Theseus's Ship and You

There's an old philosophical question that's always interested me. It's about the greek hero Theseus and his ship. I'll tell my favorite version of it here.

Young Theseus is given a fine new ship by his father Aegeus. With this ship he goes off, makes wars, slays Minotaurs, and sows his oats. Each time he comes back from these adventures his ship is pretty banged up, and he has the shipwrights replace things. Some rigging here, some fixtures there, a new prow after a particularly daring ramming attack. Theseus grows up, founds Athens, and the ship continues to take a beating. The deck is relaid one year, a new hull is fitted the next, the rotting mast is replaced after a few decades. This continues until Theseus is an old man.  Eventually every piece of the original ship has been replaced. The question is this; Is that fine ship in the harbor the same ship that Aegeus gave the young Theseus?


Some argue that the ship is the same, because it's the continuity of its existence that give it identity. Others say that it became a different ship at some point, when the refitting so altered the original that there was no more physical connection to the original. What do you think?

And the question you're probably more interested in at this point, what does this have to do with health and fitness?

I have a lot of clients who are wrestling with their own Ship of Theseus paradox. It will usually be expressed something like this:

"You know, in college I was a semi-pro tennis player. I'd do an hour of wind-sprints in the morning before practice and an hour of weight training in the evening, with 4 hours of court time daily, sometimes more... so I'm thinking I'll be able to handle this program no problem."

This kind of client can be a challenge. They will plunge into training with gusto, only to get a slap in the face when the first real workouts come around. It turns out that despite their athletic past, they've let things go for a long time and are in fact, in terrible shape. Their sore from head to toe. Their knees are shaky. They can't get through the recommended number of reps. They are forced to chose the easy versions of exercises. They have a lot of mental anguish as it becomes clear that they're really struggling to get through even the most basic thing like a lunge or sit-up.

The human experience is deceptive, it flows from day to day and year to year so seamlessly that we lull ourselves into thinking that we're not changing very much. But the reality is that, just like Theseus's ship, your body is constantly breaking down and reassembling itself. And if you don't eat well and exercise consistently your replacement cells and tissues won't be quite as good as the old ones. Go through a few cycles like this and you'll end up feeling like the same person but made from inferior materials.

This is how in your mind you are still that same college athlete that did an hour of wind sprints every morning but now can't get through 5 minutes of jumprope. It can lead to some real cognitive dissonance!

In the best case, a formerly athletic client will realize how far they've slipped, redouble their efforts and get back to a good place with their body. In the worst case they will be unable to accept their new unfit reality, blame the program or the trainer, and drop out entirely. I've seen it go both ways.

For me, the solution to the problem of Theseus's ship lies in mindfulness. From one perspective, we can see our lives unfolding on a timeline with a beginning, middle, and end. But the more accurate view is that we are experiencing a constantly unfurling present moment, connected to the things that came before it and influencing the things that come next, but whole in and of itself.

If you try to spend most of your mental time in this moving present moment, you can free yourself from the hangups of how you think your body ought to be. You can look at the body you have right now, the good and the bad, and move forward from there.

This is far more preferable than fooling yourself into thinking you still have the body of your youth and getting an unpleasant shock when disease or injury comes along to kick your ass. Clarity is always better than delusion, even when it stings.

Your ship may not be the sleek cruiser of your teens, but it's the only one you've got. Start making repairs! Eat vegetables. Exercise. Sleep enough. Happy sailing!

These People Think You're Stupid

I have a bizarre fascination with fitness infomercials. If I hit one while flipping channels I'll always stop and watch for a bit. What interests me most aren't the products but the people. The presenters are great of course, selling their wares in the finest tradition of the snake oil salesmen, but the ones I'm really interested in are the models, and all the people in the background showing off the product.

(You know... THESE people)

The infomercial people are always in very, very, VERY good shape. They have exquisitely balanced physiques and perfect muscle tone. They exude health. In fact, they're in such good shape that they can make lots of money by appearing on camera and making you envious enough to buy a crappy fitness product.

