Lean and Hard

Being overweight, not to mention morbidly obese, created a multitude of inconveniences and lifestyle restrictions for me, as it does for millions of Americans. One of these restrictions was the hassle of air travel.

Faced with the difficulties for an overweight person of walking through miles of airport corridors, as well as the discomfort of too-small airline seats, many simply give up on air travel altogether. It had been almost a decade since I last traveled by air. The thought of the challenges I would face was simply too overwhelming.

Now that I'm back to a healthy weight and level of fitness, I recently rejoined the air-traveling public, and the experience was a tremendous boost to my motivation to stay healthy and fit.

Walking through the airports was easy and comfortable. I fit comfortably in the economy-class seats. The seat belts had lots of extra length to cinch tight. And I wasn't embarrassed to be seen by the people at the other end.

You have to find motivation wherever you can, and for me, being able to travel comfortably is a biggie!

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Either you've said it or heard it: "When I was younger I ate everything in sight and was thin as a rail. Now I eat a single donut and put on five pounds!"

I can tell you for certain that I gave not a moment's thought to my eating when I was 16, and I was a skinny guy.


I ate whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted it. And look at me! But then a few decades passed and I weighed more than 300 pounds. What the hell happened?

This is what I think:

It's not that something mysterious changed and my metabolism suddenly slowed to a crawl. It's that I was always eating more than I was burning, but since I was still growing and developing, the extra calories went into producing that growth. I was getting heavier, but it wasn't fat. It was muscle, bone, blood, etc. Add to this the fact that I was very active: I was always on the move and playing sports in school.

But as I got older, I became less active and my body, no longer needing to build, started storing fat. I kept eating what I wanted, but burned and used less. So I put on a few pounds of fat every year. Maybe noticeable, but not alarming, really. With those extra pounds came increased difficulty in moving around, so I became even less active.


From 175 to 180. Then 180 to 185. No big deal. Then I hit 190 and decided to diet. I dieted and lost 20 pounds. Yay! But then I went back to the usual over-eating and under-exercising and started the process over again. This happened maybe 3 or 4 times until I gave up.

Finally, after all these years, I've found a way to limit my caloric intake and eat a nutrient dense diet as a way of life, and have also developed the habit of exercise. The cycle has been broken and I'm not looking back. Except for writing about it. :-)

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The word "diet" is not bad, per se, but its typical meaning relates to something bad: That is, when it refers to an eating plan that, by its very nature, is doomed to failure. Anyone who has struggled with weight issues knows that most diets fail. Like me, they have dieted over and over again and, while they did lose weight at first, they inevitably gave up and gained it all back and then some. Why is this such a common pattern? I'll offer 5 simple reasons in this post.

1. They are overly restrictive.

Any eating plan that results in weight loss must cause you to run a negative energy balance. In other words, you have to be taking in less than you are using up. No way around it. But many diets make that negative balance too large. They bring some very impressive results, but always lead to intense feelings of deprivation and inevitable binging. A sustainable weight-loss plan should run a small negative balance that, over time, brings huge results. Beware of any diet that promises to cut 30 pounds in 30 days. Even if it worked, you'd probably put on 45 pounds in 45 days after that.

2. They include bad carbs.

For a diet to be sustainable over the long haul, it can't leave you feeling like you're starving to death, or have you dreaming about consuming an entire bag of chips or box of donuts. Diets that include simple and highly processed carbs will cause sugar spikes that leave you craving more of the same. When I tried these I'd end up eating 4 lo-cal meals in a single sitting just because I'd be so hungry. What works is an eating plan that is nutrient dense and calorie poor, not tiny amounts of calorie dense and nutrient poor foods.

3. They don't include exercise.

As I've written before, research has consistently shown that both diet and exercise are essential to any successful attempt to become lean and hard. Exercise transforms our bodies at a cellular level and makes us feel more energetic and less prone to regaining the weight we've lost by dieting alone.

