Category: Nutrition

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What is your fitness plan for 2012? Here’s mine.

Okay, so this is all about me, but it’s my blog, right? I can’t very well write about you.

But here’s the thing: I’m no uber-muscular gym rat; I’m no triathlete. I’m just a regular guy who wants to be fit, so my hope is that you can take the things that I do in my life and apply them to yours.

My fitness quest continues into 2012 — it’s going on 5 years now — and while I have surely come a long way, I still have a long way to go. I am pretty sure, for example, that I could lose 15 pounds and feel good about it.

Those are some tough pounds, though, those last 15.

The first 45 pounds were not so hard for me to lose, pretty much diet only, and not an overly rigid one to maintain it.

The next 15 were more difficult, but I managed to lose ’em with exercise.

But these last 15, wow, tough. I’ve been trying to lose them for a year and a half now. Admittedly, I haven’t been trying that hard, because, as I said, I’m no fitness fanatic. So, the time has come to give it a real go, but not at the whole 15 (which maybe should even be 20 — I dunno).

I’m going to shoot for 10 pounds. On June 30, 2012, I would like to weigh 10 pounds less than I do right now, and, because maintaining the weight loss is key, on December 31, 2012, I would like to weigh the same as I did on June 30. Or less would be okay, too.

Ultimately, I really only want to lose fat, not muscle, and weight measures both, right?

I feel comfortable, however, using weight to quantify my goal, because I know that because I’ll be working out my entire body, the vast majority of the weight I lose will be fat. If I do put on some muscle, well, that’s all the more fat I’ll need to lose to reach the goal.

Okay, so now that I have a goal, how do I plan to reach it?

The plan will have to involve calorie restriction and exercise. Of course. There are no magic potions or formulas and liposuction is just too expensive and downright gross, not to mention that when it’s over, your body is now in an unnatural state, so I don’t like the idea of it.

HOW MANY CALORIES DO WE NEED?

There is a really nice calculator right here to let you know about how many calories you need every day to maintain your current weight.

A good rule of thumb is to subtract 500 from that if you want to lose weight.

NUTRITION

I’m going to shoot for around 2000 calories a day comprising 50% protein, 30% carbs, and 20% fat. That will mean a lot of fish and chicken breasts for the protein and a good supply of vegetables and fruit for the carbs. The fat will primarily come from meats, nuts and seeds, egg yolks, and avocados.

I will minimize

  • Any foods that were created to satisfy a sweet tooth. I banished all these foods from my diet almost two years ago and have not turned back, so this part will be easy for me.
  • Grains, such as wheat, corn, oats, and rice. I’ve gone entirely without these “foods” for 6 months, so this should be okay for me. I currently only have maybe 15-20% of the grain intake I used to, so this should not be too hard for me.
  • Fatty foods in general, and fatty dairy products specifically. I truly believe there is something about dairy fat that allows my body to store it more easily than other fats. When I go through my periods of massive brie consumption — I do love me some brie — I gain weight. This may simply be a too-many-calories thing, but suffice to say that I’ll be leaving full-fat cheeses off my shopping lists. 2% is fine. Fat-free yogurt is fine.

I will maximize

  • Lean proteins like fish, chicken breasts, and egg whites. I am glad that I have figured out good ways to prepare and eat chicken breast — which I don’t really care for — because fish is too expensive for me to eat it all the time. I’ll also throw a few turkey burgers into the mix.
  • Raw and frozen vegetables and fruit. Mostly vegetables, because the fruit carbs add up quickly. The fruits will primarily be frozen berries consumed as part of a protein smoothie or in fat-free yogurt.
  • Sugar-free protein powders. I started using protein powder supplements when I first went on a 50/30/20 diet. It’s very difficult to eat that much protein, so a supplement is a must for me.

I will also document everything I eat in a series of spreadsheets, one per day. I have found that this is the only accurate way to track my food intake. Without writing it all down, too many little food items — the kind that often add up to big calories — fall through the cracks.

