Property Investments, Landlording, CrossFit, Nutrition & Safety

Last week I wrote and released an article on how it is possible to kick a website out of Google’s Search Engine Ranking Pages (SERP’s), and how to defend yourself against it. I released it under the title: How to Defend your Website from the Google Duplicate Proxy Exploit and under the psedonym “Sophie White”.

Why the pseudonym? It’s a Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) trick, as it’s easier to track where articles go and who publishes them, if you use different names. I have several, Sophie White is just one I occassionally use. Also,sadly sexism is definitely rife on the internet, and some sites only publish articles written by women. Such is life.

Anyway back to the point, how can it be that it’s possible to knock a website out of Google? You’d think that Google were pretty on the ball these days on this sort of thing? Is this a new exploit that Google have yet to become aware of? No, Google have known about it for at least 2 years, and have done nothing despite repeated appeals from SEO experts like Dan Theis for example.

I’m not going to repeat the entire contents of my article here, you can click the link above and read it in its full glory. So here’s the short version:

Google has a duplicate content filter. Every time the GoogleBot indexes a page it gets checked against Google’s database to see if they’ve found that page before and determine whether it’s a copy or not. They do this because Google doesn’t want to be serving up duplicate pages all the time. It’d be irritating if you searched Google for “blue widgets” and the first 10 results were all the same page content.

Let’s say Google finds a page and determines that it’s a duplicate (how they do that is beyond the scope of this post) what happens is Google decide to heavily penalise one of the pages. Simple huh? Here’s the rub, how does Google know which is the original page, and which is the copy? What if they get it wrong and they penalise the legitimate site, in favour of the duplicate? Doh!

And this is where it gets worse, what if a competitor of yours deliberately sets up a duplicate page and gets Google to rank it instead of your page? Ok there’s a raft of things you can do in this circumstances, many involving changing content, engaging lawyers, cease and desist letters to the ISP’s etc. However, there is one kind of webserver that is built to do exactly this: proxy servers.

Proxy Servers are designed to copy the web and serve it up as a local cache, and they are integral to making the internet run faster. If a competitor gets your page cached by a proxy, and then starts using normal white (or black) hat techniques to promte the proxies copy of your site, there’s every chance that Google will think that this big proxy servers copy of your web page is the true legitimate copy, and pow, there goes your sites rankings as Google boots you down it’s index.

There are various defence mechanisms you can use to protect your site, and they are detailed in the article I wrote. If this has happened to you, and you are completely stuck, my SEO company Intrinsic Marketing will be able to help.

(On a side note, I submitted my article to be published on eZineArticles.com sadly despite being a Platinum Author at eZineArticles, they refused to publish my article, claiming that it might be used for malicious intent. Whilst that’s true, I believe far more good will come from informing the masses on the proplem and the solution, rather than sticking our collective head in the sand, and hope the bad guys don’t notice!)

The inexorable fat loss continues, with this months 37″ waist making the body fat percentage calculation now 18%, compared to last months 19% body fat. Note that weight is about the same at 13st 10.

It is interesting actually because it seems hard not to loss fat on the Zone Diet. This month for example, I can probably put down these items as things normally not conducive to losing weight or fat, but that I have consumed anyway and still lost fat:

• 3 litres of ice cream
• 1kg of old fashioned sweets from www.AQuarterOf.com
• about 10 bottles of wine
• 8 bars of chocolate

Careless I suppose, and I reckon if I was being more strict with my diet I’d already be at my target 15% body fat. Be hey, if I can still eat and drink what I like and still lose weight, why not?

I’m a complete Zone Diet convert, it’s true. In fact, I’m almost concerned about what happens after I reach 15%, because how do I stop losing fat when I get there? It’s a bizarre thought to think I might get too thin!

A friend of mine approached me recently and pointed me at a “Stunning New PLR Package In Highly Lucrative Niche“. This scheme basically buys you a website template, pre-built with Google AdSense adverts, access to a load of articles, and a few bundled ad ons, and promises that if you buy it, you can fiddle with a bit of work, and then watch the cash roll in.

