P90X: "Consistency" Day 29 of 90

Today was a very busy day and really different for a Saturday.  We had to be somewhere at 10:30AM and I knew the day would be really busy in front of me.  I wanted to get my workout done early.  Ate my bowl of oatmeal and had my two cups of coffee.  Then five minutes later, I rocked into Core Synergistics.

Bad idea.

Okay, not totally bad...I did the whole workout.  I also worked harder than usual on intensity now that I have the forms down, the exercises memorized and the energy/strength to get through all the reps.  The bad part?  I have never felt so much like I was going to lose my meal during a workout!  I should never have gone into this routine so close after breakfast.

Superman/Banana was brutal.  The prison pushups were also kind of tough.  The pushup position runs wiped me.  So I really pushed it...and I felt it.  Then, when I finished, I broke again from my norm.  Typically, I have a large 32oz cup of water, lemon juice, sea salt and a dab of pure maple syrup and wash down my vitamins.  It makes a great recovery drink, usually followed an hour later by my shakeology when I use that as a lunch replacement.  None of that happened today.  I found myself feeling very odd later at the event I went to.  A little dizzy, and very hungry.  Empty tank, low electrolytes and fluids were probably the culprit.  I am learning how tricky it is keeping your system balanced.  You have to pay attention to your body's needs.

I am going to shoot for a little better consistency in the execution...particularly the timing.  These P90X workouts are not to be taken lightly.

Keeping it short tonight, pics and Cardio tomorrow.  Keep it up!

P90X: "Fear...of Failure" Day 25 of 90

I always set my goals publicly.  I tell people when I intend to make an attempt to do something.  Why?  I realized long ago that if I am doing something all by myself, and if the only person being held accountable is me, and if I am the only one who even knows that an attempt was made, that it is all too easy to quit.

The other thing I learned was that if you publicly set a goal, then people think twice before getting between you and it.  Some may even help you!

So when I set out to do something, I let people know.  I mark the goal.  I want folks to know that I have committed and am holding myself accountable to get it done.  I have been practicing this for a long time.  There are two sides to this practice.  If you succeed, everyone knows you did something you set your mind out to do.  You become known as a driven and determined person.  If you fail, you fail publicly.  Everyone knows it didn’t work out.  It may be a mark on your character, but that all depends on how you handle it.

I have been doing this for so long that it stopped occurring to me that anyone would approach the task of goal setting and achievement any other way.  The thought of setting a private goal and covertly going after it never occurred to me.

I first encountered this when I did the Optifast diet four years ago.  I did this because I had gotten myself past the point of ‘no return’ and needed medical help to get the weight off.  It is a special program designed to help the exceptionally large and obese people lose weight and change how they think about food.  Two critical aspects to this program are weekly classes on behavior and nutrition.  There is an exercise element as well but in my humble opinion, it is not stressed nearly enough and is one reason for some of the personal failures in the program.

On this diet, you weigh in every week.  You know how well you have done in the short term.  You have a target weight objective in the program, so you know where you are supposed to be going in the long term.  The diet is so meticulously measured that, if followed, you have to lose weight.

From the first behavior class, it was obvious to me that at least 85-90 percent of the class would not say on a weekly basis how much they lost.  They always said, “I did okay,” or “I didn’t do so well.”  It was completely arbitrary.  I can still remember asking on that first night, “What does okay mean?  How much did you lose?”  You would have thought that I murdered someone.  I got rotten looks, hurt looks, indignant looks…it was really confusing to me.  I made my own personal statements of how much I was there to lose and I was ready to go!  I hadn’t even started the diet yet, I was still holding my 8 oz. 150 calorie sippy drinks.

As I went through the program, the ones that were very open to setting their goals and talking about their progress in a real way were losing weight.  Every week I openly spoke of how much I had lost, what I had done right and what I may have done wrong.  In week three, a man I used to sit next to was ready to graduate to normal life again.  He had lost about 95 lbs.  He took me aside after class because he knew I was frustrated by the contempt being shown to me and the defensive postures of most of the class.  He told me to just keep doing it the way I was doing it because I would be successful.  He wished me luck and just disappeared.

Week after week I sat there listening to stories about doing ‘okay’ and the lack of progress for most of them.  I listened to the therapist coddle them.  The more I listened the more I kept hearing the fear creep in.  Then one night, I asked the question that opened my eyes.  I asked one woman, “Doesn’t your family and friends know you are on this medical diet?”

“Oh, no!  I haven’t told a soul.  The last thing I need is for them to know that!”

Just by looking at the faces around the table and the nodding of heads, this was a prevailing and reinforced point of view.  They were afraid.  Afraid of being judged but also letting themselves off the hook for accountability.  These closet eaters were trying to be closet dieters.  The program was allowing this by telling them that they were accountable to no one but themselves.  So then, why do this in a group?  At least be honest and accountable with the group.  I truly believe that the program did not want to lose participants and that they wanted a high attendance.  So they let some people simply cruise along.

I understand now how much courage it takes to put yourself out there and publicly state a goal.  I also think that without that declaration, there is very little accountability.  Accountability is important because when you have to make two choices, one supporting the goal and one thwarting it, accountability may help influence your choice.  The other thing not usually stated is that there are very many who NEVER TRY THINGS.
They will applaud the fact that you even tried.

The bottom line here is that you should not let your fear of failure keep you from openly pursuing your goals.  Take some risks and put yourself out there.  It will help keep you on track when you feel like drifting.  Put your goals in a place where you are not the only one who sees them.  Don’t be afraid that not reaching the goal is a failure.  The only true failure in this life is not trying.  So let that publicly stated goal help you…let it influence and guide your decisions because you feel accountable for achieving it.

I know this one is hard.  Best of luck!!!

[later that night]

Did Yoga X tonight as scheduled. I have to agree with Melissa, this is not really in Tony's wheelhouse. Has anyone else noticed that he short cuts the left side? Always faster than the right...I know his left knee is bad and when he has to support the lunge on the left leg, it must be painful. But he whips through it too fast. I am going to have to figure something out. Three weeks ago, I couldn't keep up. Two weeks ago, I was fine and didn't even notice. Now that I am disciplined and counting the reps, I even notice when they short the routine. I just keep going. I am really enjoying this. My berry skakeology came today!! I am about two shakes away from opening it.

See ya in the AM!

P90X: "Time to Reflect" Day 24 of 90

This week seems like a great week to do some reflection.  I have never done P90X but I have done a lot of programs to lose weight.  There are a few similarities that I think I can share on this blog.  Right now, in week four of P90X, it is a recovery week.  We have put our bodies through three rigorous weeks of physical training and we are now exercising, but letting some stuff repair.  I can tell you, my body needed it.  I am doing a little more cardio in this phase, which isn’t in the plan, but fast walking at 4.2 mph on the treadmill doesn’t seem ridiculous.  I am just burning extra calories.  The bottom line is, when you get here, you have come a long way.  Seriously, the hard part is over.  What?  There are almost eleven weeks left!  I know.  But let me explain.

