Category: Reading

Posted on

Why are my muscles sore?

I am sore today. Really sore. I am in week 9 of a P90X run, but I decided to mix it up a bit and so some workouts from Tony Horton’s One-On-One series.

(I don’t have all these — there are two full sets of 12 DVDs each and the third set is going on now, one DVD per month. I only own some from the first two sets that looked useful, plus I have all of the third set to date, because I subscribe to it.)

Anyway, on Monday I did the 30/15 workout, which is a series of 30 pushups followed by 15 pullups. Tony does different varieties for a total of 24 sets. For me this is not 30/15, nor is it pullups. I have found that pullups are a major factor in my tendinitis problems, so I use an exercise band in place of the pullups.

So my 30/15 is actually 24/15, and the 15 are band back exercises, trying to mimic the actual motion of pullups with a isometric hold for each rep. It’s effective, lemme tell ya.

Also, btw, let me tell  you, if you don’t have the DVD, Tony backs down to 25/12 about halfway through, so 30/15 is a bit of a misnomer. But let me also tell you, this is one helluva workout.

Anyway, the point is that I had not done this particular workout in about two and a half months. I’d been doing other chest and back workouts, but not this one.

And I am so sore from it.

The next day, Tuesday, I did One-On-One Plyo Legs. Again, I have been doing other lower body workouts, but not this particular workout in about two and a half months.

And I am sore from it. All the muscles in my legs hurt to move them.

I don’t know what causes muscle soreness. I’ve read several explanations, from lactic acid to minute tears in the muscles, but, according to Mark Sisson, who is a pretty informed guy, we don’t know what causes it. (You can read what he has to say about it at his website, Mark’s Daily Apple.)

So what’s to like about muscle soreness? Well, when my muscles are sore, I know I’ve exercised them in a way that I haven’t done in a while.

General fitness can only come from working all our muscles. Tony Horton attributes much of his success to what he calls “muscle confusion”. He likes to mix it up, keep the body guessing.

Use your experience as an example. Have you ever started a running program? If you have, you probably remember how sore you were the day after your first run. Eventually, as you continued your running program, you were less and less sore, until you could run quite a distance without experiencing soreness. Your muscles had become used to the strain you were putting on them. But is that a good thing? I guess so, if your primary fitness goal is to become really good at running.

But that is not my goal, to have my body be good at only pushups or pullups or bicep curls or tricep kickbacks or squats. I want to be good at them all and then some.

With that in mind, I welcome muscle soreness as a sign that I am doing something right, working my muscles in ways they are not used to. And that’s got to lead to my being more fit, right?

Posted on

Listen to your body

In my search for the truth about health and nutrition I’ve happened across a lot of different viewpoints. I am quite sure that the vast majority of those viewpoints are driven by money and politics.

For the politics, please read Taubes’s Good Calories, Bad Calories.

For the money, please use your brain.

Let’s say someone like me, for example, starts up a blog in good faith, just as I did. I write this blog to help you in your quest to better health and fitness, and also to help myself stay on track.

Now let’s say that I take a hard core primal stance, like Mark Sisson at Mark’s Daily Apple.

(I am not going to do that, because I am looking for the truth, and I am convinced that once you think you’ve found it, you are surely wrong.)

But let’s say I do. All’s well and good now, because paleo/primal/low carb is all the rage. Even science is finally coming around. Wow, I can now start up my own supplement company, make tons of money on that, write books and cookbooks. Get rich on something that really just started as a hobby.

But wait. A few years down the road the tide turns. New incontrovertible evidence (in the future, I’m conjecturing) shows that primal eating causes cancer of the pancreas and stomach. It is to those organs what smoking is to the lungs. What now? Do I accept this evidence or do I gainsay it and continue making money with my primal attitude?

Well, scientific evidence that is contrary to prevailing opinion has been ignored for many years, proving it’s easy to do, so odds are, if I’m getting rich, I will try to gainsay the science and continue to rake in the bucks from my primal empire.

