Wellness tips that work for me

Eat good fats! Eat fat to get thin. Avoid low-fat and non-fat. The body needs good fat, so if I avoid fat I force my body into a fat-storing mode and start to increase my waistline. So, I eat whole-fat yogurt (with no artificial sweeteners and low sugar), whole milk, meat with fat (not too lean!), and lots of avocados (guac, baby!), nuts, and healthy oils (olive oil, peanut, sunflower, avocado, and coconut oils).

Sleep! I average 7-8 hours per night. Yes, I’m super busy. Yes, I’ve made millions of dollars in my lifetime. But that doesn’t mean I’m a machine & neglect my body. I strive for balance, and that includes allocating time for adequate sleep. It helps my body burn fat, restores my spirit & soul, and keeps me super productive with high energy each day.

Exercise! No surprise here. I find that #HIIT (High-Intensity Intermittent Training), ninja warrior, parkour, sprint/walk (this applies to running, swimming, biking, etc.), and similar exercise works much better for me than endurance exercise (like long-distance or long-duration exercise). 

Yoga – 26 years and counting (since 1991) at least once a week but usually 2x per week. I can’t recommend this too strongly. It keeps my body strong (especially my core and my joints), flexible and healthy, as well as providing de-toxifying benefits to my organs.

High protein, low carbs. I find that bread and other starchy foods (pasta, rice, etc.) go right to my waistline. So, I severely restrict starchy carbs and limit my carbs to mostly just vegetables and some fresh fruit. I eat mostly eggs, nuts, avocados, meats (lots of fish – but I avoid farm-raised salmon due to the high toxicity) and peanut butter. Lots of peanut butter.

Alkaline water – we have a machine at home & I strongly recommend you drink a lot of alkaline water. Do some research on it. I drink a full glass of water every morning before anything else touches my stomach, sometimes with some fresh lemon juice squeezed in. This kick-starts my day and I don’t need coffee and don't eat as much for breakfast.

Fast – I wait as long as I can between meals, helping my body burn fat by fasting a bit. Usually, I only eat 2 high protein, high good fat (nuts, seeds, beans, avocado, oils, meats), and low carb meals per day.

Organic!! I have been eating almost exclusively organic foods since 1986 when my mom taught me thru her actions how important the avoidance of toxins is in foods. America uses more pesticides, herbicides, and insecticides per capita than any other country by a HUGE margin. We’re slowly killing ourselves. Eat organic. Duh.

Massage – I get bodywork about every 3-4 weeks. It helps me detox and keeps my tissues young & supple. Health is about assimilation & elimination. The body can assimilate foods that are not processed and don’t contain chemicals or additives. Read the ingredients of everything you buy: if you can’t pronounce something or don’t recognize it, don’t put it in your body! Some toxins are inevitable, so for me, massage helps me rid my body of this crap.

Toxin avoidance. As hard as I try to avoid toxins, they are everywhere: in our air, water, and food. The body has evolved to protect itself from anything unknown that we ingest by wrapping it up with fat molecules (to shield the body from the unknown particle(s)). So, the more toxins you eat or drink (like Splenda / Sucralose/ High Fructose Corn Syrup or other artificial sweeteners) the fatter you get because the body has to wrap up those nasties with protective fat. I’m no doctor, I just know what happens with my own body & I’ve done a ton of research and tried lots of different things. This is another reason I’m so passionate about wind, solar & other clean energy sources: over 80% of the mercury in our air & water comes from coal plants, along with lead, arsenic, cadmium, and lots of other nasty stuff.

See also: How to lose 15 pounds in 5 days

When you sleep affects mental health dramatically

Living organisms are governed by an internal biological clock known as the circadian rhythm, and as the Earth rotates every 24 hours, this clock aligns with the cycle of day and night. In a new study, scientists reveal that this process has a strong link to mental health. There’s a larger chunk of the genome dedicated to body clocks than previously realized, and those genes are linked to others that determine a person’s overall state of well-being. In the paper, released Tuesday in Nature Communications, medical researchers explain that being a “morning person” or “evening person” is a behavioral consequence of a person’s underlying circadian rhythm, which is shaped by their genes. Some genes, they found, can even shift a person’s natural waking time by up to 25 minutes. In the study, they investigated whether these “chronotype” genes were associated with any genes related to mental health. They found that people who tend to wake up earlier are more likely to experience a greater sense of well-being and a lower risk of schizophrenia and depression.

https://www.inverse.com/article/52855-body-clock-circadian-rhythm-depression

Intermittent Fasting - When We Eat (or Don't) Matters...a Lot!

