Once off the phone, I began to dig into the details of her record, finding little beyond her existence.  I checked on her membership status.  Nothing.  I checked to see if a connection card had been filled out in service recently.  Nope.  I checked with finance to see if there was any record of giving.  Nada.  Growth group participation?  Serving team? Kids in a program?  Anything at all?  If it weren’t for an initial record entry from October 2010, she may have well been a ghost.

So I wrote the letter anyway.

It said: “To Whom it may concern: Our records indicate that [redacted] attended our church in October 2010.”  I printed it on letterhead, signed it, and sealed it in an envelope for her to pick up at the front desk.  All well before 1PM, just like I had promised.

Later, she called to thank me for writing the letter, but it wasn’t quite what she needed.  ”You see, Mr. Knowles, I need it to say that I’m a member.”  I walked her through my investigative process, which led me only to a lone record from October 2010.  I asked if she’d ever filled out a connection card.  She said she didn’t know it was required [it's not].  I asked why she doesn’t have her kids in our age-appropriate programs.  She said church was her family time.  I asked why she didn’t serve anywhere.  She said church was her family time.  ”You know, we go to church together, then go and have lunch as a family.”  I continued to ask difficult questions, looking for an opportunity to help point her toward growth in faith.  Unfortunately, she remained inwardly focused on getting what she called about.  As the call came to a close, she still needed a letter, and yet I couldn’t change anything and still keep my integrity.

A few days later, I got a voicemail from her saying: “…I kept thinking of our conversation that we had last week and I was wondering, um, if possible, see I really really need that letter I told you about.  I’m willing, um, in fact I’m not willing, I want to donate about $100 to the church and if you can please, uh, let us have that letter so that I can take that to her [her daughter] school, that will be greatly appreciated. Please give me a call, Mr. Knowles. Tell me how you want this donation. Alright. My number is [redacted].  Again, it is something that is required by the high school that my daughter belongs to and I will be highly appreciated if you can help us with this.”

I declined the bribe.

What does it mean to be a member of your church?

Those are not the words I want to hear on a Saturday about 3 hours before our church service.

I made my way down to the auditorium to find a 15000 pound, 30′ articulating boom lift sitting idle near the stage of our auditorium.  The lift did actually kind of work.  It could drive one direction (at high speed only) as well as steer.  However, the one direction it could drive wasn’t the direction that we needed to get it out. A technician from the rental company stood by and explained that the best he could do is release the brakes on the wheels, but it was stuck until the replacement part arrived.  Or, if we removed about 300 bolted-down seats, we might be able to turn it around and drive it out.

I called his supervisor and explained as clearly as possible that the lift absolutely could not stay in the auditorium.  He repeated what the technician had said: the church called in the issue on a Thursday, the technician came in on Friday and ordered the necessary part for Saturday delivery, the part never arrived, and therefore there was nothing they could do.  I repeated that there was no way it was going to be acceptable to leave a 30′ boom lift in the auditorium to distract thousands of people from our message.  The supervisor was out of solutions, so I ended the phone call.

I immediately called one of our members, John, who happens to run iTowing, a local towing company and asked if he had a winch on his truck.  He did, and he was on site in about 15 minutes.  We weren’t sure if we would actually be able to pull the lift out, given the weight and the slope we were up against.  In fact, we also spoke with our speaking pastor for the evening to give him the heads-up and loosely constructed a “what-if” plan.  John from iTowing gave it a shot.  He drove his tow truck on to our patio, and about 30 minutes later, the lift had been successfully pulled out to allow us to drive the lift from the patio in its one working direction and out to the parking lot.

Lessons:

1. Do business with vendors that understand the needs of your business and are willing to apply responsive, creative solutions to interesting and urgent problems.

2. Have a personal standard so you know what you’re willing to live with and what your willing to try anything to resolve before the deadline.  A giant green distraction in everyone’s view violated one of my standards (although I’d never specifically defined this one ahead of time, I’d just lumped it in with my ‘no major distractions’ standard).

3. Surround yourself with subject matter experts.  You can’t possibly know what to do in every situation, so be prepared to call on your team of consultants.

