I got tipped to this today, and felt compelled to post it here. It’s 1 hour and 30 minutes long; and has some deep bio-chemistry – but it’s necessary to understand what he’s saying. How does it boil down? Fructose is evil. All sugar needs to be looked at; and how much of it is in everything we eat and drink needs to be looked at. Sugar minus fiber is what lies at fault; removing fiber from sugar causes all sorts of evil mayhem in our bodies.

There’s a LOT here to digest (groan worthy pun) but it’s worth anyone’s time and effort to watch this. I was mesmerized.

I’m not a doctor, not a scientist – but this is much too important to not learn from and start thinking/talking about.

Original article here: Click here

I’m reposting this here because it’s brilliant and on point. The humor can be crude, but the message is on-point. Scott

Diet Products

It’s very simple: if a weight loss pill, plan or exercise machine claims to make weight loss “effortless,” it is a scam. Let’s have science explain:

Diet Products

Due to the cruel laws of physics, losing weight requires two things:

1. Pain

2. Hunger

This is due to a few fairly simple facts about your body. Your body wants to store fat, because through most of human history, food was scarce and in times of plenty it wants to store up for when supplies are short.

This is a process your body invented to keep you alive, over centuries of living in a world that did not have fast food or Hostess snack cakes. Any time you try to stop or undo that process, your body will send unpleasant sensations to your brain, because it thinks you’re setting youself up to starve to death.

To lose weight, you must endure those unpleasant sensations. There is no shortcut.

For instance, you can exercise to the point that your body will run out of the ready fuel in your system, at which point it will reluctantly dip into its fat reserves and burn them. You will experience fatigue and pain when this happens. This is your body punishing you for using the fat it has stored up. It doesn’t want to use it. Your body was saving it for an emergency.

You can also restrict the amount of food coming into your system so that your body is forced to go through that same fat-burning process, but this time your body will punish you by making you feel hunger, or cravings for fattier foods that will let it replenish those fat reserves on your thighs and belly and everywhere else.

Any pill or cream that claims it can “burn fat” while you sit on the sofa, or exercise machine that claims to make exercise “easy” or “effortless” is a scam to steal your money.

There have also been numerous products put on the market intended to suppress hunger. But turning off one of the fundamental processes that keeps you alive (ie your brain alerting you that you need to eat) is not an easy thing, and time and time again those pills turn out to be dangerous or even deadly (see the popular diet drug Fen-Phen, pulled from the market due to potentially fatal side effects, only to be replaced by Ephedrine, which was also promptly banned in weight-loss products for being just as dangerous).

Now, most of the weight loss supplements you see at your grocer store now are just mild appetite suppressants, usually just packed full of caffeine or another stimulant, since the nervous, jittery, mildly sick feeling they induce does tend to kill your hunger. Just note that it is only replacing one unpleasant sensation with another (the body does not give up easily). Occasionally they will package these supplements with “all natural” ingredients on the label (such as “Hoodia” or “Green Tea Extract”).

The most recent and terrifying addition is Alli, the brand name of Orlistat, which lets you eat fat, but simply prevents it from being absorbed in the stomach. If this sounds like a perfect get-out-of-fat free card, keep in mind that (once again) you are short-circuiting one of the body’s natural processes. The result is that you will have uncontrollable greasy diarrhea, pooping out an orange substance like the stuff you see sitting on top of a pizza. The fat your stomach couldn’t absorb has to go somewhere.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Just because pain/hunger is required in order to lose weight, you should not assume from this that if you are feeling pain and hunger you are therefore losing weight. Many weight loss plans will give you all of the unpleasant feelings of a real diet plan, only without the weight loss.

So is the situation hopeless?

Not at all. Most people have a higher tolerance for physical suffering than they think. And it is temporary; exercise gets easier as muscles get stronger (though at the point it becomes TOO easy, it’s time to increase what you’re doing) and your system WILL adjust to getting less food.

Also, you can lessen the suffering that will come with weight loss by losing the weight slowly – your body won’t kick and scream as much about losing one pound a month as it will if you are trying to lose five pounds a week Biggest Loser-style. It’s impatience that makes most diets fail.

The even better news?

Weight loss doesn’t cost a dime.

