Years ago, I started noticing I was in significant physical pain when I used the computer for more than a few hours at a time. I used to spend 10+ hours a day in front of a computer. Figuring it was probably just time I invested in some better chairs, I bought myself an Aeron chair (and later, a better desk.)

Except the pain didn’t stop. If anything, it got worse.

I took more action. I started seeing a chiropractor. Later, I would add a weekly massage to my list. Today, I don’t do the weekly massage (actually, upon writing this, I realize I should probably add that back in!) but I do see a personal trainer three times a week to do workouts that stretch and build muscles I barely knew I had.

If there’s one thing that is a constant in my life, though, it’s pain.

“Supposed to”

That’s what makes me indescribably angry. I was raised to believe I could do anything I set my mind to. My mental faculties are strong–I get upset with my body when it doesn’t work like it’s “supposed to”–”supposed to”, meaning, of course, spending hours in front of a computer. (I am slowly starting to understand that that is definitely not what our bodies are “supposed to” be doing all day.)

After long talks with chiropractors, physical therapists, personal trainers, and massage therapists, there’s no real conclusion as to why this happened. My own theory: In high school, and growing up, I was ashamed of my body.

I was happy to show off my intellect, but scared of being treated like an “object”, so to this day I wear virtually no makeup and don’t like dressing up in anything that would show off my body. That same reflex caused me to slouch, as I was overly wary of “showing anything off” or being looked at by boys.

The slouching–that’s what I think caused this issue. It actually caused most of my muscles to develop in strange ways. I went to a myopractor recently, and he said, “Well, you’re an interesting case.” “Interesting” in this case meaning “messed up.” My hips were so far off that it basically seemed like one of my legs was longer than the other. And my neck bones were so out of place that I actually had one set of overdeveloped muscles, on one side, and one set of underdeveloped muscles on the other side of the bone.

“This stuff has been here for years,” he told me. Then he touched my left shoulder–like you would do if you’re tapping someone on the shoulder–and I screamed in pain. “Whoa,” he said. “That’s not right.”

He rotated my arm, with me fighting back tears and biting my lip as I tried to do anything to get my mind off the pain. He touched underneath my armpit and that set me off again in a red delirium of pain.

He reset my shoulder bones as he asked “How long has your shoulder been like this?”

“I don’t know,” was all I could manage. “My entire adult life.”

Pain and Anger

I live through pain every day, but it was only recently that I finally realized that most people don’t go through what I go through…that my pain level is several notches more intense than average. That what most people go through when they have an injury is what I go through on a daily basis.

It’s not something I’ve had an easy time accepting. It makes me angry when pain keeps me away from doing something I want to do. My pain level is, fortunately, matched by my determination level. Right now, for instance, I’m working through the same left shoulder pain I described above as I write this, and I can feel that I have a rib out of place. But I’m still here–writing–because I feel that getting this out there is more important than dealing with the pain. (As soon as I’m done writing this, I’ll go home and lie down on an ice pack for the next few hours.)

I recently had the realization that I had to stop fighting the pain–that fighting it was just making it worse. Being at war with the pain was just making me angry–and angry me meant more tense muscles.

The Most Difficult Lesson

Instead, I’ve had to learn probably the most difficult lesson of my life: Acceptance.

Every part of my body–both physical and mental–does not want to accept that I am in pain. It does not want to accept, in particular, that I am in chronic pain. “I can do anything!” it says. In fact, it’s difficult to even write these words, but I know now: Acceptance of a difficult situation is the only way you can get through it. You have to accept it, and see it for what it is, before you can begin finding your way out.

For me, acceptance is the first step in a journey of figuring out not only why I am this way, but how to get through it. It will involve detangling many emotional “knots”, and admitting that I can’t do everything. That I am stuck in this human body that doesn’t always like to cooperate with my dreams of being among the stars.

But then I look back at what I’ve already accomplished, and I am amazed. I draw strength from that. I didn’t make perfect decisions in my last business. In fact, one could argue that I sacrificed a lot of my physical and emotional health in building my last company.

And that makes me more determined than ever to not do that this time around. I see so many people slouched over laptops, and I just want to go over to them and say “Don’t do that! You’ll end up like I did!” But that is their journey, not mine, and I have to focus on myself. (Another lesson I’ve neglected for far too long.)

So, I can only work 4 hours a day or so. (Sometimes less, sometimes more.) I can’t hit every party (even though my brain is screaming “YES YOU CAN” right now–my body doesn’t always cooperate.) Sometimes I just have to just lie on the floor with an ice pack for 20 or 30 minutes. Sometimes I can’t sleep because everything hurts so much, and I get exhausted and just cry it out.

But you know what? It’s been this way for years, and I’ve still managed to get so many things done in this short number of years I’ve lived so far. I have to stop fighting it. I have to show people my “weakness” and still prove to them that I can do anything. The first step is accepting myself for who I am.

So, here I am, world. An imperfect being. Maybe I can’t pull the hours others can. (I can’t spend more than an hour on a laptop in a coffee shop without being in agony.) Maybe I can’t hit every party, or write 34 blog posts a week. That doesn’t make me a bad person. I have goals, and I’m moving toward those. I’ve built an amazing support network, and I’m proud to say that everyone at Whoosh Traffic has become an amazing friend to me.

In short, perhaps I can do anything…and I just need to cut myself some slack. I’m not perfect. I’m just little ol’ imperfect “me”. But maybe that’s enough to still have a huge impact on the world.

Maybe that’s just perfect–in its own way.

(I can feel the anger slowly fading away.)

Recommended Reading:

• Hitting the jackpot doesn’t mean instantly becoming happy. I wrote this post in late 2007, after I sold my business. It’s when I first started to realize that selling my business wasn’t an instant panacea.
• What Money Can’t Fix. “You can hire the housekeeper, but you’re not fixing the underlying issue. It doesn’t fix the workaholism or the need to prove yourself…”
• They’re All Going To Laugh At You. “They will leave anonymous comments on the Internet about how awful your company is, and, by extension, how awful you must be as a person.” What do you do when it happens? Read this post for my solution.

Don’t enjoy cleaning your house, cooking,
or mowing your lawn? How to outsource
boring jobs in five easy steps.

My Story

I’m a lazy cook. Anything that takes longer than 15 minutes is longer than my attention span. So I end up cooking a lot of hot dogs and macaroni and cheese.

Since I was recently diagnosed with Celiac disease, I can no longer eat out at many restaurants.

I needed a solution.

Step 1: Decide What You Want to Outsource

My first thought was to research recipes online. After reading a few of them, I quickly realized cooking could become my second full-time job. Gluten-free cooking requires understanding a myriad of various flours–and which flour works best for which purpose.

Around that time, I was reading the new expanded version of The Four-Hour Work Week. Tim Ferriss added tons of case studies to it, and one of them was about a guy who was looking for an Indian vegetarian cook and posted about it on craigslist.

That hit me like a lightning bolt. I realized my dilemma–either eat a bunch of hot dogs and Chipotle or take on a new “job” of cooking–had a third option: Hire someone.

Step 2: Push Through Your Fears

Immediately, I was beset by fears. Would this be ridiculously expensive? Would I be able to find someone who knew how to cook gluten-free food? Would I find someone who cooked terrible food that I hated or that made me sick? Would they need to use my kitchen for hours on end?

The questions didn’t stop, but I realized that, like my business fears, I would simply have to push through them and try it out.

Whenever I get paralyzed by fear, I like to play this game called “What’s the worst that could happen?” I imagine the most outrageous scenario possible. I often do this before public speaking. Feel free to make it totally insane. Here’s one from public speaking: “I go up on stage, and aliens abduct the audience. Then an earthquake hits. Then I’m suddenly transported back in time to the Ice Age…”

Once you start laughing, your fears are usually gone. Whatever it is, it can’t be as bad as your crazy imagination makes it out to be.

I applied this technique to hiring a cook. “She charges $500 an hour, and claims she knows how to cook gluten-free, but then uses flour in everything…she makes the worst food imaginable…” (And then I started imagining food that looked terrible and tasted even worse.)

Step 3: Post the Ad

I needn’t have worried. My craigslist posting (below) generated 14 responses within the first day; the vast majority of the responders mentioned that they were gluten-free themselves!

