Telling the Truth

I can be nice or I can be truthful.  The situation is this: being nice doesn’t make people uncomfortable, and comfortable people don’t often change their habits.  The truth hurts, and if telling people the truth will cause them to reevaluate their life condition then I will gladly use this forum as a means of evoking emotions that can make a change in readers.

In this age of political correctness, it seems that we are concerned with peoples’ emotional states more than we are concerned with their physical states.  Here’s a way to observe this idea in action: walk up to the next hefty person you see in town – preferably a perfect stranger – and tell them, “You’re fat and need to exercise.”  Chances are you’ll see some degree of indignation – the individual will either punch your lights out, cry, or reply with some insult of their own.

Point of the matter is that you actually told the person the truth, so why the touchy emotional response?  Don’t we teach our children to tell the truth?  Isn't truth valued over falsehood?  Well, yes and no.

Like I said, there is an unwritten rule in our society that says we should be concerned for the emotional welfare of our fellow travelers on this planet.  We’ve adopted a whole long list of “politically correct” terms that are designed to protect people from otherwise unpleasant truths.  People are “between jobs” instead of “jobless.”  Some immigrants are “undocumented” rather than “illegal.”  Teachers have to tell students that they “deferred success” in a class rather than telling the truth: “you failed.”  We are teaching our children to lie to themselves, and they carry the skill into adulthood.

 Let’s cut through the crap, shall we?  If you’re reading this and you can’t look at yourself naked in the mirror without feeling nauseous, you’re not chunky, hefty, husky, overweight, or stout.  There’s not “more of you to love.”

You’re fat.  The degree to which you are fat is irrelevant – you might be fat, obese, or clinical – just understand that you’re fat, and you need to do something about it.

Hopefully hearing me say you’re fat is uncomfortable that makes you want to slap me.  That’s fine with me (especially since I’m sitting safely in my home) as long as it makes you think about your current condition and the importance of changing it.

I wish someone would have told me what I’m telling you now.  In this age of political correctness no one was willing to look at me, put their hand on my shoulder, and tell me as a true friend that I was fat.  I had to wake up one morning, look in the mirror and tell come to terms with my condition. After years of lying to myself, I had a moment of epiphany on the morning of my 39th birthday.  I looked in the mirror, looked myself in the eyes and said, "You look terrible, Keith."  It's not as if this was new information, but in that moment I saw through the lies I had been telling myself.

I dare you to tell yourself the truth.  Look at yourself in the mirror and say out loud, “You’re fat.”  It’s true, isn’t it?

After all, if you walk around telling yourself lies all the time, you’ll never compel yourself to change.  Do you tell yourself that the extra weight is “muscle”?  Do you tell yourself that getting fatter is a natural part of getting older?  Have you convinced yourself that “fat” is the new “fit”?

Those are lies.  Shadows and illusions in which you hide to protect yourself from the painful truth that you are far from being the healthy individual you know you should be.

Remember the old adage that “the truth will set you free”?  It’s no less true when it comes to your health and fitness.  I can tell you the truth, but it’s far more important that YOU tell YOURSELF the truth.  There’s no time like the present to get busy being honest with yourself – and begin to make changes for the better.

I invite your comments.  If you want to tell me I’m wrong (or if you think I’m right) then leave a comment by clicking below or send me a personal message.

Be well!

The Paleolithic Diet

I caught wind a few days ago of a fairly current development in the field of nutrition and wellness - the Paleolithic Diet.  While I'm not normally the first guy to jump on the bandwagon of the newest and latest trend in nutrition, I have to admit that I've become a bit intrigued by the information I've read on the subject of Paleo diets so far.

The basic premise of the diet is simple - we shouldeat like our very ancient ancestors ate before the agricultural revolution came along.  Paleo eating consists of pre-agricultural foods such as eggs, wild game, fish, tree nuts, leafy green veggies, fruits, berries, members of the squash family (any squash, zucchini, and cucumbers), and mushrooms.  By eating the 'approved' foods, we eliminate things like processed grains, sugar, all dairy products, tubers (potatoes), and a whole bunch of refined junk.

