Sugar Baby – Part 3

It’s just cool to think that we got beamed down from “somewhere” to experience such earthly abundance. An abundance of experiences, loves, hates, playthings and … sweets. If you have been reading the other “Sugar Baby” blogs you’ve probably made some decisions about those sugars and sweeteners brought to you through the marvels of modern chemistry. Unlike the sweeteners in Sugar Baby –Part 2, these sweeteners weren’t created by chemistry geeks wearing lab coats… we’ve left the Frankensugars behind. So this blog takes a look at natural sweeteners.

Will Work for Sugar

As a kid, my sweet tooth was so strong that I’d ride across town to my grandparent’s house to score some cookies (I was a dental mess). Along with her "All American" chocolate chip cookies, there were always her Armenian specialties of Paklava (or Baklava as the Greeks say) and butter cookies, both sweet and without sugar (she served the latter with spoonfuls of honey over it). Most of the time there was a half eaten apple or berry pie around too.

Before she would let me indulge, I’d have to work in the garden, filling the apple basket and collecting eggs from her chickens or berries and vegetables from her garden. She had plenty of honeybees as well, but they terrified me. She was my first teacher about the abundance and generosity of natural foods and also the memorable, addictive sugar spikes of refined sugars. Sugar is irresistible to 4 ft. tall humans, and just as juicy to 6 ft. ones.

Stealth Naturals 

With the exception of stevia, (stevia doesn’t elevate blood glucose levels) all of these natural sweeteners can lift you up, send you flying and then crash you down just like the old Paramount Park Stealth Rollercoaster. These sweeteners have calories… you know what that means. If you don’t burn them off, you'll add them as fat and end up looking like a stand-in extra for "Big Momma". One more thing, even though the “crash and fat” warnings should be enough – Sugars can weaken your adrenals, which compromises your ability to deal with stress. Stress leads to illness.

Dehydrated cane-juice crystals

These are the easiest substitute for replacing white sugar, and you know, if it looks like a dog and barks like a dog… Anyway, the crystals are made by evaporating water from sugarcane juice. This is sold under the name sucanat. Sucanat is not processed like white sugar so it still contains nutrients found in the sugarcane. Don’t be mislead, sucanat is not commercial “brown sugar”.

Sugarcane is a crop that isn’t sweet on the environment; it’s hard on ecosystems and biodiversity. Buy organic or Fair Trade certified sucanat.

Blackstrap Molasses

This sweetener is what is left after crystals of sugar are removed from sugarcane or beet juice, and it’s about 65% sucrose. Blackstrap molasses contains calcium and iron and other minerals, providing nutritional value. Sorghum molasses and Barbados molasses are less nutritious than Blackstrap.

Barley Malt, Rice Amasake, Rice Syrup and Sorghum Syrup

These sweeteners are made by fermenting grains. They contain both simple and complex sugars as well as some complex carbohydrates so they are absorbed slowly into your bloodstream. They also contain nutrients (approximately half) from the original grains.

Date Sugar

Like the previous sweeteners, you can figure out the source from the name. This sugar is made from pulverized dried dates. One tablespoon of date sugar is counted as one fruit exchange in the diabetic exchange system. It contains fiber and minerals from the original fruit.

Maple Syrup

This great tasting stuff is simply tree sap. There are lots of minerals in this one including potassium and calcium. It takes 10 gallons of maple sap to make 1 gallon of maple syrup. Make sure you are choosing REAL maple syrup. Under the ingredients it should say 100% pure maple syrup, not corn syrup or anything else. Making sure it is organic is important because some companies use formaldehyde to prolong sap flow. Vermont has stringent quality control for the production of maple syrup. Always check the label.

Honey

Honey is just as sweet as refined sugar and gets absorbed into the bloodstream quickly. If you want nutritional value from this sweetener, choose raw honey. Raw honey contains the vitamins, minerals, enzymes and pollen that are destroyed when honey is processed. Raw honey, particularly from local sources, may help with hay fever and allergies by building your natural immunity. My suggestion: don’t eat processed honey.

