Second Thoughts: Use Your Own Habits, Good & Bad, To Lose Weight

Take advantage of your habitual behaviors to lose weight, get healthy, and be inspired to workout.
I have the habit that once I’m home, I stay home. I hate battling traffic and will avoid it at all costs. This habit works to my advantage because no matter what, I will not get in my car and go in search of food, no matter how bad the craving. That means I don’t eat junk food just to satisfy a fleeting craving. 
Even though I don’t hate to cook, I will avoid it whenever I can. It takes time. It leaves me with pots and pans I have to wash. I admit it. I’m habitually lazy. When I have a favorite cereal in the house, such as granola, I will not only eat that for breakfast, but when hunger hits anytime of day I will grab a bowl of cereal for a quick meal instead of preparing something more appropriate to reaching my goals. Granola = carbs, sugar, fat.
When I don’t have granola or some other favorite grab-and-go waiting in the cupboard, I am forced to cook oatmeal. I love oatmeal, but don’t want to wait, or in summer to eat something hot on a hot morning, or wash the pan. But when there’s no granola, etc., due to hunger and my cravings for carbs I buckle down and cook the oatmeal. No Fat, no sugar. I can’t eat what isn’t readily available to me. Oatmeal tastes good but not good enough to work for me as a quick snack food like granola does. My lazy habits work to my advantage.
Your habits may be quite different. For example I never order take out delivered to my door. Never in my life have I done this, partly because I don’t so easily part with a penny :-) —more importantly though, I worked in a restaurant for years and I know what goes on behind the scenes. I don't trust takeout, for good reason.
Yet another habit is I rarely buy snacks foods (candy/chips/cookies, etc.) at the supermarket. 80% of the time I can resist because I don’t go to the market hungry, and also because in my head I know I am sabotaging myself. It helps that I have developed the habit of going to the gym right before grocery shopping, so I’m pumped both mentally and physically to do what’s best for the goal I’ve set. I won’t help negate the great workout I just had by buying that big bag of Snickers Minis.
I realize everyone is different. At my local Safeway they have a BIG Deli department, and at 10 a.m. the other day it was off-putting to see the line of people waiting to order sandwiches and macaroni salad, all of whom were extremely overweight. The fact that no one of optimal size was waiting in that Deli line, yet plenty of optimal-weight people were there shopping, was telling of people's habits.
Figure out what habits of yours can work to your advantage, or are working against you, to keep yourself from eating. Some people, like those at the Deli, have no constraints/self-control at all, and will eat anything at any time of day when the mood strikes without a second thought. They’re the same people who at the doctor’s/insurance agent/hair-salon will grab the free snacks in the candy bowl without a second thought. 
Begin changing your eating habits by developing the habit of having second thoughts.

Get Cut With (Charles) Glass

The best trainer ever is on youtube and bodybuilding.com. 

Charles Glass is a bottomless pit of fantastic training tips and sage advice. Paying close attention to the details of his wise counsel will transform your workout. In my own observations at the gym it is disconcerting how many people “work out” mindlessly, basically wasting their time at the gym by their inattention to detail and by utilizing terrible form. Everyone can use some guidance, including me — and I’ve been working out since I was thirteen years old.

Here’s a great video on a safe shoulder workout:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1Mxns_JJTk

Search for all “Charles Glass” videos on youtube and elsewhere, and pay attention to the details therein, and your progress will zoom forward as your injuries subside.

Dear Anti-Vaxxers: Mosquitos And Ticks Are Right Now Vaccinating Your Child

by Richard Sullivan

Illogical parents who don’t give a whit about their child or yours have been enlisting their own precious offspring to work out their personal conspiracy issues as they relate to vaccinations against deadly crippling pandemics.

These parents are somehow unaware that all summer long their kids are being vaccinated — daily.

Mosquitos, flies, bees, wasps, ticks, mites, fleas, bedbugs and other stinging, biting, chewing, blood-sucking organisms are having at us wholesale. The common backyard mosquito needles deep into our blood vessels, injecting bacteria, viruses and assorted filth, leading to West Nile virus disease, malaria and other horrors. Ticks inject us with Lyme disease. Both insects have historically proven to be deadly little bastards, yet anti-vaxxers seem to be fine with this.

I see no organized effort by these parents to rid our environment of any of these trillions of living pests despite the death and damage they have caused to millions of humans. Why aren't these concerned parents wrapping their children in mosquito netting and dunking them in 55 gallon barrels of insect repellant?

