Taking a Week Off Exercise

This is a discussion from my Happy Eaters site, but it reminded me of when I used to blog about my life and my workouts and stuff, so I'm posting it here too. 

 

I have a twinge in my right shoulder. I like to think that it's the result of weeks of heavy military presses, but I have a sneaking suspicion I did it lying in bed pulling on the comforters at a weird angle (the dreaded loaded external rotation). I can't bring myself to say I hurt myself making the bed though. It was the heavy military presses, yeah, that's it! 

Anyway, shoulders are not to be trifled with. A little twinge turns into a nagging pain, turns into a screaming impingement, turns into surgery before you can say, ow. So, I'm going to do the prudent thing and give it a break for a week before I make anymore beds or press anymore kettlebells. 

I'm excited about this! Both because I feel like I actually need a break (my left foot has been a little tricky lately too) and because I always lose weight when I stop exercising. Always. I think it must be a muscle pump, glycogen, appetite thing. Plus, whenever I've managed to take some time off, I always come back rested and strong with newfound enthusiasm. A week from tomorrow I'll start a System Six 20 rep endurance phase with much lighter weights than I've been using, assuming I feel nothing twingy in my shoulder. I'll still walk the dog every day but that's about it. 

- Do you willingly take a break from exercising once in a while? Or does it have to be forced?

- Does it feel good to take a break or does it make you panicky? 

- If you panic, what are you afraid of?

- Have your feelings about "time off" changed over the years?

I used to be a total lunatic, gobbling pain killers and training with broken bones. I honestly don't know what I was so afraid of or trying to prove. I just would not could not quit, even though I could tell other people to do it and list all the benefits! I could even use myself as a cautionary tale. I think what cured me is breaking my leg, tearing my ACL, and not being able to walk for 8 weeks. Nothing bad happened! I didn't gain weight, my muscle came right back. It was totally fine.

I would love to hear everyone's thoughts on taking time off.

 

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Rest Day 1- I'm down a pound and a half (for mysterious reasons I can never understand), feeling good, eating cookies. Trader Joe's Pinachios are like crack. I've been having 5-6 per day, every day. I should probably knock it off but you would not want to try to take the container from me right now. MINE!!! They're MINE!!!

My shoulder feels better already. I experienced a minor twinge all day yesterday. Today I don't feel it at all unless I move it the wrong way. This is the kind of niggling little injury that I previously would have ignored and made worse until they had to amputate my arm or something. 

I'm geeked about my rest week and know it's the right thing to do. Although the devil on my left shoulder just said, "See, it's better. You can lift tomorrow." I fed him a cookie. :-)

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Rest day 2 - I woke up this morning and my shoulder felt like it was on fire. It really hurt, which terrified me, but I think maybe I just slept on it wrong because it feels ok now. The pain was a good little reality check though. It removed any temptation to lift heavy things today. I walked the dog. Picture the scene. Both of us injured and wearing matching hot pink workout gear, she in her hot pink no-pull harness and me in my hot pink and black Nike Free shoes and running tights. We look like we're ready for business, but we stroll along at 1.89 MPH, for exactly .15 miles, and then we have to turn around because .30 miles is her safety zone. That gets us a little over a block down the street and back. LOL I use a GPS so I don't accidentally take her too far. What a dork fest. 

Normally, I workout right after the walk so I felt a little displaced today. I decided that I would spend some time on the internets and then watch The Walking Dead before lunch. I used to watch it during lunch but I was eating the day the bloated water zombie broke in half and his intestines sprang out. That pretty much cured me of eating during zombie shows. 

Speaking of eating, my weight is the same today, which is good because I kept going on the white chocolate pistachio butter cookies yesterday. They're gone now. They're in ma bellllay! Not a problem because I am a master of dietary displacement. If I want a bunch of cookies, I'll cut back on real food to make it happen. I sacrificed 2 eggs, a tablespoon of peanut butter, a piece of cheese, and 2 dark chocolate squares for a few more cookies. I imagine that if I did that every day, I wouldn't look or feel very good, but once in awhile when I need sugar, that's how I do it. All the treats, no overeats. 

