PastorMan’s BodyBlog

Just got back from 7 days in New Orleans working with group of friends to try to help rebuild the city. Had a great trip and was able to help 7 families get back into their devastated home, but it is great to be back with my family in my home. Can’t wait to sleep in my own bed. Also looking forward to getting back into my routine tomorrow—chest day baby!  The main lesson we learned…don’t take what you have for granted. Family, Friends, Your Health, Your Home…each one a tremendous blessing. Don’t wait for a disaster or calamity to learn to appreciate what you have.  Kiss your spouse and kids. Tell your friends you love them. Work hard at your job and take care of your body. You are blessed. Have a great night.

Our team divided into 3 crews today and begin working on 3 different houses…so much damage! Tens of thousands of homes completely empty and abandoned. We are making such a small dent so it is good to meet the families you are helping. My crew sheetrocked & mudded a house today…should finish tomorrow. Hard to imagine the scope of houses destroyed and lives impacted. I would love to see some bodyspace people put their muscles to work, take some time and invest in this community. They need it sooo badly. Wouldn’t you want the country to rally around you in their same situation?

It’s one thing to see the pics, it’s another thing to drive through the flooded areas and see entire neighborhoods thrashed and abandoned. New Orleans is NOWHERE NEAR back to normal. All of downtown and the money making districts have been rebuilt but the poorer neighborhoods are vacant and ignored. There are 12,000 homeless people here living on the streets. Compared to Seattle near me…about 2,000. Anyway, there is still great need for us to do something. If you have the chance come down here and help out. We will be sheetrocking, wiring and painting houses. Everyone can do something. Just a thought.  Hope you all had a great weekend.

Our first day in the Big Easy was filled with travel fiascos…amazing how supposedly professional businesses drop the ball and don’t seem to care about customer service. Other than that we had a good day. Spent most of it at the NBA All Star Jam Session. Pretty fun. Another day of hanging around the city and then start our 3 different projects on Monday. Am glad to be here helping the city recover.  Have a great weekend everyone.

A bunch of friends of mine (about 25 of us) and I are headed to New Orleans to work on homes for Hurricane Katrina victims. Been looking forward to this for a while. We will be gutting and remodeling a couple houses. I love helping people and this community definitely needs our help. The downside is, no working out or eating clean for a week. They will be feeding us.  Small price to pay. Have a great week everyone!

Happy Valentines day everyone!! Valentines day has special meaning for us. Today we celebrate our 21st Engagement Anniversary. 21 years ago today in Cour D Alene, Idaho I proposed to the beautiful woman who is now my queen. Everyone say, "AAHHHH." The song that came on while I was proposing and is now are song was, "Bad to the Bone." Describes us perfectly. Anyway, enough reminiscing…Have a Great VDay everyone!

Here are some more thoughts on the attitude we choose…

Attitude is like a Mirror…Have you ever noticed that happy, friendly people generally see the world as a happy, friendly place? While negative, grumpy people generally see the world as negative and grumpy.  Our view of the world is simply a reflection of the attitude we embrace.

Attitude is like a Seed…whatever you plant, that is what you will eat. Too many people are planting crabapples and hoping for golden delicious.

I hope you have a happy, friendly, golden delicious kind of day today!

I just shared this quote yesterday with my congregation and thought I would post it here. It is one of my fav quotes of all time and it applies to everything…physical fitness…a marriage…a job…everything.

"The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life.  Attitude, to me, is more important than facts.  It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think, say or do.  It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill.  It will make or break a company… a church… a home.  The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we embrace for that day.  We cannot change our past… we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way.  We cannot change the inevitable.  The only thing we can do is play the one string we have, and that is our attitude… I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it.

And so it is with you… we are in charge of our Attitudes”

Charles Swindoll

My rant…Been trying to gain mass and size (like most guys I assume), but having a hard time. Can’t really complain, but my metabolism is so high that I stay pretty lean and can’t gain weight.  So I lift more, harder, etc… As a newbie at this I am learning working out is the easy part. I can bust my butt in the gym and love it!!! No problem. What I am NOT doing is eating enough. I’ve suspected this for a while. I eat pretty well and clean just not enough. This month’s M&F reveals to me that to gain the 10 pounds of lean muscle I want to gain I need to eat about 4,500 clean calories a day!!! Holy Cow, I don’t think I can eat that much. This will easily be the hardest part for me.

Today was our first day of Eating Clean off the Tosca Reno plan. Had her "Oatmeal Bake" for breakfast…oatmeal, cranberries, raisins…pretty bland but I could do it. Not bad. Will see how the rest of the week goes.