This week will have alot of announcements as I am working on alot of projects. I’ve actually been asked by a couple people about private coaching, and I get way too many emails to return them all about specific modifications to IF or workout plans. So, I have been able to find some time to provide a coaching service for 4 weeks. This is a paid service (but at a very very fair price) and I can only handle a small amount of people per 4 weeks with all my other business work also. I have a full page up with more info here (as you will see the 4week Coaching button up in the menu as well).

Hopefully this can help those with very specific needs or who want more advanced programming with their workouts and IF schedules. All the benefits are listed including a private blog page in which I will check in weekly and talk with the clients about their progress and see if things need to be changed up.

Again this is only a temporary service (as far as I am planning) because I am still working on the ebook (which will be a while still, but I am planning on making it a pretty big package and more complete) as well as other professional business ventures that will take up more time in the near future. It will only be 4 weeks and my goal is to get people great results (which are 100% money back Guaranteed) as well as understanding and a plan to go forward with in their healthy lifestyle.

Sign ups will be very limited and it will be first come, first reserved (spots have to be paid for in advance to reserve). If you have any questions, please feel free to put them below in the comments. I am excited to start doing some more coaching online with people! (As I have been doing years and years of fitness coaching in person)

PS. I’ll also throw in a FREE copy of the e-book package (which is now several reports) once they are done for anyone that signs up for coaching.

photo by anonymousmuse

Now I normally don’t get caught up in the likes of Hollywood, who they are dating, what they are wearing, etc…..as I really don’t care. But I came across an interesting show this weekend and it peaked my interest. It was called the “15 Best and Worst Hollywood Beach Bodies” or something like that. What interested me was seeing who kept themselves in great shape, how they did it….and on the reverse side who let themselves go and what happened. As for the “best beach bodies” ones the usual crowd was up there like Jessica Beil, Pamela Anderson, Hugh Jackman, Mario Lopez, Matthew McConaughey and others in great shape (interesting to note that these people are in great shape year after year). What was sad to see was people who “used” to be in great shape but let themselves go like John Travolta and Val Kilmer. Also you didn’t have to be overweight to not look so good as a few women were very very thin, too thin and looking almost malnutrioned. Anyways…..I wanted to focus on what the lessons we could learn from them….

• “I try to break a sweat everyday” - This what is what one actor in great shape said. He didn’t specify what it had to be but he did anything from jogging, riding a bike, dancing, beach sprints, pushups, lifting weights in a gym, etc. He stayed active and his motto was to just keep the active lifestyle going no matter what it was.
• They know what they ate - There was no guess work and the diets differed between people. But what they all had in common is they knew what they were eating, they had a healthy plan and stuck to lots of whole natural foods. Did they enjoy other treats from time to time? I’m sure they did….but when you are active and can eat healthy most of the time…you can get away with eating occasional treats very easily. (note the “occasional”)
• They lift weights/do resistance training - Whether it is using their own bodyweight, bands, dumbbells, or whatever….they challenged their muscles. If you want that toned look you have to build muscle plain and simple. Anyone can get skinny, but as show with the worst beach bodies….many of them were very skinny yet had no muscles so they looked flat and not very healthy. Your muscles are very important for your health and long term functionality. Remember the saying “Use it or Lose it”!
• They live healthy lifestyles (well as much as Hollywood royalty can) - What does that mean? Well the ones in shape still got plenty of sleep and enjoyed their life (less stress). I’m sure they do go out and party late night on the weekends, but the ones in better shape most likely do not do it that often…and they do not over consume alcohol either. They are happy with the way they live their life and enjoy it every day. Alot of what they did was being active outside (riding bikes, going to the beach, surfing, etc) and they always were surrounded by people of similar interests. A good support group (and not a negative one) can make a huge difference.

