Captain Ahab’s BodyBlog

I was reading something the other day that really caught my attention. It was written by a Dr. Oz. This same Dr. Oz has appeared on Oprah and through appearances on her show found a great deal of popularity and has now been given his own TV show, which appears during the day.
Apparently Dr. Oz is a bit of a health nut and is really working hard to help people get rid of bodyfat and this article was about two beverages that you can drink that helps your body get rid of extra bodyfat.
The first was White Tea, which he said may have special fat-thwarting powers and was made form the buds and early leaves of the same plants that are used to make green and black teas. He said that your body’s fat cells increase and decrease in size according to your weight and in a lab study human fat cells treated with white tea extract accumulated significantly less fat. The tea also stimulated the fat breakdown from mature cells.
The second was something that most of us have heard about and that is Green Tea.  He stated that green tea speeds up your body’s calorie burning process and that it seemed to turn up your body’s calorie “torches” after exercise.
In fact, he said, overweight people who worked out for 12 weeks lost more belly fat when they drank green tea every day and that compounds called catechins may be the reason. They may act on enzymes that influence the way your body burns fat and calories.
The only thing that I would like to add is to be sure you are getting “real” green tea and the same probably goes for white tea. The reason I say this is that many packaged tea products on store shelves contain very little of the real tea and I found a huge difference between supermarket bought green tea and green tea leaves that I bought in an actual tea house and steeped at home.
I would like to know if any of you folks have encountered good results from these two beverages or even if you have tried white tea.
Best of luck.

I was absolutely staggered to read the results of a recent study done by the Canadian Cardiovascular Congress where they stated that high blood pressure, high cholesterol and obesity are affecting young teenagers in Canada at alarmingly high rates.
What they said was that 20% or one in five young Canadian teens studied have high blood pressure and most had at least one major risk factor for heart disease or stroke.
This was not some little rinky-dink study done on a couple dozen kids over a two week period either, the study was done on 20,719 grade nine students aged 14 and 15 over a seven year period from 2002 to 2008.
One of the most disturbing facts is that the trends are showing that things are getting worse instead of better. So with more public awareness on the problem of obesity even in young teens it has not transcended into any behavioural changes. The percentage of grade 9 students with one or ore cardio risk factors rose four points from 17 per cent to 21 per cent over the seven year period.
The percentage of students with elevated cholesterol rose seven points from 9 per cent to 16 per cent.
As the risk factors for heart disease and stroke have increased so have the hours of sedentary behaviour among teens. The percentage of 14 and 15 year olds who spent 20 hours per week watching TV or playing video games rose from 22 per cent to 24 per cent between 2002 and 2008. Also, the percentage of grade 9 students who are physically active for at least 90 minutes at least 5 times per week fell from 28 to 22 per cent.
Teens with high blood pressure or cholesterol or who are obese are likely to carry these same risk factors on into adulthood.
Without changes in these patterns of risk factors into adulthood puts these same teens in danger of becoming part of a generation that has a shorter life span than their parents because of developing early aged heart attacks and strokes.
Most of these risk factors are completely reversible if the person decides to adopt a healthier lifestyle that includes a more nutritious diet, exercising with weightlifting and doing some or various forms of cardio vascular exercise on a regular basis.
Isn’t it amazing what exercise can do to help us all live a healthier and higher quality of life?

Patti-Jean Naylor, assistant professor of exercise science and physical health education at the University of Victoria in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada is at this moment crunching the data taken from 500 surveys of children in Grades 4 to 6, before and after their participation in an education program but sweetened drinks.
The education program called Sip Smart! B.C., was an initiative of the government-funded B.C. Healthy Living Alliance, which aims to support healthy eating and exercise.
What the group says is that reducing the consumption of sugar sweetened beverages is quite possibly the single best way to combat the current epidemic of obesity in B.C., where one in 4 kids is classified as overweight or even worse, obese.
The children were selected at random throughout B.C. and were confidentially weighed and their heights recorded to determine their body mass both before and after taking the Sip Smart! B.C. program. They also filled out extensive questionnaires about healthy eating.
“The study is not just about obesity,” says Naylor, adding the program also examines children’s attitudes about their food choices. “What we want to see is that the children have reduced their sugar sweetened beverage consumption.”
Sip Smart! B.C. was first offered last school year at 220 schools and presented to 6000 students. It offered educators two sets of five 40-minute sessions delivered at two grade levels. Beginning next month information kits will be available for teachers to include in their regular health curriculum for the coming school year.
The program provides children with easy to understand facts about the food and drinks they consume - for example, a standard small can of soda contains 10 cubes worth of sugar, (1 cube is equivalent to 1 teaspoon) while a medium slushy has the equivalent of 24 sugar cubes.
Just imagine giving your child 24 teaspoons full of sugar - I don’t think most parents would do that, but then they willingly (but possibly unknowingly) let them drink a slushy or slurpie or whatever name those drinks go by at the local corner store.
Again, would you let your child sit and eat 10 teaspoons full of sugar - probably not - but when you let them have a can of soda that is what they are putting into their body.

