She was the lowest weight she has been since her wedding.

She called me with excitement to tell me the good news. She knew that I did the whole raw diet thing and I kept track of my meals using raw bucks. She wanted to try it out. However 300 days raw was a lot for her. So I suggested raw coins . This strategy meant that she didn't have to eat raw food solely. Simply ate raw food for most of her meals. Each month she can have 16 regular meals.

Where do the coins come in to play?
She has 16 coins that she uses to keep track of the meals she has left in the month.
Who collects the coins?
Her husband. Haha he is also doing his own health challenge so they are both keeping each other accountable.

In just 6 weeks she lost 15 pounds. And she is not stopping there.

She couldn't believe how quick the progress was and how simple this motivational gimic was... using coins.

It's so cool when different friends of mine and people I know call me to tell me they tried one of my health ideas out and how it has been helping.

In our very first podcast (which launched today) we talk about how Fitness is not dieting as in dying... but it's a lifestyle. That's what our Podcast, "AdventFit" is all about. It's holistic Fitness.

In fact we uploaded our first 3 episodes.
So if you are craving a lifestyle change or just curious then check it out on...

www.AdventFit.org

As the ball was dropping the last thing I ate was some jalapeno. 

This was a good experiment doing 300 days raw in a year. I was able to maintain below 6 percent body fat for the majority of the year. I hardly went to the gym (not good, but the pandemic made it difficult), but due to a great diet I was able to keep the fat off. In fact this was the longest period of time that I was able to stay at that low body fat state.

I was able to have good conversations with people who also wanted a healthier lifestyle. A number of people have already tried a raw diet. Some plan on doing it for a stretch this year.

Today was the first day off the 300 challenge. I ate cooked food. Although I had cooked food whenever I spent a raw buck, today felt different. I missed the challenge. I miss the raw lifestyle. I usually feel this way whenever I get off a long stretch. Raw food has become a part of my life, so when its not there I miss it. I feel off. 

A raw diet will not be the best for me in 2021 with the evangelistic plans that I have. I don't have any concrete plans or challenges for this year when it comes to raw food. I pushed the raw food lifestyle as far as I could for the time being. This year I don't plan on having any hard fast restrictions. I do plan to eat raw food most days (we'll see) particularly if I'm not hanging out with people. 

Being that my diet won't be as raw this year, I need to get back to the gym or invest in home work out equipment. All those extra calories need to be put to good use. 

I also need to monitor my measurements to make sure I don't gain too much fat and my waste size doesn't expand too much.

As for this blog page, I plan to still upload posts from time to time like I did last year. I will be posting things like, taking body measurements, and raw food recipes, ect. I will eventually rename this page from the 300 challenge to something like "Health Blog".

The 300 challenge was a fun one. Great conversation starter. It for sure had it's challenges, such as when the days off slowed my fat loss progress, but once it came off it stayed off. Keeping fat off is just as important as loosing it. So for that I would say that this was a success. 

Subscribe if you want to follow this next chapter in my health and fitness journey.

Ever since I was a kid growing up in the church I would sit through these health lectures that would guilt you into being “healthy”. I would hear people read books or show slides that would continuously cut down your diet. Too often the presentations were about ‘Don’ts’.
Don’t eat this.
Don’t drink that.
Don’t eat this with that, while drinking those.

Someone desiring to do what was right, I would frustratingly follow these things. But with each presentation that I heard I felt more and more restricted. It got to the point where any product that had sugar I didn’t eat. Do you know how much products when you read the ingredients has sugar? It even got to the point where I stopped using soap because some presentation talked about one bad ingredient that wasn’t kosher. Same thing with toothpaste and I had to stop using toothpaste until I found a kosher one. I felt like I couldn’t do anything. Then in one of these presentations, someone said something about some “bad water” and I LOST IT. I was done. I couldn’t keep restricting my lifestyle like this, and now they are talking about certain waters I can’t drink. I threw my hands in the air and gave up on listening to people and their “health” presentations. I needed to get to the bottom of these issues. So water, soap, and sugar… I studied all those things vigorously while I was in high-school. I even called companies and realized that the issues with these bad ingredients were not present today which would have made them non-kosher. I was so relieved after doing the research that I could relax.

I decided from that day forward to not take people’s word for it. I don’t even think the people who did these presentations actually followed these rules that they made me feel like I had to keep.

