Holiday tips

Happy belated Thanksgiving.

With one day of celebration behind us and the shopping season in full swing, we're looking forward to a month full of potential calorie, sugar, and carb-loaded treats, meals, and snacks. Cakes, pies, candy, big meals, drinks, and all kinds of delicious temptations are just days away. And let's be honest. Family, friends, and co-workers are going to offer you all of it. Sometimes, it's hard to say no without offending them. It's ok to indulge, as long as you do it within reason and keep your discipline with the rest of your time. So with all those temptations, here's a list of tips to help make some good, or at least better choices than stuffing yourself with food that's going to derail your efforts to stay fit.

• Keep your portions limited. You may be presented with some unhealthy choices you can't say no to, potentially many times a day, but keep your portions within your normal limits, no matter how tasty the options may be.
  
• Don't be afraid to decline an offer. If you see it offending the other person, offer to take a taste, and let them know you're on a diet. They'll be happy that you took them up on the offer and not be offended by taking a small portion.
• When food baskets show up at work, opt for the fruit or pass on taking anything from it.
• Chose to load up on the healthier foods (vegetables, chicken, turkey, etc.). It's better, plus you'll be less inclined to eat the less healthy food because you'll already be full.
• Offer to split dessert with somebody else
• Make time for exercise.
  
• If you're going to go shopping, park far away to take advantage of the extra walking.
• When nobody is looking, make really good dietary choices.
• Throw your own dinner party full of healthy food.
  
• Avoid the processed cheese and meats as much as possible.
• Drink a lot of water before meals to fill part of your stomach to control your portion size
• Increase your cardio to burn off the extra calories
• Keep your fitness goals somewhere you can see them everyday so you'll keep them on your mind.
• Opt for salads on your own meals to offset extra calories for unhealthy meals.

Good luck, and happy holidays.

DIET: What is it

One of the worst things ever said about the word diet is this:

"The first three letters of diet are DIE."

I've heard it before, but the most shocking place I read it was in an Anthony Robbins book. I find it incredible that a guy who talks about the power of positive thinking would cast such a negative view on something so neutral.

Diet is a noun. It just means the food you normally consume. You can have a good diet, you can have a bad diet, you can make and follow diet plans, but in the end, your diet is just the food you eat. It's a completely neutral concept.

Oh, I understand. We THINK of diet being a particular diet (e.g. Adkins Diet, South Beach Diet) or of eating food we really don't like in hopes of losing weight. It carries a lot of negativity with it, but that's the first thing you need to get rid of. You can eat nothing but cheeseburgers, but it's still a diet. Albeit, a bad one. The only time you're not "dieting" is if you are starving yourself and eating nothing at all.

I'm not a fan of specific fad diets. Why? Well, they aren't enjoyable in the least and they aren't sustainable. Most fad diets aren't even meant to be sustainable. You're supposed to eat X foods for Y days, lose so many pounds...and then what? You haven't learned any long term eating habits to help you keep the weight off, so you end up gaining all that weight back. One plan I do actually like is the Body for Life plan, because it actually teaches you long term healthy eating habits. But in all reality, I don't think you really need to pay somebody to understand how you should be eating.

All those things you learned as a kid about eating habits are still true. Eat your fruit and vegetables. Don't eat too many sweets. Don't snack too much. Don't overeat. Eat balanced meals. Drink lots of water. So on and so on.

The problem is, along the way we deviated from those simple maxims. We prefer foods that are tasty and with our busy lives it's so much easier to stop at a drive-thru or make quick meals that are boxed, canned or frozen...made possible by excessive amounts of sodium and preservatives. It's hard to find a lot of really healthy options out there, you have to scour the grocery aisles and menus to find healthy choices. What's worse, so many supposed healthy foods have hidden sugar and sodium which cheat us out of our efforts.

And once you've gotten used to eating all that sugar and sodium and preservatives, your body expects them. But they aren't healthy. And you've probably eaten that way for so long you don't even realize how rotten your body feels after eating all of that. But trust me, your body feels it. If you eat healthy for a while, you're going to discover that all those foods you thought were tasty really aren't, and they make your body feel miserable.

You have to break the cycle. You have to commit yourself to exploring the nutrition labels, reading nutrition guides for restaurants (most are available online), and finding recipes that are healthy. You would be surprised how many more calories or how much more sodium and fat are in the simplest of things you eat. Chose a salad (and throw out the usual dressing) over a hamburger. Chose fruit instead of potato chips. Not really tough decisions, but you do have to make the decision.

Rather than explore ways to get weight off in super-fast ways, it's better for you to make proper dietary decisions from the beginning, so that when you do hit your target weight, you'll be able to keep making those decisions and maintain your hard earned losses.

In future posts, I'll begin fleshing out how you can make a proper, sustainable diet plan. It will require some homework, but in the end you'll be glad you did.

Cheers

My story

I'm 26 years old. I'm 6'3, and I currently weigh 169lbs. I have a 32" waist. By no means do I look like a swimsuit model or a body builder, but I'm in pretty good shape. I eat relatively healthy, and work out 3-5 times a week, depending on my schedule.

I can't say much of that USED to be true.

I was raised in a household where both of my parents worked. I didn't receive much discipline about exercise or diet. In fact, growing up, there was very little exercise involved. I drank soda religiously, and Happy Meals were a staple of my diet. Needless to say, I was a fat kid. It started about the time I was 6, right about when my mom started working and dinner responsibilities were left to my dad, who was a big fan of cooking the quickest thing he could make--often the least healthy choices.