 

I See Skinny People

Yes, I'm still reading "skinny girl" fluff. Is She Naturally Thin or Disciplined? profiles 101 fit women of all ages. It includes a color photo, height, weight, age, clothing size, and details about what they do to stay fit. Spoiler alert: they're all disciplined. As the author points out, "Maintaining one's weight is very similar to money management--building wealth does not happen by accident, and people who are 'born rich' will become poor if they are careless."

This book was actually mind-numbingly boring because they all do the same thing. They exercise regularly, eat real food, control portions, avoid processed food, fast food, sugar, white flour, high-fructose corn syrup, artificial sweeteners, and industrial oils. Most of them eat 5-6 meals per day but they don't know why. One woman said, "To keep my body from storing fat cells, I eat every two and a half hours." That made me LOL. There were a few amusing anecdotes. One woman tries on her prom dress every 3 months to make sure it still fits. A model points out that measurements are everything, a low number on the scale doesn't necessarily eliminate bulges. Another woman, struggling with weight gain for the first time in her life, came to the horrifying realization that her daily Starbucks "snack" was over 900 calories.

There were a couple of vegans and at least one paleo person, but the profiles are almost indistinguishable. The author seems to have weeded out or gently modified the words of any meal-skippers or non-snackers to support her "lots of small meals" belief. Certainly that approach can work but nobody questions it. The book would have been more interesting if she'd included some rebels and outliers instead of only those who read Shape and Oxygen.

I liked the photos and stats. I loved that it included women in their 50s and 60s. I didn't like that all the profiles blurred into one generic narrative. However, maybe that's because what it takes to be lean and fit is pretty universal--exercise, real food, and portion control.

Be warned that if you're getting the Kindle version (which was only $1.99!!!), the 101 color photographs make this an enormous freaking file. I had to jump on WiFi and it still took quite a few minutes to download. It's not the normal zippy-zip and have your new book in a couple of seconds experience. Also, there are some comically bad typos. Like mixing up "fat" and "flat." One of the women says, "I like a fat stomach so I avoid wheat." I don't think that's what she meant. The Kindle version could have used some proofreading. 

This book has some real flaws but if you're a sucker for photos, stats, and success stories (as I am), it's still moderately entertaining in a fluffy sort of way. It's also mega-reinforcement that there are no shortcuts. Whether these women claim they are naturally thin or working really hard, they're all engaged in the same behaviors with the same level of discipline. Nobody is lounging around eating junk food, not exercising, and somehow still a size 2. So, it's a bit of a motivating reality check.

The Secrets of Skinny Chicks
Here's another fascinating book that Amazon recommended for me, The Secrets of Skinny Chicks by Karen Bridson. Sometimes I find it hilariously perfect that all of my recommendations are like kettlebells, chocolate chips, and books about weight. A couple of months ago, my main page was filled with suggestions for cardio DVDs and ice cream machines. Do they know me or what?! :-D

I have mixed feelings about this one because it goes back and forth between brilliant examples of naturally thin  happy-eatering, and straight up diet ninny lore. Here is the premise. The author, a personal trainer and health journalist, interviews 21 thin women, not naturally thin women, but women who work at it. In most cases, they need to stay lean professionally - athletes, runway models, actresses, fitness competitors, dancers, showgirls, and body doubles. For each of the 21 women, she lists:

- a full sample day of food with calorie totals

- an overview of their weekly exercise routine with calorie expenditures

- their height, weight, body fat percentage, BMI, measurements, and clothing size

- an interview about their food and workout philosophy

- an evaluation of their approach by a Ph.D from a health and weight loss research center, a personal trainer, and a dietitian

(At this point in the description, I'm buying the book. I don't even care what the rest of it is, I just want to know what body doubles eat and how big they are!)

So, that's the first part of the book. Throughout these interviews she highlights "Skinny Secrets" that the women use, such as - lift weights, stop dieting, work in the yummy stuff, get a portion size wake-up call, learn what your metabolic rate will allow. The second part of the book explains each one of these 50 secrets in more detail and then gives you suggestions and examples for making them happen in your own life. The third part is an action plan that I haven't even looked at yet.