4. They don't seem doable.

It's been shown that successful changes are the ones we can see ourselves making. The single change that got the ball rolling for me was switching out complex carbs for simple ones, which my oldest son happened to mention he was trying almost one year ago. It sounded doable to me. If you'd asked me then how confident I felt that I could make that change on a 1 - 10 scale I would have given you a solid 9. I could see myself doing it. Later one, once I began to feel stronger and less hungry, I could see myself cutting my caloric intake. Later still, after I'd lost about 20 pounds, I could see myself joining a gym and working out regularly. It's important that you make changes you can actually see yourself making successfully, even if you don't make them all at once.

5. They don't taste good.

This is one reason I failed at diets that had a specific menu. If I don't enjoy what I'm eating, how can I I keep eating it? I've tried diets before that told me exactly what I could have for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I hated them, and I can promise you I got off them as soon as I got within shouting distance of my goal. And then I went back to eating what I liked and gained all the weight back. What I do now is sustainable because I enjoy the recipes I've come up with. There's been lots of trial and error and there will be more, but it's got to taste good if you're going to keep doing it.

Ultimately, most diets fail because they are unsustainable, and if you can't do it for at least a year, it's pretty much a waste of time. I like this quote from an interview with Dr. John Berardi, a very successful fitness coach. When asked about some of the most important lessons he's learned about helping people over the years, he said this:

I also learned that all the technical, scientific recommendations in the world are meaningless...if you can't actually follow them for at least one year. Because that's how long it takes to make a sustainable, jaw-dropping transformation.

 In other words, if you can't sustain it for at least a year, it won't produce awesome results.

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The key to weight loss is not as simple as eating less. If it were that simple, no one would ever be overweight.

Yes, it's true that IF you eat fewer calories than you are burning, you WILL lose weight. The problem is with the IF. It's not easy, and virtually impossible for many people to eat fewer calories that they're burning. It was for me. I knew I was ruining my life by becoming morbidly obese, but even the threat of death couldn't help me to eat less. Quite simply, I was as addicted to fast carbs as someone else might be to alcohol or cocaine.

The problem was I didn't know it.

The good news was, it wasn't that hard to break my addiction.

All I had to do was replace fast carbs with slow carbs. A complete substitution.

What are fast carbs? While there is no absolute line between fast and slow, some are clearly fast and some are clearly slow. Fast carbs are simple carbs, carbs that break down into sugar very rapidly when eaten. Things like white potatoes, refined flour products like bread and pasta, sugary drinks like soda or even orange juice, cakes and pies, candy, ice cream, white rice, are all fast carbs. And almost all low calorie recipes still include them. Just try looking for a so-called lo-cal frozen meal at the supermarket that doesn't have these ingredients. It's not possible.

So you have to simply stop eating those things. No more donuts or bagels. No more pizza. No more linguini. No more white bread sandwiches.

But lets talk about what you can replace these things with.

All kinds of beans, vegetables, whole grain breads like Ezekiel bread, corn flour products like tacos or tortillas, yucca and yams, sweet potatoes and fruits, other whole grains like quinoa and flax. There's a pretty long list and thousands of great recipes.

What are some typical meals for me? (Keep in mind that I'm only eating 1200 to 1500 calories a day in order to get my weight to an ideal level, while at the same time getting exercise 6 days a week in order to build muscle, so the amount you eat may need to be different.)

Breakfast is usually a scoop of cooked beans and half a cup of liquid eggs. I make a big crock pot of beans and mushrooms, cooked in chicken broth and with my favorite seasonings, and just get a scoop of them in a frying pan with some cooking spray (I like to add some jerk seasoning too because I am Jamaican after all), then I add the liquid eggs and stir. Delicious.

My mid-morning snack is usually a cup of soup, which I cook on weekends and take to work in a Tupperware container. I like to cook boneless/skinless chicken thighs, which I pull apart when they've been boiling long enough to be tender, then add vegetables like squash, carrots, etc., and some split peas or lentils that I've pre-soaked. Sometimes I'll include chicken broth, chopped spinach, onions, celery and the like. It makes a very healthy, thick, delicious soup that keeps me going till the afternoon.