I've been practicing Intermittent Fasting (IF) since summer 2017, 18 months ago as of the time I write this blog. That doesn't mean I can't eat yummy foods like home-made buckwheat pancakes with fresh whipped cream (all organic, and yes I made them myself :) 

At 50+ years old, it was the only method that worked to melt off the last of the belly fat I was trying so hard to lose.

It takes some getting used to, but there are SO many benefits. Check out the NY Times article below for some recent research. I have 1st hand experience with the following benefits:

1.       Reduces body fat

2.       Melts belly fat (for me, that was hardest to lose)

3.       More energy

4.       Less joint pain & inflammation

5.       Better sleep

6.       More strength

7.       Saves money

8.       Stronger immune system

9.       Saves time

10.   Simplifies my life a bit (2 meals per day + healthy snacks w good fat: nuts, olives, avocados)

What is it?  For me, I do 8 & 16: 8-hour window of eating, 16 hours of fasting…every day.  I generally eat my first meal about 4-5 hours after I wake up (so around 11 or noon), then my last meal is 8 hours later (around 7-8 pm). 

I generally go to sleep around 11 and wake up around 6:30 or 7 (I am consistent about getting 7 to 7.5 hours of sleep, minimum).

Think about it: we evolved over hundreds of thousands of years to eat one big meal per day, usually (two if we were lucky), with snacks of nuts, seeds, berries, etc.  Now, society tells us we should eat 3 meals per day, but our bodies were not designed to process that much food.  Assimilation and elimination are the two most important functions our body performs.  If we throw too much food into our systems, the body must work super hard to digest it and assimilate the nutrients properly.  This generally takes several hours.

But if we throw more food in our system too soon (just as it’s getting through the last meal), many of the nutrients will not be properly assimilated and the body will be forced to eliminate a lot of the food that it doesn’t have time to process.  That’s not only wasteful, it leads to incomplete assimilation and challenges with elimination.  Over time, these imbalances can lead to a whole host of health problems that may manifest in dangerous ways. 

When We Eat, or Don’t Eat, May Be Critical for Health

A growing body of research suggests that our bodies function optimally when we align our eating patterns with our circadian rhythms.

See NY Times article here or https://getpocket.com/a/read/2268038902.

How Exercise May Make Us Healthier (NYT) - Protein activity

I was fascinated with this article, especially since I eat a high protein, very low carb diet (lots of peanut butter, fish, seeds, nuts, and plant protein - and almost no bread).  Evidently, protein activity in the body is not well understood...especially among those who exercise a lot. 

Check it out!

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/19/well/move/how-exercise-may-make-us-healthier.html

Troy Helming
SolarNinjaTroy

2017 Recap

2017 was a good year for solar in the USA but a very good year for me.  I sold most of my solar company in 2017, which helped to generate a profit in the 8-figure range.  Nearly all of that profit was used to pay down debt at my solar company, causing total debt & liabilities to drop from over $100 Million in 2015 to about $3 Million in late 2017.  That's a huge weight off the shoulders of me and my partners in the company, obviously.

Other key milestones and updates:

