliate Marketing, hoards of so called “entrepreneurs” rushed to try to cash in on the gold mine.

Unwilling to put in any actual work or creativity to build projects that actually produced some sort of value for the world, they instead just focused on trying to find the fastest, shortest, easiest way to rip off someone else and to make a quick buck.

Of course, as any real-world entrepreneur will tell you – that never works long term.

The principles which make you successful as an online entrepreneur, are identical to the principles that make you successful in the “real” world.

Integrity, intuition, creativity, perseverance, belief in yourself and your ideas, and your ability to execute on those ideas are all a part of what it takes to succeed online and offline.

Unfortunately, most people are not willing to put that kind of effort in so instead they are always chasing the next quick buck.

Because of this, as I mentioned above, I don’t really like to reveal a lot of my projects anymore.  Some of the top Bloggers in the MMO niche I have spoken to have also expressed the same sentiment.

Some of them have been ripped off much worse than I have in the past because they have a much bigger profile and shared a lot more details about their projects.

The truth is that unfortunately I have had to hold back a lot of information on my projects from my Blog audience, which I think is a shame as I think it would help a lot of other people get started.

I do share a lot more details about  how I make money online with my one-on-one mentoring clients as well as my Paulymath Mentorship Club students, because there I have a much better handle on who everyone is and I would know if someone is ripping me off.

For the Ethical Entrepreneurs

Having said all that, I do want to give offering more transparency on some of my projects another try.

The reason for this is because I believe the “Make Money Online” niche has matured a bit more now, and a lot of the unethical rip-offtreneurs have left in the last year or so in a mass exodus to find their next “get rich quick” schemes.  Not sure what the flavor of the year is for them now – back to MLM’s? flipping real estate? penny stocks? forex?  online poker? Who knows.

Either way, good riddance to them.

Once again I’m seeing a lot more people who do exhibit some of the qualities I mentioned before coming into the market and they genuinely want to learn how to make money online without being stupid about it and ruining it for everyone.

The biggest challenge I see with such entrepreneurs who are just starting out with making money online is that they have no inspiration or examples of some of the things that you can do online in 2011 to produce results.

The Internet is littered with all kinds of examples of what worked in 2006-2009, but after that it’s mostly a black hole as most people went underground with their projects.

So, in hopes that this project might inspire someone like that out there, I have decided to share a new project I’ve just launched.

I don’t know if this project will work.

I don’t know if it will be ultra successful, a complete flop, or somewhere in between.

But, either way, I figure if I share it maybe some of you can learn something from it.

Even if the project completely flops at least you can learn from what doesn’t work.

And if after sharing this project, I don’t see some of the downsides that I’ve seen in the past, maybe I’ll share more of my projects in the future.

Helping people like that is one of my passions, so I really enjoy doing that.

Anyway, let’s get to my new project.

My New Project

My new project is an Ecommerce website.

I’ve talked about building Blogs and Affiliate Marketing websites in the past, but I haven’t really publicly talked about building Ecommerce sites.

Back in the early 2000′s I actually used to run a web development firm that built Ecommerce and auction based websites for companies, and up until about 5 years ago I actually ran my own Ecommerce website.

To this day I still do a lot of consulting and helping retail businesses develop Ecommerce strategies for their online store.

The Ecommerce model of making money online is actually a great model if you can get everything aligned and working properly.

Five to seven years ago my Ecommerce site was actually starting to really take off, but the challenge I had back then was that there were too many responsibilities I had on my plate to make it work – not to mention the fact that I was also working full time managing a corporation.

You see, back then in order to run my Ecommerce site I had to:

• Be the creative director who came up with ideas for how to make the site successful
• Be the programmer who developed the eCommerce shopping cart platform / website myself
• Do the day-to-day administrative tasks associated with running an Ecommerce site
• Stock inventory, package and ship it out when items sold
• Generate traffic to my site pages

Of those three things, the biggest time drain for me was the programming / development of my website / shopping cart and all the administrative tasks.

The great thing now is that today in 2011, there are much better options for running an Ecommerce site.

I no longer have to develop my own shopping cart to run the website.  I can now simply purchase a shopping cart solution and have someone else take care of that part of things for me.

Sure there were shopping cart solutions available 5-7 years ago as well, but most of them were crap.  They were slow, crashed all the time and had very limited features.  The ones that were half decent cost tens or possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars for a license.

