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Meditation Hacks For Quieting Your Mind

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Do you have trouble keeping your mind quiet during meditation?

Most meditation systems try to get you to stop thinking during meditation. This is very difficult to do, especially for beginners.

A much better system that I have found to work for me is to instead keep your conscious mind engaged with simple visualizations to keep it occupied during meditation.

Here are some very simple visualizations you can use to keep your conscious mind occupied during meditation:

  1. Start Off With The Elevator

    Start off by closing your eyes and imagining yourself being inside an elevator. Imagine standing in an elevator, facing the door and looking up at the digital display up top which shows the current floor as 50. Now imagine feeling the elevator going down, and watch as the digital display starts to count down from 50 down to 49, 48, 47 all the way down to zero.

    Not only does this keep your conscious mind engaged with the exercise of counting backwards from 50 to 0, but it also puts you into a deeper state.

  2. Enter The White Room

    Once you go all the way down to zero.  Imagine the elevator doors opening and you now see a white room that seems to go on forever.  You step out of the elevator and you’re in a white room with no walls.  The white glow of the room makes you feel safe and welcome and relaxed.

  3. Enter Your Board Room

    Once you’re in the white room, imagine seeing a rather large room ahead of you that has glass walls all around.  It’s a board room with a board room table in the middle and chairs all around.

    Walk into the room, and sit down in the chair at the head of the table.

  4. Invite Others In

    If you prefer, you can imagine inviting others to join you in your board room.  You can invite your mentors in, your friends, family, a pet or pets, a fictional character, or anyone you’d like.  It doesn’t matter if they are alive or passed away, if they are a real person or a fictional character like Yoda.  Feel free to invite anyone in that you like.

  5. You Can Chat With Them

    If you invited anyone into your boardroom, you can have an imaginary conversation with them, or just simply hang out in their presence.

    You could imagine a caterer coming into the room and bringing a delicious lunch for everyone.  It’s totally up to you.

  6. You Can Be Alone

    If you prefer, you could also imagine being in the board room alone.  Just being there quiet with your thoughts, or with some animals. You could make the boardroom table disappear and your chair could become a massaging recliner that gives you a full body massage.  It’s totally up to you.  Just try to make the experience as relaxing and enjoyable as you can.

  7. The Simplified Version

    This type of visualization will keep your mind “busy” enough to get you to stop thinking about your TODO list or the things you forgot to do this morning etc.

    However, if you find this type of visualization too difficult for you to imagine, another simple method of keeping your conscious mind quiet is to imagine a symbol, like for example the infinity symbol and just imagine drawing it out in your mind.

    Imagine drawing the symbol with a pen made out of light, going around in one direction and then coming back in the other direction, and then back again.  Just keep mentally drawing that symbol over and over again ,and as you do this, it will keep your mind occupied.

    You could even time the drawing of the symbol with your breathing, such as make it so that it takes one breath in and out to draw the symbol.

    It doesn’t really matter what symbol you choose to use.  You can pick a symbol, a letter, a word, or even just focus on a sound, but the important thing is to just keep your mind occupied with SOMETHING, while you just sit, breathe, and relax.

    Over time, you may find that your conscious mind just kind of “falls asleep” and no longer needs to be occupied and you’ll then enter this state where you’re awake, and aware, but just not really thinking about anything.

Give it a try and see how it works for you. Leave me a comment below and let me know if you enjoyed this post.

How to Literally Add and Remove Gray Matter From Your Brain With This Simple Exercise

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There’s an exercise that I’ve been doing for about 19 years now, and more actively in the last 10 years or so that a recent Harvard study has shown to correlate with an INCREASE and DECREASE in brain gray matter in certain areas of the brain.

Participants in this study performed a simple exercise for an average of just 27 minutes a day for a period of 8 weeks.

At the end of the study the participants reported reductions in stress, and their responses to a mindfulness questionnaire indicated significant improvements compared to pre-participation responses.

Skeptics may argue, however, that such indicators are somewhat subjective so the Harvard research team went a step further and took pre and post MR images of the participant’s brains so that they could scientifically and objectively analyze if there was any changes to the actual brain.

What they discovered was rather amazing.

Participants who performed this exercise showed increased gray-matter density in the hippocampus, the area of the brain known to be important for learning and memory and in structures associated with self-awareness, compassion, and introspection.