Dr. Tom Warshawski, a local pediatrician and chairman of the non-profit Childhood Obesity Foundation said that “children should not have soft drinks at all.”
“In some ways,” Warshawski says, “soft drinks are more insidious than junk food such as potato chips because they don’t make you feel full and you end up consuming more.”
Studies show that 50% of Canadian adolescents drink soft drinks on a daily basis but there are no current studies showing how often or how many of the giant slushy’s are being consumed on a daily basis but hang around your local 7-11 and see the size of these containers that some of these kids are drinking and you might just end up like me, shaking your head and feeling like we are killing our kids slowly with sweetness.

I knew that almonds, walnuts and even pistachios were great “health’ foods, but I had no idea just how great until just recently.
I have written about the benefits of eating a handful of almonds and/or walnuts as a between meal snack, which included helping you get your daily requirement of certain vitamins and minerals as well as being great sources of helpful oils and even protein, but now I find out that they can actually help fight off cancer.
Wow!
As a nut lover this is great news, it’s similar to an ice cream lover finding out that eating a pint of Ben & Jerry’s can help you to lose weight. (My wife says,” if only.”)
It seems that almonds, walnuts and even pistachios contain a potent substance named inositol pentakisphosphate, which is easier to digest than to say, but this substance works like crazy to help protect you from certain forms of cancer.
Another great benefit from these three variations of the nut family is that a small handful about half an hour before dinner can help keep your appetite in check and help you not to eat too much. Talk about a triple threat.
So when you are figuring out your daily diet make sure to include a handful (not too many as they are a high calorie food) I would say about 15 to 18 of the little devils as a must have.
For those alergic to nuts there are ways for you to get similar benefits.
The same compound found in nuts is also found in wheat bran and most legumes. Whole grains such as quinoa (pronounced “keen-wa”) kasha, millet, chia and spelt go a long way towards reducing the risk of cancer of the small intestine. With our high meat diets here in North America adding some whole grains like these is definitely a must.
So now you know that there are some actual benefits to being just a little bit nutty.

It took a while but we have finally done it!

My wife Judi (bodyspace: judimax) and I have sold our house and have bought a truck and 5^th wheel trailer and we are going to be hitting the road within the next month. We intend to live in our 5^th wheel full time for the next 3 years at least and travel across North America.
While doing this we intend to stop at as many gyms as we possibly can and at as many churches that wish to have us speak about our journey and our fitness program called “Faith & Fitness…the first step.”

 We are very excited and hope to meet many bodybuilding.com members as we travel from town to town and city to city as we continue our journey from state to state and from province to province.

 If you would like to get together at your favorite gym send us an email and we will try to schedule and arrange a workout.

 We would enjoy nothing more than getting the opportunity to say hello and discuss bodybuilding and the lifestyle that goes with it.
I look forward to hearing from as many of you folks as possible and getting in as many workouts as possible.

I have started and am continuing to run a program at my local church called “Faith and Fitness,” where along with my wife (Bodyspace: judimax) we work to help educate people on what is needed to lose weight and to achieve a higher degree of fitness so that they can enjoy a much better quality of life, especially as they get older. We teach about of the need for proper nutrition and what and how it pertains to a achieving and maintaining a healthy body, weightlifting and the positive effects for both men and women and about cardio and how aerobic exercise helps and should be done.

In the course we also talk about what the bible has to say regarding our health and fitness, and where in the bible to find those teachings and how they are still applicable even in these modern times. Hence the name, “Faith and Fitness.”

