Author: steve

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Are your clothes hiding a mess?

When my wife and I decided to get a new kitchen range recently, we went with stainless steel. We like the look of it, and it shows everything, so, at least in my mind, that means it’s easier to keep clean, because you can see all the junk that has been splattered onto it. It’s in plain view.

A few months after our purchase, I updated my facebook status, saying how happy I was with our decision to go with a glass cooktop, double oven, and stainless steel finish.

One of my friends commented that he hates stainless steel, “because it’s so hard to keep clean.”

I countered with my thought on the subject — pretty much what I wrote above — and that was the end of the discussion.

It occurred to me only a few months later that what my friend really meant, although he’d never say it this way, was that stainless steel is “harder to leave dirty.”

In other words, his non-stainless steel range was probably a mess, but it was okay, because you couldn’t see the mess.

How about your body? Is it a mess that you are able to hide with loose clothing?

That only works for so long. At some point, you will no longer be able to disguise the fat. In fact, I am guessing that is why women in our society seem to be more prone to dieting than men, because women generally wear tighter-fitting clothes, so their excess baggage is more often on display.

Do you really think you look okay? Stop kidding yourself and others. If you are overweight, stop covering it up and do something about it.

And, really, I hope you understand that my point has nothing to do with the way you look. It has to do with your health. Overweight is just not as healthy as thinner. We all know that.

Contact me. I’m here to help.

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You can’t out-exercise a bad diet

I saw this statement again recently, and, while I have touched on it before in other posts, I thought I should finally write a full article about it, because this is a very important principle to understand.

YOU CANNOT OUT-EXERCISE A BAD DIET!

It’s just that simple.

While 20% to 25% of your body composition is controlled by your exercise regimen, 75% to 80% of your body composition is determined by what you eat.

So, then, why do some of the most health-conscious people I know think they can eat just about whatever they want, whenever they want, and then hit the gym to work it off?

A Big Mac Meal, with a medium fries and a 21-ounce Coke, comes in at 1130 calories. Oh, but you drink Diet Coke? 920 calories. That does not include ketchup, which will add a few more carbs (and calories). But let’s not quibble.

A Big Mac Meal is not an absurdly sized meal. It’s easily edible by people for lunch or supper. Many people enjoy the flavors of the Big Mac Meal. If you are one of those people, cool. No judgment here. I’ve had my share of Big Mac Meals.

Don’t like Big Macs? Here are some other typical meals. The calorie totals include a zero-calorie beverage (like diet soda or water).

  • Arby’s – Medium roast beef sandwich with medium curly fries – 990 calories
  • Taco Bell – 2 Beef Burrito Supremes – 840 calories
  • McDonald’s Breakfast – 2 Sausage McMuffins with egg and 1 hash brown – 1050 calories
  • KFC – Spicy Crisp chicken breast with cole slaw and beans – 810 calories
  • 2 home-made cupcakes with frosting – 1000 calories

Okay, so each of those has 800+ calories. Let’s see what the Mayo Clinic says about calories burned by exercise.

The bigger you are, the more calories you burn, so we include a range of weights. You can adjust the numbers to approximate your calorie burn, based on your weight.

Activity (1-hour)Weight of person and calories burned
160 pounds200 pounds240 pounds
Aerobics, high impact533664796
Aerobics, low impact365455545
Basketball game584728872
Bicycling, < 10 mph, leisure292364436
Resistance (weight) training365455545
Running, 5 mph606755905
Running, 8 mph8611,0741,286
Skiing, cross-country496619741
Skiing, downhill314391469
Stair treadmill657819981
Swimming, laps423528632
Tai chi219273327
Walking, 2 mph204255305
Walking, 3.5 mph314391469

I weigh around 160, so that means to burn off that single Big Mac Meal, I’d need to

  • Walk rather quickly for 3 hours
  • Run pretty fast for a little more than an hour
  • Play basketball or hit the stair stepper — without dogging it or taking any breaks — for about 90 minutes
  • Do about 2.5 hours of weight training

Again, that is just to work off one meal.

“Well,” you might reason, “that’s not impossible.”

I will grant you that. Difficult, but not impossible to work off that one meal, but if I am making poor dining decisions all the time, forget about it.

If eating that stuff is worth the extra workout time to you, that’s your decision to make, but it’s not worth it to me. I’d rather have my body spending time building itself than expending energy battling the things I ingest.