My craigslist post. Within a week, I had hired my chef!

The prices were all over the place. I mentioned I wanted to pay hourly, but some of the more professional chefs wanted to charge per meal. That could get expensive quickly! I pretty much instantly ruled the pros out–I’ve learned that those at the top of their game probably aren’t the best to hire for this type of task, anyway.

Step 4: Follow Up With Questions and Do a Test Run

I responded to several emails with followup questions. The woman I ended up hiring has a day job and is also gluten-free in her daily life. She was looking for a way to earn extra cash on the side.

I decided to give her a test. If it worked out, I’d hire her. She agreed to the challenge, and I had her make some time-consuming gluten-free cinnamon rolls. I reimbursed her for the ingredients. The cinnamon rolls turned out great–and Richard and I spent a day gorging ourselves on them!

After I ate the cinnamon rolls, I hired her. Yum!

Step 5: Hire, and Make the Details Clear

Here’s how our arrangement works: I pay her $10/hour, plus reimbursements for food with provided receipt. That hourly rate includes time shopping and driving the food to my house.

Since her kitchen is gluten-free, she cooks at her own house every Sunday and Wednesday and brings food over. She lives close by–about 10-15 minutes from me. We coordinate menus via email. Richard and I read gluten-free blogs and cookbooks and send her recipes.

My total spent is about $300 a month (plus food costs), and for all that I get fantastic meals that would have cost us a lot more were we to eat them in a restaurant.

Am I paying a little more than I would have to make food myself? Yes.
Am I eating better, higher-quality food? Heck, yes!

Here I am enjoying some of the fruits of my chef’s labor–gluten-free shrimp scampi!

My Rule of Thumb

There’s no rule that says you have to do everything around your house–especially if you don’t particularly enjoy a certain task. If you don’t like cleaning, mowing your yard, doing taxes, or cooking, hire someone else to do it.

Here’s my rule of thumb: If it stays on my to-do list for longer than two weeks, it’s time to hire someone else to do it.

“But I Can’t Afford It!”

If you think you can’t afford it, do a budget. See exactly what you’re spending money on every month. Then take $200 of those expenses and get rid of them, and use that money to hire someone. Cell phone plans, car insurance, your cable bill, and miscellaneous junk (like, oh, stopping at the convenience store after work) are all easy targets.

You can also do a few hours of side work. Typically, you will be able to bill your skills out at a higher rate than you’ll pay someone to work on your house. I really enjoy giving advice over the phone, for instance. So one alternative would be for me to do an hour of consulting a month and bill it at $500. If I can confidently deliver at least $500 of value to the person on the other end during our hour, it will be well worth it for both of us. Even if your hourly rate is lower, it’s probably still higher than $10-$12.

I live in one of the most expensive areas of the United States (N. County San Diego), so you may be able to find a chef for even less than I did!

Life is too short to do boring chores you hate because you’re afraid to hire someone else. Do your homework (and trust your gut instinct if it says to not hire a certain person) and find the right people. Spend your time doing things you love instead. You won’t regret your decision!

Recommended Reading:

• The Expanded Version of The Four-Hour Work Week. I already had the former version of this book, but the new version includes 100+ additional pages of case studies. The information on hiring a chef alone made this book well worth the purchase price.

My journey toward my diagnosis with Celiac disease.

The doctors I went to told me to get more sleep.

Things got worse as I got older. By the time I was 25, I was sleeping for a few hours every day after lunch, and not feeling any better after I woke up. Doctors told me to “take it easy” and “work less” (I worked 60-hour weeks or more, typically.)

I began to develop a hatred of the medical community.

I went on the Internet. Using websites, I diagnosed myself with hypoglycemia (and blogged about it.) This was when I was still running my hosting company. I was pretty used to doing everything myself, and I didn’t think much of any doctor I’d ever had up to that point, so diagnosing myself on the Internet seemed the logical thing to do. I quit sugar cold turkey and dealt with the cravings.

Quitting sugar certainly helped my mood, but the exhaustion continued to get worse. In addition, I developed two other symptoms: recurring bladder and yeast infections.

“Isn’t there anything I can do?” I begged multiple gynecologists.

“No, not really,” they replied. “It’s common in women who are on the Pill.”

It got to the point where I could just call and they would have a pill ready for me to fight off that month’s infection. Eventually, disgusted with having to wait until business hours, I ordered my own fluconazole on the Internet, and stockpiled it in the bathroom for the next infection that was bound to happen.

I came down with a bizarre bacterial infection on my skin. Went to the doctor. “Why do I have this?” I demanded. As they cut me open (with minimal painkillers) to clean it out, they simply shrugged. “It happens,” the woman who was stitching me back together said. “We don’t know why people get this.”

In the meantime, I was having chronic back pain. I went to a chiropractor (who became the only doctor I trusted.) He helped me find a good massage therapist. I started getting chiropractic work and massage every week.

Convinced there was still something wrong with my diet, I went pescetarian for 30 days (which continued for months afterward) and also did a liver flush. The liver flush helped for a few days. Pescetarian (though I was unwilling to admit it, as I really enjoyed the diet) didn’t really help at all.

My World Comes Crashing Down

It was May 23, 2009. I spoke at Pat O’Bryan’s UnSeminar6. For the first time, I made an offer from the stage…and 10 people signed up! I was overjoyed. I would finally begin a new business. I promised to teach them how to build blogs.

I was sleeping 10 hours a day even at UnSeminar, and still feeling exhaustion after meals, but I had myself convinced that this was mental. That if I had customers motivating me and pulling me along, I’d be able to get back into the game.

This was exactly the wrong decision.

When I got home, I could barely stay awake. I was sleeping 15 hours a day or more. My sex life was completely gone (not that it had been that great for months, what with my energy levels being so low.) I felt awful. I could barely drag myself out of bed to blog. Now I knew there was something seriously wrong.

My boyfriend insisted I find someone who could help me out. There was no way I was going back to the idiot doctors, so I asked for recommendations from people I trusted (at that point, my chiropractor and massage therapist.) My massage therapist recommended a nutritionist.

I went to her on June 19. I nearly fell asleep in her office. She was concerned. She thought it might be gluten intolerance. She immediately got me a blood test.

The results were in a few weeks later. I had mono. But the gluten intolerance test returned negative. “See?” I told her proudly. “I knew I didn’t have any food allergies.”

In the meantime, we moved to San Diego. Thank God we hired a full-service moving company; I would never have had the energy to help pack our stuff. I had recently quit my Pilates class because I couldn’t work out for more than 15-20 minutes without finding myself in an exhausted fog.

My chiropractor in San Jose recommended a chiropractor he trusted in San Diego. I saw her in July. My new chiropractor gave me a mouth spray that was supposed to help get rid of the Epstein-Barr virus (that caused mono.) I used it and felt better within a few days. “I am cured!” I thought happily.

Instead of sleeping so much at night, however, I was collapsing for 4 hours after I ate any meal. I’d eat, and about 40 minutes later, I’d sleep and wake up 4 hours later, groggy and disoriented. Something was still wrong.

More Tests Reveal The Real Problem

In August, I did a stool test. The test shows what your body can’t digest properly, and also shows parasites, which commonly cause fatigue. The test results came back and, on September 9, I had a chance to speak to my nutritionist.

The stool test showed fat malabsorption. Even though I was eating, my body wasn’t digesting all of the nutrients from the food. No wonder I was feeling exhausted!

But the “jackpot”, as my nutritionist called it, was a line on the test called “Anti-Gliadin sIg A.” Mine was labeled “High.”

“You have gluten sensitivity,” she said. Then: “You need to try going on a gluten-free diet…the sooner the better.”

“But…” I protested, remembering the words a friend had said to me a week earlier. “Gluten is in everything.”

And indeed, it is. Gluten is found in wheat, barley, rye, and some oats. A gluten-free diet means complete elimination of all of those things. No bread, pitas, cookies, cakes, pies…oh, and weird things like soy sauce, which is brewed with wheat. And many sauces, which use flour to thicken them. Which means I couldn’t eat at many restaurants.

I knew I didn’t have any real choice. I would have to try this insane diet.