All of this sounds good right? But just because you're thin doesn't mean you have any clue what you're doing! One of the models had a granola bar and a Dr Pepper for breakfast every morning. One didn't drink any water, only tea and Gatorade. One spent 40 minutes a day, 7 days per week on the elliptical trainer. The author talked about running 10 miles on Christmas Eve and another 10 on Christmas Day as a preemptive measure?!?!? Or calculating how many minutes of cardio you would have to do to burn off various foods. In the part about lifting weights, she suggests you start by putting 2, 5, and 10 pound "hand weights" near the television. She didn't even use the word dumbbells.

I'm sure some of my facial expressions as I read were fascinating. I'd be nodding in agreement one minute and rolling my eyeballs all the way out of my head the next. However, I still recommend this book because it is fascinating, I mean, FASCINATING! If you're carrying any delusions about what it takes to be a size 2 swimsuit model - how little you have to eat and how much you have to move - this book will cure you of your delusions. Most of these women eat between 1200 and 1600 calories per day and exercise as much as 2-3 hours per day 6-7 days per week. Not all of them. Some exercise much less and eat 2,000+ calories. Some of the women who exercise the most actually do eat the cookies in the break room at work every day, drink sugared soda, and eat bread with dinner. They're all different and they're all human with cravings that must be satisfied. What they have in common is the consistency. Nobody diets in the sense that they do something crazy for a few weeks and then go "back to normal." What they do every day IS normal. They all talk about how you can be dedicated and work hard, but it has to be in a way that you genuinely enjoy and can live with. You need your treats, your favorite foods, your holiday meals, your restaurant outings. They all have various ways of accomplishing that.

The Secrets of Skinny Chicks is an incredibly interesting book. You just have to read it with your brain on, collect all the ideas that resonate with you, and disregard everything that seems cuckoo. The reviews on Amazon seem to be split between 5 stars from people who loved the skinny chick interviews and got something out of it they could use, and 1 stars from the sour grapes crowd who aren't interested in eating that little or moving that much. I don't think blindly imitating a runway model's routine was the point though. It was more like, what could I learn from the way she does things and how could I apply it to my own situation and goals?

Once again, I am hopping up and down waiting for someone else to read this and comment. Let me know what you think!

Romanticizing Food

I've been reading a book called Skinny Thinking: Five Revolutionary Steps to Heal Your Relationship with Food, Weight, and Your Body by Laura Katleman-Prue. There is a section in the book called Letting Go of Romanticizing Food. This part really stood out:

"Part of our healing requires us to stop glamorizing food by withdrawing some of our false projections onto it and false meanings we've given to it. A balanced relationship with food would be more like your own relationship with toilet paper. Okay, I admit this is a crude analogy, but with both food and toilet paper, quality is important. They both fill a need (when you need it, you need it!), the experience of using them is quick, and most importantly, there's no need to think about them when you're not using them. It's not like you're going to create an overblown fantasy anticipating the velvety softness of two-ply Cottonelle!"

What do you think of that? I agree that food problems often spring from romanticizing it. It's great to enjoy good food when you're hungry and it's time to eat. It's probably not great to fantasize about food constantly. When you turn it into your friend, your enemy, your comfort, your partner in crime, your Friday night, your emotional boost, the highlight of your week, that's when the relationship starts getting dysfunctional. Actually, just entertaining the idea that you have a "relationship" with food is probably dysfunctional, but a lot of us have treated it that way. You turn to it in hard times. You sneak and "cheat" to spend time with it. You feel guilty afterward. You break up. "Never again," you say and you kick the cookies to the curb. But then next thing you know, you're back together! And it's a blissful reunion, perhaps because it's forbidden. LOL

I mean, wow! That's a role that food was never meant to play. Imagine projecting all of that importance onto any other inanimate object? It's weird, right?!  Like that woman on TLC's "My Strange Addiction" with the Teddy bear babies. :-) Thinking about a random object in such an overblown, almost romantic way, giving it that much significance, can only cause problems and suffering.

