I hate photo Christmas cards

I apologize but this entry is going to be short and unrelated to anything else on this blog.

I hate photo Christmas cards.

Do I love to see pics of friends I haven't seen in years?  Yes.  Do I love to receive Christmas cards?  Yes.  Do I like getting a cheap 25-cent mass copy of an odd-shaped photo that's not even framable, with some random "Happy Holidays" strewn across the front in gaudy fonts, without so much as a "Love, The Jones Family" signed on it?

NO.

Do us all a favor, people.  If you can't be bothered enough to write a heartfelt message on the card, save your .25 for the copy and your .44 for the stamp and all the trees you're helping kill, and DON'T BOTHER SENDING ANYTHING AT ALL.

Also; shirtless kid pics over the age of 1, MAYBE 2, are creepy and inappropriate.

And finally, if you're actually going to *electronically* send me a Christmas card, now it REALLY better have a heartfelt message in it that is customized just to me and my family.  Otherwise you've really only just SPAMMED me.

You don't have to be Martha Stewart, people.  You just have to give a damn.  When you care enough to send the very best, you don't need to go to Hallmark.  YOU JUST NEED TO HAND WRITE SOMETHING.  ANYTHING.

If I'm not worth it enough to send something personal to, PLEASE.  Spare the trees.  The earth, and I, thank you.

Focus on: Abdominals

Today's post comes from a friend who wants to improve her midsection.  We all have "trouble spots", and while the fact remains that fat comes off in sheets, that's no reason not to improve the musculature BEHIND the fat; adding muscle will not only help burn off fat, but it will also improve the look of the tissue overtop of it, by helping to keep it smooth and supple looking.  So, with that in mind, here are my tips to her (and you) if you're looking to improve your abs:

First, my trainer's (Mistress Helga's) ab tips were as follows:

When doing abs, if you begin with frontal abs, work your way around your body, from front, then to obliques and on to back. If you begin with back, work your way then to obliques and on to frontal abs. Always work your way around the core, as working obliques continues to work the front abs as well. Also, always finish with hollow holds (this is when you hold the body in a V formation, so you're sitting on the floor, legs at a 45 degree angle, back at a 45 degree angle, arms extended straight out in front of you on either side of your knees, parallel to the floor). The hollow holds work every part of your abs and ensure you really fatigue the muscles.

Another important thing to remember about working *any* muscle is: "Knowing the best sequence when performing your exercises is crucial. To prevent undue fatigue, you always want to train the muscles from largest to smallest. Here's the logic: When you exercise one of the big muscle groups, say the chest, you also recruit the smaller muscles nearby, like the triceps, in a secondary or helper capacity. Your triceps will not work as hard during a chest press as they will in a triceps press, but if you exhaust your triceps before you even get to your chest, they'll be weak. As a result, you will not be able to give your chest the best workout possible. This is why you want to work from, for example, chest to biceps to triceps (large/medium/small), or from front to back of the abdominals (large to small), as each muscle aids in the exercise of the other."

Finally, regardless of your workouts, you need to follow the following rule: make sure that each muscle group gets time off. For example, "if you focus on pushing movements (think push-ups) one day, you should do pulling movements (think dumbbell rows) the next. If you follow both by a day off, the pushing muscles are fresh from two days off before repeating the next workout cycle. This splitting approach prevents overtraining by providing your muscles the time they need to repair and develop."

In my workouts we also separate each muscle GROUP by at least two days; if you do core on Monday, no more core until Thursday. If you do upper on Tuesday, no more upper until Friday, etc. etc. If you do compound exercises, like upper/lower combined, you want to make sure that you don't work the same upper/lower muscle groups for at least 2 days. So if you do chest/back and quads/calves on Monday, on Tuesday or Wednesday do biceps/triceps and hamstrings/glutes/thighs. See how that works?

I always devote 1 full day each week to each muscle group (upper, core, lower), and 1 day to a compound workout to catch any of the muscle groups I didn't get on the other days.

