Biosignature CE, Day 1, Halmstad

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Day 1 of my third Biosig CE course is done. Today I can feel my brain trying to connect all the dots from the previous weeks and days - I'm flooded with information and my poor brain is having hard time saving all the jewels! We have a big group on this course, about 60 Biosignature practitioners from all over the world, mostly Europe.

So why am I doing this course over and over again? Because there's no single Biosig course that is 100% same as any of the previous ones. Even Biosignature 1 changes all the time because the information is changing all the time and multiplying at a faster rate than anyone of us can imagine.

I wanted to do this Biosig CE because I've been interested in hearing Dr Robert Rakowski talk. He is a widely known speaker, natural healer, chiropractor, nutritionist and detoxification expert who gave a lecture earlier this year at Poliquin Strength Institute (here's a trip report of that, not mine by the way). Many of my colleagues raved about it later so I thought I better get to his next seminar. Soon some of my Biosignature friends emailed me about their results of a seven day cleanse that Charles had done as well (his blog posts about it are here and here).

I'm a very curious and open minded person so I decided to do it in the beginning of August... just to find out that my body is very very toxic! Honestly, until then I had lived in some kind of utopia, thinking that of course I'm not THAT toxic - it would be a piece of cake for me. I thought that living in "clean" Finland, my young age, healthy eating habits compared to most people and so on would mean something. So what happened? I had awful detox reactions and honestly it was one of the worst weeks I've had in a very long time. I can be a robot and do short term stuff like that - staying on shakes and green vegetables for a week - quite easily. After all, I've done a figure show playing the robot part for over 20 weeks training 20 hours per week while eating 900-1300 calories... consisting of tuna twice a day - a little mercury and BPA here and there can't hurt that much, right? ;)

A cleanse like that will cause many things to surface, things I did not expect to see. I didn't expect to...

-have emotional breakdowns (liver cleanse will bring up blocked emotions, it's good to tell this to your loved ones before beginning ;))
-have extremely heightened sense of taste (couldn't finish my servings of white cabbage one day - it burned my mouth so bad, not sure why)
-have ringing ears (also related to liver cleanse)
-get so tired that I had to nap numerous times a day
-sneeze so hard I thought it would never end, it continued with a continuous runny nose for the whole day (two packs of toilet paper made me look like Rudolph the red nosed reindeer in two hours)
-run to the bathroom every 15 minutes (and thinking I should have evacuated the house first so nobody would faint)
-have my scalp suddenly begin itching and get white spots on it

...on some days and so on!

Just lots of stuff that can't be explained by anything else than doing detox - and doing it for a reason. I probably could have fixed many of those by adding more aminos, more antioxidants etc. but I didn't know what or when. Next time I'll know better as now I've heard Charles' lecture about the detox numerous times. The cleanse was rewarding anyhow, as I noticed that after the week I've slowly begun getting rid of things that have bugged me for quite long now. Not as much anxiety anymore, less energy crashes, better strength in the gym, increased mental performance, higher sex drive - just better life quality as a whole. And now that we've got that part clear - all of us are toxic - I think we're all on the same page. Let me put it in one paragraph:

We must help our bodies detoxify at all times by giving them adequate sleep and organic, as nutrient rich nutrition as possible. High quality supplementation plays a crucial role as soil has become poor with minerals - it takes over 30 elements to build a healthy human, our soil has now about 3. Thus everyone of us should help their bodies function optimally by using omega 3 oils, plant nutrients from organic greens powders and high quality a multivitamin + mineral complex. According to research done in 2007, today's food is too weak to replete depleted cells and bodies. WHO's number 1. cause of death is currently malnourishment.


If polar bears are toxic, how can we really think we aren't? Many of the problems we face with our bodies today can be explained by understanding that the toxic load on our bodies is higher than what the body can process with the resources it has. It's been shown now that a newborn baby has 250 toxins in his or her body on the time of birth. I can only wonder how many do I have? Actually, thinking that thought makes me sick to my stomach. Maybe by learning this now will help me whenever it's the time to have kids. If we can have any, you never know! Fertility on both males and females has dropped dramatically and the researches are putting a lot of the blame on environmental toxins and hormone disruptors. I would like to do a toxicity and plastics test at some point to see how I'm doing. And do the same for my hubby. Charles will teach us more about toxicity tomorrow. It's one of the most interesting topics that I want to learn more about right now.