Three plus weeks is a long time to do the P90X program.  If you have stuck with the plan, you have exercised almost 21 of 23 days.  The workouts have ranged from 50 minutes to 90 minutes.  Conquering the milestone of doing this physical activity regularly is big.  You may also be following a diet plan along with the workout.  That requires personal discipline as well.  At this point, if you have had to reschedule your life to make room for this, you have probably settled into a daily routine of sorts.  People in your life have adjusted to the fact that you are doing this…some may even have commented that they see an improvement already.  Anybody familiar with certain eating habits you used to have, have finally adjusted to your new habits.

Give yourself a lot of credit.  You have come a long way the last three weeks.

The hard part…the stuff that causes most people to quit, is behind you.  There is really only one thing left, barring injury, that could cause you to stop doing this.  You have to understand that you are forming habits that you want to last the rest of your life.  This isn’t a 90 day program you are on.  It may say 90 days…if it said, “To do the rest of your life!”  They wouldn’t sell one DVD set.  They hope that along the way here a message sinks in.  That message is, “Living this way is healthy and better than what you were doing.”  The only thing left that can cause you to quit is not making the mental leap required that makes exercise a part of your life from now on.

You will hear everybody who was ever on a diet type program tell you, “It worked for a short time, but then the weight came right back.”  The problem isn’t that the program stopped working….the problem is that THEY stopped working.  Making physical activity a part of your life is not a rock you push until it has momentum and then it mysteriously carries you and keeps rolling the rest of your life.  As you get older, things get more difficult.  The slope rises in front of you, not the other way around.  You stop pushing and that rock will just stop.  But if you decide right now that exercise and proper nutrition can work for you, you are moving in the best direction.

Reflect.  Use this week to fix your mind on how you make exercise work for you for the long term.  I don’t mean P90X type of exercise either…there is a goal and purpose to this workout that goes beyond a lifestyle change.  That said, you may WANT to incorporate P90X into your life…I know I am seriously considering it.  But right now, you need to begin to think about what life will be like from now on.  How will you commit to your future health?  Don’t overthink it and overwhelm yourself.  Just start thinking about yourself as someone who will want to exert themselves every day to keep the calorie burn going.

Reflect.

You have accomplished a lot.

What was your goal?  Was it to survive 90 days?  Or was it to change your life?

At this point, as people start to observe the changes, the positive feedback probably feels great.  Now is the time to feed off that and use that positive energy to carve out your future plan.

When I lost my 85 lbs four years ago, I can still remember the diet specialist asking me before the program, “What is your goal?”  Well, this wasn’t my first fatty rodeo.  I had lost a lot of weight many times and it always had come back.  I looked at her and said, “My goal is to lose the weight and never put it back on again.”  She responded, “No, I mean how much weight to you want to lose?”  I looked her straight in the eye, “I don’t care.  YOU give me a number and I will hit it.  I know I can do that.  I need to know how to keep this off for the rest of my life.”  As professional as they are, and as long as they have run that program for hundreds (maybe thousands) of people, I could tell by her tone that the number of times they had gotten that response could be counted on one hand.

This is a week to exercise at a vigorous but not too strenuous pace.  This week’s program is the kind of thing that you should be considering as you think about changing your life patterns for personal health.

Have a great week and Namaste!!

[Later that day]

Did Kempo X tonight...interesting thing happened.  I was doing the stretching and got a cramp in my hamstring.  I immediately stopped the DVD.  I took an additional 5 minutes of stretching and got myself warm with some jumping jacks and high knee stepping.  All went well.  Gave my all, and my all gave back...great workout.

One observation...how come I am working so much harder and with such better form than the big lunk in the back?  His horse stances are for crap and he puts no energy into his workout.  He must have blackmail pics of Tony Horton.  Now I know I am doing well...I am criticizing people in the DVD for not trying.

See ya tomorrow!

P90X: "Changes" Day 23 of 90

I'm not trying to hide the fact that this P90X program that I am undertaking has, as it's primary goal, to change the way my body looks.  I will say, though, that how my body looks is just evidence.  The true goal is to greatly improve my physical condition. The only visible barometer is 'how it looks.'  That said, when I want to know if this is working, the first thing I do is look for the changes.  There are a lot things that I observe during each workout, as I see improvements in every set of repetitions more vigor expended, but the most obvious indication is found in the mirror every morning.

There have been a lot of changes in three weeks.  I'm not going to go into great detail except to say that there are areas that I thought would always be a little flabby that are thinning out.  My legs are becoming more defined, my stomach is much tighter and, yes, there are some abs showing (for the record I always knew they were there buried underneath).

It's been a little more than three weeks and I am not even one third of the way there but the results are alarming.  They are so alarming that my wife and son are now doing the Tony Horton Thirty-Minute Power Half-Hour.  When the results inspire others, you know it is working.

For those of you following this, I did the Core Synergistics today and really worked myself into a sweat.  Every workout has been an improvement.  This is my warm-down week so I also did the treadmill as well for about thirty minutes.

It's Oscar night and I have been a massive movie fan my whole life.  Gonna relax and prep for this week.

Thanks P90X for putting just one more thing in front of me to challenge my way of thinking and my belief that nothing in life is impossible with the right drive and dedication.

See you all tomorrow!

P90X: "Fear" Day 21 of 90

So you do something, and it hurts.  You feel the pain.  Maybe you even could hear the pain.  The human response is to avoid that pain causing action in the future.

But, life goes on.  If you were drinking orange juice, and got really sick, whether the juice caused it or not, you may never even want to smell OJ again.  But, there may come a day when you are in a position where you may have juice in front of you and have to drink it.  Maybe you are on ‘Survivor’ and you need to drink it to win a competition.  That’s a big stretch, but the analogy is not lost here.

You can’t let your fears debilitate you.  While there are some fears that are justified, most fears can be put into the irrational category.  Our response to them is emotional, not calculated.

So there I was last night, looking down the barrel of a Kempo X routine that I knew might have some issues.  I am on week three now and have been through this…so I know what the moves are.  I know the motion, and I know the body parts and joints required to complete the motion.  I know what is coming.

The night before, I had heard an exquisite joint wrenching sound from my right hip area, and felt the pain to go with it.  If there was ever a reason to not do the routine, that was it.  I also was still a little sore in that spot with a twinge here or there.  The fear is that I really do something that either makes me stop working out or worse, requires some medical help to fix.  That is not emotional fear.  Based on what I was about to do, that fear was completely rational.