I know that food is more than food. It has cultural and social significance. I don't think it has to be completely utilitarian, like toilet paper. But I think it's really important to keep it in context. There's a time and a place to celebrate with food. If it's not that time or place, your mind should be elsewhere. I guess that's sort of what I've done with creating a routine with my meals and a schedule for certain treats. When it's time to eat pizza and ice cream, I totally enjoy the experience. When it's not time, I don't even think about it. That has been insanely freeing. I used to battle every day with food decisions, temptation, excitement, guilt, anticipation, remorse, vows to change,  all these strong emotions that shouldn't have a single thing to do with lunch.

It's much easier when everything has a time and a place, "I'll eat that on Tuesday." Or, "I'll have two bites." Then my thoughts are onto something else. I don't like to spend all day every day dwelling on what I will or won't eat. I've put food back into a proper context. Only, I hadn't realized I'd done that until I read the toilet paper analogy.

What do you think? Have there been times in your life when you've romanticized food? Do you still do it? Do you think you could or should stop? If  you have stopped, how? 

I also have a sneaking suspicion that processed, engineered, highly-palatable, "too-good" junk/snack/fast/convenience/restaurant foods have played a part in people's brains forming inappropriate romantic relationships with fatty, crispy, sugar-coated type things. The more I've reduced my consumption of those, the saner the whole thing has become!

This is one of my recent posts from Happy Eaters. If you haven't been over there lately, check it out! That's where I am these days. 

Daily Weighing...Or Not

Here is one of my recent posts from Happy Eaters. If you haven't been over there lately, check it out! That's where I am these days.

 

Ok, so you know those words I said about how I was only going to weigh myself once a week? Those were silly words.

I made it 5 days and I've weighed myself 3 times since. Here's the deal. (I'm sure you can hardly wait for this logic.) Until I stopped doing it, I hadn't realized how much I was using my daily weigh-in to determine what and how much to eat. And it wasn't the weight I was looking at necessarily. That little ritual of shedding my layers of winter clothes, seeing my condition in the mirror, and stepping up for weight, body fat, and hydration readings gave me all kinds of information to work with. If I were: 

bloated - more protein and plants

dehydrated - more water

muscles flat - more carbs

abs gone - less carbs

light and lean - more food

heavy and fluffy - less food

Trying to be a carefree "I don't weigh myself" person blew up my finely tuned feedback loop...that I didn't know existed. It's not so much about the scale weight. It's about looking at myself and the data and saying - I need crackers today, or I need salt, or noooo more salt, or lowish carb, or a bigger lunch, or no lunch, or definitely a steak tonight. Those little adjustments each day keep me looking and feeling great. There can be zero denial going on, but if I hid in my baggy sweats and avoided the scale all week, I might be in for a surprise or have something that actually needed fixing. 

Do you know what I'm saying? Am I nuts? No, don't answer. LOL

Anyway, so here is my latest thought. There are certain days when it's ridiculous to weigh myself. On my weekends it's not like I'm going to consider weight, sodium and hydration and say, "No, I'm sorry, I can't go to the Italian buffet tonight." I may be a little weird but I'm not an alien life form. I need bread. But there's no real reason to weigh myself on my weekend, or the day after. So, perhaps I will go from mirror / weight / body fat / hydration check-ins 7 days per week to 4. We'll see. Maybe.

Love, 

The Crazy Person  

The Happiness Diet

 

I kept seeing The Happiness Diet mentioned in the media so I had to check it out. The message is a good one, which is that the modern American diet (MAD, they call it) of sugar, processed carbs, chemicals, and industrial fats is making people fat, sick, and depressed. It says:

You're probably well aware that our food is responsible for our epidemic levels of obesity and diabetes, but you might be surprised to learn that it's also largely responsible for skyrocketing levels of brain disorders. We all want to be happy, but every day most of us consume what amounts to a series of "Unhappy Meals."