It didn’t really go into why people had let themselves go, but my guess it would have to come from a side of either over indulging in “rich” tasting foods, too much partying, no longer being active (maybe they burned out doing too much for roles in movies, as actors can go overboard on training for a role…and then their body is pretty much done and needs time off. Lesson learned, slow and steady leads to more consistent, long term and lasting results), perhaps an increase in ability to gain fat (you will see this in people who’s weight fluctutate…so if someone gained 50lbs for a role…in the long term it’s going to be easier for them to gain that back again if they are not careful).

In the end, the lessons are simple….it’s doesn’t have to be the perfect workout (as many did a wide variety of activities) and it doesn’t have to be some perfect diet….what you need to do is just:

• Have an active lifestyle (vow to “break a sweat everyday”)
• Find and do activities you enjoy (find new ones to keep you excited, try new things!)
• Get a good support group around you (take a look around you….and see what your “friends” are doing to your lifestyle…are they helping or hurting it?)
• Eat real foods (which can taste great) for health and not for pleasure
• Be happy (stress free, worry free, living in the moment right now)
• Don’t try and overdo it all at once (as that will just burn you out and set you back longterm)
• Challenge your muscles once in a while (resistance training)
• Let your body recover (SLEEP!!)
• and just enjoy the journey of living healthy (don’t worry about getting somewhere quick….as the results will come soon enough).

photo by Zavosh

This is an interesting story about a man named Luigi Cornaro who overcame his own illness and lived to the ripe old age 102. Apparently here’s a man who discovered CR back in the 14th century as a lifestyle choice for better health. Here’s a pretty good overview about Luigi from Wikipedia:

Alvise (Luigi) Cornaro (1464-1566) was a Venetian nobleman who wrote treatises on dieting, including Discorsi della Vita Sobria (Discourses on the Sober Life). Finding himself near death at the age of forty, Cornaro modified his eating habits on the advice of his doctors and began to adhere on a calorie restriction diet. Twelve ounces of solid food and fourteen ounces of wine was the daily allowance he allowed for himself initially. He later reduced his daily food intake to no more solid meat than an egg.

Let us see more about his story from this main article on his life.

Let’s look at Luigi Cornaro, a man who at age 35 was weak, sick, and dying. At the time, he consulted the medical heads of Genoa, Italy. He asked the doctors, “What can I do?” Finally, one smart doctor said, “Look, Luigi,” (Luigi was a nobleman) “cut down on your riotous living, stop the drinking, cut out the rich food, eat as little as you can, and don’t abuse your body. You can get well.”

When he died, he died in an ideal way. He was in his rocking chair. He closed his eyes, took a nap, and didn’t wake up. There was no pain or suffering, ever. His mind was clear as a bell until the very end, no senility, no memory loss. Indeed, one of the things he wrote about in his discourses was that his hearing and vision were perfect He retained all his senses. That’s something you don’t see today.

Luigi ate a little meat; he ate an egg yolk; he had panado, which was a vegetable soup with a little tomato; he had grape juice; and he had bread. He used to dip the bread in the soup. That was his diet. That’s all he ate. He didn’t want to eat fish because it didn’t agree with him, and he didn’t eat chicken. He ate a little meat. On that diet, which we natural nutritionists would call low quality, he lived to 102.

an individual who was dying at 40 years of age brought himself to a state of good health in less than one year, and through the careful exercise of self-control prolonged his life to 102 years of age with the full preservation of all his faculties to the very end. The living of each day was a joy in his life at all times.

The amount of food necessary to sustain life. Since the quantity of food needed to maintain excellent health and spirits is so small, it is rather shocking to realize that all of us, with very few exceptions, overeat and produce an endless array of miseries in our lives in both mental and physical afflictions.

Our states of mind are dependent upon our health and closely related to the amount of food we consume. Dejection and melancholy are a projection into our conscious minds from our inner environment. Exhaustion of our energies by the excessive labors involved in metabolizing excess food reflects in our minds as melancholy, depression and negativity.

The KEY to health and happiness is inextricably associated with the QUANTITY of food we consume daily.

