North . . Dogma

Lots of folks are joining in.  Great!

I’m doing the body-for-life thing again (not officially entering the contest, though).  I actually started curbing off just before New Year’s day, when
my weight reached an all-time high of 227 pounds and officially went all out on Monday.  Thus far, things are looking good because I’ve already lost 5 pounds in the first 9 days (gee, d’ya think
there was any water weight due to the multiple helpings of chicken nachos over the holidays?).  Since I’m already on the downswing and because there’s no way in the world I’m taking my shirt off
for anyone right now, there won’t be a ‘before’ picture like before.  I have some regular pics from Christmas, so I can use that—- I ain’t embarrassing myself with a snapshot of a huge gut at
this time.  Right now I’m closer to Will Ferrell than Colin Ferrell. 

That’s about to change.

My goals?  I have but one and that is my new year’s resolution:  single digit body-fat.  I’ve been there before and I will be there again.  That means I’ll be pumping a
lot of iron & thus I hope to actually gain a good bit of muscle during that time, so there probably won’t be too much of a weight loss.  I’d be shocked if I got down into the low 200s…probably
around 210.  Yeah, 17 pounds is a lot but let’s face it – I’m 6’5" and 222 pounds.  I can drop a pound with a trip to the urinal.  

Declaring things here & seeing others participating gives me a chance to add some extra incentive – I don’t want any of you outdoing me!  Thus, I’m throwing down the gauntlet (in a hospitable way amongst friends): 
if you’re going to try to work harder at making yourself more fit than me, you’re going to lose.  Thinking about taking a few bites of cake at the office party?  Fine, that means you’ll be
easy for me to beat.  Gonna starve yourself so you can lose oogles of pounds?  Bad for you because that means you’ll be an unhealthy waif who’ll balloon by fall on the rebound – while I’m
toned.  No, there’s no definitive way to declare a "winner" and we’re really on the same side (getting healthier), I just want to add a little push so that there aren’t wimps who drop out because
they didn’t reach their goals by the first time they craved a slice of apple pie (mmmm, pie).  So, if you’re looking for some personal incentive, I just provided it in the preceding paragraph.

If you have questions, I have answers (as in, don’t starve yourself – it’s the absolute worst thing you can do).  I’ve been into the fitness thing since 1998.  My sister-in-law is a
personal trainer & I’m friends with the runner-up in the Georgia women’s bodybuilding contest.  I’ve got scores of books/magazines to use as resources & 5 years experience in dieting/fitness to
draw from.  Join in!  I have a fitness category on this blog & would love to post your progress/questions/responses/information/teachings!

The most focused I’ve ever been about this was a bet I had with a friend of mine back in college.  The bet was a 6-pack (mine was a six pack of coca-cola).  We pushed ourselves for 2
months over a couple of 6 packs.  Having everyone read about it on the internet has got to be more incentive than that.

The proverbial coin has been tossed and the teams are lined up for kickoff.  

Game on, guys. 

I’m going to start posting some more fitness stuff, mainly because so much BS is out there:

Atkins Diet Doesn’t Work

The Atkins diet works – for a while. But as renowned junk science debunker and author of "Fat of the Land" Michael Fumento points out, it doesn’t take all that long to regain the
weight lost on the diet.

Fumento explains, in a recent op-ed piece published in papers around the country, that the Atkins and the similar "South Beach" diets "induce rapid weight loss in the first couple of weeks,
because all low-carb diets promote quick water loss. Water is heavy, but it is not fat."

And, in no time at all, dieters get tired of following the low carbohydrate regimes and resume normal eating and the weight piles back on, as shown by a 12-month study in the May 22, 2003, New
England Journal of Medicine.

So, the New England Journal of Medicine has cracked open yet another of life’s mysteries:  If you fall off your diet & start eating the crap you used to eat, you’ll gain weight. 
Also rumored to be in the study: taking a shower will make you wet, dying hurts your chances of living and waking up will mean you’re no longer asleep.  Look, I did the Atkins thing this summer.  Here’s a post I wrote in August that I never added to the site because I didn’t think that anyone was as interested in fitness as I am, but what the
heck?  Here it is in its entirety (and keep in mind that there’s no way on earth that you could love food more than me):

Something I haven’t posted on very much lately is ‘fitness’.  I realize that it gets next to zero comments & little interest amongst the politically oriented folks who read here, but it is a
rather large part of my life and since the weight-loss/fitness/training/supplement industries are in the billions of dollars in biz, I’m not the only person out there who keeps an eye on things. 
Amongst bloggers, I know OW is a big proponent of the Atkins diet & one of my wife’s friends had so much success with weight watchers.

