“Hi Rick 

I wanted to set up a meeting with you next wed at 330pm to go over the [copier]. Please let me know if this works for you

Best”

Before I’m interested in a meeting about a copier that I’m already in contract with, I want to know why this would be a good idea.  So I replied:

“Hope I don’t offend you with this:

Send me what you’re specifically interested in talking about, then I’ll let you know if I have time for it.

Just going over the [copier] doesn’t sound terribly interesting.”

Four quick vendor tips for getting a meeting with busy people:

• Specific: “Your contract is 2 years into a 3 year deal. I’d like to talk to you about renewal options for equipment and service.”  Unless I know why you want to meet, I don’t want to meet.
• Brief: Single lines, bullet points. No paragraphs. Don’t make me work to read your email.
• Time-Bound: “May we schedule a meeting from 3:30PM to 3:45PM on Wednesday?”  Without a pre-determined bailout time, I’m less likely to accept a meeting.
• Connect the Meeting with an Additional Service: “I’m planning to run some equipment tests from 3:00 – 3:30PM on Wednesday, may I meet with you afterward for 15 minutes to talk about [specific reasons].”  Or, “I’ll have a cup of Starbucks with me to stay fresh as the day winds down.  If 3:30PM works for you, what can I pick up for you on the way in?”
• Spelling and Grammar: From the signature line of the request above: “Certified Vendor For Sevice & Supplies.” Help me be confident in your ability to be accurate.

If you can’t identify with any reasonable confidence why you should accept a meeting with a vendor, skip it.

First off, doing a significant dietary change isn’t easy.  I love my homemade corn tortillas and my wife’s gluten-free scones, muffins, and pancakes. I love butter.  I like half-n-half in hot coffee. Cheese is a convenient and easy snack.  No rice and beans at a Mexican restaurant? You’ve got to be kidding!  But I stuck with it for the sake of the experiment.

I tracked everything I ate for the month in myfitnesspal (free, and allows for inputs on the web, iPad app, Blackberry app – everything that I use!).  I didn’t track my food for calorie counting purposes, but to look for total macronutrient breakdown as well as to potentially find links between what I ate and how I felt.

The recommended intake for macronutrients as a percentage of calories (at least according to myfitnesspal) are 55% carbohydrates, 30% fat, and 15% protein.  On a diet of basically meats, vegetables, fruits, and nuts, my macronutrient makeup was:

• Week 1: 24% carbs, 54% fat, 22% protein
• Week 2: 27% carbs, 51% fat, 22% protein
• Week 3: 32% carbs, 47% fat, 21% protein
• Week 4: 30% carbs, 52% fat, 18% protein
• Current week-to-date: 30% carbs, 51% fat, 19% protein

What?!? Greater than 50% of my calories came from fat? Get the AED device and statin drugs, quick!

Sorry. The science simply doesn’t support the cholesterol myth. Besides, at my last check, after I’d made the first big change in my eating habits to eat least clean 6 days a week, my cholesterol markers were all well within standard guidelines (much different than they had been in the past on a grain and sugar-heavy diet).

How did those macronutrient breakdowns happen? Did I get a target from a Paleo Diet website and work to follow it? Nope. I ate meats, vegetables, fruits, and nuts and that’s how it came out. Did I purposely seek out more dietary fat? Nope. I just don’t fear it. I ate whole (and usually organic) foods until I was full, letting the chips (that I didn’t eat) fall where they may.

So what happened with the experiment?

Most people would want to know whether or not I lost weight. That wasn’t what I was going for, but it was a nice side benefit. I ended up losing 12 pounds over the month, dropping from 224 on January 1st (I had gotten a little sloppy since the end of the sugar-free summer experiment) to 212 on January 31st. 212 is the lowest weight I’ve been at in over 20 years.

For me, however, the experiment was about what it would do for my skin. I have seborrheic dermatitis that I was looking to clear up without applying a prescribed steroidal cream. Steroidal creams can have an effect of thinning the skin over long-term use, and that didn’t sound good to me. So I looked to nutrition for a potential answer. Based on a clean diet for the month of January, I’d say it’s a success. My skin is more clear that it’s ever been and I’m not experiencing red, patchy flareups at all. Early into the experiment, I did allow about 1/2 tablespoon of shredded cheese to enter my diet and within 2 days, I had very painful flareup. It cleared quickly and hasn’t come back.