My friend asked me if that was the sort of thing I was interested in? Hmmmmm……

This “Niche” was basically student loan consolidation, so it’s a financial loan “niche”. It’s the Unsecured Loans market, which is clearly a huge, multi 10’s of Billions of dollars / pounds / bucks / yen etc market a year. I would stay away from this and all other mass markets: Real estate, Back pain, Hypnotherapy, Stop smoking, Weight loss, Exercise, Loans, Mortgages, Poker, Gambling, Credit Cards etc etc, are all not worth it in my humble opinion. These aren’t “niches”, they are mass markets. Yes there are big gains to be had here if you can really break into the mass market, but there are ten thousand people thinking the same way, so why set oneself up for the hardest fight right from the off?

Let me give you an example, I know a guy, Rob Benwell, who sold the Niche Domination System. What was his niche? Fish care! Not just fish in general, Fish are a market not a niche. No, his niche were just Discus Fish. This is his website: www.discus-fish-secrets.com It doesn’t make him a fortune, just about a $1,000 profit per month last time I heard. And he has many such sites. How to raise, care for and breed Discus fish?!? Now that’s niche! I’d rather have 10 small niche sites like this, each bringing in a few hundred pounds a week, than 1 site on loans, which would be a lot more effort, may never pay off, and be significantly higher risk.

Personally I would rather be a medium fish in a small pond; than a medium fish in a big pond, where there are bigger fish about, if that makes sense?

I have relationships with a couple of Financial Advisor’s, and have toyed with the idea a couple of times of going into the lead generation side of things, as they have the contacts to be able to make it pay. E.g. one of them does lead generation at the moment, and he reckons for every 100 qualified leads he gets (i.e. they fill out an “I’m interested in a unsecured loan, here are my details, someone call me.” form), he makes £2,500 GBP ($5,000 USD) profit. But getting those leads is damn hard! How much traffic to a website on loans do you think you need to get 100 people to give you their personal contact details and ask someone to call them? I’d say, that even if you had a really professional looking website, with great original content, you’d be looking at most at a 0.25% conversion rate from organic traffic. So you need 40,000 unique visitors to get 100 sign ups. Tough.

I would say that a full half (probably more) of everyone I meet who is trying to make a living online, tries to go after at least 1 of these high profile markets. I’d also say that 95% of the people I meet trying to make a living online, are not successful (which I define as being able to give up all other forms of income and live comfortably).

To my mind it’s pretty obvious that those 2 statistics are inexorably linked! I would also never buy a “Stunning New PLR Package In Highly Lucrative Niche“. If it was that stunning, the guy would be doing it himself, several times over, quietly dominating the niche, and rather than trumpeting it, he would be desperately trying to make as much money as possible before the word got out.

PLR (Private Label Rights) Packages are basically schemes where you get access to content, usually in the form of articles, that you can package and resell. But PLR Packages are a waste of time, because you are sharing your content with every other person who subscribes to the package. You are paying to use duplicate content, bad idea. I would say that when buying a PLR package you are actually taking a step back, because you erroneously think you are a step in the right direction, and that’s not a good start. Any business model where you buy the bits off the shelf, plug them together, and then expect the cash to roll in…. well you hopefully get the point.

If it was that simple, why would this guy by telling the likes of you and me, and offering to sell the hidden secret for just $49 USD? I’ll tell you why, because there’s another mass market “niche” that I didn’t list before, it used to be called the Get Rich Quick market, now it has a new name: the “Internet Marketing” market. I.e. people who want to make a living online and have a few bucks to throw at buying a “Get Rich Quick, give me $49 and I’ll tell you everything you need know and do to be holidaying in the sun while the cash roles in.” scheme. This is a multi $Bn world wide market.