I also have a small food scale that I’ll use to accurately measure portions.

Is the 50/30/20 diet necessary? Probably not. 40/40/20 or 40/30/30 would be okay, too, as long as the calories are right. But I’m shooting for 50/30/20, so if I fall a bit short on protein, I’m still within what I consider acceptable levels.

EXERCISE

I’m going to start the year with a round of good old Insanity with Shaun T. I have a lot of new yoga DVDs, too, so I will be sprinkling those in.

That will last through January and February and on into March.

At that point I will be really itching to start P90X2, so, after a week of yoga, I’ll do that program.

That should take me all the way through June. On June 30, I’ll do my weigh-in to see if I reached my goal of losing 10 pounds, and decide where to go from there.

The way I document my workouts, btw, is in my Google calendar. I set up a separate calendar for Workouts, then I just add my workouts as I complete them. This is also a must for me, because I like to know what I’ve done to get where I am, and, yeah, it’s hard to remember day-to-day, what I’ve done. Not as necessary when participating in an organized program like Insanity or P90X2, but I’ll put the workouts in there anyway to stay in the habit.

DO YOU HAVE FITNESS GOALS FOR 2012?

If you’d like to join me this year, like my Facebook page, and I’ll let you know when I blog, as well as send out little motivators every so often. Our goals don’t need to mesh, nor do our fitness plans, but perhaps within our little community, we can help each other keep going.

If you’d like to order Insanity or P90X2 or any other Beachbody product, email me about it or order it yourself through my Team Beachbody page. It costs you nothing extra, and, yeah, I do get a little kickback when you order through me. Hey, I gotta fund my fitness DVD and equipment habit somehow!

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New Year’s fitness resolution?

The new year is almost upon us, and many of us will make resolutions to lose weight, get into better shape.

And … many of us will never follow through on them.

Oh, sure, we’ll get some new running shoes and hit the road or treadmill on January 2nd, but things will come up, or running will be too difficult, or we’ll get injured, or … and that will be the end of that.

Oh, sure, we’ll buy 30 — no, 60 — days of a mail order diet plan, and we’ll stick to it the first few days, but that will become inconvenient, or the meals won’t taste that good, or, dammit we’re hungry … and that will be the end of that.

What is it about humans that we form these great plans to do things we know we should do, but then, at the first sign of adversity or inconvenience, we give up?

How do we continue to live with ourselves after we’ve let ourselves down like that? Here we are, still 30 or 40 or 60 or 80 or 100 pounds overweight with high blood pressure and no breath after walking up a flight of steps. We know what we need to do … but we don’t do it. What the hell is wrong with us?

I can only speak for myself, and for me the answer was that I felt I was just too old to get fit.

Heck, when I was in my early 20s and my pants got a little tight, I could go on a low-carb diet and lose weight fast. No exercise, pounds melted off.

As I got older, my body reacted slower to changes I made. I didn’t see results as fast, so I quickly lost interest in what I was doing. Whatever it was — diet, exercise program — it obviously did not work, and it did not work because I was too old. Look around? How many men 40-plus-year-old men are in shape? Something happens as we age, I reasoned, that makes it impossible to get fit.

Well, maybe not impossible with a little help, but I wonder how many copies of Tony Horton or Shaun T or Chalene exercise programs have been ordered, but only little, if ever, used. Do you have one … somewhere?

Part of the problem may be that we have no great incentive, because we have not had the significant emotional experience that helps keep us on track.

We have not had the heart attack or the divorce or the diabetes diagnosis that makes our health and fitness issues more real to us. We’re not perfect, but we’re okay, and, well, those chocolate cake donuts from Dunkin do taste pretty good.

Another piece of the problem is that we often set our sights too high.