I went out to eat with Richard. Like a condemned person, I decided I would have one last really good meal. We went to an Italian restaurant and I got some hand-rolled pasta. It was delicious. I ate as much as I could.

Then I came home and slept for 4 hours. That sealed it for me. I was going to attempt the insanity.

The next day, I went shopping basically the entire day. We did a “kitchen purge”, spending nearly $300 and replacing all our flour, bread, pasta, etc. with gluten-free equivalents. (Did I mention that gluten-free ingredients are expensive?) I realized I was going to have to learn how to cook.

The Final Test Results

In the meantime, I told my new chiropractor what was going on, and she advised me to get a genetic screening test for Celiac disease. I ordered the test.

On October 1, as I was standing in line to check in at my hotel for Steve Pavlina’s Conscious Growth Workshop, I decided to check my email on my cell phone. One jumped out at me immediately: the test results from the genetic screening test. I opened the email. It said “HLA-DQ 2,3 (Subtype 2,7).”

The email explained what the heck that meant. Each of us has genes from both our parents. One of my parents had given me the gene for Celiac disease. The other one had given me a gene for gluten sensitivity.

I had just about the worst possible combination of genes. I would never be able to eat gluten again. And, for the first time, I had to come to grips with what it meant to have a disease for which there was no cure. A disease which, until just a few weeks ago, had been destroying my body. A disease I had had my entire life, which had gone undiagnosed for 28 years.

A disease I was guaranteed to pass on to my kids, should I choose to have them.

Interestingly, the universe had sent me people to help. My chiropractor here in San Diego is also gluten-intolerant. My nutritionist’s husband has Celiac disease. And San Diego itself is full of supportive businesses, including local pizza places, an Italian restaurant, and a gluten-free bakery.

What Is Celiac Disease?

Celiac disease is one of the most common diseases, affecting mostly women. It is genetic, and tests for it have been recently developed. It is quite common in anyone with Northern European heritage (as I like to say with a smile, it affects mostly white women!) It is unknown why it affects women more than men.

It is an autoimmune disease, meaning your body attacks itself when you eat gluten. Common symptoms include upset stomach, fatigue, malabsorption, and bloating. It is often misdiagnosed as chronic fatigue syndrome or irritable bowel syndrome.

Since your immune system is busy fighting off gliadin by mistake, you may come down with other infections…yeast infections; bacterial infections…and yep, even mono.

It is estimated that 1% of the U.S. population has Celiac disease and up to 15% of the U.S. population has some form of gluten sensitivity. However, only 5% of those with Celiac disease in the U.S. are currently diagnosed. That means that there are literally millions of people running around wondering, like me, why they are so exhausted all the time.

Why You Haven’t Heard of Celiac Disease

If this disease is so common, how come you’ve never heard of it? The pharmaceutical companies don’t touch it because there is no drug to cure it. Since it can be managed by diet alone, there is no profit in it for them. Since tests have only very recently become available, most doctors (who went to medical school before it was known that Celiac is so common) don’t think to diagnose it. There is a huge knowledge gap with Celiac, which means people suffer needlessly.

Since going low-carb (a few months ago, before I was diagnosed) and now gluten-free, I have lost 13 pounds. I feel better and am now sleeping ~7-8 hours a night instead of 10-12. I no longer feel exhausted after I eat. My stomach is healing, and I am taking supplements to help it along. I have not had any more infections, and I have enough energy to exercise regularly. Plus, I managed to salvage many of my blogging clients and am now helping them build authority blogs.

The best part is that, after many months of delays getting my new business off the ground, I am finally ready to announce it publicly! And wait till you see what I have in store for you…including an amazing contest. I’m going to open my entire business model to you. That starts later this week!

Getting Tested

If you think you might have Celiac disease or another food intolerance, please find a nutritionist or doctor you trust, and have them order the tests. The tests I took to diagnose it were a gene panel from EnteroLab and a stool test from Metametrix.

Finding people you trust is an important step in this. Talk to your doctor or ask for advice from someone you trust. (If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, I can refer you to my nutritionist in Los Gatos; contact me and I will send you her details.) The most important takeaway from this is that it’s not normal to feel exhausted after you eat or to put up with other symptoms. Many people self-medicate with caffeine, antacids, or other drugs, but it’s best to get diagnosed and find out what the real issue is. If my symptoms sound familiar, don’t wait to get tested and seek support!

Recommended Reading:

• Wikipedia: Celiac disease. Everything you would ever want to know.
• Celiac.com. An excellent independent resource about Celiac disease.
• Trader Joe’s gluten free list (PDF). A complete list of every food at Trader Joe’s that is gluten-free. Very useful, and another reason why Trader Joe’s continues to get my business and support!

It’s hard to concentrate for more than a few seconds; writing anything more than two sentences is almost too much effort. You can’t remember anything and begin to slip on making appointments because your brain is so foggy. You find yourself constantly glancing at your calendar for fear you have missed another appointment. You are invited to social events, but can’t muster the energy to go. Even taking a 20-minute walk makes you feel like you need another nap.

This is what my life has been like for nearly a month now. I won’t mince words — it’s devastating and depressing. I wondered constantly what I was doing wrong. It was clear that this had something to do with food, but eating less, more, or different foods didn’t change the situation. I was sleeping 14 or more hours a day and not finding relief.

It became increasingly clear I wouldn’t solve this myself; besides my brain being too foggy to self-diagnose on the Internet, it was time to heed my own advice and hire an expert to help me solve this issue.

Finding an Expert

My massage therapist recommended a nutritionist named Nancy. I called Nancy and, to my relief, got an appointment last Friday. At Nancy’s request, I started keeping a food diary. On Friday, I headed to her office, where we would spend the next three hours discussing what was wrong and my treatment options.

I explained that every time I ate, I felt like a wreck — no matter what I ate. I had changed my diet to eliminate most meat, but even fruit was causing me issues. I had eliminated alcohol, caffeine and most sugar years ago due to similar problems. Yet whatever I had, it was clearly getting worse. It was to the point where I didn’t want to eat because I knew it would make me exhausted. I had lost 5 pounds in the past few weeks, even though I wasn’t overweight to begin with.

Nancy said one thing that stood out to me: “My goal is to make sure you can go to the ballpark, eat a hot dog, and drink a beer and feel great — even if you don’t want to do that!” I knew I had picked the right person to help me when I heard that!

My Visit With Nancy

Something really interesting happened at her office. I had only eaten a light breakfast before I came, for two reasons: one, I didn’t want to pass out during our appointment; and two, I didn’t expect to be there for more than an hour. After about an hour of being there, my blood sugar dropped and I started to get tired. Nancy noticed and handed me a protein bar. “Try this,” she said. “It’s gluten-free and fructose-free.” (She was concerned that I might have a gluten allergy.)

45 minutes after I ate it, I was basically asleep in the chair. I was yawning and struggling to keep my eyes open. Nancy was surprised. “That was fast,” she remarked. I learned that typical food allergies manifest after a few hours; that it happened so quickly meant my body was not properly digesting food. We had solved a small part of the puzzle — I was tired because my body wasn’t getting any nutrients from the food I ate.

Trying to Find a Fix

Nancy prescribed a plethora of supplements, and asked me to try them in a few different dosages and quantities. After experimenting throughout the weekend, the breakthrough came Monday afternoon. I tried a supplement Nancy had given me called Glysen, which has nutrients designed to “support insulin receptor sensitivity” and regulate blood sugar.

It worked like a charm and stopped my exhaustion! On Monday night, I was happy, laughing, and enjoying myself. Richard asked me when the last time I had this energy level was. I said, “I think eight years ago,” and then I started crying. I couldn’t believe it had been that long since I felt like a normal human being after I ate, but looking back, I do think that’s true.

It has only been a few days since I started taking Glysen, and the underlying cause of my exhaustion has yet to be uncovered. I am currently waiting for the results of a blood test and a saliva test to help Nancy and I understand what’s going on at a deeper level.

This is a journey, and I understand that there will be setbacks along the way. There may be days when I feel worse instead of better. The Glysen may stop working, or I may need to take more drastic measures. All I can do right now is continue recording everything I eat and how it makes me feel and continue taking Glysen. I consider it a huge blessing that I am finally able to get back to blogging and helping you.