This is actually the model that you need to follow though if you want to break into the extremely lucrative Internet Marketing niche. First, you need some modest success. You need to launch that website that makes you some cash, it needs to be > $10,000 within 3 months as a minimum. First, and this is the most important, you need to milk it for all it’s worth, until other people catch on and competition is squeezing your profit. Then, here’s what you do, you need to collate all you evidence: ClickBank cheques; Paypal statements; pictures of you on holiday with the Ferrari and gorgeous girl on your arm. Then turn what you did into a “system” and then sell it. After all, you have the proof right? It’s simple isn’t it? Of course that niche will be busted right open and the chances are only a small fraction who buy your system will make any money, but meh, you’ve probably just made 50 grand, so what do you care, right?

Do you know I’ve actually spoken to people who have lost their job, borrowed $20,000 USD and then gone to an Internet Marketing forum and asked what they should spend their money on to get rich online, but please it’s got to be quick, and guaranteed to make a profit, cos their money will run out soon and that’s all they’ve got to feed their family, and then they don’t know what they’ll do can they can’t get any more credit! {:-O Seriously, I’ve seen it.

It is however entirely possible to make a decent living online without targeting these mass markets, and I know several internet millionaires. What’s the common denominator? They all produce (in different ways) genuinely original products and services and websites, and they devote a significant amount of time to SEO and marketing their site. Some sell info products, most however have commissioned these themselves and are not selling other peoples stuff (though I do know successful affiliate marketers too). Some sell physical products, and they vary from pure drop shipping with a few scattered work from home “employees”. Some have progressed to visiting China and importing directly container loads of stock and have warehouses and offices and employees and the like.

It’s also entirely possible to make a modest income and be “rich” in other ways. Take Dave Taylor: of www.askdavetaylor.com He earns a modest $100,000 USD a year from that one site (that’s all he’s got) mostly from AdSense. But he only works part time, and he takes an entire month off work every summer to spend with his family. (His blog is pre-loaded with time delayed content for that month.) That’s his goal, he’s a happy man and I have immense respect for him for it.

I know another guy in Ireland who amongst other things, plies his trade on MySpace and the other social networking sites, doing for example affiliate leads for things like online paid surveys. He’s not wealthy, but he doesn’t have to work an office job to feed himself and his family. He made me laugh actually, cos he said to be once: “Whenever I get a bit bored and am lacking motivation, I just pop down the pub for a Guinness and watch all the fools trudging to and from work all day. That normally cheers me up.”

So what’s the moral here, well it’s simple: There is no Get Rich Quick scheme in Internet Marketing. If you find one, keep your mouth shut. If someone’s selling you one, there’s little chance you’ll make any money in it. Don’t try to buy an income stream, go out and carve yourself a little corner of the net from which to peddle your genuinely unique and value add, wares, whatever that may be.

My daughter Jadzia, loves the times she can get down to Crossfit Manchester. Crossfit is ideal for kids as it’s a very varied and fun workout regime, which keeps them interested and entertained, whilst exercising the entire body. As we all know, with the lure of TV, and games consoles, and the demise of PE in schools, it can be hard to get kids interested in exercise and fitness. I’m just thankful we have a Crossfit gym nearby to help.

The situation is made even better with sites like Crossfit Kids doing open competitions for kids all over the world to do Crossfit style workouts, scaled to their age. The current competition is Cindy, which is nominally round of: 5 Pull ups, 10 push ups, 15 squats, and your score is as many rounds as possible (AMRAP) in 20 minutes. As I said, this is scaled to age, so my 6 year old did this: 2 pull ups, 3 push ups, 4 squats AMRAP in 6 minutes. In fact, the pull ups were further scaled to jumping pull ups, and the push ups to box push ups.

Jadzia was ecstatic at the chance of entering this competition and talked of nothing else for the 2 week run up. Actually she was very interested in the possibility of winning a Crossfit Kids T-shirt. This is her competition entry:

She manages an impressive 16 rounds, 2 pull ups and 2 push ups. However this competition has raised an interesting question. I was asked by a concerned relative:

“I’m sure, knowing you, that you have checked any possible health risks that might be associated with putting a young child’s developing body through strenuous exercise, especially a young girl.”

