Are they trying to kill us?

I just read a disturbing, yet not surprising, article on the madness of restauraunt chains and fast food joints.

Read article here

As if we didn’t have enough to worry about.  This has been going on for years and years and slowly but surely escalating into the gargantuan problem it is now.  Puns abound.  In all seriousness it isn’t about getting fat.  Sure that’s the first visible indication of something wrong but what goes on inside the body is more sinister in the long run.

Just a few things to note.  When you go to an Italian restaurant have you ever noticed they do not skimp on the portions of noodles?  I’ve never once in my life been able to finish a plate from any Italian place.  Ever.  On top of being horribly bad for you it’s wasteful.  Think of all of the noodles that end up in the garbage.  Do we expect that much to be fed to us?  Think if they cut the portion in half, they could cut the price in half.  Though, that’d attract more patrons and they might not have room to seat them all?  Is it some kind of equilibrium to balance?  I know that I’d personally love to eat somewhere where every single item is healthy and balanced.  In making a meal that way then it’s almost forced to be reasonably priced.  Hell, I’d pay the SAME price for a healthy meal because I know that my jeans won’t be hard to button and my body will otherwise benefit from it.

Exercise is very important but it’s useless if your diet is in tatters.  I really think that it all starts with what you put in your mouth.

I’m not innocent of this though when I’ve made poor food choices I was well aware of it.  Stress can do that!  I always know when I’m eating something good or bad for me.  Or do I?  O’Charley’s has a cup of broccoli with 11 grams of fat.  Are you kidding me?  1 entire cup of raw broccoli has 25 calories.  They must put a good tablespoon of butter in their cup.  Way to go at destroying something perfectly healthy.   Their turkey burger is 1000+ calories.  Better off getting a Big Mac.  Pretty deceiving and in that article you’ll see even more than that.

Why are they hiding it?  Why can’t they change their menu?  Are they afraid people will stop eating it?  Apparently.

I wish someone would step up and make a genuine stride towards providing healthy meals.  Not this pansy “we offer two healthy items” bullshit.  Really make a valid and knowledgeable effort.  Hire a nutritionist, use better ingredients.  I think even if the cost were affected that more people would respond positively.  Too me it means they respect me enough to want to keep my business and NOT kill me in the process.

So who will step up?  Will our gargantuan appetites change?  I really hope so.

Day 16

I aggravated my shoulder a bit at some point during the night.  It’s a bit sore but it’s still notably better than in recent days.  It’s two weeks to the day since I hurt it.  It feels a ton better but I still have some weeks to go.

Diet yesterday was good as was water intake.  Exercise was a no go.  It’s one of those things that I HAVE to do the moment I get home otherwise we get buried in the duties of the evening.  It’s far easier to put those duties off for half an hour than to interrupt them.  Yes, tonight I believe we’re both going.  This is more my ‘experiment’ than hers.  Hers is coupon-mania.  Which I might add she got something like $110 worth of things for $10 (roughly).

Time to get to coding.

Day 15

I usually write my daily update at days end but not today.  Why?  Well I want to get on with it.  My weekend was good (and bad).  Good because it was pretty tame and not much happened.  Oh, well I did lose my wallet.  That sucked but everything was replaceable.  The “bad” part would fall in the realm of my diet and lack of exercise.

Diet took a hit because 1) Still sulking about my hurt shoulder a tad.  2) I am now 100% convinced that diet drinks DO increase our need/urge for sweets or at least compensation for calories which our bodies were thought to have had.  A couple of weeks ago in a coupon deal we got 5 12-packs of diet soda for something like 2 dollars.  Hell of a deal!  At least it wasn’t regular soda?  Anyhow, if anyone recalls, several months ago I went on a diet drink exodus.  It worked quite well and I felt quite well.  I suppose I need to do that again.  3) It was my birthday, so I figured “what the hell!”.

Exercise: next to none.