The solution, of course, is to back away from the packaged crap and focus on eating more nutrient dense real foods. It talks about the perils of corn, cottonseed, safflower, sunflower, and soybean oils. Some of this I'd heard before but plenty of it was new. For example, I'd never heard of the Israeli paradox, where people have relied on vegetable oils to stay kosher. With the high consumption of polyunsaturated omega-6 fats, Israelis have some of the lowest cholesterol levels of any Western country yet some of the highest rates of heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and obesity. I've found it interesting that since I'm all onboard with natural fats like butter, coconut oil, olive oil, chicken skin, bacon, and full-fat dairy, my total cholesterol has gone up but the ratios are amazing compared to when my levels were below 150. Last time I had it checked, I want to say the total was right around 200, HDL was 86, and triglycerides were quite low, like 50-something. The guy who handed me the results said, "Whatever you're eating, keep eating it." LOL Yes, sir! Bacon, cheese, avocados, and steaks. I'm on it!

The book talks about what's wrong with the modern American diet (MAD), how it affects your health, brain, and mood, what you can do to shift to a more traditional whole foods diet, and the brain/mood benefits of all kinds of different foods. Part 1 is called "This Is Your Brain on Food." Part 2 is "The Happiness Diet: The Foods, Menu Plans and Recipes." It stresses that you can ease into the new foods and not to overwhelm yourself or engage in catastrophic thinking. If you have a fast food bender, no big. Just get up and eat a happy breakfast. One such breakfast that I highlighted because it's one of my favorites is whole wheat toast topped with almond or peanut butter, sliced banana, and honey. There is at least one meatless day included in the menu plan. There is no "grains will kill you" spiel as long as you're eating actual grains and not Wonder Bread. Some other recipes that I highlighted to try are Humble Hummus, Brussels Sprouts with Bacon, and Roasted Chicken and Vegetables. I still haven't attempted the roasting a whole chicken thing and this looks like a really easy and delicious way to do it.

Throughout the book there are little sidebar snippets called The Top 100 Reasons to Avoid Processed Foods. Some of them were thought provoking and some were unsubstantiated drivel. They did entertain me though. One example:

Reason #3 - A Dunkin' Donuts glazed chocolate cake stick contains more than forty ingredients, including five different types of gums and TBHQ, a form of butane (lighter fluid) that's used as a preservative.

I don't think The Happiness Diet was quite as strong overall as Deep Nutrition or Real Food but it was thought provoking and entertaining. It reads much more like a mainstream diet book. That's not necessarily a bad thing. People who wouldn't go anywhere near Deep Nutrition's discussion of epigenetics might be very inclined to pick up a diet book with a hamburger on the cover, and they need this information desperately.

The Peanut Butter Crisis

On a diet forum, a subject line like that might mean somebody is guilt-ridden about their peanut butter consumption. Here, it means I CAN'T BUY MY SKIPPY!!!! Now, I'd been seeing news stories about the great peanut shortage of 2011. Drought in Georgia and Texas decimated the peanut crop, peanut butter costs skyrocketing, yadda, yadda... I didn't care. I'll pay whatever to get my Skippy Natural Super Chunk. No problem. Until I couldn't buy it anymore! The last two weeks, there have been NO jars of my Skippy at the store, only the transfat kinds and the other (unacceptable) natural brands. 

I cornered the grocery store manager and quizzed him about Skippy, no doubt sounding like a complete crazy lady. He says that he has ordered a case of Skippy Natural Super Chunk every other day since October 20th and has still not received any. He says, "Apparently, people are hoarding it." I look at me feet and think about all the jars stacked in my cupboard. LOL I guess I hadn't noticed the shortage until my stockpile had started to dwindle. 

There were still all these other natural brands on the shelves. I decide I have to find an emergency backup alternative peanut butter to get through the crisis. I don't start in the natural foods area because I know from experience that all of those simple organic PBs taste like oily sand. I grab a jar of Smucker's Natural. It has no sugar. Baaah! Spit! Put it back.  I grab a jar of Peter Pan Natural - fractionated palm oil. WTF is that? I googled on my phone in the aisle. I quickly learn palm oil is the best option, palm kernel oil is less desirable, and fractionated palm oil is heated to concentrate the saturated fats. I'll pass on that. Oils should be messed with as little as possible. I put the Peter Pan back.

