The Peak Condition Update

Theseus's Ship and You

2011-10-22T09:17:00.001+09:00

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

2011-08-16T08:23:00.010+09:00

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

2011-07-03T14:43:00.015+09:00

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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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

2011-05-21T11:40:00.008+09:00

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

2011-04-20T15:16:00.006+09:00

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

2011-03-17T11:09:00.005+09:00

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

2011-02-09T14:52:00.017+09:00

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?

Eating Well for Optimum Death

2011-01-25T11:17:00.006+09:00

Jack Lalanne died this week at 96. If you don't know much about him just watch this video, or this one. They sum up his whole attitude and philosophy nicely.

What I want to talk about today isn't Jack Lalanne's, life, but the quality of his death. He died of respiratory failure due to pneumonia in his home in California. It seems an anticlimatic way to go for a man who was so vigorous, but in many ways it is the perfect death for someone who devoted their life to health.

Here's how pneumonia works. Throughout the day, along with life giving oxygen we're breathing in all manner of dust, dirt, and germs. The lungs can usually beat back these germs through a strong cough reflex and a healthy immune system. But if you are already ill or have reached old age, there's a greater chance that one of those germs can get into the lung tissue and become infected. If that germ is one of the nastier types (usually influenza A or B) then you are in for some serious trouble. From here the infection can get into your blood which will result in your organs failing over the course of 5-7 days, or the lungs can become so infected that they collapse and you die within 5-7 minutes.

From what I can gather from the news reports, it looks like the second scenario is what got Jack Lalanne. And, in its way, that's a wonderful thing. I don't know the details but I imagine that he starting feeling flu like symptoms sometime during the middle of last week, was quickly bed-ridden by high fever and short breath, and passed away a few days later as his lungs became damaged beyond repair.

This is an optimum death, in my opinion. The reason is that Lalanne had a fantastic level of vitality all the way up to the week before his death. He lived on a very high plateau of energy and good health that ended with a sudden drop-off. He didn't spend weeks in a cancer ward, or years in a nursing home, or decades dealing with decreased mobility. Below is the most recent picture of him I could find, at 95 years old. And here's a TV interview from that same period. He's sharp, trim, and on top of his game. You can find similar video of him from every period of his elderly years... always unfailingly positive and active.
Imagine two elderly men. One lives to be 90, but the last 15 years of his life were spent in frail mental and physical health, with only the help of family and modern medical treatment keeping him hanging on. The other man lives to be 80, but he was in great shape all the way through, with a one week illness that got him in the end. The 80 year old had 80 full years of life, or perhaps I should say 80 years of full life, while the 90 year old only had 75 years before his quality of life began to decline into senility.

Which life would you choose? I'll take the 80 good years any day.

Guess what? You are living out this choice in slow motion right now. Looking at Lalanne's life, can you point to the one thing that kept him so vibrant all the way till that last week? Was it the exercise? The diet? The emphasis on helping others? Clearly it was all of these working at the same time, and most importantly, working consistently, that did the trick for him.

So as you try to exercise regularly and get off the processed foods, remember the rewards will not only come during your years of life but also in the quality of your death. You only get one chance to die, so do it right! I'll leave you with some Jack Lalanne quotes, add more in the comments if you've got em!

•"What you need to do is get that tape measure out, and start measuring that gut. Then you start working out and you start eating properly till that gut gets down close to it was when you were in your 20`s. Then you`ll find out what your weight should be."

•"Have you seen some of the crap they're selling as exercise equipment now? ...How about that Suzanne Somers? She should have been thrown in jail for selling the piece-of-crap Thigh Master. It just develops a little muscle on the inner thigh. What good is that? And have you seen Tony Little, the guy who screams on TV? He's like an imbecile. He says you need this little thing to hold you while you do a sit-up. Why does the government let him get away with it?"

•"I just want to see how long I can keep this thing going. The easiest thing is dying. Living is a a pain in the butt."

•"If man makes it, I don't eat it. I practice what I preach. I eat 10 raw vegetables, 5 pieces of fruit, egg whites and fish for protein, and whole grains. Finally, if you can't have a sense of humor, you're dead."

...and from his blog, written just 3 days before his death.

•"Hope you all are keeping your New Year's Resolutions to taking care of the most important person on this earth, YOU!!!!"

Badass.

The Dreaded Lapsed Student Encounter

2011-01-03T07:05:00.006+09:00

2011 marks ten years that I have been teaching people how to take care of themselves in one form or another. So I thought I'd share with you an experience that has been happening, like clockwork, every few weeks of those last ten years.

With my yoga studio and other wellness programs I'm working with thousands of people a year. And the reality of this kind of business is that a good chunk of your customers will not stick around long. They'll try hard for a few months and then will just stop coming. A few missed weeks becomes a few missed months and then years. As a result, there are hundreds of people walking around who I've taught in the past but have since lapsed in their training.

So, I'll be out and about, going to the bank or the post office or something, and in front of me in line or across the street I'll see one of these students also going about their business. From here the encounter can go one of two ways.

1. Suddenly we're in The Bourne Identity. The person gains secret agent powers of stealth and misdirection. They blend into crowds, get a very important message on their cell phone, take an abnormal interest in a window display, anything to avoid eye contact. In mere seconds they have slipped off down a side street or ducked into a building. Amazing!

2. The awkward conversation. If visual contact has been undeniably established and escape is impossible we enter into an uncomfortable parlay that goes something like this.

"Oh hey there [student's name], you going to the ATM too?"
"Patrick! Yeah! I've been meaning to come by and take a class but it's been sooo busy this year my department at the office was just merged with another one and with my daughter's ballet classes I can't make it on Saturday morning anymore so I'm trying to find the time on Wednesdays it's so good to see you!"
"Uh, yeah, you too!"
"You know I just feel so much better when I exercise and you're a great teacher, it's not you, it's just my schedule has been so crazy it's hard for us parents to make time for ourselves, things should quiet down in spring and I'll definitely be by, ok, have to go great to see you!"
And like scenario 1, an amazing disappearing act takes place.

At first these encounters freaked me out, but talking to other people in the yoga/fitness/wellness field over the years I've learned that they are quite commonplace amongst all teachers. I'm sure these descriptions have rung some bells with you as well, no matter which side of the situation you've been on.

There's no need for these awkward moments. Believe it or not, I don't carry a mental list with me of people who've stopped coming to class and who I can find on the street and wag my finger at. I'm usually really happy just to see you, and the thought "Why haven't you been coming" doesn't even enter my mind. You don't need to bring it up, and you certainly don't need to explain yourself to me.

Here's the truth: If you've worked with me towards a healthier life and have since lapsed, know that I DON'T CARE. I care about you as a person, I want you to be as healthy and happy as possible, and I will gladly share everything I know with you, but I'm not losing sleep over the fact that you haven't been by in 6 months. A human life is incredibly complicated and I have no right or desire to impose judgment on you for your health choices. You don't need to explain why you've stopped exercising, because it has nothing to do with me. That's between you and your body. Everyone is doing their best in their short time on this earth, and I'd rather talk to you about something normal than run through your list of excuses. So chill.

But what I want people to internalize here is that when it comes to your health NO ONE CARES. No one else but you has to have that backache, has to lose their breath going up stairs, or has to look at you in the mirror every single day. The people around you love you and want the best for you, but they will only invest so much attention towards your health. After all, they have their own one-of-a-kind body to take care of.

At first blush this seems like a depressing and mean-spirited truth. It's not. It's empowering. We spend the first 20 or so years of our lives working so hard not to disappoint others. Our families, our teachers, our peers, they all ask different things from us and the majority of youth is spent figuring out how to make them happy. (I think those awkward encounters I have with lapsed students are vestigial traces of those early social habits to please an authority figure.)

But then, hopefully, you grow up. You stop caring what people think and do things for yourself. And nowhere is this more important than your own health. On this entire planet, there is no one who has a more vested interest in your well-being than you. When you finally get that through your head, your motivation becomes like tempered steel. Dilettantes eat well and exercise because they want other people to think better of them. The truly healthy eat well and exercise because they know that no one else cares and no one else will do it for them.

If you've put on some weight and let your body slide to a point that it's starting to disturb you, get your thinking straight right here and now.

•It's your fault.
•No one else really cares, because it's not their body.
•This means that no one else can match your motivation and will to change.
•You are in control.

When you believe these facts deep in your soul, you realize that all the excuses and rationalizations have nothing to do with the person you are giving to them. They are all about you trying to make yourself feel better. Save your breath and make real changes. If you need some help, there are tens of thousands of teachers out there just like me who know what they're doing and would be thrilled to help you out. Just know that as committed as they are to you, at the end of the day you will only answer to yourself. And that's exactly how it should be.

So, next time you bump into me on the street, smile and tell me something good that's going on in your life. I can't wait to hear it!

(If this post reverberated with you, you'll probably enjoy this one and this one too!)

Men, It's SEXY Time!

2010-11-25T06:34:00.011+09:00

My favorite cafe in high school had this sign in the back in big neon pink letters that said

SEX!!!
(now that we have your attention, please place your used cups in the washbin)

This post is going to be in that same spirit. Sex motivates like few other things, and in a world where it's so hard to find the motivation to be healthy you've got to use whatever you can to get you on the right path.

So, guys, let's talk about using wellness to get sexy. I like the word sexy because you don't have to be born with designer genes and freakishly symmetrical bone structure to be sexy. Sexy is a mystique that mere beauty can't touch. Some of the sexiest people I've ever met wouldn't be called beautiful in a million years. And some of the most beautiful people I've met are about as sexy as a Borg Cube.

Anyone can be sexy, but you've got to get on top of some of your body stuff first. So whether you're into dudes or ladies or both you should find some points in here that motivate you to get to that workout and pass on the onion rings.

I'm going to write this same post for ladies in the future, but let's start with the dudes, as they're the ones who screw this up most consistently.

If you're a dude and you want to be sexy, keep the following in mind.

• Lose the excess weight. When you're walking around with extra weight of more than 20 pounds (10 kilos) you're sending a message to everyone you meet, a message that says "I don't know how to take care of myself." And that's not SEXY. We're naturally attracted to people who are comfortable in their own skin, who take responsibility for their choices, and who get things done. Being trim puts a check mark next to all three of those things without you having to say a word.

• It's all about the face. Very few people are ever going to see your abs (or lack of them) but everyone you meet is going to see your face. They aren't, however, going to take the time to gaze deeply into your eyes. They're going to get a quick impression of you by the basic lines of your bone structure. Forehead, brow, eyes, cheekbones, nose, lips, jawline and chin will be scanned in a millisecond and conclusions will start to be drawn. But guess what, you have dozens of little fat compartments just under the dermis on your face. If you're carrying around a bunch of weight, those fat compartments are going to plump out and obscure the natural bone structure of your skull. In that brief mental scan others make of you, you'll be entered into the memory banks as a kind of a blurry non-entity.

I heard an interview with a former CIA spy once and he was laughing about all the James Bond movies. He said you'd never send an incredibly handsome, debonair spy out into the field. He'd attract way too much attention. Real spies are dumpy, average types whose faces you'd have a hard time recalling. That's the point. However, if you want to be SEXY you don't want to be that guy. You want to make an impression. And your main tool for that is your face. So shed that fat and let your real facial features have their day in the sun.

