1. RAW Cleanse Toxin Defense – optimal oral health and immune system support.
2. RAW Cleanse Organ Detox – natural detoxification of organs and GI tract
3. RAW Cleanse Digestion & Elimination – toxin capture and removal

I’ll explain each component as I go through them.  I got my kit from our local Sprouts store for a little over $30 plus tax, but you can get it online from Amazon (RAW Cleanse – 7 day – Kit) for just under $30 with no tax and free shipping.  I liked it because the product is Vegan, gluten free, dairy free, and claims to be less harsh than some of the other colon cleanse products on the market. Here are some pictures of the whole box and the 3 parts inside.

Garden of Life – RAW Cleanse Box

3 Components of the Garden of Life RAW Cleanse

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1) Minimize

The first tip is probably the most important.  You just can’t do everything in life.  When you try to do too many different things and get spread too thin, this is the single biggest threat to becoming a quitter.  Instead, focus on what you really want to spend your time doing and minimize out everything else.  For example, I was signed up for several survey-taking websites.  I had made decent money over the years taking surveys, but I figured out that it took up considerable time to complete the surveys and took time away from what I really wanted to be doing with this blog and other online ventures.  I chose to quit the surveys so I could finish more items that i really wanted.

• Quit what you don’t really want or need so you can focus on finishing the important things.

2) Commit

Once you have cleared away the extraneous items and tasks, look at what you have left.  If you really are passionate about something then take the time to reflect on why you want to accomplish that project and imagine what it will feel like to complete it.  Make a commitment to the task and make a conscious commitment to finishing the task.

• Knowing why you are doing something – and having a vision of what it will feel like to complete it – can help you make it to the end.

3) Serialize

Now that you have committed to a small selection of items, put each part of the task in an order and do the steps one at a time.  One huge risk of being a quitter is taking a shotgun approach and doing a little here and a little there.  You can’t tell how much progress you are making and it isn’t clear what to do next.  If you know exactly what comes next, it makes it easier to overcome that inertia and jump back in when you have time.

• Do things one step at a time to get to the finish.

4) Organize

Having good organizational skills will help you immensely when it comes to finishing projects.  Keep all your supplies or equipment organized and in good shape.  Being organized will help you to track how far along in the project you are so you can clearly know what is left to accomplish.  Also, when everything is well-organized you will find that you want to keep going and it will be easier to pick up where you left off.

• Clarity will help you see where you are in the process and make it easier and more enjoyable to keep going.

5) Segment

This is somewhat in opposition to #1, Minimize.  You can’t completely minimize and only have a single thing to work on, so segment your life into different areas.  Then when you have a specific area, it is much easier to apply all the rest of the rules to a specific segment.  For example, I had a ton of books I wanted to read and I had about 4 different books that I started and never finished.  I segmented “book reading” and got my act together.  Then in this narow space, I was able to apply the other tips much easier.  First, I made a commitment to set aside time for reading and finish everything I had started.  Then, I serialized reading them by putting my books in a stack right on my nightstand and read only the top one.  I also organized my reading by setting up an account at goodreads.com to track the books I had read, were currently reading, and planned to read.

• Divide and conquer: apply all the other tips to each segment of your life.

Logan Challenge

I challenge you today to start with #5 and segment areas of your life.  Then find one segment – an important one, or maybe a small simple area to get you moving – and then apply the tips to that area.

Good luck, and make sure to give me feedback if this was helpful or if you have your own suggestions.

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1) Set Goals

if you don’t have goals for yourself, then there is no way to judge if you are doing good or not.  It is much too easy to let things go without having the focus that a goal gives you.  What ever you decide on for a goal, it should be something tangible and it helps immensely to write them down or document them somehow.  Having a goal of “lose weight” is no good.  A goal of “lose 15 pounds” is better, and “lose 15 pounds in the next 6 months” is even better.  Make sure you quantify your goals, put them in writing, and set a time limit if you can.

2) Do it for Yourself

While doing things to please other people, or for some outside motivation can work sometimes, the only way to truly create good habits is to do it for yourself.  You need to own the task and make it fully yours.  Don’t work on losing weight because your partner wants you to; if you really and truly want to lose weight make it your task.  This gives you not only ownership and power, but it also takes away an easy scapegoat.  By being responsible to yourself you take away the possibility of blaming someone else if you fail.  If you don’t really want it for yourself, then maybe it isn’t right and you should rethink what you are doing.  You can always revisit your ideas in the future if you come to truly want to do it for yourself.