As artificial as everything in an infomercial is, the bodies are real. That level of fitness can't be faked. When the shirts come off and the spandex shorts and bras go on, all the cards are on the table. Sure, you can enhance the effect with lights and camera angles, but at its core every infomercial depends on an incredibly fit and healthy person showing off the product of the moment.

Anyone who has ever trained seriously and gotten even close to the level of these actors and models knows how difficult it is to look that good. You have to exercise religiously for years and have an impeccable diet that you never cheat on. You don't go out to eat, you don't have a drink after work, and you don't miss workouts no matter how busy you are. You view food as fuel and medicine and not something to be enjoyed. You actively seek the pain of burning muscles straining at their absolute limit. In other words, if you look like one of these people, you're one badass mofo.

But the products on sale are anything but badass. They usually isolate one small muscle group and even then they barely work it. You could get 10 times the results with a floor and a few chairs. And then there's the elephant in the room, the fact that 90% of the reason these models look so good is their insanely low body fat. Look at these two showing off one of the many electrical ab stimulator belts on the market today.

That dude is at about 6-8% body fat. How do I know this? You can see the freakin' Costal Cartilage of his ribs connecting to his Sternum. That's some seriously low body fat, and something tells me it wasn't the ab-belt that got him there. And the lady? She's coming in about 10-12% body-fat. How do I know? You can see her freakin' pelvic notch on the left side, an incredibly difficult thing to uncover on the female body.

To put things in perspective, a healthy body fat for men is 12% and women 20%. (And for more perspective, the average body fat for men in the US is 25% and women 35%!) Just getting down below 15% body fat requires discipline, to get as low as these two models and retain the kind of muscle tone they have requires extreme diligence and a good bit of expertise in anatomy and physiology.

And yet, there they are in those infomercials, smiling, fake sweating, and telling you that this is the product that will finally get you results. However, they know more than anyone what it really takes to get results, because they live and breathe it. And let me tell you, if you pulled out one of these contraptions in a real gym, the kind of gym these models go to, you'd be laughed out of the weight room.

And so I sit there thinking about all this, and I wonder what these men and women who take such good care of their bodies think as they go through the motions on the plastic contraptions. And I bet there's a small voice in their heads that says,"boy, if anyone buys this piece of crap they must be pretty stupid..."

Infomercials are designed top to bottom to press your buttons. Even the most sophisticated exerciser can be tempted by all the fabulous smiling people promising easy results. And at such a reasonable price! Always just slightly higher than you'd be willing to pay but not out of reach! It can be pretty enticing.

Luckily for you, I've found the ultimate defense against their siren songs. It's simple. Just remember that these models think you're stupid. And if you neglect your diet and buy one of these gimmicky things you're only proving them right. The next time you see one of these infomercials just remember this series of images I've compiled for you:







Puts you off these worthless products pretty fast right? Maybe even gets you a little hot under the collar? Good! Don't get mad, get even! Eat right, exercise every day, be consistent and get in awesome shape without giving these infomercial jerks any more money! Invest in yourself with sweat, time, and nutrition.

If these lame models did it you can too!

(Interested in this kind of topic? Check out this classic PCP post about those before and after photos!)

Caloric Literacy

I've always had a soft spot for the Mt. Rainier brand of cold coffee drinks, probably because when I first came to Japan I drank one every day. They're available everywhere, tasty, and a quarter of the price of a Starbucks espresso concoction. I don't drink them much anymore, but occasionally when I'm stuck in Tokyo and see one in the convenience store gleaming from the refrigerated section I'll go for it.

I was in that exact situation last week. After a meeting I wanted to sit down and unwind with a coffee before heading home. The convenience store had a selection of 4 Mt. Rainier brand cafe lattes. Here they are!

From left to right, we have the classic no frills Caffe Latte, the Non-Sugar Version, after that the Espresso Caffe Latte which has a darker richer taste, and finally the fancy Tiramisu flavor Caffe Latte.

Now, my question to you is, can you rank these drinks from lowest Calorie to highest? Take your time, I'll wait...
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.
.
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Let's check the labels and see how you did. Click the photo for a bigger size if you want to read the label yourself.

The lowest calorie drink is not surprisingly the Non-Sugar Caffe Latte. It has 32 Calories.





Next, coming in at 102 Calories is the Espresso Caffe Latte.