My response was that firstly, I hardly think that a few minutes of body weight exercises, half of which are basically just standing up (the squats), could possibly be considered “strenuous exercise”. It is however simply “exercise”, something that kids seem to get very little of these days, as they develop obesity and diabetes in ever increasing numbers each year.

That other nice thing about timed work outs, is that you work at the rate your body allows. You can see that Jadzia speeds up significantly in the last minute, which just proves that she was working well within her ability and had some left in reserve.

Crossfit is deliberately an intense workout regime, I don’t pretend to understand all the science, but I know Crossfit works, simply because I am for sure in the best physical shape I’ve ever been. Take Friday for example, the workout was Jackie: 1,000m Row; 50 Thrusters at 20kg (basically a squat but when you stand up you lift a weight lifters bar over your head), followed by 30 pull ups. Last time I did this workout was 1st May and it took me 12 minutes 21 seconds. Today it took me 9 mins and 20 seconds, an astonishing 24% improvement in “fitness” in just 3 months!

I strongly recommend having a read of this free Crossfit Journal which has an excellent article on What is Fitness which is actually a surprising difficult thing to define.

However, to address the specific point about kids and exercise, let me quote the Jeff Martin, the person who runs Crossfit Kids:

“In our research we found plenty of people saying that weights were harmful to kids, and absolutely no evidence to support their statement. On the other hand we found plenty of evidence that it is beneficial”

You can read Martin’s research in the Crossfit Kids journals he publishes, specifically issues 2 and 3: Feb 2006 and March 2006 respectively. As for “especially a young girl”, as the most vulnerable gender in society, I think it’s even more important that girls have the physical confidence to protect themselves than boys. There is no reason in my mind why girls shouldn’t be equally physically capable people.

One comment on “prevailing wisdom”, I must confess that’s not something I really take much notice of, simply because it seems so often to be clearly wrong! Take weight for example, prevailing wisdom says that in order to lose weight you should cut out fat and eat loads of carbs instead. As a Nation, our diet is a lot less fatty than it used to be and yet obesity, diabetes and heart disease is a lot more common… that fact alone should make anyone with an enquiring mind stop and think about whether the “prevailing wisdom” is correct or not.

Similarly, look at how exercise is promoted: lots of athletic people bouncing on trampolines with big grins and no sweat, with the voice over saying how *easy* it is to lose those inches! Again, despite the record sales of home exercise machines: obesity and heart disease is still rife. If exercise and getting fit was so easy, as the prevailing wisdom seems to be telling us, then shouldn’t we all be fit and healthy athletes?

I believe it is a truism to say that your body adapts to its environmental needs. If you need to get out of a chair, your body will build the muscle and strength to allow you to do that, so long as you practice regularly. If you need to be able to run a mile, then your body will develop the stamina to allow you to do that, providing you keep asking it to do it. This is self evidently true, or exercise of any sort would result in no strength gain / muscle growth / stamina increase, whatsoever.

It’s also true to say that as children grow up, their developing bodies develop to fit their environment, but in a much more effective way than us non-growing adults. That’s why kids that watch TV all day and eat too many pie and chips, turn into 14 stone monsters at 9 years old (in the news about 3 months ago!). And why kids that grow up in an athletic environment, adapt very quickly to that need and develop an athletic physique and attitude towards fitness that should see them in good stead for the rest of their lives.

There is a lot of myth and speculation about childhood exercise and indeed childhood weight lifting. However there is next to no evidence to suggest that it’s in any way bad, and plenty to show that it’s beneficial. I foresee a long and athletic Crossfit future for myself and my family.

I discovered today a new way to hurt myself down the gym: I was doing a “Clean” which is to pick an Olympic Weight Lifting bar off the ground, stand up straight as fast as you can which launches the bar into the air, then squat down underneath it and catch it on your shoulders. Actually I was dong 60 of them, at 40kg, along with several other exercises too (60 deadlifts, 60 push j3rks and 3 runs round the block), but that’s not the point.