Today's lecture's topic was HEALTHY. LEAN. STRONG. How to get there? Put it shortly:

"Healthy is a matter of choice, not a mystery of chance." -Aristotle

Things to consider - I strongly believe that most of us (who aren't in their perfect health) still don't have these habits (below) 100%. So I challenge you to pick TWO of that list that you will focus on for the next couple of months. On a scale from 0 to 10, where are you with each of these? Below are my thoughts of the habits we covered during the day. There was much more, everything from using supplements to balancing the hormones, but if the basics aren't covered, those don't matter that much. And the habits below will do much of the work anyway!


Sleep


Everybody should sleep 8 hours a night - uninterrupted. Sleep will raise growth hormone, body's main fat burning and tissue rebuilding hormone, as well as improve detoxification. Liver and gut work when we sleep. The room should be pitch dark, cell phones turned off or in another room when possible (electromagnetic radiation will affect the brain, as you may not produce as much melatonin, the sleep hormone, and less "recharging" as EMF is a stressor as well). It's not always possible but those are things to consider if sleep is your weak link. I've put a lot more emphasis on having enough hours in bed during the past year. I've rather slept than trained, next I will work on having both of them in my daily life :) I still wake up between 1-3 am so it suggests that all the detoxing isn't done for me yet. That's liver meridian working.

Eat organic, clean foods


Lots of protein, lots of vegetables, some healthy fats. All unprocessed, as local foods as possible to make all the nutrients are still inside the food you eat. An orange flying from the other side of the world (even if it's organic) will have minimal amount of nutrients left when I buy it in the store. So I'll rather have berries that were picked close and frozen right after picking.

"If God made it, it's good to eat - if man made it, don't eat it." or as Michael Pollan says in his books: "Eat real food. Mostly plants." Animal protein is needed to maintain and grow muscles and to supply enough amino acids for the liver to do its detoxification process. Without enough protein there's no complete detox. I think Charles said once that the first 30 grams of protein you eat will be used by the liver. If protein supply is inadequate, liver may be creating even more toxic components as phase 2 can't be completed. It's also crucial to know that the body actually breaks down the protein - test the stomach acid level to make sure the protein is digesting well.


I learned how to eat by reading John Berardi's Precision Nutrition. It's probably the best $99 I've spent as it pushed me to begin tweaking my nutrition, get on the PN board, become a moderator of the board, meet Krista Schaus, got introduced to Biosignature... and so on! After following the typical fitness bunny diet (weigh everything from cucumbers to egg whites, follow a diet on a paper that's attached to your fridge door, eat anything else = might as well blow the whole thing and eat everything in sight on one sitting), I was very confused about HOW or WHAT to eat. PN changed the way I view nutrition, cook and look at my meals as a whole.

I'm very passionate about my food. I have a created a gallery of meals that I've made at home or while travelling, eaten in restaurants (it's easy to eat healthy when you eat out - just need to know what habits to follow) and so on. I call it Flow Food - food that is fun to make, healthy and delicious. You can go check my gallery on Facebook. These photos here are from my recent travels... the meal above was made in less than 5 minutes after rushing through the door after a very long day with clients. The meal below is from a restaurant I had my lunch in one day while in Helsinki. High protein, loads of veggies and a little bit of berries or fruits plus healthy fats. Can't get much easier - but it's a matter to choice, as there were boatloads of bad foods to choose from. No bread, mashed potatoes, commercial salad dressing or desserts etc. for me.


Drink


Dehydration is more common than we can think! Everybody should drink at least 2-3 liters of pure water per day. It's also one of the major reasons for overproduction of cortisol. 40-60% of the body is water. And no - diet soda, coffee, milk and fruit juices don't count. They just make everything worse by putting a chemical load on the body and raising insulin. A well hydrated body means well functioning brain and happy muscles :)

Poop


We need to take care of our gut health to eliminate toxin components of the body. Yes, it's that important that I will put it out here! Using enzymes, HCl (WHICH IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING TO TEST), probiotics and fibers helps a ton. I meet clients every once in a while who tell me they go to the bathroom once a week. Imagine how many toxins their body reabsorbs from the large intestine during that time?