I decided that what I needed to do was to do the workout and really listen to my body.  I should only push the workout when I knew the moves were safe and I could do them without causing damage.  I had my moments.  There were some left leg kicks that required the support of the hip that did cause some pain.  I made some adjustments and it was okay.  The interesting thing was that, if executed in the proper form…really disciplined proper form, the pain was less.  These exercises were made with that in mind.

I turned out a pretty rigorous routine, 95% of the exercises required no adjustments.

My flexibility is increasing tremendously and I think that the real tearing that might be happening is due to the deep stretches.  It might just be the breaking down of some gristle.  We shall see.

The bottom line is you can’t let fear become an obstacle to your growth or achievements.  Emotional irrational fears should never be allowed to do that.  That said, because they are emotional and irrational, they are the most difficult to overcome.  Rational fears should not be obstacles either.  Remove them.  Evaluate them for what they really are.  Then drop them off the plane.

 Fly straight, happy landings…and here’s to the start of week four tomorrow!

P90X: "Be Realistic" Day 20 of 90

Nothing in this world is perfect.

While we know this, far too often we let the “lack of a perfect solution” become the main obstacle to our success.  If you are ever going to get to the next level of success, there are going to be things that will get in your way.  You have to start your journey to achievement of any endeavor with the idea that you know things are coming your way; you are watching out for them; you will plan for them; and you will beat them.  Don’t start by expectation the road to be paved with daisies and lilacs.  If that were the case, everyone would be successful at everything…and we all know that true achievement comes with a price.  You have to be willing to pay it.

Right now, I am doing the P90X workout plan.  It is extreme.  I knew that going in.  The oldest guy on the DVD’s is Tony Horton, who at the time was a 45 year old freak of nature.  He is the result of 30 years of body conditioning.  I am 50.  So I know, there will be things that don’t quite go well.  I have to warm up very vigorously.  I have to make sure I stretch.  I have to pay close attention to my body because tears and rips are going to be far less forgiving at 50.  It will take me longer to heal.

That said, there are going to be moments when giving up might seem like the thing to do.  Don’t.

Last week I felt a pop in my shoulder.  I avoided that particular exercise this week and substituted something else.  I worried each time I did a new routine each day following the pop.  It went okay.  I didn’t take a day off, I just kept going.  You don’t have to kill a whole routine to heal.  You do what you can and don’t aggravate something that is still healing.  Last night was great because I feel like many other pullup exercises went way better than last week.  Some things healed up very well.

Then last night, I had a pull in my hip while I was doing lunges.  I backed off immediately and walked it around.  It was like the shoulder.  90% of the motion was possible with the hip, just one motion wasn’t.  So I was more careful with that movement.  I know that in the next few days, it will heal.  Probably stronger.  Take this away from the point though…I didn’t stop.

I have a favorite Al Pacino movie quote from the football movie “Any Given Sunday.”  I am taking this from memory as I write this but it goes something like this…”When you get old, things get taken from you.  That’s life.  But YOU have to decide if you are going to lay down, and get the $h!t kicked out of you, or if you are going to fight your way back.”

I choose the latter.  I think that anything in this life worth having requires work.

 Work on Kempo X tonight!

P90X: "The Magic of Motivation" Day 19 of 90

Don’t miss the little signs.

When we are driving to a destination these days, almost everybody uses either some type of PC generated map or a GPS.  When you do that, you have to put in two things: (a) your starting point, and (b) your destination.  The system does the rest by inserting all the small directions in between.  If you follow the small directions, you will get where you are going.  “Take a left at…”  “At the intersection, go right on…”  You know that you only need to make one move at a time, in order.  You will get where you are going.

This works great for goal setting because the big goal is no more than the summation of hitting all the little goals that hopefully have been inserted with the bigger goal in mind.  Goal setting in this manner has become generally accepted as the way to achieve.

The thing that is often left out is that to get from point to point requires the motivation to take the next step or make the next move.  When you are driving, just seeing the next location on the map provides that motivation.  You might even get out and stretch your legs.  You may take a look around and breath it in.  You have never been here before.  Enjoy the specialness of the journey. 

After you are done taking everything in, you are ready to take the next step.  You know the next place will be new, different, and that your ultimate goal is just that much closer.  That’s your motivation.  When you are goal setting, you need to do the same thing.  You need to make sure you pick your head up at each minor destination and acknowledge your progress.  It is in that moment, that you will find your motivation.  When performing a difficult task, is there anything that excites someone more than knowing that what they are doing is working?  I will answer it for you.  No.  There isn’t.

As you acknowledge each step the excitement will grow.  There will come a point when you are anxious to move on because the motivation is building.  It grows and feeds on itself.  The more you take in the small successes and the more they build, the greater your confidence gets that this is entirely possible and is really going to happen for you.

Remember to look close for these signs.  Sometimes, it’s the little signs that give you the biggest inspiration.

When I lost my big weight of 85 lbs four years ago, I will never forget a moment I had with my daughter.  I have been big my whole life and have fought the weight battle since I was ten years old.  The thing was, I had been fat for so long at that point in my life that, at twelve years old, my daughter and son had never seen me as anything other than that.  The big heavy fat guy, in their eyes, was who I was.  It had become as much ‘me’ as my mustache, my glasses, and my blue eyes.  It was a permanent image of who ‘dad’ was.  If they had to draw me in a school art project, I was fat.  Stop for a minute and consider that.  Almost every fat person can remember a time when they weren’t fat.  But there are people in your life who have only known you for a short time.  Their image of you is not the same as your self-image.

So there I was in my kitchen, and I had lost a lot of weight.  I was down about 65 lbs.  I was standing by the refrigerator, with my little 150 calorie sippy shake, and my daughter Lexie came up to give me a hug.  Then, she jumped back and looked at me with a very surprised look on her face.  I said, “What?  What’s wrong?”  Her surprise turned into an amused smile and she said, “That’s the first time I’ve ever hugged you where my hands touched each other.”  I want you to think about that for a moment.  That isn’t one of those little moments…that’s one you frame and put on the wall.

It’s hard not to get emotional when I recollect that memory.

I was not the same person to her anymore.  I was a brand new me.

There are small ones too.  Each becomes valuable in the chain.  When it comes to this journey of weight loss, you need to relish every success emotionally (not by giving yourself an eating party).

You may move a certain way and realize that you are doing it for the first time in a long time.  You might be wearing your favorite pair of pants (because they always fit just right) and stand up and realize they’re hanging too low and you have to hike them up.  You might put on your belt and pull it to the notch you think you usually use…and it feels funny.  When you look down, you can see a notch with all the color worn off the leather and a crease that looks like the belt could break right at that spot because that location has been worn in with age.  But you are not on that spot.  You can see it because it pulled through and you are on the next notch.  As they say on the talk radio stations, “First time, long time.”