Furthermore, participants who performed this exercise showed decreased gray-matter density in the amygdala, which is the part of the brain that plays an important role in anxiety and stress.

Let me rephrase this in a different way, because sometimes when researchers start throwing weird names like hippocampus and amygdala around, our minds literally shut off and stop listening because we don’t understand the jargon used.

Here’s the much more simplified version of what this study shows in plain English…

Basically… there’s a simple exercise you can do, that can LITERALLY get your body to strengthen the parts of your brain you want to have more “brains” in, like the part of the brain that helps you LEARN and REMEMBER STUFF…. while simultaneously decreasing the strength of the part of your brain that makes you feel ANXIOUS and STRESSED OUT.

Think of it like going to the gym and lifting weights to strengthen your muscles, except with this exercise you strengthen your BRAIN not your muscles.

Have you ever seen that movie called Limitless?

In the movie, the protagonist gets his hands on a new drug that changes his brain and allows him to LEARN FASTER, REMEMBER BETTER and it gives him MORE CONFIDENCE (ie. less stress and anxiety).

Remember that?

Do you remember how awesome that dude become after taking that drug?

He went from being broke, depressed and miserable to being rich, confident and fulfilled.

Now… as far as we know, there’s no such drug out there.  (Although I’m sure someone is working on it. :) )

But follow along for a second here…

… because what I’m trying to explain to you is that you don’t need a drug.

Harvard has proven that we already have the ability to RESHAPE our brains and make them able to learn things faster and to remember better, while simultaneously removing stress and anxiety so that we are more confident.

What Harvard won’t tell us – however – is what this secret exercise is!

I’m just kidding… they reveal the exercise.

It’s something so simple, and so easy, and so common that the majority of people will completely ignore it.

Skeptics may even make fun of you for thinking that this exercise actually does something.

But science doesn’t lie.

The exercise that Harvard got those participants to do was meditation.

Yup… meditation.

Crazy, eh?

I have an incredibly good memory when it comes to remembering things and I’m one of the fastest learners I know.

I’ve also been doing meditation at least a few times a week for 19 years, and almost on a daily basis for the last 10 years.

I journal, and I meditate all the time.

Do you?

Would you like to learn how I do my meditations?

Comment below and let me know.

(Source: http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2011/01/eight-weeks-to-a-better-brain/ )

Network Marketing Infographic

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Today I decided to create a network marketing infographic that shows some of the differences between network marketing strategies that worked back in 1994 versus network marketing strategies that work today in 2014.

I’ve been in a number of different network marketing companies over the last 20 years and the biggest complaint I hear from new people is that they don’t like the marketing aspect of their business.

Most people love the products that their company sells, but they hate the marketing strategy.

Most of these marketing strategies are outdated, and date back to 1994 or before.

Here’s a network marketing infographic I created that shows some of the strategies from 1994 and how they’ve changed over the last 20 years.

One of the most exciting things about getting involved with network marketing in 2014 is that you can virtually eliminate all the annoying, boring and difficult marketing strategies that don’t work very well anymore, and replace them with newer strategies that are a lot more fun, easier and way more effective.

Here are some examples:

No Need for a 25 Name List

Back in 1994, most network marketing companies would start a new distributor off by getting them to make a 25 name list of their top friends and family members.

Then the person’s job was to call those people as quickly as possible, invite themselves over to their house along with their sponsor, and to go see as many of those people as quickly as humanly possible.

Ideally, you and your sponsor would do a blitzkrieg style attack on your 25 name list and get to see everyone on your list before the first person on your list that you went and saw had a chance to call the rest of the people on your list to warn them about your new business venture. 🙂

I won’t deny that this approach does work in some situations, especially when a person has a good reputation and relationship with their 25 name list, but in most cases it was a very stressful and intense experience to go through.

I have personally seen the downside of this approach with family members calling the new sponsored distributor and yelling at them for being put in a high-pressure position when they were visited by the new distributor and their sponsor.

Once a distributor goes through this process once or twice in their lifetime, they never ever want to put together another 25 name list again.

Today, in 2014, there’s a much better approach to building your network marketing business.

Instead of attacking your 25 name list of friends and family who are probably not interested in your latest business venture anyways, you can instead build an online following of people who are interested in you, and your business offering.

You can learn how to setup online marketing systems that generate an ongoing stream of new, targeted and interested leads who actually WANT to hear from you – instead of bugging your aunt Ruth for the 90th time to join your latest venture.