Now, I am not saying that I would do this — I am a good guy with an honest search for the truth driving me — but the low-fat people have done it for many years, and, in fact, continue to do it, because they are making big money. Am I any better than they are?

(I HOPE SO!)

What’s the point of what I just said? Simply this: LISTEN TO YOUR BODY!

Your body will tell you if your diet and exercise programs are working. Are you losing fat? Are you gaining muscle? Are you hungry all the time? Do you feel weak or tired? All these are indicators of whether or not what you are doing is working for you.

Everyone is not the same. There is no magic to shaping and reshaping your body. There is no miracle to staying healthy. What works for one person may not work for another person. Try things out. Give them a good go, a month or two. If you don’t feel better at the end of that period of time, try something else.

Just because your best friend lost 27 pounds on a low-carb diet, doesn’t mean that’s right for you. (Hey, did she gain all that back and more after she went off that diet? Yeah, that’s what I thought.)

Find what works for you, commit to it, and make it a lifestyle. You’ll be happier and healthier for it.

Posted on

About white carbs

White carbs. You may have heard them mentioned as public enemy #1. I dunno about that, but I’m pretty sure they’re not good for you, if your #1 goal is to lose fat.

White carbs, by my definition (based on reading I’ve done), are processed carbs, like sugar and white flour. I avoid them. I also like to avoid white rice and potatoes.

Why avoid them? The problem with white carbs is that they rather quickly increase your blood sugar, which spikes your insulin, which processes the excess sugar into fat. They can also lead to a host of other problems, including cancer, type 2 diabetes, and high blood pressure. If you can read the first 100 pages of  Good Calories, Bad Calories and still think you can consume all the white carbs you want, well, I don’t know what to say.

In that book, acclaimed science reporter Gary Taubes makes a strong argument against white carbs. Perhaps the most compelling evidence is the incidence of type 2 diabetes and cancer in native tribes before and after the introduction of white carbs into their diets. Before white carbs, those diseases were virtually non-existent. After the white carbs were introduced to the natives, well, a few years later, guess what? Yeah, you guessed it.

I have been experimenting with white carbs on my own body.

I was completely off white carbs and, in fact, all grains, for about six months. During that time my weight stayed steady. Recently, I purchased some supposedly carb-inhibiting white pasta by Dreamfields. I’ve also been less cautious about how much white bread I’m eating. I am still, however, completely off anything with sugar added, except for some honey or dates put into a protein shake after weight training.

(The reason for carbs with a protein shake after weight training is that an insulin spike after weight training is good. Insulin, in addition to helping to store fat, also helps the body assimilate proteins, so having it in the body along with some protein right after a workout will build muscle more efficiently.)

My waist size has been creeping up. The creep is slight, a mere one-half- to three-quarter-inch so far, but that’s too much. I was at one waist size for about 8 months, and now it’s moving upward. What’s that about? What’s causing it?

Are the white carbs the cause of the added size? I don’t live in a closed environment, so there could be other causes, but the white carbs are my primary suspect.

I will finish off the pasta — I still have a few boxes — continue to observe my waistline, and then go off white carbs again when it’s gone.

Damn white carbs!

Posted on

My goal for this year is to lose this waist fat

If you’ve read “about the author” you know that my weight peaked at 235 — pretty huge for a 5’10” guy. I lost 50 pounds by restricting calories and walking and I thought I was stuck there, but then my brother turned me on to P90X and I found out I could lose even more fat while also adding muscle.

… HOWEVER …

While I lost 4.5″ off my waist after the first round of P90X, I am stuck at that waist size. I cannot seem to lose these final few pounds of fat.

Fortunately, my chest, shoulders, and back are all much larger, so that diminishes the waist fat, but, really, I’m not happy with that. Getting larger up top so my middle appears to be smaller is not acceptable.