Each morsel we consume beyond what is absolutely necessary to sustain life, wastes physical and mental energy at a fearful rate. If any single factor were to be considered as the most important for health and happiness, this would be it. Those who are compulsive overeaters should study, restudy and ponder deeply upon this question, for herein is contained the key to the solution of most of their daily problems. ……

Quite an interesting story about someone who was able to heal himself and live long without all the science, research and other medical advanatges of today. From his story there are important points to really take notice….and then see how they can apply to our lives.

• He took personal responsibility - It’s one thing to know what is healthy, it’s another to act upon it. Look around and you will find most people saying “I know it isn’t good for me…but….”. People are not really getting it, not really comprehending deep down inside that they need to drop things that are harmful. Once you come to that pure realization, then you will drop whatever harmful things you are doing to yourself. The solution is there! People just need to “see” it truly, to become aware to the fact of what is going on. Could it be the only real “cure” to obesity and disease is just personal “awareness”?
• Calorie Restriction - This should be nothing new in everything we have talked about but in the 14th century to come up with this conclusion shows just how long that wisdom has been out there.
• With excess eating comes mental decline - When do we experience depression and other serious mental conditions? Could it also be centered around excess food and lack of quality of food? The brain on a high sugar diet does not do well, nor does it perform well when eating to excess.
• He did not think he was missing anything or feel deprived, to him living daily (as he was close to death to have to learn that) was the ultimate joy in life….not food or drink - The biggest battle we face in life, is the one within….as we always have total control. He was happy with living daily, enjoyed his food and never once did he put himself in a mental state of sabatagoue. Weight loss and health are huge mental battles…..ones we MUST learn to control and win if we are looking for long term success and happiness.
• Quality of food was important - The body needs amino acids, essential fatty acids, vitamins, minerals….does it really care what the calorie total is? Could we sustain life on less food if they are only of higher quality? This may be why so many people say that they can eat less on IF and still maintain muscle is because their choices for food increase in quality….and therefore so does our body’s ability to use it. Quality and Quantity of food is always going to be the more important factor in our health.
• He lived long with full mental clarity, writing, pain free, no medications….far from what we see today - I wonder how long he would of lived in today’s world if doctors would of perscribed statins for a natural increase in cholesterol as he aged or other medicines (that are supposed to be there to keep us healthy). He became his own physician….and lived long in the process.
• He found Happiness and Joy daily - It took Luigi a life of excess and to the point of death to realize the ultimate happiness in living each day….don’t let it have to get that far for you. Find your happiness…let worries and fear go….stress no more….food/alcohol/drugs are not solutions to any problems (they just are short term vacations we take…and which do more harm the more we do them)…..and you will just be focused on living each moment (and live longer in the process)
• “The Two Rules for Maintaining Health and Prolonging Life: These were reduced to two things, quality and quantity. The first, namely quality, consists in not eating foods or drinking liquids harmful to the stomach.” - So avoiding things that are irritants to our body/gut are key to health, along with getting the quality nutrients our body/cells need to repair and rebuild themselves for optimal function. See more about gut irritants in the Healthy Gut Post
• “The second, which is quantity, consists in not eating or drinking more than the stomach can easily digest, which quantity and quality every man should be a perfect judge of by the time he is forty or fifty or sixty……”I felt like singing a song after my simple meals.”" - Do you “sing a song” after a meal? Or are you asleep and feeling terrible an hour later? Sounds like he mastered the art of insulin control long ago.

“To state it clearly, the inevitable conclusion was: “eat what you like, when you like and die young.”"

photo by W

You have heard “insulin” discussed here many times, I’ve said that sugar is your #1 enemy in Fat Loss 101, and I have also said that the biggest health factor that contributes to most all degenerative diseases as being insulin resistance. But really…it’s quite simple to just take control, and that is what we need to do (as we do have full control and responsibility for everything we put in our mouths). Looking at the Standard Food Pyramid above that has been taught to everyone (esp kids) as the healthy way to eat….is it any wonder our rates of obesity, diabetes, cancer and other diseases are skyrocketing?

