Willpower is just like any other muscle in the body....

Thursday, August 19, 2010

.....the more you EXERCISE it, the STRONGER it gets

--
“If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.” - Lao Tzu

“He who controls others may be powerful, but he who has mastered himself is mightier still” - Lao Tzu

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OMG!!! --- I finally Get It!!! Amazing!!!

Tuesday, August 03, 2010

Yes, I got the shock of my life this past weekend .... the little light bulb in my head finally clicked on Yes, I "get it" now that some people...lots of other people...they just DON'T "get it", at all. Holy Moley!!!

As usual, I was having lunch at Longhorn with one of my best buds the other day. He's struggled for a LONG time with his weight, trying to find the right formula for being able to slim down from his current 300+lbs. Alas, he was recently diagnosed with insulin resistance and basically he's headed towards full blown diabetes...unless of course, he makes some changes to his lifestyle.

Well, we were sitting there at lunch, talking about his current state of affairs and letting him do some soul searching, over lunch.

I thought it funny in the midst of our conversation to watch him having his "same ole" lunch from Longhorn....starting out with sweet tea and bread, then ordering the bacon and cheddar burger w/ fries...and he always finishes with the Golden Nugget Fried Cheesecake.

Of course, I'm having my "same ole" meal......unsweetened tea (w. Splenda), no bread, garden salad w. extra cheese (no croutons), the Outlaw 18 oz. bone-in ribeye, a lobster tail and a double order of steamed brocolli.

So my friend was lamenting the changes that he was going to have to make to his diet, as recommended by the doctor of course. Most definitely, he didn't know how he was going to live life at the dinner table making such drastic changes.

At one point during the meal, looking at my plate, he commented, "Man, for real, I just don't know how you eat LIKE THAT and still stay in shape?!?! Plus, how are you not gonna be sleepy as hell after you get done eating?!?!?"

I responded to him, like I've responded to him a thousand times before, "Dude, I'm not eating any carbs, what's your problem?!?!?"

But this time, hearing that answer, he paused....looking curiously at my meal. He asked, with a curious look on his face, "What do you mean, you're not eating any carbs???"

Cutting off another slice of my ribeye, I asked him, "What carbs am I eating?", as I popped the meat into my mouth.

His eyes darted from the salad, to my steak, to the brocolli, to the lobster tail, then back to the salad....pausing there.

I jumped right in, "Yes, there's SOME carbs in my salad from the tomatoes and ranch dressing, but the lettuce and cucumbers are mostly water.... so give me like 10g of carbs from the salad..."

Then he looked at my brocolli, again, I interrupted his thought, "Yes, carbs in the brocolli, but most of that is fiber so it's not counted in 'net carbs', give me another 10g of carbs from the brocolli. This whole meal is like 25 g of carbs, right?"

He looked over my spread once more, then his eyes wandered to his side of the table....and I pointed out the sweet tea that he was drinking was probably 30g of sugar in each glass (and we were on our 3rd refill at the time), the multi-grain loaf bread that he was eating was probably another 100g of carbs EACH loaf (he was on his 2nd one), the bun for the hamburger was another 30-40g of carbs, and the french fries probably another 50-70g of carbs. So he was probably already at 400g+ of carbs ..... and that was before the cheesecake arrived.

He sat there with the most stunned look on his face which was doubly strange to me since we've had this exact conversation before, time and time again. "Damn man....that's what the dr. is talking about, huh?", he asked me. Confused, I just had to ask, "What's what the dr. is talking about?"

Then he started talking about how the dr. was telling him he absolutely has to cut out eating so much sugar and highly processed carbs (no dip sherlock?)....where he was thinking that he didn't eat a lot of carbs or sugar. The dr. was telling him to start focusing on eating more proteins,veggies, lean meats, beans, nuts, and maybe fruits, etc (really, imagine that?) but to cut out all the bread, and potatoes, and pasta, and desserts, etc.

Not able to contain my frustration, I blurted out, "Dude, what the hell? I've been telling you the same thing for YEARS?!?!?"

"Yeah, I know, I know...", he said, "But NOW .... I Get It!!"

And now, I guess I get it too....wow!

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Good Habits are SO HARD to Break!!! Thank Goodness!!!

Monday, July 19, 2010

Yes, I definitely know that BAD habits are hard to break....seems that's most of what people battle with here on Spark: Breaking bad habits and replacing them with new ones to support their NEW lifestyle.

Thank goodness, once the NEW ones have taken hold and gotten ingrained into your everyday thoughts and behavior patterns, they are just as hard to break and I found it out first hand this past weekend.

This is hell week for me, well last week and again this week, since I've added our yearly krav maga fitness boot camp to my normal daily routine.

