Gut-Bustin’ 101

There’s gotta be something in the air this year. I don’t know what it is, but it sure ain’t smellin’ good to me. Either that or I just don’t know how to WALK properly.

You can probably tell this is coming: I broke a toe this morning. Little toe, right foot. *crack* right up against the corner of the couch. I wish I could say I was doing something exciting, like playing basketball, or saving someone’s life, but I was just walking in my socks. Remember when you were a little kid and used to get mad at things when you got hurt? If you bumped your head on a table you would hit the table in retaliation for the pain it caused you (or was I the only one!) Well, I beat the heck outta the couch this morning! I’m even tempted to post pictures of my TOE progress, but no,  I won’t scare you off with THAT nasty image.

So, thanks to my clumsiness I’ll have several weeks of "toe-recovery" putting the damper on my calf workouts. Could be worse though - I mean, I could’ve broken a RIB or something hahaha! (see my previous post). Hey - I got through the rib thing, this should be cake, right?

Off to stick my foot in some ice and party down.

So back in March (3/12/08), I cracked a rib. At the gym. Cuz I’m a dork. I was doing leg presses with only moderate weight, crankin out my last set, and decided on the last rep to tense up my abs and hold my breath as I pushed the weight up. No, I don’t know what I was thinking. Halfway up, *pop* goes the rib. I felt this "snap" in my left rib area and thought, "OK, that can’t be good." Got off the machine, twisted a bit, and the pain hit. Beautiful. Tried to do some ab work after that, but no WAY was that happening. Saw a doctor a few days later and he told me I had fractured a rib because I built up too much pressure in my chest when I held my breath and tensed up. And he threw in "Of course as we get OLDER things like this sometimes happen." Thanks Doc. Just give me my Geritol and send me home. OH - and he says that’ll be between 6-10 weeks of recovery, NO EXERCISE until I feel I can safely do one or two things without re-injuring myself.

Man, was I PISSED! After two days of self-bashing, I decided I wasn’t gonna take this lying down. I couldn’t exercise - hell I couldn’t even do CARDIO it ached so much - but I COULD control the food I was putting in my body. I took measurements. Formulated a super-clean nutrition plan, and decided I would NOT gain fat or lose what little muscle I had during the next couple of months.

I had to keep motivated somehow, so I read through several of my favorite bodybuilding and nutrition books, and also decided I would KEEP going to the gym 3 times a week to help my ex do her workouts. Boy was THAT hard - seeing everyone else workout and knowing I couldn’t even lift a 5 pound weight. But it was also SUPER-motivating, and I was able to concentrate on my ex’s efforts and help her at the same time.

I ate 6 small meals every day religiously, day in and day out. Nutrition was super-clean, but I didn’t get obsessive - I enjoyed a small dessert on the weekends, had a couple pieces of cake on my daughter’s birthday, enjoyed a hot dog or two at a BBQ… and what blew me away was that these things didn’t have any effect on the results I was seeing. I’ve been eating so clean and consistently that the occassional cheat keeps me sane and doesn’t screw up my efforts. Sweet! I knew nutrition was a big part of the bodybuilding equation, but I never dreamed it was so powerful. Week after week, my waist measurement went down and my excitement grew.

It’ll be 11 weeks since the injury this Wednesday. Here’s what i’ve been able to do by JUST cleaning up my nutrition program:

Weight: 153 lbs down to 147 lbs = loss of 6 pounds
Waist: went from 35-5/8 to 34-3/8 = loss of 1-1/4" on my waist;
Bodyfat: 22.8% down to 19.6% = loss of 3.2% points
Lean Mass: 118.2 = NO CHANGE in lean body mass
Fat Mass: 34.88 down to 28.8 = loss of 6 pounds of fat

I can’t believe it when I look at those results. Now, of course, they aren’t massively impressive until you take into account the fact that I wasn’t exercising at all. I really thought I’d gain several pounds, my bodyfat would increase, and I’d lose a good deal of lean mass, so these numbers blow me away. They say nutrition is 80% or more of any bodybuilding program, and now I believe it!

It’s been a long process of recovery here, I’ll tell ya. Hard lesson to learn, but I’ve been able to see the opportunity and use it to establish some habits that I can practice for the rest of my life. My nutrition strategy is solid (something that I never really paid much attention to before) and now makes a great foundation to support the upcoming workouts. I also learned to go slower and PAY ATTENTION to each rep and especially my exercise form - can’t be breaking and cracking things in my body anymore!