Next, I grab a jar of Jif Natural Crunchy. I'm generally not a fan of Jif because there's not enough sugar in it. It tastes too much like peanuts. (Yes, I know I have issues.) The ingredients are: peanuts, sugar, palm oil, salt, molasses. Ooh! Two sweeteners! I think, "That'll do, pig." and I put it in my cart. I opened it yesterday and was impressed with just how crunchy it is. There are lots of peanut pieces in there! It's sweet enough. Now, the primary problem is it's not salty enough. Skippy had that salt/fat/sugar combo absolutely perfect. Jif is not quite as euphoria-inducing, but it will get me through the crisis.

Ok, I just had to share all that. I'll let you know if/when I'm reunited with my beloved Skippy.

System Six Easy Fat Loss Review
It's a good day. I have a new fitness program! Josh Hillis sent me this one to check out so I thought I'd share an overview with my fellow e-book junkies. System Six Easy Fat Loss is a really interesting concept. I caught myself nodding and laughing and agreeing with nearly everything he said. People make fat loss much more complicated and difficult than it needs to be. He talks about how years ago, the mistakes people were making were too much long boring easy cardio, machine isolation exercises, body part splits with lots of resting between sets. Then everybody realized that wasn't working so well and they went berserk for high-intensity, total body, no-rest, fast-paced, kill you dead six days a week type programs. Those worked GREAT, for a few weeks until you were injured and burned out and couldn't sustain it, then you regained the weight. So, the basic premise of  System Six is that every workout should not be a hard workout. The intensity of your workouts should vary from day to day, week to week, and season to season. It's ok kill it for 8 weeks before a beach vacation, but then you need to know how to maintain that lean body all year without mentally and physically breaking yourself.

Josh says, "There are 30 day programs, 12 week programs. Tons of great short term programs. Unfortunately, they suck for long term results." Going hard all the time leads to failure, quitting, injury, loss of motivation, or just seeing the fat loss get harder and harder. So, he lays out what appears to be a pretty kick ass periodized program that mixes up your intensity level and focus. The movements are basic - push, pull, squat, hip hinge - so lots of push-ups, pull-ups, presses, rows, deadlifts and swings. The routines are primarily kettlebell and body weight. If you don't have a kettlebell, then dumbbells and body weight, or just body weight. If you happen to have access to barbells, you can work some serious squatting and deadlifting into the mix.

There is no diet. (Yay!!!! The crowd goes wild!!!). There is a lot of talk of food journals. (A hush falls over the audience. LOL) I'll not lie, that gave me pause. Oh, noes, not the OCD food journaling again! But it's not like that. He emphasizes several things: First, there is no judgment. You just write it down. You had seventeen Twinkies and  a whole bag of cheese puffs? Great, just jot that down. It's not about beating yourself up. It's about gaining understanding. What works for you? What holds you back? How could you make one small improvement? He says:

Focus on consistency over perfection. Make one small change at a time. Make the change stick. Making the change stick is more important than making more changes.

Yes!! Exactly!

In one of his videos, he goes on to say that not everybody needs to keep a food journal all the time. Different people will handle it differently. If you're struggling to make anything happen at all, maybe you need to track things closely for a while and really see where you are. If you've pretty much got it down, maybe you just write down what you ate without any calculating or judgment, kind of like our "What did you eat today?" thread. If you're already lean and your eating habits are second nature, maybe you don't track anything at all, or maybe you only track for short periods of time when you're trying to take it up a level. In any case, understanding how your eating affects your results is really important. Guilt and denial and avoidance don't work.