The point is, I now have something new to fear: hitting myself in the neck with a flying 40kg bar, specifically right in the adams apple! I have a lovely graze on my neck now. Which matches nicely with the 2 friction burns on my butt0cks which I got yesterday (*insert jokes here*) from doing 200 situps (again, amongst several other exercises: 100 pull ups, 150 pressups, and 250 squats).

Add to that the bruises on the back of my shoulders from Back Squats on Tuesday, the bruises on the front of my shoulders (delts is it?) from Thrusters on Friday, and the bruise on my collar bone (clavicle I think) from Push Presses on Saturday, and I’m generally feeling rather beat up! Of course I haven’t even mentioned the aches and pains to go along with the physical evidence, like the sore thighs, wrecked pecks and aching stomach muscles.

Crossfit’s fun, no honest it is! 🙂 “Wear your stripes with pride.” so I’ve been told, and to be fair, when they stop hurting, I will. 😉

There’s something special about the named workouts in Crossfit, a certain special amount of pain!

I had the “opportunity” to do Fran last week for the first time. Fran is: 21 Thrusters (with a 40kg bar), 21 pull ups, 15 Thrusters, 15 pull ups, 9 Thrusters, 9 pull ups. Doesn’t sound to hard does it? I am reasonably good with Thrusters as they work to my strengths, and I know I can do 21 pull ups in one set, so I was quite looking forward to it. I’ve seen one of the coaches, Mark, do Fran in a blistering 3 minutes 17 seconds, and was keen to see how far behind him I would be.

This is the video of Mark doing that time it at the Crossfit Manchester grand opening, Mark is on the left with the longer hair:

Even amongst the named crossfit exercises, Fran however has a special reputation as being particularly fierce. Think about it, an exercise routine that can be done in just 3 minutes (if you’re really good), and yet that is your total exercise requirement for the entire day! That’s an astonishing statement, and should really have given me warning, but here’s the thing about Crossfit, the anticipation never seems quite so bad as actually doing it.

It all started fairly well, I was hoping for the first set of Thrusters unbroken, which I just managed. 15 Thrusters straight off the bat, pausing for a few seconds whilst still holding the bar at 15 and 18. Then however, the pull ups were a lot harder than I thought, and I had to do 21 is 3 sets.

After that, it all went down hill, I just can’t explain how badly Thrusters take it out of you. Typical to Crossfits philosophy is the whole body exercise, and Thrusters certainly do that. Follow that with Kipping Pull-ups (the body swinging type, distinctly not the static hang body builder pull ups) which are designed again as a full body exercise, and it becomes constant 100% full body effort. And beleive me, when you’re at maximum output, 3 minutes is a long time. Imagine asking a 100m sprinter, who’s used to sprinting for 11 seconds at max output, to try to maintain max pace for 3 minutes, then you are starting to understand what Fran does to you.

Anyway, my time eventually was a respectable 7:24 which I was a bit disappointed at to be honest as I’d hoped for sub 5 mins, worse though was I spent pretty much a full 20 minutes lying on the floor recovering before I could stand up and function as a member of the human race again.

Now for Barbara, which is completely at the other end of the spectrum to Fran. Barbara is 5 rounds of:

• 20 Pull ups
• 30 Press ups (push ups for the Americans reading)
• 40 Sit ups
• 50 Squats
• 3 mins rest

So in total (and I’m always getting told off for doing this) the total number of reps are:

• 100 Pull ups
• 150 Press ups
• 200 Sit ups
• 250 Squats

Ouch! It’s also a marathon when compared to Fran, in fact the 3 minute rests at the end of each round just make things worse, as there’s no excuse not to work as fast as you can each round, cos you know a rest is coming. Karl, one of the Crossfit Manchester coaches, has been saying for a while and now I beleive him: “Learn to fear the Crossfit exercise routines with built in rests!” And he is sooo right.