3) Be Consistent

This is really the nature of habits.  Make it habitual and create a rhythm and pattern.  Figure out a weekly schedule for exercise and stick with it.  This also applies to building on your successes, or consistently improving.  If you haven’t exercised in a while, it is much better to start slow and consistently build on that.  If you get out and run one time a week, do that for a month and then add a second day so you are running twice a week.  Be consistent about what you are doing and about building on your habits.

4) Make Your Good Habits Easy

Now this tip is more accurately “make your good habits as easy as possible” because what ever you are working on probably isn’t easy. So do what you can to make your activity as easy as possible. For example, find the best time of day for you to exercise.  If you can get up early and exercise – and it leaves you feeling good all day – then do that.  On the flip side, if you find yourself eating in front of the TV at night, change that routine and maybe exercise in the evening.  Also, try to string things together.  My gym is close to my kid’s school, so when I bring them to school I go dressed to exercise and work out on the way back.  Find simple things that you can change to make the habits easier.

5) Remind yourself Why

When you are in the middle of another set of crunches and you really don’t want to continue, it is hard to see the forest of why you are doing this.  Take time to reflect and continually renew why you are doing what you are working so hard on.  This can be reflecting back on the goals (you did set up goals, right?!), or reflecting on why you made this commitment to yourself.  Whether it is for a healthier, slimmer body, or feeling better about the way you look, it is vitally important to remind yourself why.

Do these tips apply to your situation?  Got a tip yourself or an interesting way you applied these?  Be sure and let me know.

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Life is Now

In reality shows like Survivor, they have an intense experience with a group of people, and when it is all done they have the reunion show where everybody (mostly) gets along and they can rehash what a great experience it was.  Life isn’t like that.  There will be no reunion show.  Life is the show.  What you are doing right this moment is your life and it is defining who you are.  Are you happy with it?  Do you want to change?  What is stopping you?

Later isn’t Guaranteed

There are too many things on my to-do list that I have put off until “later”, but the reality is that there is no guarantee that we will have a “later”.  If you died today, what would you regret not doing?  If you have an answer to that, you should work on making it happen now instead of later.

Constant is Artificial

We tend to create an artificial sense of constancy and consistency in our lives.  By creating routines and patterns, many going back years, we create a feeling that life is constant.  It is anything but constant.  It is an ever changing and evolving thing and that is exactly why life is such a beautiful thing.  Embracing the change and evolution is another big way to life now.

Logan Challenge

Today’s Logan challenge is to find one thing in life that has been lingering on your to-do list and do it today.  Don’t save it for tomorrow, or later, do it today.  It can be something as simple as cleaning the bathroom, or as huge as moving to a new country.  Use this one thing to start a positive motion for you.

Make sure you leave me comments on what you plan on doing, or your own helpful tips for self-motivation.

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Keep Perspective

This one is the hardest for me.  I feel an obligation to get angry at stupid drivers or feel that it is my responsibility to police other driver’s bad moves.  All that this leads to is the potential for road rage – both for yourself, or being on the receiving end of someone else raging.  Instead, remind yourself that it isn’t your job to correct other people’s stupidity.  Keep your perspective on two things:

1. Traffic is fleeting and fluid and it doesn’t really matter exactly where you are in the traffic flow
2. It doesn’t matter how right you are if you end up dead or injured

Instead of focusing on a stupid stranger and getting emotionally involved with them, think about your family or your own personal hopes and dreams for the future.  Stay emotionally involved with the people and things that matter to you and it will be much easier to ignore that moron.

Create Good Habits

Figure out things that minimize stress during the actual drive and do them consistently.  For example, instead of trying to pick which lane is going the fastest and changing lanes back and forth, I like to get way over to the left lane and just stay there for most of my drive.  This way I don’t have anything to do except watch the car in front of me and wait for my exit.  This also applies to the reverse by finding ways of avoiding stressful driving situations.  For instance, if there is a section of your commute where you need to change several lanes of traffic quickly and it is usually a hard, stressful merge, either change your habits – like changing lanes sooner – or find an alternative route to avoid the stressful section.  You can’t always cut out all the stress, so do your best to quickly merge or get into a better position and then get back to focusing on relaxing.