Today, things are much different.

Today I can purchase a license of Interspire Shopping Cart and get the benefit of an entire team of programmers working to constantly improve my website/shopping cart for a price that would have been impossible 7 years ago.

Secondly, the administrative tasks that I always dreaded doing such as uploading products and descriptions and answering support questions can be easily outsourced to a virtual assistant today.

Essentially what this means is that if I outsource that development by purchasing a shopping cart license, and I outsource administrative tasks, then all I’m left having to do myself is to be the creative/idea person, stock the inventory, sell it and focus on building traffic to my site.

Even traffic building / SEO can be outsourced to companies like Rankpay if I wanted to.  Of course there is always other traffic sources like AdWords and Facebook as well.

Overall, I think that today in 2011 it is a lot easier to run a small-sized Ecommerce site than it was 5-7 years ago.

However, as with anything there is always a flip side to it as well.

Because the cost of entry to run an online store is much lower today than it was 5-7 years ago, there is naturally more competition.  Also, industry giants like Amazon are also in the picture offering stiff competition with their low prices.

What this means is that I will definitely need to learn and adjust my strategy to fit in with what works today in 2011.  Times have changed, so I have to adjust and change with them, but I’m really curious to see how I can fare in running a part-time Ecommerce site today in 2011.

Either way I’m sure I’ll learn something.

Wish me luck.

Re-Introducing BlackTieMagic.com

After making the decision to try my hand at an Ecommerce project again, I was thinking about the type of products that I would want to carry.

My first thought was to try to run an online Warhammer 40k store, but my research showed that Games Workshop is not currently very friendly with their online distributors.  Their business model is still very much based on selling their product at their bricks-n-mortar shops and from what I’ve researched, they seem to treat their online distributors like the ugly step-sister.

This is too bad as I love Warhammer 40k stuff, so I think it would be fun to run a store selling that.

My second thought and the one I ended up going with was to re-open my former Ecommerce site which sold magic tricks, magic dvd’s and magic books.

I actually still have a lot of inventory left over from when I ran that store, so I figured what better way to start then by liquidating that inventory on my new site.

For a shopping cart platform, I looked at a lot of different shopping cart solutions such as Magento and other WordPress Based shopping carts, but I finally settled on what I believe to be the best shopping cart platform on the market at it’s price level – Interspire Shopping Cart.

Interspire Shopping cart is the self-hosted version of BigCommerce shopping cart.  They are the pretty much the same identical shopping cart solution except that BigCommerce is a monthly subscription service while Interspire is a one-time license you purchase.

With the one-time license you get more control over how the site functions and it also integrates with my Point of Sale / Inventory Management System I use, so I chose to go with that.

I still have a lot of work to do on prettying up the design, implementing a newsletter, building traffic, and of course putting up a lot more inventory for sale, but that’s all in the works.

Today is day 21 of my Dr. Bernstein Diet, and day 62/120 of my Weight Loss Challenge with Tyler Cruz.

Last week I had my first appointment with my Dr. Bernstein clinic doctor.

I’m usually not a very big fan of medical doctors when it comes to nutrition / weight loss related issues as most doctors have almost no nutritional training in their background, but I was actually quite pleasantly surprised with this doctor’s visit.

The doctor actually knew what he was talking about related to nutrition and weight loss, and I didn’t hesitate to ask some very direct questions.

I found one of the questions he answered very enlightening.  It’s something that has been bugging me for a long time, related to weight loss.

Why Do We Lose Weight Quickly Only at First?

This question has been bugging me for a long time.

I’ve gone on so many different diets and have lost a lot of weight very quickly, usually in the first 1-2 weeks.  However, after losing the initial 5-10lbs or so, it seems like my weight loss progress comes to a grinding halt.

If it was a matter of me falling off the diet after the first two weeks and not following it properly anymore, then I would understand, but that is not what happens.

I typically follow a diet perfectly, adhering to all the guidelines and in the first 1-2 weeks I’ll lose 5-10lbs or more very quickly.

Then, while still following the diet perfectly, my weight loss results will diminish greatly.

I have always found this to be very frustrating and annoying, and never really understood why this happens.

The doctor I met with at the clinic last week finally shed some light on this.

Glycogen Weight Loss vs Fat Weight Loss

The secret to unraveling this mystery of the initial rapid weight loss we all experience when going on a diet is related to our glycogen stores in the body.