I have had this conversation with numerous people over the years. There are two rationalizations I generally hear:

  1. Everything in moderation.
  2. Life’s too short to restrict myself.

“Everything in moderation” – You know what? If you are otherwise engaging in health-conscious dining, and can eat from the above-listed or equivalent meals only once per week, I’m with you. Go for it. I doubt many people can do that, though, because once you are eating mostly clean, you simply won’t want the Arby’s sandwich and fries, or the Big Mac, or the cupcakes. That’s what happened to me. But if you can do it, and you really enjoy a weekly pair of Burrito Supremes, then go for it.

“Life’s too short to restrict myself” – I have an easy answer to that, because as far as I’m concerned, life is too short, and I don’t want to make it even shorter by eating what I consider to be junk food that can cause health problems. I don’t measure my life’s success by what I eat, I measure it by what I do, and the longer I live, the more I can do. ‘Nuff said.

Life is a continuous series of choices, so staying informed and making the best choices based on the best information available is important. Once you have all the facts you can gather, then you can decide whether you can out-exercise your diet or not. I choose not to let my diet stand in the way of my fitness goals. How about you?

If you’d like some no-obligation help with your diet or exercise goals, please feel free to contact me. I’m here to help.

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Is P90X2 better than P90X? First impressions

I started P90X2 a few weeks ago, so I am still in Phase 1. So far, so great, so let me answer some common questions about the program.

  1. Does P90X2 replace P90X?
    NO! P90X is still for sale, because it is still a great workout program. It’s the workout program that saved my life, in fact, as I struggled with weight and fitness. P90X set me on the path to good nutrition and exercise.
  2. Is P90X2 harder than P90X?
    That’s a tricky one, and I am tempted to say yes, because P90X2 involves a lot of balancing. We work out a lot with a stability ball, for example, doing one-handed chest presses with my back balanced on the ball, pelvis up, feet on the floor. That requires a lot of extra balance and muscular coordination than doing a simple press from a bench. Also, pushup-to-one-arm-balance with hands on medicine balls is quite challenging…. Okay, screw it, YES, P90X2 is harder!
  3. Should I do P90X first, then do P90X2?
    Well, I just said P90X2 is harder, so you might think it makes more sense to do P90X first, but I don’t think it really matters much. Would you do better during X2 if you did The X first? Sure. And vice versa.
  4. Is the structure of P90X2 different than P90X?
    • It is a bit different, but not really too much. With P90X2 you only need to press play 5 days a week. You can either do the “Recovery & Mobility” workout or simply rest on Days 3 and 7.
    • X2 is not as rigid as The X is, with X’s 3-weeks-on-one-week-recovery formula. X2 is divided into 3 phases — Phase 1: Core, Phase 2: Strength, and Phase 3: Performance. You can make Phases 1 and 2 anywhere from 3 to 6 weeks, and Phase 3 should last 3 to 4 weeks. There is a Recovery Week that you can “do whenever you want”. You can do it between phases, in the middle of phases, or just skip it altogether. I wouldn’t recommend that, though. Just listen to your body.
    • If you did The X, you know we worked that “Ab Ripper” workout 3 days a week. In X2, it’s only that often during Phase 2. Ab Ripper is only 1 day during Phase 1 and it’s not in Phase 3 at all.
    • The workouts are still about an hour long, and Ab Ripper is still about 15 minutes. Yoga is about an hour (not 90 minutes as it was in P90X). Remember, I am only a week in, so  we’ll have to see about the later workouts.
    • Oh, also, if you buy anything but the basic package, you will get some additional workouts on DVD that you can substitute in to ease boredom and add muscle confusion.
  5. Do you need to be in shape to do X2? How is the Fit Test different from P90X’s Fit Test?
    The Fit Test for P90X2 is the same one as for P90X. However, I started P90X a few years ago without passing the pullups part of the Fit Test, and I know others who have started it without passing much of the Fit Test at all. Those people understood that they needed to take the exercise very slowly and eat right to build up to the point where they could do the workouts properly. If you take it easy and don’t hurt yourself, couch potatoes can start one of these programs, but a program like Power 90 might be the way to start, then go for one of the more advanced ones.
  6. Is there a vegan nutrition guide for P90X2?
    Yes, there is! X2 comes with several nutrition paths, including vegan.
  7. If I’ve done P90X, do I really need to do P90X2?
    If you are happy with P90X and the results you continue to get from it, then you can stick with it. But if you are looking for a new challenge — and aren’t we all? — you should definitely give P90X2 a try.

I really like P90X2 so far. I enjoy the difficulty of balancing on balls to do moves that previously seemed pretty easy. Better than P90X? You will think this is a cop out, but it’s true: They are both great, but different.