No Need for Meetings at Your House

Another slightly different strategy that some network marketing companies have been doing for decades, which I believe also belongs in the “1994 network marketing strategies” bucket is doing meetings at your house.

In this model, what the new distributor does is they pick up the phone and they call all their friends and family and try to invite them over to a “business opportunity” meeting at their house.

The idea is to try to get around 20-50 people invited, which will usually mean that about 2-5 people will actually show up.

Then, the distributor’s sponsor shows up and “closes” those people on joining the business.

To be fair, this method can be very effective and is still very widely used by companies such as Tupperware, Mary K Cosmetics, Partylite, and other network marketing companies that do a great job of training their distributors to put on proper meetings.

In these types of meetings – which are usually referred to as “parties” – a group of women (usually, but not always just women) will gather at one of their houses and a distributor will do a demonstration of their products and then take orders at the end of the party.

This method can be effective in these types of situations, but it is usually best suited for people who enjoy standing up in front of a group and putting on a presentation.

For people who are shy, introverted, or just don’t like putting on group presentations, this method is largely ineffective unless they can overcome their fears of being in front of a group.

In most cases though, the typical situation that happens is a new distributor tries to put on a meeting and after exhaustively calling everyone they know, they can’t get people to commit to coming to a home meeting / party.

A lot of times, even if the distributor successful invites a few people over, they are later disappointed when on the day of the meeting / party, everyone calls with some excuse to cancel, or simply just don’t show up.

This leads to a lot of awkwardness amongst the sponsor and his guests, and that is why most people avoid even doing meetings like these.

Today in 2014, this whole process can be made much more effective by firstly building an audience of people who are actually interested in your offering (as discussed earlier), and then by using Webinar technology to invite people to online webinars, instead of over to your house for a meeting.

There’s a much higher chance that a person will tune in to a webinar than showing up to a meeting at your house.

Think about it – the person doesn’t have to get dressed up, doesn’t have to find a babysitter for their kids, doesn’t have to drive over or explain to their spouse where they are going.

They just click on a link you send them, and they join a webinar to see if what is being offered is of interest to them.

Also, using webinar technology instead of putting on meetings in person means that you are usually going to be getting the companies BEST OF THE BEST doing the webinar, instead of your local sponsor doing the meeting.

Meaning, in most cases the person putting on the webinar might be the founder of the company himself or someone who is ultra successful in the business – like a 7 figure earner in the company – and your invited guests will be exposed to someone like that, versus attending a meeting where you and your barely qualified sponsor try to stumble through a presentation.

Using online webinar and sales funnels is a much faster and easier way of building a network marketing company.

No More Cold Calling Prospects

Another “1994 network marketing” strategy that I absolutely detested was cold calling prospects from different lists and directories.

Back in those days I would get listings of business owners in my local area and cold-call them asking them if they happened to know anyone who is interested in a business opportunity.

99 out of 100 people would either hang up, tell me to go away, yell at me, or tell me to never call again.

1 out of 100 would agree to meet with me to see what I had to offer. Only a certain percentage of those would actually show up to the meeting.

It is a strategy that can be made to work if you’re willing to pound the phones for hours every day, hoping to hit that 1% of your market list who will actually agree to meet up with you, but it’s really hard to stay motivated when you’re constantly being rejected on the phone.

Personally I hated cold calling and I avoided it like the plague.

Today in 2014, cold calling is no longer required.

Instead of trying to cold call thousands of people who are most likely not interested, in the hopes of hitting that small percentage of people who just happen to be interested in a business opportunity – using today’s marketing strategies we can connect with ONLY THOSE people who are interested.

How? By using tools like Blogs, Facebook marketing, Solo Ads, Email Lists, Banner Ads, and many other tools that allow us to connect with people who are looking for a business opportunity.

How to Get Started

Many network marketers who are still trying to use 1994 style tactics and strategies in their marketing will sometimes ask me “Okay Paul, but how do I learn how to do all those things you’re talking about?”

The best way to get started in learning how to do network marketing using the strategies that work in 2014 is to buy into a training system that teaches those strategies.

Don’t wait for your network marketing company to provide you with those systems.

Most network marketing companies on the planet are still stuck in 1994, using those strategies – because most of them have top level network marketers on their advisory boards and on their marketing teams who build successful network marketing downlines back in the 1970’s, 1980’s and 1990’s.