You see, besides bones, muscles and fat, the body also has a reserve tank of something called glycogen.  Glycogen is a type of carbohydrate / sugar based fuel that the body uses for short-term energy.

Although everyone’s body is slightly different, we might carry 5-10lbs or more of glycogen/water weight in our bodies.

Glycogen is stored in the liver and in our muscle cells, and for every gram of glycogen the body also stores 2-3 grams of water along with it.

Another thing to realize is that glycogen provides us with 4 calories of energy for every gram of glycogen, as opposed to fat being 9 calories per gram.

So what does all this add up to?

Well, lets say that through dieting we create a calorie deficit of 7,000 calories in one week.

7,000 calories / 4 calories per gram for glycogen = 1,750 grams of glycogen.

Meaning, the body will use up 1,750 grams of glycogen for that fuel.  That’s 1.75 kg or 3.86lbs.

So burning 7,000 calories of glycogen for fuel would result in a weight loss of 3.86lbs.  Not bad, right?

Well, it gets better.  You see, as I mentioned above, when the body stores glycogen it also stores 2-3x it’s weight in water as well.  So on top of the 3.86lbs of glycogen you will also shed about 7 – 10lbs of water along with that glycogen.

So that results in about 10-14lbs of “weight” loss (a combination of glycogen and water) in the first 7,000 calorie deficit we create through dieting.

So far, so good.

We get all excited seeing that weight loss, but what happens next?

Well, once the glycogen levels get depleted, THAT is when the body actually starts to burn fat for fuel, instead of glycogen.

So let’s say that once again we stick to our diet perfectly and in the following week we once again create a 7,000 calorie deficit (as an example).

However, this time around instead of burning glycogen for fuel, we’re burning fat.

How much weight will we lose?

Well, fat provides us with 9 calories per gram of fat.

So 7,000 calories / 9 calories per gram of fat = 778 grams which is 1.72lbs.

So, what does this mean?

Well, what this means is that hypothetically speaking, the difference between losing 7,000 calories of Glycogen vs 7,000 calories of FAT can be as much as 10-14lbs of weight loss vs 2lbs of weight loss for the same amount of calories.

If we know this going into a diet, then we can expect those first 5-14lbs of glycogen/water weight to disappear in the first week or two, followed by a  much slower weight loss of 2-3lbs in the following weeks.

However, if we don’t know this, then we get all excited for 1-2 weeks on any diet and then we feel like shit afterwords when our progress slows down.

The Great News

As sad as it is to see your weight loss progress slow down after the first week or two, the great news is that as soon as your weight loss slows down, it means you’re actually burning FAT off of your body.

You see, any glycogen/water weight loss is pretty much irrelevant because glycogen/water weight loss is NOT fat loss and fat loss is what we’re after.

Once you go off your diet, you’ll gain the glycogen/water weight back anyways but you’ll keep any fat loss.

So hypothetically, let’s say you start off at 200lbs and go on a diet for 8 weeks.  Your weight loss might looks like this:

Week 1, -10lbs, 190lbs (mostly glycogen/water weight loss)
Week 2, -3lbs, 187lbs (fat loss)
Week 3, -3lbs, 184lbs (fat loss)
Week 4, -3lbs, 181lbs (fat loss)
Week 5, -3lbs, 178lbs (fat loss)
Week 6, -3lbs, 175lbs (fat loss)
Week 7, -3lbs, 172lbs (fat loss)
Week 8, -3lbs, 169lbs (fat loss)
Week 9, +10lbs, 179lbs (re-gained glycogen/water weight)

Do you see the pattern?  The first -10lbs and the last +10lbs really don’t count.  They just represent your body losing glycogen & water and then regaining it back when you start eating “normal” again.

There’s nothing wrong with that.  It’s how the body works.

But the 21lbs of FAT loss is what really matters.  So this person would have gone from 200lbs to 179lbs in that 8 week period of time, with 21lbs representing actual real fat loss.

So the GOOD news is that as long as you’re sticking to your diet, when you start to see a slowing down of your weight loss after the first 1-2 weeks, that means you are now finally starting to actually burn FAT!

So don’t freak out if your weight loss slows down.  That’s a good thing, not a bad thing.