Stop and think about what you have done at those moments.  Give yourself credit for the work.  You have done a lot to get here.

DON’T MISS THE LITTLE SIGNS.  Relish every small step for what it is and use that fuel to take the next step.

That is why you write down your weight on P90X.  That’s why there are pictures.  That’s why you mark down what you did on day one and what you did every day along the way.  Progress, yes, but motivation. 

You need to understand this one thing.  When you get to the point in your life where your achievements are also becoming your motivating fuel, your success is a self-fulfilling prophecy.  You are then creating your own momentum in whatever endeavor you are embracing, be it weight loss or anything else in your life.

Recognize the small signs.  Find your fuel.  Master your success.  You CAN do it.

Legs and Shoulders tonight…last week I broke my shoulder on this one.   Tonight I go to the bands to see if I can work the muscle without the impact to the joints.  Wish me luck!

[later that night]

Good news and bad news.  For me, anyway.  The shoulder really responded.  It came back stronger and I was actually able to do all the pullups except for the wide grip, which were still twinge-y.  I didn't want to push to pain, so I did 25 lb shoulder presses instead.  The other pullups, all were done at higher reps than two weeks ago. I actually recovered stronger.  That was great news!

The 'not so good news' now.  You know on Thanksgiving?  When you grab a turkey leg that is still attached to the turkey...and then you twist it and try to separated it from the body?  You know that sound?  I actually heard that from my hip.  I was doing a left leg out lunge, right leg straight and behind me.  I lunged and then I wanted to make sure I was straight and when I straightened up, that's when I heard the noise.  It was painful but I released and walked it off.  I did some moderate stretches and it seemed that I was fine to bend every other way.  I could also go back to a lunge but not put a full stretch in that area.  I think the one week of recovery will be really welcome.

Oh yeah, every exercise improved.  My son is going to start the 30 minute power hour with Tony to get himself conditioned to do more.  Cool eh?  See you tomorrow. 

P90X: "OLD Is a Choice You Make" Day 18 of 90

A friend of ‘like age’ said to me once, “I’ve decided that there is nothing else I want to learn.  No texting, or chatting or social networking.  No new technology.  I’ve learned all I need to learn for the rest of my life.  Now I just want to enjoy things.”

I thought about that for a while.  I thought about it enough that I never forgot it, and it has been almost two years.

I listen to people say things like, “I’ll never understand that,” or “I just don’t get how these things work.”

It all comes down to choice.  I work in information technology, a field that changes all the time.  The competitive landscape, the tools, the customers…you have to evolve or die.  That is something that permeates my work life but also my personal life.  Do I embrace the 'new' because of the job?...and then have it overflow into my personal life?  Actually, no.  I embrace the 'new' personally, and it makes me effective at my job. 

Why are new things so challenging to people when they get over forty?

Because they stop.  They stop trying.  They stop growing.  They halt their own evolution.  Like my friend, they stop learning.  They paint their own finish line.  And they paint that line in a race that only they are running.

Do you realize, that you are giving up at a time when you possess the greatest advantage? 

To illustrate, I look at my work life.  To have been in a business environment for twenty five years…to have gone through three economic cycles…to have observed technology change from a PC where the operating system was a floppy disc and the data storage was a second floppy disc, to what we have today…is experience no new worker can buy.  You can spot the risks instinctively.  You can work to a better and more successful outcome because you know how to protect your backside.  You can see the problems that lay hidden in front of you, because you have been there before…so you can steer the ship and avoid a collision.

That’s a business analogy.  It’s the same personally.  You have been around the block.  Your kids don’t know that.  They think you’re stupid.  They have no idea you may have tried drugs, binged on alcohol, skipped school, partied with your friends, been dumped by a girl/guy, drove without seatbelts, made fun of the teacher, or been suspended from school.  They think you will never get it.  Their methods may have changed, but their social habits haven’t.  Their social needs are the same as yours were.  They are just playing on a slightly different field.

You have experience.  It’s the greatest competitive advantage known to man.  If you throw in the towel now, you are quitting right as your opportunities for success have their highest potential.  Opportunities in all walks of life.  You have never been in a better position.

If you choose to be old now…if you choose to embrace the perceived comfort of stopping now…you have painted your own finish line.

I was watching a TV mini-series recently that ended a couple of years ago, but a friend told me I would love.  He was right incidentally.  It’s the new Battlestar Gallactica series.  It's not the one from the seventies, it's the one from this decade.  In it, there is a race of aliens known as the Cylons that have evolved from robots that man built.  They are part flesh and part machine.  The advantage they have over the humans is that if they die, they download their consciousness into a collective hive and then that same consciousness is then uploaded, or reborn, into an exact but brand new replica body.  In essence, they never die.

As I watched the episodes, there was a line that really made me think.  One enlightened human said to the other, “How can we ever beat them?  You kill them, but they keep coming back in new bodies.  And the new ones never have to be retrained.  They come back stronger and with all the experience and knowledge that their predecessor had.”

P90X.  As I do these workouts, I think of that concept.  I’m not ready to stop.  I’m not ready to give in.  Like the Cylons, I am creating a new body to live in for the next ten to twenty years.  I will be in as good a physical condition as someone twenty years my junior, but I will have all the advantages of experience and knowledge.

True living is evolution.

I absolutely refuse to paint the finish line of my own life.

Yoga X tonight.  Ninety minutes of some of the toughest ‘posing’ you will ever see.

P90X: "Daring to Try the Impossible" Day 16 of 90

How hard does something have to be before it is too much for you to contemplate?  What is the point at which you say, "No way, not for me?"  Many look at this P90X program and decide that it is too much.  I do understand.  It is a commitment of literally an hour per day.  It means that you will watch your diet and be disciplined about following the fitness program.  The exercise is pretty strenuous and hard.  Those can be some pretty tough obstacles.

I did my workout today, Cardio X and I really kicked butt on it.  The workouts are getting to the point where I complete every workout and every repetition.  That was NOT the case two weeks ago when there were some things I just plain could not do.  My flexibility has practically doubled.  I am taking few to no breaks per session on any of the nights now.

It's a challenge for me to do this, as has been many things in my life these past four years.  A lot of the challenges I have taken on are things not many would attempt.  Losing my 80 plus pounds and keeping it off, writing a book, and achieving many of the things I have done in my work life.  Now this P90X challenge is in front of me.

Does this make me special?  No.  Not a chance.  It is personally rewarding, yes.  But there are many people, every day, who face far greater challenges than this.  I try to remember that when I begin every day and look at what is in front of me.  Doing P90X is not impossible.  It is completely possible.  It is just hard.

