P90X: "The Best Book on Weight Loss and Fitness That I Have Ever Read" Day 47 of 90

Whew!  That was one long title.  But really, I couldn't think of a shorter way to say it!

Losing weight is hard.  Keeping the weight off is harder. 

75% of people have a hard time simply losing weight.  Many, like 20%, can lose a set amount of weight over a certain set period of time.  Very few however learn how to manage and keep the weight off for a long time, maybe for life.  That’s not my opinion, that’s a fact.  I believe there is one underlying cause for this and that is that many want to BE thinner, but are not motivated (or do not want) to actually live the lifestyle that will cultivate health and fitness.

There are many reasons for this.

First, we have turned eating into an art form.  A poor art form.  Like an Andy Warhol painting where it looks a little like something we recognize, but not really.  Everything is about the food.  Dinner and a show.  Tailgating at sports events.  Family gatherings that revolve around the food.  Eating is not fuel anymore, it is an experiential event.

Second, more and more today, our culture seems hell-bent on consuming food that is loaded with preservatives, additives and chemicals.  Food used to be grown, now it is made.  Think about that for a minute.  We manufactured food.  It has a real odd ring to it.  Something doesn’t sound quite right when you say that.  Well, something is NOT right.  We have a whole industry that is dedicated to manufacturing our food, designing it to look like something that once was real and truly appetizing, and then selling it to us as though it were the 'must have toy' of the year.

Lastly, we are less active than ever before, working on computers, socializing on computers, sitting down and texting.  Much of our work used to be manual labor, done with the body.  No more.  Sports are now organized FOR kids, not created by the kids, and we don’t even let the kids leave the neighborhood on the bicycle.  Kids have more activities, but there is a difference between exercise and ‘stuff to do.’  We are sedate.  End of story.  Exercise has become a walk after dinner with the dog or riding your bike once per week on a Saturday morning.

Given these things, how do you actually live a life outside of these boundaries?  It is hard and requires a lot of self-discipline and/or exercise to stay on a healthy track. So what can you do?  How do you create a mindset that will help you do that?

The first step is knowledge.  Knowledge is power.  I believe that if you know what the lifestyle you are living is doing to you, and if you truly know what is causing it, then you are in the best position to change it.  When it comes to weight loss and fitness, nothing beats a great book on how your body turns your food into energy.  Nothing tops a book that can show you exactly why your poor physical condition is the way it is and, more helpful than that, how to change it.

For me, that book is Ultrametabolism by Dr. Mark Hyman.  The part of this book that I got the most out of was the section on the Seven Keys to Weight Loss.  I can summarize, but you should go get the book and read it in detail.  There are sections that will apply directly to your situation.  Some sections won’t apply so much.  Be honest with yourself when you read it.  Don’t just look at a painful truth and say to yourself, “Oh, I don’t do that!”  Take a hard look at yourself as you read each part.

The Seven Keys are:

 1. Control Your Appetite.  In this section, Dr. Hyman goes over the chemical reactions that occur in your body when you eat different types of food.  He does this in very simple terms, not like a college Biology professor.  He discusses the role of insulin in your body and how it regulates sugar but also how it can completely make you crazy through cravings.

2.  Subdue Stress.  He discusses how stress produces the chemical hormone Cortisol and the impact that Cortisol has in blocking the hormone Leptin (Leptin makes you feel full).  Learn here the reality of ‘stress eating.’

3.   Control the Fire of Inflammation.  Much of what we eat has very toxic effects on our bodies.  This toxicity causes our entire physiological structure to be ‘inflamed’ and leaves us exposed to illness while counteracting the things you do in your life to stay fit and in shape.

4.   Prevent Oxidative Stress or ‘Rust.’  You have heard about foods that are anti-oxidants right?  There’s no way you missed the juicing infomercials or the acai berry infomercials.  Learn why these types of food help your body and immune system, giving you the best advantages to a more fit body.

5.   Turn Calories Into Energy.  What exercises give you the most gain in terms of metabolism?  Your goal to losing weight is to create the most efficient fat burning machine possible for yourself.  How does your body burn energy and what can you do to increase your exercise efficiency?

6.   Fortify Your Thyroid.  “I have a slow thyroid.”  “I am thin because I have a fast thyroid.”  How about, “My thyroid is dysfunctional because it is getting the wrong nutrients and my body is in a poor state of disrepair.”  This section will tell you the role your thyroid plays in your life and how to maintain it.

7.   Love Your Liver.  This was one of the most interesting chapters.  Your liver is the primary fat processing unit in your body.  It also processes all toxins (and sugar, especially processed sugar, is a toxin) and chemicals (like Nutrasweet etc.).  Alcohol is also processed in the liver.  As we put all the additives and chemicals through the liver, we are damaging it to the point where it will not effectively process your fat for you.  Find out how!