From here, it’s hard to even want to experiment with bringing things back to see if I can identify the exact trigger. Besides, my wife already eats gluten-free, dairy-free and it makes sense within the family to be more aligned in our diets. But, Superbowl Sunday is coming up and I’m thinking about throwing all caution to the wind, eating a bunch of crap like I did last year by punishing my body with about 5500 calories and getting back on track the next day. I haven’t had a “cheat day” in a while, but with results like feeling better, losing weight, and clearing skin, it’s hard to want one.

Paula Deen adds an injection to her daily routine and collects a paycheck for becoming the face of the drug. That’s not your reality. You don’t get to sell your health out to a drug manufacturer and collect a pile of cash for your family. Paula Deen does. She has to work like everybody else.

Since collecting a paycheck for being sick is likely out for you, you have a different choice to make:

Will I choose to manage symptoms or address causes?

For Paula Deen, managing symptoms means using Victoza, and according to the literature:

“Victoza® is an injectable prescription medicine that may improve blood sugar (glucose) in adults with type 2 diabetes when used along with diet and exercise.”

Wait a minute. The drug MAY improve blood sugar? WHEN USED ALONG WITH diet and exercise? Then why not just do the diet and exercise thing? The simple answer comes down to money. There’s no money in healthy people, or at least not nearly as much as sick people.

Let’s say that Paula Deen did indeed try the diet and exercise route. If so, she was obviously unsuccessful, hence the need for the injection. So why would she have been unsuccessful? It’s either:

a: She truly has a problem that cannot be dealt with through nutrition alone.
or
b: She didn’t follow the recommended plan for diet and exercise.
or
c: The recommended plan sucks.

I suspect that many people upon finding out they have type II diabetes go to the American Diabetes Association for help. Looking through a few articles will generally come to the same conclusions: watch your carbohydrate intake (but still eat whole grains), lower your fat intake (especially that dangerous saturated fat), get some exercise, lose some weight. In losing weight, the ADA does say that both the low-carbohydrate approach and the low-fat approach may provide benefits up to one year, but it does caution readers about the safety of a low-carbohydrate approach.

In essence, the ADA mimics the government stance on general nutrition. Eat your grains. Eat less fat. That leads to two main questions:

1. How’s that working out for you?
2. Why should you be concerned about the ADA’s nutrition advice?

How’s that working out for you?
Despite improvements like some weight loss or perhaps a generally lower level of blood glucose, I’m guessing that it hasn’t resulted in the elimination of medication. Despite the assertion that whole-grain pasta, whole-grain cereal, and whole-grain bread are all good sources of dietary fiber the pasta, cereal, and bread will all increase your blood sugar. According this CDC report, diabetes cases in the United States have more than doubled since 1980. How’s that standard, recommended American diet working out? Not well.

Why should you be concerned about the ADA’s nutrition advice?
While the stated mission of the ADA is to prevent and cure diabetes and to improve the lives of all people affected by it, there is a significant conflict of interest. A quick check of the annual report shows the four donors of over $1 million in 2010 were all drug companies. Four of the next five highest donors at the > $500K level were also drug companies. The other is a supplier of diabetes supplies, devices, and technologies. The biggest donors to the ADA have the largest amount to lose if diabetes were actually cured without medical or pharmaceutical intervention.

Paula Deen, the ADA, and the drug companies all have a significant financial interest in NOT curing you, but simply managing illness. There is no financial upside (except to you, the consumer) to finding a cure that is not drug-related.

You’re not Paula Deen. You can’t afford to be sick, so it’s time to start addressing the cause instead of just managing the symptoms. Start with a 30 day elimination diet and remove all known common causes of health problems: eliminate processed foods, grains, sugars, dairy, and legumes and see how you feel. Eat until you’re full and ignore the government recommended daily allowances. Add things back one at a time and see how you feel. Do you feel better, worse, gaining weight, losing weight? Those are all clues about whether or not you’re on the right track. You are an experiment of one. Think you can’t live without soda? That’s a great potential experiment. I’ll bet you can.

It’s inconvenient, sure. But it’s only 30 days. What have you got to lose?

Read:

Hebrews 10:24-25

Reflect:

When things get challenging, my wife likes to check on me with this question: “Besides me, who can you talk to about that?”

She knows me well.  She knows my tendency to try and handle things on my own.  She knows my want to be private.  She knows that I like to be self-reliant, dependent on no one.  She knows that I want to be the strong one, not burdening anyone – including her – with my problems.

She knows this about me because for years I was private, self-reliant, and strong, handling things on my own.  The strongest thing to do, I thought, was to involve no one in my burdens.  I appeared strong to others, yet choosing isolation turned my focus to myself.  That is, I became selfish.  I thought about my needs, my burdens, my desires, my stressors and what I could do myself to satisfy them.  That’s dangerous territory.