The program has been receiving amazing reviews not only by the participants, but also by the Senior Pastor who has sat in on a number of the sessions. These reviews have lead people to ask us to put the entire course on DVD along with the accompanying workbooks, so that they can be implemented in and by as many churches and organizations that wish to employ the course themselves.

Both my wife and myself feel truly honoured as well as being incredibly humbled that our course has been received so well and that so many people of all age groups, which run the gamut from 16 to 82, have seen fit to attend the course and to offer up such positive and at times emotionally stirring reviews.

Our church has honoured us by including Faith and Fitness as part of their non-profit foundation (The Trinity Foundation,) which means that now when people donate to help us further this cause they can and will receive a charitable contribution, tax-deductible receipt, which we feel will go along way toward helping us take this program to as many churches and organizations as possible, hopefully right across North America. There will of course need to be funds raised, but the amount is not staggering and we believe that with the Lord’s help we will be able to raise enough to be able to start moving forward, hopefully before the end of the summer.

Ever since loosing my leg, coming back from the brink of suicide and finding renewed life through the help of the Lord I have been searching for a way to help others, especially folks who like me have been frustrated, even to the point of deep and dark depression at not being able to lose weight and get into better shape and I am incredibly excited that I may now have found a way to assist them in that endeavour.

I am writing this blog to share my excitement with my Bodybuilding.com friends because without Bodybuilding.com and a lot of the support I received through my bodyspace I would not have had the courage to even try, let along to go forward with this program.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this program and any suggestions you might have will be warmly welcomed.

Thank you Bodybuilding.com folks.

Since I first wrote this I have been contacted by a few Bodybuilding.com members who said that just in case people wanted to support the Faith and Fitness program, I should at least put up where they can send their donations.
I have included the address of my church and the name of the foundation and
I thank everyone for his or her wonderful support and may the Lord bless you all.
 
 
Mailing Address:
 
Trinity Foundation
c/o Trinity Baptist Church
1905 Springfield Road
Kelowna, BC, Canada
V1Y 7V7

 
Make cheques or money orders out to:
 
Trinity Foundation
Re: The Faith and Fitness Program

 Isn’t it interesting that in this day and age with so much emphasis on having, getting or keeping a smaller amount of bodyfat on our bodies and us trying to provide nutritious foods for our families that manufacturers are still trying and trick us into buying their less than nutritious products.
For example, we know that we should be looking to purchase 100% whole grain products and while we are seeing a plethora of labels bearing the words whole grains we in fact are not being told the 100 per cent whole truth. Many of these labels do not give you an accurate picture of what is inside and the product that they market to appear to be good for us as far as the label says might in fact have all the nutrition of floor sweepings.
Most of us know that we want whole grains because they include the bran and the germ of the grain, which have more nutrients than the endosperm (that is the real name, I didn’t make it up), which is what you get with refined or the especially interesting, “enriched” grains. Grains made with the bran and the germ are absorbed much more slowly by the body than foods made with enriched or bleached flour, and that helps keep your glucose and insulin levels lower and you feeling full longer. The experts say that a diet rich in whole grains may even help keep you free from cardiovascular disease, metabolic syndrome and even gun disease.
But because it may cost more to produce products made with 100 per cent whole grains, and because most companies care more about their bottom line than the size and health of your bottom, so they find interesting ways to trick you into believing you are getting something that is healthy and good for you.
I have found a few marketing gems and fake label words that you should watch out for:
Made with whole grains: This particular product may have just a pinch of whole grains, but unless it says it’s 100 per cent, you are getting fooled.
Multigrain: This says nothing about whether the grains are whole or refined. Even if they include 38 different grains, they will not do you much good if they are all refined.
Whole grain: If the label does not say “100 per cent whole grain,” it may contain many different grain blends. Warning words to see paired with the word “flour”; enriched, bleached, unbleached, semolina, durum and rice.
What the label should say: “100 per cent whole grain” or “100 per cent whole wheat”.
Anything less than 100 per cent means that you are getting pranked.

Think about it. If you are doing anything to build your muscles, what are you? 

A bodybuilder. 

If you are a woman who just wants to tone up her arms a little bit, you are a bodybuilder. 