Now, let me go on record before the fact as saying that I'm not calling my father in law a prehistoric man, but he's a great example of what a pseudo-paleo diet follower looks like.  For a guy in his mid-sixties, he's in pretty good physical shape despite a long-enduring ankle injury that prevents him from doing any sort of cardiovascular exercise.  His protein intake consists primarily of forest-killed deer (in season, of course) and fresh-caught fish.  He grows his own vegetables every spring and has a bumper crop every year.  His paleo diet 'failings' are in that he eats fast food on occasion and loves the daylights out of soda.  Those little items add a little soft tissue around the underlying muscle, but for a guy with some years under his belt he's doing fairly well.  I'd have to credit his physical shape to the percentage of wild game and fish that he consumes.

The benefits of the paleolithic diet are many fold and are based on anthropological studies of early human remains.  It appears that our great-great-great (many greats) grand-cestors lived a fairly long life, assuming of course they stayed out of the way of charging mammoths and stampeding buffalo herds (OK, getting through infancy and/or infection was important too.  Being fair here).  Dread diseases like cancer and diabetes were basically unknown to our prehistoric forebears.  Even today, people living in tribal cultures with diets consisting of hunter/gatherer type foods experience very low (statistically marginal) occurrences of diabetes, heart disease, cancer, arthritis, and depression.

The real trick in all of this is, of course, making the switch in our own eating and sticking with the change long enough to experience any meaningful physiological changes.  Too many people give something like the paleolithic diet (or any 'healthy' eating regimen) a brief trial run before abandoning it for what's simple, comfortable, or convenient.  As with anything, the ability to stick to the program over the long term is paramount to success.

So, all of this came back to mind yesterday as I was butchering the deer my wife shot last week.  The food I was preparing at that moment is exactly the kind of food our forebears consumed - the kind of food that kept them practically disease free.  My wife has a few more hunting trips planned in the next couple of weeks, so there's a possibility that there will be more deer in our future.  In the spring, we'll have to make it a priority to do a bit more fishing than was done last spring - I'm SURE my children won't argue with that!  Perhaps I'm a bit too much of a modern guy to go all-out paleo - I do like my Monster Milk shakes, after all - but I can see the benefit of removing refined grains and sugars from my diet.  Maybe I'll even try to cut back on the skim milk.  A journey of a thousand miles, after all.

Be well!

For more information on eating well, check out my Eating for Fat Reduction article.
For more information on the Paleolithic Diet, take a look at Dr. Ben Balzer's site.

Congratulations!

Jeremy Hickman - you are the lucky winner of this month's giveaway!  You are now the proud owner of a brand new Gaiam aluminum water bottle.  We will be contacting you in the coming days for mailing information.

For all you fine people out there, be on the lookout in the next few days as we post a new giveaway for the month of December.

Be well!

Banish Your Excuses

People make excuses about as easily as they change their socks.  Not enough time.  Not enough money.  Not enough information.  My back hurts.  My feet are flat.  I love food.  Blah, blah, blah, ad nauseum.

Today is Thanksgiving, a day when people abandon any semblance of self-control and eat themselves sick just because the food is available.  This holiday, however, is little more than an excuse to binge.  As if the words on a calendar somehow give tacit approval to ignore the body's dietary necessities.

FWIW, my holiday meal consisted of a portion of turkey breast, a portion of potatoes, and a few ‘naughty’ indulgences - a portion of broccoli casserole, some stuffing, and a dinner roll.  I did eat a small piece of pecan pie for dessert.  It wasn’t the most upstanding dietary accomplishment in my life, but I didn’t walk away from the table 2000 calories heavier either.

As you are aware, the nationwide binge eating will repeat itself at Christmas.