I would say that most Crossfit routines are on average 15-20 minutes long, but Barbara took me a whopping 54:10 ! I know I’m bad at body weight exercises, as I’m still carrying extra weight round, I reckon probably a stone (14 pounds) in fat that I could still do with losing, and my fast becoming fairly bulky frame seems to do better on strength than endurance. And this is shown up by once again, me having the slowest time in the whole gym for that day (most were in the 40-45 min range).

It is all hard of course, but the press ups particularly so. It’s not that you get tired or out of breath so much (though you do) it just becomes a fundamental lack of strength and your muscles just refuse to do a simple thing: push your body up off the floor! This is something only a few seconds rest can fix.

The whole point of Crossfit, is it’s a functionally varied exercise regime, that builds on your strengths and exposes your weaknesses. I’m not going to improve on mostly body weight crossfit exercises by not doing them am I? And it’s fun and interesting in part because of that variation. In 6 months of doing Crossfit 3-5 times a week, I have done Fran once, and Barbara once, and it will likely be months and months before I do them again, at which point I shall be looking back here to check my times for improvement.

Has it really been 3 weeks since I’ve updated my log? 😮 Oh dear, this is going to be a big one!

Monday 30th July – “Boxing Fran”

30 Box Jump, 21 Thrusters, 21 Pull Ups
30 Box Jump, 15 Thrusters, 15 Pull Ups
30 Box Jump, 9 Thrusters, 9 Pull Ups

Colin – 18:02 / 26″ / 30kg

26″ Box jumps means the stage by the white board. I slipped once and landed on my shin. 3 weeks later, I still have the scabs and bruise!

Tuesday 31st July – Front Squat – 1 – 1 – 1 – 1 – 1 – 1 – 1

Colin – 90 – 100 – 110 – 115 – 120 – 122.5PB – 125F
Then Cleans – 85kg

Thursday 2nd August – Snatch – 1-1-1-1-1-1-1

Colin – 55kg

Then 3 rounds of: 10 Snatch, 15 OH Squat, 430m Run

Colin – 21:08 @ 40kg

The magic shoes haven’t quite done it for my snatch, I’m 10kg off my PB! 🙁

Friday 3rd August – AMRAM in 20 minutes of:

5 Push Press, 10 Knees to Elbows, 15 Lunge Walk

Colin – 7 / 50kg / K2E

So many knees to Elbows are d4mn hard!

Monday 6th August – 3 rounds – (with a cut off at 30 minutes if full 3 rounds not completed)

15 Dumbbell Cleans
20 Press Ups
Row 500m
25 Pull Ups
30 Sit Ups

Colin – 28.22 – 17.5kg

With the 17.5kg dumb bell cleans (each that is!) I honestly didn’t think I’d finish this one before the 30 mins, but was pleasantly surprised.

Tuesday 7th August – Back Squat 5×5

Colin – 115 – 115 – 115 – 115 – 115

Going for strength workout here rather than max weight. Doing all 25 reps at 115kg was hard!

Thursday 9th August – Snatch + 3 Overhead Squats x 10 – Max Load Completed.

Colin – 60kg

It’s getting better, I’m working on changing my snatch technique, but I’m still 5kg off my PB’s here.

Friday 10th August – “Resting Helen”

3 rounds
Run 430m
21 KB Swing
12 Pull Ups
Rest 2 mins

Time / KBell
Colin – 15:58 / 20kg

OMG this kicked my 4rse! The rest only helped me kill myself more on the runs. It didn’t seem like it was going to be too hard, boy was I wrong! :'(

Saturday 11th August – Front Squat 7×3

Colin – 100 – 105 – 110 – 112.5 – 115PB – 105 – 100

Was pleased with this performance (not least cos I beat Kempie, tee hee! 😉 ) Actually was very nice working out out with him.

Tuesday 14th August – Back Squat 5×5

Colin – 117.5 – 117.5 – 117.5 – 117.5 – 117.5

Inching up the 25 off back squats here (did 25 x 115 last time). Was tough though, and my knees and thighs are really starting to feel the heavy focus recently on squats.