If you've never gotten up at 430am to enjoy burning 2000 kcal (yes, my heart rate monitor said 1831kcal last Wednesday, thank you) and losing 8 lbs of sweat over a 2 hr fight conditioning/fitness boot camp (530am-730am), you're missing out on one of the finer pleasures in life.

All this is just getting the day started mind you. Being the over-achiever that I'm accused of being, I'm also sticking to my normal evening workouts---don't wanna be called a slacker by the other nimrods at the gym

Boot camp being Mon-Wed-Fri, those days are pretty grueling: 2hrs for the morning workout and another 2-3hrs in the evenings I must be a glutton for punishment. But I digress from the "good habits" lesson that I learned.......

Feeling particularly proud of myself for making it to Friday evening, leaving the gym, I made the announcement to a few friends that I was gonna "chill out, eat and have some fun" for Friday evening and the entire weekend. Of course, my friends all being "normal", they were glad to finally be able to include me in the "eat, drink and be merry" festivities they indulge in daily, if not hourly.

Friday night was supposed to be bar-be-que night, complete with ribs slathered in sauce, baked beans slathered in sauce, cole slaw, french fries by the pound and of course bread, bread, BREAD galore. But when it came my time to order my food.... I just couldn't do it. I couldn't pull the trigger! I ordered a pound of beef brisket (hold the sauce), a small red beans and rice ..... and brocolli.

The look of disgust that came over my friends face, said it all. "Dude, I thought you said you were gonna eat tonight???? That's the same $%&@ you always order?!?!", he mocked.

Later at the dance club, I got busted again...at the bar. I thought that I was being slick, just ordering a plain Diet Coke, getting refill after refill after refill (lying about being the designated driver to save face with the bartender)...but telling my peeps that I was drinking Rum&Coke That worked, of course, until it was time to pay the bill and mine was only $2.95, oh well.

I had even agreed to go to IHOP the next morning, telling my peeps that I was "skipping" the Saturday morning gym routine....since boot camp was so rough on me. Again, I fell short of my goal...as I forgot to unset my normal 7am Saturday morning alarm. As I laid there in bed, I realized that I could go do my normal 2hr workout, get back home, shower and change....all before my peeps even rolled out of bed for the day. Plus, I could workout in anticipation of the IHOP pancakes that I was about to eat...no one but me needed to know, right?

But getting to IHOP, my best laid plans were again thwarted. Just as we sat down to our table, the server for the table next to us was bringing those customers their food. And one of them had ordered the Cheesecake Pancakes and what looked like a triple order of hashbrowns. Now if you don't know...the IHOP Cheesecake Pancakes consist of: A pancake on the bottom, then a layer of cheesecake, then another pancake added, then another layer of cheesecake, then another pancake. Keep piling it on if a short stack ain't good enough.

Of course, I was sitting there with the ole "You gotta be frigging kidding me?!?!" look on my face as the guy about to chomp down on said 5-Stack Cheesecake Pancake monstrosity was a particularly portly fellow that could stand to lose a few pounds! I know each to his or her own, but hey, that just ruined it for me. I ended up ordering the T-Bone steak and Eggs, and gave away my pancakes that came with it.

Saturday during the day was more of the same. Turned down Ben and Jerry's ice cream later in the day in favor of polishing off the fruit I had at home before it went bad. Turned down the movie theater popcorn, candy and soda, in favor of my Coke Zero and beef jerky that I sneaked in with me (Inception is a VERY good movie by the way). And after the movie, I reneged on the Thai Crab Fried Rice, instead ordering a stir-fry dish with extra, extra veggies (hold the rice, thank you) and even worse, I turned down more dessert at Cheesecake Factory, instead coming home and eating two of my Supreme Protein Bars, the "wanna be candy bar", washing both of them down with a tall tumbler of ice cold Soy milk.

Sunday, well, my friends dropped me like a dirty shirt. Of course, they always say that THEY can't really enjoy themselves with food and drink, if I'm not going to be a participant. Pure and utter Hogwash to me, I swear I'll never understand that thought pattern. No worries though, I enjoyed my carefree, relaxing Sunday, even getting into bed by 8pm to be ready for my maniac krav trainer at 530am this morning

So yeah, it's hard being BAD isn't it???? Curse those good habits!!!

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Sugar vs Sweeteners: Stop the Huffington's Nonsense!!!

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Well the discussion started innocently enough.

Sitting there at Longhorn last night with my kids, they were challenging me to tell the difference between Equal and Splenda in my iced tea. Not having any sweetener on our table, we sent my youngest to raid an adjacent table for it's stash. Having two glasses, one kid started mixing my tea using Splenda, the other using Equal.

It was at that time that I first noticed we had caught the attention of two ladies at the table next to us. They looked over occasionally with a smile and whispered quietly amongst themselves.

It wasn't until much later in the meal (and after about 2-3 iced tea refills) that one of the ladies came over to our table.