So I hated these health presentations. They were so doom and gloom. They were legalistic. The people who did these presentations didn’t even look all that healthy.

Fast forward years later. I am no longer in high-school. I am graduated from college. And I start doing raw-vegan diets. Not cooking my food for 3 months with no break or cheat days. Then for 6 months, no cheat days or breaks. Now, this year I am working on completing 300 days of no cooked food spread throughout the year. I have been working out and got into the shape I long wanted.

What was the change?
I still hated the health message. Meaning, I couldn’t stand these legalistic health presentations.
I didn’t want them in the churches I was pastoring. I get skeptical whenever someone wants to come and do a presentation in my church. I am not fan. There is too much of a tendency for legalism in our church, and these presentations plays into that mindset too easily. I lived it.

So while on a raw-vegan diet, working out consistently throughout the week. I went to one of these health lectures at someone else’s church. I spoke to the presenter afterwards. He tried to invite himself to my church and I told him, “I hate the health message.”
His face distorted in shock to hear that from a pastor.
Then I continued. “I hate the health message, but I love living it.”
His face got confused.
“Let me explain. I can’t stand when people talk about the health message, because most times they are legalistic. However I love living the health message, not because I think it’s going to save me or make me a better Christian, but because I like being healthy. I have seen more people work on their health by living a healthy lifestyle and sharing my experience with them, than people sitting through a health lecture. A lot of people who sit through a health lecture are turned off by these presentations. Meanwhile I see people getting excited about raw-vegan (much stricter than being a vegetarian) because of seeing me live it.”
The presenter understood and agreed. I assured him his presentation wasn’t a bad one, which I was pleasantly surprised. I ultimately didn’t book him present, because of pricing issues.

So I still don’t like hearing most health message presentations, but I enjoy living a healthy lifestyle and allowing that to be the message I give people.
So when my buddy, Jeffrey, told me he wanted to start a health podcast and he wanted me to partner up with him, I was down. This was an opportunity to present the health message in a different way. Not legalistic, but holistic. For the last several months we have been working pretty much each week preparing this podcast.

It’s called AdventFit. We want to change the mentality of what it means to be fit as a Christian.
We plan to launch this podcast in Spring 2021 and make it free to the public. You can sign-up to join the email list today and we will message you when the podcast airs. Just go to our website AdventFit.org 
​Thank you in advance for your support.

So what exactly is intermittent fasting?
It’s when you are fasting (not eating food) for most of the day. People usually promote breakfast in the morning, lunch in the afternoon, and dinner in the evening. So throughout the entire day you are eating. Some people even snack in between. You are not giving your stomach a rest. Intermittent fasting promotes putting all your meals closely together.
 
WARNING – Don’t try this if your diet is unhealthy. While some people do this, the reason I don’t recommend doing this with an unhealthy diet is because when you eat unhealthy your body takes a long time to digest. So adding new food to your body before your last meal has left your stomach is a bad idea. By the time I implemented intermittent fasting I was already pooping three times a day. One for each meal. The raw diet is great like that, because digestion time is so quick.
 
I’m a Huge fan Hugh.

His acting is incredible and versatile. He can go from snarling like a monster to singing like a showman. 

​Now you cannot think about the Wolverine without thinking about Hugh Jackman. A great part of his success is his dedication to diet and exercise. I mean look at him from the first X-Men movie compared to when he did Days of Future Past. He was getting older, but looking better. 

So back to intermittent fasting… Many people do it in different ways. My brother has 1 meal a day. Others have 6. I have tried both. But ultimately I found that 3 meals worked just fine.
Another type of intermittent fasting is to fast for an entire 24 hour period, giving your digestion a day of rest. When I heard that, I was like “Whoa!” Isn’t the body amazing? I mean the Bible talks a lot about rest. Taking a day of rest from work on the Sabbath; giving the land rest every seventh year; getting rest from debt every seventh year; and spiritual rest from working for your salvation. Taking a day off eating (especially when your diet isn’t the best) feels so good. Many times I take Saturday off from eating.
It’s interesting how the Bible talks about fasting quite a bit. Now the primary purpose of fasting in the Bible is for the purpose of having extra time to pray while having a clear mind. It’s not primarily about diet and health. But it’s fascinating how science shows the health benefits of fasting.