1. We completed another utility-scale solar project, this one in Wisconsin on a landfill in Eau Claire, WI, which happens to be the largest community solar project in the state at 1 million watts (1 megawatt).  It produces enough energy for the communities in the area to power the equivalent usage of about 300 homes.  Many thanks to Wunder Capital, Industry Capital, The RAQ, B&B Electric, the City of Eau Claire, XCEL Energy, Sustainable Solar Services Corp, and the many other parties who helped make this project a reality despite numerous challenges.  The project uses 40-kilowatt high-efficiency string inverters from Growatt, solar panels from South Korea's Hansol, racking from Michigan's The RAQ, and monitoring systems from Also Energy.  The project took approximately 2 and 1/2 years to develop to "shovel-ready" status, and yet only about 3 months to construct once all permits and electrical grid interconnection studies were complete.  See YouTube below (be sure to like & subscribe to my @SolarNinjaTroy YouTube channel!).  https://youtu.be/GS3kKdfz4W0 
2. Former employees.  After selling the 3 primary divisions of Pristine Sun LLC to buyers, each of the buyers has taken the "shovel-ready" or nearly fully developed projects and finished construction.  This has caused hundreds of millions of dollars of Pristine Sun-developed projects to become operational, representing enough clean electricity to power tens of thousands of homes.  All former Pristine Sun employees should feel very proud of their contributions to these projects that caused this all to be possible! Most of the Pristine Sun employees went to work for the buyers of our projects, and most of the rest ended up working at other solar companies.  Employee staff obligations were paid in full as part of those sales, although some portions of outstanding employee obligations of managers and executives (excluding any unsupported claims by disgruntled former employees who were laid off prior to the sale(s) closings) are to be paid on an "earn-out" basis by the buyers, Pristine Sun's largest shareholder (that's not me; I'm the 2nd biggest shareholder), and/or the last remaining corporate lender of Pristine Sun, upon achievement of certain milestones.  Executive compensation payments that may be due (upon achievement of certain milestones) will be paid last, after any other milestone-based payments or other obligations are paid 100% to all non-executives.  Many of those milestones were achieved in 2017, although some are expected to be achieved in 2018.  My substantial personal earn-out, including bonuses and unpaid wages, and distributions of any profits as the founder and 2nd largest shareholder of Pristine Sun, will be paid out over about 5 years on a milestone basis, but only AFTER all other non-executive employee obligations are satisfied first (again, excluding any unsupported claims by disgruntled former employees).
3. Floating Solar.  In 2017, the United States Patent and Trademark Office awarded patent pending status to 11 patents on floating solar technology.  I am a co-inventor, along with our senior engineer Kenny Forrest, on the patents.  See www.FloatoRack.com.  .The potential for placing solar on bodies of water is enormous.  Benefits include: reduces water losses to evaporation by up to 80%, reduces algae growth (which clogs filters and pumps in lakes and ponds) by a similar percentage, keeps the panels clean (due to daily rinsing via sprinklers, using the water underneath) which avoids the "soiling losses" of up to 40% endured by solar projects in areas with air pollution and/or dry, dusty climates, and keeps the panels cooler (due to the lower temperature of the water) which makes them up to 5% more efficient (solar panels are semi-conductors and therefore lose efficiency when they get hot).  We are developing numerous floating solar projects in various regions, on wastewater treatment ponds, drinking water reservoirs (where recreation is limited or forbidden altogether), and even ocean waters.
4. World-changing technology.  Also in 2017, several additional patents were granted patent pending status by the U.S. P.T.O., and I am the sole inventor of these particular patents.  These are for technologies for a company that started developing a world-changing technology (also in the energy and infrastructure sector) in 2013.  Equipment was ordered in late 2017 to build the first prototype at a secret location in the Silicon Valley San Francisco Bay Area.  Stay tuned for more information on this company and its products, as we hope to come out of "stealth" mode in mid-2018.
5. Additional solar projects.  In 2017, I partnered with Industry Capital where I am an Operating Principal (and a minority owner of the solar fund, Cratus Energy).  We began investing significant capital into developing floating solar projects in Sonoma County and San Diego County, California, as well as additional projects in Wisconsin, North Carolina, South Carolina and a few other areas.  The pipeline of solar projects available to develop within this partnership exceeds 7,000 megawatts (MW), which if they were all built would be about $10 Billion of assets.  Not all of them will be developed or built, due to some that will encounter fatal flaws with permitting, grid interconnection, or the availability of project finance at a reasonable cost of capital.  However, over the next five years, the partnership expects to build at least $2 Billion worth of clean solar energy power plants in dozens of communities across America.

Major Challenges Overcome in 2015-2016 as part of the "Solar Coaster"

This post describes one of the most difficult experiences I have endured in my solar career...on par with getting death threats about 20 years ago while doing wind energy development in Kansas.  It's painful, so grab a cup of coffee or tea and read on!

In late 2014, after two consecutive years of multi-million dollar profits and solid growth, Pristine Sun LLC lost a major incoming investment from a large U.S.-based energy company due to crashing oil prices. As a result, our corporate lender (who had lent us a peak amount of about $22 Million to support our growth of 400% per year in 2013 & 2014) demanded that we find an equity investor to counterbalance their loans.  Prior the then, the company had grown with about $500,000 of equity invested by the founders (mostly me) and a $10 Million investment from Capital Dynamics in 2011.  Due to strong profits, the CapDyn investment was repaid in full (with their 25% return) in 2013 & 2014, buying back the 40% share they had in Pristine Sun.  The company "boot-strapped" its way to further growth in 2015 along with loans from the corporate lender based on about $80 Million of assets we had on the balance sheet by 2014.