Third is the Tiramisu Caffe Latte, with 148 Calories.





And the heavyweight, the original Caffe Latte, with 166 Calories.



The calories from these drinks come from two basic sources, sugar and fat from the milk. The non sugar version has as advertised, no sugar and in addition a low fat milk. The original Caffe Latte has both high fat milk and a generous helping of added sugar. There's a 134 Calorie difference between these two drinks!

What's interesting is how these four beverages sit side by side on the shelf, they have identical branding except for some color variations and tag lines. I wonder how many people look at that Tiramisu version and think, "Mmm, looks good, but I'm watching my weight so I'll go with the regular Caffe Latte" not realizing they've actually chosen the most Calorie-dense drink on display.

I don't want to get mired in the details of this one beverage too much, my point is simply that most consumers are very poor judges of the Caloric value of food and drink. We make a load of assumptions based on package design and gut feeling about the products before us.

I think the mandatory inclusion of nutrition facts on food labels is one of the most empowering things to happen for consumers (believe it or not it was only made law in the US in 1994!). And as you've probably noticed with each passing year more restaurants are posting their calorie content as well. There have been a number of studies that show all of this has had a negligible impact on people's food choices, but that doesn't really bother me because I know it has changed how I eat.

Being able to find out the caloric content of any food in a supermarket or restaurant is a real gift. Not because it helps you choose this or that Caffe Latte but because armed with this information you can become Calorically Literate.

If you go to Italy and see the word "Uscita" with a man running to a door 100 times, you're going to learn that "Uscita" must mean "Exit".
Similarly, if you see that products containing mayonnaise consistently come in 100-200 calories higher than their counterparts, you're going to have an intuitive understanding that mayonnaise is a heavy hitting food.

Keep up your label reading practice and in a few short weeks you'll start to have a rough picture of how food and calories are related, and you'll be making choices from a base of knowledge, not the color of the package. This doesn't mean that you never eat rich things that taste good, it just means that when you indulge you'll know you're indulging.

Ignorance is bliss, but it also ends up on your waistline. Take advantage of the fact that these companies have to tell you what's in their products, be one of the 5% of people paying attention and making better choices!

(Interested in reading more about my take on calories? Read this classic post!)

Eating on Credit

Of the many approaches I see people taking to lose fat and get fit there's one that consistently under-delivers and often makes matters worse.

I call it the "Eating on Credit" technique. Here's a classic example:

You've had a nice dinner out with some friends, and afterwords one of them is eagerly thumbing through the dessert menu. This friend is trying to lose some weight and you can see her having an internal debate about whether to order the chocolate cake or be good and skip it.

After a minute of this, something clicks in your friend's brain and she announces she's going to order the cake, with the all-important "Eating on Credit" sub-clause;

"It's ok, tomorrow I'll just do an extra 15 minutes on the elliptical..."

This person is saying that tomorrow's exercise is going to make up for today's indulgence. Eat now, pay later. This strategy is poisonous to your fitness progress for so many reasons. Let me count the ways!

• The most obvious flaw with Eating on Credit is that very often the bill is never paid. Can you remember what you had for lunch yesterday? Two days ago? You probably have to think about it for a second, right? This same amnesia applies to all the promises we make ourselves in the middle of a calorie laden treat. Very few people have the wherewithal to actually pay off calories that they've already eaten. I certainly don't have that level of mental organization, I have a hard enough time remembering what appointments I have, much less what my caloric balance sheet looks like from yesterday.

• The next problem is double dipping into the credit well. Let's say your friend has actually remembered to exercise a little longer to burn off that piece of cake. There's still a good chance that sometime that day or week they're going to remember how hard they worked and go a little overboard with another poor food choice. "I'll have that bag of chips, after all I put in all that extra time on the elliptical yesterday." So they've used one exercise session to rationalize two poor diet choices. The math doesn't add up and the fat gets packed on!

• But let's give your friend the benefit of the doubt, she remembers to exercise more and doesn't double dip into that credit pool. The next problem is that people generally underestimate the calories in food while overestimating the amount of calories burned during exercise. Let's look at that chocolate cake:
One slice of with frosting will come in around 250 calories. (Add a scoop of ice cream and that can get up to 500 calories in no time, but we'll give your friend a fighting chance and skip the a la mode scenario) That 250 calories will be eaten in 5-10 minutes, depending on the care with which your friend enjoys the treat.

