Sugar Baby – Part 1

It's the middle of January and our 2010 resolutions are still fresh. The last of the sugar cookies are just crumbs left next to the half eaten gingerbread house that moved in with us last month. It's that time to re-train our minds and our tongues.

From the dark side 

We've heard enough to know that refined sugars and sugar substitutes are not good for us, but they’re so difficult to stay away from. Let’s face it; sugar is a sneaky ingredient lurking everywhere. Take a look around your kitchen and you’ll find it in breads, dried cranberries, soymilk, tonic water, bottled teas, salad dressings, crackers and just about any processed food. The people who create the recipes for these foods used to cook for Darth Vader and now he gets a cut of their profits. They know that the sugar in their foods will get us drugged up and lure us right into their dark side. Sugar is a mortal enemy of ripped abs.



It’s important to remember what we’re feeding with our sugar addictions. Viruses love sugar, yeasts (like Candida) love sugar, parasites love sugar, cancer loves sugar, fat cells love sugar.


Sugar, in its original form, is the juice from the sugar cane plant. Simple enough, and not terribly damaging when consumed moderately in its natural state. The white sugar on our tables and in our foods is stripped of the fiber, vitamins, minerals and natural enzymes that are helpful to our bodies. This refined sugar has no nutritional value and is usually found in foods that contain excessive fats, useless calories and a ton of cholesterol.


Refined sugar makes you fat. When our liver maxes out on the amount of sugar that it can store as an energy source, the rest is pumped back into our bloodstream and dumped around our body… so guys, look for it on your belly and girls on your thighs and upper arms. Type 2 diabetes is caused by too much sugar. All this stresses your body and stress causes aging.


Beware, when fructose, a natural sugar found in fruits, is refined, processed and added to foods or beverages, it has the same effects as refined sugar.


Legalized Coke
A 24-ounce Coke usually contains over 75 grams of sugar. That’s enough sugar to make your insulin levels bark like a Doberman on crack. Harvard says a single can of Coke a day will add 15 pounds of body weight a year.


According to "Healthbolt" this is what happens to your body after drinking a Coke:
The First 10 minutes:
10 teaspoons of sugar hit your system. (100% of your recommended daily intake.) You don’t immediately vomit from the overwhelming sweetness because phosphoric acid cuts the flavor allowing you to keep it down. Nice visual huh.
20 minutes:
Your blood sugar spikes, causing an insulin burst. Your liver responds to this by turning any sugar it can get its hands on into fat. (There’s plenty of that at this particular moment)
40 minutes:
Caffeine absorption is complete. Your pupils dilate, your blood pressure rises, as a response your livers dumps more sugar into your bloodstream. The adenosine receptors in your brain are now blocked preventing drowsiness.
45 minutes:
Your body ups your dopamine production stimulating the pleasure centers of your brain. This is physically the same way heroin works, by the way.
60 minutes:
The phosphoric acid binds calcium, magnesium and zinc in your lower intestine, providing a further boost in metabolism. This is compounded by high doses of sugar and artificial sweeteners also increasing the urinary excretion of calcium.
60 Minutes:
The caffeine’s diuretic properties come into play. (It makes you have to pee.) It is now assured that you’ll evacuate the bonded calcium, magnesium and zinc that was headed to your bones as well as sodium, electrolyte and water.
60 minutes:
As the rave inside of you dies down you’ll start to have a sugar crash. You may become irritable and/or sluggish. You’ve also now, literally, pissed away all the water that was in the Coke. But not before infusing it with valuable nutrients your body could have used for things like even having the ability to hydrate your system or build strong bones and teeth.


This will all be followed by a caffeine crash in the next few hours. (As little as two if you’re a smoker.) But, hey, have another Coke, it’ll make you feel better.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Sugar = Diabetes, obesity and aging… are we having fun yet? Tune in next week for part 2 -- information on sugar substitutes.


Train Your Body. Train your Mind. Tame your Tongue.
Information on this site is not a substitute for consulting a licensed medial professional. You should never begin an exercise or nutritional regime without consulting your physician.

The 11th Commandment

More than Anti-Aging
Every time I cut myself I’m amazed. I can’t help but feel like the bionic man. First I bleed and then my alien super skin takes over and stitches the whole thing up. Sometimes you can’t even see the patch job. It seems to happen faster than taking a '70 Mustang from 0-60. 