Those people built their downlines using OLD strategies that don’t work the same way anymore, but they continue to teach and preach those strategies today because that is ALL they know.

How can you expect to learn online marketing strategies from someone who has never used online marketing strategies to build a downline?

It just doesn’t work.

Don’t expect or wait for your network marketing company to teach you what works — the truth is that they don’t know.

At best, they will hire a consultant to come in and build a replicated website, after their field agents complain enough about not having one.

However, these replicated websites are often made to look pretty, and not to be effective. They simply don’t work.

And when field agents / distributors try to use them, and don’t get a lot of positive results, their company’s leadership will then say “See, we TOLD you that online marketing doesn’t work. Here, just do this thing I used to do back in the 1980’s and 1990’s and you’ll see that it works.”

Trust me, I’ve been there. I’ve tried plugging into the online marketing training from network marketing companies.

At the very best it barely scratches the surface of what is required.

What you really need is to learn from the best strategists on the planet. People who are producing results with online marketing TODAY and who have results to show for it.

Not theory – but actual results.

Personally, after close to a decade of searching for a training system on this topic I have found the best training comes from a company called Empower Network.

Empower Network teaches the most up to date online marketing strategies for network marketers.

They teach everything from Blogging to Facebook advertising, to developing a following and building your email list. Virtually every topic you could think of related to building your network marketing downline in 2014 is covered and taught within the Empower Network.

Empower Network also has a proprietary Viral Blogging System platform they created to enable anyone to launch a fully optimized Blog within seconds of joining the program.

For more information about Empower Network and what they offer, click here to watch a short video explanation.

As a member of Empower Network myself, I also offer personalized coaching and mentoring to my team-mates along with regular webinars and training videos that are exclusively only available to my team.

 

Make Your Own Hydroponic Garden Grow Box For Under $55

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For the past two months I’ve been growing herbs like basil, thyme, parsley, dill, mint and chives in my hydroponic AeroGarden.

Then I decided to get the growing bowl upgrade / conversion kit for the AeroGarden so that I could grow strawberries in it instead.

I still had all the herbs that I had grown for the past two months and I didn’t just want to throw them away, so I decided to build a very basic hydroponic setup for my herbs.

Here’s how I built it.

Step 1 – Getting a Container

The first thing I started with was finding a suitable container.

I found a small Rubbermaid container that worked perfectly.

( Link )

They come in virtually any size you want.  I picked a size that was roughly the same size as my AeroGarden.

I took a picture with a pair of scissors on the lid for size comparison.

20140226_225234[1] 

 

Step 2 – Marking and Drilling Holes

Next, I marked seven round holes with a dry-erase marker on top of the lid to fit my AeroGarden plastic baskets.

If you don’t have an AeroGarden, they look like this:

If you’re not already transferring plants grown in these AeroGarden baskets, and instead starting from scratch, I would recommend getting some net mesh pots like these instead:

( Link )

You can get them in various sizes.  I’d probably go with 1.5″ or 2″ in diameter, just depending what you’ll be growing.

Once you know what kind of baskets the lid will be holding, you’ll need to drill holes that are slightly smaller than the baskets so that they don’t fall through the hole.

I started off by pre-drilling a hole in center of where each of my baskets would go, and then I used a 1.5″ hole saw drill bit to drill the holes.

The only hole saw that I had in that size was a diamond one used for cutting through tiles, so it was a bit overkill for cutting through plastic but it got the job done.

 

Step 3 – Moving the AeroGarden Herbs Over

Once I had the holes drilled, I simply pulled each one of the baskets out from the AeroGarden and moved them over to the new lid with the holes in it.

I had to be careful with the roots, as they had all kind of grown together and into each other, but by gently pulling on them I was able to slowly separate the roots.

Once I moved all the herbs over to the new lid, they looked this:

20140226_224529[1]

Pretty much the same setup as them sitting inside the AeroGarden.

Step 4 – The Water and Nutrients

Once I got all the herb baskets moved over to their new home, I took the nutrient solution straight from the AeroGarden and poured it into the Rubbermaid container so that the herbs could be exposed to the same water and nutrients they had in the AeroGarden.

If you aren’t starting with an AeroGarden like I was, and don’t have nutrients or baskets, you can also get the AeorGarden Grow Anything Kit which comes with the baskets and nutrients…

Step 5 – Lighting

Obviously with the AeroGarden, the herbs also had a light source right above them to help them grow.

