You measure yourself by the people who measure themselves by you. - Carter Chambers, as played by Morgan Freeman.

photo credit: Tawni Rae

Every year I make a list of things to do that year. I refuse to call them resolutions because no one ever does those anyway. I am slightly OCD and organized in life (otherwise I procrastinate horribly) but it's written on a list, I'ma friggin do it. It's a weird little compulsion that I've harnessed as a way to Get Shit Done(TM). At some point, an enterprising young woman will figure this out and try to write "propose to me" on a piece of paper and slip it to me. Meh. Might be easier than doing it on my own. At any rate my equivalence of resolutions is a public list of all the stuff I want to get done for the year. This year's was actually not half bad. I was going to link it in this post to give an example of my weird to-do list mentality when I realized- holy crap, I've accomplished most of my list already. The year is barely half over and I've got like 2.5 items out of 10 to go.

So what does this have to do with anything? Other than pointing out to all you slackers how much I've done so far, I was going to announce that I took my first stab at surfing today and could cross it off the list. That's when I noticed- it wasn't even on the damn list. I had put it off in the past because I thought I wasn't in good enough shape or coordinated enough (newsflash, I'm still not!) but the idea was still kicking around in the back of my mind. "Must be a bucket list item or something", I thought. Not that I maintain one, or even like the idea of one mind you, but I've been kicking around the idea of learning ever since a friend offered to teach me. While we're on the subject, had anyone even heard of the phrase before the Jack Nicholson movie came out? I certainly hadn't and now it's a cemented into everyone's vocabulary to the point you couldn't get it out with an Urban Dictionary sized crowbar. I've come to the decision that I hate this damn phrase and everything it represents.

Because it makes people lazy, that's why.

Life is about goals people. Wait, no, I take that back. Life is about having and accomplishing your goals. This "bucket list" bullshit encourages people to put their desires on a magical list and get to it before they die. It's the ultimate New Year's resolution / procrastinator bastard love child. It's resolutions for lazy people- don't worry about accomplishing them this year, you have your whole life. You don't need that kind of pressure man!

F that. I got junk to do and no magical "eventually" wish list is going to make it happen for me. There is a list, it is short, it has an expiration date, and shit is getting done man. Each year's list builds off the previous years. Bucket list. Whatever.

And yeah, I'm going surfing against next weekend. Probably every weekend from here on actually, until I can actually manage to stay upright on the board for longer than 0.2s. I will however be buying a rashguard because right now my chest looks like a slab of raw meat.

I really need to make better lists. 2010's already needs more stuff on it.

Peace out!

Try not. Do or do not. There is no try. ~Yoda


photo credit: carolyntiry

A lot of people don't like to make New Year's resolutions for a variety of reasons. I'd like to think that I've heard every excuse there is at this point but people continually find new ways to surprise me. The two most common (to date) that I've heard are:

1. "Oh, I don't need a reason to make goals, I have them year-round."
2. "People never stick to resolutions anyway so why bother."

There's a whole slew of ways to argue these points, but for me it just isn't worth it. While I agree with the first statement in principle, New Years and its associated traditions provide a logical, easily remembered point in time to set goals for yourself for the coming year. If you're committed enough to not need such a landmark date that's great, but I'll stick with what works for me.

In years past I never bothered setting goals for myself. Sometimes (infrequently) New Years was a good time to look over what happened to me in the last year and try to figure out what went wrong. The past two years were the first times I tried setting concrete goals for myself and it worked out pretty well. I think that where this practice fails for a lot of folks is that they don't set concrete enough goals. If you don't know your goal, how can you judge your progress or success / failure?

Now without further pontificating- my goals for 2010.