Now, let's talk about the elliptical machine.
This type of machine burns about 10 calories per minute. An extra 15 minutes on it would negate 150 calories of overeating. That means we're still 100 calories in debt to that piece of cake. The sad truth is that our friend needs a whopping 25 minutes on the machine to truly pay off her calorie bill. And yet the cake was consumed in just 5 short minutes.

This is the inherent imbalance between our modern ultra-refined foods and old fashioned exercise. Hundreds of calories can be consumed very quickly, but there's no shortcut to burning them off. We still haven't come to grips with exactly how much energy we're consuming and how much exercise it takes to burn through it. With your friend's busy and fulfilling life, an extra 25 minutes on the elliptical machine is probably not going to happen. Again, the columns don't add up and the fat packs on!

• Finally, there is a philosophical problem with Eating on Credit. For truly sustainable fitness, exercise needs to be its own reward. I know of no long-term exercisers who are in it only to make their calories balance out. Approaching exercise with that mindset makes it an interminable chore that you will give up on within weeks. Exercise because it makes you feel good, because it gets you out of the house, because it's a pleasure to experience your body in motion as it was designed to be, anything is better than doing it to burn calories. The irony is that as soon as you start exercising just to exercise you lose fat and start looking great!

Sometimes after dishing out some advice like this I'll get some push-back. "So I'm never allowed a piece of cake? You just want me to eat carrot sticks every night!?" Quite the contrary. I'm all for enjoying the pleasures of rich food. If you're going to have something indulgent, don't taint the experience by worrying about how many calories are in it or how you're going to burn them off. Eat and enjoy! But you must use this power responsibly. A wedding, a birthday, a victory celebration, or any of the moments in life that revolve around delicious food should be embraced. If you exercise and have an otherwise balanced diet these calorie inputs will burned off like nothing happened. It's the habitual weekly overeating that's making you fat and sick, not the one-off birthday cakes. Truly changing your body is about restructuring your entire approach to food and exercise, not doing mental gymnastics as you rationalize poor choices with promises of future piety.

Stop eating on credit, and start eating as an investment in your body and your health. That means vegetables and fruit! Vegetables! Fruit! FRUIT! VEGETABLES!

Choosing the Right Trainer

We've been having a great year on The Peak Condition Project, lots of people changing their lives for the better, lots of happy clients who for the first time feel in control of their eating and exercise habits and can take care of themselves for the rest of their lives.

It's my hope that people who work with me get far more than some fitness tips. I want them to get an complete education how the body really works and how to make it do what you want it to do. Many of these lessons are counter-intuitive, the kind of things you'd never figure out on your own. When working with the messy reality of the human body you will get farther faster if you can find the right teacher to show you the way. This applies to getting fit, mastering a physical activity, or becoming skillful in a sport.

I see so many people making poor choices for their teachers and trainers, having a bad experience, and then giving up on the whole idea of physical improvement. So I'm going to give you some insight about what makes a good teacher, and some things you want to avoid.

1. Your trainer needs to look the part.

When it comes to choosing someone to help you change your body, judge the book by its cover. If your trainer is overweight, underweight, or in poor condition, then something about their program is too boring, onerous, or impractical for even them to stick with. And it will inevitably chip into your motivation when they tell you to do something that they clearly aren't doing themselves. "Do as I say, not as I do" works just as poorly with adults as it does with kids. This can sound judgmental and shallow, but it's important. If you're set up with a trainer who's clearly not in good shape, just walk the other way. They need to get right with themselves before they try to educate others.

2. Avoid "Naturals".

This is a trap a lot of people fall into. They get involved with a teacher who has a high natural aptitude for the thing they are now trying to teach. For example, a guy who has always been muscular and lean no matter how he eats or exercises, or a lithe yoga teacher who has been doing splits since she was three years old. If you are a beginner, these teachers and trainers will be nothing but bad news for you. Why? Because they have no experience of ever being "bad" at their activity.

