amanisamanisaman

Just another WordPress.com site

Category: Fitness and Nutrition

June 15, 2012

The Elephant in the Room

Alright, I’ll say it (since a lot of you are thinking it): obesity is a huge problem–pun fully intended.

Over one-third of American adults is obese.  Not just a bit heavy: obese.  Thirty-five point seven percent to be exact, according to the CDC .  Take a gander at your leisure: http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html

I am not obese.  I have never been obese.  I have never been what might even slightly be considered over-fat.  In fact, I’ve been very thin my entire life–except for the first year or so, but I had a three-hundred-pound babysitter who fed me grits, so it wasn’t my fault.  Having admitted that I’ve always been thin, I know what the objections will be to me posting this: that I don’t understand what it’s like, that I have genetics on my side, that I’m a superficial a-hole.  I’m sure there are many more, and I’m sure I have heard them all.

Look, I live in the same country as some of you (United States), and I am subject to the same food choices and other environmental factors as you.  To be fair, I ate In’N'Out last night, so I am by no means a saint when it comes to eating out.  But I ate one burger, not three, and I had a few fries, not a plateful.  I do not eat fast-food on a daily basis.  Like many other activities in my life (except for maybe reading), I do it in moderation, which is just fine.  I’ll be the last one to preach about the evils of a night out to eat once in awhile or the occasional beer with buddies or a cookie now and again.  But Americans are not so good at moderation; we enjoy excess.  And it will kill us if we’re not careful.

An answer to a possible objection: my genetic blessing of a super-fast metabolism.  It would be dishonest of me to say that it has been hard work for me staying thin.  It has not.  I come from a family of thin people on both sides.  Small people in general, really.  My brother is five feet and six inches tall, weighing in at about a buck twenty; my sister is five feet tall (probably more like four eleven) and tips the scales at about a hundred pounds.  I am the giant of my family at five feet ten (and a half) inches tall, with a hundred and sixty pounds to carry around, twenty of those gained in the last few months by working out frenetically.  I know I have a fast metabolism, and I act accordingly.  I wouldn’t lead the lifestyle I do if I didn’t have some genetic assistance.

But it would be nonsense to claim that this is the only reason my family is thin.  We have all led fairly healthy lifestyles.  We were never allowed sugar cereal as kids (possibly due to my hyperactivity, but…), we drank soda sparingly, ate fast-food maybe once a week, we were involved in sports, rode our bikes all the time, and more.  It would be easy and convenient to just say that we had to do nothing but rely on the genes to keep us thin, but it would be untrue.

I work hard to maintain a healthy body.  Yes I had fast-food last night, but you know what I’m doing today?  I’m going to the gym to work out with weights, and tomorrow I’ll swim at least five hundred meters.  Weight-gain and weight-loss both are a matter of simple mathematics: there are either caloric surpluses or caloric deficits.  Not rocket science.  I also get plenty of sleep and stay active throughout the day.  It’s not that hard.  One can run anywhere, do push-ups anywhere, do sit-ups anywhere.

I’m tired of living in a place where it’s okay to rip on someone for smoking, giving a laundry list of the health risks, putting commercials on TV about it, and more, but then it’s cruel to talk about the health risks of being over-fat.  We might hurt someone’s self-esteem.  It’s my opinion that people not only look better when they’re fit, but they also feel better.  Heart disease is the number one killer in America.  That’s a fact.

So let’s make a collective effort to get that number below one in three.  It’s embarrassing to have such a ratio in what is supposed to be a developed nation, one that claims to be a beacon of light to the rest of the world.  The light will not make it out there if it’s obscured by all these rolls of fat.

You don’t like it?  Stop reading and get off your butt and do something about it.

Leave a comment
June 8, 2012

Goooooooooooaaaaaaaal!

Tell me you don’t hear a soccer announcer’s voice in your head.

So yesterday was the Iron(wo)man at the school where I teach.  Now, it’s nowhere close to a real Ironman: we only swim five hundred meters and run two and a half miles.  But it was still tough.  I was the only staff member who did it last year (with no training); I mostly did it just to see if I could.  This year, I invited my fellow staff-members to join me.  We had nine people this year, with six of them partnering up (with one swimming, one running), and we turned it into a fundraiser for our new multimedia center on campus.

I’m not sure how much money we raised yet, but I’m so happy that I got that many people to get out there for a good cause.  It’s a nice feeling of solidarity to set a goal and have other people right there with you working toward that same goal.  I started lightly training for this back in February, and aside from the money we raised and the feeling of accomplishment and pride I have, an ancillary benefit was the fact that during training I gained about twenty pounds of muscle.

I’m big on setting reasonable goals for myself.  I like having that marker on the horizon to look toward when I’m heading down the road.  I encourage everyone to think about a goal to reach–whether it is mental or physical–and set up a plan to train for it and achieve it.