Wednesday 15th August – “Josh”

21 Overhead Squat, 40kg, 42 Pull Ups
15 OH Squat, 30 Pull Ups
9 OH Squat, 18 Pull Ups,

Colin – 12:12 @ 40kg

Followed by 10 x approx 50m sprints, with about 30 secs rest between sprints.

Was very pleased to do this as Rx’d without modification, even if it meant I didn’t get sub 10 min, but it was the pull ups that slowed me down anyway. And boy do my elbows still feel all those pull ups 24 hours later!

Thursday 16th August

A much needed rest day. Typically though, 36 hours after last exercising, I feel worse than I did yesterday with aches and pains and the like. Still, I know I need it cos am sore in more places I care to mention.

This is an email I sent a guy who was just starting on the zone, and not getting it quite right. I hope I’ve managed to correct him properly. “> ” denote his comments on what he was eating, I thought I’d stick it up here for your benefit, if you’ve got an opinion, feel free to pipe up:

> Breakfast – porriage, small slice cold meat, 4 almonds.

You’re not giving precise measurements but that looks like 2 problems: not enough protein (*small* slice of meat), and too many carbs (porridge – I’m assuming a bowl full?). I always start by planning the protein in my meals. Protein always is the start which drives how much carb and fat to add. These days, protein is the only thing I still actually measure with scales, as it’s the most important to get right.

> snack – apple, small slice cold meat, 4 almonds.

Again, a *small* slice doesn’t sound like enough.

> Lunch 1 egg, 1 small brown pitta bread, small amount of cheese grated over and salad.

This looks a better protein to carb ratio, so long as the pitta was really small. Where’s the fat though? Salad dressing perhaps?

> dinner – 1 slice beef ham (thin), 3 small pototo, veg seclection stir fried with small amount of olive oil.

1 thin slice of ham doesn’t sound like nearly enough protein. Potatoes are very carb dense, so 3 pototoes could easily be 5 or 6 blocks worth of carbs. And what was in the veg selection? Carots and parsnips for example would be fine, but not with the potatoes.

> snack – plain yogurt, apple, 4 almonds and 1 thin slice of fruit loaf (home made)

That was a great snack, until the apple and fruit loaf! lol. 😉 A typical balance zone snack here would have been: plain yoghurt (1 block protein and 1 block carbs) and almonds (1 block fat). The apple adds 2 blocks of carbs with no protein or fat to balance it. And only you and the recipe book know how many carbs are in the fruit loaf.

> It was only a thin slice without any butter.

That’s not zone thinking. Butter is fine (in moderation) as a fat source. It’s actually better to have butter on a carb source, than just pure carbs, cos the fat helps to tell your brain you are full (providing the protein is there too).

The nice part about the zone is this: you can eat exactly what you are used to eating. You just need to change the proportions, and that can take some getting used to, cos you have to throw away everything you thought you knew about “healthy eating”. Let me give you an example:

When I first started on the zone, it entertained me no end that I could have a zoned bacon butty for breakfast! ;D Here’s what my bacon butties used to look like:

Old bacon butty: 2 slices of bread, 2 rashers of bacon, butter and brown source. Yum.

Then I zoned it, for my 5 block breakfast. I checked the carb count of the bread on the packet (9g carbs = 1 block) and found that 1 slice was 18g carbs, so 2 slices were 4 blocks. Then I checked the protein count of the bacon (7g of protein = 1 block) and discovered that an entire 6 rasher packet was about 35g protein, so that’s my 5 blocks).

So 2 pieces of bread and 6 rashers of bacon was 4 blocks of carbs and 5 blocks of protein. Checking the HP Brown Sauce bottle I discovered a modest squirt of HP was about 10g of carbs (about a block) which conveniently made up my missing carb block. But no fat yet – well 1/3 of a teaspoon of butter is 1 block of fat, so a thin spreading of butter on each bread makes the fat. Excellent, my 5 zone block bacon butty breakfast now looks like:

New bacon butty: 2 slices of bread, 6 rashers of bacon, butter and brown source. Yum, yum yum! 😀

What’s the difference? I use 3x as much bacon, and a little less butter than I would have done, apart from that, it’s exactly the same.