Exercise can be done on the floor – mankind was getting exercise long before any machines had been invented for the purpose. Google around for the best techniques. Diet is just a matter of not eating the foods you already know you shouldn’t be eating. Both of these will cause you some mild suffering. Enduring that suffering is the only thing between you and being thin.

Good luck.

It’s humor, it’s not scientific, but it’s a message that needs to be told and learned.

I’ve my own story about supplements, but I’ll get into them later. Suffice to say, no more. Ever. No more protein drinks, ‘energy’ boosters, or anything else. Taking Creatine messed with my kidneys. Pre-workout drinks like NO-Xplode messed up my kidney function and digestive tract. My doctor demanded I stop them all. NO more. Four months clean of ALL of that… and I’m feeling fine. Workouts going fine. Recovery time is fine. I miss none of it.

The original article on Cracked.com is here: Link

Health: How to Stop Throwing Your Money Away on Snake Oil

Go to the drug aisle in your grocery store. In between the pills and the vitamins will be a huge shelf full of herbal supplements that promise to do everything from helping you lose weight to easing joint pain to making your brain work better.

And it’s all BS. All of it.

Worse, it’s BS that we spend $34 billion a year on, almost a third as much as we spend on prescription drugs that actually do something.

Just to be clear: Scientists have spent billions in government money carefully testing the effectiveness of this stuff. Their results? No, echinacea can’t cure your cold. Gingko doesn’t do anything for your brain, glucosamine and chondroitin won’t fix your arthritis. Hoodia gordonii won’t help you lose weight.

If it were good for you, it probably wouldn’t be covered in horrible spikes.

Don’t get us wrong; we completely realize that lots of the drugs we have now were once naturally occurring in plants and that it is therefore possible that out there, somewhere, is a leaf yet undiscovered by science that will cure your diabetes. But if so, these rip-off artists in the grocery aisle aren’t going to be the ones who find it.

They’re scam artists.

They’re so sure their supplements don’t do anything they don’t do any actual quality control to track how much of the supplement is in each pill. They just throw a little bit in there and shrug. Aren’t they worried about people accidentally overdosing? No, they’re not. They know you can’t overdose on a placebo.

All they’re doing is “curing” ailments that either naturally go away on their own (colds, joint pain) so you wind up falsely attributing the relief to the supplement, or they’re claiming to cure conditions that are hard to quantify (see supplements for “alertness” or “stress relief”). Snake oil salesmen have been getting away with that technique for thousands of generations.

Students, we’re counting on you to make sure that ours is the last.

Some Truths Include:

1. Pharmaceutical Companies Are Jerks, But at Least They Use Scientists;
2. Why Hippies Have Never Discovered a Single Disease Cure;
3. “Homeopathic” is Another Word for Voodoo BS;
4. Just Go See a Doctor You Big Baby.

Read more:  Original Article

I just read an article that got me thinking (which is dangerous I suppose).

The article is here: http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100614/FEATURES01/6140419/1322/More-celebs-go-public-with-their-weight-struggles&template=fullarticle

It focuses on weight, which I despise, and not on ‘fitness’ which I much prefer.

But the message that really caught my interest is the final part of the article.

Why stars fail

What makes these struggles with weight even more confounding is that celebrities seem to have every resource imaginable at their disposal — trainers, nutritionists and exclusive spas — and yet they often can’t slim down or keep weight off.

Even bariatric surgery, often considered a last resort, isn’t a permanent solution. Wilson had bariatric surgery in 1999 after her weight ballooned to about 300 pounds — she even broadcast the procedure on the Internet. Wilson ultimately lost 150 pounds but has put about 50 back on.

We may connect with someone like Alley, says Dr. Naomi Neufeld, clinical professor of pediatrics at UCLA and founder of KidShape. “But I think she’s also a cautionary tale that she’s carried her weight to an extreme.”

Identifying with a celebrity about their weight is OK, Wolper says. “If they’re describing the difficulties they’re having, I think other people can relate to what they may have to say.”

What’s lacking, however, is a success story with legs.

“It would be nice if there was somebody out there doing it the right way,” she says, meaning a sensible diet and regular exercise, with pounds coming off slowly. No doubt there are celebs who have slimmed down that way, they’re just not doing TV shows.

Because it would be boring.