I promise you: it will only make you hungry for more.

Leave a comment
May 27, 2012

WSNH: Gym Edition

I’ve decided to do a “Work Smarter Not Harder” series, and the first one will be about working out.

I started lifting weights when I was fourteen.  My family got a membership to a local health club, and so I went with my dad occasionally.  At that time, I only used resistance machines because, quite frankly, I was afraid of the free-weights section: there were men much bigger than I lifting much more weight than I could.  I also surfed every single day and rode my bike three miles to school and three miles back, so I got a lot of exercise.

In the last fifteen years, I’ve tried every workout under the sun.  I am a hard-gainer: my metabolism is super fast, I eat whatever I want without gaining a pound, and I actually lose weight if I stop lifting.  I’ve also tried a number of weight-gaining techniques via diet.  I’ll start with what I found works best for me in the gym, and then I will discuss my dietary choices.  Let me say first that all my choices were based upon my fitness goal, which was to gain weight, mostly muscle.

The Gym

  When it comes to weights, I focus on low repetitions and high weight to build explosive strength rather than endurance.  I try to add weight to my lifts each week to challenge my muscles and promote growth.  Below is my day-by-day workout:

Day 1:

Barbell squats: 4 sets with 4-5 reps per set

Barbell bench press: 4 sets with 4-5 reps per set, one max. set if a spotter is available

Lat Pulldowns: 4 sets with 4-5 reps per set

Day 2:

Single-Arm Dumbbell Overhead Shoulder Press: 3 sets with 6-7 reps per set

Single-Arm Bent-Over Dumbbell Rows: 3 sets with 6-7 reps per set

Bench Jumps: 3 sets with 7 reps per set

Day 3:

Barbell Deadlifts: 3 sets with 3-4 reps per set

Bent-Over Barbell Rows: 3 sets with 3-4 reps per set

Weighted Bar-Dips: 3 sets with 3-4 reps per set

The days that I don’t lift, I swim twenty laps or run two and a half miles at as fast a pace as is comfortable.

None of these days takes me more than forty-five minutes.  I’m not one to sit around and rest a bunch between sets or chat it up with my fellow patrons.  I get in, do the work, and get on with the rest of my day.

I take two days off a week.

Diet:

I don’t have a strict diet that I follow day after day, mostly because I need as many healthy calories as I can get to gain muscle.  But I do focus on eating a diet rich in protein and complex carbohydrates.  I eat a protein bar–Cliff Builder’s Bar–to supplement my protein intake.

I also take creatine on a daily basis: five grams a day in the morning (with chocolate milk).

It’s very important to eat a bit of protein before and especially after a workout: your muscles are starving and you need protein to help rebuild.

I’ve tried counting calories, but I got to the point where I was trying to eat until I felt lethargic and sick: not good.

 

So this is what works for me.  I’ve gained twenty pounds of muscles in about three months, and I feel better than ever.  You just have to stay committed to it.  The mental game is the most important of all.

Leave a comment
May 17, 2012

I’m a Man, Damn It!

  Two years ago, my friend Gerry and I were walking to our ten-year high school reunion.  We were both wearing v-necks, and I commented on the fact that Gerry was looking quite a bit hairier in the chest region than he did ten years ago.  He pointed out that I too had developed quite a bit of chest hair.  I thought about it and said, “Damn it! We’re too old now to be worrying about that sort of silly shit.”

  And by golly, it’s true.

  To be fair, when I was eighteen, I had very little chest hair, and so it actually looked worse to keep those seven stray hairs than to shave them off.  My mom used to say, “You know, in my day, we thought hairy chests were sexy.”  Well, Mom, seven hairs does not constitute a hairy chest.  In fact, it looks rather pathetic, like a boy trying to grow a goatee with his wiry and sporadic hairs on his chinny chin chin.

  But by the time I was twenty-one, I had enough hair that I could safely grow it out and not look ridiculous.  So I did.  I started dating a girl around that time, and when she saw my chest, she said, “My ex-boyfriend used to shave his chest.”  I replied, “Well, I don’t.”  I think she was put off at first, but she accepted it.  Then, on Valentine’s Day, I decided to shave it off to surprise her.  When she saw it, she paused for awhile, and then said, “I actually liked the hair…”

  And that was the last time I shaved my chest (discounting the time that I shaved it into a heart for Halloween: I was a Chippendale dancer; it was worth it).

  Now I’m not one to buy into accepted gender stereotypes without any sense of logic or reason.  I mean, I have forty pairs of shoes, for god’s sake.  I like to shop.  I proudly wear purple and pink.  But I think it’s time to drop the self-loathing that men have for their body hair.  

  Thanks to endless ads in magazines featuring hairless male models, the paradigm shifted.  But it’s time to take the power back, men.  Don’t just accept your hairiness.