If you would like to order P90X2, please click any of the links on this page. If you have questions, contact me at for more information. Take control of your fitness!

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The Ultimate Reset – Tips

Once you order and receive The Ultimate Reset, you may be overwhelmed by the complexity of some of the menus. I know I was.

Now that I’ve gone through it, though, I have learned some helpful things that I thought I’d pass along.

  1. Join the Facebook groups. There is a lot of help and support in them, and Beachbody reps, as well as Reset veterans, are there to answer questions. You will need to be added to the group by an administrator.
  2. Watch the videos with Carl & Isabelle Daikeler. They are extremely informative and provide a lot of information you won’t find anywhere else. You can find links to them under the FILES tab at the top of the page in the Facebook groups.
  3. Check out the other stuff under the FILES tab at the top of the Facebook group pages, as well, because there are tips, recipes, all kinds of useful information.
  4. Vegan Shakeology was added to the Reset after Reset was developed, because people really wanted it. While people on the Reset have reported great results using more than what you see below, currently the official line is that you can have Shakeology:
    • In place of breakfast during Phase 1, with a full scoop (using approved recipes)
    • In place of breakfast during Phase 2, with half a scoop (using approved recipes)
    • As a snack during Phase 3, with half a scoop (using approved recipes)
  5. The booklet that came with the Reset is very good, but there are some errors. Two of the biggest ones are:
    • Mentioning green tea as an okay thing to drink. It’s not, because it has caffeine. Only one cup of caffeine-free (not decaf) herbal tea is allowed per day (officially).
    • Including black pepper in one of the recipes. Black pepper is specifically excluded because it tends to contain microtoxins and can mess with your digestion.
  6. Because there are errors in the booklet, be sure to check the Facebook groups for the latest information.
  7.  The Ultimate Reset website has all the recipes, including vegan substitutions and nutritional information. It is not as up-to-date with information, though, as the Facebook groups.
  8. Unless you are curious and just want to try them, don’t worry about the millet or farina, and skip the ground flaxseed. They were hard to find for me, and as it turns out, millet is optional, oatmeal can be substituted for farnia (hot rice cereal), and the flaxseed was only used once, so now I’m stuck with the rest of the $6 bag. On the other hand, when I did find and try Bob’s Red Mill Brown Rice Farina, I really liked it, and I still eat it now.
  9. I shopped around and found a lot of the less common items for The Reset reasonably priced at Vitacost.com.
  10. Don’t be afraid to play around with the recipes. I did this routinely, using the basic ingredients that I was presented with and preparing them the way I wanted to. Just don’t add things that don’t belong, like mushrooms, which were specifically excluded because of their fungal nature.
  11. Beets, the red ones, can make colors appear in your toilet that may cause you to worry. Don’t worry — it’s just the beet juice!
  12. Mixing the Alkalinize packet in a shaker cup is a lot easier than trying to stir it into a glass of water.
  13. Also for Alkalinize, use a large amount of water, like 16 or 20 ounces. That dilutes it enough to make it taste okay. That worked for me. Others recommended doing it as a shot and following up by sucking on a lemon wedge.
  14. Oxygenize can cause headaches. I put my drops into water and was fine. Others report that putting the drops directly on their tongues stopped the headaches. Try both methods, see which works for you. I think it’s easier to count the drops, though, when you put them into a glass of water.
  15. Don’t worry that much about portion size. If you are really trying to lose weight, maybe you should watch it, but I was trying to simply detoxify my body, so I didn’t fret much if the recipe said 1/3 cup and I used 1/2 cup. These are all pretty lean and low-calorie items, so I figured that, for example, an extra 1/4 cup of blueberries was not going to kill me.
  16. Speaking of trying to lose weight on the Reset, remember, as with any short-term weight loss, once the short-term behavior is changed back to normal behavior, you will gain the weight back. I know some people just have this thing about reaching a certain weight and will starve themselves to get there. But don’t be disappointed when you gain it right back, zallimsayin….
  17. Oh, and also, about your weight, don’t weigh yourself every day! I do, but I understand that my weight can fluctuate by +/- 2 pounds depending on how hydrated I am, so don’t get wrapped around what the scale says. Weigh yourself once at the beginning and once at the end, at the same time of day.
  18. The Mineralize ingredient is simply Himilayan sea salt, so if you run out, use that.
  19. Also, a “pinch” of Mineralize = 12 shakes from the Mineralize container.
  20. You may feel really terrible at times. The book said Days 3 to 5 would be bad. I only felt terrible on Day 1. It was so bad, with a huge headache, that I felt like quitting. I did not. On Day 4, I woke up with a really bad sore throat that was caused by post-nasal drip. The sore throat abated after a few days, but the drip stayed with me, diminishing daily, until the end of the Reset.
  21. Wean yourself off caffeine before embarking on The Ultimate Reset, especially if you are a heavy coffee drinker. I only ingest a moderate amount of caffeine (about 125mg daily), but I had a really bad withdrawal headache the first day. Try moving to half-caf, then decaf before you start the Reset.
  22. Eat the allowed snacks only if you have to. I never did, but, as I said above, I probably had a bit more food than the program called for during the regular meals. The snacks are supposed to be for emergencies only, although I see a lot of people eating them routinely.
  23. My experience with kale was that it tastes like spinach, but is a lot tougher — I did not care for it. I saw baby kale at the market, perhaps I should have bought that. However, I just used spinach wherever kale was mentioned.
  24. Tempeh isn’t good. You can substitute black or pinto beans, if you like. Fwiw, I am determined to figure out a way to like it, because it’s an excellent source of plant protein.
  25. Remember, it’s your Reset, so feel free to adapt it as you need to. You have to be able to fit The Ultimate Reset into your life. Stick with the primary principles, but if you need to drink a cup of coffee every so often, or have a snack at night, well, then, do it.

