Blueliner81’s BodyBlog

Ok, I’m getting fed up with this Aspartame Bull-Sh*t hype.  Every now and then it resurfaces through stupid email chain letters or blogs from people who don’t know anything about the facts!  It’s always the same…they say Aspartame causes a multitude of physical harms to your body like cancer, hair loss, depression, methanol & formaldehyde poisoning and obesity.  It irritates me that people’s ignorance spreads fear like this, so I’m going to lay it out for anyone that is interested in learning the truth.  I know I’m not reaching a lot of people through my little blog, but it gives me peace of mind to rant about it; and who knows, maybe that the 5 people who read this might  tell 5 other people and so on.  I’ll start my own chain letter.
 

I have a degree in chemistry, but it doesn’t take one to figure this out.  Aspartame is simply a methyl ester dipeptide of two naturally occurring amino acids L-phenylalanine and L-aspartic acid.  When metabolized by our bodies it breaks down into L-phenylalanine, L-aspartic acid, and methanol.  Uh oh…methanol can then further break down into formaldehyde!!  People see these two chemicals and freak out, but they are jumping to big conclusions.  Yes, methanol and formaldehyde are poisonous, but only at extremely higher levels than anything you could possibly ingest containing Aspartame.  Aspartame is about 200 times sweeter than sucrose, so its’ concentration in food and beverages is miniscule. The fact is that a BANANA naturally contains more methanol than your body would get from a can of diet soda sweetened with Aspartame.  I say we all stop eating bananas because they are obviously DEADLY!

The FDA approved Aspartame way back in 1974 and has undertaken several intensive inquiries over the years since then.  They all come back with the same results affirming the initial approval.  People also say that the evil Monsanto Corporation was influencing the FDA and the scientific studies done on the effects of Aspartame, but it wasn’t until 1985 when Monsanto bought the aspartame business and created NutraSweet.; 11 years after FDA approval.  It’s all lies…wake up people!  Don’t believe everything you read…including this blog.  Do some research and see for yourself.  The facts are out there, but ignorance and laziness spread lies.

When I first started seriously transforming my lifestyle and body a little over a year ago, one of my goals was to be able to do wide grip pull-ups.  To me they are the ultimate indication of strength.  I probably could not have done one rep at that time with my body weight at over 220lbs.  Even though I had been lifting on and off for 10+ years I had never really spent much time on my lats.  They were a very neglected muscle, and I knew I had to catch them up with the rest of my body.

 I have been slowly progressing on my lat pulldowns and, according to the stack, getting up close to my body weight.  Same with the assisted pull-up machine, which I usually do for higher reps (10-15).  So I thought it was about time to add body weight pull-ups to my routine.  Well, yesterday was the day, and I did 4 sets of wide grip pull-ups at 8,6,6,& 5 reps!  Now these were good form pull-ups too…none of that swinging or leg kicking crap!  I’m pretty stoked about it.  The rest of my lat/back/ab workout went awesome after this, and I’m already tightening up and really feeling it this morning.  I love it!  I’m sure not having that extra 30 lbs of fat on me is a big part of my success with the pull-ups, but I know the strength and size of my lats has increased greatly.  I don’t think I can consider them a weakness anymore.

The new Pearl Jam album Backspacer will be rocking my iPod this fall.  I can’t wait to hear it after the teaser they did on the Tonight Show w/ Conan O’Brien last night.  They played a song called "Get Some" and it was flipping sweet!

I was just browsing the home page and saw the most viewed woman’s profile.  WTF…are guys really into this?  I’m not writing this to be mean an any way to the girl, rather to show how messed up our society is when women who obviously have eating disorders are oogled by thousands of men, furthering their disease even more.  I am not at all attracted to a skeleton in a bikini, so apparently I am in the minority in thinking that muscle is sexy on a woman.

I really try not to click on the top profiles and feed the egos of the people (most of whom have no reason to be on a bodybuilding site) who change their pic every 3 minutes or post close-up crotch, butt, and breast shots to get horny guy hits, but I had to check this one out.  I was relieved to see that her goal was to gain 10 lbs of muscle, and I wish her the best of luck with that and more.  However, I also saw all kinds of comments from guys professing their love and saying how hot she looks.  I just don’t get it, and I’m glad I don’t.

I’ll leave you with some classic prose that shares my point of view.

So I’m lookin’ at rock videos
Knock-kneeded bimbos walkin’ like hoes
You can have them bimbos
I’ll keep my women like Flo Jo
Sir Mix-A-Lot

My gym, like any other, has it’s cast of characters that range from the experienced, knowledgeable lifter to the completely clueless idiots that do the most ridiculous things I’ve ever seen.  I would like to talk about the clueless side of the spectrum.

I’m not a social person at all at the gym; I put in my earbuds and go to work so that I can get done and go home to my little girl.  Except for an occasional nod, a "how’s it going?", or a "are you using this?" I keep to myself.  But sometimes I just want to scream and tell some of these dumb bastards that they look like fools and they need to pull their heads out of their ass.  But I refrain from doing this and instead just laugh to myself or my wife if she is there.

Does this make me a bad person?  Should I try to help them? I do enjoy the entertainment of watching some of the insane things that people do at the gym.  A couple quick examples for you:

1.  Bicep Boy, who thinks he is the man…but is far from it.  You would think he would have huge arms since that is all he ever does….EVER!  He’s always doing some partial range of motion crap with too much weight.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen him do a bicep curl with proper form for the full range of motion.

2.  Skinny Guy with Super Tight Shirt, who only does 3 aweful pointless exercises.  This guy is lucky if he is 150lbs, but he puts 225+ on the incline bench and does a two inch range of motion.  Then he hangs two 45lb plates from his waist, climbs up to the pull-up bar and does one negative before completely failing at one rep.  Then he attemps to do cable flyes with the entire weight stack; it’s like a monkey f-ing a football.  He takes the cake.

Life would be dull without these people, as much as they annoy me.  But what I don’t understand is how they don’t realize what they are doing is a waste of time and effort.  Do they pay no attention to those of us who know what we are doing and have results that show it?  I think they are too wrapped up in their own ego to acknowledge others.  This is why I don’t say anything to them or offer advice.  I leave them to their blissful ignorance.

I measured yesterday and I’ve lost another inch in the last month to bring my total to 5.5"!  I’ve lost 3" around my hips also, and I’ve gained an inch on my biceps.  So far I have lost about 20 lbs since I started, but most of that was lost in the first 5 months or so, which means I have been adding some good muscle mass to keep my weight steady st just over 200.  I’m pretty excited with the results I’m seeing lately; my training and diet are so locked in now.  I have my daily routine and it’s become a normal way of life for me.  I almost never miss a day in the gym, even when I was sick a few weeks ago, and it has gotten a lot easier to resist temptations and eat healthy.

I’m going to keep doing what I’ve been doing and in couple more months I should be at my body fat goal just in time to show my six pack off this summer!  Yay!  I eventually want to gain about 20 lbs of muscle after I finish leaning out, so that will be my long-term goal.

I am so glad that I got my ass going last year and finally decided to get in awesome shape because I have never felt better.  It has been slow and steady progress and sometimes I don’t feel like I have changed that much, but then I look at my progress pictures and I can’t believe what I used to look like.  I remember feeling good about my 3 month progress pictures, but I look fat compared to where I’m at now!  I really owe a lot to this site and the motivating people on it.  Thanks BB.com!

Cory