Of course if your weight is slowing down because you’re going back to your old bad eating habits, that’s a different story, but if you’re sticking to your diet/exercise program then it’s a good thing.

Dr. Bernstein Diet – Results So Far

As of this morning, I have lost 14.2lbs in 21 days on the Dr. Bernstein Diet.

This also puts me at a loss of 17.4lbs since starting my Weight Loss Challenge with Tyler Cruz.  That’s more than half way towards the 30lbs we agreed to lose by September 21st.

Here is my weight loss graph so far:

As you can see, I have now moved pretty far below the green “pacer” line and I’m hoping the graph will continue at the same pace or better.

I think I’m safely out of the initial glycogen / water weight loss phase of my program, which means I’ve burned 3.2lbs of fat in the last week.

I’m happy with that.

So if you look at my week-by-week weight loss so far on this diet it looks like this:

Week 1 -  7.6lbs lost (most likely glycogen/water weight + fat)
Week 2 – 3.4lbs lost (fat)
Week 3 – 3.2lbs lost (fat)

Understanding what I understand about glycogen/water weight loss now, this pattern makes total sense to me now.

What about Tyler Cruz?

Tyler’s actually been doing pretty well with his weight loss as well, until today.  We’ve been pretty much neck-to-neck with our weight loss stats every day until this morning when he jumped up by 1.6lbs.

I’m now 4.4lbs ahead of him in total weight lost in the challenge, with Tyler weighing in today at -13.0lbs and me at -17.4lbs.

Dr. Bernstein Diet – Review After 3 Weeks

In last weeks review of this diet I said that if I continue to lose weight at the same pace of 3-4lbs/week as I did in week 2 then I would be really impressed with this diet.

Well, in this past week I lost 3.2lbs so now I am really impressed.

Why this is super exciting for me is because on previous diets I have always had a good 1-2 weeks, but then I always seemed to have hit a brick wall every week after that.

This time I’m continuing to lose weight so I’m really happy with that.

As I wrote about earlier in this post, I also had my first actual doctors appointment at the Dr. Bernstein clinic this week.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that the doctor actually knew about nutrition and weight loss, as compared to most medical doctors who usually know nothing about these subjects.

As part of going on this diet, the doctors also ask you to go in and get your blood tested for some of the most common things like cholesterol levels etc.

I did that last week as well, and we’ll be going over my results on my next visit.

Another thing I’ve realized too is that with my total weight loss of 17.4lbs in the Weight Loss Challenge so far, I have now lost more weight in one go than any other time in my life.

On other diets or weight loss programs I’ve been on, I’ve always lost 10-16lbs and then stopped the program, so I’m now entering into new territory for me weight loss wise.

I’m going to do some PSYCH-K balances around this as well to make sure that I don’t have any blockages, beliefs wise related to losing more than 16lbs of weight.

I don’t think I do, but I want to make sure.

As usual I’ll be taking my weekly pics and measurements and posting them on my Body Transformation page shortly.

If anyone is interested in doing the Dr. Bernstein diet, contact me to get a free gift from me if you tell them I referred you.

So I’ve made it to Day 14 on the Dr. Bernstein Diet.

Which also makes it Day 55 of my Weight Loss Challenge with Tyler Cruz.

This last week just seemed to fly by super fast for me, which is awesome when you’re on a diet as it just feels like the weight is just peeling off since the days go by fast.

Unlike Week 1 on the Dr. Bernstein diet where I mostly stayed home, this past week I had to go out a few times during the week to a few events.  This meant that I wasn’t able to prepare all of my meals at home, and it also meant that I was exposed to a lot more temptations this week.

For example, on Friday I was at a food court in a mall where I normally order greasy Chinese food which I love the taste of, but I didn’t get Chinese food this time.  Instead I ordered a veggie sandwich and water.

Then on Saturday night I went out with some friends and we went out to a restaurant, then an ice cream shop and then to a movie.  Restaurant food has always been a temptation for me.  However this time I ordered a salad with baked salmon on top and water – which is perfectly within the allowed foods on my Bernstein diet.

At the ice cream shop I watched as everyone else ordered ice cream, but I ordered nothing.  I honestly didn’t even have a craving for it.  And ice cream has always been my weakness.  Not this time.

At the movie theaters everyone ordered popcorn or nachos and drinks, but once again I ordered nothing.  I had no desire to either.  I just enjoyed the movie.