• While we're on the topic of fat pockets, I should mention all people have a substantial fat pocket just above their pelvic bone. For men, however, if that fat pocket gets plump, it will have the unfortunate side effect of making the other body part found there appear smaller and shorter. Not to get too blue, but if your fat percentage creeps high enough, that fat pocket will cover a good inch at the base of your manhood. Conversely, if you can lose some of that fat, you're little champion will appear longer and larger. Not exactly necessary to be SEXY, but it doesn't hurt!

• Second to your fat level, the next most important is your posture and bearing. With the prevalence of computer based office work, it's hard to find men these days who naturally stand tall with their shoulders back, head high, and chest lifted. This is in fact how your body is designed to stand, but a seated lifestyle will round the shoulders forward, make the neck jut forward at an unpleasant angle, and cause the belly to stick out. You'll look shorter and fatter than you really are. It's important to realize that this problem cannot be fixed by forcing yourself to stand up straight. The problem isn't a lack of willpower, it's the fact that your body's structure has been altered by the modern lifestyle. Only by strengthening and stretching your atrophied legs can you restore your posture to something a little more SEXY. (If only someone would write a guide about how to do this... OH SNAP!)

• Which leads me to the next point - flexibility. Being able to touch your toes or do fancy yoga poses is not the point of being flexible. A flexible body will simply glide through space better. A guy who moves like a block, no matter how good his condition, is inherently less pleasing to watch than a person who moves with some elegance. The only way to start moving with grace is to ease the amount of resistance between muscle and bone. And that means you need to start moving and stretching regularly. Take a yoga class. You'll meet other SEXY people there too.

• Chill with the chest and biceps stuff. If you have a massive chest and bulging biceps, there's only one group of people you're going to impress; the other sweaty dudes in the weight room. And that's not really the point right? Men focus on these two areas far too much, probably because they get results fastest here and they're the places you can easily see in a mirror. A large chest rarely looks good on a guy. What you want to be is proportional. A toned chest gained without heavy weights will look better in clothes and will get you away from the musclehead look.

As far as biceps go, just get over yourself. The biceps is not a very useful muscle for daily life, and when the arm is held relaxed (as it will be when you meet most people) a large bicep can actually make your arm look less toned. What you want to work on is your triceps, the muscle on the back of the arm. This muscle will help you with almost all actions involving your arm, and when the limb is held relaxed the triceps give it a great sexy shape.

• Legs! I can't tell you how many guys I've met who spend a lot of time on their upper body but neglect their legs. If you do this, you're going to look incredibly silly. A big muscley torso balanced on little chicken legs will knock you a quite a few pegs down on the sexy scale. Listen well men of the world, women love a guy with strong legs. They check out your legs and butt almost as much as you check out theirs. Strong legs hint that you are a truly athletic person and not just a gym rat preening his pecs and biceps in the mirror. We spend a whole month of the PCP hammering on the legs. Legs legs legs! Gotta have em looking good if you want to be SEXY.

• And finally, a good balance of Confidence and Curiosity. An attractive person is happy with who they are while simultaneously willing to improve and change. Be comfortable with who you are, but open minded about who you'll become. This combination makes you incredibly interesting to be around, and only interesting people will prove sexy in the long run.

So chew on that fellas, I'll come back to this topic from the ladies perspective in a few weeks. Till then, eat better, move your body a little every day, and stay SEXY!

The Bitter Choice

2010-10-24T14:25:00.005+09:00

Someone asked me recently what the single biggest reason is for people being overweight and out of shape. I think they were hoping for a simple answer like "the industrial food system" or "sedentary lifestyles" but my real thoughts on this are a bit more complex.

The problem is not the unhealthy food, or the inactive lifestyle, it's that people choose the unhealthy food and inactive lifestyle. Day in and day out, millions if not billions of people simply make really crappy choices. And I certainly count myself in that number. Even when training and eating really well I still spend an embarrassing amount of energy every day fighting cravings and petty rationalizations for skipping exercise and pigging out.

So the real question is what is at the root of the poor choices? Everyone knows the facts, too much junk and too little exercise makes you fat and sick. But we plunge on anyway.

A lot has been written recently about emotional eating and food addiction. There's a lot to validity to those ideas, but I don't think that's why the majority of people are making crappy choices. In my mind the essential problem can be boiled down to the following principle. I call it the Peak Condition Conundrum.

"Being out of shape and overweight* is the result of a number of small pleasures throughout the day, pleasures that when added up, result in a massive displeasure; the displeasure of not liking or being comfortable in your own body.

*(You small percentage of ectomorphs out there can substitute "underweight" for "overweight")

Conversely, being in trim, good shape is the result of countless small pains throughout the day, pains that when added up result in a larger pleasure, the pleasure of looking and feeling great in your own body."

So, in short, when it comes to your body, small pleasures add up to large displeasure, while small pains add up to great satisfaction.

We need to be honest with ourselves. It is an honest pleasure to eat a piece of fudge. It is nothing but wonderful to lay in a warm bed and skip a workout. We shouldn't try to deny that. Saying no to a delectable dessert can truly be painful, and exercising is nothing short of volunteering for discomfort and misery.

It makes perfect sense that so many people would choose the path of small pleasures. But this road leads to some dark spaces. Poor body image, low self confidence, a diminished quality of life and indeed, a shorter life. But the path of small pains, sweat, and sacrifice is also a hellish ride, and only offers up its treasures to those who commit to it for the long term and do not waver.

All in all, it's an absurdly unfair situation. Either way, you're going to be in for some serious mental anguish. Suffering is the price of admission to the human experience.

The question that only you can answer is which pain will you choose? The thousand little cuts of saying no to the sloth, sugar, salt and fat that surrounds you, or the one large misery of an unhealthy body that doesn't do what you want it to do?

It's wrong to think that there's a "correct" answer, but it's also wrong to think that there isn't a choice at all. The choice is happening as we speak. Everyday you are making it in dozens of different ways, whether you realize it or not. The majority of the world is making it in one direction, we on the PCP are trying to make it in the other. So take comfort, either way you won't be alone!

The Chemical Compound You MUST Start Eating!

2010-10-01T09:08:00.012+09:00

If you pay even a bit of attention to the news you will have more knowledge about food than a scientist would have 100 years ago. You know that food has calories, you know about fats, carbs, proteins, you've heard of good and bad cholesterol , antioxidants, omega 3 fatty acids, saturated and unsaturated fats, fish oil supplements and every vitamin from A to Zinc.

But I find people consistently miss one of the most basic elements of food, and one that can help them make much better choices than knowing there's so many milligrams of folic acid per serving.

Give me an H! Give me a 2! Give me an O!

If you want to have a diet that supports your body and keeps you slim, you need to EAT YOUR WATER.

Drinking water is nice, but not as important as you may think (the 8 glasses a day myth has been shattered for years now). Eating water is where it's really at.

What do I mean? Let's consider a table with 3 carbohydrates on it.

Exhibit A: A potato.

Exhibit B: A few slices of bread

Exhibit C: A plate of crackers

These three items have about the same number of calories (around 100). But when you look at their water content you'll see a very different story.

A potato is 80% water.

A slice of bread is 35% water.

A cracker is about 3%.

So to get your 100 calories out of a potato you'll also consume a the equivalent of a half cup of water. The crackers, however, are essentially giving you that 100 calories "dry".

Ever gone camping? You'll remember that the most annoying, heavy thing in your pack was your water. Considering it's a 0 calorie element, water is absurdly dense. It fills you up. In other words, for the same number of calories the potato will make you feel more satiated and full than the plate of crackers.

Processed foods have a lot of problems. They are filled with additives, sugars, and salt, but just as important is that every step further away from the source food sees an evaporation of the water that is so abundant in natural foods. A potato is a source food that is 2/3 water. Bread has gone through one step of processing and comes in at 1/3 water. A cracker has gone through an extra step of processing and ends up with almost no water content.

When people stop eating processed food they often remark how incredibly full they feel. PCPers will often complain around week 2 and 3 of simply not being able to get all the food down. And yet they continue to lose fat. This is all because they've started eating their water.

So forget about all the fancy micronutrients and ask yourself the simple question, "how much water is in this food?" To put things in perspective, check out these numbers.

Water Percentage of some unprocessed foods:
Apple - 84%
Avocado - 81%
Banana - 76%
Carrot - 92%
Grapefruit - 90%
Red Bell Pepper - 91%
Strawberry - 91%
Tomato - 97%

As you can see, natural foods will usually have a water content around 80% or higher. Eat more of foods like the ones above, and less like the ones below!

Water Percentage of Highly Processed Foods
Beef Jerky - 3%
Milk Chocolate - 30%
Popcorn - 13%
Potato Chip - 2.5%
Pretzel - 8%
Pizza Crust - 25%
Twinkie - 65%

Remember, the body that is going to eat these things is also made predominantly of water. It's 75% of your brain, 75% of your heart, 86% of your lungs, and so on.... Eat foods that have at least as much water in them as you do, and you'll see the fat come off and the energy levels rise. This is not an academic exercise. You can try all this advice in real time with one trip to the supermarket. Get out there and make better choices TODAY.

The Path of Laziness

2010-09-07T15:27:00.004+09:00

I am the laziest person you will ever meet. I often tell people this and they think I'm joking or being overly modest or something but I'm telling you, it's the honest truth.

I was reading Terry Pratchett's book Moving Pictures a few weeks ago and to my delight I came across a passage that explains my laziness perfectly. This section is when we are introduced to the character of Victor Tugelbend, a student at the University.

"In a sense which his tutors couldn't quite define, much to their annoyance, Victor Tugelbend was also the laziest person in the history of the world. Not simply, ordinarily lazy. Ordinary laziness was merely the absence of effort. Victor had passed through there a long time ago, had gone straight through commonplace idleness and out on the far side. He put more effort into avoiding work than most people put into hard labour."

Precisely! This is exactly the kind of laziness that I have committed my life to mastering. Wasting a few hours on the Internet or sleeping in on the weekends is amateur-hour laziness. To truly master the art requires years of dedicated study, learning how to do as much as possible with the absolute least amount of effort. It was so nice to see it in print like that. But a page later came the sentence that had me pounding my fist on the table saying YES YES YES!

"People who didn't apply themselves to the facts in hand might have thought that Victor Tugelbend would be fat and unhealthy. In fact, he was undoubtedly the most athletically- inclined student in the University. Having to haul around extra poundage was far too much effort, so he saw to it that he never put it on and he kept himself in trim because doing things with decent muscles was far less effort than trying to achieve things with bags of flab."

How can you argue with that!? Pratchett took the words right out of my mouth. Being healthy, lean, and strong is the only way to go for someone competing for the title of "Laziest Person on Earth."

If you're going to walk around and be alive, you're faced with two choices. The hard work of eating well, exercising, and staying on top of your fitness, or the harder work of wheezing up stairs, making two trips to carry the groceries, and going to the doctor in ill-health.