Well below are some great takes from a lecture done by Dr Rosedale from 1999. The full (and long but very worthwhile read) transcript can be found here (and many other places). The end result is, the more we learn about insulin and how to control it, the quicker we will improve our health and help to increase prevention from degenerative diseases. Once you really understand the damaging aspects of high insulin, insulin resistance and eating sugar…why would anyone want to continue down a road of increased risks of degenerative diseases and aging? Take control back and help those around you to do the same!

There are three major centenarian studies going on around the world. They are trying to find the variable that would confer longevity among these people. Why do centenarians become centenarians? Why are they so lucky? Is it because they have low cholesterol, exercise a lot, live a healthy, clean life?

Well the longest recorded known person who has ever lived, Jean Calumet of France who died last year at 122 years, smoked all of her life and drank.

What they are finding on these major centenarian studies is that there is hardly anything in common among them. They have high cholesterol and low cholesterol, some exercise and some don’t, some smoke, some don’t. Some are nasty as can be and some nice and calm and nice. Some are ornery, but they all low sugar, relatively for their age. They all have low triglycerides for their age.

And they all have relatively low insulin. Insulin is the common denominator in everything I’ve just talked about. They way to treat cardiovascular disease and the way I treated my stepfather, the way I treated the high risk cancer patient, and osteoporosis, high blood pressure, the way to treat virtually all the so-called chronic diseases of aging is to treat insulin itself.

If there is a single marker for lifespan, as they are finding in the centenarian studies, it is insulin, specifically, insulin sensitivity.

How sensitive are your cells to insulin. When they are not sensitive, the insulin levels go up. Who has heard of the term insulin resistance?

Insulin resistance is the basis of all of the chronic diseases of aging, because the disease itself is actually aging.

We know now that aging is a disease. The other case studies that I mentioned, cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, obesity, diabetes, cancer, all the so-called chronic diseases of aging, auto-immune diseases, those are symptoms.

We’ve known for many years that sugar depresses the immune system.

We have known that for decades. It was only in the 70’s that they found out that vitamin C was needed by white blood cells so that they could phagocytize bacteria and viruses. White blood cells require a fifty times higher concentration at least inside the cell as outside so they have to accumulate vitamin C.

There is something called a phagocytic index which tells you how rapidly a particular macrophage or lymphocyte can gobble up a virus, bacteria, or cancer cell. It was in the 70’s that Linus Pauling knew that white blood cells needed a high dose of vitamin C and that is when he came up with his theory that you need high doses of vitamin C to combat the common cold.

But if we know that vitamin C and glucose have similar chemical structure, what happens when the sugar levels go up? They compete for one another upon entering the cells. And the thing that mediates the entry of vitamin C into the cells is the same thing that mediates the entry of glucose into the cells. If there is more glucose around there is going to be less vitamin C allowed into the cell and it doesn’t take much. A blood sugar value of 120 reduces the phagocytic index seventy-five percent.

What is the purpose of insulin in humans? If you ask your doctor, they will say that it’s to lower blood sugar and I will tell you right now, that is a trivial side effect. Insulin’s evolutionary purpose, among others at least known right now, we are looking at others, is to store excess nutrients.

We come from a time of feast and famine and if we couldn’t store the excess energy during times of feasting, we would all not be here, because we all have had ancestors that encountered famine. So we are only here because our ancestors were able to store nutrients, and they were able to store nutrients because they were able to elevate their insulin in response to any elevation in energy that the organism encountered.

When your body notices that the sugar is elevated, it is a sign that you’ve got more than you need right now, you are not burning it so it is accumulating in your blood. So insulin will be released to take that sugar and store it.

Once you fill up your glycogen stores how is that sugar is stored, as what particular kind of triglyceride, or fatty acid? Palmitic acid. Saturated fat, ninety-eight percent of which is palmitic acid.