An easy and cheap solution to lighting is to get a simple clamp light reflector that looks like this…

( Link )

… and then throw in a full spectrum hydroponic grow light bulb like this…

( Link )

 

Step 6 – Aeration

This final step of adding aeration, I actually didn’t do, as I only had the herbs in the container for a couple of days so I didn’t think it was going to be that important.

However, when I looked at the roots a few days later, I wish I did add aeration as the roots didn’t look as healthy as they did before.

If you’re going to be keeping the plants or growing new ones in a system like this, you’ll need to add aeration which can be pretty easily done by getting an aquarium aerator pump like this…

( Link )

…and adding an air stone like this…

( Link )

Summary

This type of system where you have a plant suspended in a basket with its roots exposed to an aerated nutrient water solution is called a deep water culture hydroponic system.
It is one of the simplest and cheapest to build systems, and it worked perfectly for me and my herbs while I was waiting for my new hydroponic system to be setup.

The only thing I would do differently next time, would be to immediately add an aerator pump and air stone to the water to keep the roots healthy.

There are a lot of people out there using this exact type of system they built themselves to grow anything and everything from lettuce to cucumbers to tomatoes and many other things you can grow and eat later on.

Total cost for the project:

  • Rubbermaid Container ~ $12
  • 2″ Net Pots x 8 ~ $5
  • Clamp Light ~ $7
  • Full Spectrum Grow Bulb ~ $14
  • Aquarium Aerator ~ $9
  • Air Stone ~ $7

Total Costs – Approx. $54

I didn’t include the seeds or nutrients in the cost above as there’s so many different kind of nutrients you could go with, but as an inexpensive option you could go with the AeroGarden Grow Anything Kit which includes baskets that are ready for your seeds and nutrients for just $18.

I also didn’t include the cost of the drill to drill the holes, but if you’re the type of person who doesn’t already have a drill at home for various do-it-yourself projects, then you probably shouldn’t be trying to make one of these anyways. :)  You may be better of just buying an AeroGarden where it’s all made for you like I did to start and go from there.

Also if you’re not transplanting plants from an AeroGarden like I did, or getting the AeroGarden Grow Anything Kit you’ll need to get some Grodan Rockwool cubes to put your seeds into, which then go into the 2″ net pots.  These cubes are also ultra cheap, at around $12 for a pack of 45.

I’ll write a post on how to start seeds in these cubes in the near future if you guys would like.

Dr. Bernstein Diet – Day 1

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In yesterday’s weight loss challenge update post, I promised that today I would reveal my new diet.

So here we go…

The diet I started today is the Dr. Bernstein diet.

The Bernstein diet is essentially a combination of the following:

  • A calorie reduced diet based on tracking portions of proteins, vegetables, breads and fruits
  • An accountability system with 3x/week visits to the clinic
  • Monitoring of your progress by a doctor to customize the diet to your specific needs / situation
  • A 2-phase diet approach with a short-term “weight loss diet” followed by a long term “maintenance diet”
  • A support system to help you stay on track

The first time I heard about the Bernstein diet was when a co-worker of mine went on it years ago and lost a lot of weight in a very short period of time.

Back then I was just getting started on my advanced nutrition diploma studies so I didn’t really look into this diet in any great depth since I figured that I would just put together my own diet after completing my studies.

Also, I heard from someone that this diet requires you to go into a doctor’s office three times a week to get some kind of injection, which sounded like some kind of pharmaceutical approach to me which I have no interest in.

I actually have heard of a few other people getting really good results on this diet since then, but my unconscious mind just filtered it out as a possible diet to look at – most probably due to the whole injection thing.

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, it was actually my intuition that made me re-consider this diet.

Last week I asked my intuition to show me the diet that it would “green light” for me to go on.

Shortly thereafter I found myself stopped at an intersection, waiting for the red light to turn green.  As soon as the light turned green I looked across the intersection where a bus had just pulled up in front of me.

On the back of that bus was a giant ad for Dr. Bernstein’s Diet & Health Clinic.  As soon as I saw the sign I knew this was my answer.

I was rather surprised by this though, because I had previously misjudged this diet as “crap” without really knowing anything about it.

My intuition was basically saying, “Yup, this is it” while my rational mind was thinking “What?  Really?!  This thing?  Seriously?”