Know what else is hard?  Fighting your own cancer.  Having to sit with your child when they are in pain, and you can do absolutely nothing.  Living with a medical condition that you will have to carry with you to the grave, because there is no cure, only medicines to help manage it.  Now THAT takes real courage.  THAT is a challenge.  How do you deal with a hand that you were dealt that you didn't ask for or ever contemplate was coming?

When things look hard, I think about those things.

I also think about those people who choose to put themselves in harms way.  People who may give their life to save another.  From our Police and Firemen...to the military...to someone performing a random act of unselfishness to protect someone else and paying the ultimate price.

It's humbling.

While I was on the treadmill today, I watched a DVD of mine called "When We Left Earth."  It's about our space program.  When I watch the first men who went to the moon, I watch in awe.  I look at the astronauts who got into those rockets.  Rockets that were largely untested.  Every new rocket had improved technology in it.  Which means they were using it for the first time.  The Saturn rocket used on Apollo 8 was brand new, 35 stories tall and had a million gallons of fuel.  The last people to get into a Saturn rocket had died testing it.  That was Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee in Apollo 1.  The mission for Apollo 8 was to go to the moon, do 12 rotations and come home.  Alive.  It was the precursor to the moon landings...proof that we could go all the way to the moon and back.

I think a lot about all of those astronauts.  What kind of men did something like that require?  What were they made of?  This was a risk that we cannot even contemplate.  They had almost no control over the machinery.  The on-board computers had less technology than what we have today in a complicated digital watch.  They actually had slide rules to help with the math.  Slide rules.  No one from this generation even knows what they are.  They climbed onto those large man-made bombs and strapped themselves in to take the ride.  Frank Borman, one of the astronauts, said he calculated the odds of mission success at 33%.  Seriously?

So when I look at things, like P90X, I think about those kinds of things.  Doing it every day reminds me that persistence pays off.  It reminds me that I can control more in this life than I might think possible.  It keeps me healthy, something that has become very important to me.  But no one's dying with the decision to do this.

Can you do this?  If you are asking yourself that, remember...no one's asking you to cure cancer, or survive it.  No one is asking you to risk your life.  No one is asking you to perform brain surgery.  No stress about trying this.  No one even invested money and is asking you to turn it into profit.  It is an exercise program.  That's it.  And it is physically demanding.  So what.  (I say that with a 'period' purposely...it is a statement)

Give it a try and if you push through it, you will love that you could do it.  And you will feel great about it.  And you will feel, the next time you have an obstacle in your life, that you are just a little bit better prepared for the challenge...because you have done some tough things in your life and whipped them.

See you tomorrow.

P90X: "Seeing a New Me" Day 15 of 90

Today is the first day of week three.  I did Core Synergistics for the third time.  Very few times did I have to hit 'pause'.  I typically do this if giving my all was really exerting or if the exercise we are about to do requires me to see it before I do it.  I have seen all the exercises, so I really only need to be reminded of the moves.  I am at a point where I really don't want to miss even one rep because I had to watch Tony.  I decided that since the reps were all being done, that I would make a concerted effort to not hit pause and try to blow through the next set.  Anything to up the intensity.

Why am I feeling this way about the workouts?  Because whether this "works or not" is not even a question anymore.  Neither is whether I can do it.  I have the answer to both questions.

I know it seems stupid to ask if it works.  But to be absolutely honest, to see people who make their living doing and selling exercise as a lifestyle leaves doubt in your mind if a 'regular person' can look like them.  I am seeing a level in my own performance, and a look to my body, that I have never had.  It's pretty exciting and amazing.  I am dropping the weight, my pants are already baggier and my shirts fit differently.  There are areas of my body where I have always had the 'extra' and, although I have lost a lot of weight in the past four years, I had convinced myself that I couldn't get rid of it.  It was 'excess skin' or something like that.  You know what?  I was wrong.  It is going away.  I find myself really looking forward to Day 90...and contemplating how to keep this going.  It is working.

I struggled with wondering if I could do it.  I am in very good shape for a 50 year old man.  But 50 year old men who just started working out at 46 are NOT on this video.  Tony Horton has done this forever.  There are gymnasts, ex-marines, and other young fitness dynamos all backing him up.  Nowhere in there do I see my profile.  So you, of course, ask yourself the question.  Can I do this?  Oh, then of course is the warning on the DVD's.  "This is an extreme workout program"...and so forth.  Scared yet?  So I plowed right in and just followed along.  I am at a point where, with the exception of one thing, I am able to do the entire program.

What is that one thing?  If you are following my blog, you know it was my shoulder popping from the pull ups.  I now know that when I dropped, I put a shocking, full weight drop on my shoulder.  It was a slight shoulder separation.  My shoulder feels fine now and it seems ready to continue.  I will be adjusting to the bands hanging from the pullup bar until my shoulder strength equates the lower body strength.  My physical condition was extremely out of balance...which in all likelihood led to my trip to the chiropractor five weeks ago.  But at the end of the day, I can do everything on this DVD.  I can also do some things at a pace and using weights that only Tony Horton is doing.  I can do it.

Lastly, I am seeing a new me.  When I do the workouts, I am feeling a lot stronger.  Better strength, better stability, more endurance.  But also, I am changing.  I can see something happening that I have never done before.  I am pushing through a level that I never expected.  It makes every week exciting and it makes the work involved so rewarding that it is ceasing to become work.

So, if you are following this blog and are considering this program.  You can do it.  It is work...but it is really good and rewarding work.

P90X: "Sleeping the Weight Off?!" Day 14 of 90

How important is sleep in your life?  I don’t sleep enough.  I know that.  I go to bed between 12 and 12:30AM on the weekdays and am up by 6 to 6:30AM.  So I get 6 hours on a good night.  On the weekends, I do a little better and get a full 7-8 hrs of sleep.  I know it's not good for me.  I also know that, when dieting and/or working out, it is essential, but for me, even harder.  I exercise after work and after I eat.  So I exercise between 8PM and 9:30PM.  I am usually so jazzed up that I can’t fall asleep until midnight.

So goes my conundrum.  I need the sleep, but I can’t sleep.

Why is sleep so important?  Let’s start with the diet reasons first.

When you diet (and I am going to assume you are exercising with this diet…as I have prescribed), you still have this issue of making it through your day with the diet intact.  Many things mess with this from stress to fatigue.  It is very important to have the right chemical balance in your body during the day for metabolism.  That includes the right foods and the right amount of water in your body.  When we are tired, many of us increase our alertness through stimulants.  The stimulant of choice for most of the world is caffeine in the form of coffee, tea, and (I’ll never adjust to this one) soda.  The problem with these stimulants is that they dehydrate you.  You may get an artificial energy boost, but you will deplete your system of the water necessary to the liver to process the fats efficiently.  You also are robbing your muscles of a key ingredient in the rebuilding and, if you exercise later, exercise part of your diet.  Proper rest will ensure you have enough alertness and energy to do without some of the stimulants.