That is the crux of the entire fitness problem here in the US IMHO. At least here in the US, everything is about ‘weight’ – weight loss, weight control, losing weight – it’s never about just getting shape and living better. Because hard work and doing it every day along with a proper diet is boring.

That’s why, IMHO, our current Western approach to life – no focus on eating proper portions or even core foods, many folks (across racial, sex, culture) defaulting and depending on easy foods (processed); no exercise; sedentary lifestyles – has caused all of this madness leading to what many call an epidemic, etc.. of obesity.

There was a thread here that called out TGP members in group photos for all being overweight; and that OP got ripped to shreds. But it all comes back to the fact that a) there are some people, no matter what, that will be heavier. That’s just facts; b) there are more folks out of shape and overweight than at any other time in the history of mankind; c) even with all the attention and focus on this issue… it’s misplaced.

IMHO, at least here in America, it is misplaced. It’s all about weight, lbs., pounds, etc.. You never hear anything about fitness, or being in shape. It’s always about ‘losing weight’ or ‘losing that last 10lbs.’ etc..

Until we can simplify the actual reality – we have lost the knowledge about how much to eat, what to eat and made time in our day – every day – for some sort of physical activity – we cannot ‘overcome’ this issue.

One of the main reasons this is true is simply because the actual reality of it – hard work and self control – is boring.

There’s no magic diet. No potion. No magic pill. For some the work is easier, and for some the work is harder.

Folks get really interested to find out about P90X a lot, even just on this forum. It works for a simple reason – the workouts are hard work and the diet is laid out for you. I have done 4 complete rounds of P90X; I know that program pretty well. I constantly post that P90X is no big magic thing. It’s just hard work and a good diet – both in food choices and portions. Nothing more. There are a LOT of other very good approaches, there is nothing that special about P90X. It’s just an example that gets some bandwidth here and I am familiar with it.

People don’t want to do that. You’ll hear the ‘I cannot find the time to do a 1 hour workout everyday’ when the real answer is that you cannot afford not to do SOMETHING everyday in order to keep your body functioning correctly.

This is no condemnation of anyone; I’m not picking on anyone, I’m not saying I am better than anyone.

I am legitimately scared for a lot of my peers and guys even 1/2 as old as I am that just don’t focus at all on taking care of themselves. You don’t need to be an underwear model, but pay attention to what you are eating and how much of it you are eating and find something to do physically that you enjoy. And do it.

It’s NOT about losing weight. It’s NOT about some diet to starve yourself down to some goal; nor is it some liquid diet to ‘lose that last 10 lbs’. It’s about changing the way you live. Do it for REAL. Live it for REAL.

I abhor preachy diatribes like some will read this as being; I hate the ‘converted’ folks shaming others for not being like them. I do NOT want to be ‘that’ guy.

I just would like it if even one person out there sat down, pondered it and went out for a walk with their significant other or decided to take a bike ride instead of watching “CSI” tonight. Try it. Take a look at your dinner plate and see if 1/2 of it is fruits and veggies and 1/4 was protein and 1/4 is carbs. Find out how many calories and grams of fat are in that Starbucks you want so bad in the morning. Look at the ingredients of that ‘nature bar’ you have as a snack.

End of yet another of my semi-annual rants. Thanks for reading.

And check this out – this woman is an ANIMAL!

1) Diet. Most important, yet completely tied to and intertwined with the other two legs. There are lots of formulas, approaches, thoughts, fanatical craziness about diet; it’s really simple. Think about what you eat before you eat it and don’t eat too much of any one thing or type of thing. Drink water as your main hydration, everything else should be infrequent and treated as a ‘dessert’ if you will.

2) Movement. Sitting is the culprit. If you sit a lot – in a car, at a desk, on a sofa – your body won’t work right as you age. You need to move. Workout, exercise, play sports. Do it often. If you are not moving at least as much as you sit, and walking is fine here, then you need to think about it. What you do and how you do it can be as detailed as you like as you progress up the intensity ladder, but walking is key to everybody.

3) Rest. Proper uninterrupted rest. Find your balance point, do it on a regular daily basis if necessary. If you walk around sleep deprived all the time, you cannot function properly.