Skin repair always reminds me of the constant rebuilding my body does. When I’m feeling great, I simply forget about it, but when I’m sick or dealing with a health challenge, I’m aware of every single area that’s in pain or needs attention. Fortunately, we were designed to renew and regenerate. Wasn't that the 11th Commandment – "Thou Shalt Rebuild and Regenerate"? (The 12th one was Eat Organic, but that's another blog) Exercise helps clear lymph systems, strengthens muscles and bones, oxygenates cells and helps our bodies regenerate, heal and magically youth.

If you’re dealing with cancer, or a life threatening illness, keep hitting the gym. If you feel “sucker punched” and want to give up, don’t, just work out smarter. Find a doctor who will support you in caring for your whole body. The days my mind wants to keep me from the gym are the days I get the most emotional and physical benefits from it. You might feel like your walking on a newly hot tarred highway in the middle of August when you're on the way to your workout, but it's worth it. 

Here’s my "Zen Exercise" version of regenerating and youthing

Zen Mind

We create with our thoughts.

Zen Exercise

What we push against pushes back against us.

Zen Muscle

Resistance makes our muscles work hard and break down.

Zen Repair

Rest and eat the right nutrients.

Zen Body

Muscular-skeletal system renews.

Zen Mind

Refreshed mental clarity, creativity.

Pretty simple isn’t it? We have an ongoing external and internal "youthing" system. The opposite of this is disuse and neglect. The highest groups at risk for illness, depression, premature aging and early death are individuals who are completely sedentary.

A Tufts University study by researchers William Evans and Brian Rosenberg has shown that exercise can reverse ten measurable biomarkers associated with aging. Their studies were published in a book called Biomarkers. The book title refers to the ten measurable biomarkers of age that have been shown to be reversible. It didn't matter what age a person was, everyone reversed their biomarkers of aging on an exercise program.

If you’ve been putting off getting started, here are ten good reasons to hit it at the gym, and hit it as hard as you can. Modern medicine rates its statistics on the “average adult”. Is that really what you want to be? 

1. Exercise develops lean body (muscle) mass.

The “average adult” loses 6.6 pounds of muscle each decade.

Yikes, that’s almost 20 pounds of muscle lost between the ages of 30 and 60. Guess what it’s replaced with.

2. Exercise increases strength and muscle function.

Bundles of muscles and motor nerves deteriorate between the ages of 30 and 70 with the “average adult” losing 20% of the motor nerves in the thighs, with similar losses in all the large and small muscle groups elsewhere in the body. This brings a whole new meaning to bundle up. Whatever your exercise choice, your muscles and motor nerves will thank you.

3. Exercise increases your basal metabolic rate.

The body’s metabolic rate declines in the “average adult” by 2% every decade after the age of 20.  That’s an 8% decrease by the time you’re sixty. When your metabolism slows down, your body stores the unused calories and fuel for the future as guess what…. See number 4.

4. Exercise reduces body fat.

Between the age of 20 and 65 the “average adult” doubles his or her ratio of fat to muscle. This can be even higher in very sedentary lifestyles. Excess fat, particularly belly fat is deadly to men, promotes estrogen production which tips a mans natural testosterone/estrogen balance toward estrogen, which in turn promotes more fat production.

5. Exercise increases aerobic capacity.

By the age of 65, the “average adult” looses the ability to use oxygen by 30 to 40%. Don’t you wonder what’s going to oxygenate your cells, help your body remove toxins and get you to the bus when you have to run a block to catch it? There is a reason for doing cardio. Interval training combines anaerobic and aerobic work in the same workout. This is the best way to increase your aerobic capacity and burn calories.

6. Exercise decreases blood pressure.

The “average adult” experiences an increase in blood pressure with aging. Why put your system through the problem when you can maintain it with age-defying exercise. If your blood pressure is out of the ballpark, you’ll probably have to take medication, if not, work on controlling it with exercise and diet changes.

7. Exercise increases blood-sugar tolerance.

Type II diabetes risk increases with age in the “average adult” because of the body’s reduced ability to use glucose in the bloodstream. Exercise amps up your natural ability to deal with everything, including glucose. Better yet, tame your tongue and exercise.