My mid-afternoon meal is typically a piece of chicken with a slice of Ezekiel bread, or sometimes a salad.

Dinner might be 3 tacos, made with seasoned ground beef in whole grain corn taco shells, diced tomatoes, a bit of shredded cheese and some chopped jalapenos. For dessert I might have a few apple slices.

Of course these are only a few ideas. You can find thousands more online, but you only have to avoid the fast carbs listed above and replace them with slow ones.

I hope this helps!

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I hate those stupid web adds that promise to do everything from get rid of belly fat to save you thousands on car insurance if you will follow "this one simple rule." Doing those things is rarely accomplished with a simple rule. If they were then no one would have belly fat or pay with their left arm for car insurance. But I can tell you how I was able to cure myself of morbid obesity, chronic fatigue and type 2 diabetes by substituting slow carbs for fast carbs.

Chronic Fatigue and Morbid Obesity

I suffered from chronic fatigue, at first sporadically, then eventually continuously, for about 30 years. I can tell you that it is very real and can drastically impair your life. It hurts those you love, hinders your career, and can end marriages. And almost worst of all, it gets no respect.

Since medical science has been unable to pin down a cause, many people will assume that you're a malingerer, faking illness to avoid things you don't want to do. Loved ones will question whether it's all in your head. People will ask you over and over to explain what it feels like. I can assure you that it's not like normal fatigue. I've experienced both and they are nothing alike. The double whammy for me was feeling too sick to do anything but lay in bed while at the same time maintaining an enormous appetite. So, guess what happened? I got very, very fat.

I tried everything under the sun to find a cure. I traveled to foreign countries, submitted to batteries of tests, visited with real doctors and quacks, all to no avail. But I have now found a cure that has worked for me going on almost a full year. I've regained my strength, diminished my addiction to huge amounts of food, and so far have lost 121 pounds, going from a high of 303 to my latest weigh-in of 182.

Type-2 Diabetes

With the morbid obesity came type-2 diabetes. I was having to spend thousands of dollars on insulin and other medications just to control my blood sugar. Over the past year I have been able, under my endocrinologist's supervision, to get completely off all diabetes meds while maintaining healthy sugar levels.

What about you?

I can't say whether or not you, reader, will find the same benefits from adopting my eating habits, since we are not the same. I am certain, however, that there are many, many people out there who will.

In my next post I'll go into more detail about the slow carb for fast carb swap.

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Is it ever advisable to take a break from my regular workout routine? Will I lose all my gains if I miss a day? How do I know if I need a break? And how long should a break be?

These are all great questions. I've actually taken short breaks by necessity rather than by choice, and I've found that they can actually be advantageous. But what do the experts say?

While exercising consistently is important for building endurance, conditioning your body and losing weight, you may reach a point where you're tired, bored and desperately need a break. Taking a break may be just what you need to rest, recover and rejuvenate, but how long before you start losing your fitness?

You may be surprised to learn that taking a few days or a full week off from training won't necessarily hurt the gains you've made. In fact, many serious exercisers and athletes regularly schedule a week off every 8-12.

So if you're serious about fitness you can be certain that breaks are not only not a bad thing, they're actually important for your long-term fitness goals.

Today's awesome workout song...



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Photo credit: The Holy Grail

The answer is a definite YES!

As long as you are on a weight reduction plan, you are going to face the temptation to cheat. The reason is simple: To lose weight you have to burn more calories than you're taking in, and this means you will sometimes feel deprived.

I've lost 115 pounds so far, and I've been losing weight since about September of last year, so you can believe that I've strayed from the strictures of my regime a few times along the way. Once in a while I've faces temptations that, for me, at the time, were irresistible. Here's how I've managed these diversions from the path...

1. I've tried to limit the damage. OK, so I simply have to have pizza. Nothing I can do about it when the desire is so strong and so persistent. I go ahead and have some, but I eat it slowly and stop when I'm satisfied (which, since my stomach has shrunk from eating less food, happens much sooner than it used to!). Then I throw away the rest and my splurge is over.

