As many of you will remember, I recently had what I’ve dubbed The Headache (you can see the effects of it here). As a result of The Headache I had an MRI in order to see if there is anything wrong with my brain (such as a tumor, a forming aneurism, signs of stroke, bleeding, etc). Thank God (literally) there was nothing what so ever wrong with my brain. Everything checked out.

However, my sinuses are so jacked up that the radiologist (or whoever it is that does this) that read the MRI made a special section on the report to talk about my sinuses. It’s the same old story…

Sinus cavities are full of hardened mucus….

Left, top, front sinus cavity is 100% filled with hardened mucus and 100% blocked from draining…

This seems to be the story of my life the last couple years when it comes to my sinuses.

A long story short, no concrete proof as to what caused The Headache. However, the theory is that my left, top, front sinus cavity ruptured (again… this has happened in the past, but not this painful) causing the initial pain. Then, due to the pain and stress / frustration of such a nasty, persistent headache (along with a considerable dose of stress from my daily life), I also had a severe stress / blood pressure induced headache.

Combine the two together and you get: The Headache.

(The doctor also mentioned there’s the possibility of having an a-typical migraine at the same time… which would have just made everything that much worse.)

Hopefully, this is a once in a life time headache.

Which brings us to how to prevent such a headache, as well as how any of this is relevant to living A Life Not Wasted.

The way we are going to begin treating / preventing future occurrences is through drastically altering my diet. In altering my diet it is hoped that my body will better be able to handle whatever is thrown at it and therefore I won’t have a recurrence of The Headache. Also, in altering my diet I should gain more energy, have a better immune system, and a more… stable mindset.

This huge transformation of my eating habits is going to be a significant life change for me. Very significant! I’m used to eating what I want, when I want, and not gaining weight from it either. Now, I’m going to start being intentional. If I want live A Life Not Wasted it’s going to involve eating properly so I’ll have the health and energy to live the life I want.

And right now, I can tell you for a fact I do not have the health and energy I need to do what I want. I frequently am too tired to stay up late to work on things that I want and need to.

This change in my diet is going to help address these issues.

Stay tuned. There will be more about this in the future.

~Ivan

Part of living A Life Not Wasted for me, personally, is making sure that I have the physical health to actually fully live the life I’m creating. In order to do this, I know I have to exercise, which I have not been doing very much of over the past few years.

If you rewind around 6 years or so you’d find me in the best physical shape of my life. Through hard work and dedication I had put on 40 pounds of muscle mass in 12 months. I was eating healthier, feeling better, and more full of energy than any time before or since.

Fast forward to me today, and my body is a wreck, even if it doesn’t look like it on the outside.

What I mean by that is my family is blessed with being tall and skinny.

And then later dying of heart attacks.

Because even though we can eat anything we want without gaining weight, our internal workings are just like everyone elses’. With the exception of we eat even more bad for us crap and exercise less, because we have no visible side affects, therefore we suffer sooner from the corresponding health issues.

As of today, I’m 32 (be 33 on Sunday!). I’m 6’2″ tall, around 210 lbs. My muscles are as weak as I can remember them being, because I hurt my shoulder a few years back and instead of going to a doctor, I stopped exercising… I stopped using my right arm for pretty much anything.

In terms of major health issues, I have high blood pressure (frequently ran 190 / 110 when I was working my day job, due to stress and frustration), I started getting annoying headaches I was told were due to the high blood pressure, I began having asthma attacks for the first time in my life, and finally I started having swallowing issues (where the muscles used for swallowing would randomly lock down on food I was swallowing, causing me to choke).

Top all this off with once I went full time at my business I noticed I still felt very lethargic and I’m frequently not able to stay up past 9 or 10 PM, even when I want / need to for business, and I realized I need to get in shape if I want this new life I’m trying to create to succeed. Otherwise I might not have the energy needed to take me from where I am to where I want to be!

Enter my friend Justin Owings and a new site he’s got going hundredup.com. Simply put, the 100 Up Challenge is designed to help runners run more effectively. To run with less impact on the body and to have better form. If you want all the details on the 100 Up Challenge, please check out this post (and join the challenge!).

To date, I have made three separate videos chronicling my efforts during this challenge. In the past, around 2003 or so, I used to run for around an hour every day, and with my recent desire to start exercising again, running was foremost on my mind.

So bare in mind, I have not been running since 2003. So I’m taking this challenge from the stand point of a “non-runner”, who is simply wanting to start running use the best form and method available.

Here are the three video I’ve made to date:

Day 1: Benchmarking

Day 2: Answering some questions and describing my efforts at the 100 Up

Day 13: Another update

As I said in the update on Day 13, I am extremely pleased with the results I’m seeing. Most notably my foot, ankle, and lower shin and calf strength has increased significantly in only 13 days! When I started the challenge it was actually difficult to balance on one foot with the other leg up in the air, my ankles could barely support me (I actually fell into the wall twice the first time).

The soreness on days 4 and 5 was intense in those four areas. But I powered through it and kept at it!

So for all of you wanting to live A Life Not Wasted, remember, you must be in decent physical shape to live the life you’re building. And if you want a great place to start, check out the 100 Up Challenge and get your butt (literally) into shape!

~Ivan