Some of the repeated attempts of getting back into shape from ages 30-37 were focused on lifting, much like my workouts were in my 20′s. I bought a Bow-flex machine and worked with that in a more traditional lifting program that I’d do for sometimes months at a time… but then would lose motivation or interest in and would fade away from. It didn’t ‘stick’ with me because I was no longer motivated to do the workouts.

When I had my fitness epiphany at age 37 (described in detail below, essentially when I did not recognize myself in a photo in the pool) I knew I had to find something that I would a) enjoy; b) be able to do for the rest of my life. I did not want to lose weight, get in shape and then fall back into bad old habits. I wanted to make a permanent change I could sustain for the remainder of my days.

I knew nothing about bodyweight exercise at the time. The very notion that you could workout with just movements, gravity and the floor seemed silly to me. I had no clue.

Here’s something to consider about bodyweight exercises. Other than humans, no other animal in the entire animal kingdom goes to the gym, lifts weights, does workouts. All other animals are playing or play-acting functional movements that are relevant to their specific existence. Ponder that a moment. Then look at boxers, wrestlers and MMA folks. Look at gymnasts. Look at sprinters (not marathoners; that’s a different universe of fitness than what I am talking about). All might also use weights, but do not focus their workouts around them. They focus on doing movements – with their bodyweight – that are relevant to their specific existence. See the corollary?

I knew that my ankles had issues and I still had shoulder issues too from years of lifting. I stumbled upon “Combat Conditioning” by Matt Furey, which is a good ‘starter’ program but far from a complete fitness regime like Furey likes to purport it is. I do recommend checking it out and/or doing it, but will also caution that Furey is a marketing tour de force that will try to upsell/oversell/push his other products on you like mad. You can do simple Google searches to seek out what the “Royal Court” consists of. YouTube can also be very helpful too.  What his program DID teach me though is that you can be pretty intense, if you choose to be, with just moving your body with gravity. I did do the 500 rep Hindu Squat challenge; and it was serious to do.  I also incorporated other moves, including his now titled “Gymnastic Abs” (when I did it, it was called “Combat Abs” or something like that).

I started to play soccer again about 4 months after I had my epiphany. I was worried – a lot – about my ankles and those doctor’s warnings from way back when. So I decided to try indoor soccer played on turf grass; which is very consistent and very ‘cushioned’ if you will. I wore some of the now available ankle braces, far more advanced than what they had available when I was in my 20′s.

Playing soccer – competitively – motivated me to ratchet up my fitness levels so I could compete. I was in my upper 30′s at that point, coming off of a long period of sedentary living, rebuilding my body and had to adjust to the game speed and my (somewhat faded) physical skills against guys up to 8 years younger than I.

That’s how I stumbled into P90X; not so much from the infamous infomercials, but from a post on The Gear Page.  Upon checking out workouts that involved Pylometrics – jump training – I found P90X.

I bought it and that journey is detailed on many posts elsewhere on this blog. By doing that – primarily focused on bodyweight exercises – I have strengthened my joints and ligaments in my ankles to the point where I no longer wear any ankle braces or supports. I attribute that mainly to the Yoga component of P90X, but the entire program works together on all levels of fitness – strength, flexibility and cardiovascular fitness.

In the last 6 months, needing a change after 3 years based on the P90X workouts, I discovered though my wife’s cousin the TRX Suspension Trainer; which again is detailed on this Blog. That has again raised the bar by not only using bodyweight and gravity (flexibility and core are in most every move), you take that functional movement with resistance through planes of movement not possible unless you ‘get your feet’ (or hands) off the ground. It is truly simple, amazing, effective, fast, efficient, fun, creative and interesting. You can craft your own programs based off established workouts you can buy;  AND you can also supplement them with your own variations, changing things up on the fly. YouTube, the TRX site and Google are again your friend here.

See my other posts here for more detail and I can assure you, I’ll be adding more and more content related to the TRX as I go.

There are some phenomial resources available on the web doing Google searches on “Bodyweight Workouts” and the like. One such place is the BodyWeight Culture Forum.

I posted in a thread recently about my theory regarding all around fitness oriented lifestyles and how important bodyweight exercises – since P90X in my case – are to me. I got a lot of questions via private messages and emails over it, so instead of just sending out long emails, I figured I’d just post about them here and take it from there.

