13 Dec 2011
Thought For Food.
Thought for food. I liked the play on words.
Are you making progress toward your, can we call them, “physique goals”. A physique goal in my dictionary is about how you appear in the mirror. It is more about your ratio of fat mass to lean mass, and less about your scale weight.
Muscle and bone basically give our body its shape (and most of it’s mass, or scale weight). Fat is an organ, or functional part of human physiology and not the enemy. Now, if a heart becomes enlarged or your liver, well problem city. Fat has very little shape, like none basically. Your skeleton and muscle shape your fat. It is an insulation layer. Too much insulation and you get “blobby”, too little and you are “ripped”. In the middle, where most of should strive to be for health reasons, we have “defined” or “shapely”.
In the middle of this past July I weighed 167 pounds, VERY defined, for me. The week before Thanksgiving I topped 204 some odd pounds, starting to look (and feel) like the Pillsbury Dough Boy. Today, two full weeks after turkey day, I am 188 lbs. The change was all food.
Why does this matter? Because if you pay attention to your body, you can make changes like this for yourself.
If you step on a scale, would you ( or, do you) alter your behavior? Is it punitive? Is it positive??
Some of you might go run 10 miles if you’re up a pound. I’ve news for y’all. Daily and weekly (I can argue monthly) weight fluctuations are not due to your training as much as you’d like think. It’s all about your food intake.
How can YOU manipulate your body to achieve your visually ideal “hottie” in the mirror? And maintain it week to week??
Here are some things I’ve played with that work, or seem to work. None of it is new, though I may have a few “hybrid” ideas. These may or not help you, results will vary.
Exercising for the right reasons and with right mindset. A goal is the start. If you want to look great naked, then start taking pictures and making changes until you get there.
Making time for productive exercise. It really doesn’t need to involve as much time as we think.
Kettlebells. Efficient, effective, compact, portable, inexpensive, did I mention that they work? One to three kettlebells and 10 to 30 minutes can be more than most of really need.
*Note: Sorry, but you will need to “work out”. I like efficient and effective exercise practice and principles.
Now the feeding side of the equation. Most experts believe that nutrition is 80% of the battle. You need to become more educated about what you put into your body, it really does make a difference.
Water. Yup, good old water, we absolutely can NOT live without oxygen and water. You should strive for a gallon a day, and while you’re at it you should learn to breath with your diaphragm.
Portion control. This is hands down a game changer for sure. Get your portions right. Enough is good. Too much or too little is bad.
Getting away from highly processed foods. Also a game changer, maybe the best bang for the buck on this list. Go Grain Free for a month and see what happens.
Eating more protein. I like about 40% of calories to come from protein. Fish, organic free range poultry, grass fed beef. If you are Vega-anything, please consider carefully the potential down sides to loads of highly processed soy. Go for Edemame or Tempeh, as I understand these are much healthier soy based protein sources.
Fish Oil. Future “miracle” drug? Find and use a quality source. Now.
Intermittent Fasting and a HIGH protein day. This has been getting a great deal of press. As has the idea of a cheat day followed by a day of fasting then a high protein day… Though I wonder if we shouldn’t stop micromanaging our diets.
If I pig out on good or bad food, I usually don’t really want to eat most of the next day. So I don’t. Does having a “HIGH” protein day after a fast make a difference? Maybe, it does make sense. I do enjoy a big sirloin after a day with little or no food.
If you only make quality food choices, this is easy. If your cabinets are full of crap, it will not work. If you roll into every drive thru or stop at the first deli… it won’t work.
I believe that putting top quality fuel or food into our body will help it to self-regulate and repair damage. I also believe that most cases, if your food is only from top quality sources and UN-processed your body will re-establish a healthy balance and make reaching your physique goals easier.
Start eating more locally farmed foods. Stay out of boxes and cans and bags.
Start with these. Incorporate one or two changes each month for long term success. Putting it all together can have dramatic short term effect, though you must understand that YOU will fight too much rapid change.
More to come…
Swing Hard. Swing Often.
Steve