I have read this book maybe four times from cover to cover.  It is an easy read for most and full of real life examples of how the way you live impacts your health and general fitness.

As you can tell, I highly recommend it.  It is especially useful to those who may be trying to lose weight and have plateaued.  Sometimes, you may find that you have taken your fitness as far as you can without making some small tweaks to how you are living and what you are putting in your body. 

The hope would be that, once you have absorbed the knowledge in the book, you begin to walk through your life and make conscious deliberate choices about the food you eat and the activities you participate in.  After a while, those choices will become reflexive. 

We have a tendency to look at the healthy and fit people in our lives and think they are that way due to some freak of genetic luck.  The alternative is actually the painful truth.  When you look at those healthy and fit people, believe it or not, they actually DO make those decisions reflexively every day.  They just make it look easy, because it is part of them.  You can do that too.

Keeping the weight off and becoming permanently healthy is one of the hardest things you will ever do.  If that is your goal, give yourself the best possible edge to accomplishing it.  Get this book, arm yourself with knowledge, and best of luck!!

P90X: "Overweight? What Did You Eat as a Child?" Day 46 of 90

Rocking and rolling along on this fitness plan.  As I have said, I am seeing changes every single day.  I don’t think it is the P90X program per se.  Often, people think that weight loss has some kind of magic bullet.  In my mind, the exercise portion of weight loss can be any exercise program so long as it exercises all body parts, is rigorous, and is both frequent and consistent.  It could be P90X, Insanity, Tony Horton’s Power Half-Hour, it really doesn’t matter.  What matters is that the three factors I mentioned are present and that you DO THE WORK.  It helps a lot if you enjoy the workout too!  (but it’s not really necessary)

The diet is the other side of the weight control coin.  I am re-reading a favorite book of mine called Ultrametabolism by Dr. Mark Hyman.  I am going to blog a little on that tomorrow, but I highly recommend this book, in particular if you have worked at losing weight by both diet and exercise and are seeing little results.  This book could give you keen insight as to why.

I have been working with a Nutritionist on evaluating my diet.  I eat pretty clean and eat foods that one would consider to be very good for you.  With a rigorous exercise program, making sure your diet is giving you proper nutrients is essential, so I have sought professional advice.  She sent me a Health History Questionnaire to fill out.

As we cover these things, I will share (no, really!?) my progress.

Today though, I am reflecting on a question I had to answer because it was a real eye opener.  There were two sections, one asked, “What were your meals like as a child?” and the other was, “What are your meals like now?”

I have fought weight issues my entire life.  As I thought this through, I also considered how long I had followed this pattern.  The answer was not good.

Here is my response:

Breakfast: Sugar based cereals…Quisp/Quake (some of you may know what this is, and your age is now showing), Captain Crunch, PopTarts (a favorite), Trix, Lucky Charms.  Hmmm.  Great beginning of the day for a fat kid.

Lunch: Ham or Turkey sandwich on white bread, usually the Wonder bread.  Cookies.  Chips.  Lots of Hostess treats from Twinkies to the Cupcakes.  Lots of processed wheat, flour and starch.

Dinner: Pretty much what was cooked, in quantities large enough to fill me.  Given what I know today, and given the breakfast and lunch I just listed, my insulin spikes must have really set me up for this meal.  There was always a dessert, and it was always calorie rich.  Dessert was never missed.

Snacks:  Sweets…cookies, candy, etc.

Beverages:  Milk and Kool-Aid.  I wasn’t a big soda drinker, thank god.

Holy crap.  That’s all I kept saying as I listed these things.  Do you have any idea how dramatically different this is from how I eat today?  If you read this blog regularly you do!  If you don’t, it’s radically different.  Who the heck set up THAT diet?  The witch from Hansel and Gretel who wanted to put fat on the kids' bones?  Thank God that in the late sixties and seventies High Fructose Corn Syrup was not vogue yet as a replacement sweetener like it is today.  I would have been in critical care.

It made me think about what kids eat today.  My kids as well as other kids.  It made me think about the childhood obesity epidemic we face currently.  It made me realize the eating patterns that set up my weight issues as huge obstacles I would face for years to come.

The only way that the diet I had as a child would NOT result in a plump kid is if I had the exercise regimen of a world class athlete…and I did not.  My favorite exercises were getting up to turn the channel (no remote back then, not until 1980 or so), getting up to go to the refrigerator (kind of self defeating), and walking to the busstop.  I played with the other kids outside when a game was organized, but that was ‘activity’... not always ‘exercise.’

So this was an eye-opener for me.

I will keep you apprised of my Nutrition evaluation.

If you are having issues with weight, READ Ultrametabolism!  And hydrate.

See you tomorrow.