I am at a bit of a loss on how to lose the waist fat. I’ve read all kinds of books on the subject, and I’ve experimented with my body. I am pretty sure that carbs are a primary factor in fat storage, but I also know that I feel like total and utter crap without carbs. Plus, as you may realize, I am not a fitness fanatic. I like my relaxation and I prefer to live my life without obsessing about whether or not I was able to get a workout in or whether or not I can eat exactly perfectly healthy all the time.

So here’s my plan:

PART 1: Eat lower carb (no more than 150 carbs a day), lower fat (not obsessively, just keep an eye on the fat), and high protein (aiming for 50% of calories from protein). When I started P90X, I was on their recommended eating plan, which was 50/30/20 (protein/carbs/fat). I lost fat fast on that diet, but I turned to a primal diet about six weeks into it after reading Mark Sisson’s The Primal Blueprint.

I went totally off grains (no rice, corn, wheat, rye … nothing) for 6 months and increased my fruit intake. The fruit was not necessarily in keeping with Sisson’s ideas — he likes to get most of his carbs from veggies, with only some fruit thrown in — but it’s much easier to eat fruit, which I primarily do with frozen fruit in my protein shakes, than to eat lots of veggies. Plus, okay, I’m not a huge fan of vegetables.

The upshot is that I’m fairly happy with my diet, but it’s not getting me where I want to be. I’m not going to restrict calories — that just doesn’t work for me in the long run — so 50/30/20 (or thereabouts) is where I’m headed.

I also, however, feel that I need to step it up on the exercise side. That leads me to …

PART 2: I’m going to give Insanity a try. I bought it at the end of 2010 with this in mind. I checked out one of the DVDs a few weeks ago, and, whoa, it is tough. Yes, tougher than P90X. But I’m pretty sure it’s what I need, or, anyway, I’m pretty sure there’s no way to be sure without trying it, so I’ll give it a go.

After one round of Insanity — which is a 60-day program — I plan to go back to P90X with other Tony Horton DVDs thrown in to mix it up, keep the muscles confused.

I have to admit that I am a bit concerned about my knees. I have some weakness in my right knee and some arthritis in my left one. I keep the arthritis pain and stiffness away with a low-grain, high-activity lifestyle, so I’m not worried about that, but the right side may prove problematic. Still, one of my favorite sayings is, “There are always good reasons not to do something. Successful people often ignore those reasons.” I could just write off Insanity as impossible with my knees. But. Not. Gonna. Do. It. Is this a no-guts-no-glory attitude? Is it foolish? Perhaps, but I will never know until I try.

I still have another month to go on this current round of P90X, so I’m going to wait to start Insanity until after I’m done with that, but I’m really looking forward to this new challenge. I’ll keep you posted on my progress.

Posted on

Does your significant other sidetrack your fitness goals?

I often have been sidetracked from my fitness goals by my significant other.

It’s not her fault. Honestly, I don’t expect my wife to make every dietary turn with me in my quest for fitness. That’s not fair to her, now, is it? But, too often I give in. The cupcake is there, and I cave in and eat it.

NO MORE!

I am not sure what changed in me. Perhaps it was reading Taubes’s Good Calories, Bad Calories, which convinced me that sugar is a poison. Perhaps it was watching my waist shrink with my new higher protein, lower carb lifestyle. Perhaps it was just because I had reached the end of my rope and knew I wanted to be fit. Whatever the reason, I swear, you could put a chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream frosting right next to me and I would not be tempted even to taste it.

Where are you in your fitness journey? Have you reached a point where you are determined to be fit? Or are you still able to be knocked off track?

I guess it’s kinda like quitting smoking. I tried to quit many times, even quitting for 18 months at one point, only to start back. But the last time I quit, I never again had any temptation to smoke. Right from the first second of that decision. I was done. Hell, I even dated women who smoked, took puffs off their cigarettes (without inhaling), and never restarted.

Breaking ourselves of our laziness and, more importantly, our eating habits, is a lot like breaking ourselves of other addictions. At some point we just say, “Enough is enough!”

How close are you to that point? When you reach it, no one can deter you from it, not even your significant other.

Read part 2.