The final point I have here is that it still stands true; you CANNOT target fat loss, it comes off in sheets. If you're a pear shape, you will ALWAYS be a pear, just a SMALLER pear. Same if you're an apple. But if you get your body fat low enough, you WILL eventually eliminate excess fat from every body part. A pear will still have bigger thighs, and an apple will still have a bigger waist. They'll just be more developed :) ONLY CARDIO (a sustained high heart rate during the workout) will produce fat loss; resistance training will condition the muscles. But no matter what kind of 6-pack you develop, if you're not burning fat, you'll never see it. So give your abs the old 1-2 punch, and make sure you do 20-30 minutes of cardio at least 5-6 days/week and make it INTENSE.

My ab workout was yesterday, and as I write this they're really good and sore :)  You really want to feel your workout 24-48 hours after you finish it.  If you're not feeling it, you aren't challenging yourself enough.  Do more reps, add weights, switch up the moves so that you're training your body in different ways and it can't adapt to the exercises and become "immune" to them.

I hope this helps all of you looking for an edge.  Get out there and kill your workout today!  Make yourselves proud!  Don't think.  Just go!

It's What's Inside That Counts

I don't mean this in that pathetic way modern Self-Esteemists mean it.  I never bought this line when I was 65lbs overweight, and I don't buy it now that I'm 133 pounds of muscle, either (and contrary to what you may be thinking, it takes guts to tell you what I weigh, and I do it to prove a point here, not to brag; more on that in a moment).

Nowadays you hear about "Helicopter Parents", you hear about how "Millenials" are self-absorbed and can't handle failures, setbacks, and other common disappointments otherwise known as "Reality."  We're beginning to hear how that whole damn "Self-Esteem" movement, how "You're wonderful just as you are!" and how "You all get a trophy just for showing up and trying!" has backfired like mad.  In his book, "The Optimistic Child", Mertin Seligman, Ph.D. explains to us that self-esteem isn't gained by being told how great you are.  He argues that REAL self-esteem is gained by trial-and-error, by trying and failing and conquering a skill on our own, and that even the smallest children know they're being fed a line of bullshit when they're told how special they are, even when they've done nothing to earn it.  It makes them lose doubt in the person telling it to them, it makes them doubt their own worth (rather than believe in it), and it makes them feel helpless; if they're so wonderful, why don't they FEEL wonderful?  Because they haven't EARNED it.  Yes, folks, yet again, our society has fallen prey to Snake Oil Sales.  A miracle in a bottle (or in this case, in a phrase).  When will we learn that nothing worth having or doing is ever easy?

"To lose weight, you have to occasionally allow yourself to get really hungry"

'To lose weight, you have to occasionally allow yourself to get really hungry," he said with a knowing smile returning to his face. "I haven't had anything to eat yet today. I'm actually quite hungry.'"

Your (inner) "Running Partners"

Today at the gym I climbed onto an elliptical on which someone had left a copy of "Runner's World" magazine.  I don't normally read while on the elliptical, as I find that it makes me slower, makes me motion-sick, and is nearly impossible to do, what with the constant up-and-down motion.  But it was here, and so was I, so I lazily flicked through the pages during my 2-minute warmup and stumbled upon an article that actually made me laugh out loud.  It was short and it was delightful, and, I thought, a fanatastic way to personify the struggles everyone has with their regular workout routine.

You can find the article in its entirety here.

We're Not Judging You

I see it all the time.  New people at my gym.  I've only worked out there for 6 months, but you start to get used to the regulars.  Then there are the "periodicals"-they come in here and there, you usually see them at least once a week, but probably not daily.  Then there are the newbies.  Most newbies are obvious because they're nervous-they're not just new to this gym, they're new to ANY gym.  They aren't sure how to work the equipment, they don't know which cardio machines are in front of which TV's running the stations they like to watch, and they have NO idea what to do when they get into the weight room-you can FEEL their intimidation.  You can't always tell which ones will become regulars and which ones will drop out quickly, but there are warning signs, and I'm sad to say, they are so avoidable and preventable.  The biggest red flag?  How they nervously look around and tug at their clothing and walk with their shoulders hunched and head down, eyes on the floor, silently begging "PLEASE DON'T LOOK AT ME."