Sure, we want to lose 50 pounds, but why do we do that to ourselves? 50 is great as a long-term goal, but for the short term, it is impossible. Why not start with 10 pounds, or an inch and a half off the waist, some number that is more manageable? Once we accomplish that, then move on to the next 10 pounds or inch-and-a-half.

My personal quest for fitness has taken a slow road. I lost a lot of weight with diet and a little walking. Then I added more walking along with some pushups, pullups, and crunches. Then I got into P90X, and from there into Insanity. Now I do workouts from both those programs, plus some I made up myself, and yoga.

I’ve been at it for more than four years now, and I still have a way to go to reach my final fitness goals, but I am not too discouraged.

After all, I’ve seen great results in body shape, my blood tests show severely reduced levels of bad cholesterol and triglycerides, and my blood pressure is normal after many years of being way too high. I am on no longer on medications of any kind. I may never reach my final fitness goals, but those kinds of results keep me going.

How about you? What kind of results will keep you going?

It’s another new year. How about this year we make our fitness resolutions, as usual, set long-term but also short-term results-oriented goals, and then commit ourselves to reaching them. This approach should lead us to greater success, and, as the saying goes, nothing breeds success like success.

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How to avoid the yo-yo

The yo-yo is the bane of dieters everywhere. If you’ve tried to lose weight before, you know about it.

You start a diet, stay on it for a while … maybe a week, maybe a month, maybe longer.

When you first started the diet, you thought, “Wow, this is great. I can eat like this the rest of my life, no problem.”

And you do stick to it … for a while. You lose weight. You feel great. Everyone is complimenting you on how good you look, asking you how you did it.

Then you start to want the foods that you can’t have on your diet.

If you are sticking to a low-carb eating plan, you want cupcakes or cookies or just a huge bowl of pasta with a thick slice of garlic bread.

If you are eating low-fat, you want fried chicken or butter on your toast or simply a decent friggin’ salad dressing.

“I’ve been so good for so long,” you reason, “I can have it just this one time.”

And you do have it. And it’s good.

That’s fine, not disastrous , because after you enjoy your treat, you stay true to your diet. But then you figure, why not establish certain times when, in fact, it is perfectly fine for you to have those “forbidden” foods? Maybe, let’s say, the weekends.

And you do eat them. And they are good.

And now you are on that slippery slope. The “weekends” start earlier and earlier, and before long you are back to eating the way you used to eat, the way that made you fat. Sure enough, all the weight comes back … and then some.

Every few years, you repeat this series of events, and, as your weight goes down then up then down then up, there you have the yo-yo.

So the big question has always been, “How do we avoid the yo-yo?”

It’s really quite simple. Simple, but not easy.

Kinda like quitting smoking. All you have to do  it quit, right? Simple. But not easy.

I think the answer is (1) quitting a problem food group (or two), and (2) reshaping your self-image.

Quitting a food group? Like stop eating carbs or proteins or fats or …?

No, not exactly. I mean try choosing a type of food that causes you problems, leads to weight gain, and quitting it. Just stop eating it.

For example, for me the food group is “anything designed to appeal to my sweet taste buds”, so, basically, sweets are out for me.

You may think that is harsh, but, wow, I was really out of shape, so harsh measures were necessary. I never made any great long-term strides toward good health by using easy methods. How ’bout you?

Similar to the way I felt about cigarettes when I quit smoking, when I quit eating sweets, I went through a period of really wanting them. During that time I couldn’t have them in the house or I might break down.

That was the hard part.

Once that phase passed, when I could actually be in the same room with a german chocolate cake with coconut-pecan frosting and not dive into it, I still had to exercise self-control, but not too much. I’d seen results and didn’t want to jeopardize them.

Nowadays, it’s really not a problem. I don’t want the sweets. Not at all. Wave a cupcake under my nose — no problem.

I imagine I’ll get to a point where I’ll be able to eat just a little of something, if I want to, but I don’t foresee wanting to. I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.