Fitness

• I want to maintain a 30-31 inch waist.
• Make it to the gym 4 days a week at least every other week, if not every week.
• Reduce my bodyfat. My scale currently says I'm at ~8-9%, but I wonder how accurate that is. That might be true overall, but most of my bodyfat is concentrated around the 'ole waistline. Needs to even out!
• Be able to squat 160lbs, bench press 180lbs, and do 100 pushups. Not necessarily all of these back to back

Hobbies

• Read at least 3 books a month (or 36 books for the year) with at least half being non-fiction. I'm great at tearing through fiction but I'm slow on the nonfic.
• Draw more. I haven't actively sketched anything in years, and the LA Ink marathon I watched while fighting off the deadly ninja sinus virus ..thing rekindled the creative urge in me. I haven't decided what I'm going to draw yet but I want to have at least four finished pieces by the end of the year.
• Photography. I definitely want to take more pictures, and I've started on that by joining the 365 Project. It's not a competition- you just take a picture every day and post it. I also want to enter at least two photo contests this year.
• San Diego Exploration. At least once a month, try something new around town. This includes hiking.

Self Improvement

• Learn a foreign language. This is one of my failed goals from last year, sadly. Logically enough I'm starting with Latin American Spanish since it's the second most popular language here. I'd also like to be able to talk to the nice smiling people who run the 24 hour burrito drive thru near my house.
• Add a new technical skill / certification. I'm leaning strongly toward PHP here due to my increasing WordPress involvement. Currently I'm more of a talented amateur hacker at it than anything else.

So thems my goals for the year. The fitness ones should be a breeze, the hobby ones a bit harder, and I think that the self improvement ones will be the hardest of all.

"Looks like someone's got a case of the Mondays!"

Yeaaah, she scares me too.

Yes indeedly, and it's every day that's gym day. It's been hard for me lately to motivate myself to go to the gym every week; once I'm there everything is fine and dandy but actually getting myself there becomes a battle every night. While I think it's way too early for me to be hitting any sort of burn out I'm definitely far enough past the "newbie" phase that the quick improvements are going by the way side, so now I have to buckle down and really work at it. I'm pretty impatient in general, so it's hard for me to be motivated without continual visual improvement. While I'm glad I recognize it for what it is, it doesn't make it any easier for things like Dragon Age to not eat up all my time.

Tomorrow is weigh in / measurement day and I'm more than a little happy. Looks like my weight will be ~165, which means I only have 5 more lbs to my goal of 170. Granted that translates into another 4 or 5 weeks, but I'm trying really hard not to think about that too much. After that it's a week to relax the diet a bit, then I start cutting down again. I've had tons of support and advice from my friends (Dorian and my old trainer Dennis at 1 on 1 Personal Training) in regards to diet and exercise and I couldn't have done it without them. I mentioned that it was hard for me to stay motivated, but the easiest way I've found so far is to be open about what I'm working on and my goals are- I find I'm less likely to let myself slide if I know other people "watching" what I'm doing. Ironically that's also today's topic on the My Daily Wellness Tip blog. Another good motivation tool is that I have friends coming to ME now for fitness advice. It's a good confidence booster and it helps me to keep myself on track. I also follow a few different twitter feeds and forums for fitness motivation; For websites, there's the forums at Bodybuilding.com of course, the forums over at Daily Burn (as well as a small fitness group I'm a member of there), and My Daily Wellness Tip, which is run by a few different folks. I follow many of those sites by Twitter, including jlboissonneault from the Daily Wellness Tip blog, Bodybuildingcom which is pretty self explanatory, and Bodybdercoupons which is a Twitter feed of new forum topics + discount codes. Dennis my old trainer has a Twitter feed as well as 1on1trainer.

Here's to hoping there's only 4 more weeks to go!

“Part of the secret of success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside.” -Mark Twain

Om nom nom

I'm currently in what's known as a "bulking phase" and I hate every minute of it. That picture is my lunch today: A sandwhich with 3 servings of turkey, fat free cheese, tomato, and lettuce, rice cake chips, carrots, trail mix, a light Muscle Milk, sugar free Jello, and water. ( o . o ) I feel like a blimp most of the day. The scary thing is all that food is only 560 calories. Eating this much food is soooorta expensive.