Either way you've got to do some work, which is a real pain in the ass, but if it comes down to it the lazy person will choose good health and fitness over sloth and obesity. Not because there's virtue in being trim and strong, but because you can get by with doing less when you're not carrying around unnecessary weight.

Think of it like this. You're starting a new job at an office, and on the first day the boss comes to you with two options. You can spend the hours between 9 and 11 working hard, getting through your tasks, and then leave and do whatever you want. Or you can be on call from 9 to 5, where you'll be called in to do some annoying minor task at random intervals throughout the workday.

Now any sane person would choose option one. Get your stuff done and get out of there to enjoy the rest of the day! And yet most fail to make this choice when it comes to their bodies.

Eating well and exercising is like putting in two hours of concentrated work. But if you do it, you'll find with a strong, fit body you won't be hassled by small things like running to catch a train, sucking in your gut when an attractive person walks by, or finding clothes that look good on you. Being flabby and overweight means you save those hours of good diet and exercise, but you more than lose them to all those minor hassles throughout the day. Plus, looking out of shape takes A TON of mental energy, as you experience psychic dissonance every time you pass a mirror or see a photo of yourself. Anyone who's every spent some time overweight will know exactly what I'm talking about.

When I got married someone made some kind of remark that my figure on the wedding cake should be jumping rope. Are you kidding me!? I HATE jumping rope. But I do it because I hate not jumping rope and the hassle of being fat more. Jumping rope is the only choice for the person who has truly committed themselves to the lazy life.

Do you have what it takes to master the art of laziness? Most don't. They take the easy way out of hard, fruitless labor. I just don't get it!

And the Results are In!

2010-08-19T13:30:00.008+09:00

So, how'd your secret survey of your neighborhood shoppers go? (If you have no idea what I'm talking about, read back to a few posts ago).

Let's break down what observers find when they compare what people are buying in the supermarket to what level their fitness is.

✰Lets look at the first group of High Body Fat shoppers.

Not a lot of surprises here. This person will usually have a cart full of highly processed foods purchased in the larger sizes. They'll also have a large selection of beverages; especially colas or sweetened "juices". The freezer section will also have a big share of their cart, as side dishes or whole meals are bought premade to be warmed up in the microwave. Very often, at the bottom of the cart will be the dessert aisle, cookies, cakes, and candy bars.

These people are consuming double to triple the calories they need every day. The only way this is even possible is through modern food processes which pack an unnaturally high amount of highly refined calories into a small flavorful package. You will also notice that very heavy people often don't have the most food in their carts. This is because a great many calories will be coming not from the store but from fast food and restaurant experiences.

✰Next up is the consumer with an Average Body Fat. Average Body fat for men in the US is 25% and for women 35%. (The recommended body fat for men is 12% and 20% for women. So take the term "average" with a grain of salt.)

Now this group is the largest and the most interesting. In general, they will avoid the obviously unhealthy cheap cookies and snacks. You might see an occasional bottle of soda or bag of chips, but for the most part, these shoppers are making their best effort to eat well. This will often be expressed in their desire to cook from real ingredients. Unfortunately, these people mistake processed food units for ingredients. So you'll see a lot of things like a pack of spaghetti with a jar of tomato sauce, a pack of ground beef, and a frozen loaf of garlic bread. The shopper will combine all these ingredients into something that looks very much like a homemade Italian dinner, but which in fact is just a bunch of salty processed components interlocking like lego bricks.

So there will be a lot of sauce packets, a lot of breads and pastas, and a good helping of "ready to eat" meals that are just one step above the frozen dinners that have fallen out of favor in the 21st century. An attempt will be made to by "healthy" things like orange juice (which has more sugar than a cola) but time and time again the consumer will be trusting the advertisements and labels that promise this stuff isn't as bad for them as it really is. And finally, just as with the first group, you will see less food than you expect, because to have a body fat over 25% will require some committed restaurant and fast food going.

✰Finally we arrive at shoppers with Below Average Body Fat. This group is the first that shows an affection for the fruit and vegetable aisles. Leafy green things will be popping out here and there. There will be fewer boxes and shiny packets, and more earth tones in the cart. When processed food is bought by these people, it will often be things that are one small component of a meal. For example I saw a fairly fit woman who had fresh tomatoes, basil, mushrooms, and a box of lasagna sheets. The lasagna was clearly the only part of her meal she wasn't going to construct from scratch.

You'll also notice that the lower a person's fat percentage, the less beverages they are buying. The cart will also appear fuller, because, one, fresh fruits and vegetables take up a lot of space, and two, because these people tend to stay out of restaurants and prepare most meals at home.

✰Which leads up to the Very Low Body Fat group of people. A lot of people wrote in to tell me they couldn't even find one person like this. That's because having a low body fat in this day and age is very, very challenging. If you partake of almost any modern food you're going to be getting an unnatural load of calories in one sitting.

You can see this in action when you look into a thin persons cart. Almost everything will be fresh from the vegetable and fruit aisles. You'll see a nice mix of colors. But you won't see many food company labels. These people will buy a lot of whatever produce is in season, not because they have their pulse on nature's cycles, but because in season vegetables and fruits are cheapest, and these people eat so many of these things that they have to buy what's inexpensive to stay within their budget.

When one of these people buys something indulgent, it will be a small quantity of good quality, like a dark chocolate, a nice wine, or a rich cheese. And funnily enough, you will never, ever see a diet product in a thin person's cart.

Now you might remember that I asked you to do a sub-classification of "S" or "W" as you tried to figure out what category our shoppers were. "S" was for strong, muscular bodies, and "W" was for weak, underdeveloped physiques.

The food has very little to do with somone's muscle mass. That only comes from what they do. If someone has an active life, they'll be edged into the S category. If they are sedentary they'll be a W. But the main aspect of how they look, they're body fat, will not change with exercise alone.

Which is all to say that what you eat is the determining factor in how you look. You can go to the gym or build houses for a living but if you eat like a fat person you'll be a fat person... with muscles underneath. If you eat like a low fat person and sit on the sofa all day you'll still look like a thin person, just without any muscles underneath. So get your food right first, and then worry about how many reps and sets of what exercise how many times a week later.

Keep observing people in the supermarket and you'll see what I've written here is absolutely true. Eat like the Low Body Fat crowd, and you'll find that you become one of them!

A Simple, Silly Mistake

2010-08-02T08:08:00.006+09:00

As I've worked with people who are learning (usually for the first time) to master their body and eating habits, I see this little mistake crop up from time to time. It's such a simple and silly thing but it can get you if you're not aware of it. So let's nip it in the bud.

Take off all your clothes and stand in front of the mirror.

What you see there has nothing to do with the things you ate or the exercise you did today.

When you look in the mirror, you are looking at last week's choices.

All of your fitness progress (or regression)is running on a one week delay. It takes a good 5-7 days for your body to incorporate changes that you've made to it through diet or exercise.

For muscle to be broken up and then rebuilt stronger takes about a week. For fat to be metabolized from the various fat stores of your body takes about a week. In the same vein it takes about a week to start losing muscle tone if you become inactive, and it takes a week for fat from overeating to be integrated inbetween your skin and organs. One week!

So, how does this simple fact trip people up? In two ways:

1. Someone starts a workout/diet routine. They work hard for a week, are feeling good about themselves, and then spend some time in front of the mirror. But the results are disappointing. They don't see big changes. Some places might even look worse than before (because the body is in the process of rebuilding itself) So they go a little less hard the next day, or eat that dessert because it doesn't seem to matter what they do, they'll always be out of shape. If they only went strong into the next week, they'd be able to see the results of their first week of hard work!

2. This one is a little trickier. Someone has gotten into pretty good shape. Their muscle mass is good and fat percentage pretty low. And then something happens, maybe a wedding, a holiday, or a week's vacation. Quite reasonably, they go a little overboard, eating too much, drinking too much, enjoying themselves. They get back, check the old bathroom mirror, and what do you know, despite the lax week they're looking totally hot! The fat is still low, the muscle is still popping, everything's as it should be. So when the next sweet treat or round of beers comes by they figure, "Hey, what the hell, I'm bulletproof!" and go for it. The workouts get skipped, the food control weakens, and they slowly start the slide back to shlumpiness.

Once you know the one week concept, you can start to prepare for it. If you're just starting a program, know that you're going to be well into the second or third week before any big changes start to happen. Trust it and it'll come. And if you have a lazy or indulgent week, know that the bill will come, just not for a week or so. When the due date arrives be ready by already having gotten back on the horse.

And of course the best course of action is to not think about weekly progress at all, but to have a set period of time where you'll eat well and workout no matter what the mirror shows. This is the only way to get real results.

So, big surprise, the key to success is having a plan that you do consistently over an extended period of time. Is there anything on earth that this doesn't apply to?

A Science Project for Everyone

2010-07-13T17:39:00.010+09:00

I was giving a corporate presentation last week and someone came up to me afterwords and asked, "What's your secret? How do you get into the kind of shape you're in?" I replied, "It's no secret, you've got to get your diet under control. Get your diet right and the rest will follow." The questioner kind of rolled his eyes, and said, "Yes, but what are you doing? Weights? High reps? How many hours a week?"

This happens a lot. People don't want to hear about the diet. It's too obvious an answer. It's not sexy. They think they know all about that diet stuff and they want to skip ahead to the good stuff.

But your diet is the good stuff. It's the secret. It's the silver bullet. If you got your diet right and didn't do a single push up or sit up you'd still look fantastic. I feel like Cassandra repeating this week in and week out and still having people think I'm holding out on them.

So I'm going to give you a little science project. You will need a note taking device such as your smart phone or the good old pad and paper.

Now, for the next few weeks, when you go to the supermarket, I want you to snoop on your fellow shoppers. Your first task is to judge what kind of shape they're in. Here are the categories:

Group 4
High body fat. Neck will seem short. Face will be jowly. Fingers will appear close together. Movement will be somewhat labored. Clothes will bulge at certain points and be baggy at others.

Group 3
Average body fat. Clothes look ok but around the waistline and chest there will be a bit of bulge. One area in particular will be storing a lot of fat, usually the breast, the buttocks, or the face.

Group 2
Low body fat. Shirts will hang from the rib area without visible contact with the skin. The neck will seem longer and the face more elongated. Some of the larger veins will be visible on the arms and hands.

Group 1
Very low body fat. You know what this looks like, as you are bombarded with images of it in every advertisement in the supermarket you're in!

So, once you've assigned the person a group, I want you to add the letter (S) or (W) to their rank. S stands for strong. This person seems to have a lot of muscle, either visible or under the surface. They move with confidence and have no trouble getting through their tasks. The W stands for Weak and means that the person is carrying very little muscle. Their movements will be somewhat hesitant and unfocused. The "S" and "W" ranks are a bit tricky to evaluate but you'll get the hang of it soon enough.

So, some examples:

This woman is a 2W. Do you see how her bent arm has almost no tone?

This woman is a 2S. See how the arm has visible musculature underneath, and check out that sternomastoid!

This guy is doing his best to hide that he's a 3W. The sloping shoulder line and lack of width in the chest where the stripe on his sweater are giveaways that there's not much muscle underneath.

4S. Her posture tells us she's got some muscle under there. A close call though.