That yoga teacher who has been very flexible since childhood will have only intellectual understanding of what it feels like to not be able to touch your toes. If you ask a natural "how do I do that?", at the fundamental level there will be a voice in her head saying "I don't know, you just do it." In the worst case, naturals will be dismissive and highly demotivating, they lack the empathy and ability to understand how to explain things to people at the bottom rung of the ladder. They often won't respect the limits of your developing body and will push too hard, meaning your sessions will be tense and injury prone.

Naturals are everywhere in the fitness world, because they can open a lot of doors with their clear talent and ability to pass test number 1 (look the part). But the majority of them will be detrimental to your progress.

3. Certifications are not as valuable as you think, and can indicate of a poor trainer.

A fancy framed certificate on the wall looks professional and reassuring, but don't make any decisions based on your trainer having it. The certification circuit in fitness and wellness training is mostly a racket. Different groups vie to become the dominant organization within a field, in the hopes that trainers will have to pay them yearly fees and go to pricey certification classes to show that they're legit. There are no standards or oversights. Many certifications are awarded after a two day workshop or less. But that's not even the real reason you should be dubious.

I'll probably alienate a bunch of certified people by saying this, but here goes. The type of person who goes out and gets a certificate to be a personal trainer, yoga teacher, or some other wellness coach is, in my experience, often casting about for something meaningful to do with their lives. They hit upon the idea of teaching people to be healthier and before they have any experience actually doing it they spend several thousand dollars getting that piece of calligraphy covered paper. Armed with a sense of legitimacy they go out and immediately learn that their training bears little relation to reality. And often their certification puts them in a mental box for years to come, as they struggle to figure out what to do with real-world clients based upon the sparse theories of their training program.

Some of the best trainers and teachers I have ever had possessed no certifications at all. This is because they got into their field because they were passionate about it and naturally attracted students without having to justify their style with a piece of paper. Conversely, some of my worst experiences have been with teachers who had a whole stack of certifications. A wall of certificates is a good indicator that your potential teacher is better at attending workshops and retreats than the gritty work of working with real people. Be wary!

4. Enthusiasm is key.

You can feel in just a few minutes whether someone is sincerely interested in working with you or just doing their job. It's so important that your teacher loves helping people of all ability levels. I've seen with my own eyes what happens when someone has grown bored or frustrated with wellness work. All that simmering angry energy gets passive-aggressively directed at the client. You will have made an effort to reach out and get some help for your body, but your energy will not be returned to you. It will just be sucked away until you're both miserable. You can see this in almost any gym with a fleet of personal trainers on call.

5. No Products.

The second a teacher insists you have to have a certain product to make the most of your training, write them off. Their main interest is thinning out your wallet, not your love handles. The only essential products needed to get healthy are vegetables, sweat, and sleep. Anyone who says different is 1) lying, or 2) misinformed. Either way, you don't want them telling you what to do with your body.

Keep these points in mind as you look for some guidance towards getting in shape. I've painted a pretty bleak picture, but you'll find there are many great people in the world who know what they're doing and would be happy to help you for all the right reasons. They're out there and they're usually not the best marketers because they're busy doing what they love, so dig deep and find one of them!

Crisis Fitness

Following the Great Sendai Earthquake here in Japan, my inbox was flooded with a lot of concerned emails and well-wishes, all of which I appreciate. Everything is fine in Yokohama and will continue to be so, so don't worry

But also in my inbox were a few messages of gratitude. As you know, the afternoon of the quake knocked out train lines all over the greater Tokyo area. Most people had to sleep in offices or hotels until the next morning when limited public transport restarted.

But a few former PCPers took the bull by the horns and just walked home. One of them had a 5 hour trek from a stopped train, the other had a 9 hour hike all the way from downtown Tokyo to Yokohama. And they had emailed me to say thanks for helping them get in shape. They both noted that their old fat selves wouldn't have even considered the journey, but with strong, lean bodies they knew they could do it.

During the earthquake I had my own grateful moment, when my heavy convection oven was close to toppling from its shelf I was able to get to it and ease it to the ground. As I was doing this I thought, "hey, this is just like a curl!"