So what’s my eating schedule while I’m intermittent fasting?
First meal: 12 noon
Second meal: 3 pm
Last meal: 6 pm

This has worked great for me. This provides me with 3 hours of digestion between meals. Then I have 18 hours of not eating after my last meal. Some people space it out a little more and have an 8 hour eating window, with 16 hours of rest. Any less wouldn’t really be classified as intermittent fasting.
Some people find it easier to do this with two meals, one at 7 am and the other at 12:30 pm. This gives them plenty of digestion time.
 
When should you start implementing this?
I know this may sound counter-productive… but don’t start today. This is advanced stuff. Again if your diet isn’t healthy, you want to change what you eat first before you focus on when you eat. You could however implement the one day off method. That’s what I recommend to people who aren’t fully committed to a healthy diet yet.
So when can I start doing intermittent fasting?
I think it’s best used when you hit a plateau in your fat loss. This will help you break through that wall. When I first did a long stretch on a raw diet, I was shedding fat every week or two. I watched as my body fat got lower and lower, but then it stopped, hovering over 7% (caliper measurements for body fat percentage). The solution wasn't to eat less, but to change the times that I ate. That’s when I read about intermittent fasting. I found out that Hugh Jackman was doing this with a clean diet. So I gave it a try and I was finally able to get under 7% body fat. Eventually I went under 6% (more on how I did that in later post).

So I recommend changing your diet to healthier foods. You don’t have to go drastic, especially when you start off. When you are above 10% body fat, simple changes in the diet will be enough to shed the fat. If you eat meat, switch over to a vegetarian diet. If you are already vegetarian, then switch to vegan. If you are vegan, than try going all raw. Whatever you do, try doing it for 300 days within a year’s time. That will give you one cheat day a week, plus holidays.
Then, whenever you hit a plateau (3 weeks where there is no change), implement an intermittent fasting cycle. Hopefully you are regular with your trips to the bathroom. If not, then hold off on intermittent fasting and increase your water intake as well as your fiber. 

If you are ready to start intermittent fasting or have already been doing it, I would love to hear from you. ​

Now on top of that I barely worked out this year. I have been so busy. Like I would go a month at a time without going to the gym. And now with the quarantine I couldn’t even go to the gym. I should have done home workouts, but I have never been good at that. Then I got curious. How much difference has my workouts been to reaching my goals? But the biggest question was if the 300 challenge was actually working. Ever since I first started doing cycles of raw diets, I tried not to allow myself to go above 10% body fat. Whenever I got close or past it I got on a raw diet to bring it back down. Normally it takes 3 months to drop below 6% body fat. So about 3-4% drop in 3 months. But again I would do that with a strict raw diet. No cheat days.
 
Now, I just want to say that if you are above 13% body fat as a man or 20% body fat as a woman then you would drop body fat much quicker on a raw diet that what I am describing. The lower you are on the scale the slower the body fat loss is.
 
So now I was curious. How would the cheat meals I was having on the 300 challenge affect my fat loss? So after three months I took my measurements. I used a tape measure to check the size of the different areas of my body. I used a caliper to check my body fat percentage. In another blog I will go more in detail on how to check your measurements.
 
The Results:
As to be expected, I had not reached my goal of being below 6% body fat. I was at 6.97% body fat. When I compared my progress to years before, I was about 24 days away from breaking below 6%. This made sense. I had taken 12 cheats so far this year. Remember each cheat day set me back 2 days. So it didn’t come as a surprise that I was 24 days behind schedule to drop below 6%. So I thought to myself, ‘if I don’t take any cheat days in the next 24 days then I should reach my goal.’ Well, being that we have been quarantined I have not been in social situations where people would want me to eat with them. This was the perfect opportunity to get to where I wanted to be. And today I took my measurements and sure enough I am below 6% body fat. I am at 5.69% body fat.
 
So its official the 300 challenge works. It will take you a little longer to reach your goals, but having a cheat day is better than quitting all together. Now the fastest way to a destination is a straight line. So if you want to go hard core, try going without any cheat days. However, I know that for most people it is so much easier to have that cheat day once a week. It gives you a sense of reward for being good for the weeks before. No need to feel guilty if you are planning your cheat meals in advance.
 