It's widely accepted that you can't add muscle without adding fat, so most serious gym rats do what's called a bulk/cut cycle. You "bulk" for 2-3 months which involves in eating excessive calories, then flip and "cut" for about the same amount of time eating fewer calories. Everyone has what's called a "maintenance" level of calories- it's the point where your daily calorie intake is exactly equal to what you use in a day. Granted it's hard to do that on a day to day basis, so most people use a weekly total and average it up. Since adding 1lb of muscle of fat requires 3500 calories, that easily breaks down to 500 extra calories a day for a week. If you're trying to cut, you shave an extra 500 a day. Sounds easy right?

The problem comes in determining your maintenance level of calories. Lots of people use a body mass index formula (BMI) like the one described here. The problem is that everyone is different; the formula varies by weight, height, and gender. It can take a bit of experimentation and time to figure out what your maintenance level is. For reference mine is ~2400-2800 calories a day. I started bulking two weeks ago and weighed 155. As of this Friday's weigh in I'm up to 163. I've been slowly increasing my calories until I hit ~3200 on gym days and 2900 on non gym days. I finally seem to be adding mass pretty well and increasing strength-wise, so I don't see a need to mess with the formula much more. The only downside is I'm starting to reacquire a bit of a spare tire again. I was originally going to try and hit 170, but I'm not 100% sure that that 15lb increase has a good ratio of muscle to fat. On average for most people it's 2lbs of fat for every 1lb of muscle, so starting at 170 I'd have to cut back down to ~160. It's an eternal juggling act as you lose a bit of muscle when cutting too, so I may just go for 175 before starting the cut. I'm adding in a light bit of cardio 2-3 times a week for a few weeks to see if I can't get back to a better ratio without impacting calories much.

It's a good feeling when small shirts are too small through the shoulders and chest though

Editor's Note: this is a long 'un folks! Brace yourselves for lots of fitness-related rambling.

Wikipedia defines a non sequitur as an argument in formal logic in which its conclusion does not follow from its premises. Its original Latin meaning is "it does not follow" and that's exactly the sentiment I get when reading this article from Time: Why Exercise Won't Make You Thin. I only came across it while reading the Daily Burn blog (I highly recommend their service- you can see my sad little profile here. Friend me!). I could tear the Time article apart easily, but Susan on the Daily Burn blog did a pretty good job already. I highly recommend reading the Time piece, then her response. Instead I'm going to talk a little about what I had to do to get back in shape and let you draw your own conclusions about the Time piece.

I wouldn't describe myself as a fitness guru by any definition. At best I'm a "fitness enthusiast". I work out 3-4 times a week and I track what I eat pretty closely, but I'll readily admit that it's for completely shallow reasons and that the overall health benefits are a secondary goal as far as I'm concerned. My major form of entertainment is gaming and I don't think anyone would argue that it's a very "fit" hobby. I was tired of being a lump on the couch, and while I don't think I was fat, the extra weight I carried definitely had an affect on my state of mind. Luckily for me I've had the added benefit of working with a great trainer and getting advice from friends who are far more experienced than me, so any sort of success I've had has been 70% encouragement and advice from them and only 30% effort from me. Of that 30% effort, probably the three most important factors for me to get back in shape was education, organization, and willpower: not what I ate or what I did.

When I first tried to exercise for a few months by myself I quickly found I had problems sticking to a schedule or I ate badly (willpower). When I did manage to exercise, I was often doing the wrong exercises or doing the right ones incorrectly (education). Even if I managed all of that, I would lose track of what I did the preceding week (organization). I was floundering and not making much progress all of which contributed to demotivating me from continuing. To combat these three issues I decided to hire a personal trainer. Working with a trainer allowed him to handle the organization and education portions, and willpower was up to me. Willpower quickly became a function of my bank account; if I deviated from the diet the longer it would take and the more it would cost me. That was all the motivation I needed to stick to the diet and work my ass off. While I had a shaky foundation gleaned from friends/books/magazines, working with the trainer improved on the foundation I had and gave me a fair amount of confidence that I knew what I was doing. By the time I was done (8 months later), the base education was there and the willpower was more habit than anything. That left organization and better education left to conquer.