If you like the taste of bacon, just eat real bacon.

This is what’s in a vegan alternative, “Smart Bacon”: Water, soy protein isolate, wheat gluten, soybean oil, texured soy protein concentrate, textured wheat gluten, less than 2% of: natural smoke flavor, natural flavor (from vegetable sources), grill flavor (from sunflower oil), carrageenan, evaporated cane juice, paprika oleoresin (for flavor and color), potassium chloride, sesame oil, fermented rice flour, tapioca dextrin, citric acid, salt.

Read: Matthew 14:22-33

Reflect:  In the week before Easter, I received a challenge from my boss:

Take an hour in the next few days to simply connect with Jesus.  Don’t spend the time praying for the problems of the world, just connect with Him.  So I did.

I drove out to Coronado on a beautiful, sunny day, parked near the end of Ocean Boulevard, and walked toward the fence separating the Naval base from the rest of the beach.  My iPod played worship tunes and I sang along as I walked, preparing my heart for talking with God for an hour.  Once ready, I turned off my iPod and began to talk to Him as I walked south along the beach toward the Hotel Del Coronado.

On the way out, I focused on giving thanks and praise for all He has done for me.  On the way back, I focused on asking what was next for me. I prayed for a while and soon found myself walking in a tire track in the sand.  As long as I watched the track, I stayed on it.  Once I took my eyes off of it, I veered off track.  Eventually, the track I was on was replaced by a different tire tread pattern, going in slightly different direction. I was faced with a choice: follow the new path before me or choose to go my own way.  I pondered that for a moment and felt God give me a simple message through tire tracks in the sand: the path laid before me can change, but I still need to remain focused on following Him instead of my own way.

React: Find a quiet, peaceful place this week and take an hour to meet with Jesus one on one Listen and learn, then take a next step.

Pray: Father God, I could use a spiritual refueling.  Meet with me so I can listen and learn from You.

Dr. Robert Lustig

Thanks to the recent piece on 60 Minutes, there has been a lot of interest in Dr. Lustig, particularly his diet recommendations. Here’s the deal: Dr. Lustig’s schtick is to be the anti-sugar guy. As far as I know, he does not have a diet book or a particular diet he subscribes to. He simply rallies against sugar consumption. I happen to agree with him, although not his desire to have the government regulate sugar like it does alcohol. We need less government in food, not more. It was his 90 minute lecture on YouTube, The Bitter Truth, that got me to try my sugar-free summer experiment in 2011. Since then, I haven’t taken allopurinol nor have I had a gout attack.

Rick Knowles Dog

To be clear, I am not the guy charged with beating his neighbor’s dog with a hatchet. He goes by Ricky, I stopped using that nickname in 7th grade, after a 9th grader told me it sounded “gay.” Ricky-the-dog-abuser lives in Orting, Washington and although I grew up not so far away in Tacoma, Washington, I moved to the San Diego area in late 2004. And, the extent of my meanness to my dog basically revolves around saying “oops” in the kitchen without actually dropping anything, waking the dog from her nap and forcing her to sniff around for a non-existent prize. I love it.

“Shirtless” Variations

There are a number of searches that involve the word “shirtless” ranging from “hot guy shirtless” (THANK YOU) to “Older shirtless white man no face” (GO AWAY). I assume these searches related to a couple of posts I did during my sugar-free summer experiment to show how I was able to drop bodyfat. It killed me to post the pictures, but I wanted readers to see that there were actually visible changes associated with cleaning up my diet.

Swinging Meat

A few people have clearly been searching for Dad-isms. My dad has several old classic lines that you could always count on. For example:

• You ask my dad for a match to light your cigarette. The reply, EVERY SINGLE TIME, was “I ain’t had a match since Superman died.”
• You comment on his pot belly and receive: he would reach for his zipper and say “I’m having a baby elephant, want to see its trunk?”
• And, you might playfully say “Hey, boy! Come over here!” You would get this back: “Boy? I’ve got 15 pounds of swinging meat and a bucket of balls and you call me a boy?” Sigh.