If you want to get healthier as well as stronger by lifting weights or even through another form of exercise, you are a bodybuilder. 

Bodybuilding is about changing for the better, not just growing enormous muscles. 

Joe Weider 

Flex Magazine May 2008

I have been asked to put together something for those people who are just starting out and who may have never been inside of a gym in their life or who are not familiar with fitness and fitness facilities. I hope that this can help clear up some of the confusion that is causing trouble for a large number of people. Also remember, these are my personal suggestions and only how I see things.
First of all no matter if you are a male or female your fitness program should consist of a great nutrition program (which I have addressed elsewhere in my blogs) and then both weightlifting and cardio. I suggest for your weightlifting and cardio needs to choose a gym. All too often people with the best of intentions spend a lot of hard earned money on outfitting their basement or garage with very expensive weightlifting and cardio equipment only to lose their desire and have to sell the equipment at a huge loss. To start out the best investment can be a 3 to 6 month membership at your closest gym or fitness facility. Later on, once you have determined how far you wish to take your fitness journey you can choose to outfit your home for all of your needs. If you are going to workout at home then make sure that you have a sufficient range of dumbbells and barbell weights so that you will be able to challenge yourself as well as a cardio machine that will allow you to pursue a high intensity cardio workout, otherwise you may not be able to achieve the results you are looking for.
Ladies, do not worry that if you lift weights that you will get really big like the very muscular ladies you see in magazines and websites, mainly because almost every one of these ladies have injected a male hormone (steroid) to allow themselves to get huge male-like muscles and no matter how much weight you lift or for how long, unless you inject male hormones (testosterone) you will not get as big as a man. The most that will happen to you is that you will achieve a very nicely defined and shapely physique that will be the envy of all of your girlfriends and more than a few of their husbands.
Step one; find and decide on a fitness program that addresses all of your fitness needs. If you are looking just to lose a bit of bodyfat and tone up it will do you no good to follow a program designed for a full time professional bodybuilder, which is what you will find in most of the big name fitness magazines. You are just starting out and need to find a program that takes that into consideration as well as your nutritional, weightlifting and cardio needs. For me it was the Body for Life program. I was grossly overweight and needed to learn what and how to eat so that I could lose weight as well as making sure that I was getting enough nutrients so that I could stay strong enough to finish my weightlifting and cardio sessions. Body for Life not only did that but it was free. They give you all that you need to know to effect a complete body transformation. I honestly owe it all to my wife (bodyspace: judimax) for finding the program and getting me to follow it. She herself made a great transformation and we both have nothing but great things to say about it. Body for Life wants you to buy their supplements of course, as that is how they make their money, but either way whether you buy any, all or even none, they still want you to get into good shape and give out their program for nothing. Speaking of supplements, they are not magic pills. They are to be added to your diet for supplementation to what they hope is an already nutritious food intake. Too many people spend money on highly advertised, supposed wonder pills only to later realize that it is they that have to do the work. The pills don’t lift the weights or magically make bodyfat disappear. There are good ones out there but you need to know that unless you do the hard work and put in what I call “sweat equity,” no amount of supplements will make you look like one of the magazine models, male or female, that you admire.
Step two; show up at the gym wearing workout attire, prepared to work out and carrying both a water bottle and a fitness journal. I recommend a water bottle because you need to drink lots of water and it is always good to know just how much you are using while you are working out. Also, I personally think it is a big waste of time walking back and forth from where you are working out to the water cooler for a couple of sips here and there between sets. A workout journal will help you keep track of your routines; the weights you are lifting and let you know if you are progressing or staying plateaued, or especially if you are setting any personal bests. How else can you challenge yourself at each and every workout if you don’t know what weights you lifted last time?
Step three; plan your workouts before you reach the gym. This is another good reason to have your journal. Before you go to the gym you should decide what body parts you are working, what routine you are going to do and what exercises you are using on them. It is a huge waste of time walking into the gym and then deciding what exercises to do and then wandering around trying to decide what equipment to use. Plan first and then execute that plan. There is a saying that goes: If you fail to plan, then you plan to fail!