Once I wasn't working with a trainer full time anymore, I needed to set and track my own goals since there wasn't a 3rd party giving me the necessary organization and structure. I had tried spreadsheets when working out on my own before the trainer, but I didn't have easy access at the gym to follow a workout or update my progress. Enter Gyminee. It had a great website for tracking my workouts/exercise/food but it still wasn't "in the gym". In time they became Daily Burn and now have two great iPhone apps. One, Daily Burn, lets you update your nutrition and exercise info (including tracking your workout process) while the other, Food Scanner, is a barcode scanner to let you look up nutritional information. I've added all the food I eat including some custom recipes to my favorites so it's easy to track / update what I've eaten each day on the fly from my phone. My diet stays pretty constant as long as I don't eat out, and I only tend to buy the groceries I need to make my food for the week. Without extra food in the house willpower and binge eating suddenly isn't an issue. Thanks to the Daily Burn website/app I can pre-plan my workouts at home online then just follow the workout instead of standing there in the gym like an idiot trying to figure out what to do. Due to the habits I formed while working with the trainer, I've now managed to knock out the necessary organization and willpower to exercise on my own.

Education was probably my biggest hurdle, and still is to this day. There's a glut of information out there, and 99% of it conflicts with itself. Exercise routines, diets, cardio, strength training, yoga, pilates... the list is infinite. There's no easy answer here as basically you just have to learn what works for you by trial and error. There are a few key concepts that are good to know though:

• Body types. There are three major body types, known as ectomorphic, mesomorphic, and endomorphic. Body type is determined in a few different ways, but basically it has to do with how close to the joint your muscles taper and how your body processes/stores fat. It's a sliding scale with ectomorph at one end and endomorph at the other. Figure out which one you are! It will have a pretty significant impact on how you need to reach your goals. A good primer was made by my friend Jaerik here.
• Building muscle vs losing weight. These are two distinctly different and conflicting goals. Building up of muscle will not necessarily cause fat burning. Don't believe me? Check out endomorphs in the link about body types. While it's true that 1lb of muscle will burn more calories than 1lb of fat, in general it's only about a 10-50 calorie difference. Cardio, core exercises, and endurance training are all great for weight loss but not so good for makin' your guns huge. In fact most body builders go through periods of "bulking" and "cutting" where they alternate between packing on the pounds then trimming the fat. Both the exercises and the diet for these two goals are completely different
• How muscles work together. Seems obvious, but not always. There are some exercises that involve many groups of muscles (compound movements) vs exercises that involve single muscles (isolation movements). Your workouts can comprise of both, but it's important to understand that your shoulders workout is doing crappy today because you over trained on triceps during your chest workout yesterday. Triceps are a supporting muscle and involved in the compound movements for both of these groups! Once you've decided on how many days a week you're going to work out you can divide your body into days, and never do the same area in a row. My four day schedule is back/biceps/abs one day, shoulders/chest/triceps another, and legs (quads, hamstrings, calves) another. The fourth day is a core/cardio/calisthenics day mostly, or I might work an area that didn't get enough attention.
• How food is processed by your body. This one is pretty hard, and I'm still digging in here to educate myself more. As I mentioned before, there's a big difference here if you're just exercising to lose weight vs exercising to build muscle. Your body turns calories in your food to energy, and you have three primary sources of calories: carbohydrates, fats, and proteins. Based off your unique metabolism there's probably a perfect blend that will be optimum, but in general a 1/3 ratio of each is probably a good starting point. When I'm trying to build muscle I'll skewer this and try to make sure more of my calories come from protein, then fat, then carbohydrates last. While cutting the order changes to protein -> carbohydrates -> fat. Everyday usage however, 1/3 of each is a good rule of thumb.
• Know how many calories you need. If you're working out 4-5 days a week, and doing cardio 3-4 times a week, you need calories. You can't exercise without energy. Another handy tip for those wanting to exercise: take your current body weight * 15. With that level of activity, that's the amount of calories you need to maintain that weight. To add a pound of muscle, it will take an additional 3,500 calories. Want to lose a pound? Same deal. You need to add or subtract ~500 calories a day to lose/gain a pound. Your body also handles food better in multiple small doses, so try and change your eating patterns to 3 smaller meals + 2-3 snacks throughout the day. By eating all your calories in large lumps, the body doesn't need that many calories RIGHT THEN and can store the excess as fat.