Another thing that the low sleep habit does is give you more hours of awake time.  When you are awake, you have more hours to possibly grab a snack and throw down unneeded food/fuel. 

Just go to sleep and let your body replenish itself using what you have in the storage tanks.  Those are the fuel supplies you are trying to get rid of anyway!

Now, on a good exercise program, like P90X or something else where you are really putting the work on your body, a good night’s sleep is necessary and essential.  This is where I get into the biochemical brain processes.  This process happens all the time, even in some of the lighter exercise programs, but I didn’t want to scare off those who are simply interested in losing some weight but not excellent physical condition.  I want to stress though, all the reasons I am about to mention are the primary reasons your body needs sleep…diet or no diet.

The four things happening when you sleep are:  (a) growth hormone is produced, (b) protein synthesis occurs, (c) energy consumption is reduced, and (d) your brain recharges.

Why are these important?

Growth hormone is produced.  Any exercise that you are doing, particularly P90X, requires a degree of repair for the body.  Human growth hormone is the necessary ingredient for this.  Nearly 60-70% of all human growth hormone release happens in the deep sleep cycle.  If you are not sleeping long enough to get into the deep sleep level (often called the REM part of the sleep cycle), you are not producing the growth hormone required for bodily repair.  If you are doing very physically demanding workouts, this can actually be damaging.  The REM sleep cycle is also where your body restores your organs, bones and tissue as well as replenishing those immune cells.  There is a reason many of us with poor sleep habits get sick…we compromise our own immune systems.  The HGH is a very necessary ingredient in the diet/exercise cycle.

Protein Synthesis occurs.  When you exercise, if you are doing more than walking your dog, you are breaking down muscle.  As I said earlier in this blog, the human machine is the most marvelous machine ever observed.  It is the only one that gets more efficient through use.  The reason for this is that, during sleep, it restores itself.  Protein synthesis is one of the prime ways it does that.  When your muscle restores itself, it repairs the damaged areas and you end up stronger in those places.  Stronger.  If that synthesis does not occur, you just keep breaking down the machine until it crashes.  You are trying to make yourself stronger.  Rest.

Energy Consumption is reduced.  Physically demanding exercise routines require a good amount of effort .  You need to be able to call on your body’s physical resources and really push them.  If your body’s energy consumption is high due to a long day’s activity or improper sleep to recharge, you will tire faster and not be able to complete the exercise.  You will quit early, if not altogether.  This also leads to the reliance on stimulants during the day.  Avoid this if you are interested in the diet/exercise cycle required to take the weight off.

Your brain recharges.  Of the four, this one usually gets the “so what?” response.  Motivation.  You need to be motivated to do exercise.  You also need it to get through your work day.  Recharging the brain restores the alertness and motivation required.  When you are tired, or get tired, your body produces something called Adenosine.  The Adenosine tells your brain that it is time to recharge.  The Adenosine is also a neurotransmitter that tells your body to produce more ADP.  ADP is the energy storage molecules that power your body’s biochemical reactions inside cells.  You are tired, the Adenosine kicks the ADP, which begins to push your body for more energy because you should be sleeping, but you are not.  Your body only can do this for so long.  You also use ADP when you work out.  The same biochemical reactions that you need to stay awake will also be needed during exercise…but they will be close to depleted or overworked.  You are going to not work out as hard and may even opt not to work out...because you are “shot.”

So, it is easy to see why sleep is not just important, but essential to any diet/weight loss program.  We need it to stay alert and motivated, but the exercise that we should be doing regularly also requires that our bodies sleep for restoration.

Saying the “why” is the easy part.  Now, can you go to sleep?  It is not as easy as it looks!

Today is break day.  Perhaps I will just treadmill and do the Ab Ripper.  We’ll see.  The body does need rest you know!!!

P90X: "'Your Liver and Your Weight - Pt 2" Day 13 of 90

Quick update on the shoulder ‘pop’ I heard last night.  It is sore, not painful.  It only hurts with a very specific motion.  I won’t need that motion for a few days, and it is really a strain only when extending my left arm over my head and pulling back in.  I have the BenGay on it again this morning and somebody is going to have clear sinuses going up to Boston.  It won’t discourage me.  I’ll work around this until it feels strong again.  I will keep those following this blog up to date.

So…back to the liver.  We covered artificial sweeteners…one of my pet peeve issues.

What else is a toxin that will inhibit your liver’s functioning?  Alcohol.  Everyone knows that alcohol is processed in the liver.  So when you drink, you occupy your liver with something other than fat burning.  A well known side effect of alcohol is that it breaks down your will power and throws your insulin production off.  Many sweet alcohol drinks cause the same autonomic insulin response as artificial sweeteners.  I know when I drink, I end up snacking on something sweet…maybe several things…after drinking booze and before bed.  Then, you’re sleeping.  No activity.  Your liver is burning off the alcohol and the sweets are going straight to whatever your problem areas are.  As your liver works extra hard on the non-food, the real food stuff takes a back seat.  What’s more important?...getting the chemicals out of your body or taking care of your energy use/storage issues?  Alcohol is poison.  Your body makes that a priority.

What else is bad for the liver?  Processed sugars.  Sugar in any form will kick off the insulin response and your liver will attempt to use the sugar for whatever the body needs at the time.  The insulin gets to work breaking down the sugar for cell absorption.  If you are an inactive person, guess where it goes?  Yes, stored for future use.  That’s no problem.  Our bodies not only have plenty of places for storage but we actually can manufacture little cell globules and store that energy in there.  The miracle of the physical machine is that it actually can balance those little globules all over your body so you don’t notice them too much.  A little in front, a little in the arms and thighs, and a little behind…until the behind ‘ain’t so little no more.’  Those globules are called fat…but you knew that.

Not all sugar is made alike.  Some sugars are in foods that are more fibrous.  Complex carbohydrates that take a while to break down.  It is harder for that breakdown to occur and it requires time.  Your insulin has to work for longer periods until it converts those carbs to energy.  If you are not that active, that is not too bad with these types of sugars.  The longer breakdown cycle can begin to somewhat match your activity cycle and less sugar will be stored as you go about your day. 

Other sugars have been manufactured by man or are processed (refined) in such a way as to make them very easily digested in the body.  Mankind has actually done the job of insulin before the sugar gets into your body.  The problem with these sugars is that they convert to energy so fast that your body can’t use the fuel right away.  Your body immediately goes into storage mode for the excess.  Pump up those little globules of fat again.

