Jumbo Rider’s BodyBlog

Having had talk with gbone74 after seeing his success has made me look a little closer at the calories that I am consuming.  I have had slow and steady success by simply eating every three hours without carbs, other than vegetables.  But I would like to lose more than 2 pounds a week, and at 373 pounds that should be attainable.

Gbone74 is not watching the types of foods he is eating, but only eats 1800 calories a day.  My plan is to watch what I eat and eat on average 1800 calories a day.  Why on average?  Days that I cardio but don’t lift will be at 1800.  Days that I lift will be at 2200, and days that I do nothing will be at 1400 calories a day.

The change in my diet was not that drastic.  I eat less meat and have cut way down on the nuts that I eat.  Other than that it is simply a measuring exercise.

Speaking of exercise, I am currently walking 30 minutes everyday on the treadmill at 2.6 mph.  That is weak, but it taxes me at the fittness level I am at today.  My goal is to work up to 1 hour 5 days a week at 3.5 - 4.0 mph while adding incline.  That is a month or so in my future.

I plan on lifting 3 days a week using my powerlifting bands and bodyweight exercises.

So, I will give this a try for my 12 weeks and see how it turns out.  If I don’t lose much faster I will go back to eating the way I did prior to the calorie counting change.  If I do lose much faster then I know that I am doing the right thing.

After I eat crap I get huge cravings.   It takes a few days of eating clean to not crave the pizza etc.   Today I finally feel normal.  What causes these cravings?  I really am not sure.

I know that gluten messes with me.  Bread kicks my butt.  Overly sweet items also seem to create a craving in me.  Diet soda/cool-aid and the like may have no calories but they seem to stimulate my cravings.  Back to water and lightly sweetened green tea.

Watching TV coupled with not working out builds my cravings.  You can only see so many Domino’s commercials before giving into the temptation.  So I need to stay busy in the house and not vegetate.

This Sunday, April 20th, begins the first Discipline Warrior 12 week contest.  Unlike other contests that judge physique or weight-loss, this contest gauges your tenacity, your discipline.  This leaves the contest open to those very fit and unfit.

How does this contest work?

Each week you will judge your own effort in two categories,  workout and diet.  You will award your self 0-3 points in each of these categories dependent on performance.

3 = 100% on point

2 = Pretty good but could have been better

1 = Well I tried but….

0 = Complete wipe out..

It is completely at your discretion what constitutes the a 3 week or a 0 week.

Total the points for the two categories each Sunday and put a comment on my bodyspace and I will update scores in a page on my bodyblog that you can link to if you wish.

If you would like to participate just send me a PM or leave a comment.

Rewards?  Bragging rights.

Who is participating?

BLSMITH

Jumbo Rider

There never seems to be a morning that I go into the freezer at work to find a full bucket of ice.  It is a small peeve but why not take the few minutes to crack the ice and fill the trays?  Then I felt self-righteous indignation as I thought about my morning that was already behind by several hours worth of work.  "Why should I fill the ice bucket?", I mumbled under my breath.  Then it hit me…

We live in an age where we have no moments, no seconds.  The Western society is not so much pound foolish and penny wise but hours foolish and moments wise. It is not a matter of courtesy but a feeling that we have no time to do the simple things in life.  Cracking the ice and filling the trays took me less than 2 minutes.  I sit here typing this taking 5 minutes.

Being in such a rush ends up costing me more time in the long run.  If I did not crack the ice and refill the trays I might not have ice available later in the day.  That could mean a walk to another building.   More time lost.   It could also mean that I forgo the walk and do without cold water leading to dehydration.  You don’t even want to know where the trouble not putting the toilet paper on the empty spool or putting the toilet seat can lead. Do you know how much time divorce court can waste?

The same is true of working out, cooking your own food, and logging your intake.  We as a nation are much too busy for that.  Heck, you can even by frozen peanut butter & jelly sandwiches now to save time.  Fast food can save 10-20 minutes off of your day.  An hour for working out?  How much time does heart bypass surgery cost you?  How much time does leg amputation due to diabetes cost you.