Keep Your Mind Occupied

You need to pay enough attention to drive safely, of course, but sometimes the best thing to do is turn up the radio or tune in to a favorite morning DJ.  Keeping your mind focused on something else makes the problems of the road seem distant and less important.  If you are laughing or enjoying yourself it will be harder to get upset over yet another long commute.

NET – No Extra Time

This is an even more useful alternative for using your time.  I picked this phrase up somewhere from a motivational speaker and it has really stuck with me.  I plan on giving this its own post in the future, so I’ll just touch on it here.  The concept is to accomplish tasks during time that would otherwise be wasted.  You are not using any extra time – you need to be in your car for that commute anyway so you might as well make use of the time.  Accomplishing tasks can be anything from listening to audio books, planning out your day, catching up on phone calls (with a good headset of course!), or even taking public transportation so you can pull out your laptop or a book.  Anything you can accomplish during this time will cost you no extra time.

Avoid The Commute

This is not always possible, but avoiding the drive – or at least the rush-hour drive – completely is the best possible solution.  If you have flexible hours then you can try to schedule your day to avoid rush hour driving by coming in early and leaving early, or coming in late and leaving late.  If your job allows, talk to your boss about telecommuting.  I have made arrangements that during projects which don’t require in-person meetings I work from home anywhere from 1-4 days a week.  This has really helped out and saves time, gas costs, and the headache of driving completely.

I hope these tips get you thinking about ways to improve your commute which will make life just a little bit better.  So remember to focus on who and what is important to you in life instead of the morons you meet for a few seconds or minutes during your drive, get into good driving habits and avoid bad ones, and make the most of your time in the car.

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Keep It Simple

I researched for a long time and there is a huge range of rice cookers available.  My first stop was to our local large Asian supermarket.  I was totally surprised to find way too many choices and most of them very expensive.  Most of the models were over $100 and I really didn’t know what the difference was.

I finally decided to keep it simple and purchased this Aroma 4-cup Rice Cooker for under $30.  It couldn’t be easier as it has a single button that works like a toaster – push it down and the unit automatically pops the button up when it is done cooking the rice.  I wanted to get something so I could get started cooking more rice and get into the habit of feeding my family more rice in general.  If I find that this isn’t full-featured enough, then I will upgrade to a more advanced model.

Use It

What ever you end up selecting, make sure you use it.  I stocked up on rice trying to keep a few different varieties on hand.  With the simplicity and speed of a dedicated rice cooker, there is no excuse for not using it often.  Even with the bare-bones unit I selected, there still is some trial and error and it takes time to figure it out.  My first few batches were dry and a little on the hard side.  I figured out that if I add a little more water and/or let the rice stand in the water first it turns out better.  Also, rinsing the rice first really helps get rid of the excess starchiness of the finished rice.

Then Get Fancy

After using my rice cooker for a few months, I have now started to experiment more with it.  Tonight I used vegetable broth instead of water and I added zucchini and tofu right into the pot when it cooked.  It turned out great and my wife even went back for seconds (which doesn’t usually happen with my rice experiments)!

I am happy that I purchased something and this unit has already exceeded my expectations.  What ever rice cooker you decide to purchase, I urge you to pick something and start cooking.  Eating more rice is a great way to improve your vegetarian diet and it is naturally gluten-free too.

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Tracking Books

For quite a while now I have been wanting to keep track of the books I read so recently I went looking for software or a website to keep track. I found a few good websites. My favorite is goodreads.com. It is free to sign up for an account and can easily track books. It has “shelves” which you can assign books to. By default you have a “read”, “reading”, and “want to read” shelf. You can add your own named shelves such as “I own it” or and other category you want to track.  There are a few other free websites so be sure to look around if this doesn’t fit what you want.  For software, I really didn’t find anything good – most people just suggested keeping an Excel spreadsheet like I do for my biking log.

iPhone Notes

I love carying my iPhone with me because I always have a place to jot down thoughts.  The Notes program is perfect for miscellaneous thoughts, ideas, or things to follow up on later.  You can even sync Notes with your Mac so you have them available on your computer.  This is a two step process:

1. In iTunes with your iPhone connected, in the left panel select your iPhone under Devices.  Then select the Info tab and scroll down until you see Notes and check the box that says “Sync notes”.  Now click Sync in the lower right corner and it should sync the notes onto your computer. Tip: the computer may warn you with a scary-sounding message like “this will change over 50% of the notes on your computer.  Are you sure you want to continue?”.  If you don’t have any notes already on your computer, this is perfectly normal and safe to continue.
2. The notes actually appear in the Mac Mail program.  If you don’t have Mail set up, you will have to do that now to be able to see your notes.  Once configured, the notes appear in the left pane under Reminders, Notes with the first line of the note appearing like the subject of an email, and then the entire note appearing in the email body section.  Very handy!