  Embrace it!

1 comment
May 16, 2012

Smarter Not Harder

  It’s not a revelatory point: it’s better to work smarter than harder.

  I tell my students this all the time.  If you can find a more efficient way of doing something and get the same or a better result, you would be an idiot to do otherwise.  Now, some students–inevitably–will think that I mean it’s okay to cheat.  Not at all.  Grades are such a false measure of what we actually achieve.  Much of what we learn stays dormant, sometimes for years, until it becomes necessary for us to use this knowledge in a practical sense. 

  How you work should depend upon what your goal is for a particular endeavor.  When I was in my education program, I had to take an adolescent psychology course.  I’ve always been a dedicated student (at least at university), and I went to this class every session and listened to the lectures, but I didn’t really care about what was being said.  I was ready to get into the classroom and start teaching.  Perhaps I should have paid better attention.  But the way I studied for the exams was this: the professor put a PowerPoint on her website the day of the exam; this presentation was a review of all of her previous lectures.  I went to the library an hour before the exam and looked at the slides as many times as possible before I took the test.  The first exam came directly from these slides, in the order of the presentation.  I finished it in fifteen minutes, and I got a ninety-six percent on it.  The next test, I finished in ten minutes and got a ninety-eight. 

  Now ask we what I remember from Adolescent Psychology.

  Nothing.

  I participated in what I call intellectual bulimia.  I swallowed the information, puked it back up on the test, and never digested any of it.  But I got an A.

  I am not, in any way, espousing this sort of academic behavior… if your goal is to actually learn.  But it served its purpose.

  I see this same principle at work when I go to the gym.  On average, I spend about forty minutes in the gym lifting.  I focus on a full-body workout, with every exercise activating multiple muscle groups.  There are plenty of studies that support this as the best way to build muscle.  It makes sense: no activity that exists in nature requires only one muscle group.  Yet I still see people in the gym performing set after set of isolation exercises like bicep curls.  I have a friend who does this, and he spends about an hour and a half at the gym.  I’ve managed to gain twenty pounds of muscle and up all of my lifts by at least thirty pounds, and all this in a matter of two months.

  So next time you find yourself frustrated with the amount of time and energy you’re putting into something, stop and think about it.

  Can you work smarter rather than harder?

Leave a comment
May 14, 2012

Drink It Down

A memory I have of my childhood mornings: my dad heating up water to make his cup of Earl Grey.

I’ve taken after my dad rather than my mom (who is a daily coffee drinker).  I’ve never liked the smell or taste of coffee, so I stuck to Coke for my caffeine fix when I was younger.  But my senior year of high school, I felt fatigued all the time and figured it had something to do with my three-a-day soda habit, so I kicked soda and replaced it with water.  I felt a billion times better.

As I got older and had more and more work to do, I found I needed a place outside of home to work on school and such.  I usually ended up at a coffee shop, but due to my distaste for coffee, I opted for tea, specifically green tea.  Thus began my love affair with the stuff.  I have been an avid green-tea consumer for the last nine years or so, and I still love the daily ritual of heating the water, steeping the tea, mixing in the honey, and feeling the hot liquid on my tongue.

There are a ton of articles and studies about the health benefits of green tea.  I’ll be honest: I didn’t–nor do I–drink it for these reasons.  I figure if there’s some peripheral benefits to my addiction then I’m a lucky guy.  The studies I have read are not conclusive, but just look at the Asian cultures that make tea a staple in their diet: they live to be like one hundred and twenty or something.  I just drink it because I like the taste (and the ritual, as I said above).

I drink about thirty-two ounces of green tea a day, in the morning and the early afternoon, and sometimes I even have some herbal mint tea in the late morning (so I don’t go too nuts from caffeine intake: I’m ADHD, after all).  If there are no other health benefits to it, at least I’m consuming a decent amount of water in tea alone, albeit only four cups out of my target of thirteen cups a day.

So for those of you who eschew coffee like I do: try some tea.  It’s a delicious and cheap treat.

2 comments
May 8, 2012

Time to Change

Every year at the school where I work, there is an annual event called Ironman: students swim five hundred meters and run two and a half miles.  I had been thinking about doing it for a couple years, and I decided that last year I would.  I made the mistake of opening my mouth and telling students that I was doing it, which meant that I had to or lose all sense of honor.  I fully intended to train leading up to it.  I really did.  But I didn’t.  The day came and I got out there and did it (though I felt like I was going to die).

This year I decided that there would be no shenanigans like last year: I decided I was going to train at least three days a week.  And I decided I was going to get other teachers involved as a drive for myself and others: it’s always better to have a training buddy.