I usually only see these folks once.

Work It Circuits

Another thing people often want to know is *exactly* what my workouts look like.  It's never enough to tell people I do 30 minutes of cardio 5x/week and 3 weight-training sessions 3x/week.  People want specifics.  I get that.  When I was first starting out, I didn't know enough about exercise to mentally fill in the blanks, and it was frustrating and intimidating not to be told *exactly* what to do.  Unfortunately, I can't actually write workouts for everyone on the planet.  One, I'm not a personal trainer, and two, my workouts are choreographed by me, to challenge myself.  I have no idea how much weight *you* can lift, how many reps *you* can do, how long is too long for *you*.  Some of the moves I do, you will not be able to pull off.  Others, you will be able to do that I have not yet attained the strength to accomplish.  But if what you need is a general idea of what a good workout should look like, here are three different sets for you to use as a starting point.

On Nutrition

Ok, I haven't posted in a million years, and sorry about that.  Life gets in the way.  I always have all these grandiose ideas, and then they just don't play out b/c I can't fit it all in the way I want to!  Perfectionism and procrastination go hand in hand; if you can't do it perfectly, you don't want to do it at all, so you put it off.  Better never than half-assed!  But I digress.

As usual, I'm getting a lot of the same questions from people and it's time that I put them in writing to share for all to see.

So this week's top question is about nutrition.  People don't want to just know the basic facts about what to eat (calories, number/frequency of meals, carb/protein/fat ratio, etc.), people want to know what *I* ate to lose all that weight.  After all, if it worked for me, it has to work, right?

Trail Mix is NOT Health Food

Trail Mix is one ingredient away from being a snicker's bar, dammit people!  If one more of you tells me you're sweating your ass off in the gym (on the treadmill, walking, zero incline, at a pace of a 20 minute mile...that's sweating your ass off?  You better be HUGE), and eating salads (with ranch dressing and bacon bits and cheese and croutons and...) and TRAIL MIX, I'm going to reach out there and SMACK YOU!

Trail Mix:

raisins (a healthy food turned into candy by shrivelling it into little sacs of sugar)
nuts (healthy in VERY SMALL DOSES, not HANDFULLS)
m&m's (seriously?  This is CANDY!)
mini chocolate chips (CANDY!)
mini peanut butter chips (THIRD CANDY INGREDIENT!)

Just because people (supposedly) eat this food on the trail doesn't make it healthy for you!  "Trail Mix" was designed as a quick, easy-to-carry, calorically DENSE food (that means a little bit has TONS OF CALORIES) so that as you HIKED ALL DAY LONG you could eat it and replenish your glycogen stores in your muscles.

You aren't hiking, let alone all day long.  PUT IT DOWN AND GO EAT AN APPLE!

No more Trail Mix, people.  I MEAN IT!

Journeys

In Jillian Michaels' book, Master Your Metabolism, she talks about her Journey.  Like all of us, she has a story, and a Journey, and like all of us, her Journey stops and starts, meanders and twists, and sometimes, she gets lost.  As she puts it, "Have you ever made a choice in your life that seemed like a mild course correction but turned into a major detour?  That's what happened to me, and it took me years to get back on track."

We all say the same thing, just in different ways, and this is one of those "The In Club" secrets I'm trying to help you all uncover.  I call it Just One Step, Just Not Just Any Step.  The First Step in your Journey.  Jillian is a very down-to-earth person, and she said the exact same thing.  Only she put it this way:

"A bad day for your ego is a great day for your soul."

It's taken out of context (she's speaking of being fired and blackballed all over town and having to take a job making 1/10th what she was making before, and being seriously humbled and mortified, and how it was the best thing to ever happen to her), but it should ring true for all of us.  It's not the best days of our lives that cause us to look over where we are and make our lives better.  It's those WORST days of our lives.