Step four, challenge yourself. This usually applies to women rather than men for reasons of male ego. Most men actually try and use too much weight when lifting resulting in poor form and hence, poor gains. With men it is hard, but the best thing that we as males can do is to leave our egos outside the gym door and only use weights that we can control while utilizing strict form. Women on the other hand tend to use too light of weights, maybe because they don’t want to get big muscles, but hopefully only because they have yet to be shown how to and the benefits of using progressively heavier weights.
By challenging yourself, I like to use the term “sweat equity,” I mean working smart and hard and trying to better the amount you previously lifted at each and every workout, but only by using the strictest of form. For example, if you were able to do 10 reps with 5-pound dumbbells when doing a biceps curls then the next time try and do 10 reps with 6 or 7 or even more pounds. When you can do 10 reps with whatever weight on any exercise it is time to try and increase the weight. By increasing the weight you may only be able to do 8 reps using strict form, but 8 hard reps will be better for you than 10 easy ones with a lighter weight. If you want to see results you need to push yourself out of your comfort zone.
Step five; make the most of your time. Don’t make each workout a marathon session. I like to remember the saying: “Don’t measure busywork. Don’t measure activity. Measure accomplishment. It doesn’t matter what people do, as much as it matters what they get done.”
If you are just beginning the weightlifting portion of your workouts should take no more than 45 to 60 minutes. That means you should be doing one set of the exercise, resting for about 60 to 90 seconds and then going right into doing another set and doing this until you are finished with that exercise and are moving on to your next machine or sets of weights. The gym during workouts is no place for socializing. Do your work and then once you are finished you can turn your attention to meeting other like-minded people. All too often a workout can be ruined when you become engaged in a conversation that stops you from maintaining the pace you have set. More than once I have lost my intensity and actually cooled off when approached by people who wanted to either talk about what I was doing, or who were more interested in socializing than working out. It took me a while to learn how to politely say that I needed to keep pushing or I would lose the benefits of this workout and if they would like, I would meet them after my workout was finished. It may be a hard thing to learn how to do (it was for me) but in reality you are at the gym to better yourself and to reach a goal and people should respect that. This is actually “all about you!”
Step six; cardio. Only once you have finished the weightlifting portion of your workout should you do cardio. This has been a controversial subject, whether to do cardio before or after lifting weights. The Japanese (leave it to the Japanese) found that you actually burn more calories and bodyfat by doing cardio after lifting weights than you do by doing it before. Also, and this makes good sense, If you push yourself hard doing a high intensity cardio workout then you will have less strength left to use for your weightlifting. But, if you push yourself hard lifting weights you will still have enough energy left to do a high intensity cardio workout.
I suggest in the beginning to lift weights for 45 to 60 minutes and then immediately follow that with a 20-minute high intensity cardio routine. The reason for this is so that you get to have every other day off. You can lift and do cardio all in one 65 to 80 minute workout three times a week and still have every other day for recovery. Or if you have lots of time I suggest lifting one day and then doing your cardio the next day. Whatever works best for your schedule.
One of the best forms of cardio for fat burning is what is called the high intensity routine.
Using whatever machine you choose, which can be among others, a recumbent or stand up bicycle, elliptical or stairmaster machine or treadmill and in doing so I suggest choosing a nice walking pace on the speed scale, somewhere around 2 to 2.5 miles per hour depending on your aerobic capacity, you can adjust according to your own personal abilities, and then first warming up at a lower intensity and incline level say a level 3 (on a 15 incline level machine) for the first 2 minutes then move the setting up to level 4 for the next 2 minutes. Then do level 5 for 1 minute, level 6 for 1 minute, level 7 for 1 minute, level 8 for 1 minute. Level 9 for 1 minute. Then lower the level back to level 5 for 1 minute, level 6 for 1 minute, level 7 for 1 minute and level 8, 9 & 10 for 1 minute each. Lower back to level 8 for 1 minute, then 9 for 1, 10 for 1, followed by a cool down at level 3 of 2 minutes.
Remember that this is my suggested beginner’s cardio routine and as you progress you can continue to make it more challenging by upping the levels, the time and even the speed. I suggest not running but always maintaining a brisk walking pace. Even with my artificial leg I can get bursts at time in the 3.5 to 3.7 miles per hour range but usually I try and keep it to around 2.8 to 3.0 mph and vary the inclines.
Step seven; rest! Too many people decide to get fit and then go all out and hit the gym every single day until one day they just are too sore and too tired to go anymore and they end up quitting. Every person no matter whether they are just starting or are the most experienced of fitness athletes needs time to rest and recover from the stresses and strains they have subjected their bodies to. I suggest in the beginning a one-day on followed by a one-day off program until you have become accustomed to the routine and choose to change it, which should happen approximately every 3 months. Depending on your schedule you can do a Monday-Wednesday-Friday program and still have the weekend to enjoy your family.