With that said, my youngest fell asleep on me 5 times on Saturday.  Even when she couldn’t get him to nap.  I’d take him, bounce him in my lap and a few minutes later he’s snoozing.  He slept right through my home theater stereo blasting 7.5 million pounds of space shuttle thrust into the room.  That’s skill!  Ah what a great launch.  They never get old.  It takes a couple of seconds for that bull to get rolling but after that, it hauls ass!

Ok, well all that said, I’m starting again, here on day 15 as a 30 year old man.  Today is the first day of the rest of my life.

Day 10

Shoulder: Feeling a bit better each day.  Still stiff and painful when I exert too much force on it.  The progress is slow but it’s expected since the shoulder typically takes a long time to heal.

Cardio: Ran today actually which was good for the shoulder because it got some blood flowing to it and kept it loose.  I’m a little stiff today but I want to keep active.  The doc told me to keep the shoulder moving, just don’t stress it with weight.

Eating: Blah, I did decent but by days end I’d snacked a bit too much.  Not a blowout by any means but just not as well as I’d like to have eaten.  I’m looking for moderation, not perfection.

Day 5

Sorry, this is actually day 6 but I’m writing about day 5!

Day 5 was great.  I did splurge on lunch and a small dessert after dinner.  I had a hamburger and baked beans at lunch and dessert was some of that double extra super mega churned icecream.  Calories were in the range of 1900 which is still a deficit for the day.

I went to the gym last night too.  I cannot remember the last time I went to the gym on Friday.  It’s been at least 2 years.  I did a killer cardio workout.  My shoulder still hurts, I think it’s a rotator cuff thing.  I’ll go easy on it for a couple more days and see how it feels.  I should probably ice it up…

Oh well, good first week.  My scale this morning said 210 but more than that I can comfortably wear some jeans I’d been avoiding for a few weeks.  They aren’t falling off yet, but it’s a great start.  Looser clothing speaks way more than numbers on a scale.  Aside from my shoulder bugging me, I feel great!

Plan for fitness

Fitness is a scary word and if it were a four letter word it’d be more fitting.  Fitness, to me, does not mean sporting track pants chugging water every waking hour of the day.  The truth is that most of us don’t want nor can we actually live like that.  It’s like a movie, fiction, fairytale.  Sure some can, like professional athletes.  We’re not professional athletes.  We’re professionals at living our lives.  The key to succeeding is to plan, plan and plan.  This isn’t stressed enough.  Before you do anything, at all, you plan.  Period.

What are your goals?  Short-term, long-term?  You can’t go into a mindset of “after 12 weeks I’m done for good”.  You should have short term goals but you should think long term as well.  In planning and following carefully that plan, you set up good living habits.   These good habits will establish themselves into your life and follow you.

For years upon years there have been too many schemes and scams to get us into shape.  Sadly, an overwhelming majority of them do not work or even make things work.  I had one of those Ab Roller things a few years back.  All of the people in the commercial were ripped or flat bellies using this thing.  Well I fell for it and bought one.  I used it once.  Ok, I used it twice.  Three times would have been way too much!  The point is, we’re easily bought and sold with this idea that getting something nice requires hardly any effort.

Well how do you plan?  You have to know your limits.  You have to know how much time per day/week you can devote towards exercise.  You must plan your diet out and track it.  It’s not as bad as it sounds.  Lets start with exercise.

Exercise

The system I follow is something I picked up from the Body-For-Lifeprogram.  It mixes cardio exercise with strength training.  Now, as I’m typing this, I am currently restarting this program!  I fell off the wagon for a few years and honestly it was my fault.  Now, back on track.  The system I use might not be right for the next person or the next.  I know a couple of people that have added it to their routine.  I suggest researching this program if it sounds up your alley.

The most important thing is to make time for exercise.  I’m serious that you can get a very good workout in a 15-30 minute period depending on what you’re doing.  A key here is to make sure you’re doing your exercise correctly.  I am not a morning person, so I prefer evening workouts.  You might prefer mornings, it’s up to you.  If you want to achieve your goal then you simply must make time.

