The Road to Ultra

Happy New Year!

What an exciting year this has been. I know this is a week late, but I'm sure you'll understand. Our family spent the first week of the year in our cabin that is nestled within Georgia's northern mountains. We swam, soaked in the hot tub, lit fires in the freezing weather, visiting small gold rush towns and generally had a great time.

Of course every year we spend this precious time to reflect upon our accomplishments of the previous year and to set goals for the year to come.

Our daughter, Lizzie, was the highlight of the conversation. After launching her website, LizzieMarieCuisine.com, and recording her video series, we were amazed at how quickly interest grew. For her desire to make a difference in the community to help people live better and healthier lives, she was awarded the Del Monte Do Something Good for You! Grant. This has opened many doors, and the funding will be used to purchase supplies in order to provide healthy cooking classes.

Just as children grow older and move out of the house, Lizzie's business has grown and has moved out from under the fold of Golden Summit Inc. As part of the process, we moved her completely to her own website. She was able to organize her content into better categories. Visit her site to watch the videos, read her articles, and learn more about her accomplishments.

The decision to make changes to the website went beyond highlighting Lizzie's content. After careful consideration and reflection, we realized that my own website is more about Lose Fat, Not Faith and should embrace that brand and belief. I recently began making changes to the site to transition it from the Golden Summit Inc umbrella as well.

Of course, these websites have been around for months. We know some links may be broken and unfortunately the search engines take time to reconsider the changes as well. It will be a few weeks before things are back to normal but we're confident you'll agree the new format will be easier to navigate, bookmark, and refer to. We're also excited about focusing more on how faith and our spiritual journey empowered us to become the healthy family we are, and will incorporate more of that into our sites.

You can now access the main website simply by typing LoseFatNotFaith.com into your web browser. All of our articles are grouped under Articles.LoseFatNotFaith.com. The gallery has been moved to Gallery.LoseFatNotFaith.com, the forums are at Forums.LoseFatNotFaith.com, and the bookstore is now at (you guessed it!) Bookstore.LoseFatNotFaith.com. We appreciate your patience as we transition. Please let us know if you encounter any issues as you navigate the new sites. The searches should start working again within a few days.

I also moved my own page and blog to JeremyLikness.com. I'll be making updates there, reformatting it more like a profile with curriculum vitae.

I had a lot to be thankful for. As the 4th employee of a wireless applications company, I helped grow the business to now over 30 employees. I've seen our locations expand from hundreds to thousands and have grown my own department as well (I now have a large team of developers and am not the only one writing code).

In my own, personal journey, I wasn't as focused on the right priorities and made some poor decisions that created more of a struggle to my ultramarathon than I anticipated. It became very clear that my biggest obstacle to running longer distances is weight, so I shifted my focus to shed these extra pounds. Once I'm back down to lower body fat, I'll start building up my distances but now I must focus on the formula I know works for fat loss: intense weight training and high intensity cardio mixed with low intensity sessions (mainly walks on a steeply inclined treadmill).

This year is about reinventing Lose Fat, Not Faith. I'm considering coming out with an expanded edition, including several of my other works, and packaging it as an e-book (and possibly discontinuing the print edition ... would love to hear your feedback on this, as I know some people prefer one over the other). It's about expanding the website, posting more content, sharing more of my faith, but most importantly, restoring balance in my own life so that I can continue to "walk the walk" and not just "talk the talk."

Thank you for joining us on this wonderful journey, and for your continued support. We appreciate you and all you do. We look forward to providing tremendous value this year and always strive to exceed your expectations. Have a blessed, abundant, and successful year.

Yours truly,

Doreen, Lizzie, and Jeremy Likness
The Lizzie Marie Cuisine and Lose Fat, Not Faith Team