One thing Josh says that is probably as clear an explanation as I've ever seen is:

Scale Weight = Calories Consumed

Body Fat % = Strength + Food Quality

If you're heavier than you want to be, you're eating too much overall. If you're light but flabby, that means you're not strong enough to pull off the body fat percentage you're hoping for. You need to lift more AND lay off the muffins. He says that lean people tend to eat more protein than average people, consume fewer calories than average people, and make better carb and fat choices than average people. There's nothing wrong with average, but these are the things to keep in mind if you want to get leaner.

Now, the workouts themselves. There are three phases, a volume phase, a circuits for time phase (Tabata inervals), and a strength phase. Within the strength phase there are 6, 12, and 20 rep schemes emphasizing strength, fitness, and endurance. He has like a year of workouts spelled out in 6 week phases. Within every phase, there are hard, medium, and easy days. So the focus of the routines change, the intensity changes, the reps change, the only thing that doesn't change much is the movements - push, pull, squat, hip hinge. However, even those have detailed progressions. So, say push-ups from your knees, to full push-ups, to offset push-ups, to spiderman push-ups, to windshield wiper push-ups, to one-handed push-ups. Same for pull-ups (maybe you start with just hanging from the bar or doing small partial reps), and squats (maybe you start with a basic glute bridge and work up to squats, reverse lunges, split squats, and eventually a full unassisted pistol squat).

An example, phase one, week one, day one:

Kettlebell military presses - 4 sets of 5-10 reps

Kettlebell swings - 4 sets of 10-30 reps

That's it. You're done!

Another one from a later phase:

Pullups - 2 sets of 6-12 reps

Pushups - 2 sets of 6-12 reps

Deadlifts - 2 sets of 6-12 reps

Squats - 2 sets of 6-12 reps

If I have any reservations about this approach, it's mainly my own attention span. Can I hang with these shorter workouts (20-40 minutes) and basic movements? If they're getting me better results, I'm sure I'll adjust! ;-) Remember that there is progression within the movements. If you can't knock out that many pull-ups, you'll be doing hangs, negatives, or partials. If you could do that many push-ups in your sleep, you'll be working up to the most difficult variations. You might do the deadlifts in the gym with a loaded bar, you might do them at home, single-leg, with one kettlebell. So, even though it looks very basic on paper, you can still mix things up quite a bit.

I'm intrigued by this. I have a week or two of Venus Index Phase 2 to finish and then I plan to give this a whirl. If you want to check out System Six Easy Fat Loss, it has one of the more interesting sales pages I've seen. There is no mile long highlighted and boldfaced testimonial crap. There is no talking head sales pitch video. Instead, the video is basically like attending a fun live fitness presentation. It's an overview of the problems with popular fat loss programs, how they've changed for the better and worse, the common mistakes people make, how Josh's own training methods have evolved, what works for fat loss, what had his clients hitting a wall, how he arrived at this approach. It's LONG. I'm talking 48 minutes or so. The first 20ish are about fat loss in general and the last 20ish go into the specifics of the program. I listened to it while doing other things, namely cardio, but it held my attention the whole time.

Check it out and let me know what you think. It does come with a pile of materials, quick start guides, choosing a kettlebell, kettlebell progressions, 2-kettlebell workouts, bodyweight only workouts. Does anybody have this yet? Have any questions? I'd be eager to talk to somebody who has the program and has started.

(Disclaimery thing: Although I am an e-book junky and buy them like candy, I received a free review copy of this program. I use an affiliate link when discussing it. If you buy through my links, I will receive a portion of the sale, fueling my e-book buying habit. As always, thank you for enabling me.)

Sugar Nation
I finished reading Sugar Nation by Jeff O'Connell. Jeff is a fitness writer and editor who has worked at Muscle & Fitness and Men's Health among others. He's also diabetic. Not a stereotypical obese, sedentary diabetic but one of those active skinny guys who can eat whatever he wants and not gain weight. There was just the small matter of his pancreas going berserk and trying to kill him. I thought he would have an interesting perspective. I was mostly right. The book is a little uneven with certain chapters being completely riveting - his diagnosis, his diabetic dad, his discussions of other fit people who also have blood sugar issues, the specifics of how he handles his food and workouts. Yet, other chapters with longwinded tales about diabetes conferences literally caused me to fall asleep and drop the reader out of my hand.