So the idea of the medical profession to go on a high complex carbohydrate, low saturated-fat diet is an absolute oxymoron, because those high complex carbohydrate diets are nothing but a high glucose diet, or a high sugar diet, and your body is just going to store it as saturated fat. The body makes it into saturated fat quite readily.

What is one of magnesium’s major roles?

To relax muscles. Intracellular magnesium relaxes muscles. What happens when you can’t store magnesium because the cell is resistant? You lose magnesium and your blood vessels constrict, what does that do?

Increases blood pressure, and reduces energy since intracellular magnesium is required for all energy producing reactions that take place in the cell. But most importantly, magnesium is also necessary for the action of insulin. It is also necessary for the manufacture of insulin.

So then you raise your insulin, you lose magnesium, and the cells become even more insulin resistant. Blood vessels constrict, glucose and insulin can’t get to the tissues, which makes them more insulin resistant, so the insulin levels go up and you lose more magnesium. This is the vicious cycle that goes on from before you were born.

Insulin also causes the retention of sodium, which causes the retention of fluid, which causes high blood pressure and fluid retention: congestive heart failure.

One of the strongest stimulants of the sympathetic nervous system is high levels of insulin.

What does all of this do to the heart? Not very good things.

There was a study done a couple of years ago, a good, down to earth nicely conducted study that showed that heart attacks are two to three times more likely to happen after a high carbohydrate meal. They said specifically NOT after a high fat meal.

Why is that?

Because the immediate effects of raising your blood sugar from a high carbohydrate meal is to raise insulin and that immediately triggers the sympathetic nervous system which will cause arterial spasm, constriction of the arteries. If you take anybody prone to a heart attack and that is when they are going to get it.

Cells become insulin resistant because they are trying to protect themselves from the toxic effects of high insulin. They down regulate their receptor activity and number of receptors so that they don’t have to listen to that noxious stimuli all the time. It is like having this loud, disgusting rap music played and you want to turn the volume down.

This is the same thing with insulin resistance. What happens is that if your cells are exposed to insulin at all they get a little bit more resistant to it. So the pancreas just puts out more insulin. I saw a patient today, her blood sugar was 102 and her insulin was 90! She wasn’t sure if she was fasting or not, but I’ve seen other patients where their blood sugar was under 100 and their fasting insulin has been over 90.

That is a fasting insulin. I’m not sure how many people are familiar with seeing fasting insulins. But if I drank all the glucose I could possibly drink my insulin would never go above probably 40. So she was extremely insulin resistant.

All of those sugars are as bad or worse for you than glucose. You can’t just go by so-called blood sugar which is just blood glucose, because we just don’t measure blood fructose or blood galactose, but they are all bad for you. Why are they bad, well number one we know that it provokes insulin and every time you provoke insulin it exposes yourself to more insulin and just like walking in a smelly room it is going to become more resistant to insulin.

So every time you have a surge of sugar and you have a surge of insulin, you get more and more insulin resistant and all of the problems we’ve talked about.

Diet really becomes pretty simple. Carbohydrates we started talking about. You’ve got fiber and non-fiber and that’s real clear-cut. Fiber is good, non-fiber is bad. Fibrous carbs, like vegetables and broccoli, those are great. What is a potato? A potato is a big lump of sugar. That’s all it is. You chew a potato, what are you swallowing? Glucose. You may not remember, but you learned that in eighth grade, but the medical profession still hasn’t learned that.

You know you need to breathe oxygen. It gives us life and it kills us. Same with glucose. Certain tissues require some glucose. We wouldn’t be here if there were no glucose, it gives us life and it kills us. We know that we have essential amino acids and we have essential fatty acids. They are essential for life, we better take them in as building blocks or we die. So what he did is he took all the essential nutrients that are known to man and plugged it in to this computer data bank and he asked the computer what are the top ten foods that contain each nutrient that is required by the human body. Each of the fifty-three or fifty-four, depending on who you talk to, essential nutrients that there are were plugged in, and did you know that grains did not come up in the top ten on any one. What is the minimum daily requirement for carbohydrates? ZERO.