Just last week I was able to actually DO A LIGHT WORKOUT! (cue the cheering crowd and streamers), and of course I have to take it slow and use "baby weights" for a while so I don’t re-injure myself.  But I’m being realistic and not expecting massive results too quickly. I’m giving myself until mid-Autumn to get back to using a decent amount of weight, whcih will also give me time to drop an inch or two more off my waist before I start in trying to build muscle mass again.

Just wanted to share the experience in case anyone else is dealing with an injury or needs to realize the true power of a good nutrition plan. Hope my experience can help motivate others out there too.

I have to confess I have a love-hate relationship with protein shakes. On the one hand, they’re great for getting that extra boost when you wanna pack on some muscle. On the other hand, if you take it to the extreme like I did many years ago, well… it ain’t pretty.

Back in ‘97, I was doing a radio morning show and we did a promotion with a local gym and bodybuilding company where me and my morning girl would start a nutrition/exercise program and keep our listeners updated on our progress. Great. I was excited because we’d get to workout with these personal trainers and I needed the motivation. So we set up a program, the guys give us a bunch of free supplements (their brand of course) and tell us what to eat and when. We met them at the gym a few days a week and powered through some pretty intense workouts. In fact, on my first day, the trainer asked me what I normally used when doing biceps curls. At the time, its was only about 25 lbs. He told me to pick up the 50’s and go for it. I cried. He slapped me, and I was OK.

Anyway, obviously the nutrition was a big part of the program. Well, being in radio, I didn’t have a lot of time on my hands to formulate a plan of attack and consume tons of food. So, brilliantly, I figured I could replace several meals a day with protein shakes. No biggie - lotsa people do it. As the weeks went by, I started getting bigger and more ripped. In fact, those were the most incredible results I’ve ever had (of course like an idiot I never thought to have pictures taken). Loving the results, I increased the amount of protein I was drinking, until towards the end I was taking in a 1,000-calorie shake THREE times a day. Now, for lotsa huge bodybuilders, that may be nothing. But for a smaller guy like me, I might as well have had a feeding tube jacked in to my stomach pumping protein 24/7. It was a recipe for disaster.

After about 3-4 weeks of these shakes - and understand that I wasn’t drinking NEARLY enough water or eating much real food at all - I started feeling tired more often. One morning after drinking my shake, I felt like I had just runa marathon - I had to literally sit down in a chair during our morning show I was that drained. Wasn’t sure if I was getting sick or what, so I went another day or so before realizing something was wrong. Saw a doctor and told him what was going on, and he immediately told me I was doing WAY too much protein. He mentioned something called "renal failiure" and I thought "Great - my ass is gonna  fall off." Actually, renal failure means a major problem with your kidneys, and mine were on the brink of shutting down. In fact, I had taken in SO much protein that my entire digestive system went haywire.

The prescription: I had to literally RE-TRAIN my digestive system how to work properly. For several onths, I was eating nothing but applesauce and white rice. It was NOT a pleasant experience, especially having to gather my own  - look away now if you’re squeamish, you’ve been warned - *stool* sample once a week to have the labs examine it. I don’t know about you, but having to fish my own crap out of a toilet isn’t something that’s high on my list of fun things to do.

Needless to say, I learned a hard lesson from that experience, and I’m lucky and grateful I didn’t end up in a wooden box. For YEARS after that, I didn’t touch protein, and barely flirted with exercise.

NOW, I’m smarter and more realistic. I actually just started taking a protein shake on a DAILY basis earlier this year, and I was very cautious about it. Of course, this time around, I’m not loading up the shake with extra maltodextrin and tons of god-knows-what supplements that those trainers handed me to dump in there. I started out with half a shake a day, and am now drinking one (and ONLY one) per day, along with about 1 gallon of water a day and a proper nutrition strategy that consists of actually eating FOOD. The results have been great.

Protein is a valuable supplement to a good nutritional strategy, but that’s all it is - a SUPPLEMENT to the lean food you should be eating as a mainstay in order to achieve the results you want.

I should’ve called this blog WHAT NOT TO DO TO BE HEALTHY, cuz I’ve got lots more stories!