So I went home and started doing a whole bunch of research on it – honestly, more than anything to find something wrong with it. 🙂

But after almost a week of research I found nothing wrong.  In fact, quite the opposite.  I really like this diet!

Dr. Bernstein Diet Costs

During my research, one of the main downsides that people talked about in respect to this diet is the costs associated with going on it.

The cost to go on this diet are approximately $600/month (not including food).

When people first hear about this, they freak out.  I know I was a bit shocked at first as well.

However, there are two main things to consider with this.

Firstly, you can’t just look at the cost of the diet alone.  We must consider how it will affect your food costs as those two things are interlinked.

For example, previous to going on this diet, my typical expenditures for food might look something like this:

  • Breakfast – Skipped
  • Lunch – McDonald’s Big Mac Combo & 4 piece Nuggets – $10 (all $ values are approx)
  • Afternoon Snack – Small Bag of Chips & Pop – $3
  • Dinner – Restaurant Meal & Pop + Tip – $23
  • Late Night Snack – $4

That adds up to $40/day.  Now I don’t eat like this every day, but more often than not I’d be snacking and eating all the time trying to keep up with my cravings.

Junk food is NOT cheap.  Even if my daily food costs aren’t $40/day every day, I do know that sometimes it’s even more than that and other days it might be $30.

Let’s say that it’s $35/day average.  That’s approx $1,000/month for food, soft drinks etc.

Now, when you stop eating crap like that, and  you start cooking your meals at home, things get a lot less expensive.

After briefly looking at the Bernstein diet menu, I would estimate that it will cost me less than $10/day for food.

So really, I will be saving approximately $25/day in food costs, which comes out to $750/month.

What that means is that if my estimates above are correct, I will actually be saving $150/month by going on this diet.

Secondly, even if you’re not spending $35/day on food (even though I think a lot of people do but are in denial about it), we also have to consider the fact that this diet is NOT a long term diet.

The $600/m costs are only there during the “weight loss” phase of the diet, which may only last a few months.

The average weight loss that people experience on this diet is around 0.75lbs/day.  That means that you can lose around 20lbs in one month.

If you’re 40lbs overweight, that means you could potentially lose that weight in just 2 months.

And here’s the thing.  Once you lose the weight, and go on the “maintenance” phase of the diet, your costs for the diet drop but your savings continue – hopefully for the rest of your life.

So the way I see it, for anyone who is currently eating crap food at home, or at restaurants, this diet will not cost you anything.  In fact it will save you money.  Short term you’ll probably break even on your total food/diet costs.  But long term you’ll probably save a LOT of money.

What About the Injections?

As I mentioned above, when I first heard about this diet I was turned off by the idea that you have to go in and get injections 3x/week.

The reason for this is because I thought this was some kind of drug or hormone or some other unnatural thing they were using to promote the rapid weight loss.

After I did some research though I found out that it’s nothing more than Vitamins B6 & B12.

The program promotes supplementing your diet with multivitamins and minerals.  Most of the vitamins you can take in a capsule form.  However, for the B6 & B12 vitamins which are especially beneficial for the body during weight loss – it is much more efficient to administer them as an injection, instead of orally.  That’s all.

I haven’t done enough research yet on just how much more efficient Vitamin B is as an injection versus taken orally, but either way I’m sure there’s some benefit to it.

So while on this diet, as you go into the clinic three times per week to do your weigh-ins and to go over your meal plans and urine tests, they do the Vitamin B6/B12 injection as well.  It takes 3 seconds and is relatively painless.  No biggie.

My First Appointment

For now I’m not going to bother diving into how the diet works, or the theories behind it or how it compares to other diets.

Instead I’d rather describe what it’s like to get started on this diet for anyone who decides to try it out.

The diet starts with a 1.5 hour consultation.  The consultation was split into three parts.

When I first got there with my pre-filled “New Patient Forms” (they send them to you before), the lady entered all my information into their computer systems to create my account.

The initial 1.5 hour consultation is $315, which pays for your “Starter Kit” and your first week’s worth of visits & injections.  As part of going onto this diet, once you reach your target weight loss goal, you will be placed onto the “Maintenance Diet”.  As part of your initial fee, you also receive one month free of the “Maintenance Diet” (including visits and injections).

After this initial consultation, it costs approximately $150/week for your three visits, injections and doctor’s consults.

From my understanding, some extended health plans do cover a portion of this diet.