In 1998 I decided to maximize my potential, so I changed the diet & started resistance training.  I’m a former athlete, so I’ve never been obese in my life.  Actually, I really have never been
overweight.  I just had – at that time, thanks to a terrible diet, two knee surgeries and a sedentary lifestyle of cheeseburgers, pizza & milkshakes – a small spare-tire around the mid-section.  I
watched the "Body for Life" video and that pretty much was all I needed (I cannot recommend enough that everyone should see that thing.  If "they" can,
anyone can).  Thus, in August of ‘98 my life changed – drastically.

This is my five year anniversary.  In August of 1998, I went on a 4 day ‘fast’ from sugar, which sent the ultimate shock to my body’s chemistry.  I was a full fledged coke-a-holic, and I
mean coca-colas.  Try 14 per day, on average.  When my wife noted that I couldn’t finish a meal without opening my 3rd can, I began to realize exactly what direction I was going in (and again, I was
not overweight, I just had a gut).  Thus, I went 4 days with zero grams of sugar.  No ketchup, no fruit, no sauce, no nothing.  Grilled/baked chicken or fish, dried veggies (clean) and
water.  Bland.  Plain.  Pretty much tasteless.  But, it did the trick.  I was ‘cleansed’.  I introduced sugar back into the diet slowly, but I no longer had a taste for things like cake, caramel,
most pies & the like.  On September 18th of that year, I also drank my last soft-drink.  Now, I drink water.  Every once in a while some beer (maybe one or two per week, on average) & when we
go on vacation, I’ll have one glass of orange juice and one glass of chocolate milk (it’s basically a tradition).  Other than that, pretty much all I ever drink is water.  If you want to
shape up, that is the #1 secret.

Back to body-for-life (whew, a long post that probably had most folks dropping off by the third paragraph).  I hit the plan, entered the contest & was absolutely amazed with the results.  My wife
did it with me (late 2000) & the ‘after’ photos floored us. She looked great.  My gut had turned into a quasi-washboard & my chest and arms were bigger and more defined, so I was sold on the
concept of high protein, moderate carbs & low fat.  But, more than anything, I felt great (and still do).  I won’t go into detail on the plan, you can go to the
web site & check.  However, after 4 and a half years, I needed a break.  I’d eaten chicken & egg whites, protein shakes and dried potatoes until I was about
ready to regurgitate when I saw a grilled chicken breast.  Thus, I took up the Atkins plan.

Some background: I have every workout that I’ve done since ‘98 printed out in various notebooks, and files with my body measurements & % body fat, so I have quite a bit of data on hand.  I began
Atkins May 14th of this year.  Almost immediately the pounds started to fall off.  Within 29 days, I was minus 10 pounds and had lost a good bit off my overall % body fat.  On top of that, I was
able to eat a new variety of food.  Yum!

Now, the bad part – in June I could tell by looking in the mirror that I was shrinking.  Overall.  For an ectomorph, that ain’t good.  I immediately cut out all cardio, which burns muscle.  The
absence of carbs does the fat-burning thing & I wanted to maintain at least the same amount of body mass.  Not working.  I checked the workout logs and in every exercise it was the same trend:  I
was losing size, strength and muscle.  It was official.  As I said, not good.  On July 11th, I switched to a modified version, mixing BFL with Atkins, so I could get some much-needed carbs into the
shrinking muscle fiber (and as any ectomorph will tell you, it’s much harder to gain 1 lb of muscle than to lose 5 lbs of fat) and started taking creatine again (which is better absorbed with
carbs).  Luckily, I’ve gained my strength back within one month (according to my workout logs) and a visual check shows about 90% of the mass has returned. 

This isn’t an indictment on the Atkins plan….it obviously works.  It just wasn’t for me, since I started losing what I worked so hard these 5 years to get.  However, I do plan on
incorporating it into about 10% of my eating regimen, so that I’ll lower my overall carb intake.  That way, I can tweak the fat/carb ratio so that I can widen the variety of foods to eat on a
regular basis.  When I return to a plan, I’ll bring in the pizza (sans crust) and cheeseburger (no bread) additions, so I won’t get quite so burned out on chicken.

In closing, BFL gets 4 stars, with the only negative being the spectrum of food items (which is primarily my fault, since I can eat very few veggies).  Atkins gets 2.5 stars, with the positive
being fat loss (rapid, folks) and the negative being muscle loss (also, rapid, for me).  If you’re overweight & need a quick jumpstart, try Atkins for a while & get rid of some of the excess weight,
then try body-for-life for muscle gain (bigger muscles burn more fat) and long-term rewards.