Your problem food may not be sweets and it may not be so broad a category. Maybe it’s “fried foods”. Maybe it’s “soda”. Maybe it’s “fast food”.

Quitting a problem food is just one piece, though. The other piece of the answer to avoiding the yo-yo, I think, is to work through the weight in levels.

When I weighed 70 pounds more than I do now, I was fat, but had a hard time realizing it.

When I started my quest for fitness, I leveled out at a weight 30 pounds above where I am now. That weight was cool for a while. It was, after all, 40 pounds below my peak, but eventually I realized that weight was also too fat.

That’s when I started P90X, and when I got to my current weight, I felt so much thinner.

However, now that I have been at this weight for over a year, I am starting to feel fat here. You know why? It’s not anorexia, I promise — not only can I tell by looking in the mirror, but the numbers say that I do, indeed, have some fat left to lose.

Now, figure this: If I feel fat at this weight, do you think I’ll ever let myself get anywhere near that other weight. No way!

I have successfully reshaped my mental picture of myself, so, hopefully, that will work to prevent my returning to a previous, rotund body shape.

Just like anything worth doing, you have to commit to it. Despite what you may see on late-night tv, there are no magic pills or patches. There are no easy roads. You have to commit to succeed.

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Do we really need to overeat on Thanksgiving?

Thanksgiving in the United States is a day that celebrates gluttony.

Turkey, potatoes, sweet potatoes, stuffing, corn, pumpkin and pecan pies, cranberry sauce. One helping is not enough on Thanksgiving Day. Gotta go back for seconds, thirds. Gotta have a slice or two of all the pies and other desserts, too.

Why?

It would be one thing if we ate healthy the rest of the year, but then on Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, we chose to blow it out. I could buy that.

But that’s not the case, is it? We don’t deprive ourselves every other day of the year. We tend to indulge — overindulge — ourselves on a regular basis. Like five-year-olds in a candy store, we have no self-control.

Pecan pie is soooooo good!

Sausage stuffing is soooooo good!

[Insert your favorite food here] is soooooo good!

Well, sure those things taste good. Tell me something I don’t know.

But, you know what? I’m not five-years-old anymore. I have the ability to control myself both in the candy store and at the Thanksgiving feast.

Eating right is all about self-control, and not giving in to our inner urges is one thing, but we also often get off track by giving control to someone else.

“My wife will be offended if I don’t eat an extra spoonful of her special dressing.”

“My dad will be offended if I don’t have a second slice of his strawberry-rhubarb pie.”

If people choose to be offended because we are trying to be fit, then so be it. That’s on them, not us.

Do yourself a favor this Thanksgiving and try not gorging yourself.

Sure, go ahead and have some of everything you like, but skip the seconds (and the thirds, although if you skipped seconds, I guess you would never get to thirds. Skipping seconds would make thirds the seconds. I think I just blew my mind. How do I get onto these sidetracks?).

After dessert, when you see that last piece of pumpkin pie sitting on the counter — you know, the one that you always heap with Cool Whip and eat right out of the pan? — leave it for someone else.

Don’t succumb to guilt trips from others, and don’t let your inner child convince you that you should eat more, more, more, just because it tastes good.

We’re adults, let’s act like it and take control of our own lives, be responsible for our own fitness, by not overeating — or, if that’s too much to ask, at least try overeating less — on Thanksgiving.

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What I’ve learned about fitness and nutrition over the past few years

I’ve been on my fitness quest for about four years now. I went in with with an open mind, wanting to find out as much as I could, experiment on myself, see what works and what doesn’t.