Interestingly, this week news of a malaria vaccine approved for use in Europe presents a conundrum for anti-vaxxers: should you vaccinate your child against a disease that is itself caused by entomological vaccination?

It's Easier The Second (or Third) Time Around

Since I’m not unlike other people, life does get in the way of goals and good intentions. I had an extended layoff from the gym and during that time I worked out at home with disappointing results. Of course a good gym has a shitload of machines, handles, weights, etc., and what I had at home was very basic, some free weights and bands. Recently I re-joined the gym and I was very happy to verify something I have long told my clients and friends: once you build muscle, even if you take a long break from a challenging workout routine, your muscles do not forget.

We don’t forget what we’ve learned, in the case of those who have years of experience at the gym, and our muscles react far more quickly than they did the first time. That is, the positive changes you’ll see in your body will occur much faster than they occurred the first time you built muscle.

In my case I didn’t expect to be able to use as much weight as I am, and I also thought I’d be sore and hurting the first month. But neither of those happened. Like riding a bike, it was all second nature, and even though I am more fatigued as I wrap up the day’s workout, my progress has been surprisingly fast.


So if one of the things that has been holding you back from re-upping your gym membership is that you’ll be starting from scratch with memories of limping out of the gym and a long recovery, you should be pleasantly surprised that this is not the case. Once you build muscle, you are much quicker to gain it back even after a prolonged layoff.

Oprah's WingNut Posse Gains A New Member

Jim Carrey, whose credentials certainly reflect that he is an expert in such things, has come out as an anti-vaxxer. Which is sadder? — goofy actors spreading misinformation that is a threat to society’s health, or the internet morons who accept celebrities' views as scientifically valid and adopt them as their own?

Oprah’s wingnut brigade keeps on expanding. In recent years she has perpetrated  some of the most god-awful fakes and loonies on her adoring public. At one time Oprah seemed quite grounded, actually. But the long line of creeps and crazies, such as areyoukiddingme? “fitness expert” Bob Green, snake oil carney barker “Dr.” Oz, AIDS death coach (as opposed to life coach) Marianne Williamson, that black preacher who is suddenly the new Dr. Phil, the old Dr. Phil, bat-shit crazy Suzanne Sommers. The list goes on and on.

You can search on youtube for the Jim Carrey appearance on Oprah where she celebrates him solely for his story of writing himself a check for a zillion dollars and carrying it around in his wallet before he became successful and then voilà it really happened and then he cashed it.

We want our old Oprah back.

Pain In Hands Or Feet

I have stated what a mistake it is to "work through the pain” when exercising. Whether running, strength training, swimming laps or whatever, when it hurts, STOP. Stop and think and reevaluate. Most people can’t tell the difference between a temporary pain and an actual injury, so it’s best to take a breather while you figure it out.

However, with us Geezers, certain issues such as arthritis or rheumatism come in to play. Discomfort or pain in hands or feet for example keep many from exercising when in fact the exercise will help alleviate the pain.The trick is to know that this is the problem. For those who experience these pains or discomfort who have not been diagnosed with early arthritis, for example, it’s wise to get a doctor’s analysis. 

Warming up no matter what our age, or how often we exercise, is crucial.

“Use It Or Lose It” applies here. If you stop exercising, or hand off opening stuck lids on jars to somebody else, or curtail playing tug with your dog because of pain in your hands, this problem will only snowball. Keep activities in low gear until you warm up, then push yourself gently past the discomfort or pain as best you can. 

Aerobic Weight Training

Photo: Age 48, Papaohaku. Hawaii

The Internet, having proven there is no shortage in today’s world of self-appointed “experts”, continues to spit out garbage information and manufactured controversies. For some long time now there has been a stupid argument over which is better, aerobic exercise such as jogging, stair-stepping, spinning, etc., or good old fashioned body-sculpting strength training with weights. You know, as if these are mutually exclusive.

People will jog, step and spin to exhaustion for the sake of an aerobic high but for some reason never thought to apply the same principal to weight training.

Watching people at the gym carry on 10-minute conversations between "sets" complaining how little progress they are making is just is par for the course.

Crybabies.

