Day 31 DP - A Challenge to the Challenge

Recently I have been reading some of the Survivor forums online and I have also been posting my SDC onto one or two of them to see what type of response I would get.  One forum in particular (Thanks Betsy) has been voicing a pretty strong opinion.  Surprisingly it is called SurvivorSucks.com and the weblink to my post in this forum is: The Survivor Diet Challenge - who's up for it?

Check it out when you have some time.  One response has raised some pretty good questions about the SDC and I took some time to address these questions on the forum.  I thought it would be a good message to post on today's blog as well - since I took all that time writing it and all.  I think you'll find it interesting:

From: yookooyoo:
Your fad diet is unhealthy and irresponsible.
You've got to wait until week 3 for vegetables? Can't that be 'found', like fruit?
There's no mention of your body undergoing any form of exercise during the diet - needless to say, a lot of physical activity occurs during Survivor.

Starving yourself may work to reach your goal of losing weight short term, but if there's no mental change in regards to developing strategies of more healthy living and eating long term... then you are going to end up yo-yoing with your weight and ending up back in the same spot.

• First of all I'd like to say that unhealthy this diet is NOT.  If people only knew about some of the things that grow wildly outdoors they might have a better understanding.  For example, go to my post from Day 22 and scroll to the bottom to read about the health benefits of dandelion greens.  There are so many similar greens that grow all around us if we just take the time to look for them.
• Irresponsible?  To what degree?  I'm teaching my kids about so many new and interesting things.  I have been eating vegetables the WHOLE time - I put that in as the week 3 reward just in case I was feeling like I was missing out on some vital nutrients but to be honest - I didn't even take my week 3 reward like it is described in the Guidelines.  I didn't need it because there are so many greens that I have been finding.
• There's no mention of exercise???  All I'm doing is exercise.  A ton of walking, bike riding, kayaking, swimming, building - I am constantly on the move and not sitting in front of my computer or watching tv on my couch very much at all.  Don't even get me started on spearfising in the ocean - talk about a workout - try swimming 300 yards against the current with 18 pounds of lead around your waist, pulling two 20 pound striped bass behind you after spending 2 hours  ofholding your breath diving up and down in 25 feet of water.  Just because I don't go to the gym and lift weights or run on a treadmill doesn't mean I'm not exercising.  In fact - that's how this whole Survivor Diet came into existence in the first place.  I HATE all of the traditional forms of exercise so I came up with this in order to lose weight and have fun in the process.
• I agree totally with your last statement about short term weight loss.  However, I have found that periodically during the Survivor Diet Challenge I take some time to reflect on my experiences and learn from what I am doing.  That is the main reason why I started the blog.  It forces me to keep a diary - a written account of the significant things that I do and what happens to me during this time.  At times I go back and read my posts to remind myself about the things I have learned.  There are several posts that discuss the issue of short term weight loss and having the mental will power to come up with more of a long term plan after the 40 day Survivor Challenge is over.  Hopefully, when people see the improvements in their body, their health, their energy levels, their weight, their looks, etc - it will be an inspiration to formulate a plan to continue with a modified version of the SDC in their daily life.  I, for one, have been able to control - or completely eliminate a chronic migraine headache problem as well as bring down a crazy high blood pressure to perfectly normal levels.  No medication - just through natural eating and staying active.  That's enough right there to take on the SDC.

Here are some links to posts I have made in the past that address the issues about having some type of plan for your dietary habits after the SDC:
Day 40 of SDC2 - scroll to the bottom "Where do we go from here"
Day 23 of SDC2 - "Reflection" (some REALLY good stuff here)
Day 24 of SDC2 - "What to do when the challenge is over"
Day 30 of SDC3 - "The Secret to Weight Loss (and keeping it off)"
Day 18 of SDC3 - "Eating out of boredom"

You have raised some very good and important questions.  I thank you for that.  Hopefully I have answered them to your satisfaction.  I welcome the chance to defend my Survivor Diet Challenge because I truly believe that it has made me better than I was before.  Better, stronger, faster.  Keep those questions coming!

Ok - that was the end of that forum post.  More to come today. . . I had an awesome breakfast and I want to tell you about it.

I'm back.  Let's see if this little video playlist from YouTube works to show a quick construction of my breakfast omelet.

Fresh as can be - and delicious to boot!  Here are a couple photos from lunch today.  I have been eating too much of my bass - need to preserve it for a little longer because the weather was terrible today and it doesn't look like I will be doing any outdoor activities for a few days.

A nice piece of fish to slice.  And some jerky.

A fitting lunch - fish skin jerky on top of sashimi

 I sliced the fish skin into little strips as you can see above.  Then I did to them exactly what I did to the fish pieces that I turned into jerky.  Well, it certainly isn't bacon but it's just about the closest thing to bacon on my menu.  It turned out really good.  A nice snack and a nice smokey addition to a plate of sashimi.

I tried to work on reinforcing the coop today but it just poured rain all day.  I am making a sand box for the chickens because the book I read says that they love to bath in sand.  So I went to the beach in the pouring rain and filled 3 buckets full of wet sand.  That was my work out for today.  Man - a bucket full of sand is heavy!  Especially after I tried to lift if by the handle and the handle broke.  Has anyone ever tried walking 30 yards on the beach carrying a full bucket of sand without a handle in the pouring rain - 3 times???  There's a 'Survivor Challenge' idea for you.

Less than 10 days left - I'm starting to see the finish line.  I still have MEGABURGER to look forward to at any time.  I haven't really been in the mood yet though.  I'm sure it's not too far away.

“If you wait to do everything until you're sure it's right, you'll probably never do much of anything.”