Nevertheless, we are here to talk about excuses - the lies we tell ourselves to justify our inactivity, inadequacy, or temporary inability to do what truly needs to be done. Personally, excuses disgust me.  Take a few seconds to recall someone who offered up an excuse instead of results.  For example, did you think to yourself, “Oh, OK. I understand” when you heard the excuse for why the report you expected at work didn’t end up on your desk?  I doubt it.

If you have kids, you hear excuses every day – I know my four children are LOADED with them.  However, I expect excuses from children – they are adults-in-training after all.  Hearing excuses from adults, however, is pretty sad.

Banishing Your Excuses

Adults who make excuses, especially with regard to their health, are pitiful.  It’s time for us to be totally honest with ourselves and understand that point.  Making excuses is sad.

If you’re one of those people that has made excuses in the past but is ready for a change, there’s good news: you can get started right now. 

Make a Decision

On New Year’s Eve (about 5 weeks from now), a bunch of people are going to make a “decision” to “lose weight”.  With admirable vigor, they will begin the process of dieting and going to the gym in an all-out attempt to cut the fat.  Despite the initial activity surge, about 98% of them will quit whatever program they start by the time Valentine’s Day arrives.  Most won’t make it past MLK Jr.’s birthday – just 2 weeks into January.

A decision isn’t a decision until you’ve followed through with it over the long term.  A wedding engagement is a good example of true decision making.  From engagement to wedding, there’s a lot of opportunity to abandon everything, especially when disagreements about wedding details and other planning stresses come into play.  The reasons we stay committed to following through on the decision are varied but probably include an amount of external pressure (from family & friends) and keeping the focus on the end result – marriage.  When the going gets tough, the tough remember that the goal is worth the effort.

Making a decision for your health requires the same commitment and the same external pressures.  External pressure (a training partner, for instance) and a focus on the end result (a healthy, able body that responds to the demands you place upon it) are mandatory to your success. 

Maybe you don’t know what the end result feels like, which makes it hard to focus on the ultimate goal.  That would be another excuse – one that prevents you from ever getting started.  You can banish it by reading the stories of people who HAVE transformed their bodies through exercise and proper nutrition.  I transformed my physique, so you can use my story as a starting point.  A simple online search will provide you with literally thousands of other stories of people that made a decision for their health and followed through with it.  Read people’s stories with the understanding that your biology isn’t so different from theirs, so you too have the ability to create a transformed body.

Put Yourself First

Far too often I hear of people who decided to abandon their quest for better health as a means of pleasing someone else.  A weak decision coupled with a weak commitment made this the perfect excuse for some to quit what they begin.

Back in February, I had the perfect opportunity to quit my training program in order to focus my attention on someone else.  My marriage was on the rocks and my wife had come to me with the news that she was filing for divorce.  Ironically, she informed me of her plan as we were getting dressed to go to the gym.  After the initial shock wore off (which took about a week), I decided that the only thing I could do was to keep training.  I had to improve myself – to be stronger, healthier, and more confident – in order to be a better husband to Alice and father to my children.

At first, it occurred to me that I should stop training in order to spend more time with Alice.  This belief was quickly abandoned, however, since much of my marital strife was the result of a lack of self-confidence and dislike for my physical appearance.  In other words, I knew I was fat, and that knowledge manifested negatively in my relationships.  Only by sticking to my exercise and nutrition plans could I change my body AND my mind for the better and thus become a better, more confident husband to my wife.  I put myself first and everyone was better off for it.

You might face opposition from your spouse, co-workers, and friends.  Often these are people who feel threatened by your newfound vigor and potential for success.  Nobody likes to have their excuses stripped away, and fat people are notorious for dragging people back into physical complacency.  Overweight members of my family and former coworkers have openly stated to my face (“jokingly”, of course) that they “hate” my wife for being fit.  Their words belie the unspoken assumption that my wife was intentionally going to the gym and improving her health as a personal mission of embarrassment to them.  Like Alice seriously thinks, “In your FACE, Liz!” as she does bench presses.  Please. 