Move


The human body is made to move. We need to strive for a body that's flexible, strong and aerobically conditioned. Doing regular strength training or other intense exercise (interval training / that type sports) sessions, regular yoga / stretching sessions and some aerobic exercise will improve health of any single individual. Doing any of the extremes is unhealthy - meaning that drug-enhanced bodybuilding, powerlifting or in the other end of the scale marathons, triathlons etc. put the body under very high stress. I think the minimum anybody should do is four workouts of mixed types of training per week. I can feel it when I do less and it's just not enough. We sit way too much on our butts - it's not healthy! This is one of the things I will focus on during the next months.

Think right


We need to learn to run our own brain. We can't eliminate stress from our lives, but we can learn to perceive life's stressors differently. I'm all for positive thinking and always try to find the bright side of everything that happens! It's not always easy. I still fall in mudhole of dark thoughts once in a while. I believe we go through difficulties because "somebody out there" knows we have the strength. And through those experiences we learn and grow. The same things will happen as long as we learn the lesson that's needed to learn. So it's all about learning to perceive life's lessons in a new way.


This is the hardest one for me and needs the most work. I've taken NLP courses to learn about the structures of my own thinking and behavior. It's very interesting and has given me new perspectives. One of the most important ones is that even though figure competing messed up my body and mind, it was the first step on this path that I'm walking now. So instead of seeing myself as a failure in competing in figure, I'm trying to learn to see myself as a success as everything that happened just made me a stronger person in the end.

Talk right


We need to talk right to ourselves and everyone around us. Negative self talk is like mental abuse. I need to practice this a lot as well. I can be very very hard on myself. After giving a public promise in Biosignature 1 in NYC that I will be more grateful to myself for all the things I do and what I am, I've begun observing my inner talk more. When I find myself saying ugly things to myself, I apologize and try to go behind the thought to see what's there. Most of the time it's fear over something, and sometimes it's a negative belief. I use Byron Katie's method "The Work" to break the into the structure of negative beliefs. It's very effective (for me). And when I talk nicely to myself, it's way easier to talk nicely to others - not because I want them to like me, but because it comes from the heart.



By watching Robert talk, I think I finally know what True Health looks like. He looks very energetic, happy, lean and healthy. And he SMILES. A lot. From the heart :) I want to feel the same and look as healthy (but with more muscles, thank you ;)). I will turn 30 in June 2012, and I want my 30's to be about HEALTH. It's time to get strong and healthy... if I accomplish both of those, it must eventually lead to lean as well!

2 comments:

Anu said...

"We need to talk right to ourselves and everyone around us. Negative self talk is like mental abuse. I need to practice this a lot as well. I can be very very hard on myself. After giving a public promise in Biosignature 1 in NYC that I will be more grateful to myself for all the things I do and what I am, I've begun observing my inner talk more. When I find myself saying ugly things to myself, I apologize and try to go behind the thought to see what's there. Most of the time it's fear over something, and sometimes it's a negative belief."

Tämä kosketti oikeasti tosi syvältä. Hyvä, että en itkemään ruennut. Kiitos, että saat ravisteltua. <3

Meri, Helsinki said...

Read this in the subway on my way home from yesterday's gymnastics... Not just interesting but very touching :') You have a talent for this writing thing, especially in making serious stuff appealing and also emotional, but not in a bad way. In a way that is easy to relate since you tell so much about your own experiences.

Also, this liver detox thing: I just came to think there might be some happening with my liver as well (due to the minerals and stuff I'm using to "heal" it). I mean, some of the symptoms sound so familiar: my ears have been ringing, my scalp's dry and wicked mood swings. Could also be due to the cortisol but there's at least something happening :-D (this is the happy moment, like most of the time)

Anyway, I think I've got the other stuff taken care of, but the think and talk right part is seriously challenging... I'm with you on the Katie Byron thing!

Wishing happy thoughts for your day!