8. Exercise improves your cholesterol/HDL ratio.

Overall cholesterol in the “average adult” increases with age, and “bad” LDL cholesterol gains ground over “good” HDL cholesterol.  Cholesterol (the good kind) is required to produce testosterone; testosterone helps our bodies build muscle.

9. Exercise increases bone Density:

Bones lose strength with age in the “average adult”, when this goes too far it becomes the disease osteoporosis. We don’t like this. Push some weights. When legs have to bear weight, they become stronger and denser. Studies have shown that running has the same effect to leg bones. The surprise here is that the same study showed that runners forearm bones were also denser even though no weight bearing exercises were being done… a message given to the whole body at the quantum level through (probably) hormonal chemical signals.

10. Exercise assists with body temperature regulation.

The “body’s ability to regulate a steady internal temperature of 98.6 degrees declines with age in the “average adult”. Our bodies like to be comfortable and everything functions better at 98.6. So exercise and wear that cashmere sweater just because it looks good on you.

If exercise is about getting healthy, the side-effect is looking good. So when one of my favorite clients says that the only reason he exercises is to look good, I just smile. 

Train your Body. Train your Mind. Tame your Tongue.


Information on this site is not a substitute for consulting a licensed medial professional. You should never begin an exercise or nutritional regime without consulting your physician.

New Year's Eve

2  0  1  0

Wishing you an abundance of health and love.
Everything else   we can buy.

See you all next year!

Train your Body, Train your Mind, Tame your Tongue.

2010 Challenge

New Body – New World

I’ve been thinking of the people who’ve inspired me on my various paths in life, some are still my teachers, others have moved on. Then I had to look at myself and ask what kind of role I play in the world and what I want for the New Year.

Inspiration is really just holding up a mirror of hope, real possibilities and desire to someone else.  How we live our lives is what’s on our mirror and we never know how much we affect others through our actions and our lives.

So what’s this got to do with health and fitness? Everything. When we’re inspired, endless possibilities can become real. An inspired possibility comes from an energized brain, and an energized brain is the hottest ticket to any life transformation.  

Dumped after 30

A lot of men start to feel old and experience a depressing loss of youth after 30. The media “youth advertising” blitz starts to taper off, hormones change, careers kick into gear, we can’t metabolize the junk food we loved in our 20’s and it’s easy to feel old when we go out to dance on the weekends.

What’s really critical here isn’t the “chronological loss of youth” that implies aging in our culture, it’s the lack of inspiration for, and encouragement of, a healthy life, body and lifestyle. Having ripped abs isn’t a description of having good health or a lack of it; they’re just ripped abs. Put "mind-body" health together with ripped abs and you’ve got something really great. But it’s always your choice of what’s healthy – for you – that is the most important thing.

New World Order 

I noticed that whenever I’ve shifted something in my life, I’ve attracted new people and opportunities. Imagine the magnitude of local and world change that would occur if all of us made ourselves fit (ripped if you want) and healthy from the inside out. Supersized double cheese burgers with fries and diet cokes would disappear, no one would be buying them. Gyms would open in airports, shopping malls and roadside gas stations. Irradiated food would sit unsold on shelves for it’s 100-year extended lifetime and fresh food would be the order of the day.

So for the New Year, make time to take care of yourself at the gym. Eat well. Skip those unfulfilling social events, and go to the ones that are more meaningful. Make a lifestyle plan for yourself. If your friends make fun of your new patterns and eating habits, just love them. No defense necessary. When you’ve taken care of yourself —and really, who else is going to? — You will find your interactions with everyone else to be so much lighter, you’ll have energy for hours and you’ll deep sleep like you used to, regardless of the stress you endure.

Be the Change 

If we want to live in a world full of happy, healthy, kind people then Gandhi’s guidance is perfect:  “be the change you want to see in the world”. Here’s a 2010 challenge, I hope you’ll join me:

Be the happiest that we can be.

Be the healthiest that we can be.

Be the fittest that we we be.

Go ahead and make this list longer, it’s just a start. What do you really want in the New Year? How do you want to look and feel? What kind of world do you want to live in? If we continually step-out being ourselves, being our best, we’ll feel inspired and we'll inspire someone else. That’s how the world will change, one of us at a time.