Have a great Reset!

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Switching from Low-Carb Eating to Vegetarianism. Why?

As you may or may not know, I have been a low-carb eater for more than 2 years now. That means I ate very few grains, a lot of meat, and some fruit and vegetables.

I’m changing that, doing almost a 180, in fact. For at least the next year, I’ll be eating a modified vegetarian diet, which means I’ll eat only plant-based foods, but also include whey protein, eggs, and fish. Some call that “pescetarian” or “pescatarian”, but, really, fish will be a very small part of my diet, as will eggs.

Why?

Low-carb was great for me for weight loss, because I could feel satisfied on the low-carb, high-fat/protein regimen. The problem is that I’ve been stuck for more than 2 years. I cannot seem to budge below the 170-175 range.

Or I should say that I could not budge below that range. I have now busted through with the help of a detoxification cleanse, a 21-day detoxification process that attempts to rid your body of contaminants through a vegan diet and reset it to zero so you can, essentially, start over. And that’s what I’m doing. Starting over.

Not only that, but I am starting over 11 pounds lighter. That’s right, in 21 days I lost 11 pounds and 2 inches off my waist. That’s significant, because I had struggled to lose that gut fat, and now it’s shrinking.

In light of that, then, I decided I should take a closer look at plant-based nutrition.

The first thing I noticed is that while most eating plans focus on the fact that you can lose fat on them, and, thereby receive all the health benefits of a leaner body, vegan eating also has been shown to reverse diseases like heart disease and cancer. Reverse them.

The second thing I noticed is that when I looked at vegan recipes, often the nutritional breakdown was missing, so there was no listing of macronutrients like fat, carb, protein grams. Why? Because who cares, that’s why. You can’t get too many calories on an plant-based diet. Okay, that’s not really true, but if you stay away from processed foods of all kinds, like flours, oils, sugars, you’ll be okay. Yeah, you gotta watch your protein, and my sample size is probably too small to determine that this is a trend, but I found it interesting.

The third thing I noticed is that I’ve never been talking to a fat person about nutrition and had him tell me, “I’m a vegan.” That’s not to mention that the vegetarians I do know are all thin.

By the way, I should caveat this with the fact that I do believe that heredity definitely impacts all of our body compositions. Some people are naturally thin, some are naturally fat, some in-between. That’s why some have to work harder at staying thin than others. I do not use “fat” as a pejorative term here. Fat is fat, same as thin is thin.

Finally, and most importantly, is that it seems to work for me. I lost that gut fat that had hung on for so long. And my eyes have stopped burning! They used to burn so often, and I often blamed it on allergies or staring too much at the computer screen. I’m sure my doctor would have diagnosed it as dry-eye syndrome, if I’d told her about it. But here on this vegan diet, no burning eyes, and that is a huge mood changer for me.

With all that in mind, I’m going to give a modified vegetarian lifestyle — maybe merging into a vegan lifestyle — a shot for at least a year and see how it treats me, make sure this isn’t just a short term fluke.

[UPDATE ON OCTOBER 25, 2012] After further research, I have decided to drop all animal products from my diet and eat vegan at least through October, 2013. I figured, what the hell, might as well go all in, right?

I’m pretty excited about it, because it’s something new to learn, and I love learning. Drop me a line if you want to join me or just have something to say about it, because I’m all ears!