Yeah, we are all moment wise and hours/days/months/years/life-time foolish.

I have always tried to use the lessons “Under the Bar” to teach many of the same lessons in life. Many of these lessons we miss and forget about. It is not that we do not know them we just get caught up in all the other stuff.

Last week after having my bodyweight stuck for more than 6 weeks (dropping Kcals by close to 1000 per day, plus adding in cardio) I relearned a very valuable lesson.

There was NO reason why my weight should not have dropped. Since day one my Kcals have dropped from 10,000 all the way to 3500. My weight dropped during the first phases from 297 to 270 and then held on regardless of what we tried to do with my diet. I even changed my training program twice. The one thing I forgot to change was my internal belief systems.

You may think this is some crazy made up crap but it is what it is.

My weight got stuck exactly where knew it would when the process started. My bodyfat also stopped right where I knew it would get tuff.

My internal beliefs were set to stop at 270 and was never changed. This was because while I knew where I wanted to go (8%) I lost sight of what was going on right in front of me.

After six weeks of this BS I changed how I thought about the weight (I convinced myself that this was a mental game and changed the way I began thinking about it).

Today I weighed in at 264 (JB’s note: down 6lbs in 6 days).

Now, I do not see this as a 6 pound drop over the past 6 days but a 6 pound drop over the past 6 weeks.

I just heard a great story about an egg.

If you look at a fertile egg and watch it over time you will not see anything happen. This goes on day in and day out. You expect to see something, anything, but nothing changes. Then one day the egg begins to shake and a chic pops out. While the egg sat idle things were changing under the surface.

We all spend too much time looking at the outside of the egg when we should stop and think about what is going on inside.

We all get frustrated with lack of progress, slow strength gains, injuries, and the 100 other things that never come as fast as we like.

Many times busting out of these slumps does not take external changes (special exercises, new diet parameters, supplements, programs, money) but how you are internally programed.

What internal beliefs do you need to change?

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This is an excerpt from Dave’s Blog at: http://asp.elitefts.com/qa/default.a…=43454&tid=124

A few posts back I wrote about the 350 barrier and that I felt my body stalling.  How can I describe that or explain how I ‘felt’ my body resisting weight loss?  I really can’t, but I know it is true.

My nutrition plan has been solidly in place since November 2007.  Prior to November I had been simply watching caloric intake.  Things that I now have a handle on that was foreign to me just a year ago:

1. I know when my body is thirsty.
2. I know when my body is in need of specific nutrients
3. I know when my body is fatigued and needs rest
4. I know when I have pushed too far during exercise
5. I know when I need to get activity in or backslide

Each of points above deals with physiological>unconscious>conscious communication.  I can honestly say a couple of months ago this communication was completely broken.  Worse, the communication was giving wrong messages.

The wrong messages came from a bunch of causes.  My blood glucose was severely out of whack.  High blood glucose would make me tired and weak, and low blood glucose would make me crabby, hungry, and weak.  I would rarely be at a good blood glucose level. The blood glucose roller coaster was a wild ride that left me literally sick, tired, weak, and ever getting fatter.

Another wrong message bearer was chemically induced by what I was drinking.  It was normal to pound down 2-3 2 liters of diet Pepsi in a day.  The Pepsi had a double whammy of caffeine and Aspartame. The caffeine made me edgy and placed me in a foggy state of non-sleep.  The Aspartame messed with my blood glucose and there are multiple studies showing that Aspartame inhibits weight loss and affects mood.  Drinking all day long you would think that I wouldn’t be thirsty, but I was in a state of waterlogged dehydration.  The caffeine and salt in Pepsi stole any hydration from the drink that may have been available.  That dehydration was mistaken for hunger.  That hunger was never satisfied by eating because I really wasn’t hungry but thirsty.  This led to binge sessions, which led to more weight, which led to more depression, which screwed with my blood chemistry making the whole matter even worse.