And this is the point I want to make in this post. Getting in shape is great. You can look good in your clothes and go to the pool with your head held high. But the real benefit of a healthy body is when things get REAL.

You might have heard of Nassim Nicholas Taleb's Black Swan Theory. (I highly recommend his book The Black Swan) The idea is that we humans underestimate the power of randomness and chance and overestimate our ability to shape and control situations. We don't take into account the unexpected Black Swan events like terrorist attacks, natural disasters, or rise of the internet. Instead, we go back with hindsight and fit these events into our neat timeline of how history unfolds. We also we do silly things like award CEOs massive bonuses simply because they've filled the role during boom times, and then are taken by surprise when an unpredictable event causes the good times to end, when we fire that same CEO for "doing a bad job."

The point of Black Swan Theory isn't to predict the next curveball that the world will throw at us. By definition, a Black Swan is unexpected and cannot be planned for. What we can do is acknowledge that Black Swans will occur and be realistic about our limited ability to control them.

Which is all to say that, at least once in your life you are going to have an unexpected Black Swan event that transpires in your immediate physical world. It could be something as dramatic as a magnitude 9 earthquake and thirty foot tsunami, or something close to home like a household accident or sudden illness. We have woven such a tight cocoon of technology around ourselves that these events can be a real wake up call.

A few months ago I had to carry an ill family member down three flights of stairs and a few hundred yards to a waiting car, and I barely managed it. The last few meters every muscle in my legs and shoulders was on fire and I really had to dig deep to finish the task. But luckily, I have 100s of hours of experience dealing with muscle fatigue and working through the burn, I knew exactly how much I was capable of and was able to keep a clear head. This is the same kind of thing my former clients walking home were expressing in their emails, how glad they were to have well functioning bodies that could see them through the crisis.

This is not meant to be a "check it out aren't we awesome!?" kind of post, it's a question I want to put on the table for everyone. When your Black Swan comes crashing into your life, do you have the physical tools to deal with it? Can you sprint 100 meters to safety? Can you climb up or down several stories on uneven ground? Can you carry a sick or injured person for any distance? Can you lift your body weight to get out of an overturned vehicle? Have you ever even thought about these things?

I know sitting in front of your screen reading this in a comfortable chair these scenarios seem far off and highly unlikely. But one of them is out there and it has your name on it. Why not do the bare minimum to prepare for it; lose those excess pounds, get some muscle on your body, and gain some confidence in your physicality. There is no downside here. Even if your Black Swan event never transpires, you'll be looking better and adding years to your life.

Be honest with yourself and make some changes. You can either be pulled from the rubble, or be the one helping others. With every bad meal or missed workout you are making your choice!

Breakfast Fails

At some point in your life you've probably heard someone nag you about breakfast being the "most important meal of the day." If you are in the position of having to get serious work done in the morning then this is true. However, what most people consider a decent breakfast I consider a totally failed meal.

Just eating something for breakfast does not make you any healthier, in fact, most breakfast foods only tear your body down even more than if you had skipped it all together.

So here, in alphabetical order, are the biggest breakfast fails. And of course at the bottom I'll tell you the trick to having a truly healthy breakfast.

Biscuits (in the American sense of the word) - High in calories and terrifically high in sodium. If you want puffy skin and a pot belly this is the food for you!





Cereal - I've written about this many times, but for the record, cereal is a terrible breakfast choice. Most of them are full of sugar and salt (oftentimes more per 100 grams than a cola or pack of chips), and in general dried grains are a very calorie dense food. In just a matter of minutes you can down 300 calories of cereal, get jacked up on the sugar hit, and come down with a crash at 10:30 am, which will have you crabbily reaching for another sugary snack mid-morning. And worst of all, cereal can't be eaten with anything besides at best some chopped fruit. If you're eating a bowl of cereal for breakfast there's very little chance that you'll be having any vegetables in addition.

Cinnamon Roll - The Starbucks in my area lists the calories of all the foods in the glass case. And the cinnamon roll is the King Kong of the bunch, weighing in at 630 calories. That's a lot of energy that will likely go unused, and when energy goes unused it goes right into your fat stores. Worst of all, you'll experience that 10:30 crash all the same, despite consuming enough calories to account for a third of your daily amount. To put things in perspective, 630 calories is the equivalent of eating 230 spears of asparagus. That's a lot of food.