What Dad-isms could you count on from your Dad?

I’ve also had great success not being a control freak, achieving the sales growth, labor efficiency, service metrics, and profit growth without working lots of hours and follow-up calls in my off time.

How did I get the same business results while giving up control?

I gave framework, my team members made decisions.

Look around your house and you’ll see drywall.  The drywall can be finished smooth for wallpaper, or with a textured finish for paint. The paint can be a variety of colors and a variety of applications.  Wainscoting can be added.  Crown molding is an option.  The drywall corners can be squared or rounded.  What doesn’t change is how the walls are framed.  The architect determined the size of the rooms and the location of the doors, windows, and hallways.  The owner made decisions on how to finish it.  The architect may have had some suggestions, but the owner made the final decision.

Spend your time designing, training, and coaching on framework.  You have non-negotiables, must-haves, and gotta-be-theres? Fine – that’s all a part of your framework.  Repeat those things until your team can recite them word for word.  Then let your team make the decisions within the walls you’ve designed.  Your focus is framework and results.

It’s a lot more up-front work, but it’s less tiring and stressful.  It’s also a lot more exciting to see your team fully own decisions and achieve results beyond what you had originally pictured.

Weight, however, is not the primary concern.  It’s just a benchmark indicator of how things might be going.  Other things are worth looking at like:

Skin conditions: Once I cleaned up my diet in New Year, New Experiment, my skin cleared up and I no longer flared up seborrhic dermatitis, a condition I’ve lived with for years.  Since it’s cleared up, I’ve given it a couple of tests with dairy and gluten and I’ve flared it each time.  Clean eating gets me back on track.

Measurements: There’s incredible value in taking and comparing measurements.  I wish I had done it from the beginning, but I did take them from January 1st to January 31st.  While I did drop some weight during January, perhaps more important is body composition.  During the experiment, I dropped 2.75″ across the following measurements: neck, chest, waist, hip, and bicep.

Body Aches: Cleaning up your diet can yield results in general aches and pains.  For some, arthritis lightens or clears up.  For me, I stopped taking allopurinol and colchicine for gout after many years of dosing and haven’t had a gout attack in a year.  For others, there’s even more at stake.  Dr. Terry Wahls was wheelchair-bound with MS, changed her diet, and has reversed the process:

Happiness and Energy Levels: This is a little more difficult to measure, but I find myself less stressed and more even-tempered.  My energy level has been very good and at my peak of Crossfit-style training last year, I was frequently setting new personal bests.  As life got busier, I found myself training less, but still feeling good.

Improved Breathing:  Before I changed my diet, I had been put on an inhaler for exercised-induced asthma.  I had a scary episode while on a run, hitting the first mile at a new personal best.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t catch my breath and was in a lot of pain as I coughed and gagged on the trail by myself.  I was a mile away from the car one way and a half-mile away from the road the other way.  Not a good feeling at all.  The inhaler helped on future runs, but once I changed my diet, I found that I didn’t need it.

Need more reasons to clean up your diet?  Check out:

Testimonials on Robb Wolf’s site, author of The Paleo Solution

Testimonials on Mark Sisson’s site, author of The Primal Blueprint 

Testimonials on Whole9′s site, author of the Whole30 Success Guide

Of course, it’s not all good news.  Eating a clean diet is pretty inconvenient and you give up things that you currently like.  However, once you see the improvements, it’s hard to go back.  Heck, I like things like Oreos, but now that I know exactly how it will impact me (shaky, can’t concentrate, skin flare-up, headache, potential to precipitate a gout attack), I simply have a hard time justifying doing that to myself again.

Seriously, give it 30 days and see what happens.  If it sucks and doesn’t make a difference, you can always eat how you always have.

“Hi Rick 

I wanted to set up a meeting with you next wed at 330pm to go over the [copier]. Please let me know if this works for you

Best”

Before I’m interested in a meeting about a copier that I’m already in contract with, I want to know why this would be a good idea.  So I replied:

“Hope I don’t offend you with this:

Send me what you’re specifically interested in talking about, then I’ll let you know if I have time for it.