Alice and I go to the gym for ourselves.  What others think about out motivation is irrelevant.  We put ourselves first, and we enjoy a happy, healthy lifestyle as a result.  Training together actually helped bring us back together as a couple, and our relationship grows stronger with every workout.

Face Your Fear

Fear can be a great limiter or a great motivator.  It’s all in how you use fear to your own advantage.  Stepping into a gym in an overweight body is a scary thing to do, but it’s far less frightening than hearing the news that you have diabetes, heart disease, or cancer.  You honestly have to decide which fear you’re willing to live with – a temporary fear that is based on nothing more than what you believe others might think about you or the very real fear of living long-term with a dread disease that might put you in an early grave.

I remember the first time I ever put on a pair of sweats and stepped into a gym.  I was petrified.  I thought that everybody in the gym was going to be a super-fit hyper-motivated go-getter that would look at me as a pitiful waste of air.  Nothing could have been further from the truth.  Most of the people in the gym were helpful to an extreme, giving advice and sharing knowledge to help me along the way.  Trainers gave me tips on improving the effectiveness of my exercises and other gym members were a great source of motivation as they acknowledged changes over time.  My fears of the gym, I discovered, were completely unfounded in reality.

Your confidence will improve far more quickly than your body will once you tackle the fear of going to the gym.  There’s a certain rush of pride that stems from knowing you followed through on a decision to be better today than you were yesterday (the opposite is equally true – there’s no greater dejection than knowing that you failed yourself by giving in to fear).  By doing what’s right for yourself, you immediately gain confidence in yourself.  Repeating the action only emboldens you further to take more positive action.  Before long, you’ll be the helpful gym member teaching a new, overweight newbie how to get the treadmill going.

Banish Your Excuses

You can make a decision, or you can make excuses, but you can’t do both.  One is the opposite of the other.  There are no legitimate excuses.

Face it.  If you’re reading this and you’re overweight, you’ve been making excuses (and poor decisions) for a long time, which is why your body has its physical and aesthetic limitations.  Starting today, you can make healthy decisions that will pay dividends in the not so distant future, or you can just keep doing what you’ve always done.  Only one of those options, however, is going to lead to a happier and healthier you.

Further, if you start down the path to health and decide after a few workouts and “diet” meals that you just can’t keep going, at least be good enough to be truthful to yourself and others – admit that you quit intentionally.  Save us the lame excuses you offer as an “explanation” for giving up on yourself.  We really don’t want to hear them.

Yeah, that’s a bit blunt.  Under normal circumstances I’d apologize for stepping on some toes, but not this time.  If a little discomfort helps knock someone out of an unhealthy rut and puts them on the path to better health, then I can be happy with the results of my effort.

No excuses.  Get on with it.

Drinking for heart health?

Let's go ahead and file this one under "Huh??"

According to some Spanish researchers, men may receive some heart-health benefits by drinking 4-10 alcoholic beverages per day.

Sounds like a great way to assure yourself of some heart health.  Oh, sure - our livers will probably shut down, but our hearts will be A-OK!  If this is the case, then the guys I see hanging around near the fountain downtown must surely have fantastic heart-health.  Sure they're socially not the people you would normally invite to your holiday get-together, but at least they're concerned about their heart health, right?

Hey, guys!  In all seriousnes, while drinking yourself silly might seem like a fun way to keep your ticker in good health, just keep in mind that most women would probably be attracted to a man whose belly doesn't advertise itself as a "liquid grain storage tank."  Now, don't get me wrong: I do enjoy the occasional mixed beveraged in certain social situations, but 4-10 drinks A DAY??  That's just a bit outside of what I'd be comfortable with.  After all, I do have a wife and children.  And a job.  And adult responsibilities... Those things tend to fall by the wayside when one is imbibing from sunrise to sunset.

My understanding is that 30-45 minutes of exercise a few days a week is also good for the heart - and good for the soul!  And it will keep you in good social standing with your boss, peers, and friends!

Be well!