Now the thing that really surprised me was the fact that I was able to get below 6% without much working out. Usually on the last week or couple of days work out twice a day just to break below the 6% mark. I didn’t do that this time. I simply ate right and made sure my protein intake was 80 grams a day. You know what this tells me? Truly diet is the best thing to loose body fat. Its leaps and bounds over working out. Now working out is not a waste of time. Aesthetically your muscles will look more tone if you have been working out. But even in that department, when I measured my different body parts they were up to par as compared to last year. Granted I had worked out quite a bit in years past.
Now aesthetics isn’t everything. Exercise also helps your heart as well as your strength. I am not belittling exercise in any way. But if you are in the gym all the time but you are neglecting your diet don’t expect to be losing a ton of body fat.
 
So join the 300 challenge. It doesn’t have to be a raw diet, but commit to eating better food than you are eating today for 300 days within the next year and see the type of progress you can make. If you would like to receive a the plan I put together for people interested in trying a raw diet subscribe to this blog and I will email my plan to you. 

Going to the gym feels like a waste of time.

The end and start of the year is so busy for me at church. I started off doing a week of prayer at each of my churches. So 3 churches, 3 week of prayers. 
So once I completed those I was able to get back to the gym last week. Its been a long time since I have been in the gym. And you know how it goes, the longer you are away from the gym the more you put it off. You gotta just do it. 

I was so worn out. Fortunately because of a good diet it wasn't that bad, but very far from where I needed to be. 

Next day, I was crazy sore. But the day after I was back in the gym and battled through the pain. 

Only two days last week. Not the best start, but it was a start. It was the time I had available. 
Now its the first week in February. It is time to not just find time, but to make time. 

But sometimes it feels like going gym is a waste of time. After my first day back, I looked in the mirror and not much had changed. I mean, what was I expecting after one day? But that's what make exercise so hard. We do all this exercise, and there is nothing to show for it. I can see how someone who has never really exercised before would be discouraged after a workout. You're tired, sore, sweaty and you can't see a difference. They say "no pain, no gain." But it seems like there is way more pain than gain.

But I know better. I know what months of consistent exercise can do- especially when you combine it with a good diet. 
After my sister saw my before and after photo after I did a raw diet for three months in 2018, she told me she didn’t realize how drastic the difference was, maybe because she saw me all the time.
 
And that’s the thing, it seems drastic when you see the before and after side by side. But when you are living in the before picture, you don’t see any drastic changes and it can get discouraging. So let me show a photo that shows more of a progression from month to month.

The first month is where I lost most of the weight. 13 pounds. However the goal was never to lose weight, but to the lower the waist size and body fat percentage. That first month I already dropped to 75.5 cm in my waist size. But not too much in body fat percentage. That goes to show how bloated I was. The average adult has 5-20 pounds of toxic waste trapped in the digestive track. That’s why when you start a raw diet you may even feel more bloated. That’s because you have a traffic jam of bad stuff blocking the good stuff. That’s why in my meal plan, before even starting the raw diet I suggest getting your water intake up. You got to start clearing the path.
 
So anyway, after a month I was just half a centimeter from my waist size goal, now I just needed my body fat percentage lower. Now that my digestion was much smoother, my body had an easier time breaking down my body fat. The next two months I was able to shed about 1% of body fat each month, bringing me to my goal of getting below 6% body fat again. I put this post up, because I truly believe that the cleaner our diet the faster the cutting of fat will take. It doesn’t take very long to start seeing results.

If you are just starting off I do recommend that you join the 300 challenge and focus on diet first. But if your diet is going well, then its time to incorporate exercise. But remember, exercise is not a one-day-cure-all. It requires commitment. One day of good diet and exercise will just leave you hungry, sore, and discouraged. But if keep at it little by little your body will get healthier and its composition will start to change. Even in the midst of your journey you may not realize that changes are happening, but you don't realize the inside changes are happening that you cannot see, but just trust in the process and when you look back you will realize, "Whoa, I have changed!" 

Exercise is a lot like faith. Sometimes you can't see anything, but you have a hope that something will happen. "Now faith is the assurance of things hope for, the conviction of things not seen" (Hebrews 11:1). In the midst of your journey you may not realize that God is changing something inside, but we need to trust in Him to do His process of molding us. 
Trust will lead to action. "Faith without works is dead" (James 2:20).