Now, I’m a naturally thin guy.  I’m five feet ten inches tall and I’ve always hovered between the one thirty and one forty pound range.  I decided that in the process of getting in shape for the Ironman, I was going to try to pack on some pounds (hopefully muscle).  I was one hundred and forty pounds, and I set a modest goal of five pounds by the time of the Ironman.   So I started training in March: I tried to swim twice a week, run twice a week, and lift three times a week.

For two months now, I’ve kept it up and it feels great.  And my goal?  I’ve quadrupled it!  I’ve gained twenty pounds (most of it muscle).  This is inconceivable to me, as I’ve struggled in the past to gain any weight at all (I’m the epitome of what they call a “hard gainer” in the business).

I’m thrilled with the results of my training and I feel better than I ever have.  Yes, it’s nice to be stronger and bigger and in better shape.  But the real reward is knowing that I can set goals and not only achieve them but surpass them.  It’s easy to get discouraged and write goals off as impossible.  Our society is great at instilling the idea that some people are just “born” a certain way.

But don’t believe it.

Whatever your goal is (as long as it’s reasonable), you can take the steps to achieve it.  I spent a lot of time (big surprise) reading about strategies to gain weight, through training and diet and lifestyle.  I set up a plan, wrote it down, chose some famous athletes to emulate, and got down to it.

I’m here to tell you that if you want to change you can.  Just leave your excuses at the door, work hard, and you’ll get there.

A little at a time.

Leave a comment
May 6, 2012

Why else?

I have a buddy who is a bit of a fitness fanatic; he works out every day in some way.  He’s a big guy, about five-ten, one-ninety.   One day, he was running at the Bolsa Chica Wetlands.  He went to UCLA, so he was wearing a t-shirt.  As he was stretching post-run, a guy who was standing nearby asked my friend if he played football at school.  My friend said no.  Rugby?  Baseball? No, no.  Any sports?  Intramural flag football.  ”So what are you training for?” the guy asked.

His succinct response has become a mantra for me:

“I’m training for life.”

There are plenty of reasons to get out there and throw some weights around, run a few miles, ride your bike, take a swim.  But the best reason is that exercising makes you feel better: it releases endorphins; it gives you more energy throughout the day; it makes everything else easier.

A few years ago, my roommate at the time said to me, “I don’t know why you waste all that time in the gym.  Yeah, maybe you’re making your life longer, but for you’re going to be spending all that extra time in the gym.”  There are many things completely absurd about this point, so let me break it down:

1. I spend about an hour at the gym each visit.  If I go three days a week, that amounts to three hours a week, which is about twelve hours a month.  So for every two months, I spend one day of my life in the gym.  Over the course of a year, that’s six days.  So if I go to the gym steadily for the next thirty years, that amounts to one hundred and eighty days.  Not even half a year.  I’ll take my chances and risk all that extra time in the gym if my life is at least six months longer.

2. His statement assumes that the only reason to exercise is to extend one’s life.  Nonsense.  I may not be extending my life at all by exercising.  It doesn’t matter.  Exercising makes my life better in so many ways (see above), not the least of which is that I feel better about myself when I get out there and sweat.

And look, if you can’t think of any other reason to get fit: being in shape brings with it the extra evolutionary bonus of making you look better; you will be more attractive.

It’s a fact.  So get out there and train for life.

2 comments
May 1, 2012

The Best Fashion Accessory

  I make it a point to read a lot of magazines so I can stay up-to-date on what’s going on out there in the world.  As a teacher, I need to be (at least slightly) in touch with cultural trends.  Most of the magazines I read are men’s magazines, like Men’s Health, GQ, and Esquire.  They always have a healthy dose of tips for all different areas in life.  I am particularly interested in the fitness and fashion articles–as both of these fields were career considerations for me once-upon-a-time.

  Every month there are articles about the new trends in both these areas.  What many of these magazines fail to do, however, is talk about how these two areas are inextricably linked: to be fit is always fashionable.  The best fashion asset a man possesses is his body.

  We’ve all heard the adage, “Clothes make the man.”  The truth is that the man makes the clothes; I sincerely believe that a confident, fit guy can pull off almost anything (with, of course, notable exceptions: nobody looks good in Crocs, sandles with socks, tucked-in t-shirts; I could keep going, but you get the picture).  And confidence and fitness are also braided together.  I always feel better about the way I look when I’m committed to hitting the gym.

  Trends in fashion come and go, but the ideal body shape for a man has not changed throughout the ages: an inverted triangle.  Take a look at every superhero, action figure, and leading man in the movies.  You will see it everywhere.  And the fact is that studies have been done that show that women–without knowing they do it–judge a man based on his shoulder-to-waist ratio.  This whispers to women his ability to procreate.

  So you want to look good in that new suit?  Those designer jeans?  A bathing suit?

  Be ready to hit the weights hard.  You won’t be disappointed.

Leave a comment
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 96 other followers