Due to the oil price crash and the unexpected and spectacular implosion of the largest solar energy developer in the country (SunEdison), our CFO and executive team (me + five other C-level executives) struggled to find any investors for the company.  For some reason, investors felt like low oil prices were bad for the solar industry.  This is weird since we don't use oil to produce electricity in this country; it's a transportation fuel, not a power generating fuel like natural gas, coal or uranium.  Nevertheless, all the 175 potential investors we spoke to, including those courted by an investment banking firm hired by our CFO, said no thanks the timing isn't right.  But nearly all of them said they would buy our projects from us at a steep discount.  That was not a sustainable business model since selling projects that were under development (but not yet in construction) at a big discount would be a short-term one-time cash infusion and then we'd have little left for our terrific employees to work on.  That was a recipe for unwinding the company and laying off most (or all) of our staff.  Meanwhile, our lender was threatening foreclosure if we didn't do something, and quickly.  Our projects were at risk of having their contracts with customers (electric utilities) canceled due to non-payment of security deposits and lack of construction progress.  Those projects were worth tens of millions of dollars once they became operational, so losing the contracts (which would kill the projects) would have been devastating.  Our options were limited, and time was running out.

So in the summer of 2015, we signed what we thought was a very exciting Joint Venture with a Chinese-based publicly traded but financially awkward solar panel manufacturer, Renesola (NYSE: SOL).  This is public information, and has been disclosed in the SOL public filings. Nothing noted here is non-public information.  The announced JV called for 300 MW of solar projects (about 5% of the Pristine Sun "pipeline" of projects in development at the time) to be developed and built by Pristine Sun and sold to the JV.  The value (at that time) of typical solar projects was about $2 Million per MW, so the total JV represented up to about $600 Million worth of future revenue to Pristine Sun.  And, a significant infusion of cash would come at the time of the signing of the JV.  We were cut off by our corporate lender and had no idea how to meet payroll for our 78 employees.  So we were effectively left with no choice but to sign the JV agreement after our law firm had won a few hard-fought concessions from Renesola's counsel. It was not a fair agreement yet, but we really had no choice; we were out of time.  We had to save our projects, and pay our team.  So we signed, got the money at closing, and saved our projects by paying security deposits to the utilities and starting construction.  The JV agreement called for significant additional capital payments to us over the next several weeks and months, which we were counting on to pay our suppliers for solar panels and other equipment and pay our sub-contractors.

You know what happens next.  We never got any more money from Renesola pursuant to the JV agreement, so both parties in the JV sued each other (the court case is public if you care to read it here). There are 3 sides to every story, but suffice it to say that our team was extremely unhappy with Renesola.  We were being starved for cash, right at the time when we needed it to pay our people and our vendors and suppliers.  It got so bad that we had to begin laying off employees in late 2015 and we sold all of our company trucks and construction equipment, along with selling the constructed projects to other buyers (not Renesola).  We entered a period of very painful protracted litigation.  Our biggest investor cut us off, our corporate lender had already cut us off and would not allow any other loans to come in, and the litigation with Renesola tied up our projects making them difficult to sell without affecting the active litigation.  It was a very trying time for the five of us who were the executives of the company, as we struggled and tried everything we could think of to dig out of the hole.  Finally, after letting the public reporting periods pass for public companies (where Renesola had to disclose the dispute with Pristine Sun), we agreed to mediation.  I cannot discuss the terms of the settlement reached in Mediation in the spring of 2016 (and finalized that summer), but I can say it was very favorable to Pristine Sun and has caused our senior lender to be mostly paid off over a period of time.  The settlement, along with the sale of several other divisions of the company, paid down about $100 Million of debt and other liabilities and caused the company to earn record profits in 2016 and 2017.

As a result of paying down so much debt and earning the record profits, we attracted some large institutional, US-based equity investors who have partnered with Pristine Sun to resume growth and development.  As the 2nd largest shareholder, this has been painful for me too but the future looks very bright: we held onto about 85% of our massive pipeline of solar projects.  This pipeline could be worth $10 Billion someday if we built all of the projects.  We won't: some will encounter fatal flaws in permitting our grid interconnection challenges.  But some portion of the projects will be developed and built, and I stand to gain a lot from helping to make that happen.  However, my role now is a Board director and investor, rather than a full-time employee (my choice).  This gives me more time to spend with my family and train as a 50-year-old (at the time of writing) ninja warrior.

Pristine Sun LLC came out of this dark chapter in the "Solar Coaster" a leaner, meaner company with almost no debt, a small but capable team, and finally a huge upside potential to monetize one of the largest solar project development pipelines in the country.  Wish us luck!

@SolarNinjaTroy at The Edge Training Center MI 2017 10