So back to exercise. Even if you can't see any difference with all this exercise and you feel like  you are wasting your time, trust in the process and let your trust lead to action. Keep exercising trusting that one day you will look back and  see that you are no longer your before picture. You are a new man/woman. ​

I have always been a super skinny guy in high school and college. Then in graduate school, no longer being physically active and eating a lot of fast food and soda, I gained a lot of weight. I was over 180 pounds- almost 190. I became skinny fat. No muscle. Big gut. I looked pregnant. I couldn’t fit into my pants and I ended up buying size 40 pants. When I graduated from grad school in 2013 I went on a 2 week raw diet and lost about 20 pounds. My weight was now manageable. But in 2016 I couldn’t fit into my pants anymore. It was really bad. That’s when I went on the 3 months raw vegan diet, I got a gym membership, and followed the Six Pack Shortcuts workout plan. During the 3 months, people became concerned for me because I was dropping weight fast. I was becoming too small for my clothes. I started to see my ribs. But I was determined to see this through. Although I may not have appeared fat, because I was wearing big clothes, I did have a lot of fat. Also, because I had no muscle, when I lost the fat I started looking unhealthy. But it was actually the healthiest I had ever been. Soon after much of the fat was lost, I saw as muscle started to form. And people no longer were concerned for me. After I completed the 3 months I felt like I made so much progress that I didn’t want to turn back. So I kept a mostly raw diet. So some meals were cooked and some meals were raw. I had started taking my body measurements and was making sure I was making progress. About a month later my abs were nice a visible. I kept a healthy lifestyle and incorporated Rock Climbing and on June 2017 I reached below 6% body fat. Since I felt like I hit my peak I relaxed for several months and made sure I just didn’t completely let myself go and go above 10% body fat. Enough time had passed and it was time to go hard core again. I didn’t like the fact that I couldn’t see my abs anymore. So on April 2018 I started the Athlean X workout program and decided to once go completely all raw for about 3 months.

I gained a bunch of weight while in graduate school. I was no longer the skinny guy. I needed to drop all these extra pounds. When I graduated I started to hit the track. I would do a cycle of running and crunches. But I realized I was wasting my time. All that hard work for nothing.
That’s when I decided to implement a raw vegan diet and it changed my life. I dropped all my college weight in about 2 weeks.

I was good (or so I thought) so I stopped the raw diet and ate normally. Years later I became the biggest I have ever been. I literally could not fit into my pants. I had this pregnant looking gut.
That was it. It was time to get serious. So I went all raw for 3 months straight.
A little after that I saw the abs. I was so excited. Finally, my personal goal to see my abs was accomplished.

I kept doing cycles of all raw.

Last year I did 6 months and got to the lowest body fat percentage I had ever been. 5.37% (According to Caliper measurements)
My waist was also at its lowest point at 73 cm (28.74 inches).

This year I don’t want to cycle. I want to drop and maintain. That’s why I am doing the 300 Challenge. The 300 Challenge is eating for 300 days only raw food. The won't be consecutive like I have done before. But in the course of the year I need to accumulate 300 days of raw. It's a challenge, but I'm excited to do it.

WHO'S WITH ME?
If you are interested in doing some sort of health challenge or goal, sign-up below and I will provide my health guide to a natural lifestyle and I will email you occasionally with my fitness journey.

In 2016 = I went completely Raw for 3 months.
In 2018 = I did Raw again for another 3 months.
In 2019 = I decided to step it up and go 6 months Raw. 
That's right. No cooked food. Just fruits, fresh vegetables (again not cooked), and nut/seeds/grains.

And of course in between those long stints I did shorter spans of time on a raw vegan diet. 
Totaling over 300 days raw.

I thought to myself, how can I step it up again?
The hard part isn't the diet. It was more the social component that posed a challenge. Many of my church members don't understand and want me to eat their food. How can I step it up, but still be social?

So I came up with the 300 CHALLENGE. 
I am going to attempt to eat Raw food for 300 days during this year. 
It won't be straight in a row like the other times, but accumulatively needs to be 300.   
So that leaves me with 66 days (thank you leap year) where I can have cheat meals. Thats once a week with 14 additional bonus days that I can use for special occasions. 

This should be fun. I'm curious to see how the results will compare to other times I went all raw. 
I will keep you updated here on this blog.

If you are interested in learning about how you can implement a Raw diet into you life then put your contact information below and I will email you my guide.