But What Does This Have To Do With Your Small Business?

I thought hard about whether to even write this blog post. After all, I thought, it doesn’t really have anything to do with business success or entrepreneurship.

Then I realized I was being foolish. After all, aren’t we, as entrepreneurs, the heart and soul of our businesses? If we’re not feeling well, our businesses suffer. I realized I had learned four lessons from this that I could pass on to help both you and your small business succeed:

1. Call in the experts! It’s so tempting to just Google “exhaustion” (or whatever your symptoms are) and self-diagnose. But often, a web site can’t really help. You need tests to determine what’s really wrong.
   
   One of the reasons I didn’t want to call in a doctor was because I was afraid the doctor would say what I’ve heard so many times before: “Oh, just eat better and exercise more, and you’ll be fine.” You wouldn’t stand for that kind of vague answer from an employee who has done something wrong, so why stand for it from your doctor? If your doctor won’t help or isn’t taking you seriously, find someone who will!
2. Once you have the right expert, set expectations. I asked for recommendations from two people in the medical industry I trusted, then used my gut instinct to choose Nancy from the list of folks I got back. When I saw Nancy, I made it clear up front I wanted tests done to determine what was wrong, and while I was willing to take diet suggestions, I needed them to take a back seat to figuring out what was wrong.
   
   In retrospect, Nancy handing me that gluten-free, fructose-free protein bar and seeing me nearly fall asleep might have been the best thing that happened to either of us all day. At that point, she realized the primary conern wasn’t what I was eating, but why my body wasn’t digesting food. She took action and ordered saliva, blood, and urine tests, and recommended additional tests based on results of those three tests. I am now on my way to figuring out what lies underneath this exhaustion.
3. Communicate with your investors, customers and employees as much as you can. Those close to you should know what’s going on. Don’t hide it from them. Remember, you are an important face for your business. Especially if your business relies on you, it’s critical to keep in touch with your team regularly — I would say daily if at all possible.
   
   If you have many customers, email them all or write a blog post. Explain candidly what’s going on and what steps you are taking to resolve it…but if you don’t know when it will be resolved, don’t say you do.
4. Use this time to create and maintain a strong support staff. If you’re not feeling well and can only get 30 minutes or an hour of work done each day, make those 30 minutes or an hour working with employees and contractors so they can handle customer issues. Have someone else in your company call or email customers and keep them up to date. That hour of good work time you have in the day shouldn’t be spent putting out fires; the stress caused from that will certainly not make you feel better.

Being sick isn’t easy, especially when it is an extended illness or one that doesn’t have a horizon where you know you’ll be “over the hump” and feeling better.

If there’s one thing I can impart on you from my experience, it’s this: If you decide to be your own doctor, CEO, personal assistant, and support team, you will fail. None of us succeeds alone.

Just as you would with employees, feel free to “fire” doctors who won’t work with you and find the good ones who will go the extra mile to get to the root of the problem. You deserve to feel your best so you can go out and become the next small business success story!

Addendum: After I finished writing this post, I saw a news headline that reinforced my point about communication. Most of us are aware that Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple, has been extremely ill lately. Recently, Warren Buffett, billionaire investor, said Apple should have disclosed the seriousness of Jobs’ illness.

Buffett said, “If I have any serious illness, or something coming up of an important nature, an operation or anything like that, I think the thing to do is just tell the American, the Berkshire shareholders about it. I work for ‘em.”

This is a great attitude and I wholeheartedly agree. Communicate with your customers, employees, and investors. The good ones will understand. The ones who don’t probably weren’t worth keeping anyway!

Does the “amazing liver flush”
really work? My detailed review.

Background

For years, I have been suffering from myriad stomach problems — namely gas, bloating, and cramps after eating. After keeping a food journal, I discovered that garlic, onions, red meat, and milk were bothering me the most. Sure, I could use Pepto-Bismol or Lactaid pills, which cured the symptoms, but the only foolproof way to avoid painful cramps was simply to avoid these foods.

Red meat and milk weren’t too bad to cut out, but the garlic and onion problem really bothered me. I enjoy both foods, and garlic in particular is used to flavor a lot of food. If I ordered an entree with garlic, I’d simply pop a couple Pepto pills and suffer, since I liked it so much.

Then, while I was browsing Steve Pavlina’s forum, a few people mentioned that they had done liver flushes. I had never heard of a liver flush, but it immediately jumped out at me as something I needed to learn more about.

After doing some research, I bought the definitive guide on liver flushes: Andreas Moritz’s The Amazing Liver and Gallbladder Flush. I read the entire book, gleaning background information on why people choose to cleanse or flush their liver.

Moritz makes some amazing claims in the book, claiming that people have cured everything from lower back pain to acne by doing a flush. The flush apparently can even clear the dark “liver spots” we get on our faces and necks as we get older. Several testimonials in the book shared a radical point of view — that this liver flush can actually prevent most gallbladder removal surgeries. Moritz believes that if we all did liver flushes on a regular basis, we would no longer need the surgery at all. Since 20% of people experience gallbladder problems at some time in their life, this is a pretty big claim!

After reading the book, I was ready to take the challenge. Was this liver flush quack science or did it really have an effect?

I started by making a list of every problem I had that Moritz claimed the liver flush could cure. The list is ordered from problems I thought the liver flush was most likely to cure to problems it probably wouldn’t cure.

1. Garlic/onion intolerance
2. “Brain fog”/lack of mental clarity
3. Inability to eat spicy food, such as peppers (I’m not even able to tolerate green peppers)
4. Problems eating red meat
5. Lower back pain
6. Acne
7. Poor circulation in my extremities

The actual flush

The actual flush consists of a week of drinking extra apple juice at certain times of the day, followed by a colonic (which you have to schedule with a local clinic), then an overnight fast and drinking a strange concoction. Finally, you drink some laxatives and go to the bathroom.

Cautionary note: I will be purposefully vague about the actual procedure in order to discourage you from doing a liver flush simply after reading this blog. There are a LOT of nuances, allergies, and a strict time schedule you should adhere to. Several pages in the book go through what ingredients you need, as well as what specific times you need to perform each function. The liver flush can fail on timing if you’re off by as little as 10-15 minutes in certain cases. If you plan to do the liver flush, buy the book FIRST! It’s a small investment in your good health.

One more quick note: There are “liver flush recipes” online. You can read them, but there are many nuances that are NOT mentioned online (I looked closely, yet I had an issue that would not have been resolved had I only looked online.) Use the book as your manual and the Internet as a supplement to the book.

The first 6 days

During the first 6 days, I drank the apple juice as recommended. Due to my sensitive stomach, however, it caused me bloating and discomfort. I opted after a couple of days to instead dissolve some malic acid powder in apple juice. I cut the apple juice amount in half (2 glasses instead of 4), opened 1x800mg malic acid capsule, and dumped its contents into each glass. This works fine, so if you have a weak stomach and can’t deal with the apple juice’s laxative effect, do that.

On day 6, I had a colonic at a local clinic. This was my first-ever colonic, and it was definitely a strange experience! Two colonics are required during the liver flush; I strongly recommend you do them instead of taking an enema. After having two of them, I can attest they get far more out of your system than an enema will, and they are not painful — just weird.

Day 7 — The fateful day!

On day 7, I followed the instructions in the book exactly, except that since I go to sleep at midnight, I did each step exactly 2 hours later than the times he recommended in the book. Just before I was ready for bed, I drank what may the worst thing I’ve ever tasted — the “flush tonic” of fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice and extra virgin olive oil. It was kind of like drinking earwax, or maybe armpit sweat. I managed to get the whole thing down in record time, and appreciated the advice of having honey readily available to suck on after each mouthful. One word of caution: the oil will get on your lips and feel strange; resist the temptation to lick your lips! It brings the awful taste back. Just keep a napkin nearby instead.

I laid down immediately, but since I wasn’t really tired, I listened to the clearing audio instead. (I love that audio track — it has gotten me through a lot of rough nights when I couldn’t sleep!)

One of the things the book described that I was highly skeptical of was that when you lie down after drinking the tonic, you may be able to actually feel the stones moving around in your gut. Sure enough, I put my hand lightly on my liver and felt something fluttering down there. It’s really hard to explain, but it felt like something was opening and closing inside me. Then I felt several stones moving around my body and toward their eventual exit.

