Thanks for sharing your 5 food groups. My wife and I laughed at that one. I am very curious about the jr hi pastors summit in colorado. Never heard of it.

Yeah being a Bible college student my 5 food groups are Tang, Ramen Noodles, the crap at the dining hall, pizza, and popcorn so I might need some cleansing later in life…

markeades — the summit is an invitation-only gathering of about 22 full-time middle school only veteran youth workers. we’ve met in san diego the last 3 years, but we’re being hosted in estes park this year, by jim candy, the junior high pastor at first pres, boulder.

Marko - that is awesome. Congrats. My body told me the SAME thing a month ago, and so I started on the “Trim Advantage - Fit for Life” system - and in just one month now I have lost 14 pounds and 12 inches of body fat. It can be done… I never believed it, but I am doing it… and trust me my meals consisted of nothing but fast food before this. Good luck and God bless. Praying for you in this new cleanse!!!

If this cleanse doesn’t work - I will be your next cleanse and diet coach. However, it will include coffee all day long, as much as you possibly want to consume. None of this coffee abstinence stuff. Coffee makes everything beautiful. Then in keeping with the same liquid color, you transfer from drinking coffee to drinking Guinness at night(one preferrable, possibly two 12 oz. glasses max). Then you stay up until at least 1:00 AM, preferrably 2:00 AM. To go to bed earlier than that is to break the diet and it all falls apart. So staying up late is a necessary part of this cleansing process.

I will coach you in this, and you will be more creative, more excited for ministry and more energetic during the day, more aware of God’s presence, develop even a deeper and better marriage, become more skilled in the ability to lead, read faster with more comprehension, stabilize any hair loss and can have all the coffee you want in the process.

Marko, I know what you mean. I was the biggest I have ever been at the end of Feb. I decided to give up fast food and just the Fructose Corn Syrup that you would see in sodas and stuff. In a month and a half I have lost 16 pounds. It is amazing what simple little things will do. So you should be slim in no time with all of the stuff you are doing.

Marko…seriously be careful. I got freaked out about walking down the aisle on my wedding day resembling a Polar Bear, so I decided to do the same thing you are on. Everything went great…even started on the South Beach deal and one day I just passed out. Evidently, my body was no longer breaking down foods…my digestive system just quit. But, I still lost weight and all I gotta leave you wiht is…think STARBUCKS!

bethany — sorry about you passing out. but i’m not doing anything like the south beach diet! i’m under the supervision of a natural food coach, flushing toxins and additives out of my body. it’s not really designed for weight loss — it’s for healthiness. some weight loss is just a nice by-product.

Good for you Marko! I too have been struggling with the diet, eating thing after my doctor promised me I would be dead at 40 because of my insane cholesterol.

Can you say anymore about the “cleanse” that Shelly has you on? What books did she recommend? What steps are you taking over the next 16 days? I would be very interested to hear more.

i’ve turned into quite a fata** myself…i’ve known for a while i need to do something similar to what you’re doing, but i can’t seem to kick this love for chipotle, freebirds, in-n-out (when i’m in socal), dr pepper, my italian wife’s heavy-on-the-pasta home cooked italian food, cookies, and 2% milk. as soon as i can wrap my hands around laying off that stuff for a while, i might be able to get on board with getting back to about 180 lbs. keep us posted on your accomplishments.

Mark,

I was once a 298 pound muscle man. My diet was meat, meat, and more meat with lots of ice cream. My favorite dinner was a box of Hamburger Helper (Yeah the WHOLE box) with some beer or whole milk. Two or three hours later I’d have a giant bowl of ice cream and go to sleep. At the time I was about 32% body fat.

I was competing in something called the Scottish Heavy Events and used my weight for that. Even at that heavy I had the genes to be really healthy.

Once I “retired” from the Heavy Events I dropped down to 200 with about 8% body fat. My cholesterol is way down there and my resting heart rate was down around 39 last time I checked.

You want to lose weight and feel better? Eat less and move more. It’s that simple. I knocked out junk food as best I could but I’m not on some raw veggie diet. I just make healthy choices even at McDonald’s. On Saturday nights I let myself go and pig out to get it out of my system.

Good luck. Once the weight is gone you can have someone make a nice quilt out of all the triple X t-shirts you have. My mother-in-law did it for me. Man is that quilt big!

~Jason

You need something to take your mind off the general lack of coffee. Just foundthis on iTunes. Maybe that will do the trick

Oops. Messed up the link. Try again.

Hope things go well for you

david — it’s a combination of a “cleanse in a box” (the one she told me to get is made by Zand), which is a combination of pills (all natural stuff) at different times during the day, along with a strict diet of natural organic foods.

Hope you survive longer than our buddy…

You gotta do what fits your body and your mind. I would love to do a diet like that (especially with my wedding only 23 days away) however, I would quit because I would be so depressed about not having the things I love. However, I did start dieting back in March and have lost 10 lbs. currently…I drink only 1 cup of coffee in the monring instead of 6 and I have only two breads a day…I walk when I have time and I have tried to reduce stress in my life. You can’t loose weight when you are stressed. Either way…no big diet ideas…good luck to you.

By the way, tell your body to shut up! LOL… :)

Marko, clearly some of your friends give better advice than others! Cleansing is hard work and takes a fair amount of self control, as you are well aware. As your Natural Health Coach, I recommend listening to the voices that support your healthly choices and ignore the others (they are walking in “darkness” :).
You are doing AWESOME and I hope you decide to stick with a number of the changes that will allow you to live longer and healthier in your new “not-so-________-fat” body.
Keep up the good work!!! Shelley

Marko,
Remember these words: A clean colon is a happy colon. You’ll soon be dropping off the kids at the pool and feeling better about, well…everything!