So there you have it, the three biggest factors that I had to overcome to become effective at exercising. I know that I learn best by mimic and rote, so it made sense for me to get a personal trainer to get started. All the books and advice in the world didn't help until I could watch and be "taught" the first few times. Unlike the Times article author, I realize that nutrition and exercise are both equally as important, and that rewarding yourself with food is broken thinking. Try rewarding yourself with being happy to see your reflection. I've done both, and the latter is far more satisfying.

Useful links in this post:
Daily Burn: http://www.dailyburn.com They have a blog and twitter and I'm sure a Facebook page.
Muscle Chow: http://www.amazon.com/Mens-Health-Muscle-Chow-Workouts/dp/1594865485 A pretty good cookbook for people looking to build muscle by Men's Health. It also has good general nutrition information in it. Google Books has a preview here.

Over the past year I've gotten lots of questions about eating and diet. I never think I have a good answer either; there are so many factors that go into what works and what doesn't (metabolism, activity level, age, sex, etc) that it's nearly impossible to give accurate advice. It took me having an awesome trainer for about 8 months to figure it out and that's only because he gave me a good base diet to work from. That being said, I have managed to work out a few things that are pretty applicable all around.

1. Drink lots of water. By lots, I mean as close to a gallon a day as you can get. This does not include cokes, coffee, tea, or anything else. Be prepared to visit the little boy's (or girl's) room frequently.
2. Eat more, smaller meals. Right now I'm doing 7 meals a day, but that's not really necessary unless you're exercising strenuously. Even breaking things up to 4-5 a day is good, like having a mid afternoon snack of raw veggies.
3. When snacking, eat lots of vegetables. Fruit is good too, but be wary of the sugar content. Avoid dried fruit at all costs due to the extra sugar (dried pineapple is my kryptonite, fyi).
4. Don't eat out.
5. If you do eat out, try to eat salads. Honey mustard the condiment in the grocery store is ok to eat, honey mustard dipping sauce and dressing generally are not. Try to go with salads that have grilled salmon, tuna, or chicken on them.
6. Don't eat the free bread.
7. Do a little preemptive calorie legwork. Most big chains have their nutritional information posted online. Read up and make informed choices before you get there.
8. If you're like me and like Asian food, look for menu items with oyster sauce and make sure to ask for light sauce. Avoid eating rice too!
9. In general, avoid restaurant starches like pastas, bread, potatoes, etc. The portions are huge. Try to swap it for a side salad instead.
10. Many restaurants have vegetables on the menu. If they're not steamed or grilled, it's probably best to just get a side salad. Green beans aren't that healthy cooked in bacon, and neither is corn steeped in butter.
11. Speaking of vegetables, the order of general "good-for-you-ness": green -> red -> orange -> yellow.
12. Stick to lean meats as much as possible like chicken, fish, and turkey. Beef should be rarer in your diet. A good general rule of them is the fewer legs the better.
13. Avoid sauces for flavor. Seasoning is ok, but get the sauce on the side or not at all.
14. Don't go to fast food places!
15. Try to plan your meals in advance for the week. I've found that if I plan the menu in advance (and the nutritional info) I tend to eat out less.
16. Carry your lunch to work- "quick" lunches at Hooters are an easy way to pack on the pounds.
17. Last but not least, avoid alcohol like the plague.

There are literally tons of little substitutions you can make and never notice: light bread instead of regular, fat free cheese, fat free / light yogurt, sugar free jello, rice cakes (flavored are ok), I Can't Believe It's Not Butter. Do a little investigative grocery store shopping. Don't worry about cheating; yes you will slip up from time to time. There will be that pie, or that beer, or whatever. Try to keep it in control and cheat only about once a week. Of course all of this is tons more effective with exercise, but we're all busy people right? Worse comes to worse if you're in the Mobile area, I can recommend a guy who will sweat it off of you pretty quick.