That was the moment when I knew it was going to work, and I was positively triumphant! All of the apple juice and the tonic were worth it; something was going to come out of me in the morning! I went to sleep.

I got up early in the morning, excited! As soon as I got out of bed, though, I felt like a freight train had hit me. The book had mentioned “detox symptoms” might hit after drinking the liver flush concoction, but I wasn’t expecting this. I hadn’t felt so sick since I had scarlet fever as a kid. I was running a fever, shivering, and cold sweat was running down my entire body. No matter what I did, I couldn’t seem to get warm. I normally don’t sweat a lot, so this was unreal. Nevertheless, I knew I had to continue, so I drank my magnesium citrate and a few glasses of water, and went back to bed. I thought I was going to be sick, but some deep breathing and meditation helped me hold it all in.

Two hours later, I woke up again to take the final laxative and wait. I tried to do some work, but I wasn’t feeling that great, and ended up aimlessly surfing the Web for a few hours. I drank some more apple juice and ate some fruit, as the book suggested, but my stomach was cranky and didn’t really want any food.

The actual stones

Finally, I felt the urge to go to the bathroom! I ended up going a total of 5 times over the next few hours. I looked forward to it, since every time I went, I felt better. I counted the stones I could see, and I ended up passing a total of 65 stones!

The stones are bright green and easy to spot in the toilet. Most of mine were about the size of Nerds candy. Some were even smaller — just tiny specks of green. The two largest ones were the size of a pea and a raisin. I was blown away! By the afternoon, I was ravenously hungry, and ate a lot of bland food and fruit. By dinner, I was eating normally, except I went light on the meat.

Throughout the entire day after the flush, I felt the best I had ever felt in my life. Even though I weighed myself periodically during the flush and did not lose or gain any weight during the week, I felt lighter. In fact, I felt amazing! I was putting together ideas much more quickly than normal, and I needed less sleep. It was completely worth the tonic and the few hours of feeling feverish.

After the flush — Did it cure my food intolerances?

As the book recommended, I had another colonic two days after the flush. I was hoping to spot more stones, but there weren’t any. I had gotten them out!

As a test, I decided to eat something that before would have had me on the floor in agony — a bagel coated in garlic. I bought some garlic spread (it’s basically just garlic suspended in a light canola oil) and smeared enough on the bagel that my boyfriend nearly gagged on the smell when I toasted it. I then ate this…aromatic…concoction with him looking on in disbelief.

I am shocked to say that I had no ill side effects when I ate it! In fact, besides garlic breath (which I had forgotten about, since it had been so long since I had eaten that much garlic!), I felt fine!

This is the result I was hoping for, but not one I could bring myself to expect. Yet there it is — my garlic and onion allergies, totally cured!

As for the rest of the list? The most obvious side effects were the complete reversal of my garlic/onion symptoms, and the clearing of my mental fog. (Trust me — even if you don’t think you have mental fog, you do!) I also was able to eat peppers somewhat more easily. Certainly, I adjusted to green peppers quite well, although red peppers still bothered me.

I can’t say my acne has really disappeared. My massage therapist says my lower back needs less massage work now, but I don’t feel a day-to-day difference. My feet and hands still get cold. I tested eating a pastrami sandwich and some pork, and they still made me feel exhausted, so I doubt I’ll go back to eating red meat. Milk still makes me gassy, but fortunately I have Lactaid pills for that. I do feel like I have a higher tolerance for dairy, however.

The bad news

One of the things mentioned in the book is that, after doing the flush, you’ll know it worked if your original symptoms reappear within a few days. The reason is that the flush gets all the stones in the front of your liver out, but within 3 days to 2 weeks, stones from the back move toward the front, and your problems come back.

Not to worry — the solution is simply to wait a month and do another cleanse. You’ll know you are done when two consecutive cleanses don’t flush out any stones. For most people, this is after 8-12 flushes. Moritz then recommends a “maintenance cycle” of 1-2 flushes a year.

I am sad to report that already, my garlic and onion sensitivities are back. It took about 6 days for them to come back. The good news is that I can eat more garlic than I was previously able to. This means my liver is making more bile than it was able to previously. I plan to continue doing the flushes every month as suggested in the book.

Conclusion

I do believe that I will again get to the point where I can eat garlic and onions without having to take Pepto-Bismol. That is a radical change! Currently, I know of no modern doctor who would have been able to solve this problem for me. After doing this, I have two opinions:

1. There are alternative cures that work as well or better than modern medicine in certain cases. The liver flush is an amazing tool, used correctly. I encourage you to try it if you have developed food “allergies” or intolerances. It may or may not fix your problem, but it will surely make you healthier.
2. Our typical American diet has unintended consequences. Moritz is a strict vegan and mentions in the book that he does the maintenance flushes once a year, but nothing ever comes out. The stones are typically made of cholesterol and fat — two things that people in our culture eat quite commonly, but that our digestive systems aren’t able to process well. If we all ate better, we might not ever need a liver flush. But since we don’t typically feed our bodies easily-processed food, periodic liver flushes are essential.

After seeing these results for myself, I have to say Moritz’s claims have a lot more credibility in my eyes. Imagine a world with no expensive gallbladder removal surgeries and fewer digestive issues. What a remarkable change! I would hope that more doctors would get on board with this simple preventative program.

Do we all have stones? If you live in a society technologically advanced enough to read this blog post, I’d say it’s likely that you do. The only way to know is to try the flush yourself. In my opinion, it’s something we all should do. I’m a big fan of preventative maintenance now instead of emergency surgery later.

Have you tried a liver flush, or do you plan to? Leave your comments here! If you write a post or review about your liver cleanse experiences, I’m happy to link to it.

Recommended Reading:

• Andreas Moritz’s The Amazing Liver and Gallbladder Flush The definitive guide to a liver flush. Do not cheap out and rely solely on the Internet–read this before attempting a flush!
• Nature’s Life malic acid capsules. The exact capsules I used in my apple juice. Buy them here (online); they’re much cheaper!
• Liquid magnesium citrate laxative. I used this instead of the epsom salts due to my sensitive stomach. It worked just fine, and I would recommend it if you are likely to not be able to hold the Epsom salts down. Remember to buy the liquid, not the pills!

In which I eat “rabbit food” for a month
in my quest to feel better.

We also skip routine health checkups and don’t go get health problems looked at unless they are acute (a.k.a. affecting our work!) Our bad diet and stress are huge risk factors, but since many health conditions take years to show up, we rationalize and assure ourselves that we’re “fine.”

I was shocked to figure out how far our “standard American diet”, or SAD (ironic acronym!) is from what humans ate hundreds or thousands of years ago and are evolutionarily accustomed to. Not only that, but pretty much every major disease that happens to us later in our lives is caused by bad diet.

Once I realized this, I became completely overwhelmed by the cacophony of diet books and websites giving me different “must-have” diets. Some diets say to eat mostly protein. Some say to eat no more than 40-50g of protein a day, since any more and our bodies can’t properly digest it. Some believe in eating vegan or raw. Some say meat is a healthy part of a balanced diet. And on, and on, and on…for pretty much any food you ingest, you’ll find those on both sides debating its merits.

To make matters worse, if you’re busy with work and can’t afford to take time off, it’s no wonder you probably are eating poorly. After all, since the diets all tell you different things, why not just avoid them all? You rationalize that they will probably make you feel worse anyway, or at least not make you feel better, and so you stick with what you know.

The good news is I’m not here to “sell” you on any particular diet. In this blog post, I’ll explain four simple steps I used to rework my diet, and how I made it work with little interruption to my regular life. I’ll give you suggestions on how you can go about reworking your diet with a limited amount of time available. Finally, I’ll give you some resources and tips as to where you can start.

Step 1: Set An Intention

By setting an intention, I don’t mean something like “Lose 10 pounds in the next 2 months.” That’s time-defined, so it’s a goal. Goals are good, but in this case, they encourage crash diets. Instead, try setting an intention.

When I started this journey in 2006, my intention was to stop crashing hard after lunch and feeling like I needed to nap. I eventually eliminated alcohol, caffeine, and sugar, and stopped the crashing. That’s the power of an intention.