Go ahead, folks.  Count your blessings.  Just don't dismiss your curses.  Those are just the blessings you haven't turned around yet!  Get out there and have a really f*cking bad ego day.  You'll be glad you did. 

Don't Think.  Just Go.

Plateaus-Yours and Mine

If you haven't hit a plateau yet, you will.  And when you do, you're going to want to give up (lizard brain!).  Let's talk about plateaus, why they happen, how to punch through them, and create some ammunition to use against the lizard brain BEFORE you hit this crisis, shall we?

A plateau is a sticking point in your weight loss.  It may happen after the first 10% weight loss, it may happen after the first 10 pounds, or it may not happen until the LAST 10 pounds.  But at some point, you're going to get stuck.  Day after day, week after week, you will step on that scale and it will stay within the same 1-3 pound fluctuation.  And if, as this happens to you, you do not break down and cry at least once...

You're a stronger person than I am!

"The lizard brain"

A couple of weeks back Seth Godin posted a blog entry about Quieting the lizard brain that I just loved.

The lizard brain (the amygdala) is, as Seth defines it, "...the voice in the back of our head telling us to back off, be careful, go slow, compromise. The [lizard brain] is writer's block and putting jitters and every project that ever shipped late because people couldn't stay on the same page long enough to get something out the door....  The lizard is a physical part of your brain, the pre-historic lump near the brain stem that is responsible for fear and rage and reproductive drive."

The lizard brain is what stops us from succeeding, what kills our motivation in the 11th hour, it's the thing that, after we've fought so long and so hard to have our goals in sight, scares us into quitting.

I wanted to share his post with all of you so you could contemplate it in conjunction with your weight loss goals.  Sooner or later, your lizard brain is going to rise up and try to sabotage you, and you are going to need to be ready for that moment.  You are going to need to be able to anticipate the irrational fear that grips you, the sudden desire to give up on your goals that you've worked so long and hard for, and to go back to your old ways.  You are going to be fighting against a very basic instinctive response, an instinct that has helped keep us alive over the millenia.  It is an instinct of self-preservation, but sometimes that instinct backfires and causes us to try to preserve things in our lives that are NOT WORTH preserving.  Things like sitting on our asses and eating bag after bag of potato chips. 

So, friends, as you set forth on your Journeys, keep the Lizard Brain in mind, and start setting up your defenses now.  That way, when it tries to beat you down, you'll be ready for it, and you'll win!  Don't Think, Just Go!

RPE vs. Target Heart Rate

An old friend of mine from high school (the second of the three I attended) who read my last blog entry, Crunch the Numbers, had a great question, and it's one I want to hit on today.  She wrote to me:

"Since we're the same age, my target HR should be 161 too, but I'm almost always up in the 180's when I'm on the elliptical, and God help me when I'm running! The thing is though, I can sustain that for an hour no problem (well, not so much the running, but the 180's), and if I drop down to 160, I feel like I'm not pushing myself hard enough. So what's the deal with that?"

This was such an excellent question, and one I'm sure quite a few of you are asking yourselves, if you started using my Heart Rate formulas.  Many of you will find that, if you really push yourselves, you are blasting way past your THR.  So should you slow down?  What if you are in good health (as my friend Carly is) and are still not really pushing yourself at your THR?  What does that mean?

Crunch the Numbers

A major part of the weight loss equation, Calories, requires some math.

Oh, stop whining.  This is where all that Algebra you thought you'd never use will come in handy!

Attitude...

I realized today that I talk a lot about having your "head in the game", being "in it to win it", having the right attitude to lose weight and change your life.  It occurred to me, however, that if a person has never really experienced this mindset, it might be hard to convey to them.  So let me take it to a very deep and personal level.

Don't Ask Me About Supplements

Not yet, anyway.  I am always very dismayed when I get this question by people new to a healthy lifestyle, because what I'm really being asked is, "I really don't want to do the work, SURELY you know of a magic pill?"