Happy New Year!

Train Your Body. Train your Mind. Tame your Tongue.

Information on this site is not a substitute for consulting a licensed medial professional. You should never begin an exercise or nutritional regime without consulting your physician.

My First Time

I'm dedicating this blog to the inspirational body builder – Joe Loprenzi who died at the age of 95 on December 16 this year. Joe's brother Sam built the first gym I ever stepped foot into, and it's still there in the same spot in southeast Portland, Oregon.

Until I was 13, my athletic activities were bike riding and playing chess. In the 8th grade, Bobby, the “popular boy” – who I had an innocent teen crush on – asked me to sign up for the Pop Warner football team with him. The team needed a “big guy” in the front line, (translation: heavy kid) and he was the quarterback. Cool, anything to get to hang out with him and get rides home in his dad’s 1950’s  windowless jeep.

Touchdown Hero

The "football thing" was a huge new venture for me. Every part of it was terrifying, and I’d never succeeded at anything in sports before. I was as determined as a 13 year-old could be because I wanted to succeed so badly and I wanted Bobby to like me. The coach realized that I could remember plays and designed a couple of them where I got to break out from the line and have the ball tossed to me. One time, I made a touchdown. Do you have any idea what kind of confidence builder that was? I was the team’s hero for a day.


My junior year in high school, a new kid moved in next door. Greg was tall, lean and ripped. His family had moved to Portland from a farm in Eastern Oregon, so he’d been tossing hay bales for years. I’d never seen abs like his except in the bodybuilding ads in the back of my superhero DC Comic books. Greg had a few years of weight training experience with his dad, and they liked to go watch bodybuilding competitions at the Portland Armory. Greg and his dad started taking me along to the shows, and that summer, Greg asked me to go to a local gym with him. Ask a high school friend with a major crush on you to go to the gym? Yeah!

Loprenzi's Gym

Loprenzi’s gym in southeast Portland was just a 30 minute bike ride from our homes. Sam Loprenzi  was a celebrity bodybuilder who had started the gym in 1948, and he was still there every day. His brother Joe was about 50 at the time and definitely looked like one of my superhero fantasies. Sam's semi-warehouse gym space was big, hot and certainly didn’t have a self explanatory set of circuit training machines. In fact, I really don’t remember any machines, just lots of heavy weight plates, home made gym equipment and really big guys with wide leather belts doing squats.


Intuitively, I knew how to do bicep curls, but that was about it. I didn’t have a clue about how to perform any other exercise. The whole place was a mystery. Greg took me around a little bit and helped me with a few exercises but because I was so intimidated, I never liked being at the gym. What kept me going there was the bike ride over and getting to spend time with Greg.

Even now when I go to a new gym I get the some of the same feelings. Gyms are like new leather work gloves. It takes a little while to get them to fit comfortably. Every gym is different, the layout, the equipment, the music and the vibe of the people. Even if you’re experienced, it’s a whole new place to figure out. If you’ve never worked out before, it’s even more difficult.

Travel Fit

Since the end of the year often involves travel, I’m giving those of you who have some training a portable workout that’s good in just about any hotel gym. The workouts are primarily dumbbell based because most gyms have them. Take this program along with you. It’ll help you knock out a weeks worth of training anyplace so you can get a quick workout in and stay in shape on the road.


For those of you who are just getting started, get some instruction first, and watch this blog for “how to” writings. (even more as soon as I get that video camera working).  Don’t use this caution as an excuse to sidestep exercise though – every gym has some form of cardio equipment and mats for abs and floor exercises.

Workout Notes

Complete 2-3 sets of 8-12 repetitions for each weight exercise. Target 2-3 sets of 25 reps for each abdominal exercise. If you can't do that, set a bench mark that's just above what you think you can do and shoot for that number. Do at least 20 minutes of cardio interval training on your cardio days. If you don't have the endurance or time for a 40 minute stretch, get up, grab some coffee and hit the gym before breakfast for a 20 minute cardio blast, then come back at the end of the day before dinner and give yourself another 20 minute cardio blast. You won't feel guilty when you eat dessert that night.