Restaurant food, ice cream and popcorn at the movies have always been my tripping up points.  Not this time around.

I believe it is because I spent the first 41 days of my weight loss challenge getting myself aligned spiritually and mentally before starting a diet / exercise program.  Instead of just jumping in to taking action, I made sure I was ready at a higher level.

Dr. Bernstein Diet – Results So Far

So far, since starting the Dr. Bernstein diet 14 days ago I have lost 11.0lbs.

My weight as of this morning was 201.8 lbs which also means that I have lost a total of 14.8lbs in the weight loss competition.

This actually puts me ahead of the linear “pacer” line in this graph.

In addition to that, it also now puts me ahead of Tyler Cruz in terms of weight loss results.

As of today he is at -12.2lbs in the competition, which is 2.0lbs behind me.  Here’s a graph showing our progress.

Dr. Bernstein Diet – Review After 2 Weeks

The short of it is that I really like this diet so far.

It is not a hard diet to follow.  In fact I think it is probably the easiest weight loss program I have ever tried.

I don’t feel deprived of any types of foods, I don’t feel tired or weak, and I don’t have any real cravings.

As I wrote earlier, I was at an ice-cream shop the other day with arguably some of the best ice-cream in town and I didn’t even flinch.  I had no craving or desire for it at all, which was really cool.

One of the differences I found with this diet compared to pretty much every other diet I tried in the past is that this diet does allow you to eat fruit in moderation.  For example, I’m allowed to have an apple and a peach or an apple and some strawberries for example.

Fruit has sugar in it so pretty much every other diet I’ve been on eliminates fruit out of the equation as well, which I didn’t like.

I find that eating those few servings of fruit per day keeps my candy / sugar cravings at bay, especially since everything becomes sweeter when you don’t eat processed sugars for a while.

The real test for this diet is going to happen in the next week.

See, I’ve noticed a bit of a pattern with my previous diets in terms of weight loss results.

On my previous diets I seem to lose around 7-8lbs in the first week, then around 3-4lbs in the second week and then the weight loss seems to slow down to a crawl of maybe 0-1lbs/week.

I’m really hoping that this pattern does not repeat itself on the Dr. Bernstein diet.

I really hope that I at least maintain or increase the weight loss pace I had this week, which was losing 3.4lbs in 7 days which is about half a pound per day.

If that happens, then I’ll be really impressed with this diet.

I guess we’ll see next week.

As usual I’ll be taking my weekly pics and measurements and posting them on my Body Transformation page shortly.

If anyone is interested in doing the Dr. Bernstein diet, contact me to get a free gift from me if you tell them I referred you.

I’m now 7 days into the Dr. Bernstein Diet.

Technically I still have until tomorrow morning’s weigh-in to report my first week’s worth of progress, but I’m too excited so I decided to do an update today based on this morning’s weigh-in.

Just as a quick recap, I am currently on Day 48 of the 120 Day Weight Loss Challenge with Tyler Cruz.

Our 120 day weight loss challenge started on May 24th and continues until Sept 21st.  We both have to lose at last 30lbs or we have top pay the other person $650.  Also, if neither of us hits our weight loss goal of at least 30lbs, then we have to donate $325/each to the BCSPCA.

My starting weight on May 24th was 216.0lbs.

As of last week – July 5th – I weighed in at 212.8lbs.  That’s a weight loss of only 3.2lbs in the first 41 days of the challenge.

On that day I also started the Dr. Bernstein Diet.

Dr. Bernstein Diet – Results So Far

Since starting the Dr. Bernstein diet six days ago, I have lost an additional 7.6lbs!

My weight as of this morning was 205.2lbs, which means I’ve lost a total of 10.6lbs so far in the Weight Loss Competition.

This is what my weight loss graph looked like just 6 days ago.  The green line is my linear “pacer” line from 216.0lbs  to 186.0lbs.

As you can see my results up until that point weren’t very impressive.

I think I remember Tyler Cruz saying that his prediction was that I only had a 45% chance of losing the 30lbs on time.

Well, here is the same graph as of today.

As you can see everything has completely changed in less than a week.

I wonder what Tyler’s prediction is now.

Speaking of Tyler – he really likes to keep tabs on my weight, every single day, and has even created some fancy graphs to track the competition.

Up until last week he was all proud of his graph because it clearly showed him having had lost more weight than me.