When I changed my diet again at the beginning of this month, my intention was to have more energy and to feel more vitality for the rest of my life. I was, frankly, tired of being tired. Even though I was no longer eating much sugar, I was still crashing in the afternoons. I wanted this to stop — or at least be a meditation time instead of a nap!

You have to have an intention for your diet to work. You have to know who you want to be on the other side of this diet change, and you have to understand what you want at a fundamental level. You can’t change your diet to please someone else. Also, a superficial change like “lose 10 pounds” will not stick with you long-term. Find a change that inspires you to move forward and will motivate you to change for the rest of your life.

In my case, I knew if I had huge gains in energy, it would be fairly easy to stick with even a restrictive diet. If I ever had cravings for the “old” foods, I could simply look back at how awful they made me feel and instantly the craving would go away. (By the way, it doesn’t matter if the foods you don’t want truly made you feel awful in the past or not. If you create that association strongly enough, “true” or not, you will never want those foods again.)

Step 2: Keep A Food Journal

I started keeping a journal of what I ate. I correlated this with how I felt after I ate those items. Lunch was the worst meal for me — I often felt tired after I ate it — so I started there.

Fairly quickly, I was able to identify a pattern. The more “heavy” meat I ate, the worse I felt. The same went with sugar…not just obvious sugar like candy, but “hidden” sugar found in things like white bread and starchy pasta.

I tried several different ways to cope with this, but I found the more vegetarian I made my lunch, the less sleepy I was. Fruits and vegetables only were best. Veggies with some bread made me tired, but not to the point of napping. Anything with red meat, and I was out like a log…napping for at least an hour.

I did some research, and found an interesting and mostly unknown chemical called Neu5Gc. You probably haven’t heard of it, and neither have I. Some scientists, however, believe that our inability to digest this chemical is part of what causes many chronic diseases. Here’s the article explaining what Neu5Gc is.

The most interesting part of the article, to me, was this:

“After testing a range of foods, they found the highest levels of Neu5Gc in red meat: up to 11,600 micrograms could be absorbed from the recommended daily serving of beef, 5,100 from pork and 4,900 from lamb. The level in goat’s cheese was 5,500, but fell to around 700 in milk and salmon. Cod, tuna, turkey and duck were in the twenties.”

Could it be that our bodies’ inability to digest Neu5Gc causes us to be tired after we eat? I can’t tell you for sure, but this was one of the only articles I found that mapped out my symptoms’ severity.

You can see why keeping a food journal is so important. Not only does it help you to see what is causing your problems — from simply eating too much to a symptom like feeling tired — but it helps you test small changes in your diet so that you can correct your imbalances.

Step 3: Make The Changes!

After investigating, I decided to implement a 30-day trial of going pescetarian. In fact, if you’re reading this Monday, December 8, 2008, that’s the last day of my 30-day trial.

I easily completed the trial. In fact, I was shocked at how easy it was for me to stop eating most meat. Pretty much every restaurant has some sort of fish or seafood entree, or even a simple salad. Instead of my local burrito place, I found a new one that had yummy fish burritos (and still made regular meat burritos for Richard.) I tried a new Chinese place that had good shrimp fried rice. I really enjoyed myself! I felt completely abundant and, even when Richard cooked grass-fed ribeye steak a few nights during the trial, I had absolutely no cravings for it.

There are definitely a few things I miss, namely In-N-Out burgers and carnitas burritos. But overall, I didn’t miss them so much that I stopped the trial. Will I go back to eating them? Possibly occasionally, but I doubt I will eat meat that often. The effect of not eating meat — feeling happier, more energetic, and less tired in the afternoons — is far more than any benefit I would get from putting it back in my diet on a regular basis.

Toward the end of my 30-day Pescetarian trial, I did a liver flush. My entire blog entry on the liver flush will be up later this week, but suffice it to say, I had some amazing changes.

Step 4: Accept Yourself – It’s OK To Be Different

This is pretty straightforward, but many people don’t do it: You have to get out of your old thought patterns and try new things in order to find what works best for you. What works best for you in terms of diet is probably not what you’re doing right now. In fact, for most of us, those two thoughts are at opposite ends of the spectrum!

At the beginning of my 30-day trial, I was at a conference where they had a BBQ. While everyone else enjoyed ketchup-covered hot dogs and hamburgers, I ate a salad with black olives and some tuna salad. Some were joking about me eating “rabbit food”, but I shrugged it off and smiled. I knew that what I was eating would make me feel good. That was all I needed.

Not drinking alcohol or caffeine, not eating sugar, and not eating most meat can be difficult socially. I suggest you try one small thing at a time. Your friends will understand, and if they tease you, just remember — it’s because they love you. Or maybe it’s secretly because they are jealous of your “rabbit food.”

Conclusion

Changing your diet is one of the most worthwhile things you can do to improve your health — both short-term and long-term. Just remember, you don’t “need” to be tired after lunch or out of breath when you climb the stairs. Food doesn’t have to make you sleepy, or gassy, or sick. What you eat is a choice. With some trial and error and persistence, you can find a diet that works for you. Just don’t be surprised if it’s quite different from what you eat now!

Start here:

• Health and Fitness forum on StevePavlina.com. Steve’s blog posts about going vegan and then raw inspired me to think more about my diet and how it was affecting my life. This forum is full of people who can help you, and the archives have a gold mine of information on diet.
• Feeling tired after lunch? This is my blog entry from 2006, when I discovered that I am hypoglycemic — and what that meant.
• Andreas Moritz’s The Amazing Liver Flush. I did it! Also has good background on why our culture is so sick all the time. I don’t subscribe to everything he says, but I do feel it’s worth reading.
• Raw Food Made Easy. Raw food recipes are tasty and easy to make — even for those of us who work long hours. See for yourself!

I’ve had 7 treatments on my legs and stomach, and I added in underarms and my bikini area a couple months ago for good measure. I’ve so far spent about $1500 for my legs and stomach, plus another few hundred dollars for the first few treatments of my bikini and underarms.

First, I want to answer the question everyone has been asking me: Is laser hair removal worth doing? My answer: Yes, absolutely! I did the math in my previous post, but to quickly re-summarize: I was having my legs waxed about every 6 weeks for a cost of $50 per waxing treatment. Waxing is painful, plus you have to let the hair fully grow out, which means I was walking around with a small forest on my legs the week or two before the waxing treatment. Plus, it took time out of my busy day. I wanted a “no fuss” solution. My goals:

1) To be able to go on vacation for more than a week without taking a razor with me.
2) To be able to not have to shave for several weeks if need be, since shaving gives me ingrown hairs, etc.
3) To not have a forest on my legs just because I didn’t want to shave all the time.

After 6 treatments on my legs, I’m down to shaving my legs once a week at most. If I’m wearing pants or don’t otherwise want to show off my legs, though, I don’t have to shave for 2 or 3 weeks. The best part is that, if I don’t shave for 3 weeks, you probably wouldn’t even be able to tell that I haven’t shaved without being a couple inches from my legs (and at that point, honey, you probably don’t care about whether I’ve shaved recently or not. ) The hair that grows back in after a week or so is more like a fine peach fuzz, not that dark wiry stuff that comes back in after shaving, so it’s not very noticeable.

A couple more treatments and I will likely be down to shaving my legs once a month or so. I shaved them last week, and I noticed that the hair that came off in the razor was fuzzy, and I only had a few long dark hairs left. I consider this a success! I’m leaving on vacation in a couple weeks for 2+ weeks. I have a hair removal treatment the day before and I won’t be bringing a razor with me on vacation. That is super-cool and worth every penny.

Since my legs and stomach were going so well, I added in underarms and bikini area. My underarms are similar to the leg treatments, but you can do them every 3 weeks instead of every 6 weeks like the legs. It hurts a bit more, but is still quite bearable. (Believe me, you’ll injure yourself more stubbing a toe.) I’ve had about 5 treatments on my underarms, and I’m down to shaving once a week instead of every other day. Also, about 40% of the hair on my underarms is gone. The hair that grows in now is still dark, but much softer than it was previously. Once it’s more peach fuzzy, I’ll stop those treatments.