My two cents worth, anyway. 

Had I stuck with Atkins, I have no doubt I’d have continued to lose – but I was losing muscle faster than I was losing fat.  And it doesn’t take a friggin’ genius to figure out that going back
to cheeseburgers & pizza will put back on the pounds.  A diet is an eating plan, not a specified period of starvation.  Unless you’re super-active, when you start eating crap (read:
stuff that tastes great) you’re gonna gain weight. 

And I didn’t need a grant to do a study to tell you that.

If anyone has questions about BFL, feel free to ask.  And now, enough about me/me/me, back to the usual political wrangling.

I know Ricky is big into fitness, and I’m sure some NGD readers are too, so maybe some of you can help me with this, since I’ve asked four different instructors at my gym and got three different answers.

I used to always go to the gym right after work and then eat dinner when i got home, but it’s too damn crowded after work so in the last month or two, I’ve started going home after work, eating dinner, and then going to the gym at night.

Somebody told me that it was stupid to eat dinner before my workout because A)It’s better to work out on an empty stomach because you burn more fat that way as the body burns the fat for energy, rather than the food in your stomach and B) If your dinner has a lot of protein, which mine always does because I’m a chicken fanatic, the protein should be injested in the first 30 minutes right when you get done, so having it before i work out does me no good.

I hate to waste good blog space on something personal and rather insignificant to the entire outside world except for myself, but i’m just trying to get the most bang for my workout buck.

Completely personal entry, so political readers may want to ignore.  I’m getting back into the fitness habit.

(more…)

This is a post that I’ve held onto for almost a week & have had many reservations about putting here as this is one of those personal entries that absolutely no one but me cares about, but I’m putting it here for a selfish reason, anyway.  A very selfish reason, as the audience is really me, but with a caveat – I’m using as a device to keep from embarrassing myself (and for all you cut n’ pasters out there, I know – further).

As I’ve mentioned many times, I follow the Body for Life diet/training/supplement plan (well, okay, I took two months off recently).  During an IM session with Jane Finch I stated that one of the best things I did was take the dreaded ‘before’ picture, as it served as my motivation.  I’d read about it, but the mirror indeed can hide so much.  Thus, I had a visual to use for inspiration and then made several written goals that I also used as I progressed through the contest.  Thus, I follow the creed of setting goals and going after them and
using all sorts of other tools in order to help me attain that goal.

Thus, some of my new year’s resolutions involved basketball & fitness.  And, I will reach my resolutions.

I’m now playing basketball for the first time in 3 years and will post some particulars for no other reason than to buttress my own ‘gumption’ to push myself physically (that’s what I’m doing it for), otherwise I’ll be forced to put abysmal figures up here for readers to see (and God bless you for stopping by).  So, if you see a post pertaining to basketball, be warned that I’m using it for my own benefit and it does have a use——but it’s for me.  Skipping it won’t bother me at all, as I’m using it to motivate myself.  Hey, call me selfish, but I need all the help I can get.

Therefore, there may be some sad numbers…really sad numbers…there may be some good numbers & there may be some great numbers, but the sad ones are the ones I’m worried about.  But, THAT’S why I’m putting myself out there, so I’ll have one more reason to put forth more effort should I start to fatigue.  And, (as I start to waive the ‘excuse’ flag) I’m 36 years old with a knee that’s been surgically repaired twice, so cut me some slack.    Then again, I’m a former basketball player, so anything less than 10 points means I either really sucked or sat out a good portion of the game. 
And…our team is not very good.

The leagues only keep up with the point totals, I’m keeping up with the rebound totals & I can remember the number of three-pointers.  

Game 1:  28 points, 6 rebounds, 5 three-pointers

Please be kind when (not if) the tallies look like a Koncak performance.

Updates:

Game 2: 23 pts, 11 rebounds, 3 three-pointers

Game 3: 19 pts, 11 rebounds, 3 three pointers

Game 4: 18 pts, 12 rebounds, 4 three pointers

Game 5: 15 pts, 13 rebounds, 0 three pointers

Game 6: 25 pts, 12 rebounds, 2 three pointers

Sick (very)—- missed 3 games

Game 7: 15 pts, 10 rebounds, 1 three pointer (19 minutes…returning from sickness)

Game 8: 11 pts, 15 rebounds, 0 three pointers