The cure for self-centeredness is connection with others.  That connection is found by getting out of your row and into a circle.  You find it by taking a risk and speaking first.  You find it through opening up in honest conversations.  You find it by talking about your goals and fears and struggles and joy and pain with people willing to do the same with you.  When you make these authentic connections, that’s when you get truly strong.  You were made for connection.

React:

Evaluate your connections.  Are you in a circle that allows you to be your honest self?  Are you in a circle at all?  If the answer is no, it’s time to take a risk and get in to a growth group.

Pray:

Father, I pray that You would bless me with growing friendships that honor you.

On day one of any change in diet, I’ve always had the same experience thinking:

• “There’s nothing to eat around here!”
• “This is stupid.”
• “This is too restrictive.”
• “But, I don’t want to not have alcohol, or sugar, or (whatever I’m cutting out)

Then I start to justify why I should have the things I’m cutting out:

• “It’s not that big of a deal.”
• “I can handle it.”
• “What difference does it make anyway?”

Then I remember why:

• “I’m doing this to improve my health.”
• “I’m doing this to take care of my body.”
• “I’m doing this to be effective and strong.”

It worked perfectly.  I dropped a few more pounds by going sugar-free, eliminated the medication, and haven’t had a flareup since.

Over the course of the last year, I’ve been doing a lot of reading on Paleo and Primal-style eating.  Each style has its own recommendations, but it really comes down to this:

Eat real food.

Paleo/Primal styles focus on quality meats, seasonal vegetables, seasonal fruits, and healthy fats.  The styles also generally avoid grains, legumes, and dairy.  Enter the new experiment:

I’m already virtually gluten-free, so that’s already covered, but for the month of January, I’ll eliminate legumes and dairy as well.  The point of this part of the experiment is to see if the elimination of dairy will clear up a long-standing skin condition.  Years ago, a doctor told me that the reddened, occasionally flaky dry patches I get were from seborrheic dermatitis.  He said there was no known cause, but prescribed a steroid cream to manage the symptoms.  The danger of the steroid cream is thinning of the skin at the application site.  That doesn’t sound like a side effect that I want, so I want to see if I can resolve the problem in another way.  As a secondary experiment, I’m interested to see if the change restarts my plateaued weight loss.

To add to the experiment, I’ll also do what’s called The Primal Blueprint 30 day challenge.  Click on the link for more detail, but here are the basics:

1. Eat lots of plants and animals (high quality paleo/primal food)
2. Avoid poisonous things (no junk food)
3. Move frequently at a slow pace (3-5 hours/week of walking, biking, etc)
4. Lift heavy things (2 bodyweight or weightlifting workouts/week)
5. Sprint once in a while (1-10 minute sprint workout/week)
6. Get adequate sleep (whatever your body needs to wake up refreshed)
7. Play (shoot baskets, toss the football around, surf)
8. Get adequate sunlight (15 minutes a day of full sun, no sunscreen)
9. Avoid stupid mistakes (don’t push through injury, for example)
10. Use your brain (engage your brain in problem-solving)

Join me? 

Once I heard about the theft, I wondered if the computer would get used.  If used, I would at least have the possibility to track it.  I was able to tell that the computer had been used a few hours before, based on the last poll of the monitoring software.  It gave me the last IP address used, so it was at least a start.  An alert was set to email me as soon as the laptop connected to the internet again.

I didn’t have to wait long for the alert as the thief was on again within an hour.  I sent a connection request to the laptop.  I had three potential outcomes from the connection request: (1) Denied by the user (2) Accepted by the user or (3) Automatically accepted because the user stepped away for a moment.  The first request was denied.  As was the second, third, and fourth.  At the fifth request, however, the user’s screen showed up on my screen.  And, the user was using Facebook.  My heart was pounding with dumbfounded excitement!  I couldn’t believe the thief was that stupid, nor could I believe that I could now monitor his online moves.  I could have taken control of the mouse and keyboard, but that would have been easily thwarted by closing the laptop.  My best course of action was to sit back and silently capture screenshots from the user’s Facebook account.  So I did.

Through simply watching the user post and chat on Facebook with his cohorts in the crime, it became easy to gather information on the burglary and who else was involved.  I love this statement from the guy that had my computer:

Turns out, I had plenty of shit on him in the form of his chats, comments on the closed group he and his friends used, his profile, his friends’ profiles, his school…

To lock in the evidence even tighter, we even silently entered the command line of the PC to remotely activate the built-in webcam to ensure that a picture of him using the laptop was captured. Based on my monitoring, he was watching Hot Tub Time Machine via a friend’s Netflix streaming account credentials.