Bikini is the only area that’s -whew!- painful. A couple good zaps made me involuntarily say “Ow!” It’s sure not as painful as getting that area waxed, which I was never brave enough to try, but you’ll definitely notice the “zing-burn” feeling. I’ve had 2 treatments there. The good news is that on every area of your body, the treatments get progressively easier as you go through them, since you’re zapping less hair each time. I can see a couple “holes” down there where there is no hair, but what is growing is still dark and thick. This is fairly typical after 2 treatments.

Kathy (the laser hair removal specialist I go to…more on her in a minute) says that you should expect to do 6-10 treatments before you’re totally satisfied. I think I’ll probably end up doing 10 treatments everywhere, and at that point I’ll likely only have to shave once a month or so. “Never shave again!” is probably not realistic; there is a law of diminishing returns at work, and while you may need 8 or 9 treatments to get rid of 80% of your hair, you might need 12 or 13 to get rid of 90% of it (everyone’s different, so take that as a thought, not a law.) But going from shaving every other day to shaving once a month is definitely worth it.

My favorite things about laser hair removal — things that you may not know:

1) The hair comes in fuzzy and soft when it grows back, and once you’ve done a lot of treatments, it will grow in lighter, as well (at least it did on me.)
2) With each treatment, your hair grows more slowly, so even if it doesn’t look like you lost a lot of hair on your first treatment or two, you’ll still only have to shave about half as much as you would normally. That’s why I’d recommend that most people who don’t like shaving at least do a couple treatments.
3) To add to #2, you can stop treatments any time. You will see the benefit with only 1 or 2 treatments of your hair growing in more slowly.
4) Kathy and most decent laser hair removal places will let you pay for each treatment on the day you do it, so it’s not like you’re going to write this huge $2000 check. It’s a couple hundred bucks every 6 weeks. That won’t break the bank for most people.

My least favorite things about laser hair removal treatment:

1) Zap! Ow! It hurts a bit. Take Advil about 30 minutes before your treatment, and ask your specialist if you can bring a portable MP3 player. Put on some soothing music and space out. It won’t hurt that much if you do. Also, make sure your specialist has a cooling device. This cooling device, placed on your skin right before the “zap!”, makes the treatment hurt a lot less, thus allowing the specialist to turn up the zapping power and nab those really deep hairs.
2) It is expensive. You will come out ahead over waxing, but if you’re shaving, it will take a lot longer to pay back. If you change your razor twice a month, and use a $2 cartridge every time, you’ll spend about $4 a month, or $48 a year, on shaving. $2000 for legs + underarm laser hair removal is an almost 42-year payback. But this isn’t considering the time you spend shaving, the fact that cartridge prices will rise, or the annoyance of having to take razors on a vacation or making sure to Nair yourself before you put on that cute swimsuit. Those “soft” factors were what I took into account when deciding to undertake this, and I would definitely make the same choice if I needed to do it all over again.
3) They can’t do eyebrows since the laser piece isn’t small enough. Waahhh! I still get my eyebrows waxed, which is painful and annoying. Hopefully this will change with better technology in the future.
4) It is addictive. They warn you about this. If you’re a woman, you’ll probably want to get your underarms done once you’ve started with your legs, so I recommend starting, at a minimum, with both of those.

By the way, guys can get laser hair removal done, too! My boyfriend is currently getting the sides of his face and chin done. He wears a mustache and a bit of a beard, but hated shaving, which bothered his sensitive skin. He’s now down to shaving once a week instead of every other day, and is very happy with the treatments, too.

If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area (especially if you’re in San Jose, California), I strongly recommend that you check out Kathy’s laser hair removal. She’ll give you a free evaluation and match any lower price you find (I checked around and didn’t find any.) Plus, she’s straightforward, honest, and super-nice about everything, taking time to answer your questions. She also gives a 5% cash discount for those of you who like to do things in cash. Even if you live in San Francisco or Oakland, price her out — it will likely be cheaper to drive to San Jose (it’s only every 6 weeks!) and get laser hair removal done with Kathy instead of paying the exorbitant boutique prices you find in San Francisco laser hair removal places.

Here is Kathy’s phone number:
Kathy Bragg, (408) 977-0975
100 O’Connor Drive, San Jose, CA (just off Stevens Creek & 880 — Yahoo Map)

Kathy’s husband, Todd Bragg, is also a wonderful and inexpensive chiropractor, in case you’re in need of chiropractic…I highly recommend him, especially if you sit in front of a computer all day like I do!

And no, I am not getting paid to post this, or anything like that, but I would appreciate it if you told Kathy you found out about her from me (I’m Erica.) Good luck, and please feel free to share your experiences here in the comments!

I have several goals:
1) Make my time at the office of maximum effectiveness, as I want to be in the office no more than 8-9 hours a day. (No more 12-hour days every day, please.) Putting the same amount of work into an 8-hour day as I had in a 12-hour day seemed hard, but I’ll tell you how I successfully managed to do it.
2) Free up some time to exercise for 1/2 hour or more at least 3 times a week.
3) Get rid of side projects that were taking up my weekends so I could have weekends free to read, brainstorm, hang out with friends, go shopping, and catch up on TV and movies.

I started reading The 4-Hour Workweek, which is an interesting book that I’ve seen mentioned on several blogs lately. I expected a bit of an ego trip from the author, Timothy Ferriss, and there was a bit of ego there, but what I found most interesting were the radical changes he made in his life that simply weren’t obvious to most people (including me). For instance, he sets aside 1 hour every day to read and respond to email, and keeps his email client shut off the rest of the time.

I implemented a variant of this, deciding to keep my email client off during the day except for predefined times that I would have it on. I was moderately successful: I immediately noticed my productivity spiked, but since I didn’t set aside a time to respond to email, some emails did not get responded to. I’m going through this weekend and responding to them, but that is obviously sub-optimal. Next week, I intend to set aside a time every day to respond to emails and ensure that all emails from that day are responded to on the same day, as well as just reading them and sorting my inbox.

The biggest change I made was inspired by Timothy’s book, however, and this improved productivity dramatically: I stopped reading blogs at work. That was a huge difference. I didn’t realize how much time reading blogs took. Timothy points out in his book that “batching” saves an incredible amount of time. That is, instead of taking 5 minutes 20 times a day to read email, you can “batch” and do the same amount of email reading and responding for 1 hour. 5×20=100 minutes; 1 hour=60 minutes.

Reading blogs, for me, turned out to be the same way. I typically now read them at night when I get home — I can read them more effectively once a day instead of 10 times a day. Plus, most blog posts aren’t that time-sensitive. I sorted my RSS reader into two categories: Daily and Occasional. I put all the blogs I wanted to read on a regular basis under Daily. I put everything else (mostly news aggregators like TechCrunch) under Occasional. I stopped reading blogs at all when I was in the office, and also asked my friends to email non-work-related blog entries to me on my Gmail account instead of IM’ing them to me. I read the Occasional blogs only when I have plenty of extra time.

Those 2 changes allowed me to squeeze about 2 extra hours out of my day. I’ll continue to work on other time-saving changes. But 2 hours was enough for me to move on to the next phase of my plan…

Today I signed up for a gym membership at a local gym. I’ve listened to lots of friends who talk about gym memberships and the most common reason the memberships fail is that the people sign up for a gym membership with no set plan of action. I didn’t want me to be a gym membership failure, so by the time I walked in to the local gym today, I knew what I wanted: a reasonable monthly rate; to do Pilates; and to have a personal trainer do several sessions with me to get me up to speed on all the machines and design a workout plan that I could do effectively. I also committed to myself to pay for additional personal training if at any point I felt like I was falling off my goal of exercising at least 3 times a week. Finally, I know that gyms are fairly negotiable up front, but once you sign, you’re in — so I went in knowing I wanted to negotiate.

The gym I went to offered a free month of Pilates training (cool!) and 4 free personal trainer sessions if I signed up for a 1-year commitment and paid $65 monthly and a $75 signup fee. They also offered free daycare, and I didn’t need free daycare, so I negotiated another 4 free personal trainer sessions instead (that’s about $265 according to their list prices, by the way.) Included in the monthly fee is unlimited use of the gym and nice pool, plus free group workouts every day. I looked at the group workout calendar and immediately determined that I would be best served by signing up for the “core strengthening” session twice a week. I figure the 3rd time every week will be what the personal trainer wants me to work on solo; if that doesn’t work, I’ll reassess later.