Just going over the [copier] doesn’t sound terribly interesting.”

Four quick vendor tips for getting a meeting with busy people:

• Specific: “Your contract is 2 years into a 3 year deal. I’d like to talk to you about renewal options for equipment and service.”  Unless I know why you want to meet, I don’t want to meet.
• Brief: Single lines, bullet points. No paragraphs. Don’t make me work to read your email.
• Time-Bound: “May we schedule a meeting from 3:30PM to 3:45PM on Wednesday?”  Without a pre-determined bailout time, I’m less likely to accept a meeting.
• Connect the Meeting with an Additional Service: “I’m planning to run some equipment tests from 3:00 – 3:30PM on Wednesday, may I meet with you afterward for 15 minutes to talk about [specific reasons].”  Or, “I’ll have a cup of Starbucks with me to stay fresh as the day winds down.  If 3:30PM works for you, what can I pick up for you on the way in?”
• Spelling and Grammar: From the signature line of the request above: “Certified Vendor For Sevice & Supplies.” Help me be confident in your ability to be accurate.

If you can’t identify with any reasonable confidence why you should accept a meeting with a vendor, skip it.

First off, doing a significant dietary change isn’t easy.  I love my homemade corn tortillas and my wife’s gluten-free scones, muffins, and pancakes. I love butter.  I like half-n-half in hot coffee. Cheese is a convenient and easy snack.  No rice and beans at a Mexican restaurant? You’ve got to be kidding!  But I stuck with it for the sake of the experiment.

I tracked everything I ate for the month in myfitnesspal (free, and allows for inputs on the web, iPad app, Blackberry app – everything that I use!).  I didn’t track my food for calorie counting purposes, but to look for total macronutrient breakdown as well as to potentially find links between what I ate and how I felt.

The recommended intake for macronutrients as a percentage of calories (at least according to myfitnesspal) are 55% carbohydrates, 30% fat, and 15% protein.  On a diet of basically meats, vegetables, fruits, and nuts, my macronutrient makeup was:

• Week 1: 24% carbs, 54% fat, 22% protein
• Week 2: 27% carbs, 51% fat, 22% protein
• Week 3: 32% carbs, 47% fat, 21% protein
• Week 4: 30% carbs, 52% fat, 18% protein
• Current week-to-date: 30% carbs, 51% fat, 19% protein

What?!? Greater than 50% of my calories came from fat? Get the AED device and statin drugs, quick!

Sorry. The science simply doesn’t support the cholesterol myth. Besides, at my last check, after I’d made the first big change in my eating habits to eat least clean 6 days a week, my cholesterol markers were all well within standard guidelines (much different than they had been in the past on a grain and sugar-heavy diet).

How did those macronutrient breakdowns happen? Did I get a target from a Paleo Diet website and work to follow it? Nope. I ate meats, vegetables, fruits, and nuts and that’s how it came out. Did I purposely seek out more dietary fat? Nope. I just don’t fear it. I ate whole (and usually organic) foods until I was full, letting the chips (that I didn’t eat) fall where they may.

So what happened with the experiment?

Most people would want to know whether or not I lost weight. That wasn’t what I was going for, but it was a nice side benefit. I ended up losing 12 pounds over the month, dropping from 224 on January 1st (I had gotten a little sloppy since the end of the sugar-free summer experiment) to 212 on January 31st. 212 is the lowest weight I’ve been at in over 20 years.

For me, however, the experiment was about what it would do for my skin. I have seborrheic dermatitis that I was looking to clear up without applying a prescribed steroidal cream. Steroidal creams can have an effect of thinning the skin over long-term use, and that didn’t sound good to me. So I looked to nutrition for a potential answer. Based on a clean diet for the month of January, I’d say it’s a success. My skin is more clear that it’s ever been and I’m not experiencing red, patchy flareups at all. Early into the experiment, I did allow about 1/2 tablespoon of shredded cheese to enter my diet and within 2 days, I had very painful flareup. It cleared quickly and hasn’t come back.