1W. The classic "skinny girl". Sloped shoulders and baggy sleeves indicate there's not a lot of muscle mass in her body.

4W. Let's make a future where this ranking is obsolete!

2W. Lack of leg tone and weak shoulders!

See the triceps and calf? Those lines tell you low body fat and high muscle. The posture with the shoulders back and squared is another giveaway. 1S.

This guys jowls show that he's just barely a 3. The arm held in that position should have more structure to it, which makes me give him a 3W, although it's not far from an S.

You get the idea. We're not going for absolute accuracy, here. Just ballpark rankings. And remember, we aren't making value judgments about the character of these people. We're just trying to get a handle on where their bodies are at this moment in time. Don't be emotional about this exercise. Be scientific!

Now that you've categorized your neighbor, we're ready for the fun part.

Look in their shopping cart. When you have a chance, note the products and quantity of those products. Try to capture info on three or four different body types per shopping trip.

And that's it! Do this for three weeks. After those three weeks I'll post again with what I've found doing this experiment and would be happy to discuss what you've found. Get out there and discover for yourself what makes a body look like it does.

The Mind is not a Bucket

2010-06-24T11:05:00.007+09:00

I see this mistake so often that I figured it was finally time to write about it.

Someone has started trying to eat better and exercise more. They're off to a good start, cutting back on the junk food, getting some workouts in. Everything's looking up.

But about 10 days in things get tricky. The body feels tired and weak. The cravings get stronger. And an insidious thought pattern starts to assert itself. It goes something like this:

"I've been working so hard, my body really deserves a break so it can rest and recharge."

or

"I've been so good about my food choices, I need to let off a little steam and have something 'naughty'.

At the root of these thoughts is a philosophical conceit that is rarely examined. These are all based on the idea that the mind/body is a bucket that gets filled and needs to be emptied in order to be filled again.

Let me explain.

In the first example, the person feels that they have been "filled up" with exercise, and needs to take a few days off so that they can come back stronger.

In the second, the mind is seen to be filled up with saying no to temptations, and saying yes just once will drain the bucket and allow the psyche to start fresh.

These are all very nice ideas that have the unfortunate quality of being completely wrong. Your mind is not at all like a bucket.

Your body and mind are organic, and they behave like every other organic thing in nature, they work in cycles, rhythms, and patterns.

When you're trying to change your dietary and lifestyle choices, you're really changing your patterns. And for a new pattern to really take hold and become your pattern you have to keep repeating it until it becomes ingrained in your psyche. This is why it's so important, especially at first, to not compromise your new healthy choices. Not even once!

What feels like an urge to empty the bucket is actually your old pattern struggling to maintain its grip. Acquiescing to that will only confuse the body and mind. Instead of making progress you'll be spinning your wheels and wondering why you can never lose that last 15 pounds or gain that tone in your midsection.

So let's say you have a pattern of decompressing after work with a few beers. You've established this pattern over many months, if not years. When the end of work rolls around, your body and brain start setting up to receive that cold dose of calories and alcohol. You've decided it would be a better idea to replace that after work beer with an iced tea and some fruit. The first week you do this your mind will be an active participant, and it will be strong enough to stick to the new plan. But the body will continue to hit all the triggers for "beer after work" relentlessly for at least two or three weeks, and the mind's willpower inevitably slackens. You start to get that "just one to drain the bucket of craving" feeling.

Now, if you go for the beer on one of these days, you've sent the body the message that the week of iced tea was an aberration, now over, and the old familiar pattern can continue. You'll find it very difficult to go back to your iced tea routine. The mind will have to get its gears moving all over again just as it did in the beginning of the exercise. The time between "emptying your bucket" will get shorter and shorter and within a few weeks you'll be back to the daily beer pattern.

This is very ineffective, frustrating and confusing to the body, and fills you with an unpleasant guilt that will turn even your favorite beer into a bitter pill.

A much more successful method is to lay out a long term plan for establishing new patterns and not deviating from that until your body has accepted the new world order. In other words, cold turkey.

This is where it's very helpful to set one month challenges for yourself. For example, "I will not drink a single beer in the month of June." A month is enough time to give your body a good chance of rinsing the old pattern out of its system. When you feel your mind start to wriggle around the rule, making excuses about it being a "special occasion" or the need to "blow off steam" or "de-stress" know that this is the pattern trying to reassert itself. Smile at it and let it pass. After all, your mind is not a bucket. It's a harmonic wave pattern.

You'll know you've successfully laid down a new pattern when the old one doesn't even occur to you. So in our beer example, if you're getting home and not even thinking of having a cold one, you're free! If however, you're having an internal fight "I'd love a beer, but I'm going to have the iced tea because I know it's better for me," then you're still in the middle of your battle. Persevere.

Some patterns take longer than others to change, but for food and exercise, a month is usually enough to get you on the right track. The next time the first of the month rolls around, give yourself a target and stick with it through the whole 30 days. And once you've done this a few times, you'll start getting really good at seeing through all the tricks the mind plays as it tries to continue its patterns. Then you'll be ready for bigger and bigger challenges.

But above all, don't fool yourself into thinking that skipping just one workout or indulging in just one of your junk foods will somehow make things easier. In fact it will only make the road longer, steeper, and more exasperating. And it's a long tough road to begin with...

But stay on it and you'll get there!

Talks with The Deflator

2010-06-16T16:00:00.006+09:00

There's something that a lot of PCPers go through, and even some people who are just thinking about doing the Peak Condition Project.

It's the conversation with The Deflator. The Deflator is that person who will never have anything good to say about you trying to be a better person, or starting something new. We all have them in our lives and at times we all are them.

Often people are caught off guard by the wave of negativity a Deflator can unleash. So I thought I'd list some responses you can call upon if you get stuck in one of these conversations. There are two responses for each, a skillful one that will make you sound wise and reasonable, and a jaded one that is perhaps best left unsaid. Let's do this!

The Deflator: But you're in pretty good shape! You don't need to do something like this.

Skillful Response: You're right, I'm lucky to be in decent shape. But I want to feel even better, so I'm giving this a try. It'll be fun!

Jaded Response: I guess pretty good is enough for some people. But nothing great would ever happen with that kind of thinking.

The Deflator: This seems extreme. Why can't you go with a more sensible program?

Skillful Response: I've tried a lot of programs, and learned something from each of them. This one is far less extreme than most of them. Just diet and exercise!

Jaded Response: Maybe it's time to stop taking 1 step forward 2 steps back approach and break my body out of the processed food nightmare of modern eating.

The Deflator: You're going to do that crazy diet?

Skillful Response: It's not so bad, it's just a lot of getting back to basics, fruits, vegetables, stuff like that.

Jaded Response: The crazy diet is the one YOU eat! Have another chili cheese french fry why don't ya!

The Deflator: But you can't drink!? Come on, that's too much!

Skillful Response: I know, it's going to be an interesting experience to see how my body reacts, and I'll have to learn how to socialize without hitting the sauce!

Jaded Response: The fact that just thinking about someone else giving up alcohol makes you so jittery perhaps says more about you than me.

The Deflator: You know after it's over you're just going to gain it all back.

Skillful Response: This program is a total lifestyle change, so hopefully the changes will stick. I'm ready to break out of these bad habits and live my best life. Your support would mean the world to me!

Jaded Response: Thanks for the vote of confidence, jerk. Believe it or not we're not all going to make the same mistakes you have.

The Deflator: You're just a big person. Accept it and stop fighting nature. (Or for those ectopmorphs out there, You're just a skinny, bony person, accept it and count yourself lucky!)

Skillful Response: I feel like that sometimes too. But the truth is I've never really gone for it like this. A total overhaul of how I eat and exercise. I'm excited to see what happens, maybe under this skin there's a new me no one's seen before.

Jaded Response: Maybe the reason I've always been like this is unhelpful negative comments like that.

The Deflator: But my trainer says that you have to do x, y, and z.

Skillful Response: Yeah, I've heard that too. The truth is the body will respond well to a lot of different plans. This one seems to be a good fit for me.

Jaded Response: I don't take second hand advice from someone who's as out of shape as you.

The Deflator: Don't you think this is a little vain?

Skillful Response: Sure, there's a part of it's that's vain. But who doesn't want to look and feel good? And if vanity gets me to have a longer healthier life, I can deal with it!

Jaded Response: You obviously don't have much vanity. Have you looked in the mirror lately?

The Deflator: It just seems so hard! I could never sign up for something like that.

Skillful Response: Yeah, it's going to be a challenge. But I'm ready to be challenged. I've been coasting for too long now. It'd be great to know you were cheering me on.

Jaded Response: Don't you see that avoiding anything hard is what got us into this mess with our bodies!?

The Deflator: This is probably just some scam.

Skillful Response: I've researched it and everything seems on the up and up. Let me give you the website address so you can see if anything seems fishy.

Jaded Response: This from the person who bought the _________? (List dumb thing The Deflator signed up for or purchased)

Don't let The Deflator get you down. The truth is, when someone makes a decisive change for the better it's very threatening for the people around them. It means your relationship is going to change, the way you spend time together is going to change. And it makes the person stuck and not progressing at all look bad. Humans are incredibly sensitive to the nuances of group dynamics, and when the status quo is threatened up will come the excuses, the derision, and, sadly, the ostracism.

All we can do is stand our ground, hope that The Deflator joins us once we've shown that it's not so scary on the other side. And watch out for The Deflator we all have within us.

Keep it positive people!

De-Lurk!

2010-06-03T10:14:00.008+09:00

Sometimes when I'm feeling industrious (a once or twice a year occurrence!) I sit down at the computer and check out the numbers of people reading the blogs and visiting my sites.

Every time I'm blown away by the number of lurkers out there. From my own small sample group of sites (this PCP site, the Kung Fu Body, The Mindfulist, the Knowledge Workers Survival Guide, Yoga Garden, Wellness Begins Here) I estimate for every 1 comment or sale there are 150-200 eyeballs that pass over it.

There's nothing wrong with lurking. After all, if you tried to respond to every piece of content you read online you'd never make it past your morning cruise through your bookmarks. But I want to ask everyone to make a special effort to interact with the people now working hard towards their wellness goals on the Peak Condition Project and the new Kung Fu Body.

Here's why. If you take the time to respond to some random news story you might give the reporter something to think about and you'll further the discussion, but that's the end of it. However, if you take the time to leave a supportive comment on a PCP or KFB blog, you can really change someone's day. The people going for these fitness goals are just like you, they're not rich or famous, they don't have access to special equipment or trainers, they're just out there living their lives and trying to be as healthy as they can be.

It gets quite lonely doing this kind of work. You have to say no to a lot of delicious food. You have to move your tired groggy body through the daily workout, and you have to find something to blog about even when your inspiration ebbs.

But when someone takes the time to leave you a comment, even something like "You can do it! I'm supporting you!" it can unleash HUGE amounts of energy and positivity into the process. You can literally, with your comment, get someone thousands of miles away off the couch and into their workout. You can help them say no to that tempting dish that will derail their diet.

You know how on telethons they say stuff like "Your donation can make all the difference!" but deep down you know your 10 bucks doesn't really make much of a difference. Well, when someone's struggling through their 90 day project, one comment really can make all the difference.