In an active day you would die if you had to rely one-hundred percent on sugar.

Why doesn’t your body store more sugar if it is so needed? Sugar was never meant to be your primary energy source.

It is a turbo charger, a very hot burning fuel, if you need fuel over and above what fat can provide you will dig into your glycogen and burn sugar. But your primary energy source as we are here right now should be almost all fat.

If you eat sugar your body will burn it and you stop burning fat.

We only have one hormone that lowers sugar, and that’s insulin. Its primary use was never to lower sugar. We’ve got a bunch of hormones that raise sugar, cortisone being one and growth hormone another, and epinephrine, and glucagon.

Our primary evolutionary problem was to raise blood sugar to give your brain enough and your nerves enough and primarily red blood cells, which require glucose. So from an evolutionary sense if something is important we have redundant mechanisms. The fact that we only have one hormone that lowers sugar tells us that it was never something important in the past.

The biggest stress on your body is eating a big glucose load.

You can increase sensitivity by diet, that is one of the major reasons you want to take Omega 3 oils. We think of circulation as that which flows through arteries and veins, and that is not a minor part of our circulation, but it might not even be the major part. The major part of circulation is what goes in and out of the cell.

The cell membrane is a fluid mosaic. The major part of our circulation is determined by what goes in and out. It doesn’t make any difference what gets to that cell if it can’t get into the cell. We know that one of the major ways that you can affect cellular circulation is by modulating the kinds of fatty acids that you eat. So you can increase receptor sensitivity by increasing the fluidity of the cell membrane, which means increasing the omega 3 content, because most people are very deficient.

To store energy and not burn it. I see a fair amount of athletes and this is what I tell them, you want everybody, athletes especially, to be able to burn fat efficiently. So when they train, they are on a very low carbohydrate diet. The night before their event, they can stock up on sugar and load their glycogen if they would like.

They are not going to become insulin resistant in one day. Just enough to make sure, it has been shown that if you eat a big carbohydrate meal that you will increase your glycogen stores, that is true and that is what you want. But you don’t want to train that way because if you do you won’t be able to burn fat, you can only burn sugar, and if you are an athlete you want to be able to burn both.

It is a high protein diet that will increase an acid load in the body, but not necessarily a high fat diet. Vegetables and greens are alkalinizing, so if you are eating a lot of vegetables along with your protein it equalizes the acidifying effect of the protein. I don’t recommend a high protein diet. I recommend an adequate protein diet. I would go 20% of calories from carbs. Depending on the size of the person, 25 to 30% of calories from protein, and 60-65% from fat.

I can not put it any better myself. I highly recommend reading the full article as he goes into much more depth and details esp with certain diseases and treatments. In the end, the best thing you can do is:

• Eat a lower carb diet (it doesn’t have to be 30g a day, but even 100g a day is quite low in comparison). Since everyone is different with their insulin resistance, activity levels, recovery needs and hypoglycemia variables, you have to tweak to your condition (always work with your physician especially if you are diabetic or on medicine). A diabetic may get more benefit from a low 50g a day while an active person may be fine at 100+g/day. Again if you have any real concerns you should always work with a professional physician to help monitor.
• A higher whole food carb meal (along with protein) is best timed at peak insulin sensitivity, aka the post workout window when they will most likely go into muscle glycogen.
• Eat moderate protein and moderate/high fat (healthy) - Eat protein to slow down the gastric emptying with every meal (controls insulin) and increase fat intake to keep your calories high enough not to be in starvation response and to fuel your body’s energy needs. Fat does not effect insulin levels, so eating a higher fat diet has a completely (and better) insulin response than a higher carb diet.
• Avoid sugar and eat only whole natural foods (not processed). Things like Fruits, while healthy can also have sugar (in the form of fructose). Depending on your starting point, you may want to limit or avoid fruit for a while. Those that are more active or have increased insulin sensitivity may do fine with higher fruit intake (esp if you time them around your workouts). Again, starting points in health will vary by person.
• Exercise! Yep. Resistance/strength training is the best way to help those muscle cells to become more insulin sensitive and suck up higher floating blood glucose levels. So get out and do some pushups, lift something heavy and do some sprints (or what you can).
• Periods of Fasting also can help lower insulin resistance/increase insulin sensitivity/decrease fasting insulin levels. If you are going deaf, how do you improve your hearing quicker…by turning down the music a little or having periods of complete silence? Hence why you see IF have a greater impact on fasting insulin levels than a CR diet.
• Supplement with some Fish Oil, as it will help increase and repair those insulin receptors on the cells while also helping to lower overall inflammation.