2. I've gotten right back on the horse. Guilt and discouragement are the enemy when you've broken faith with your plan. Put your straying behind you and come right back to the righteous path. Here's how WebMD puts in in this article:

Don't let a little slip become a backslide.  It is almost impossible to be an "A" student when it comes to dieting. "Everyone slips up, and that is fine as long as you don't let one slip turn into a backslide," says Wansink. Whenever you slip up, take note of it, try to learn from it so you can anticipate it in the future, and get right back into your diet plan to avoid the temptation to throw in the towel.

If you have a lot of weight to lose, it's going to take some time, and you are going to cheat. But cheating cannot stop you if you limit the damage and stick with your plan.

Please comment below if you found this helpful or have additional tips to share!

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I don't know yet. I've lost 111 pounds as of yesterday. I weighed 192.2 when I stepped on the scale in the AM. When should I stop losing and start maintaining? I do have an idea about that but I'm not yet certain, simply because I'm not going by a government chart. I'll know when I've landed at my ideal weight (it's really a range, isn't it?) when I look the way I want to look. Which is: Lean and hard.

I think my ideal range will end up somewhere between 160 and 175. I'd like to have a 32" waist and look great shirtless. There's still a good bit of extra fat that needs to be burned before the muscles show through and I look cut, ripped, etc. So it's onward and downward until then. And then it will be about staying lean and hard.

Today's workout song:



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Some people believe that if you can picture something in your mind, or even speak it, you can bring it into being. I don't believe in some mystical power we all have to create reality, but it's perfectly logical and reasonable to think that if we can envision some state of being in our minds, we'll be more likely to be motivated to do the things that will make it happen, and to recognize opportunities to bring it about.

That's why I like to motivate myself with visions of people I want to look like, at least in terms of leanness and hardness. Here are a couple of my motivational movie stars:






What else helps motivate me? Great workout music! So from time to time I'll share some of my favorite tracks. (I hate the slow, soulful stuff they play at some gyms, makes me want to sit and contemplate the mistakes I've made in my life. There's a time for that but it ain't at the gym.) Here's one to start things off. Feel free to share your own in the comment section.

Kaiser Chiefs - I Predict a Riot


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Today I weighed in at under 200 pounds. A few days ago I wore a pair of pants that have been too small to wear for a very long time, and I found in the right front pocket this movie ticket from 1995. Die Hard 3! The child's ticket means I had taken one (or more?) of my wonderful kids. I think that year was probably the last time I weighed less than 200. Elementary, dear Watson?

To me this is a more significant milestone than losing 100 pounds, I'm not sure why. It just feels more important for some reason. So, lean and hard is now within my grasp!

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If you have more than 100 pounds to lose in order to get to your ideal weight, don't think it can't be done. I thought so at one time, which is why all my smallest clothes are no more...

It's a shame I threw away all my smallest clothes. Why did I do that? Why, why, why did I do that?? The answer is simple. I had lost hope of ever being that size again. As far as I was concerned, those clothes were just taking up space. Turns out I was wrong. I could really use them now rather than having to buy new stuff.

Just yesterday I hit the mark of having lost 100 pounds. I'm not where I want and need to be yet, don't get me wrong, but it's a significant achievement nonetheless. At this point I am wearing the smallest sizes I have left, which means in another month or two I won't have any that are the right size. But I don't want to spend money on new clothes until I'm at my ideal weight, so I'll have to finesse it a bit.

When I started this lean and hard life last year I weighed 303. I had tried everything and simply could not curb my eating. I mean, if you had put a loaded gun to my head and threatened to shoot me dead unless I stopped eating so much, and if I believed with all my heart and mind that you would do it, I still couldn't have stopped.

If you've read some of my earlier posts you'll have an idea what changed, but I can tell you confidently it was not my degree of motivation. Instead, I found a pathway, a means by which I could manage to cut back my eating and keep it under control. What I found may work for you, it may not, I can't say. But I can tell you that being morbidly obese, as I was, does not mean that you can't turn things around. If you can find a pathway that allows you to limit your food intake, you can lose and keep losing until you get where you want to be. It's just biology. And maybe some physics.