If you know my story, I am a guy that was extremely active in my teens/twenties in the gym and active in sports and life. I was in really good shape, but got hurt when I was 27 when I blew out my ankles repeatedly playing soccer. The doctors told me to give it up. I got depressed and within 6 months was leading a sedentary lifestyle for the first time in my life. I made some well intentioned tries at getting back into shape, sometimes succeeding for 6 months or so at a shot… but not playing sports just took away my motivation to work out. My diet slipped. My wife and I started our family when I was 30 and as anyone that enters parenthood quickly realizes, that’s not exactly a time when you can eat, workout and get your sleep with any consistency. (Major understatement!)

From lifting heavy with a smaller frame like mine in my 20′s, I had issues with my shoulders, elbows and wrists. I used wrist wraps, and was extremely careful with my form and using spotters; but I was very strong for my size and frankly tore myself up. Playing soccer outside on sometimes suspect quality fields, I had issues with rolling my ankles and did so with such frequency at ages 25-27 that the doctors at the time told me to stop playing. Sports medicine was not where it is today then.

At age 37 I saw a picture of myself in the pool at my parent’s community pool playing with my kids. I asked everyone who the fat guy in the pool was because, “I thought we were all alone out there.”

I did not even recognize myself.

It was exactly that moment, that I can recall with stunning clarity, that I changed everything. I was 40 lbs. overweight. I was a mess. I was at about 205 lbs.. at 5’10″. When I was in my best shape in my 20′s, my weight always hovered around 163lbs.. I had let myself slip with a lot of self-justification, i.e. “I deserve some relaxation” and “I can get back into shape anytime I want to…” type of stuff. I had not noticed that in the 10 years between ages 27-37, that I had slipped so far. It was not a quick thing, and with two kids starting at age 30, days became blurred as time flies by. I didn’t have time to even think about it really. I ate whatever I wanted, with the constant, “It’s just one meal, no big deal” going through my head as I ordered my favorite lunch from the Wendy’s Drive-Thru: Spicy Fried Chicken Sandwich, Fries and a Mt. Dew. I was drinking about 3-4 20oz. Mt. Dew’s a day. Eating sugar charged breakfasts like Lucky Charms, Cocoa Puffs and the like. With whole milk. I was making up chocolate milk drinks with Nestle Quick and slamming huge amounts of it before bed every night.

It was a time for a change.

I have always subscribed to the ‘Three Pillars” of fitness lifestyle in the past.

1. Diet - the most important component. Simple formula? 6″ plate, 1/2 of it veggies/fruit, 1/4 lean protein, 1/4 complex carb. Simpler still? Smaller portions, everything in moderation. It’s essential to drop a lot of junk out of your lifestyle. Anything that comes in a box, bag or can needs to considered carefully. You need to make water, plain old water, your staple drink. You do NOT need gallons of water like you’ve read elsewhere. You just need mostly water, with other drinks – including milk – treated more as desserts. Some here and there is enough; water… you need. The rest, you do not. Fruit juices are essentially sugar water; with no pulp from the actual fruit, your benefits are minimal at best. Don’t kid yourself otherwise. “Nutrition bars” is simply codeword for ‘candy bars’. All the supplements and protein powders are not needed. Get your nutrition from real foods.
2. Exercise - this can mean a lot of things considering where you are on the fitness scale, physical capabilities, range of health. For some, a brisk walk 3X a week is just the ticket. Get out with your significant other and walk. Try it for a month, tell me your relationship isn’t stronger for it… and your physical well being. Take up yoga, play Frisbee catch with the dog, run around for 30 minutes with your kids (acting like a kid!). Take up a sport. Hit the gym. Ride your bike. Whatever you truly enjoy. That’s the key. It’s not work if you love it.
3. Rest - this one can throw you. Everyone is different, but the accepted norms are 6-8 hours a night of uninterrupted sleep. If you have small children (babies – toddler age) you are essentially SOS (simply out of luck) here; but you work around it and do what you can. If you don’t get your rest, the other ‘pillars’ will support you, but that support will be shaky.

Using that formula, I stopped fast food, dropped soda, and got active. In 3 months, I had dropped 30lbs.. I ramped up the intensity of my workouts (which I’ll cover in another blog post) and lost the last 10 lbs..