Agave

Agave Nectar is a liquid sweetener that comes from the sap of the agave plant. It’s the maple syrup of the south. Agave is heated and processed to create the light or amber liquids. I’ve read that the amount of iron, calcium, potassium and magnesium create the color tone. Agave is sweeter than refined sugar, but doesn’t spike your insulin levels as refined sugar does, but it has just about the same calories as sugar.

Stevia

This is probably the least known sweetener around. You won’t find it on many labels. Stevia is a native of Paraguay and is now grown in many countries. It has been used for many centuries and by many cultures. Extensive scientific research has been done to prove its safety, but until recently, it had only been approved as a dietary supplement. Stevia packs a sweet wallop. It’s 150 to 400 times sweeter than sugar and has no calories. It has been proven to help regulate blood sugar levels. A little goes a long ways. You can find stevia as a liquid or in powdered form.

Staying Alkaline

We already know that processed sugar and chemical replacements for sugar are acid forming and that cancer and viruses love an acidic body. Ratings for the following natural sweeteners come from a book I highly recommend called Alkalize or Die by Dr. Theodore A. Baroody:

Alkaline Forming Sweeteners

Honey – Raw 

(from alfalfa, clover and eucalyptus, sourwood & tupelo varieties)

Sucanat

Dr. Bronners Barley malt sweetener

Brown rice sweetener

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

Acid Forming Sweeteners

Barley malt syrup

Fructose

Honey – Processed and pasteurized

Maple syrup

Molasses

Turbinado sugar

Eat till you Pop

Culturally, we’re programmed to eat until we explode, just like the fat guy in Monty Python and the Meaning of Life. What you want to do is moderate your intake. 


Maybe because the Blue Agave plant also gives us tequila with memories of crazy dancing, I’m partial to it as a sweetener. Maple syrup reminds me of double stacks of pancakes and Sunday mornings, so I have trouble controlling my use... raw honey reminds me of stress free days at my grandmothers. 

Over time I’ve “Trained my Tongue” to be happy with less. If you ever had to stay off sugars for a long period of time –which is something one would do on a Candida elimination diet– when you finally get to eat an apple or grape, your taste buds just explode from the sweetness. 

Find a natural sweetener that works for you, it might not be the one that someone else likes. As you use less, you’ll want less. Or better yet, eat an apple. Having a dessert or an occasional indulgence can be part of diet planning. It’s actually better if it is planned. It keeps us from going on a total binge. Take the time to read labels, and stay conscious when you eat. The less processed your food is, the healthier you will be. Your body will love you for it, so will your abs... 

We don’t have to be saints to be healthy, just committed.

Supplements

To assist with sugar metabolism

Chromium picolinate, B-complex vitamins, calcium/magnesium

To help with sugar cravings

L-glutamine, royal jelly, bee pollen, gymnema sylvestra

To assist with fat burning

L-carnitine

To balance adrenal stress caused by sugar

Licorice root, Siberian Ginseng, Vitamin C and Bioflavanoids

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

Information on this site is not a substitute for consulting a licensed medical professional.  You should never begin an exercise routine without consulting your physician. 

Sugar Baby – Part 2

My chiropractor boyfriend and I are waiting for a driver to take us to the movie set of "Eat Pray Love" in Bali. We're sitting outside in the sun and we can smell our morning coffee.

Our coffee arrives – and these blue packages of pseudo sweet arrive with it. It’s really weird to see packages of "Equal" while we’re listening to the river, the sounds of the jungle and brushing ants off my computer. 

The ants aren't touching the Equal...

The coffee is great.

Ninety-two reasons 

Are you looking to get away from the dark side of sugar and think that Equal and NutraSweet are the solutions? You're not alone. What you'll want to know before you tear open those tempting packets is that they both contain aspartame, which has ninety-two (that’s 92!) side effects listed by the FDA. 

When aspartame is ingested, methyl alcohol – one of the primary ingredients of aspartame – is converted into formaldehyde. Formaldehyde is a dangerous neurotoxin.

A few side effects from aspartame

Memory loss

Nervous system disorders 

Joint pain

Migraines

Brain lesions

Bloating and 

Alzheimer’s disease

Aspartame is a $1 Billion industry, maybe it's just "too big to be called toxic". In spite of recognizing 92 side effects – did I mention these other side effects: hair loss, blindness and weight gain? – the FDA approved aspartame (without restriction) in 1996.  Who's got your back?