False Choices-Your First Hurdle

My favorite blogger in the whole world, Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project blog (and book of the same name), is a genius. She is the most thought-provoking, stimulating and succinct "self-help" writer alive, in my very humble opinion. She has never yet failed to write something, no matter how brief, that resonates with me. I'm not talking "Hmm, good point" resonate, I'm talking someone-struck-a-gong-in-my-chest resonate, and the thing that resonates most with me about her Happiness Project works is their Honesty. Everything she writes is imbued with it. Honesty. Clarity. Sincerity. Truth. There is a simple, touching beauty in Honesty like hers that cannot fail to reach people, and reach people she does. At their hearts, all people love and crave Honesty.

Today she wrote a blog post entitled "Eight Tips for Maintaining Friendships," and in it she discussed something she calls "false choices." Today I want to explore the definition of a false choice. It's extremely important to me that you all understand what a false choice is, because false choices are what got you stuck where you are today, and they're what are going to KEEP you here until you learn to recognize them and overcome them. False choices are your first hurdle.

As promised

I apologize for the lapse in posts; I had a bit of a personal crisis hit me last Thursday and have been unable to compose myself and resume living life until just now.  That may all sound dramatic but I assure you, it has been as though time stopped for me, and I mean that in the worst way possible. 

While I have no intention of getting into the crisis itself here, I have found that it has provided me with a much needed segue into the training programs I am about to suggest.  You see, the fact of the matter is, any well-rounded diet and exercise program will work for anyone.  I have been on a vast number of diets, all very different in appearances, and have had success, to a certain extent, with all of them.  I have also tried a few different exercise programs and had success, to a certain extent, with all of them.  There are only 3 true components to a good weight-loss program, no matter what any gimmick wants to tell or sell you:

Comfort Zones are neither Comfortable nor Zoned. Discuss.

Having broken out of so many of my own personal "comfort zones", I have lately begun to sincerely wonder whoever named these booby-traps comfort zones.  While we're in them, we may find them "familiar," but most of us would agree that some higher part of our consciousness does NOT find them COMFORTABLE.  In all reality, every time we're forced to think about what it is we're doing (or purposefully NOT doing), the fact is it makes us particularly UNcomfortable, fidgety even, and we look to change the mental channel we're on because we really don't want to be thinking about this.  Furthermore, a zone is more or less defined as "A [place] distinguished from adjacent parts by a distinctive feature or characteristic."  I don't know about all of you, but my experience with "comfort zones" is that the edges of said "zones" are nebulous, ever-shifting (usually widening in a way that, perversely, constricts us), and extremely DIFFICULT to define.  A more apropos metaphor might be quicksand.  You can't see them, even when you're right on top of one, you don't know you're in one until it's too late and you're already being sucked down, and every panicked movement you make only causes you to sink faster.  So you hold very still, and hope to stave off the inevitable suffocation for as long as possible.  Doesn't that sound more accurate?

Just One Step-Just Not Just Any Step

You've probably all heard the words, "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step," written by Confucius. And you've probably all heard variations on it.  "Every journey begins with a single step."  "The longest journey begins with a single step." Ad nauseum.  The problem is, like most great quotations that are pulled out of a context that will never be read by most people, this quote is missing vital information.  In this case, that information is, "Not Just Any Step."  Let me explain.

The Maiden Voyage

I've been thinking about blogging for a long time. I created this blogspot page ages ago, and never touched it. I couldn't seem to wrap my mind around what it was I really wanted to *say* with my blog. I didn't want it to become another boring, here-is-my-cute-kid blog, and I certainly didn't want it to become a Dear Diary. So it sat here, and I tried to ignore it, but the idea kept haunting me. Ironically, I was never much of a blog follower until recently, either. WHY I wanted to blog when I didn't even read the things, I will never understand. Some inner part of me had a message it wanted to send out-but first I had to find the message! I didn't know it yet, but the me I was becoming, on the inside, was trying to get out....  Then, early this year, I had a midlife crisis.  Ok, maybe it was a third-life crisis.  Regardless of how you want to chop the years up, I snapped.