Chemicals in the form of anti-depressants mess with the bodies communication system in a big way.  The fatter you get the more your dopamine receptors are reduced.  Dopamine of course is the ‘feel good’ chemical your brain makes when stimulated by certain activities like feeling full.  Dopamine receptors are the things that take in the dopamine to give you that good feel.  Scientists are not sure why the receptors die but they postulate that it is caused by an overabundance of dopamine being released with all of the dopamine in the system the body tries to gain equilibrium by reducing the receptors.  The exact same effect is seen in drug addicts.  The lack of receptors of course means that the body seeks an ever increasing amount of dopamine creating stimulants, more food, increasing the cycle.  The same thing may be happening with serotonin and the common anti-depressants are SRI’s which increase serotonin levels.  Normally serotonin leads to a decrease in appetite but  people taking SRI’s  are shown to have a huge problem with weight  gain and  trouble with weight loss.

Every item I have mentioned leads to increase weight and a decrease in energy.  This makes exercise very difficult.  It is like a 5 pack a day smoker trying to run wind sprints.  A lack of exercise makes it harder for the body to lose weight but also creates a messaging problem in the brain.  Remember those dopamine receptors?  Guess what?  Those receptors are rebuilt by exercise!  Rebuilding those receptors in a big key to getting the body chemistry in line, but if you have no energy and weight too much to exercise at a level sufficient to create change you will never replace the dead receptors.

The lack of solid nutrition also sends wrong messages in your body/brain.  If the body does not get the nutrients it needs it craves more.  With my body out of whack that craving is seen as simply being hungry.  The problem is that if my body needs vitamins from a vegetable carbohydrate source but I give it a tub of Rocky Road that body will scream that it is not satisfied and wants more.  This is true even when you feel full to the point of sickness because of the volume eaten.

Another problem we find is that we through a ton of chemicals in our body trying to "figure" out a way to break the cycle.  This can be quality fat burners or protein powders that work well when all things are equal but only increase  the miscommunication going on in the system.  Think of a traffic light that is working properly.  A fat burner may be like making the green light stay on a bit longer to allow more traffic through.  If that light was flashing red and that same fat burner was used you would have a flashing red light and a solid green light on at the same time.  What a mess right?

All of this messed up chemistry produces a body that is quick to get sick.  The immune system is confused at best and failed at worst.  I can not tell you how often I was sick or how bad my allergies were prior to eating a sound, nutritional diet.  Being sick led to me taking more chemicals, drugs, which further confused my body’s chemistry.

In my next post I will begin to tell you how and why I was able to correct my body’s communication and why I think people who lose a great deal of weight wind up in the same predicament in a few years in my next post.

Ok guys and dolls..oh and SCT,

I have been in a bit of a funk lately.  My fellow contestants all look to be so amazingly strong in their workout videos.  This is especially true compared to mine.   I know, I know.  Don’t compare myself with others…we are all in our own  place and blah blah blah.  The problem is that my mind remembers another me.

It seems such a long time ago and again just yesterday that I was a hard charger.  Jumping out of helicopters and moving through forced marches.  Never an athlete really, but strong and capable.  These legs and lungs would take me anywhere I wanted to go.  Now I am getting my but kicked by rubber bands.   — Yes, I know I am doing the best thing for my body now and that I need to live in the NOW.  But I think I understand life a bit more than I did when I was kicking ass instead of having my ass kicked.

So in the now I am not that hard charger.  In the now I am burdened with 150 extra pounds, older, and weaker.  That is why I am working to get rid of the pounds and fighting those damn rubber bands until they no longer kick my ass and once that happens I will ask Coach for a new routine to kick my ass some more.  Then I realize that I am a hard charger in a different way.  A hard charger of change and improvement.  When do you cross the finish line?  When do you stop seeking improvement?  If you are worth anything you never stop until your dead and gone!

So look at me and look at my pictures.  You see a guy that is terribly out of shape and weak by comparison to others.  You also see a guy who is in charge and charging.  You see a man that has had enough.  You see a man living.