After creating my account in their system, the first part of the consultation is you basically reviewing your medical history with the nurse.

Since mine was relatively simple, this was a short visit.  Some people do bring in a whole bunch of medications they are currently taking, so I’m sure those might be discussed during this time.

The nurse takes your blood pressure and asks some specific questions related to your weight, diet, previous weight loss attempts etc.

Once that is done, you then go into a room where there is a group session with the nurse.

During mine there were three other people besides me joining the program that day.

The group session basically goes over everything in your “Starter Kit”, teaches you the basics of the diet, what to eat, what to drink and gives you the opportunity to ask any specific questions you might have.

Since I did a whole bunch of research on the diet ahead of time, a lot of what was covered was pretty basic for me, but I can see how this part of the session would be very helpful to those who know nothing about the diet going in.

Once the group session is over, you once again have a private consult with the nurse where you have an opportunity to ask any questions you didn’t ask during the group session and you are then given your first Vitamin B6/B12 injection.

The other thing they do while you’re there is take your starting weight, height and set a two-week goal for you.

My starting weight today was 213.8 lbs (with clothes, but no shoes) and my two-week goal is between 203.8 lbs – 206.8 lbs which is basically a weight loss of 7-10lbs in 2 weeks.

We’ll have to wait and see what happens.

The Diet Itself

The diet itself is pretty simple to follow, compared to other diets I’ve followed in the past.

The “Starter Kit” comes with a recipe book full of recipes you can eat on the diet.

dr bernstein diet

Your available food choices are broken down into proteins, vegetables, fruit and bread alternatives.

You eat 2 servings from each group.  However, the servings for each food group are different.

For example, 1 serving of protein is 3.5 oz (100g) but 1 serving of vegetables is 8oz (230g).  So even though you’re eating 2 servings of each, you’re eating more than double the amount of vegetables.

There are so many different ways to put together diets.  Some diets use calories to track things, others portions, and others create a “points” system.

I kind of like how this diet just tells you what a serving size is for each food group and then you just eat 2 servings.  It’s pretty simple.

Also, I’ve been on other diets before where pretty much all fruit was “banned” off the diets.

With this diet you get 2 servings of fruit per day, which I think is pretty cool.

The Sugar Monster

I’ve done enough diets now to know all about the “Sugar Monster”.

What is the “Sugar Monster” you ask?  Well, it’s pretty simple.

We’re all addicted to sugar / simple carbs.

Unless you’ve specifically gone through and eliminated your sugar / simple carb addiction, then you’re addicted.

Sugar is more addictive than cocaine.

Nobody believes me the first time I tell them that, but it’s true.

When you stop eating sugar for just a few hours, you begin to exhibit sugar withdrawl symptoms.

A lot of us associate those symptoms with being hungry, but that is not the case.  When you go through sugar withdrawl, you aren’t hungry – you’re going through withdrawl.

Your stomach can be completely full of non-sugar food, and you’ll still feel what you might associate as “hunger”.

Sugar cravings kick in within a few hours of your last sugar fix.

They progressively get worse and usually peak around the 30-48 hour mark.

If you can survive those first two days without any sugar, you beat your addiction.

Most people can’t though… because when you first go through it, it feels like you’re going to freak out and die.

I remember the first time I confronted my Sugar Monster.  After about 10 hours of eating no sugar I started to freak out.  My stomach was full because I had just eaten some soup, but I felt “hungry”.

It wasn’t real hunger though, it was the Sugar Monster.

People laugh when I tell them this, but only until they try to do it themselves.

The tricky thing with getting past the Sugar Monster is that the best and fastest way to win is to stop eating all sugar.

The worst thing you can do is to start the process and then to give in and eat some sugar after a day or so.  That just restarts the whole process.

Anyway, with any diet I go on nowadays I pretty much expect that the first two days of eating no sugar are going to be hell and then after that things get easier.

Today was my first day and even though the Sugar Monster did show up, I didn’t let him beat me.

I know these sugar cravings will only last a few days, but the benefits of losing this weight will be with me forever.

Where to From Here

Since it’s my first day on the diet I don’t have much to report except my experience from Day 1.

I did a full set of body measurements and took some pictures so that I can track my before/after results on this diet.

I’ll add them to my body transformation page and I’ll probably do weekly updates on my weight there – in addition to my weight loss challenge updates.

Who else has been on this diet?  Anyone else thinking about going on it?