The 6 Day Hotel Gym Workout

Day 1 – Chest & Triceps

5-10 minute cardio warm-up

Flat bench dumbbell chest press

Incline bench dumbbell chest press

Flat bench dumbell flys  (or pec fly machine)

Decline pushups (toes on bench, hands on floor)

Rope triceps pushdowns

Triceps dumbell kickbacks

Day 2 – Cardio & Abs

Cardio 

Abdominals on a mat: 

Bent knee leg raises

Oblique crunches

Crunches

Day 3 – Back & Biceps

5-10 minute cardio warm-up

Dumbbell row  

Cable lat pulldowns

Pull ups – narrow and wide grips

Dumbbell biceps curl

Dumbbell hammer curl

Day 4 – Cardio & Abs

Cardio 

Stability ball abdominal crunches

Stability ball oblique crunches 

Day 5 – Legs & Shoulders

5-10 minute cardio warm-up

Squats

Lunges

Leg extensions (if a machine is available)

Seated dumbbell shoulder Press

Side deltoid – seated lateral raise

Front deltoid – standing forward raise

Posterior deltoid – seated bent over lateral raise  

Day 6 – Cardio & Abs

Cardio 

Flat bench crunches

Flat bench bicycle

Flat bench Russian twist 

Day 7 – Get out and play

Information on this site is not a substitute for consulting a licensed medial professional. You should never begin an exercise or nutritional regime without consulting your physician.

Comfort Food

Familiar and dependable foods that pretend to make life ok

Food.
My family was all about food. Shopping for it, cooking it, eating it and before any meal was finished, talking about what we’d have for the next meal. Whew.

“Gher” was my father’s favorite word at dinner… it means EAT in Armenian, and yes, I mean that with capital letters. It was usually uttered near the end of a meal when everyone was already full. My ears received “Gher” somewhere between a request and a demand. I was a fat kid.  (Photo:  Me in the 8th grade)

None of us had any idea what the food did to our bodies. Meat, bread, butter, vegetables, cookies… for all the understanding we had they could have all been put into a blender together. Except for the cookies. I always had some hidden in my t-shirt drawer, no blender for them.

Numb and Dumber

Somehow in this mix of “blenderized” foods I picked out the ones that gave me the most comfort and made them my favorites. In case you wanted a description of comfort foods, they’re the ones that numb you to the world and do it by-passing your brain’s satisfaction center finally landing in some dumb spot in your body. You know the place – it doesn’t have an “off” switch. Sometimes comfort foods put you to sleep too, just like potatoes and gravy at Thanksgiving, another numb-you-dumb.

My first experience with changing eating habits was at 18, my freshman year in college. I wanted to row with my University crew team and had to drop 12 pounds. Intuitively I knew that the foods I loved the most I’d have to give up. But I wanted to crew more than eating those Oreos, so I left them along with my big bag of chips with other guys in the dorm.

Otis Redding had just released “Sitting on the dock of the Bay” and since we were rowing on the San Francisco Bay, I made it my theme song. I talked to the food service director who took a liking to me and she came up with some low calorie meals (Jello was the linch-pin to her planning – go figure, what did I know?). I got up and ran the foothills before class every morning, and after classes in the afternoon we sprinted laps up and down the stadium stairs. Plus, we rowed an hour every other day. I got into really good shape, I actually got abs, my self-confidence changed and I got to row. We won our first time out and I thought that I’d died and gone to heaven. But I still didn’t know much in the way of how food really works. I just knew that some foods were only supposed to be sidebars on my eating list. (Photo, Stanford University freshman crew 1968, that's me, fourth back on the right side)

Hot Stuff

Later on in my college career I got to study in Germany for six months. The first three of which I forgot everything about food and lived on what seemed like a Bavarian sugar and carb fest. My body was run down and I ended up with Scarlet Fever. I discovered what I had while in Rome, after trying to escape the fever by laying down on the Sistine Chapel floor to cool off. The guards weren’t happy about me doing that and kicked me out, but it had turned out to be a great place to look at the ceiling. My skin peeled off in big sheets from the heat of the fever, I lost half of my hair and my eyes couldn’t focus to read more than two lines of text at a time, my muscle tone was gone along with my abs. The doctor was concerned that I’d have heart and other organ problems… from all that internal cooking going on. It was a pretty low spot. On top of it all, I ended up quarantined with my two best friends and my German teacher. Now, they weren’t happy.