Here are a few of the things I think I know, subject to change as I learn more:

  • It’s more about what you eat than what you do. You can lose a lot of weight by eating properly. Without exercise, though, you will lose muscle along with the fat. You have to work out to build that muscle. Still, if your only goal is to lose weight, know that how you eat is responsible for about 80% of how your body looks.
  • Carbs are not evil, but sugar is, and grains are not far behind. Fruits, vegetables, those are carbs. Eat ’em up. Anything with added sugar in it, though, is just asking for trouble. Then if you add grains, wow, you are really packing a caloric punch. By removing sweets from your diet, you can much more easily find your way to healthy eating habits. Not only that, but when you get used to eating less sugar, naturally sweet foods like fruits will taste sweeter to you.
  • P90X is a great way to dive into a fitness-oriented lifestyle. It got me motivated, took me from a terrible diet to a pretty good one, and from walking/pushups/crunches to real, structured workouts. The main thing P90X did was show me that even people over-40 can get into shape. I’d just about given up, but now I am in the best shape of my adult life.
  • Insanity is a great way to continue that fitness-oriented lifestyle. I lost some of the muscle I’d built with P90X when I went through Insanity, but did I really need all that muscle? The only part I regret is that I lost a lot of pullup (back) strength, so when I am doing a round of Insanity, I add pullups. Insanity doesn’t focus enough on the back muscles and I think the body needs that balance. I add yoga, too, just because I like starting the day with yoga.
  • Insanity: The Asylum is just too much. Maybe I feel that way because I don’t have enough space to do all the moves conveniently, but….
  • You have to warm up first, no matter what it is you are going to do. Unless you are going for a walk, which is not really a workout, you gotta warm up. I have hurt myself doing impromptu pullups. True story.
  • Insanity is good for my knees! I was shocked by this. Before I started P90X, my knees were okay, presenting minor problems when I tried to run, but they didn’t pain me much. A couple months into P90X, my left knee started bothering me. Not enough to make me stop, and the pain was not there when I exercised, but it was there from time to time. The pain was bothersome enough that I mentioned it to my doctor. He took a look and told me I had arthritis in that knee. I continued on with my P90X and One-On-One workouts. I didn’t start Insanity, because I figured if my knee was bad now, Insanity would put it over the top, right? So I put Insanity off for a few months. Then I took some time off to just do yoga and walking, give my body a rest, and my knee pain subsided considerably. When I went back to working out, it came back. At that point I said to myself, “If the pain can go away, then come back, that probably means it can go away again, so I’m going to go ahead and dive into Insanity.” After I started Insanity, my knee pain gradually diminished and has now disappeared. So … I stay away from Tony Horton (P90X) leg routines and stick with Shaun T (Insanity) ones.
  • Yoga is one of the best things you can do for yourself. It is so all-around fitness-increasing, affecting breathing, balance, and strength. Your whole body is engaged in yoga moves. It inspires discipline. And, you know what? It ain’t for pussies. Yoga is hard. Don’t skip it. In fact, I added more.
  • I much prefer body weight or band resistance training to working out with weights. Weight training is cool and I know it helps build strength and balance, but it’s a hassle. I guess that’s another reason to really like Insanity. I am not about building too much muscle, preferring a lean look, so it’s all good.
  • If you can perform a fitness routine completely without breaks the first time through, it’s not a very useful fitness routine. You need something that challenges you. Any of the aerobic workouts in P90X and Insanity definitely qualify as useful, by that definition. Plus, here’s the thing, take, for example, the P90X Plyometrics routine. Man, that is a monster. I was stopping the DVD for extra breaks a lot when I first started it. Then not so much. Then, on the day I was able to get all the way through it without stopping, I had such a feeling of accomplishment. Rightly so! As for Insanity, I still have not got all the way through any of those routines. Close. But not quite. But I will.
  • With that in mind, accept the fact that Insanity is (almost) impossible.  I say “almost” because, I suppose, anything is possible. For Insanity, unlike for P90X, I say take breaks without pausing the DVD, but don’t dog it. Get back in as soon as possible.
  • You can build great abs without doing any crunches. That is a fact, and Shaun T (Insanity) knows how to do that. Insanity is great for abs.

I’m sure I’ve learned more than that, but those are a few good lessons that came to mind pretty quickly.