I took some flak online on various non-fitness oriented websites for the ‘sudden’ turnaround and lifestyle shift. Lots of, “Yea… great. Talk to me in 6 months after you’ve gained it all back” sort of stuff.

Here’s my “I told you so” to those folks – here I am 7 years later, STILL in better shape than I was in my 20′s.

Here are the quickie Plus points:

1. It works you in all planes of movement. Even free weights do not do what this does to you in terms of involving your entire body and activating your core in nearly every move.
2. It keeps me on my ‘bodyweight’ workouts that I need and require. Less stress on joints (especially coming off of a right knee arthroscopic surgery for a meniscus tear) and more focus on overall fitness instead of focus on any one fitness pursuit (strength, cardio, flexibility). It works on all levels at the same time. Call it ‘functional’ fitness, call it what you like – it’s applicable in the real world and keeps me going.
3. Instantly change your moves – ie. the angle of your move by adjusting your feet and viola – you can increase or decrease your intensity levels instantly.
4. Allows for creativity. You can take basic moves and create all sorts of extra stretches and extensions to totally revamp what’s happening and increases the usefulness and range of motion in every move. This system – which is truly as simple, and hardcore as you make it – allows for this on not only every movement, but on EVERY rep too. It’s incredibly freeing after years and years of strict form based movements to then take the same strict forms and allow for ways to increase the range and or plane the move works in… instantly on the fly.
5. It’s really the simplest form of workout, requiring only an anchor point that creates so many possibilities. You can get and find moves all over the Net – on the TRX Forums, the TRX blog, on YouTube and add them into your program as you see fit. It’s your body moving against gravity in multiple planes and constant motion. It’s perfectly suited to circuit training because adjustments are so fast and quick to do between moves.
6. You can do entire workouts alone to the highest level of intensity without need for a spotter.
7. There is no limit, seemingly, to the creative ways to incorporate this into most any routine.

Cons:

1. It costs $150 to get; you can do the moves with ropes or straps, but you lose all the flexibility to adjust on the fly and won’t have the handles and foot rests on a rope to work with. This thing is worth the money, it’s just a functional piece of engineering genius and the materials and quality are top shelf across the entire apparatus. It’s so simple stupid to work with, but yet durable and functional at the same time. Brilliantly done, and deceptively so to those that just look at it.
2. A novice with no workout experience to draw on might be a bit lost on how to properly do the moves. It comes with a great DVD and training book; but once you want to move past that you really need to understand proper athletic exercise mechanics to craft and customize your routines.
3. Your joints are taxed with overload – it’s based on moving and your joints – especially your shoulders and hips – are in most every single move. For every single upper body move, your shoulders are involved as at least a pivot point. Until you have the strength and stamina in your shoulders to do the advanced moves through an entire routine, it’s a bit overwhelming. I hit this thing thinking I was in shape, I got a quick lesson in humility.
4. It’s an equalizer. No matter how big, strong or fit you think you are… you are on even ground because of bodyweight – with everyone using it. For some folks, that can get inside your head. Not me, but it’s something to consider. I can rip off push-ups in the hundreds per set, but on this getting 25 hanging with my hands suspended, face-down under the anchor point on the ceiling is a most humbling experience.
5. You need an anchor point. It has a door attachment you can use as an anchor point, but that limits a lot of the ‘bigger’ moves (aka. doing a pendulum move with your feet suspended). You need enough space, not a LOT of space, but enough space to lean and move side to side.

Since Fall 2009, I have been doing a lot of slide board work; with the Goaler-One 10′ G-1 slideboard. Utilizing a interval type of approach and working hard against time, it’s been a killer new way to get cardio in that is DIRECTLY applicable on the field moving side to side and pivoting like I do as a defense man running backwards, and pivoting to frontwards and side-to-side like I do.

I’ve been following the P90X structure – hard for 3 weeks; cardio/core for 1 week.

It’s been nearly 3 years since I went at P90X and I need some new, different challenges to keep things interesting and fresh.

Enter:

My wife’s cousin has been doing this for a while and talked it up for about a year or so to me.

From first glance at the “Basic Training” workout that comes with the “Pro Pack” and if you’ve done P90X and/or Yoga… you’ll be right at home. Big movements that utilize your body weight and gravity to increase over all body type of moves and not specialty moves.

Tomorrow is Day 1 for me; let’s bring it!!