I know you only have a certain amount of time "currency" each day to spend commenting on the web. If you want a lot of bang for your buck, consider spending that currency here, on people's blogs. It just takes a second, it's free, and you can brighten someone's day and help them to get the change they want for their bodies and their lives. And when you do something like that, you can't help but feel a little brighter yourself.

So click one of those names you see on the pages. They're real people and would love to hear that you've got their backs!

My Fellow Americans, You're Screwed

2010-05-13T18:44:00.005+09:00

Back in the US for a quick trip, and wanted to get these thoughts down while I'm still here.

My fellow Americans, I've got some bad news for you. If you're trying to be healthy, lean, and fit in this country, you are screwed. Let's talk about it.

Several factors have come together in early 21st century America that make a nasty cocktail for anyone trying to have a life based on wellness. Just a few of these wouldn't be the end of the world, but when you get them all together, staying fit in the US is like trying to swim against a tsunami. So, in no particular order:

Geography: Unless you live in New York or San Francisco, going about your day on foot is simply impossible. There's no choice but to take a car or bus to do everything. Driving is a tricky thing. If you spend three hours a day driving here and there, you'll be mentally fatigued at the end of it, and feel like you've had a "big day". But in terms of calories burned and exercise done, you could've been sitting on your couch for three hours. So even an active, busy American will "lose" all the calorie burn that a Londoner, Parisian, or Tokyoite gets from simply going about their day, walking to the post office, train station, or supermarket. In a given day this isn't a big difference, perhaps just 200 calories, but multiply that over a lifetime and it'll make a huge impact.

Even If You Wanted to Walk... There are few sidewalks, little infrastructure for pedestrians (crosswalk signs, etc...) and the unpleasant fact that you will be surrounded by car noise and exhaust for your entire stroll.

The Free Market: America has the most open and competitive markets anywhere in the world. It's a ruthless environment. One company will come out with a good product, and their competitor will respond with a similar version at a cheaper price. This usually benefits the consumer as high quality products at a competitive price will always rise to the top. However, when the product is the food you eat, you get an unintended consequence. Your iPhone can get faster, lighter and more powerful every year. But how do you make a "better version" of a food. The response is usually to boost the flavor and lower the price through streamlined industrialization. So every year the salt and sugar levels in packaged foods inch up, and the ingredients get farther and farther from things that actually grow in the ground. The result is the oft quoted fact that you can get an entire fast food value meal for less than a head of broccoli. Again, this might not mean a big change in any given day. But if it leads a person to buy the cheaper, more convenient, more flavorful processed food just a few times more a week, that will have a big impact over the course of a lifetime. Which leads me to:

Loss of Palate: If you've grown up on the packaged foods, your taste buds will have acclimated to the high amounts of salt and sugars. So your tongue has a certain expectation for flavor every meal. And when you bring a natural food into that environment it will disappoint the palate. Fruits will taste dull. Vegetables will be bitter. Everything will seem somehow "plain". And it won't be long before you're reaching for a sauce or dressing to bring a little pop to your bland meal, or skipping the natural foods all together. No one believes me when I tell them their palate is whacked, but just read through some PCPers reactions to their regular foods after just a few weeks off the salt and sugar rollercoaster.

Portion Size. You've heard of people dumbing stuff down to meet the lowest common denominator. Well, in the US, the idea is to make food that satisfies the largest common denominator. Every meal seems designed for a 6'5" athletic male. The fact that there are very few 6'5" athletic males walking around doesn't seem to stop anybody from eating like them. And there's usually no way to order a "half-plate." The truth is, to keep a slim, lean physique, people need to be eating the kind of portion that's only offered on the kids menu.

"Bling" vegetables. Now here's the real kick in the pants. Even if you eat fresh fruits and vegetables, you're only getting a fraction of the nutrition that your grandparents got. This is largely due to the fact that supermarkets want to have big, glossy vegetables and fruit on the stands. So farmers breed for size, not for nutrition. There's a lot of science on this which I won't bore you with. Just know that your more-expensive-than-a-value-meal broccoli has 1/3 the nutrients of a head of broccoli from the 1950s. You can see this if you buy a truly organic, locally made vegetable. They will be small, gnarly, and visually unappealing. And packed with nutrients. So even the minority of people buying fresh are getting a raw deal, pun intended.

Fat Tolerance. A few years ago a study came out that established something we all know from common sense. When the people around you are a certain way, you'll tend to become more like them. So if your friends are all healthy and into exercise, you'll gradually drift in that direction. In the US at the moment, we've got the opposite dynamic. When the majority of people are lugging around an extra 40 pounds, you'll feel pretty good that you're just lugging around an extra 30. Just as your palate becomes acclimated to the salt and sugar, your psyche becomes acclimated to the idea that "everyone" is a little jowly and heavy around the middle. This is not how your body was intended to look. Again, a subtle effect that will get you over a lifespan.

Science Has the Answer. Most people think of the US as a very religious country, but the truth is that most Americans trust science above all else. Specifically, trust in technology. Even the most die-hard evangelical christian will happily whip out their smart-phone, microwave their dinner, and take a prescription drug to reduce depression. Jesus saves but science delivers. I love technology too, but its surprisingly poor at making you any healthier. All the things that will make you fit require you to get AWAY from technology. Out of the car, unplugged from the internet, away from the scientifically formulated sports drinks, the diet pills, weight loss shakes, off the space age gym machines and out into the very unscientific world of simple foods, sweat, and exercise. Science makes life zippy and cool, but it doesn't make you fit. Which leads right into my next point:

Gyms. I'm getting famous for my hatred of gyms. I met a gym trainer the other day who said, "Oh yeah, your that guy trying to put us out of business." That's right buddy. Gyms are everywhere in the US, and they aren't helping. A gym exists to suck your money away, and they will do whatever they can to insist that your health and fitness isn't possible without them. They make people think that getting in shape is difficult without that special place with all its special equipment. They compartmentalize fitness to that one hour three times a week. Fitness is all around you! You don't need anything besides your own body and basic food knowledge. You don't need these places, they need you, like a parasite needs a host. Gyms disempower and impoverish the few fitness-inclined people out there, and they piss me off. And finally,

Aversion to Pain and Sacrifice. When I've lived in developing countries, I have been amazed at people's ability to be happy an fulfilled even as they have performed back breaking labor and scratched a meager existence out of the soil. The wealth and power of the US has made us all soft. And getting into good shape requires pain. The pain of passing on a delicious dessert, the pain of a muscle burning an exercise, the pain of sacrificing your time to workout when you could be doing a million other more fun things. Very few Americans have what it takes. This is not a failing of character, it's just that without practice you won't be "good at pain." And the US gives you very few chances to practice pain and sacrifice. So when it comes time for someone to stick with a plan, very few make it.

Again, these factors are not only found in America, nor is any one of them that big a deal. But throw them all together and you've got an environment that will trip up your wellness goals no matter what you do.

YOU ARE SCREWED.

(The funny thing about people is, when you tell them there's no way out of a situation, they instantly start hatching plans of escape. Nothing will rouse the human spirit like being told it can't do something. So, my countrymen, you're living in a place that has set you up to be fat and sick. What are you gonna do about it? Are you just gonna sit there and take it? Doesn't sound very American to me!)

Behind the Curtain

2010-04-28T20:52:00.007+09:00

I remember when I first started playing guitar. This was back in the days of OLGA (the online guitar archive, which was quickly shut down by record label attorneys). OLGA was awesome. You just searched for any song you wanted to play, and someone out there had done the tab for it. No commercials, no fake links, just content.

And here's the funny thing, when you learn to play a song you've listened to for months, it's a lot like flinging open the wizards curtain. I must have spent 6 months on the edge of my bed learning Radiohead's Street Spirit (back when Radiohead actually had guitar parts to learn). At first there's a sense of wonder that with your own fingers you can get a piece of wood to make the same sounds as your favorite band. And then comes a mild disappointment. That Street Spirit, one of the most beautiful songs ever, the turning point of Radiohead's sound, was just an Am, an Em, and a C with some hammer-ons thrown in, is just kind of... anti-climatic.

But this is how you learn how music works. By playing a song yourself, you get a glimpse of the underlying structure of sound, of the relationship between tones and intervals. Disappointment is replaced with the respect of an amateur tinkerer towards a master craftsman.

This experience of peeking behind the curtain can be had within any art-form. Sumo wrestling just looks like two fat guys having a shoving match to me, but I'm told by the afficionados that there is unimaginable technique and depths once you get to know the sport. And I believe them.

And today I want to encourage all of you to throw back the curtain on something we deal with everyday. Professionally made food. Much like a polished album (like OK Computer) a professional piece of food will arrive in your hands as if it had never been anything but complete. You look at the perfectly formed pastries behind the cafe counter, or the impeccably presented appetizer at a chain restaurant, and it seems like something far beyond your comprehension. So we eat them, enjoy them, and don't dwell on the fact that these foods were all at some point formed from a messy raw ingredient.

So here's what I invite you to do this week. Think about one of your favorite professionally made foods. One of those things you really have no idea what goes into, but that you enjoy. For me, it was the blueberry scones that I sometimes get from Starbucks.
As I've mentioned before, we're living in the matrix now, and if you can think it, someone has done a tutorial on how to do it. And sure enough, I found this great video about how to make flaky, delicious blueberry scones.

The tricks of the trade will surprise you in their simplicity. To stop the butter melting prematurely you freeze it first and shred it. Same with the blueberries. THAT'S how you get the blueberries to cook whole without bleeding and giving you a piece of tough blue bread. But there are some less pleasant surprises. 8 tablespoons of butter and a ton of sugar. It's not that I didn't know my Starbucks scone was full of butter and sugar, but when you're pouring in buckets of the stuff yourself you get a new appreciation of how truly junky this stuff is.

And this is the real magic of replicating your favorite pro-foods at home. You see them for what they really are; artfully produced bundles of fat and salt that target your pleasure centers like heat-seeking missiles. Of course I like scones... there's more than a candy-bar's worth of sugar in there!

This is a key point. Any food that has made it through the gauntlet of lab testing and focus groups will taste pretty damn good. If we use flavor as our only guide we will be constantly tempted towards foods that have been designed for that one dimension of palate satisfaction. But food's purpose isn't to taste good. It's to power your life so you can do the things you really care about.

But a professional food maker doesn't care about your energy levels, the accumulating fat on your body, or the mood swings that will follow consuming one of these unhealthy foods. They only care about making that sale, and that means appealing to your basest instincts, the desire for sugars, salts, and fat. The baked goods company that delivers to Starbucks will not bat an eyelash at the kilos of sugar pouring into the scone mixer. If you'll buy it, they'll make it.

And nothing will drive this point home like making it yourself. When it's you dumping a cup and a half of sugar into something that your then going to put in your and your family's body, it instantly becomes less appealing. Every bite is make just a little less sweet by the knowledge of what really went into making such a flavorful, pleasurable food. You will inevitably finish the treat thinking, "That was good, but it's the kind of thing I'd only have a few times a year." Compare this to the many people who will hit up the cafe counter every day.