After recovering and returning to the states I worked myself back to health. My eyes were goofy for quite a while (I re-trained them using a prism) but the worst was my thin hair and now delicate skin. Everything made it break out in a rash, similar to psoriasis. I had a vanity attack. When an allergy test showed that I was allergic to almost all of my art supplies I knew that was not going to fly. I’d have to do a healing that my doctor couldn’t help me with. Getting back to exercising and returning (most of the time) to a healthier version of my freshman eating patterns helped me feel and look better. I moved off campus and got a place for free as a live-in pool boy. I swam every day and biked to school, my diet was pretty simple most of the time. Once again my body started to change and become more healthy. It took at least six years for the outward symptoms to disappear. I still didn’t know much more about how food really worked, I just knew that if I kept working at it, I’d learn. Meanwhile, whenever I felt sad, scared or rejected, I’d head right back to those comfort foods.

All these years later, I get to guide clients on food as part of their training program. I’m still learning. I don’t crave some foods at all any more, and some foods are still real challenges. It takes time to understand food and then to accept and live by really healthy eating habits. If you have someone to help coach you through a progressive diet change, you’re lucky. If you don't, the information and support available now is amazing. The key to modifying our relationship to comfort food is through our commitment to making a change. Sometimes it has to be motivated by an outside source or goal, like getting on the crew team or addressing a major health issue like it was for me.

Everything Changes

Changing any part of our life ­­– whether it is changing our body, changing a relationship, changing our understanding of something specific to our life (like food), or really committing to something you want – changes our relationship to every other part of our life. We just can’t be the same. Like wearing a new pair of glasses, our vision suddenly becomes crystal clear. That’s one reason we re-bound to comfort foods, they’re dependable. They're from the past and they're familiar and unchanging. Leaving comfort foods behind, especially sugary comfort foods, is as tough and emotional as the final scene in “Where the Wild Things Are” where Max leaves Carol on the shore and sails off alone.

So if you want to start planning for a change, train your mind. Learn everything you can about what you put in your mouth. Develop an exercise program and stick to it. Mind, mouth, body. Connect the dots and you win.

Be proactive. Make only one change in your food habits at a time. Be fearless with your changes. Take the time to enjoy life, laugh and be with your family and friends. I invite you to share your comfort food stories with me – not keeping them a secret is the first step to letting them go.

Train your Body. Train your Mind. Tame your Tongue.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Information on this site is not a substitute for consulting a licensed medial professional. You should never begin an exercise or nutritional regime without consulting your physician.

Holiday Parties

The 10 Pound Months

Permission was finally granted. Now I could abandon my belly to the fried appetizers and the dessert table that's been tempting me like a treasure covered altar in an Indiana Jones movie. Who gave me that permission anyway? If it was the Pillsbury dough boy, he's going to have some serious competition. After all, I'm reasoning that it’s just a short holiday season and I’ve been good all year. Anyway, any extra weight can get hidden under my charcoal grey cable knit sweater with its slimming vertical stripes, right?

I woke-up in bed, covered in a sweat, with a half eaten ginger cookie in my hand.

OMG it was all just a dream.

Here I am, slightly terrified. So, I thought I'd share some of my personal survival tips for getting through the holidays – the "Ten Pound Months" – without packing on extra pounds.

Get pushy

You may have less time now but you can still include exercise into your day. Start out with a cat stretch, neck stretch, three sets of push-ups, and an abs workout. If you’re really committed, drop to the floor and do a set of push-ups every three hours. Only have twenty minutes for a gym workout? Get in there and just do it – before you spend those twenty minutes thinking about how there isn’t enough time to do anything.

Don’t party hungry

If you’re going out to dinner or a party, don’t go hungry. Plan the day before so that you’ll have four or five small meals starting with breakfast. Make your last meal before going out a protein shake. You’ll arrive feeling energized – not starving, and the small meals during the day will have fired up your metabolism.