Once I had enough, I printed out the screenshots and made a CD of them as well. I drove down to the police station and met with the detective, practically gift-wrapping the case for him. On the detective’s end, he determined the address based on the info I handed him and knocked on the door of the house. He received permission to search from the parent present and recovered the laptop as well as some of the other items.    Each member of the group was arrested and I will continue to work the legal system until we have full recovery.

Don’t mess with geeks.

2. Despite the commercials: Miller Lite.

3. Pinterest.

4. Eating pizza with a fork.  Pick it up like a man.

5. Weight machines. If there are pins or dials, that is not manly equipment.

6. Low-fat foods. You should Eat Like a Predator.

7. Whimsical Ties.

8. Sleep Masks for Men.

This week, I set up and executed a prank on my friend Linda.  Linda is not only a great friend to my wife and I, but she’s also an amazing ministry leader and co-worker at EastLake Church.  She leads all of our Life Development ministries from birth through high school, campus development, Christmas Conspiracy initiatives, and anything else that comes her way.  She’s truly an essential part of the leadership at EastLake Church and has a wonderful heart for Christ.

Who wouldn’t want to mess with the head of somebody like that?

The Christmas Conspiracy is our method of bringing our best gift to fuel our outreach to our local, regional, and global communities.  The giving is sacrificial, above and beyond our tithe and offering.  Some pray on it and write a check.  Some pray on it and spread the giving over the 12 months.  And some, well, have creative ways of participating.  Which leads to the anatomy of my prank:

Timing:  During this season, Linda has been receiving several questions, ideas, or requests every week regarding the Christmas Conspiracy.  It created a perfect cover for a letter from a character named Bill Selwonk (Selwonk = knowleS backwards – Get it?)

Believability: To ensure that the letter seemed believable, I planted three pieces of evidence to make Bill more real.  First, I asked my boss to plant a seed over the weekend by simply telling Linda that he had talked to someone unusual earlier in the day and had referred him on to her.  Next, I planted an information card in our database to ensure a contact record was created for Bill.  Finally, I added a coffee stain to the letter and envelope, scuffed up the envelope on the ground, and mailed it to pick up a postmark on Wednesday.  It couldn’t look too perfect.

Absurdity:  Because of the strength of the believability setup, the absurdity factor could be cranked way up.  Click here for a .pdf of Bill’s letter to Linda.

Stress: Bill’s letter created the stress that something was going to happen over the weekend unless she intervened first.

Harmless: One of my personal prank rules is that there can’t be any harm done.  No anvils dropping on someone’s head, no messes to clean up, no creepy gotta-watch-over-your-shoulder fear created.

The Reveal: Linda got the letter on time (thanks, USPS!), and just as I planned, she fell right in my trap.  As she read the letter aloud to my boss and I, we were both in tears from laughing so hard.  Eventually, she had to make the call to Bill to make sure he didn’t show up on campus this weekend to set up his llama milking station, but this is where my plan fell apart and the jig was up.  I hadn’t changed the voicemail on the old Google Voice account I was using from my name to Bill’s! I got a phone call from Linda where she revealed what she found when she called, and the fun was over.  Good times.

What’s your experience with pranking?

And, no joke here: check out EastLake Church’s Christmas Conspiracy website, take some time to pray about how you can partner with us on these important local, regional and global initiatives, and give.  Give as much as God tells you to.

Every job has its 11:30.  The doors open everyday at 10AM for retail.  Friday night comes every week for the pizza place.  Noon happens every Monday through Friday at the lunch drive-thru.  The first pitch for the baseball game is at 7:05PM.  Kickoff for Monday Night Football is at 5:30PM.  Sunday comes every week for church.

Work doesn’t happen because you’re ready for work, it just happens.  On time.  As scheduled.  By the deadline.

So what are you gonna do about it?

You’re going to have a plan. See, you could just wing it, but that would be stupid.

You’re going to prepare for your plan. Practice. You don’t do a show without a rehearsal.  You don’t start a new cook on Friday night.  You don’t launch a new church location without a preview service.  You’ve got to make sure every thing and every person works before you allow a guest to be impacted.

You’re going to have some “what if” contingency plans.  You know, because things don’t always go like you think they’re going to.

You’re going to execute your plan.  You didn’t prepare for nothing did you?

And you’re going to let it go.  No amount of agonizing and self-loathing over a mistake is going to resolve a mistake.  Just take some notes on what could have gone better, retool the plan, and execute it again – only better.