From here, it’s hard to even want to experiment with bringing things back to see if I can identify the exact trigger. Besides, my wife already eats gluten-free, dairy-free and it makes sense within the family to be more aligned in our diets. But, Superbowl Sunday is coming up and I’m thinking about throwing all caution to the wind, eating a bunch of crap like I did last year by punishing my body with about 5500 calories and getting back on track the next day. I haven’t had a “cheat day” in a while, but with results like feeling better, losing weight, and clearing skin, it’s hard to want one.

Paula Deen adds an injection to her daily routine and collects a paycheck for becoming the face of the drug. That’s not your reality. You don’t get to sell your health out to a drug manufacturer and collect a pile of cash for your family. Paula Deen does. She has to work like everybody else.

Since collecting a paycheck for being sick is likely out for you, you have a different choice to make:

Will I choose to manage symptoms or address causes?

For Paula Deen, managing symptoms means using Victoza, and according to the literature:

“Victoza® is an injectable prescription medicine that may improve blood sugar (glucose) in adults with type 2 diabetes when used along with diet and exercise.”

Wait a minute. The drug MAY improve blood sugar? WHEN USED ALONG WITH diet and exercise? Then why not just do the diet and exercise thing? The simple answer comes down to money. There’s no money in healthy people, or at least not nearly as much as sick people.

Let’s say that Paula Deen did indeed try the diet and exercise route. If so, she was obviously unsuccessful, hence the need for the injection. So why would she have been unsuccessful? It’s either:

a: She truly has a problem that cannot be dealt with through nutrition alone.
or
b: She didn’t follow the recommended plan for diet and exercise.
or
c: The recommended plan sucks.

I suspect that many people upon finding out they have type II diabetes go to the American Diabetes Association for help. Looking through a few articles will generally come to the same conclusions: watch your carbohydrate intake (but still eat whole grains), lower your fat intake (especially that dangerous saturated fat), get some exercise, lose some weight. In losing weight, the ADA does say that both the low-carbohydrate approach and the low-fat approach may provide benefits up to one year, but it does caution readers about the safety of a low-carbohydrate approach.

In essence, the ADA mimics the government stance on general nutrition. Eat your grains. Eat less fat. That leads to two main questions:

1. How’s that working out for you?
2. Why should you be concerned about the ADA’s nutrition advice?

How’s that working out for you?
Despite improvements like some weight loss or perhaps a generally lower level of blood glucose, I’m guessing that it hasn’t resulted in the elimination of medication. Despite the assertion that whole-grain pasta, whole-grain cereal, and whole-grain bread are all good sources of dietary fiber the pasta, cereal, and bread will all increase your blood sugar. According this CDC report, diabetes cases in the United States have more than doubled since 1980. How’s that standard, recommended American diet working out? Not well.

Why should you be concerned about the ADA’s nutrition advice?
While the stated mission of the ADA is to prevent and cure diabetes and to improve the lives of all people affected by it, there is a significant conflict of interest. A quick check of the annual report shows the four donors of over $1 million in 2010 were all drug companies. Four of the next five highest donors at the > $500K level were also drug companies. The other is a supplier of diabetes supplies, devices, and technologies. The biggest donors to the ADA have the largest amount to lose if diabetes were actually cured without medical or pharmaceutical intervention.

Paula Deen, the ADA, and the drug companies all have a significant financial interest in NOT curing you, but simply managing illness. There is no financial upside (except to you, the consumer) to finding a cure that is not drug-related.

You’re not Paula Deen. You can’t afford to be sick, so it’s time to start addressing the cause instead of just managing the symptoms. Start with a 30 day elimination diet and remove all known common causes of health problems: eliminate processed foods, grains, sugars, dairy, and legumes and see how you feel. Eat until you’re full and ignore the government recommended daily allowances. Add things back one at a time and see how you feel. Do you feel better, worse, gaining weight, losing weight? Those are all clues about whether or not you’re on the right track. You are an experiment of one. Think you can’t live without soda? That’s a great potential experiment. I’ll bet you can.

It’s inconvenient, sure. But it’s only 30 days. What have you got to lose?