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In keeping with the lean and hard theme, which is really my goal and the condition I intend to keep, my workouts are focused on losing fat and building muscle. One without the other is like trying to stand on just one leg. Not ideal at all.This means my workouts include both cardio and weight training components. The balance of the two components can be adjusted as my body changes.

I exercise six days every week. That's four gym days and 2 walking days. At the gym I divide an hour between the elliptical and weights. Once in a while, if I need to lighten up, I'll substitute the stationary bike for the elliptical.

I alternate upper and lower body (including abs), so each body part gets worked twice every week. The reason for this is to keep pushing my muscles to grow while also giving them enough time to recover.

My upper body exercises include chest, back, shoulders, biceps and triceps. Lower body and abs includes quadriceps, hamstrings, glutes, calves, and of course abs.

The larger muscles (chest, back, quads and hams) get two exercises each, while the smaller ones (calves, shoulders, glutes, biceps and triceps) get one each.

Right now I'm doing two sets per exercise, and keep my reps within ranges, like 5-8 or 8-12, depending on the amount of weight I'm lifting.

The goal for every set is to work the muscle to the point of almost failing. This means I push myself to the point where I can just barely complete the last rep.

When I can do both sets all the way to the top end of my range of reps, I'll bump up the weight by 5 to 15 pounds the next time I work that muscle.

So my typical week looks like this: Monday, lower body and abs; Tuesday, walking; Wednesday, upper body; Thursday, walking; Friday, lower body and abs; Saturday, no exercise; Sunday, upper body.

I'm pleased with my results so far. Comments?

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It's very cool to discover some unexpected benefits of doing something good for you. I found one of those benefits when I started substituting complex carbs for simple ones: I started saving lots of money.

This won't work if you pay companies like Weight Watchers or Nutrisystem for your meals (which I think is crazy, by the way), or if you shell out your discretionary income on diet supplements that gain you nothing but benefit the snake oil salesmen enormously. But I found that by cutting out the Chinese takeout and delivery pizza and fast food burgers, and by spurning all the highly refined crap at the grocery store, my food bills were cut in half.

It's true. The refined stuff is actually far more expensive that the healthy stuff! (Another parenthetical is required here I'm afraid: I'm not talking about so-called organic foods! They're just more expensive versions of regular items and have not been shown to add one iota to your health or longevity.)

I'm talking about dried beans and fruit, vegetables and grains, things that are pretty much raw and unrefined, instead of pre-made mashed potatoes and canned vegetables. Doesn't it make sense that the more work people have to put into making and packaging the food, the more it will cost? As an experiment, compare the price per pound of a package of chicken breasts and a package of thin-sliced chicken cutlets. The cutlets cost more because someone had to cut them up like that.

Take a look at this op-ed piece, Is Junk Food Really Cheaper, from the New York Times:

In general, despite extensive government subsidies, hyperprocessed food remains more expensive than food cooked at home.

Another reason I'm saving money by eating healthy, besides the fact that eating or ordering out costs more than cooking it myself and that rawer foods cost less than processed foods, is that I'm eating less food! My shopping cart is much less full than it used to be.

And finally, there are the deferred but very real health costs of eating an unhealthy diet. From Dr. Mark Hyman's web site:

For example, when you eat unhealthy foods like these, the costs of medical visits, co-pays, prescription medications, and other health services skyrocket. There are other non-economic costs of eating poorly as well. You reduce your ability to enjoy life in the moment due to increased fatigue, low-grade health complaints, obesity, depression, and more.

Eating and being healthy is better for so many reasons, but saving money is a nice added benefit.

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As I continue to lose fat and firm up muscle, people wonder what I'm eating. Here's something I have quite often. It's yummy and packed with nutrients without lots of calories.


 This makes a delicious meal that will help you get lean and hard...