A dangerous side effect is that processed sugars, like High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFC) for example, require very little insulin for absorption into the cells.  Your body doesn’t know that though.  It produces the same amount of insulin initially, but you only use a little of it.  So you have all this insulin in your body and nothing for it to do.  Why don’t you send it some sugar?  No sense wasting it.  That’s the message your body gets in the form of cravings.  So you eat MORE sweet things.  That kicks the insulin cycle once more and you start all over.  It will take a while for the cycle to naturally fizzle out.  Ever wonder why “you can’t eat just one?”  This is one of the big reasons why.

So, you ask, why not just deny your body the sugar and let the insulin just wander around aimlessly in your body until it depletes itself?  That happens.  The problem is that the physical machine is always seeking balance..and the eating style I have outlined (while it sounds like most of us) is anything but balanced.  So to achieve balance, our bodies stop producing so much insulin.  You are always crying wolf with all that alcohol, HFC, processed sugar and artificial sweeteners…you don’t need the insulin.  So your body eventually stops producing it.  Then when you really need it, it’s not there.  That has a special name.  It’s called insulin resistance and is the first stage of Type II diabetes.  Congratulations, you have just caused a condition that usually is the result of some kind of physical defect in the body.

So...with all this going on, well, your liver is pretty damn busy.  Energy distribution is last on the list.  You’re not really active anyway so there is truly no need for the energy.  Let’s just bury that for future use.  Guess where you are burying it?

One more thing.  All that liver use for things other than what it was designed for can actually damage it.  You aren’t Superman/Supergirl you know.  Fatty liver, cirrhosis of the liver…all conditions you could avoid if you understood the fuel you are feeding into the human machine.

How do you stop messing up this process in your body?  Avoid refined sugars especially HFC.  Avoid alcohol.  Moderation is key.  Avoid toxic things in your food as well as outright toxic food (artificial sweeteners) and eat more complex carbohydrates so you use the energy and store less of it as fat.  Oh yeah, exercise.  If you are using the fuel the put into your body, you won’t have any left to store.  USE THE FUEL!

Love your liver.  It will pay dividends for you.

Tonight…Kempo X.  Should be okay with the twingy shoulder.  It’s just a little pain, not injury.  Later!

[later that night]

Kempo X felt good.  Shoulder is still tender.  A few moves were a little jarring...the left jab was tough.  I know exactly what moves will be challenging to the shoulder now.  I am going to talk to the Chiropractor just to get a little advice on what I may have messed up.  The good news...my chiro is also doing P90X.  So he knows exactly what the exercises are.  That aspect of the program is really a neat coincidence...I have a chiropractor working with me!  Other than that, two weeks down and when I looked in the mirror this AM...I really am starting to look different.  Can't wait to see in four weeks!

P90X: "'Diet' is a stupid word!" Day 12 of 90

One of the most incorrectly used words by people every day is ‘diet.’  “Are you on a diet?”  “Wow, you really are following that diet.”  “I can’t diet.”

What is a diet?  It’s not a thing.  It is also not a verb.  “I am dieting.”  Many want you to believe it is…but it is not.  A diet is the fuel that you put in your body.  It’s really that simple.  These famous diets are nothing more than lists of food.  “Ohhh, I like that diet.”  That should really translate to, “That list of food looks good to me.”

No one needs to be on a ‘diet.’  You do, however, need to know how your body operates and what food works well in it.  You also need to think objectively about what you are using as fuel and why.

Most people equate ‘diet’ with weight loss…or being in shape.  Do people who work out ‘diet?’  By my definition they do.  Why?  Because when you are burning a ton of calories and trying to turn the physical machine into a more efficient mechanism, you want to put things in it that help the process.  Is it a ‘diet?’  Not really.  It’s not a diet for the same reason that you wouldn’t put sand in a car gas tank.  Is your car on a ‘diet?’  Probably not.  Putting sand in it is just plain stupid.  You need the stinking car to get around everyday…why would you mess it up?  Do you have any idea how much it will cost me to replace the car? 

Are you getting the picture?  Start thinking that way about your body.

If there is one area or organ in your body that you should be concerned about, it’s your liver.  This is one of the most vital organs in your body.  Next to your heart and your brain, it is the one organ you cannot live without.  It filters all the toxins from your body.  It also is the main processing center for your body’s fat.  Fat storage and fat mutation into energy that your body can use.  Poor liver production equals inefficient fat processing…which means weight issues and cholesterol issues.  Through insulin (produced in the pancreas), the liver also assists with the regulation of the sugar in your body.  Sugar can either be used or stored as fat.  Insulin is used by your body to break down consumed sugar and help it to get into your physical machine for energy.  If your body has too much insulin running around with no sugar to work on, your brain gets the message, “Send me down more sugar!”  Hence, cravings.

“If my liver’s job is to regulate the sugars and fats in my body and burn that stuff for energy, I want that to be its number one job priority.”

Yes, we all do.  Not so fast.  There are many things we do daily that mess up proper liver function.  The first one has to do with toxins in our environment and the second is toxins in our food.  You can’t help the first but you can avoid the second one with some work.  Your liver has a fixed amount of time every day just like when you go to work.  If you spend 5 hours of your 8 hour work day doing task A and task B is the priority, well, your year-end review isn’t going to be so sunny.

If you can avoid toxins, you can leave your liver to focus on weight regulation as its priority. You have to avoid environmental toxins.  Okay, got it.  We all try to make sure we do that one.

You should avoid toxins in your food.  The more processed the food you eat, the more exposure to toxins you will have.  Want to know the toxin I hate most?  Aspartame.  Nutra-Sweet.  Call it whatever you want.  Whooooaaa.  Wait just a minute here!  That is diet food.  DIET food…right.  Yeah, right.

So you ingest a Diet Coke or Pepsi.  It’s supposed to be good for you.  The sweet taste hits your tongue and your pancreas starts producing insulin.  Not because there is sugar….because, like Pavlov’s dogs, it THINKS sugar is coming.  Your body is trained (after years of sugar ingestion) to produce insulin as an autonomic response to a sweet taste on your tongue!  But no sugar is coming.  Then the aspartame hits your blood stream.  Aspartame is aspartic acid and methanol.  It’s a chemical compound.  It’s toxic and was actually classified as such before the big money lobbyists got the FDA to overturn its decision.  So this toxin has to be processed by the liver.  The liver has to work three times as hard to process the chemical as it would a normal food.  So it’s busy.  Your fat disposal can wait.  Sorry.  Oh…all that insulin dancing around in your blood stream?  You remember, the stuff that started flowing when the fake chemical sugar hit your tongue?  It needs sugar.  The cravings start…and then you break down and grab a donut, or candy, something, ANYTHING.  The cravings are annoying.  Now there is sugar running around for the insulin.  But the liver is busy…and overworked.  So the sugar starts to become fat as your body decides it should be stored.  Lipids are formed and cholesterol spikes.