Learning how things really work, be it music, sumo, or cooking, will make you a more interesting and engaged person. So please take me up on my challenge to reproduce one of those pro-foods at home this week. The experience will be an eye opener, and will probably end in you making healthier choices in the long run.
Knowledge is always a good! Even if your eyes become open to how badly you've been eating for the last few years, it's far better than ignorance. Get cooking and tell me how it goes!

The Top Ten Excuses I Hear for Not Getting Healthy

2010-04-12T05:44:00.007+09:00

In a given week I'll interact with dozens of people who have questions about their health and fitness. The majority of them, after hearing the inconvenient truth about having to cut unhelpful foods, eating more fruits and vegetables, and spending time each day working out, will sigh, shake their heads, and trot out one of the:

Top Ten Excuses For Not Getting in Shape! (with holes punched through each for easy carrying!)

1. "I don't have enough time." Easily the most often heard excuse, this one casts the speaker in the role of the victim. He or she wants to be healthier, but the world has laid so many responsibilities on their shoulders that it's simply impossible to find any time to do anything about it. But here's the truth. Saying "I don't have enough time" is just another way of saying "I'd rather spend my time doing something else." I much prefer this formulation, as it means you're taking control of your choices, whatever they may be. It would be so refreshing to hear someone say, "I want to get in shape, but I'd rather spend my time on getting ahead in my career." At least that's honest, and it makes it clear that when you put long hours in at the office you're doing it at the expense of your fitness level. There's nothing wrong with making a choice! Focusing on your job, your family, your reality TV watching, or whatever, is fine. Just don't act like you have no say in how you spend your time.

2. "Oh, but I couldn't give up _______" insert the food or drink of your choice here. Frappacinos, beer, chocolate, onion rings, ranch dressing, whatever. This one is always kind of sad to me. You're a vibrant, brilliant individual. And you're going to let the desire for a certain type of food derail you? It's just food. And let me tell you something else. I've lived in a whole bunch of countries, and in each place there's always been a shortage of some kind of food I like. In one place, peanut butter was non-existent. In another, cheese was unheard of. And you know what? You get over it. When you don't "feed" an eating habit, it withers and dies. So, if you give up french fries, it's not as if you're going to wake up in a cold sweat craving french fries for the rest of your life. In a week or two you won't even think about them because your body has moved on from that particular hang up.

3. "So I couldn't go out with my friends anymore?" For goodness sake, getting in shape doesn't mean you become a hermit! If anything, you'll have more energy for going out than before. But usually the root of this excuse is "I can't go out and get wasted with my friends anymore." That is true. But if you're seriously considering becoming healthier, you need to think about the fact that your socializing is centered around intoxicants that damage your body and trip up your fitness goals. There are a small number of people who party hard and have the wherewithal to wake up early the next day and hit the gym. But if you're making this excuse, you are not one of them.

4. "But you see, I have to go to social functions for my work." Again, this is an "I'm the victim of circumstance" excuse, and completely bogus. Do you really think you're going to lose business opportunities by showing you are a disciplined and motivated person who's taking your training seriously? Let's imagine you're at a business lunch and have been offered a drink or fattening food. You politely pass, saying "It looks great, but I'm getting in shape right now, so I'm going to pass today." Chances are you'll strike up more conversations, because everyone is interested in being healthier, and you obviously know what you're doing. If you're really going to lose a sale or client because you don't want to put crap in your body, then maybe it's time to reconsider who you're doing business with!

5. "The truth is, I just hate working out." What you really mean is that you hate working out as a huffing, winded, overweight klutz. And who wouldn't hate that? Nobody likes to suck at something. And when you start getting in shape, you will suck. But it's only a very short window where you have to suffer like this. Just keep going a few weeks, and you'll become a skilled exerciser. And that's when things get fun. But not even starting because you don't want to go through that is like saying, "I want to drive to New York, but I hate New Jersey, so let's skip the whole trip."

6. "You have to make your own food? But I don't know how to cook." Dude, it's 2010. We're living in the matrix. You know how when the characters in that movie needed to fly a helicopter, and they'd just download the "know-how" into their brains? We live in that world right now. It's called YouTube. Search for any meal you can think of, and someone has made a video with all the ingredients and step by step visual instruction. And below the video will be hundreds of people asking questions, giving answers, and providing extra tips. A few weeks ago I got a craving for samosas, (one of those non-existent foods where I live). My wife punched up a video on YouTube, and within the hour we had fresh home made samosas. She had never even heard of a samosa before this. And they were awesome. Better than the samosas my Indian friend's mom used to make (sorry Mrs. Gopalan!). If you can't figure out how to prepare a meal in this day and age, then your problem isn't that you can't cook, it's that you're lazy. And that's ok. But at least come out and say it!

7. "Fresh fruits and vegetables are too expensive." If you start eating well, it's true, you will see your grocery bill rise. But this is more than offset by your cutting of restaurant checks, bar tabs, and all those little micropayments you make buying sodas and snacks from vending machines and convenience stores. There are a dozen areas of your life you can cut costs. Food doesn't need to be one of them. And even if it turns out that you are spending more money than before, realize you're spending it on the only investment that really matters, your life expectancy! I know people who buy premium gasoline to keep their cars running smoothly, but consider premium foods for their bodies an extravagance. Don't be crazy. If you have enough money to be reading this blog on a computer with an internet connection, then you have enough money to buy real food.

8. "But I don't want to bulk up like those bodybuilder types" This one almost makes me laugh out loud. Do you seriously think you're going to do some push-ups and sit-ups, and wake up the next day looking like this?To get in this condition requires years of specialized training, for several hours a day (and we won't even get into the unsavory dietary and drug supplements that bodybuilders use). Changing your body is a slow and steady process. And even if you did feel you were getting bulky in a particular area, it's not as if you can't modify your training to lean out that area. But to not even start because you're worried about getting bulky is like not going ice skating at the local rink because you don't want to be bothered flying to Russia to compete in the 2014 Winter Olympics.

9. "The problem is I don't belong to a gym and my house is too small." First of all, you know my opinion on gyms. (And if you don't, read this) Second, there's this awesome thing called "the outside" that people used to go to before the internet. Your average playground, for example, will have all the equipment you could ever need. Now I hear the chorus of follow-up excuses already. "But it's cold where I live," "But there's no playground near me," "I don't have time for that!" Look, we all have space and time constraints. Work with what you've got. (Check these guys out for inspiration) If you're waiting for when you live in a 8000 square foot house with a fitness room to start getting in shape, you're going to be waiting a long time!

10. "I don't know where to start." Again, I refer you to the fact that it's 2010. Use the internet. I've even heard they have these sites where you can type something in a search bar and it'll go around the net and find the information you need! It had a funny name... I think maybe it started with a G? Now I know there's a lot of crap information out there, so be discerning. Anything that promises you fast results or is trying to sell you a product is not what you need. Here's a good tip. If the advice you're reading is boring and consists mostly of common sense, then you're on the right track. It doesn't really matter what plan you choose, as long as you choose a plan, and not a gimmick. The human body is remarkably similar from person to person. You are not a special case. Eating right and exercising will make you look and feel better. This is not a matter of wishing, it's just physics.

And if you really want someone to help you out through each stage in the process of reclaiming your body, then click that "sign-up" button on the PCP site and we'll get the ball rolling. But be warned, your excuses won't carry much weight with us!

The Psychology of Wellness - Part 3

2010-03-25T10:26:00.006+09:00

(This is the last post in a series, part 1 is here, and part 2 is here. Read them first if you haven't already)

So, we've covered the basics of how your mind works, and hopefully you've been practicing watching your mind through meditation. And we've discussed how watching mind can help you identify those recurrent thoughts that undermine your health goals.

Today is the last piece of the puzzle; leveraging mindfulness to introduce new positive practices into your life.

Our example this time will be a desk-bound 30 something guy who's found he's getting winded going up stairs, hasn't been to the gym in over a year despite paying monthly dues, and is in general feeling like he's losing control over his health and wellness.

Everytime he thinks about getting some exercise in, his mind throws up the Top 40 thoughts that he's become so used to over the years. If he tried to verbalize them they'd be something like this:

"I can fit it in later today, I really want to finish this project, I'm just feeling a little heavy from lunch, I need to digest it first, I walked this morning so that counts for something right, I'm not lazy, just busy, after all this makes me money and exercise is just a time-suck, I can get on top of this stuff in spring when there's not so much going on."

Now all of us, including this guy, know that in the light of day these thoughts are crude, bald-faced rationalizations. But for someone buying into the story of their thoughts, these lame excuses carry just enough weight to keep them sitting at the desk for the rest of the afternoon. The exercise is never done, and a good helping of guilt and self-loathing come later, which leads to overeating and overdrinking, and more sedentary time feeling bummed out.

Now, the technique we discussed in part 2, of watching your thoughts and defanging them before they plunge you into an unhealthy choice (like eating a candy bar) will not be much help in this situation. This guy's problem is a lack of action rather than a repeated series of mistakes. How should he mentally proceed when the problem is finding motivation where there is none?

The one thing that will not absolutely not work is trying to remove or "cut off" the negative thoughts and rationalizations. You're probably familiar with this old psychological trick: "Whatever you do, don't think of a pink elephant." You, me, and all the other people reading this are now thinking of pink elephants. A similar process happens if you try something like, "Whatever you do today, don't make excuses and sit on the computer all afternoon." Thoughts don't work like that. As soon as you try to delete an unwanted thought, another one will instantly fill its place. So forget about any self-talk along the lines of "Don't be so lazy."

We're not trying to tame our thoughts here, we're learning to watch our thoughts. Once a thought is flashing around the cerebral cortex, it's out of your control, you can either buy into its story or simply watch it bounce around your head, but you can never erase it. What you do have some nominal control over is what thought is being cued up next in line.

And here's the trick. To get motivated, all you need to do is mindfully introduce a positive thought into the Top 40 mix.

By positive I don't mean "I'm awesome." For me, a positive thought is an actionable item which you can reasonably execute in the near future.

So, for our sample guy, a good positive thought might be: "This flab that squeezes out of the side of my trousers is not me, and I'm walking an hour a day to make it go away, so that I can feel great when I look in the mirror." And all it takes is for this man to buy into this thought's story. Someone who can say that sentence with total conviction will have little problem getting in an afternoon walk.

This is why it's so important to introduce an actionable and reasonable positive thought. If your positive thinking is too broad or too distant, it's easy to stop buying into its story as you continually come up empty.

There is always room for big thoughts and dreams, but if you actually want to get anywhere, you need to have your sense of scale well calibrated. For example, if our guy wants six pack abs, it's not very helpful to think "I'm going to get a six pack!" A much more reasonable way to go about things is "I want a six pack but I'm never going to get there unless I start getting into a routine that sheds this belly fat first." However, if our guy is locked into a serious long term training program like the PCP then "I'm going to get a six-pack" is a perfectly actionable thought. You have to be aware of the context in which you're introducing your positive thoughts and tune up or down accordingly.

To put this all together, let's revisit our desk worker guy on a day when he's on top of his thoughts. He's just had lunch, and thinking about what to do with his afternoon. Let's ride along his thought stream, offering a little encouragement along the way.