I hope you enjoyed these additional tracking tips.  I really like having an accumulation of data over time.  It is great to analyze for future reference, and also just to refer back to since it is so hard to remember everything.  Let me know if you have other data that you like to track or have found good methods.

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Gluten Free Pasta Types

The main two types we found are rice based and corn based.  While it does depend on the brand, we found the rice pasta held up better to cooking and tasted better.  The rice pasta also tastes more like typical flour based pasta.  Corn pasta has very different strong corn flavor.  This can be a nice change, but is less like a pasta substitute.

Rice based gluten free pasta

Corn based gluten free pasta

3 Cooking Tips

1. Don’t over cook.  We found that gluten free pastas do not hold up well to boiling and can easily get overcooked and turn mushy.  Follow the directions on the package and err on the early side – check the pasta early and often and make sure not to overcook it.
2. Use lower heat.  Usually I cook regular pasta on a full rolling boil.  For gluten free pasta, I use medium-high to medium heat and a slower boil.  This helps to keep the pasta intact.
3. Rinse with cold water.  Most gluten free pastas will have a starchy residue on them.  A good rinse with cold water removes this and improves the taste and texture.  I throw the rinsed pasta back in the pot to heat it up again.  Then you can serve it from there, or if you are serving the pasta with sauce you can add the sauce and heat it all up together.

Best Bet

Tinkyada Brown Rice Pasta - Best Bet!

These bags of brown rice pasta from a company called Tinkyada are the best bet that we found.  They are available in a bunch of styles and taste great.  They have spirals, elbows, shells, spaghetti, and more.  Many of them are available in organic varieties as well.  This pasta holds up great to cooking and can even handle a little over-cooking.  It passes for regular wheat based pasta and can fool people and they most likely won’t realize it isn’t regular pasta.

I have found this brand in several stores around us like HEB, Central Market, and Whole Foods.  They shouldn’t be too hard to find.  Look in the pasta section and the specialty gluten free section of your stores.  I hope you find these tips and recommendations useful.  Be sure to comment and let me know.

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Finished Dish - Rice and Tofu

This was a really simple dish which I was surprised that I got the kids to eat and enjoy pretty easily.  There is a little cooking involved if you count the rice, but hopefully that is easy enough.

I have also tried to get a little fancy with the sauce which I cook in a small pot on the stove.  Even with these two things though, this is still a very simple dish.

I have gotten in the habit lately of making rice once or twice a week and have it figured out pretty good.  I use two cups of dry rice so I get enough for leftovers for use the next few days.

First start a pot or rice-maker of rice going.  This is the longest part of the dish.

Then start the tofu by pressing the water out of a block of extra-firm tofu.  I have found several organic brands at different stores here, but find that extra-firm is the easiest to work with for dishes like this.  I wrap it in a few layers of paper towel and then place a bowl on top with a can or two from your pantry in the bowl to add weight.  If you do this about the time you start the rice, then the timing works out pretty good.

For sauce you can use just plain soy sauce or something similar.  Lately I have tried experimenting with cooking a sauce on the stove.  I start with a few cups of vegetable broth and add whatever I have on hand – soy sauce, balsamic vinegar, etc.  The kids have liked the sauces, but my wife hated them and suggested I take a sauce-making class before continuing to experiment!

Tofu and Rice being assembled

When the tofu is sufficiently pressed, cut it into cubes.  Then take a big microwave-safe bowl and put the tofu in.  I also happened to have a zucchini so I sliced that and added it as well.  Pour the sauce over the tofu.  Then heat it in the microwave for several minutes until it is nice and hot.  Stirring in between will help to get the tofu thoroughly coated and soaked with the sauce.  Then simply plate some tofu and sauce over a bed of rice.


Even though this one involves a little more cooking than some of my other meals, I have found myself making this fairly often lately because it really is simple once you get a system down.  I also feel good serving my kids rice and a simple tofu dish like this instead of another Morningstar Farms chik patty or something overly processed like that.  It is a simple, healthy dish and then I end up with leftover rice which I can use for the next mealtime.

When I actually figure out some sauces that work I’ll try to write up that as well.  Until then, you’ll have to experiment yourself.

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