What's most disturbing about the book is how little doctors know about controlling the disease through nutrition and exercise, and how outdated and dangerous the official recommendations are from organizations like The American Diabetes Association. Basically, they stuff you full of carbohydrates and then try to control the wild blood sugar swings with drugs.

"On its web site, the ADA recommends that diabetics divide their plate in half and fill one side with starchy foods such as breads, cereals, or potatoes, all of which will be readily converted to sugar in the body. The next step is to halve the empty space and fill one part with fruit, more fast-acting carbs. The remaining (optional) quarter is reserved for a breakfast meat. An egg, arguably the single healthiest food on the planet for diabetics, has no place on this table.

The ADA isn't done carb loading a nation of diabetics, however. They recommend washing it all down with an eight-ounce glass of non-fat or low-fat milk.  All told, that's the equivalent of eating several candy bars' worth of carbs, providing a feeding frenzy for the disease that the ADA seeks to prevent with its recommendations."

Jeff himself has learned to manage the disease through exercise and reducing his carb intake. Regular heavy lifting and high intensity interval training make his muscle cells more receptive to insulin and make it more likely that the carbs he does eat will be used as fuel instead of just zooming around in his bloodstream wreaking havoc. He keeps his daily net carbs below 80g per day even though that's breaking the rules.

"Following the ADA's lead, health organizations around the globe are telling diabetics never to consume fewer than 130 carb grams a day. They claim even that amount is extremely low, and that anything below that threshold literally will starve the brain and central nervous system. But after four years eating amounts well below their lower limit, my mind is sharp. My body feels great. I can power through forty-five-minute daily workouts. The only thing that seems helpless to function under these conditions, actually, is diabetes."

Sugar Nation is worth a read if you have blood sugar issues or care about someone who does. It will also appeal to nutrition book junkies, healthy eaters, and conspiracy theorists. I'm a little of each, so I found it worthwhile even though it had its ups and downs. It's truly horrifying what's happening. If we continue this trend of not exercising and living on processed carbs, he says, "One in every three people born in the year  2000 will become diabetic. For minorities, the rate will be one in two."  Yowza!

Side Effects May Include...Leanness
There's an awesome article on the Precision Nutrition blog today: Side Effects May Include...Leanness. It talks about how getting and staying lean is a side effect of your lifestyle. Kind of like when I talk about "creating a new normal" versus going on a diet or starting a plan. I don't want to go on a diet. I want what I do every day, what's normal and enjoyable for me, to be what keeps me lean. My favorite quote in the article:

 "A 12 week diet/workout blitz will help you lose fat. But if the sole reason someone eats nutritious foods and exercises is to lose fat, what happens when there is no more fat to lose?"

I can answer that one. You regain everything, kick yourself for a while, and then look for a new/better/stricter plan to start. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Although there may be brief periods of control freak euphoria when you feel like you're "winning" the process of getting lean is never truly fun and so it never lasts long. There's always the urge to rebel, to go back to what makes you happy.
 
That's what I had to get past, especially coming off years of the Body for Life 12 week challenge mentality. I couldn't deal anymore with diets that I was on or off. Or plans that made me miserable for a number of weeks until the measurements were taken and the photos were snapped. You might look good for that one day, but then you immediately start backsliding because the methods you used to lean out quickly were so dreadful and unrealistic.
 
Now, I'm happily lean and getting leaner, but I'm doing it so slowly and pleasantly that I hardly notice. I'm talking 1 pound per month, and I expect that to eventually slow down and stop, at which point I'll just keep doing what I'm doing because the process itself makes me happy and makes me feel good. It's just what I do.
 
How has your track record been with diets? And especially transformation contests? Has anyone who's ever entered one of those before and after things with pictures easily maintained the "after photo" appearance? Has anyone done a contest and then rebounded horrifically? Has anyone vowed to never do a diet/contest/transformation again as long as they live? What are you doing differently now? Is your current lifestyle producing the results you want?
 
Lots to think about!