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Today I had a meeting with a remarkable woman who happens to be wheelchair bound.  She too remembers the woman she was before, a woman standing on two legs.  Hell, she has far more right to whine about not being who she was before than I but you will never hear a complaint from her.  Do you know why?  Because she is a hard charger even though she is in a chair.  She is not the chair, but she uses that chair to live life.  She is who she is just like I am who I am.  There is a difference though….

I have an opportunity to change my situation.  It takes time and it takes work, but it will happen.  That lady would be thrilled to have 15% mobility back in her legs with the promise of full restoration within 2 years.   That is where I am and the promise I have.  I have lost 15% of the weight I am shooting to lose and there is no way I will not lose this weight and get back to full strength in 2 years.  So forgive me for whining and forgive me for being impatient.  Finally, thank you Denise.

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I am a jokester.  I have always been a jokester.  When you get to a certain point of obesity you try to joke about your plight before others can get the first crack at you.  Often I would lie to myself saying, "I am just putting people at ease."  Nothing could be further from the truth.  What I was doing was trying to take the sting out of their future taunts by smacking myself numb first.  You know what?  That is a stupid strategy.

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What did Jumbo Eat and Supplement?

(more…)

Being morbidly obese brings with it many medical conditions that you don’t really want your body to endure. One of these conditions is type II diabetes. I found out that I had type II diabetes a few years ago when I went in to the hospital for a hernia surgery. My fasting blood glucose was pushing 850 and the docs were worried that I may be looking at diabetic shock. Now I didn’t feel any worse than normal but they kept me in the hospital for a few days to get my blood glucose levels down before they operated on my hernia.

After the surgery I really did nothing about my diabetes. It was not like I was missing a leg and while I felt bad I always felt that way so I didn’t really notice it affecting me. My wonderful doctor scolded me a year and a half ago when my A1C came back a 9.9. Normal for an A1C is 4-6 and they try to keep diabetics under 7. Obviously I was in trouble.

Guess what? I still took no action to get my blood glucose under control. Binging, sugar, past, you name it I ate it. Exercise was getting up from the couch to go to the john and wiping my butt. Phew, what a work out. Then life changed and I began to live again. That switch in my mind went off. I didn’t have to die early and there was a reason to live fully.

Last January my A1C was 9.6. This is the beginning of my focus on health. I was taking baby steps. Parking the car a bit further out. Ordering a bicycle that I could barely ride around the block. In April my A1C was down to 7.6. That kept the Doc from spanking me, but she was not yet pleased with me.

Over the summer I lost weight to below where I am today but gained it all back plus a few added pieces of luggage I apparently had hidden. Even with the weight I was still active. Well I was active for me, it’s all relative after all.

November I seriously took control of my nutrition and started following JB’s ‘One size fits all’ plan. I refined that plan a bit by eliminating grains from my diet all together. I just got off the phone with my Doc and I have never heard her so giddy. Normally my A1C report is given to me by a nurse from a recording, but this was my doctor’s voice.

6.3 with an early morning fasting BG of 135.  This is great news and the news will only get better.

Alright guys and gals I want you to assess your veggie intake.  Go on…..I will wait.

Ok, it is just about 1 pm my time.  I have had 3 feedings with veggies at each of those feedings.  I have had 6 - 8 cups of veggies so far today and I will double that before I go to bed.  The dressing for the salad you see in the picture here is simply oil + balsamic vinegar + a bit of honey and some seasoning.  I am eating a great variety of vegetables.

Why am I preaching about veggies today?  Americans generally do not eat veggies.  Many think the limp piece of lettuce on their fast food burger equals a veggie serving.  Heck, before changing my ways I was right there with you.  An iceberg lettuce salad maybe 3 times a week was all the veggie I would eat unless I count the tomato sauce on my pizza. Eating veggies is very important, especially for those needing to lose weight.

Nothing beats real food for nutrifying (yeah I made that up) our body and calorie for calorie there is no whole food more nutrient rich than our veggies.  Vegetables fill us up with bulk and not calories.  Vegetables provide roughage and water.  There is a place for pill form supplements but they are to ’supplement’ healthy eating and not replace healthy eating.