I have just allocated $855 for fitness over the next year (plus any workshops I decide to do, like continuing Pilates, tennis, or dancing lessons), so I need to be committed to this. I am open and flexible to design a fitness plan that works for me, but I also know I’ve spent some money now, so I must follow through and work diligently on achieving my fitness goals for the next 12 months. I plan to go in at 9 or 9:30AM 3x a week (this means getting up earlier than I am used to.) I’m pretty sure this will work. I’ll keep you all posted.

I talked about goal #3, eliminating side projects, at length in my previous blog entry, so I don’t have anything new to report there. I’ll keep posting more time-saving tips as I find them.

• Ritz crackers, Wheat Thins, and saltines. Strangely enough, several varieties of crackers contain high-fructose corn syrup. Also, watch out for it in breads, including some “healthy” wheat breads. Alternative foods: Find crackers/breads in a store near you that advertise “all-natural.” I found a line of Annie’s brand crackers that advertises itself as “totally natural” and does not contain HFCS. Other smaller brands typically do not contain HFCS.
• Yoplait yogurt. Another bizarre place for HFCS to show up — not quite as unexpected as crackers, but strange for a product that bills itself as health food. Look for yogurts advertising “natural” or “organic.” I found Clover organic strawberry yogurt, which is about the same price as Yoplait. It’s definitely not as sweet, but it still tastes good and it does not contain sugar (except for the natural sugar found in the fruit) or HFCS.
• Heinz ketchup. This one really stymied me. There are natural ketchups out there, but they do taste different and my body has adapted over the years to thinking Heinz=ketchup. For now, I’ve decided to stop eating ketchup — or to eat it in very small quantities when I do eat it. As I try out different ketchups, I’ll blog my results.

So why give up HFCS and sugar? Well, for me, it’s eliminated the crazy blood sugar highs and lows I had as a result of my hypoglycemia (as described in my previous blog entry.) Also, it’s forced me to really think about what I eat instead of just stuffing food into my mouth. As a result of my new diet, I have lost 3 pounds in the past month. Since I wasn’t overweight to begin with, 3 pounds was a significant change — people noticed and commented. I’m curious to know where a long-term application of this diet will put me in terms of weight.

I also feel I should point out that I do allow myself 1 dessert a week – typically on a weekend. It’s important to not feel completely deprived on a diet like this. I don’t want to develop a bitterness or a resentment toward how I eat. The 1 dessert a week allows me to reward myself when I want to, while keeping in mind that my overall strategy should be toward less sugar.

Here is a more complete list of foods containing high-fructose corn syrup. If you would like to remain healthy, I suggest you avoid these foods — particularly those where there is an easy substitute.

By now, most of you know that I have mood swings. Sometimes they are serious (crushing depression) and sometimes they are manageable. As I’ve grown older and gotten various therapy/help and read more about the subject, I’ve gotten them under control and they’ve become — not exactly a welcome part of my everyday life, but at least under control to the point where I can run a business well without burying my head underneath the covers every time the emotional parade comes around to visit.

And, me being me, I’ve read obsessively on the subject of depression, what causes it, and how to solve it. Although at various points in my life I have been tempted to see a doctor and get on antidepressants, I have not done so because I am convinced that I can solve this. This emotional craziness is my own doing, in my head, and I’m smart enough to figure it out.

The first step was getting hypnotherapy, which I did in July 2005, and which solved a lot of the older stuff…mostly the abandonment issues I had which stemmed from me being adopted. Since then, I’ve been a lot better… but I’ve still had days where I don’t want to get out of bed, and I’ve still been dealing with a lot of rollercoasters.

August, 2006 rolled around and finally I started noticing a pattern. Surprisingly (to me), the mood swings are based on time of day as much as anything else. I would wake up fine, then eat lunch and crash hard… sometimes to the point where I needed to take an hour-long nap because I had no energy and felt exhausted. 2 hours after eating lunch, I’d feel okay and start feeling better until it became dinner time. After dinner, I’d again feel awful for a couple of hours and feel better later on. I would be fine until I went to bed, at which point the whole cycle would start over again.

It finally dawned on me sometime last month that there might be a physical component to all of this. Specifically, the crashing-after-eating thing seemed to have a physical component (getting tired/sleepy) as well as an emotional component. And that’s when I started researching hypoglycemia.

Hypoglycemia is an interesting health problem because it tends to be highly emotional. Blood sugar levels directly relate to how you feel. If you have healthy levels of blood sugar, you feel rested, well, and ready to go. When your blood sugar levels dip dangerously low, you feel exhausted, dead, groggy, and grumpy. And when you spike your blood sugar levels by eating processed sugar or other processed foods, you get a temporary feel-good situation followed by a crash, which can be nearly impossible to manage.

I did the research and I had every symptom of hypoglycemia. If I don’t eat for more than 6-8 hours (or 12 hours when I’m asleep for most of that time period), I get shaky hands followed quickly by grouchiness. The grouchiness continues until I eat. Once I eat, I feel better…except if I eat trigger foods that cause a quick increase in sugar followed by a crash. That crash entails more grouchiness and, likely, a nap.

The good news is that medical professionals have already figured out what the trigger foods are for hypoglycemics. As a hypoglycemic, your diet must not contain alcohol, caffeine, or sugar. (An interesting side note is the link between alcoholism and hypoglycemia; studies have shown a proven link between alcoholism and hypoglycemia, as well as addictive personalities and hypoglycemia.)

Alcohol and caffeine were easy to eliminate for me since I had already effectively eliminated both from my diet (except for rare usage) due to the emotional rollercoaster of using either one (high followed by ugly crash.) However, the no sugar part of the diet proved to be trickier.

I knew the diet would fix a lot of problems for me, so I went cold turkey. I printed out the diet for hypoglycemics, put it on my desk at work, and proceeded to systematically eliminate sugar from my diet. I stopped drinking soda, stopped eating desserts, and changed my eating habits to eliminate anything with high-fructose corn syrup in it (which is a lot of stuff, from soda to Heinz ketchup to weird stuff like Spaghettios.) And I did it all in a matter of 24 hours.

It turns out that I was addicted to sugar. I was shocked at the overwhelming cravings I got… my body begging me for a “fix”. The first day I didn’t have cravings that badly, and I thought I was going to be okay. The second day I had moderate cravings, and I was able to eat some fruit (natural sugars such as pure fruit are okay under this diet) to get rid of them. The third day… whew. I thought I wasn’t going to make it. My hands started shaking. I thought my brain had a short circuit or something, because my only thought was SUGAR SUGAR SUGAR. Finally I got a whole pile of red raspberries and ate them all (no sugar on them). This didn’t completely cure the craving, but it helped enough that I was able to settle down and do other things.

Since then, the cravings have virtually disappeared. I stuck to the diet reasonably well even at Burning Man, declining everything from pancake syrup to rice krispie treats to icees. And boy, it really is a night and day difference. My moods feel more stable. I don’t have weird cravings. I eat less. And I no longer need to take naps after lunch.

On this diet, artificial sweeteners are okay, so my drinks mostly consist of Crystal Light and Propel. I can eat sugar-free pancake syrup (mmm…) and drink diet soda (although I don’t drink much soda at all.) Best of all, I’ve been on the diet over three weeks and am dropping about a pound a week, even though I eat whenever I want to. I’ve been making a concerted effort to make sure my meals are smallish and spread throughout the day, and I watch for signs of hand shakiness so I can ward off the grumpy feelings by eating as soon as my body warns me that it’s time to eat.

It’s important to note that I no longer believe there is a “cure” for my state. The fact is that I am an emotional being and I need to accept that. I have to accept that, even if I eat a perfect diet, I will still be a big bag of emotions. However, by eating right and remembering who I am and how far I’ve come in my life, I can maintain a more stable path and not be so depressed and weepy.

For the record, by keeping a record of my emotional state, I found that it had pretty much nothing to do with “that time of the month” or any hormonal cycles. While I appreciate that there are women out there affected by that, that’s not what is affecting me and I won’t blame any of this on hormones.