In the end, if you are doing a Lower carb/higher fat/mod protein “Paleo” food like diet with occasional higher pwo whole food (not sugary drinks) carbs after resistance/weight training, that is a pretty solid healthy plan (esp if you add in the fact you are probably only doing 3 workouts a week and other factors like IF and Fish Oil). Add in grass fed meats/eggs and not grain fed and you are going to be in pretty good health and do wonders for decreasing insulin resistance (and inflammation) and slowing down/reversing any risks for degenerative diseases (aging)! Not too mention the great results you will get for fat loss, muscle and increased performance!

Someone emailed a great point about the power of real examples/stories and I thought that would be a great addition to the ebook. Now I am NOT looking for people that are going to say that myself or my blog did anything for them…..I’m not looking for personal testimonials for me or my site….just stories about people using Intermittent Fasting (or even simplicity) to better their life, as I’m not making a diet book! What I am looking for is a wide variety of people from all walks of life that have found success with IF. The goal is to have good examples of how IF works for people from all different levels,schedules and goals. The ebook is meant to get the word out about IF…as obviously I have found great happiness and success with it and want to spread the word because in all my years of training and helping people, this is seriously something that people need to know about considering the level of obesity and diseases out there. Fasting is a natural healing process and even if someone can do it just once a week it can hopefully bring health improvements! That and people need to know the truth of what really matters/gets results and that most of what gets passed around for “health and fitness” info in the mass media is grade school gossip quality at best (some things can work…but obviously we are not winning the war on obesity or disease prevention).

So, if you have been doing IF for 2 years….or 2 months….send me an email and let me know your story. Actually even if your story involves “simplicity” steps you have taken and had positive results with, you can send in that story as well (Since some of the book will also focus on simplifying life…or as I call it Intermittent Fasting from other things besides food). What I am looking for is a variety of different stories…not all have to be fat loss…or muscle gain….some can be health improvements….personal happpiness and freedom….anything. I want to be able to show people across the board how it has helped others out there….as my personal story which I will share in the ebook is just one of many. Make sure you include:

• Full name
• A summary of what you have found IF to do for you
• Any results specifically that you are excited about
• Any personal freedom it has given you
• What kind of specific fitness workout you do with it, and IF’s effects on it
• How you made it fit your lifestyle, schedule and goals
• How you have takes steps to simplify your life and the results
• and anything else specific as possible to how you IF, the foods you eat, and the results you have had
• (if someone want to include any pictures that is up to them, but not neccessary)

Obviously I won’t be able to put all the stories in the ebook…as it might go on forever, but will select a variety handful. Again the wider the variety the better….as people from all walks of life and health starting points may read this….from an athletic person…to someone with arthritis….to a busy working/travelling professional…..to a grandmother…..so the more examples on how it could apply to their life…the better the message will get across. As it’s all about trying to help people improve their health one step at a time.

Also for those that I do select (will notify only those that I select for the ebook), I will figure out some kind of incentive for you as well….like a % ($) of the first month sales of the ebook. A little something to say thank you for helping out. Also if you do submit and I don’t use it in the ebook….I may put it up on the main post page to help others out with your story as well. So if you email a story know that you are giving permission to use it either in the ebook or on the blog. Please Email to mike@theiflife.com (note with the amount of work I have and email that I receive, I will not be able to confirm back to everyone…just those that are selected for the ebook).