Drink a lot

You thought this was the 'Absolute' solution? No, I didn't mean alcohol. This is a plan for navigating the holiday bar and leaving with with your reputation intact. Other than your reputation, we’re on a mid-section survival mission here. So start your day with a glass of distilled water. It will kick-off an alkaline reaction in your body and hydrate you after fasting all night. Then keep a scorecard at your desk and drink at least eight to ten glasses of spring water during the day. The water will keep you full and keep your brain functioning at its peak. Make sure your first “drink” at the party is sparkling water with a splash of cranberry juice in a martini glass. The glass in your hand will fit right in with the crowd, and you’ll end up having one less alcoholic drink.

See red

When you drink, make it red. Red wine can help raise your HDL levels (good cholesterol) and prevent LDL (the bad guys) from forming. It’s a source of flavonoid pnenolics – and resveratrol, which can help, prevent blod clots and plaque formation in your arteries. Should you make red wine your new best friend? Probably not. It is also a prime source of empty calories and it can increase your triglycerides (fat – the bad blood lipids). So start with that “martini-glass water drink”, and keep your red wine drinking to one or two glasses.

See green

Yellow and all the rainbow vegetables. Choose them at the party buffet table. Instead of nuts and carbohydrate loaded foods, go for cruciferous vegetables. They can help prevent man boobs and cancer (got your attention, didn’t I ?) and because they’ve got a crunch you’ll get the oral satisfaction you're wanting. Just smile at that harmless looking baked Brie appetizer, and if you still want nuts, put 12 on your plate, then eat them one at a time.

See white

White will put 10 pounds on you in a flash, unless it’s that white fruit combo you’re having for breakfast (…apples, pears, bananas, pineapples and a few golden raisins). The international conspiracy of white carbs including Irish potatoes, Indian rice, French baguettes, Italian cannoli, German spaetzle, English bread pudding and Armenian butter cookies will go right to your middle. They'll fill up that spare tire… but you’ll feel flat. So load up your plate with salads, vegetables and protein instead. Skip the white carbs and if you are going to take a dessert, then take just one taste bite and put your plate down. Now walk away from it.

Stand aside

Come to dinner armed with conversation topics and stand on the other side of the room away from the food table. Smile and laugh and everyone will come over to hear your stories. If you’re talking – you’re not eating. If you don't have anything to say, ask questions. People love to talk about themselves and you’ll make new friends doing this. Remember, even if it's on the other side of the room, standing next to the kitchen door doesn’t count.

To Z rescue

Get enough sleep. When you’re tired you eat more, you have less energy to kick your workouts into gear, you’re brain doesn’t work as well and sleepy people are less fun at parties. Need I say more?

Skinny control

Open your calendar and look at the date. January 1st is almost tomorrow. Start writing your goals for the New Year right now. Read or write in your journal every day. You’ll be amazed at how powerful this is. This one, simple action will help keep you focused and in control when you’re watching all your skinny friends wolfing down huge helpings of tiramisu at the end of the evening.

Heavy breathing

Cardio it up. Take the stairs, run to the bus stop, go dancing, do cardio at the gym. Trouble with your knees? Get them checked and don’t put it off because you’ll need them the rest of your life. Use non impact cardio equipment such as elliptical trainers. Alternately, be a duck and go swimming. No gym membership and a tight financial month? Go online and print out free passes to every gym in your neighborhood, or stop by and ask them for a guest pass to check out the gym. Then use them. At the end of December, you’ll know exactly which gym you want to join for your “New-Year’s-New-Body” resolution. There are no excuses – do at least 20 minutes of cardio every day. Do it like your life depends on it. It does.

Sup it up

If you’re doing all of these things, your immune system will be stronger. You'll want to keep it that way. Support it some more by taking a multi-vitamin, an anti-oxidant like ALA and extra vitamin C. On those nights when you’ve had too many drinks, in spite of your good intentions, take a milk thistle supplement and drink at least 10 ounces of water before going to bed. Your liver will thank you for it.

Tips of your own? Share away, I'd love to hear them.

Train Your Body. Train your Mind. Tame your Tongue.

What's Next?

New beginnings...

Or the end of the line?

It doesn’t seem to matter if we’re graduating from high school, college, changing jobs, ending a relationship, moving across country or retiring. We all spend our lives changing, growing and wondering what’s next… and like that gift from a holiday party grab bag...hoping we’ll like what we get.