Ingredients:

Raw spinach leaves
Romaine lettuce
Apple slices
Walnuts
Grilled chicken breast
Cucumber
Celery
Artichoke hearts
Sun dried tomatoes
Light balsamic dressing

A crunchy, tasty, healthy dish that provides tons of nutrition and not too many calories. Try it and tell me what you think!

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With my new slow carb way of eating, over a couple of weeks, I noticed myself feeling stronger and less hungry. What the heck was going on?

I don't know if this theory is correct, but there are those who say that a diet high in simple carbs and processed foods causes yeast to flourish in the body. They say that there can be an overgrowth of these organisms that live in all of us but can grow out of control due to high sugar concentrations in the blood.

What's more, people who have a history of taking antibiotics in abundance, like me in earlier years, can kill off many other species of good bacteria, thereby inadvertently allowing the yeast to proliferate freely. The over-abundance of yeast then supposedly causes fatigue and irresistible cravings for more processed foods.

Was this what had happened to me? I know for certain that I craved pizza, pastries, rice, pasta, bread, potatoes, etc. If I tried going to bed without my fix I would be unable to go to sleep without satisfying my cravings. I used to have two dinners every night.

But now, I found that I had more energy, and I could say no to more food! Guess what time it was? Time for exercise and some cutting calories!

See what came next in my next post!

As I've alluded to earlier, I suffered from several health challenges, starting with chronic fatigue that was sporadic but eventually became constant, and ending with morbid obesity and it's attendant complications. My life expectancy was not known to me (I didn't want to know!), but was surely not very long.

It's important to me to explain to you here that I was always receptive to and even looking for answers, even though I didn't think there was anything new under the sun that might prove helpful. The fad diets and miracle cures had become an annoyance years ago. But I understood my predicament and never ever accepted it. So when my oldest mentioned a diet he had been trying called "slow carb," I asked him to explain.

What it boiled down to was this: substitute complex carbohydrates for simple ones. This means getting rid of highly processed carbs like pasta, white bread, potatoes and white rice, as well as sweets obviously, and replacing them with foods that are more "whole," like beans, yams, sweet potatoes and whole grains.

I am a part-time blogger. And I was morbidly obese. So naturally, when I finally found my own pathway to fitness, I had to blog about it.

At my biggest I was 303 pounds large. For a man who is 5' 10", that gave me a BMI of 43.5, which made me morbidly obese. According to Highland Hospital, "Morbid obesity is a serious health condition that can interfere with basic physical functions such as breathing or walking. Those who are morbidly obese are at greater risk for illnesses including diabetes, high blood pressure, sleep apnea, gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), gallstones, osteoarthritis, heart disease, and cancer."

I had gained weight steadily over the years ever since I began suffering from chronic fatigue. My version of this condition included two symptoms that were a lethal combination: a huge, ungovernable appetite and extreme mental and physical fatigue. Lots of eating and little to no physical activity. You do the math.

I tried dieting. Couldn't do it. Berating me and trying to scare me straight didn't help. If you had put a gun to my head and made a credible threat to shoot me dead unless I ate less, I would have had to be shot. I know there are many of you reading this who know exactly what I'm talking about. Go to a nutritionist? What for? I already know I eat too much. Join Weight Watchers? (I did.) Same thing, pointless. Again, you know whereof I speak.

I went to every kind of doctor under the sun trying to find a cure for the fatigue. Homeopath? Sure, why not? Cleveland Clinic? Again, why not? Batteries of tests revealed nothing. Psychiatrist? Yep. I even traveled to the Dominican Republic to see a doctor a friend swore had cured them. Waste of time and money.

Most recently I checked out bariatric surgery. Now that might have helped, but it wasn't covered by my insurance and I couldn't afford to self pay.

How long could I have kept living, continually adding pounds and health issues? I don't think I would have made it much further.

So what happened? What has made it possible for me to get my energy back and my appetite under control? What's allowed me to lose an average of 12 pounds per month and get exercise 6 days a week? I will tell you. It started with a conversation with my oldest son...