When I went to college at 18, I was left to do a lot of walking on campus. At 19 I was working at Wal-Mart part time, and spending a lot of time pushing trains of shopping carts uphill in Texas heat. For the first time in 12 years, I found myself really thin. I had grown so accustomed to my overweight body, I didn't pay much attention to my appearance. One day, my mom said I was looking way too thin. That's when I realized I really had lost a lot of weight. That's a good thing, although my daily diet constituted hamburgers, soda, candy...and not much else. But I was busting my ass at work so hard that I was burning more calories than I was taking in. I exploited my new size. Women loved me, and I loved them. I felt good, despite my poor diet.

A year later, I went to work in an office, where I spent a lot of time sitting...and eating. Not having good dietary habits, I kept eating poorly, and over the course of the next three years, put on enough weight that at my worst I weighed in at 228lbs. with a 38" waist. Just as I had not realized my previous weight loss, I had not consciously appreciated my weight gain. Friends I hadn't seen in a while commented on my size. Yet, I was in a bad relationship, overworked with school and work, and didn't think I had the heart to change.

A few days after I weighed myself at 228lbs. I started to realize exactly where I was. Women quickly averted looking at me. I felt physically terrible, worn out all the time, and more than slightly disgusted with myself. I decided at that time, CHANGE. I tried limiting my intake of soda and sweets, and pulled a few pounds off. But that was it.

A month or so later, my girlfriend at the time suggested we go on a cruise with her family, that I liked very much. I agreed, excited about getting to take a trip and leaving the country.

But I had a problem.

All my childhood, I was the fat kid who always wore a shirt in the pool, and avoided any activity that required me to remove my clothes. I had spent all that time ashamed of my body. And now I was about to throw down almost all the money to my name on a vacation that would surely result in swimming. I didn't want to be fatty on the boat. I decided I really wanted to dedicate myself to at least being presentable on the cruise.

I found a middle school a couple of blocks from my apartment and began walking laps on their track, and trying very hard to clean up the worst parts of my diet. I started reading, reading, reading on how to eat properly and work out. I read every fitness magazine (for men) I could find, and when I ran out of magazines started on the internet. I later paid for a year of access to the city rec center so I could use their gym.

In the time it takes for a baby to be conceived and delivered, I focused intently on losing weight before the cruise. I had goals out the ass. I had plans, I had diet plans I had written out, I kept logs, I counted calories, I had a work out schedule.

My goal was to move from the remaining 208lbs down to 170lbs. in those nine months. I stood on the scale each morning, excited to catch even half a pound of movement. Sure enough, day by day, calorie by calorie and minute by minute on the treadmill I managed to get myself down to 165lbs. the morning of the cruise.

It was a lot of work, but it taught me a lot about goals, and what I could really accomplish. I had never felt physically better in my life. I had a blast on the cruise.

After the cruise, I tried to stick to my plans, but not having the same important goal, I waned. I didn't gain weight back, but I quit going to the gym with any consistency and loosened up on my diet. I wanted to get into the gym, but I didn't. Then I started working 50-60 hour weeks, and was physically and emotionally way too drained to do it.

At the beginning of this year, I made a commitment that I was going to get back on the healthy train. I wasn't very good the first half, but I've been really solid on it these past few months. I feel like I've mastered the art of staying at a good weight, and now I'm really delving into getting into the gym and trying to build muscle so I can walk around beaches kicking sand in people's faces. At least I think that's what I'm supposed to do. ;)

So I'll be passing on what I've learned about weight loss, and what I'm learning now about putting on some good muscle.

Specifically, these are my current goals:

1. Body fat less than 13%
2. Defined abs
3. 8 minute mile
4. Add 2 inches to arms (they are currently a paltry 13")
5. Be able to make my pecs bounce

(The last is just for fun.)


Cheers

What this blog is all about

Hello there.

My name is Adam. I used to be a fat feller. Now, I'm not. It's something I used to tell people all the time, but now I really don't share the information unless I feel like being self-deprecating (about the old days) or to offer a sense of encouragement for people on the road to being healthy (nowadays). I quit talking about it because I used to constantly be asked how I did it, what diet I followed, etc.

I didn't follow any prescribed diet. No Adkins, no sugarbusters, no grapefruit diet. Just a lot of determination, effort, and common sense.

Unfortunately, when I tried to share these particulars, people would ask for help but NEVER FOLLOW IT. It's really disappointing to get excited about helping somebody and putting in the work to help them out only to see them offer no effort on their own AT ALL.

A lot of people, however, have taken my advice to heart and gotten in really good shape. However, I felt like I was wasting time helping people who didn't want to put the effort into doing what I asked that I could have been spending on people who were willing to put legitimate work into their own success.

So I figured a more passive environment like the internet would allow me to offer help to people who actually will put it to use and weed out people who say they want to get in shape but really don't want to.

I'm going to talk a lot about goals, so it's only fair that I talk about my own goals here. My goal, is to spread all the useful information I found in my own weight loss and my own common sense, realistic approach. Hopefully, I'll help some people out who really want it. I really believe that people can get in shape and lead healthy, positive lives without eating ridiculous diets, killing themselves in the gym everyday, or swallowing potentially unhealthy supplements.

I plan to be slightly erratic about posting. I'll talk about diet. I'll talk about exercise. I'll talk about the psychological components, which are a huge part of the process. I'll share a lot of my personal experiences, because I think it helps to know other people have experienced the changes you will experience.

Good luck.