"I can fit in my workout later, I'm pretty busy today, and I've got to finish this project..." (Unhelpful thoughts and rationalizations! Look at the projector!) "...heh heh, there I go again, I know that's just a bunch of excuses, why do I do that?" (Good! Now use this window to introduce a positive thought!) "I want to get rid of these love handles and keep up with my nephew (Nice, now turn around, look at the screen, and buy into the story!) and I'm going to keep my workout schedule, even when it's inconvenient, because this is the new me. Hell, I'm not even that busy today anyway."

And now the workout is a part of the scheduled day, not a half-hearted desire from a health-potato.

This can of course be used for any goal you have, but it's especially powerful when coupled with fitness because you get a whole feedback loop going as you get an endorphin hit, see your body change, and receive feedback from others. And it all starts and ends in the mind. I'll say this one more time, you will never be able to stop and look at your thoughts mid-stream without training. For any of this advice to be effective you have to put some time in on the practice field of meditation. There's no other way!

Everything I've said here can be verified in real time without you lifting a finger. Watch your thoughts, train your mind, and the body will follow. Because they are one and the same.

Epilogue

This advice about buying into the story your positive thoughts tell you is fantastic for getting in shape, but it is not the end game. Anytime you believe in your thoughts too much, positive or negative, you will be setting up an edifice of disappointment, delusion, and suffering. It's one thing to say "I'm going to have a six-pack" and another to believe that having a six pack will make you a more complete or happy person. The world is full of rich, famous, beautiful people who are completely miserable.

The path to contentment doesn't lie in either mindless distraction or mindful goal-accomplishment. It's about being authentically yourself, without a crust of thoughts, judgments, and desires. So the final step is not buying into any thought too much, to let the torrent rush around you without losing yourself in it.

But I will tell you, being fit and healthy means that as you work through this lifelong process your body will support and sustain the mind component like a wind at your back. So don't get too deep in this endgame stuff if it means you're not exercising or taking care of the body you have RIGHT NOW. Go get em!

A Very Instructive Injury!

2010-03-15T14:16:00.011+09:00

About 6 weeks ago, I was teaching the usual a.m. yoga classes at the studio. All morning, my left leg had felt kind of strange, like the head of the femur wasn't quite in its groove. A person going about their regular day probably wouldn't notice this, but when you spend a few hours with your legs in all kinds of yogic positions you pick up on irregularities pretty quick.

The hip socket shifts around all the time, and the femur can get misplaced quite easily. Usually a few hip rotations like the ones pictured below will get everything in place. I did these, of course, but something was still off.
After the morning classes were finished, I spent a few minutes stretching out the leg, but couldn't quite get the hip socket settled. Puzzled, I moved into a front split to try and feel around the edges of the bone... a little pressure here, a little there...
CRACK! It sounded just like a home run off a baseball bat. Without warning the femur had finally snapped back into place, sending my split hurtling into the floor. Several things happened at once here...

1. Not to get too graphic, but the family jewels got a sudden and unpleasant introduction to the floor. Yowza!
2. The strange feeling of the misplaced bone was immediately relieved...
3. ...only to be replaced by a new unpleasant sensation, an ache from deep in my hamstrings.

I pulled myself up from the floor, and lay there for awhile, feeling the back of my leg. It didn't seem to be too bad, and at least the hip socket was back in order.

But by the end of lunch it was very apparent. The sudden acceleration had pulled a hamstring.

However, this was not your rolling around on the floor in agony hamstring injury. I could walk, run, jumprope, or whatever, completely normally. The only real effect was that anything that required a deep hamstring stretch in my left leg was completely inaccessible to me. This meant all forward bends, all seated leg stretches, all splits, and any kind of kick was off the table.

Very annoying, but I could still work and get around, and it could have been much worse. (Before anyone gets preachy in the comments, I was thoroughly warmed up, using correct technique, and being sensible when this injury occurred. It's just one of those freak things that's going to happen when you spend your days working with your body)

What I didn't expect was how much I would learn from this injury and the 6 weeks of healing it would take to get me back in business.

For these weeks, my leg flexibility was essentially set at beginner level. I had gone from this:
to not being able to touch my toes. I had difficulty with even the most rudimentary poses and needed blocks and props to hold any leg pose for more than a few seconds.

I teach beginners all the time, and I'm constantly telling them to forget about meaningless goalposts like touching their toes or achieving some preconceived idea of what the pose should look like. When someone gets caught up in the idea that they should be touching their toes, they'll start to wrench their spines and hips in all kinds of unsightly and unsafe ways, and ultimately lose the real point of the pose, which is to stretch a target muscle, not to touch their toes! (I've seen so many students go off course like this that I even made a video about it.)

And wouldn't you know it, after a few days of the injury, I found myself, even with years of training and understanding, straining to touch my toes. Unlike a beginner, I could feel exactly how the pose was being compromised in my lower back, how I really wasn't doing any good at all and probably exacerbating the injury. In fact, I wrote the book on how to do these poses. Here is an excerpt from the latest detailing exactly what not to do in a forward bend.
But some part of me, intent on getting my fingers to the toes, was committing every mistake in that graphic!

I've thought about this experience a lot. What was it that was driving me to strain for the toes, despite knowing better?

It boiled down to this. When I did the stretch properly, with just a slight forward bend, I didn't feel like myself. And I didn't want my students to think I was the kind of person who couldn't even touch his toes. I didn't want to think of myself as that kind of person. It turns out that this very arbitrary thing, touching my toes, had become bound up in my sense of who I was. Rather than deal with this cognitive dissonance, my ego preferred the pain of pushing on through.

Needless to say, this really softened up my attitude for all those students who try a forward bend, find that they can't touch their toes, and redouble their efforts with a curved spine and gritted teeth. What they are fighting is not their muscles and bones, but their sense of helplessness when confronted with a glaring indication that they're not in the kind of shape they imagined they were in.

This plays out in so many ways. For example, very few overweight people truly see themselves as overweight. They're just themselves, with a little fat covering the "real" person up. Every day they battle with this dissonant feeling. When they pass mirrors they suck their gut in, they avoid having photos taken. How do I know all this? Because I used to be one of them!

I can only imagine that this feeling must also be playing out in the psyche of scrawny people, short people, tall people, big-bottomed, small-chested, freckled, curly haired, short-sighted, far-sighted, sallow-skinned, aging, the list goes on forever and ever. Everyone will have a few unpleasant truths that clash with the image they have of themselves. The question is, how do we handle these hang-ups?

It seems to me you will always have two conflicting urges when you're facing those parts of yourself you don't like.

-The first is acceptance of your limitation. Get over your idea of yourself and see what's really there. So, in this case, after a couple of weeks of struggling I finally made peace with the fact that for the next few months, as much as I hated it, I was going to have extremely compromised leg flexibility.

-The second part is doing something about your limitation. You can go about this in an unskillful way (like curving your back and straining) or in a smart, far-sighted, planned way. For me, it meant taking it easy on the leg, icing it when I had to, eating well, sleeping well, and being patient as the muscle repaired itself.

If we were to find the two parts for someone dealing with weight issues, it would be:

-Hey, you've slowly gained some major weight over the last few years and you're starting to have trouble doing things you used to find easy. Dude, you're fat!

-With exercise and a good diet you can steadily lose the weight, if you stay consistent and don't try to rush it.

These two things will naturally tug against each other. Some days a person will be gung-ho on the exercise part and won't feel "fat" at all. Other days the acceptance of the part 1 stuff, the "I'm fat stuff" will become a grim pessimism about the possibility of any change at all. That's natural, just make sure your percentages don't get too out of whack.

What do I mean by percentages? A good acceptance/do-something-about-it percentage for weight loss is perhaps 30% acceptance 70% do-something-about-it.

Whereas, if you'd like to be a few inches taller, a healthy percentage might be 98% acceptance 2% do-something-about-it (you could always improve your posture and "appear" taller, but that's about it!).

Getting these opposing forces right will not only make you fitter, they'll chill you out about the things you can't change. And that's the only way to real contentment, because there's always another thing to be underwhelmed by with your body.

The leg's still a little tender, but I'm back in the game now, slightly less flexible, but a little wiser!

The Psychology of Wellness - Part 2

2010-03-03T15:03:00.003+09:00

Hey everyone, did you try to do some meditating as prescribed in the part 1 of this series?

If you did, (and you really should or the rest of this isn't going to make much sense) then you probably have a little more insight into the way your mind works.

As I discussed before, when you sit quietly and watch your thought-stream ripple past, you'll find that underneath your normal veneer you're really quite a nutcase. What a mess it is inside your skull! Memories from high-school will butt up against tomorrow's shopping list. Past rejections will sting again, and imagined future accomplishments will swell you with pride. Your thoughts will bounce around like a rubber ball in a spinning clothes dryer.

This is fine. It's how your mind is supposed to work. But what we've come here to do is get to grips with the mind and use our thought patterns to make us healthier people. So, having seen yourself for the discombobulated muddle that you are, what's the next step?

Having taken some time to get acquainted with your thoughts, you'll start to see that some have more resonance with you than others. Chances are these are the thoughts that have been with you the longest, that you go back to again and again. These are Top 40 hits of your mental life.

(There is quite a lot of science behind this phenomenon. Every time you revisit a thought or memory, you are tracing a unique electrical path in your neural network. And everytime you retrace the pattern, you solidify and strengthen the synaptic connections, making it even easier to have the same thought again!)

Let's take, for example, a young woman named who has found herself steadily gaining weight since she finished college and entered the workforce. She's getting concerned about it and has tried gyms and diets for a few years, but the pounds keep creeping on. She tends to eat to much junk food, especially when she's stressed, and doesn't have the time to exercise as much as she knows she needs to.
How can she harness her thoughts to get rid of all the negative habits, lose that weight, and feel like her old self again?

If we break it down, here are her 2 needs.

1. Stop eating junk

2. Start being active

In this post we're going to take on the negative part of this equation, the difficult challenge to stop doing something that you've become accustomed to. In this example, the habit of eating unhelpful foods that make you fat and sick.

Eating junk (and by junk I mean most processed foods, sweets, and beverages besides tea, coffee, and water) is largely a function of habit. For example, after her lunch this woman feels a need to have something sweet, she usually goes for a candy bar from the office vending machine. And the weekends don't feel quite right without a trip to the local bookstore/cafe for a sweet frothy beverage and some time with a good book. This has been her habit for the past few years.
Habits operate below the level of thoughts, they are more like cycles that the mindbody will try it's hardest to keep going by pushing all the buttons it can. But here's the key, a habit cannot come to fruition without a thought to execute the action.

So, for example, having finished her sensible lunch of a sandwich and salad, she gets the urge for something sweet. Before that candy bar can enter her body a whole series of Top 40 thoughts has to take place, which might go something like this:

"Hmm something sweet I'll go by the vending machine do I have enough change ok I do but maybe I should just have some fruit I know I should but It's been a hell of a day and I can spend a little extra time on the treadmill so fine what'll it be today I kind of want something with some body to it I'm kind of tired of caramel something with a little crispiness to it aha KitKat that'll hit the spot."