Between diet and exercise it’s really hard to say which is more important.  They’re both immensely important.  If you eat just right and do zero exercise, you will lose weight probably.  The problem is you might end up losing muscle.  That’s a very bad thing because muscles metabolise fat, they make us strong and in the end make us look and feel better.  If you exercise your face off but eat horridly, you’ll have a fair amount of strength but it’s likely to be hidden under layers of fat.

Diet

Now with my eating, I also fallow the BFL method.  I eat 6 or so small meals a day.  I really try to keep them balanced using the 40/40/20 method.  This means the ratio of calories is 40 protein, 40 carb and 20 fat.  Lets say my calories for the day are 2000.  I’ll have 800 from protein, 800 from carbs and 400 from fat.  You don’t have to be dead on, just in the general area.  This is important to keep you feeling fuller longer and also providing necessary nutrition to power and build your body.

I recommend something like www.fitday.com to help track food intake.

Now, must you track it for the rest of your life?  No!  You do have to teach yourself how to make wise food decisions.  Do not give up if you’ve given in to a bad food decision.  Never resort to the “tomorrow I will start” syndrome.  Start now and start by planning now.  Make sure you are capable of what you plan.  If you want realistic results, then a realistic plan is what you need.  It can take months or even years to reach your fitness goals.  You have to start somewhere and if you’re going to start, then you need to _____!  Correct answer: Plan!

I really hate typing these things up this late.  I feel like I leave things out and jump around a tad.  I am not a doctor or a fitness expert.  I’m an abnormal nerdy guy who wants to take care of himself and family.   This blog is a chronicle of my journeys through fitness and slaying debt.  I like the idea of being able to inspire others through success.

Well, stop reading, start planning!

Plan day

I’ve laid out most of my plan.  I want to do it in 12-week increments or phases.  The goal is to reach a maintenence phase.  See, acheiving a goal is only half of the battle.  Staying at your goal is where a staggering 95% of people go [95% of people who meet their initial goals].  Why?  I guess it’s because old habits are resumed and for a while it doesn’t show.  Then one day you go to zip your pants and what the duece?!  They must have shrunk in the wash…  Yes, those 3 year old jeans, shrunk… in the wash.  Likely story, turns out most of us just inflate in size when we are “done”.

The truth is, we’re never “done”.  One never stops living until they die.  I know that’s profound but life is an ongoing continual thing.  We take the things in life we can’t control and accept them. Then we take the things in life we can control and take them by the horns.  Otherwise, life will control us.  That is something I’ve battled for years.

So I wanted to sort of make myself into an experiment, journal the results and show them in numbers and images.  I want to get all my measurements taken, hopefully tomorrow (i.e. body fat%, height, weight, waist, etc).  I want to get them measured each week of the 12 week Phase I.  I’ll post the results and hopefully be able to show a nifty little chart.  I have some software I’ll track all my stuff with (www.fitday.com).  I’m going to portion meals and water.  I’m going to schedule my exercise.  I’ll see about posting that as well.  The last thing I want to do is hopefully make a video of the day to day images that chronicle the results for each phase.  There was a guy that did it but the site escapes me.  It was really cool to see his transformation.

Again, transformation is but half of the equation.  Getting to your destination and staying there is the other half.

Well, here we go.

Day 7: Semi-routine

Everyone is healthy.  Finally.

Our oldest went back to school today and we’re all back to work.  The holidays are all but a memory now.  The last remnants will be the Christmas lights, most of which I took down this morning.  I should have gotten a picture of them.  Oh well, next year.

What was supposed to start last week is going to kinda start this week.  That is, keeping track of things, finances and diet info, etc.  All this while maintaining the fragile balance of our routines.  The more people you have to care for, the more dynamic things become.  Now, in a few years we won’t have to hover nearly as much.  We have to make it there first!

So I’m going to lay off the technical diet/fitness posts for a bit and just post about real life.