So here’s the deal: shut up. The gym isn’t for socializing. Get your abs out of the way first: begin your workout with a warm up stretch, proceed to hanging leg raises, planking, crunches, you know mixing it up, keeping your ab muscles from getting accustomed to a routine workout, then move on to your arms, legs, whatever you had on your workout agenda that day. Your ultimate goal is to rest no more than 30 seconds between sets, or two minutes between exercise changes. Go, go, go.

Weight training aerobically gets your heart and lungs pumping, your veins whooshing, and your head cleared up from all the useless crap you think about as you sit on the preacher bench for five minutes daydreaming.

Keep going, Don’t stop.

Limp, do not walk, out of the gym.

Crybabies need not apply.

HOT OATMEAL COOKIES IN A BOWL

Hot Oatmeal shows up on everybody's health-conscious-heart-healthy-bodybuilding-power-food list. I’m not talking about the horrific crap pedaled by Quaker as “Instant Oatmeal”, so overloaded with sugar and artificial flavors and other unpronounceables as to be unfit for human consumption. Nor am I referencing the typical restaurant bowl of glue that has sullied hot oatmeal’s reputation - no wonder that so many people are turned off to what should be a delicious treat!
Make it at home using the naked one-minute variety and many of the same ingredients you’d put in Oatmeal Cookies, and a healthy beneficial breakfast will never sound boring again.
Put water in a saucepan.
Turn on the heat.
Add:
a handful of chopped walnuts or almonds
a dash of vanilla flavoring and/or almond emulsion
a teaspoon of cinnamon.
toss in a handful of raisins or dried cranberries
and/or a mashed banana.
and/or chopped apple.
Simmer a couple of minutes.
Add the one-minute quick-cook dry oatmeal. (Buy it in bulk at a health food store and save as much as half off the supermarket pretty-packaged stuff.)
Cook for a minute or more.
Pour into your bowl.
Add dark chocolate chips and mix to melt.
Then add your milk and sweetener: Sugar, Stevia, Splenda, maple syrup, honey, whatever.
Experiment to get the balance of your favorite ingredients to your own taste and there’ll be no reason for you to eat commercial CandyCereal for breakfast ever again.

Online Idiocy

Misleading headlines and uneducated “experts” are two of my pet peeves about the internet. Huffington Post is infamous for both. This so-called author’s crazily absurd counsel originally appeared in DETAILS magazine, which the Advocate hilariously described as “the official magazine for men who don’t know they’re gay yet,” but I digress.
Not only are online surfers exposed to these ignorant people convinced about their superiority over all others via their questionable knowledge and experience, despite their often being  barely out of their teens, but then we have the additional and troubling problem of those who believe anything they read.
There are no bad machines at the gym, just people who don’t know how to properly exercise. The gist of her article is that the machines are bad when in fact the author is herself in complete ignorance of the basics of proper workout form, period. And there she is, writing for a national magazine. God help us.

Veggies — Frozen or Fresh?

I eat frozen veggies for a number of reasons. They’re cheaper than “fresh” — in my local supermarkets it’s almost impossible to find any vegetable that costs less than $2.50 a pound. On sale I can load up on frozen for less than $2 a pound. But that’s not all that’s good about frozen. With frozen there is no prep work, no washing, no trimming, no cutting out questionable bits, no waste. And speaking of waste, when you cut stems, discard outer leaves, etc. you are throwing away parts of a vegetable that you just spent a good deal of money on, so that vegetable becomes even more expensive by virtue of you throwing some of it away. Because frozen are ready to use, and in many if not all cases fresher when they were frozen than the so-called “fresh” veggies you paid a small fortune for at the supermarket, I am more apt to eat vegetables, something few of us consume enough of. Having worked in restaurants I also am not as enthusiastic about allowing other people to decide what goes into my dinner, so I cook at home  — easy fast stuff like stir-fry or fried noodles or soups. When I see others spend a crazy percentage of their income on eating out for virtually every meal, I not only am disturbed by the waste of money, but by what is being added to their food that they themselves would never add if they were cooking at home. Also, people who can’t even feed themselves because they don’t see the importance of learning how to cook a few dishes are nuts. And don’t get me started on women who want to get married and have children who laughingly admit they don’t know how to cook and don’t intend to learn. What kind of idiot thinks it’s smart to brag about the fact that they can’t perform even the most basic task essential for their own and their children’s survival? What kind of irresponsible mother does not teach her own kids how to cook? Apparently, millions of ‘em, including my own.