 If I have missed anything (which I am sure I have) or if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to get in touch with me as I would like nothing more than to see you achieve your fitness goals and I would be honored to provide whatever information that I can.

One of the most serious, albeit silent epidemics we face is that of obesity. It plagues youth, adolescents and adults alike. We now have the fattest society of people to ever inhabit North America.
Despite countless books, movies and television programs and the efforts of experts the scale is still steadily moving upwards. Millions have tried dieting to lose their excess weight only to fail and with each failure comes disappointment, discouragement and even heartbreak. They turn from each new and highly touted “miracle” diet or pill in desperate hopes that this might be the one. The one that makes the fat go away.
In reality the solution is not really that difficult. It comes down to energy in versus energy out. You need to think of food and eating as energy in and if energy going into your body equals the same amount of energy that your body is putting out then you probably should and would maintain the weight you are now at. If the amount of energy going in is less than the amount of energy going out you will lose both fat and weight.
Here are a number of suggestions that will help you lose weight.
1)     Food: you should try eating whole foods and stay away from the fattening processed foods. A good rule of thumb (yes there are exceptions) is that anything in a box it is probably pre-packaged and processed and not the most optimal of food value. Taking these things out of your diet still leaves you with a multitude of choices such as meats, vegetables, fruit and nuts.
2)     Have a protein source with each meal. Your body works harder to process protein than it does with sugars or fats. Your body looks at protein differently than a lot of other things and does not store it as fat (unless you are eating an enormous amount of protein and not doing anything). Protein is the main building block of lean muscle.
3)     Eat 5 to 6 small meals per day. Instead of eating the 3 meals we have all previously been taught to eat we now should be having more and smaller meals. This serves to actually rev up your metabolism and the food you put into your body will not be stored as fat. Five to six small, high protein, low carb and low fat meals will keep you from the ups and downs of hunger pains and energy crashes during your day.
4)     Stay away from white starches. These include things like white pasta, white bread (actually any bread that is not made with a whole grain), white rice (brown is the rice of choice) and of course pastries. All of these products will probably be turned into fat, as these carbohydrates are going to be too much for your body to burn efficiently and your body will find a place to store them in the form of fat.
5)     Don’t use fat burning or diet pills. The solution is not in a bottle in the form of a magic pill. Other than making the manufacturers of them countless millions of dollars they are not going to do what you want, in fact many times by taking them your body will actually rebound on you and eventually slow down your metabolic rate. Most of these diet pills contain some form or another of caffeine, some less than a cup of espresso, and can lead to depression and many other undesirable side effects. While they may have a place later when you are much farther along on your fitness journey or are working towards a competition, I do not believe they have a place at the beginning and especially not until you have established a strong work ethic and have put in an appropriate amount of sweat equity.
6)     Exercise. Now that I said that the solution was not a fat burning pill I feel I better tell you what the best solution is and that is exercise. Each of us needs to lift weights and do cardio if we want to lose fat and look good. Lifting weights provides a multitude of positive effects for all of us, young and old, men and women. Things like better bone density, ease of mobility and added strength are just a few of the side effects of lifting weights. By doing cardio you are able to increase your lung and heart strength which will help you walk farther and do more before you run short of or out of breath. The best weightlifting sessions usually last close to an hour and cardio should consist of at least 20 minutes of continuous exertion.
I could have included such other topics such as getting enough “quality” sleep, drinking enough water, setting realistic goals as well as giving yourself at least 6 weeks for your weight loss program to show results, but I wanted to give you just a few of the things that worked for me and for my wife (bodyspace: judimax). I want you to achieve your weight loss and body transformation goals, get fit and be proud and happy with your body and I especially wanted to pass on some of the things I learned through trial and error.
I hope that you found something useful here and if you wish to contact me feel free because there is nothing I like better than to talk with people who wish to achieve their own body transformation and are embracing fitness.
Good luck.
Captain Ahab