This blog entry was inspired when one of my high school friends retired. His email to me was “I don’t know what to do with myself.” At 59-60, a man’s life is strangely similar to that of being 29-30. Things get re-evaluated and shifted around. Just like getting a flat tire when you're already late for a meeting, I hit one of those slumps at 59. And even though I loved every minute of my work, I was still demanding of myself to find something new and exciting. Since it didn’t show up when I wanted it to, I decided to find more peace with my life by hitting the gym with a fierce intensity. Something had to change! It worked, my mood lightened up (so did my body), and everything seemed brighter.

Give it to me

But I still wanted something exciting to happen before I turned 60…

So last fall I headed up to the Catskills and started projects on our pre-civil war farmhouse — landscaping, laying stone walks, a new metal roof and painting the whole darn house. The house is always teaching me new lessons about myself, it’s still standing proud with a peaceful face toward every season with its uneven rock foundations, weathered siding, sloping floors and –now – a new silver roof.

Right then, while I was so engaged and happy with simple utilitarian projects and a lot of dirt under my fingernails, the universe granted my request. I received an offer to take my skills as a fitness trainer to the dancers on Madonna’s “Sticky and Sweet” tour in Europe and North America. My partner, Dr. Steven Margolin, was there as Madonna’s chiropractor. Together we made quite the wellness team.

Pre-show abs blast

Really Surreal

One night, before the kick-off of the tour, Steven, Liz Rosenberg (Madonna’s publicist for most of her career) and I sat in three yellow folding chairs in an empty Izod Arena in New Jersey as Madonna and her cast of performers ran through the first dress rehearsal of their “Sticky and Sweet” world tour. Exciting? Yes, and also a little surreal. I had the same feeling every night of the performance thereafter while standing backstage, riding busses between cities I’d never heard of and learning lessons from the Icon of Music who’s lyrics have pulled me onto dance floors most of my life.

At every point in our lives we’re looking for the next thing. This is good. It’s also good to become totally engaged with who we are right now. It allows us to be better, stronger and makes room for something new to show up.

So I was thinking that the best tools for preparing ourselves for the future are really three basic rules for living joyfully in the present:

1. Live with a healthy, fit mind.
2. Keep a healthy, fit body.
3. Enjoy a desire to experience all of life.

It's all good

Most of us get slammed with a realization that we have to look at our lives differently when we’re turning 29 or 30. In astrology, it’s called Saturn return. Physically, our bodies are just starting to change, and we look at our future and past with a new vision. When I was 30, I “came out”. Being married didn’t make it any easier. The only positive thing my dad said about it all came three years later… he thought I should have done it earlier because he’d never seen me happier.

I developed a motto during this time: “It’s all good in the end, if it’s not all good, it’s not the end.”

So wherever you are in life, go for the joy. If it’s one of those uncertain times, take control of the things you can. Get your body as fit as it can be and think good thoughts. If you want some inspiration, just listen and watch the new remix video of Madonna’s “Celebration” with all of her fans strutting their stuff. Find it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZYvXVyUANY

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Tips for “working out” your stuff

• Leave your problems at the gym or yoga studio door. They’ll be there waiting for you, if you want them, when you’re done.
• Wear something that makes you look and feel good. If nothing in your closet works, go out and buy that new tank top.
• Hydrate before, during and after your workout. It’s good for your muscles, and keeps your brain happier and functioning.
• Focus on each movement of each exercise. Be so present in your workout practice that there is no room for other thoughts.
• Before you lift, know how many reps you want to do. Then do them.
• Relax your grip. If you’re doing biceps and your forearms are tight, your mind will think you’re working them instead of your biceps.
• I see so many guys at the gym making horrible faces when they train… if they only knew how unattractive they looked. Be an actor. Put on a stage smile. Stay conscious of your face when you’re working out and you’ll feel more energized. You’ll look better too — and don’t forget, we’re training our face muscles every time we use them!
• Finish your chest, shoulder or leg workout with one or two light back exercise reps. You’ll leave the gym standing taller.
• Do one nice thing for someone at the gym, it might just be a kind word. You’re the one who will feel good when you do it.
• Eat when you’re done. Keep your energy up. You’ll want every bit of it to finish the day.

If none of these work, do what my high school friend does ­­­­— just go fishing.

Train Your Body. Train your Mind. Tame your Tongue.