“But it was a DIET Coke or Pepsi!!”  Yeah, right.  “But I did all this to LOSE weight!”  I know.  The truth is painful.  Why do you think our national obsession with ‘diet’ is associated with so much angst?

My train just pulled in.  Sorry.  Tomorrow, Part Two.

[later that night]

I sit here doused in BenGay.  I was doing the Legs and Shoulders.  I got into hanging position to do my pullups...did one...then...'pop'.  You could hear it.  It felt like a muscle in my left shoulder slid around bone and released suddenly.  It wasn't a tear.  But it definitely was painful.  I couldn't do anything strenuous with the left shoulder.  I substituted curls and presses for the pullups...the hanging motion was causing pain.  Later, in the rep cycle, I hung and stretched the muscle.  I put tension on it.  The pain started to subside.  I think I will be okay. I completed the workout.  Took some Aleve and now I am watching Survivor and my left shoulder is hot with BenGay.  Let you know tomorrow how it turns out!!

Turning Wine into Water

Water. As comedian Lewis Black would say, “it’s the elixir of life.” 70% of our planet is made up of water. In a normal lean human being, water makes up approximately 60% of our body composition. In a normal obese human (and obesity is sadly becoming ‘normal’), water composes about 47% of that same makeup. The rest? By now you should know the answer. Fat.

Water should be a staple of your daily diet. 50-60 ounces per day. It makes your bodily processes work better. It aids digestion. When (not if…WHEN!) you exercise, it acts as a lubricant for all of your muscles and joints and the exercise feels better. If you have ever experienced cramping due to lack of hydration, you know what I am talking about. It helps your liver and kidney’s flush fat and uric acid from your body when you are on a diet like Optifast. Water is a must.

What do you drink during the day? Coffee? Good for a pick-me-up. It is a vice of mine, I happen to drink about 3-4 cups per day. For the first 3 months of the diet, I drank it black with ice cubes. I now use about a teaspoon of skim milk in each cup. NO SUGAR or ARTIFICIAL sweeteners. Ever. The upside, it is a known thermogenic and aids in the fat burning process. The downside, it is a diuretic and will deplete your body of its water supply if you don’t drink water during the day. So if you drink coffee, drink water too.

Tea? I am not a big fan but Green Tea is also a known thermogenic. Use the same rules with tea as you would with coffee.

Do you drink milk? What kind? It should be ‘No Fat’ or ‘Skim.’ On Optifast, you can only have it when the diet says you can have it. If you are on any other kind of diet, skim or ‘no fat’ is the only milk you should be drinking. Before you begin to complain about the taste, and that is everyone’s first complaint, try skim for a week. Then go back to whole milk. As the whole milk slowly plods its way down your throat in chunks and leaves that fatty film…ask yourself how it tastes then.

Soda? Do you drink the poison? The best thing I have heard in years is that schools are pulling it from vending machines in place of water or 100% juice. Having it in vending machines in our schools is like having a special boot camp to build little fat kids. 12 ounces, 150 calories of corn syrup. Really, is it necessary? Diet Soda? STOP THERE. Do not drink diet soda. I have a whole blog entry for tomorrow on Aspartame (also known as Nutra-Sweet) and how it affected my Optifast diet. So here is my policy…no soda. In any form.

Alcohol is a no-no on any diet. This part kills most people on a diet who enjoy a nip here and there or everywhere. On Optifast though, it is not an option. Oh, some people think it’s an option. Some don’t listen to the counselors and don’t listen to the dietician on why you can’t (not shouldn’t, CAN’T) drink on the Optifast diet.

The reason you don’t want to have alcohol when you are dieting is two-fold. Number one, it is a frivolous source of empty calories. You are on your diet. You are depressed because the weight won’t come off fast enough. You are working out like a fiend. Then, you drink the alcohol. One can of beer is between 90 and 150 calories per 12 ounces depending on what you choose. One 4 ounce glass of wine is about 100 calories.

So you have a couple drinks. 200 calories. 300. Mmmm. Just one more. 400. You know, I can exercise tomorrow. 500. Wow, this has been fun, just one more before we close the place. 600. God, I am starving. Let’s stop at the McDonald’s drive through! 1700.

That’s how it happens. It’s not the alcohol, it’s the escalation. As they say, “been there, done that.” Lots of that.

The whole escalation experience takes us to reason number two for why you shouldn’t drink on a diet. The diet is hard. It requires self-discipline. It requires control. It requires you to care about the goal. Drink by drink, all of these things slowly disappear. We’ve all done it…the booze just gets in your brain and starts singing show tunes, “tomorrow, tomorrow, there’s always, tomorrow…” Next thing you know, it’s 11:00 at night and you are waist deep in the freezer looking for that last half pint of Ben and Jerry’s Chunky Monkey.

Do you know what it takes to burn off 1700 calories? Most of us don’t. Consider this. If you are a woman of normal to above-normal weight and about 5’5” tall…

- You burn this amount of calories, maybe a little less, in a whole day just doing normal things
- If this is excess calories (and it is), you would need to walk the dog for 6 hours to burn this off.
- You could work out at the gym for 5 hours
- You could do aerobics for a little more than 4 hours
- You could swim for 3 hours
- You could jog for 2.5 hours

As a man of 205 lbs, I have to spend 50 minutes on a treadmill at 6.5 miles per hour to burn 900 calories. That is 5.5 miles. I would have to run almost 10 miles at that pace to burn the 1700 calories. I am exhausted just considering it.

If you had a ticker on your arm that lit up and gave you this information as you were knocking down the alcohol calories…you probably would have left after the first drink. That is a lot of work to pay for those frivolous calories.

Ok. Warning time. For those of you doing Optifast, this is serious. You are on a starvation diet. 800-900 calories per day. Your liver performs a process when you are in this mode where it spends all of its time taking fat from your fat cells and breaking it down into fuel for your body. The byproduct of this process is uric acid (which by the way needs to be flushed from your body, hence the need for 60 ounces of water per day). The reason you CANNOT drink alcohol is because your liver is busy. When you drink alcohol, your liver has to process it out of your body. If you are in starvation mode AND drinking alcohol, your liver will not properly function and you could damage it. Fatty liver disease, jaundiced like conditions…you get the picture. If the damage is not enough to convince you, remember this…your liver will be processing alcohol and not your fat…so you won’t lose weight!

Water. The elixir of life. Drink plenty of it. Turn your wine into water for a better, healthier you!

Next: Family gatherings, a starving man's look at gluttony.