"Excuse me, I don't mean to bother you", she started, "but you look like you're a pretty healthy person? You workout?"

It's always funny when I hear that question, "Yeah, I workout 'just a little' ", I replied, definitely tongue in cheek

She continued, "Well, I saw this article the other day...from Herndon(?) or Hasting's(?), something like that. It was saying that there is nothing wrong with using real sugar instead of sweeteners since real sugar is more healthy for you. I was wondering why you use sweeteners?"

Not quite believing the question, I replied, "Well actually, I don't like all those extra calories that real sugar adds."

With a straight face, she looked me dead in the eye and asked, "What extra calories?"



I had to have a look on my face like I was thinking, "Lady, what the hell????", cause yes, that's what I was thinking!

"The extra calories that would be in the iced tea from the sugar. These other sweeteners are zero calorie.", I continued.

"Oh...oh?", was her response, but she had a look on her face like she still didn't get it.

I explained, "Figure it this way, if I was using real sugar it would be about 150-200 calories in each of these glasses of iced tea. Figure 5-6 refills, and I'm avoiding drinking like 1000 extra calories with my meal, right?"

"Oh, ok. I guess so, hummm", she replied. "Well I thought I read that article saying that real sugar was better for you or something like that? And that using sweeteners makes you crave more sweet stuff?"

Of course, having seen references to that article spreading like wildfire here on Spark the past couple days, I had in fact read it.

So I told her, "Actually, I know what article you're talking about, it was from Huffington Post. Yes, they posed the question at the beginning of the article, 'What's wrong with good old-fashioned sugar?'. But during the course of the very same article, they went on to explain no less than 4-5 things that actually WERE, if fact, wrong with real sugar. And they ended up saying, in a nutshell, don't eat it. As for craving more sweet stuff, that's from not eating enough protein and healthy fats, not from the sweeteners."

"Oh...oh really?", she pondered, "Well, ok, I don't remember seeing all that...."

She thanked me for the information and went back to her table. I smiled as I thought to myself how just a little bit of information can be dangerous. I thought it very funny her pointing out my usage of non-sugar sweeteners while at the same time she enjoyed the loaf bread, rice and a baked potato with her grilled chicken lunch, and presumably the Coke she was drinking was non-diet?

So let me point out a few items lifted directly from the notorious Huffington's article

www.huffingtonpost.com/susan-b-dopar
t-ms-rd/artificial-sweetener_b_613684.
html :

"Eating protein at meals and snacks lowers cravings. Not eating protein will leave you hungry and craving more sweet."

"Enjoy the natural flavor of berries, apples, bananas, and melons that have fiber attached to the fructose. Just make sure to have them with some protein for satiety."

"Limit your intake of all sugars since they can increase insulin resistance and the side effects associated with it."

"Use good fats at your meals -- olive oil, avocado, and nuts enhance satiation and increase flavor."

Strange huh? Sounds like they are saying to eat LESS sugar and eat MORE protein and good fats? Now where have I heard that before.....???

Spark On!!!

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Red Meat Eaters Finally Rejoice, Kudos!!!

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Finally yet ANOTHER nutrition myth debunked!!! Yes Sparkers, 2010 has been a good year in the area of nutrition and fitness information (as opposed to much mis-information of the past).



The short story: There is nothing wrong with eating unprocessed meat (red meat or otherwise), period. More specifically, eating *unprocessed* meat does NOT increase a person's risk of cardiovascular diseases and/or diabetes, not to mention colon cancer, in-grown toenails, hair loss, etc. All this according to Harvard School of Public Health (not exactly a fly-by-night operation)

Now, you might be wondering ... what exactly is *unprocessed* meat? It's the normal chicken, pork, steak, lamb, etc that you find in the butcher section of the store. Including my RibEye steaks, yumm yumm !!!



Seafood was not included in the Harvard study, but I dare say that my salmon, lobster tails, and shrimp all pass a similar test of healthiness.



On the other hand, the PROCESSED stuff, like bacon, salami, sausages, hot dogs or processed deli or luncheon meats......yeah, it's THAT stuff that's causing all the problems, look out Subway!!! Long knowing that they were loaded with SODIUM (among other things), I've always just said NO to processed meats.

Read all about it, if you like:

www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-rele
ases/2010-releases/processed-meats-unp
rocessed-heart-disease-diabetes.html

Now, next time you see me in a restaurant enjoying my thick juicy 18 oz Bone-in Ribeye steak with a large order of broccoli and a small side salad, you can truly see it as the picture of healthy and CLEAN eating, da ha!

No wonder my body has been running so wonderfully on this stuff, I knew I was doing something right in spite of all the naysayers!




And yes, I do know that "Meat is Murder" people.........tasty, tasty, juicy murder at that!!!

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