Danish - I just pulled Danish as a representative of any one of the many pastries that we consider breakfast foods. Pastries are wonderful, buttery, sugary, creamy treats for the senses. But don't fool yourself into thinking that you're eating anything other than a candybar for breakfast.




Doughnut - Sugar glazed with sugar. You're going to feel awful if you make this the main chunk of your breakfast calories. Terrible.





French Toast - Toast in and of itself is ok, but when you cook it up with eggs and sugar and top it with butter and syrup you've just turned it into junk food. Not to mention that like most of the foods on this list, it can't be topped or mixed with vegetables.




Grits - A very salty, calorie dense way to start the day. If you don't know what these even are then keep it that way.





Hashbrowns - Potatos are a fine, proud vegetable. But if you're eating hasbrowns you've just fooled yourself into having french fries for breakfast. Nice work!





Muesli - Most muesli uses malted grains and nuts (i.e. candy covered), but even the sugar free versions run into the same problems as cereal, it's a ton of calories entering your body very quickly, none of them chased with vegetables. And the dried fruit in muesli is a red herring. Dried fruit means that you're eating pure fructose in a form that doesn't fill you up (because there's no water in it). A piece of real fruit will get you much farther in life.


Muffins - There is absolutely no difference between eating a muffin and eating a big slice of cake for breakfast. I'd prefer you eat the cake, at least then you're not deluding yourself into thinking you ate a breakfast food.





Oatmeal - Like its brothers cereal and muesli, this is a calorie dense food that is usually sweetened and is going to leave you hanging in just a few hours, cursing under your breath as you fumble for change to put in the vending machine.





Pancake - Cake in a pan. What could go wrong?






Pop Tart - I can imagine few worse foods on earth. Two of these things will put a 400 calorie hurt on you, and all of those calories come from highly refined grains and artificial sweeteners. I'd rather you eat the 630 calorie cinnamon roll, at least it was made from real ingredients.




Toast and Jam - Putting jam on toast robs you of the ability to combine some vegetables with it. It means you'll be eating your carbs with a veneer of sugar, rather than with some real food.





Waffles - Cake for breakfast again! Yay! With little squares to better catch the liquid sugar we're going to pour over it!





As you can see, the reasons these breakfasts fail fall into two broad categories.

• They are very high in sugar, salt, and overall calories and/or
• They make it difficult to eat any vegetables for breakfast. You're basically swallowing a meal of pure carbohydrates for each and every one of these choices.

So what's the alternative? You need to open your mind about what a breakfast food is. In the West, we've somehow gotten this cultural legacy that breakfast has to be a sweet carb, an egg cooked in some form, and a greasy piece of meat. It doesn't have to be this way. In Japan a traditional breakfast consists of fish, miso soup, vegetables and rice. That's the kind of thing we'd call dinner. But on that Japanese breakfast plate is a great balance of carbs, protein, fiber, and nutrients. With that kind of start, you'll have a good chance of making it to lunch without resorting to a Trente© cup of coffee or a mid-morning sugar hit.

The simplest advice I can give is to make your carbs vegetable delivery systems. You need to be eating more vegetables, especially at breakfast, but very few of you are going to have the discipline to eat a plate of vegetables at 7:30 am. So you need to have the veggies hijack your carbs and go along for the ride. Instead of covering your toast with sugary jam, cover it with a ton of lightly sauteed vegetables. Instead of having scrambled eggs plain on the side of a pancake, fill them up with vegetables. Vegetables vegetables vegetables. Cool it with the sugarcarbs and eat vegetables. Vegetables are the best breakfast food. (For other examples read this post)

A lot of people have a huge mental block about eating vegetables. They say they don't have time in the morning, that they always heard muesli was very healthy, that it just doesn't feel right to have a big complex meal so early.

They are also usually 20-30 pounds overweight and wondering why they can't seem to slim down.

So there you are, reading, nodding your head wisely, and seeing the logic of all this. But tomorrow morning will be here before you know it. What's going to be on your plate?