Coal Tar Delight

So you thought you’d switch to Sweet and Low instead? Your prize with this sweetener is the coal-tar compound saccharin. When did coal tar enter the food chain and who put it on our table anyway?  When politics takes over, we get artificial everything and so far, saccharin seems to be the biggest political football sweetener around. Saccharin was originally discovered in 1879, and claims the title of being 300% sweeter than sugar. 

In 1977 the FDA was going to ban saccharin but congress overturned their ruling, requiring only a warning label instead. Canada banned saccharin that same year. One writer stated that 'even when using very high doses on lab rats saccharin was only a low level carcinogen' –  a low level cancer causer. How many of those low level cancer causers do you think the government allows in our foods every day?  Now, it's your choice to eat coal tar products or not, and the government is more than pleased to tell you that it's perfectly safe. Looking at the increased rates of cancer over the last century, I'll take a guess that the low level cancer causers are adding up. By the way, the government has since removed the warning label.

Frankensugar

Advertisers have us loving Splenda – what a lovely name. Splenda is made by chlorinating sugar and changing its chemical structure to get something I call “frankensugar". The manufacturers call this product sucralose. It’s mostly pure... except for the chlorinated molecules, heavy metals, methanol and arsenic. 

According to Tuberose: Some chlorinated molecules serve as the basis for pesticides such as D.D.T., and accumulate in body fat. You would just as soon have a pesticide in your food as sucralose because sucralose (Splenda) is a chlorocarbon... chlorocarbons have long been known for causing organ, genetic, and reproductive damage. It should be no surprise, therefore, that the testing of sucralose reveals that it can cause up to 40 percent shrinkage of the thymus: a gland that is the very foundation of our immune system. Sucralose also causes swelling of the liver and kidneys, and calcification of the kidney.

High Fructose Dreams

There are natural alternatives to refined and chemically altered sugars, but before we get there, here comes High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) my “top of the list” of evil sweeteners, mostly because it is just everywhere.  HFCS entered our food chain in the 1970's, it's a highly processed corn syrup and because it is much sweeter than sugar it saves food manufacturers lots of money. HFCS is a dreamy moneymaker. It’s in everything from cranberry juice, soft drinks and yogurt to energy bars and those workout drinks you buy to help you get lean. 

x

The big problem with HFCS is the fructose, a sugar that is found naturally in fruit. The small amounts of fructose found naturally in fruit won't make you fat, and it's digested with natural enzymes and fibers. With HFCS our bodies don't utilize the fructose as a source of energy so we metabolize it as fat. Not at all helpful if you're looking to lean down or show your abs.


It is known that during the 1970's and 1980's that the average American's body weight increased at a rate similar to the food industry's increasing use of HFCS.

HFCS has the ability to shut off our “full signals”.  At least with refined sugar, our bodies tell us when we’ve had enough – like when you can’t even imagine having one more bite of that triple layer chocolate cake, regardless of how much it cost and how much is left on the plate.  

Kiss from the darker side

While I think these sweeteners are depraved, you don't have to be deprived, there are natural sweeteners waiting for you. Frankly, our bodies can digest small (emphasis on small) amounts of just about anything, it's a survival thing we've developed. But why push it? Small amounts add up. When your body is processing toxins, it loses valuable functions to create new and healthy cells. Translation: you age quicker, and get sick easier. 

Artificial sweeteners are highly acid forming. Our bodies maintain a natural PH or acid-alkaline balance. When our PH balance becomes too acidic, our bodies react to survive. To neutralize the acid, our bodies take alkalizing minerals from our reserves. When our reserves are depleted, the neutralizing minerals are taken from our bones and muscles. One more thing; viruses and cancers thrive in acidic environments. 

Know what you're eating and read ingredient labels. Trust yourself. If one of these sweeteners happens to touch your lips, just know what kissed you and get on with conscious eating. Read "Sugar Baby – Part 3" next week for natural sweeteners.

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.

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.