It is my firm belief that healthy eating involves protein plus veggies every 3 hours.  Maybe in extreme short term fasting you would want to go without, but I can never see that happening for me.  I know of nobody getting fat from eating green leafy vegetables.

Changing the Rules of Good Nutrition

by Dr John M Berardi, CSCS

What are the rules of good nutrition? What types of things must you absolutely do to succeed - and what types of things must you avoid?

Seriously, take a moment and think about it.

What rules do you think you’ll need to follow if you want to eat in a healthy way -; way that will improve the way your body looks and the way it feels.

Come up with that list in your mind right now.

Now that you’ve considered these rules, I want you to take a second and think about your list. Specifically, think about where you learned these rules.

Certainly your rules have been influenced by how you were raised, no? Certainly they’ve been influenced by your experiences dining with friends and relatives -\ comfort foods, right? Of course, no set of nutrition rules is immune to media influences. Your rules have probably also been influenced by what you’ve heard others say - heck, every 3rd episode of Dr. Phil is about food and dieting. And, no doubt, your nutrition rules have probably been influenced by your own past attempts at changing your body - whether you’ve been successful or unsuccessful.

I could sit here all day and list potential nutritional influences. But I’ll stop here since there are probably hundreds of ‘em and to enumerate them all would bore your socks off.

At this junction, I’d just like to go ahead and make my point. And the point is this - very few of your “Good Nutrition Rules” have been influenced by those who know anything about good nutrition - let alone about long-term success and about what it really means to eat in a healthy way! And worse yet, most of those rules have been hammered home without you even knowing it!

It’s time to change the rules.

The Triple S Criterion

Now I’ll admit it. Changing the rules - just like changing your habits - is difficult. Not only does it take a desire to change - “want to” - but it takes a strategy for change - “how to”.

The “want to” is all your own. But the “how to” is what I do best. I’ve committed my career to helping people do just this - to change their rules and change their habits - and have gotten pretty good at it. In changing these rules and habits, everything changes - the way clients eat, the way they sleep, they way they look, the way they feel when they wake up in the morning, and they way they perform in day-to-day activities or during athletic events.

Today, I’m going to teach you a good part of that system - a system based on my Triple S Criterion.

What’s the Triple S Criterion? Well, it represents a three step way of evaluating a strategy for its usefulness.

Step 1 - Simplicity:
Are the rules easy to follow?
Step 2 - Science
Are the rules based on sound scientific principles?
Step 3 - Success
Have the rules produced success in past clients?

Using this criterion, the systems developed for my clients always produce a positive result.

Think again about your nutritional rules - rules that you might be quite attached to. Which criterion did you use when determining your rules? Are your rules based on Simplicity, Science, and Success? Have your rules produced the desired effect - a lean, healthy body that you’re able to maintain?

If not, perhaps they could use a re-evaluation.

Dr. Berardi’s Good Nutrition Rules

Below, I’d like to present my 10 Good Nutrition Rules, rules based on the Triple S Criterion above. In doing so, I hope to accomplish 2 goals.

• First, I want to help you rethink your whole nutrition      approach - providing you with a new set of nutrition rules and habits - a      set that swiftly moves you in the direction of your goals.
• Secondly, I want to show specifically how the recipes,      cooking tips, and strategies can integrate together to represent a      complete success system, fully integrated into the basic habits of good      nutrition.

So here are the 10 rules:

1. Eat every 2-3 hours - no matter what.
   Are you doing this - no matter what? Now, you don’t need to eat a full      meal every 2-3 hours but you do need to eat 6-8 meals and snacks that conform      to the other rules below.
2. Ingest complete, lean protein each time you eat.
   Are you eating something this is an animal or comes from an animal - every      time you feed yourself? If not, make the change. Note: If you’re a      vegetarian, this rule still applies - you need complete protein and need      to find non-animal sources.
3. Ingest vegetables every time you eat.
   That’s right, every time you eat (every 2-3 hours, right), in addition to      a complete, lean protein source, you need to eat some vegetables. You can      toss in a piece of fruit here and there as well. But don’t skip the      veggies.
4. If want to eat a carbohydrate that’s not a fruit or a      vegetable (this includes things like things rice, pasta, potatoes, etc),      you can - but you’ll need to save it until after you’ve exercised.
   Although these often heavily processed grains are dietary staples, heart      disease, diabetes and cancer are medical staples - there’s a relationship      between the two! To stop heading down the heart disease highway, reward      yourself for a good workout with a good carbohydrate meal right after      (your body best tolerates these carbohydrates after exercise). For the      rest of the day, eat your lean protein and a delicious selection of fruits      and veggies.
5. A good percentage of your diet must come from fat. Just      be sure it’s the right kind.
   There are 3 types of fat - saturated, monounsaturated, and      polyunsaturated. Eating all three kinds in a healthy balance can      dramatically improve your health and even help you lose fat.

Your saturated fat should come from your animal products and you can even toss in some butter or coconut oil for cooking. Your monounsaturated fat should come from mixed nuts, olives, and olive oil. And your polyunsaturated fat should from flaxseed oil, fish oil, and mixed nuts.

6. Ditch the calorie containing drinks (including fruit      juice).
   In fact, all of your drinks should come from non-calorie containing      beverages. Fruit juice, alcoholic drinks, and sodas - these are all to be      removed from your daily fare. Your absolute best choices are water and      green tea.
7. Focus on whole foods.
   Most of your dietary intake should come from whole foods. There are a few      times where supplement drinks and shakes are useful. But most of the time,      you’ll do best with whole, largely unprocessed foods.
8. Have 10% foods.
   I know you cringed at a few of the rules above - perhaps #6 in particular.      But here’s a bit of a reprieve. 10% foods are foods that don’t necessarily      follow the rules above - but foods you’re still allowed to eat (or drink)      10% of the time.

100% nutritional discipline is never required for optimal progress. The difference, in results, between 90% adherence to your nutrition program and 100% adherence is negligible.

Just make sure you do the math and determine what 10% of the time really means. For example, if you’re eating 6 meals per day for 7 days of the week - that’s 42 meals. 10% of 42 is about 4. Therefore you’re allowed to “break the rules” 4 meals each week.

9. Develop food preparation strategies.
   The hardest part about eating well is making sure you can follow the 8      rules above consistently. And this is where preparation comes in. You      might know what to eat, but if isn’t available, you’ll blow it when it’s      time for a meal.
10. Balance daily food choices with healthy variety.
    Let’s face it; during the week - when you’re busy - you’re not going to be      spending a ton of time whipping up gourmet meals. During these times      you’re going to need a set of tasty, easy to make foods that you can eat day      in and day out. However, once every day or a few times a week - you need      to eat something different - something unique.

So, what about calories, or macronutrient ratios, or any number of other things that I’ve covered in many other articles on my own web site and elsewhere? The short answer is that if you aren’t already practicing the above-mentioned habits, and by practicing them I mean putting them to use over 90% of the time (i.e., no more than 4 meals out of an average 42 meals per week violate any of those rules), everything else is pretty pointless.

Moreover, many people can achieve the health and the body composition they desire using the habits alone. No kidding! In fact, with some of my paying clients I spend the first few months just supervising their adherence to these rules - an effective but costly way to learn them.

If you’ve reached the 90% threshold, you may need a bit more individualization beyond the habits. If so, visit my web site. Many of these little tricks can be found in my many articles published there. But before looking for them, before assuming you’re ready for individualization; make sure you’ve truly mastered the habits. Then, while keeping the habits as the consistent foundation, tweak away.

For more great training and nutrition wisdom, check out our complete system, Precision Nutrition. Containing system manuals, gourmet cookbook, digital audio/video library, online membership, and more, Precision Nutrition will teach you everything you need to know — guaranteed.

And what’s more, your online access allows you to talk exercise and nutrition 24/7 with thousands of fellow members and the Precision Nutrition coaches. Find out more about Precision Nutrition.