Just for the record, I don’t suggest this for every breakfast, as bacon is a fatty protein source, and all 5 blocks of carbs are made up of unfavourable (read high Glycemic Index) carbs. But it’s an illustration as to how you only have to change proportions, and normally that change is simply more protein, less carbs.

My personal recommendation, is that you go strict Zone for 2 weeks. Buy one of the Zone Books and measure everything for just 2 weeks. Once you’ve done that, you get a really good feel for what’s what. Like I said, I only measure the protein now, just to be sure I get enough, everything else is an educated guess, and I’m still losing fat (2 stone in fat lost now) and gaining muscle.

I’ve suddenly realised it’s a few weeks since I posted. I don’t know about time flying when you’re having fun, but it certainly flies when you effing busy! So, in no particular order, a mega update:

Work – Works gone mad, I’m going to be launching a new website shortly and it seems every waking moment is devoted to it. I’ll post up here what it is when it’s ready.

Crossfit – I’ve got “magic shoes” as they are called down the gym. Actually they are Adidas Adistar Weightlifting Shoes:

To be honest, they are a bit tight and not that comfortable, but they are managable. They were “new” off eBay for £60 including postage, half the shop price of £125, so a bargain really. They are better to lift in than normal trainers, but not a revolution I think. Either that, or I’m just not good enough to notice the difference, which is the more likely scenario!

Zone Diet and Fatloss – My Zone Diet Plan continues to work…. slowly, making incremental decreases on last months weight loss. Weight is down another 2 lbs to 13st9 now (191 lbs) and waist at belly button down another 1/2 inch to 37.5″, giving me a body fat calculation of 19%. It’s been 1% drop for each of the last 2 months, and I put this down to being slack on the diet.

I don’t measure anymore, I don’t calculate the blocks (other than protein) to ensure perfectly balanced meals, it’s all done by eye. I also cheat horrendously, I drink wine most nights of the week (too much still, got to work on that) and have chocolate several times a week. I guess it’s a testiment to the zone diet that I’m losing weight at all!

At the moment though, I’m content to not be on a “strict diet” and pretty much eat and drink what I want, and lose 1% of my body weight in fat each and every month. I figured when I started in February at 30% body fat, that it would take a year to get to where I wanted (15% – halving my fat) so I’m actually well on target for that, even at 1% per month.

Dead Cats – One of our four cats, Romulus, died. 🙁 The wife found it knocked over by the side of the road on her way to work. Why is it always the nicest most friendly cat that dies? Romulus used to jump on the bed in the morning and butt me awake to feed him, annoying but cute. Still, we had a full burial in the garden, the kid of course was extremely upset, actually we all were, it’s very sad when cats die. Bye Rommy.

Hamster Jams – In ironic timing, a few days after Rommy died, we got a Hamster for the kid. It was a long planned reward for her excellent school report. We’re a bit worried though that it might have Wet Tail which the shop assistance put the fear of God into us about. Certainly it’s not a happy bunny at the moment and it’s tail is constantly wet as it’s weeing in its own bed. The stress of the move from the shop I guess. I’m not sure it’s going to make it to be honest, we’ll have to wait and see.

Weddings – Went to the wedding of our good freinds Becca and Marcus last week, a good time was had by all *hick*. Errr that’s all there is to say really, a wedding’s a wedding. Been to rather a lot of them it seems. Oh, did have a small mishap with the wedding present: I was sent out to buy crystal wine glasses as a wedding present… managed to come back with a 600 piece poker chip set in aluminim case. I can’t imagine how that happened. I wonder if Marcus will bring it next time he comes over? 😉

New Babies – Another pair of good friends, Dan and Rachel, have had a baby.  At 2 weeks over due, and a 36 hour labour, Ethan was a hefty 8 lbs 13 oz!  Congrats to all three of them.

Google Dance  – Times up, I’ve got to run.  I’ll have to come back to how I’ve faired in the latest Google Page Rank Dance.