Well, here is what his graph looks like as of today.  Tyler’s line is the red one, mine’s the blue one.

Wow, what a difference a week can make.

In Tyler’s last Weight Loss Challenge Update he even went as far as calling me out on some statements I made in one of my previous Weight Loss Challenge Updates, where I said that weight loss is NOT just about making changes in the physical world.

I talked about the importance of getting the spiritual and mental side of your weight loss journey aligned first, and THEN to take action in the physical world for best results.

Here’s Tyler’s statement:

He flaunts the fact that at that point in the competition he had lost a whopping 9lbs in 45 days of dieting and exercising, like it’s some kind of amazing feat.

He states that he’s “currently winning the competition” using his logical approach of essentially ignoring the spiritual/mental side of things and just “eating healthy and exercising more”.

After 45 days of implementing his “physical world” strategy, he was only “winning” by 2.4lbs and I had only started implementing the “physical world” phase of my strategy 2 days earlier.  For 40+ days prior to that I was getting my mind & spirit aligned with my new identity.

What’s funny is that just 4 days after he had written that post, I am now 2.4lbs ahead of him in the competition.

It’s all good.  He has his beliefs about weight loss, and I have mine.

And I’m not saying that taking inspired action is not a part of the process of weight loss, but action by itself is not enough.

It only produces results for about as long as your will power lasts, and then you start to slip up.

If you don’t change your core beliefs around weight loss and the identity you visualize in your mind, it’s impossible to sustain will power forever.

Eventually your subconscious mind takes over and you go back to your old patterns.

Anyway, enough about Tyler.  Let’s get back to the Bernstein Diet.

Dr. Bernstein Diet – Review After 1 Week

Although technically tomorrow morning marks 1 week for me on the Bernstein diet, I have eaten 7 days of foods on the diet.

Here’s a bunch of pictures of the type of food I’ve been eating all week.

So far there are a lot of things that I love about this diet.

Firstly, I find it very simple to follow.  It’s not super complicated, and even though I have to keep track of my servings and portion sizes – I don’t have to count calories.

Secondly, I can’t believe how much money my wife and I have saved this week by cooking these foods instead of ordering in, or going out for dinner.  Also, the types of foods we are eating now are super inexpensive.  Junk food is what costs a lot in the long run.

Thirdly, I’m totally surprised with the amount of energy I have on this diet.  Originally I was thinking that I might have to cut out my 30 mins of cardio 5-7 times/week that I was doing before starting this diet, because I didn’t think I would have the energy for it.

However, since starting this diet I have not once found myself lacking any energy to go for a run.  I brought my runs down to 20 mins anticipating a lack of energy, but today I tried running for 30 minutes again and I was totally fine.

Fourthly, I have to say that this has been the easiest diet I have ever gone on as far as sugar withdrawl is concerned.  I felt almost no sugar withdrawl at all.  I don’t know if it’s just because I’ve done this so many times before that I’m used to it, or if the B6/B12 shots are helping or what.  Either way, the sugar monster wasn’t anywhere near as difficult to conquer this time around.

Finally, I’m obviously also very impressed with the results I’ve experienced on this diet so far.  Losing 7.6lbs in 6 days is exciting.

I know that I can’t expect to keep losing weight at that pace all the way through the diet, but Dr. Bernstein does state that the average person loses 0.75lbs/day while on the diet, which I think is pretty impressive.

I can’t wait to see where I’ll be one week from today.

Thinking About Trying the Dr. Bernstein Diet?

I know that Dr. Bernstein Weight Loss clinics are not available everywhere, but if you live in an area where there are clinics available (BC, Alberta, Ontario, Florida etc.), I’d recommend checking them out.

If nothing else, at least get some info from them over the phone.  Their call center is open 7 days a week.

I’m very impressed with the diet itself, as well as the staff at the Weight Loss Center and how supportive and professional they’ve been.

Also, as I mentioned in my last post, if you do decide to go on the diet or know someone else who will, I am offering a free PSYCH-K session focused on weight loss in exchange for letting them know I referred you to their program.

Dr. Bernstein clinics do offer a referral program so we can both benefit from that if you decide to try it out.  Having just gone through working through my own personal limiting beliefs related to weight loss, I’d love to help you as well with a PSYCH-K session.

For anyone interested, I’ve updated my Body Transformation page with latest pictures as well.