This thought stream will happen in a few blinks of the eye and will go largely unnoticed, but don't doubt that it's happening.

This is why meditation is so key to doing this kind of work. The vast majority of people aren't even aware that their thoughts are leading them around by the nose. They just ride the stream, eat the KitKat, and wonder where the pounds are coming from. Only consistently reminding yourself that this stream of thought is there will allow you to work with it.

So, our sample woman wants to stop falling for the post lunch sweet-attack. My advice for her would be the following:

She should start watching her thoughts as she goes through this daily ritual. She shouldn't try to change anything, she should go ahead and buy the candy bar, but watch. She'll get to know the little tics and mental hurdles that have to go down before putting those coins in the machine.

Once she's become best friends with the nuts and bolts of the "buy a candy bar" thought pattern, she can start to do the one thing that will blast it apart faster than anything else.

Turn around and look at the projector!

By this I mean recognizing the thought pattern for what it is, just a series of electrical impulses firing in the frontal lobe that do not have any power over her.

The next time it rolls around, she can have an experience more like this:

"Mmm I could really go for something sweet, I'll hit up the vending machine on the way back, do I have enough change, ok, I do, oh here's that thought again, like clockwork, I'm thinking about buying a candy bar, isn't that funny how it just comes up like that, I guess I don't really need a KitKat, I have some melon in the office fridge after all..."

At this point she is in the drivers seat, and has a good shot at sticking to her diet. Saying no to an impulse becomes much easier when she sees it AS an impulse.

Now, this is where things get tricky, because the mindbody, having been deprived of completing its habit cycle, will start to wriggle. It'll toss up a whole bunch of variants on the thought pattern, usually consisting of different ways of saying "You deserve it" or "you can make up for it later." The key is to keep watching, to not slip back into the slipstream of thoughts. Don't get sucked back into the story of the movie, keep a steady eye on that projector, and have a better choice in your back pocket, ready to be plugged in.

Most people won't stand a chance at winning this battle, because they never put the practice time in beforehand. Meditation and mindfulness can prepare you for these moments. Having spent hours watching your mind wriggle and squirm on the meditation cushion, nothing it does will surprise you anymore. I cannot emphasize this enough. This kind of mindwork will not succeed if you try it on the fly. You might win a few but a habit doesn't tire easily, it'll patiently be there every single lunch until you've confronted it head on. The good news is that once it's exposed as a flimsy urge fueled thought, it will die off pretty quickly and can be replaced with a healthy habit, like an after-lunch piece of fruit.

And our sample woman, having gotten on top of the candy bar thought loop, can turn her attention to the weekend frothy beverage loop. And so on. It's exhausting work, but gets easier with practice, especially as the pounds come off.

With consistent effort at seeing the thoughts for what they are, she will have done so much more than saying craving but saying "no" to sweets. She'll have become the kind of person who doesn't crave sweets in the first place. This is the psychology of a well person, and will last a lifetime!

So what gets you? The after work beer? The movie-night cheesy nachos? The desire to get your money's worth from the all-you-can-eat-buffet? Everyone has different hang ups, but the process is still the same.

1. Watch the projector.

2. Don't get sucked into the story.

3. Make a better choice, preferably one that you've thought out ahead of time.

In the final part of this series, we'll get into those better choices, and how to slip new healthy thought patterns into the mental mix.

Until then, watch your thoughts, and get to know the Top 40 hits that you wish you could turn off!

Eating "Green"

2010-02-21T08:10:00.010+09:00

Do you have any kids in your family who you only see every few months? When you meet that niece, nephew or cousin you can't believe how big they've gotten. When you only see something once in a while, the changes they make become more dramatic.

I have a similar relationship with the United States, which I visit once a year or less. Over the past decade I've been watching as the country has gotten more and more health conscious while simultaneously getting fatter and sicker.

I've discussed before the idea of the "health potato," someone who wants to be a well person but is unwillingly to make any serious changes to their lifestyle to get there. In my infrequent trips back to America I've seen how marketers are evolving their products to target this growing demographic.

This last trip I was struck by the amount of things that hinted of their natural green organic goodness. All the products look like they're getting ready for St. Patrick's day, decked out with wholesome green logos, green packaging, and the word "organic" anywhere they can squeeze it in.

On this blog I go on and on about eating vegetables and fruit. And so do all the people giving good advice on living well out there. But, as this post will show you, a product made from vegetables and labeled as organic is not a vegetable and will not further your health goals. So grab a cart and come on a quick trip to the local American supermarket with me.

(For all of these products, I'm going to assume you are a normal person who eats say, a can of soup, or, a complete pack of spices, as they were obviously intended to be eaten, despite the manufacturers breaking them into tricky serving sizes.)

Item 1: AriZona Green Tea
This product has been driving me nuts since it's introduction in the late 90s. I was so stoked to see green tea showing up on the shelves of US supermarkets as a teenager back then. A pretty cherry blossom design and some kanji, along with the magic words "100% All Natural Tea" make it seem like you're about to get something healthy in your system. But one sip will tell you this is nothing like the 0 calorie, antioxidant rich green tea of Japan. What a syrupy mess!

Let's turn the can around and see what's going on here.
How many calories are in this sucker? 70!? Oh wait, that's for 8 fl oz. The bottle contains three servings, so this is a 210 calorie drink. Where are all those calories coming from? Well, it was cropped in the picture, but the second ingredient after "green tea" is our old friend High Fructose Corn Syrup. 210 calories in what is traditionally a 0 calorie drink! If you'd like to see some good examples of what 200 calories looks like, check out this page of photos of 200 calories of different foods.

But it's not the calories that bug me, it's the fact that most people choosing AriZona green tea probably think they're making a better choice than a soda. In fact this nasty little drink is just a coca-cola in a kimono.

Item 2 : Veggie Cream Cheese
This spread has both "garden vegetables" and "natural flavors". And a happy cartoon cow! Seems healthy enough.

Alas, cream cheese is still cream cheese. One of the highest concentrations of fat of any of the cheeses. I don't have a problem with fat, it's an important part of a balanced diet. But spreading on two servings of this on either side of a nutritionally empty bagel will eat up 60% of your recommended saturated fat for the day with no positive gains in the nutrients you need to be well. Go with a light cream cheese and (gasp!) actual vegetables on your bagel and you'll be a lot better off.

Now, before I get into the next few items, we need to get our facts straight on sodium. The US recommended daily allowance of salt is no more than 2400 mg a day. I'm not sure what calculations went into this number, but it is INSANELY high. The American Heart Association goes with a number around 1500 mg, which I also find high. These recommended numbers don't really matter since the average American eats between 4000 and 5000 mg of salt a day. An excess of salt in your diet causes your body to retain water in the blood vessels, increasing blood pressure and bloats your skin, making you look red and puffy (i.e, like an average American). Chronic overdoses of salt will strip your gears as your kidneys try to keep up processing it, and you will see some nasty diseases when it catches up to you in your 50s and 60s.

The body needs 500 mg of salt to function normally. That's all our ancestors ever got. But I'll give us some wiggle room and knock it up to 1000 mg. That's the Patrick Reynolds RDA. When I get people to cut the salt, they look and feel so much better, and the natural flavors of foods become available to the tongue. So, when we're looking at the salt content of these foods, remember we are looking at a number based on the US RDA, one that is more than double what someone trying to be truly healthy would be looking at (the PR RDA of 1000 mg).

Hope that all made sense. Onwards!

Item 3 : Amy's Vegetable Lasagna
Finally! An alternative to all those unhealthy microwave dinners! This box is absolutely bursting with wellness buzzwords. Organic pasta and vegetables! No GMO's! And it's made by a girl named Amy! How could someone named Amy not make something wholesome! Let's look at the side of the package.
Ouch, nearly a third of your days salt in this little box. If you were going for true conditioning this would be just about all your salt for the day. But at least it's organic sodium stripping your kidneys down to nubs!

Item 4 : Green Giant Broccoli and Cheese Sauce
A classic brand, a classic combo. Maybe with the cheese the kids will eat their broccoli...
So we check the label, and the salt comes in at 19% Not bad right? Until we see that the box contains 2 and 1/2 servings, meaning the real total is 46% of the US RDA. If you were eating on my terms, this box of broccoli and cheese would be all the salt for your day, all in a lame side dish from the freezer section.

Item 5 : Knorr Garlic & Herb Sauce Mix
We all know we should be cooking at home more, and these little spice packs seem to make the job easier. And look how green and wholesome it looks! But you guessed it...
Holy smokes! 3 servings at 33% each! Pour this sachet into your meal and you've gotten 99% of your US RDA, or 220% of my PR RDA. Even if you're eating with someone else, this is a mean little bundle of salt for one meal.

So, maybe we'd better go with the more "organicky" looking spice packs next to the Knorr section.

Item 6 : Simply Organic Southwest Taco Mix
Ah, simply organic, just what the doctor ordered! What could go wrong?
Look, only 16% US RDA of sodium! Much better than Knorr. But wait, they've divided this one up into 4 servings... so this is still a whopping 64% of your daily salt. And blows your PR RDA up in one meal. Simply Organic all the way to the Simply Call Me an Ambulance!

Item 7: Eating RIGHT Vegetable Soup

So you've heard me on the salt thing, and now you've got your eyes peeled for reduced sodium options. This soup is called Eating Right, and it has a green label so it must be better than the usual stuff. And check it out!
35% less sodium than the leading brand. Do we have a winner?
Ugh. 2 servings at 20% gets you 40% of your daily salt, or 100% of my RDA of daily salt. And this is the reduced sodium option! I was trying to be fair! Bottom line, don't eat canned soup. Eating RIGHT should really be called Eating ONLY SLIGHTLY BETTER THAN AWFUL.

Item 8 : Organics Organic Tomato Sauce
Alright, who could screw this one up. A green, happy can of organic tomatoes. Make your own sauces, soups, and stay in control of how much sodium goes in! Just in case, let's check the label.
9% sodium... not bad... but wait, they've divided it into 7 servings? Who the hell eats 1/7th of a can of tomatos? So we're really looking at 63% US RDA of salt in this innocent looking can of organic tomatoes. That's messed up dude!

I could go on aisle after aisle, but I think you get my point. I tried to pick the most healthy looking things on the shelves, the most organic and green looking packaging, and time and time again, they turn out to be quite poor options for anyone trying to be truly healthy.

And why? Because anything that is sold to you in a package has already lost its organic street cred. If you buy any of this stuff thinking it's better than the other packaged stuff on the shelves, you have only proven the power of marketing and graphic design. It only takes a few clicks of a mouse for someone to make a label green with the word organic on it. And they'll keep the pretty shades of green coming as long as there are health-potatoes out there who buy into it.

The real green foods don't need Adobe Illustrator to get their color. In fact, they don't need packaging at all.
Spend more time with these guys, and less with the type I've listed above, and you'll look and feel like the vibrant living being the labels are straining to imitate. And as PCPers know, if you're going for peak condition, then all of those things from the middle aisles of the supermarket are completely off the table.

More impressions of the health scene in the US coming soon!

The Psychology of Wellness - Part 1

2010-02-04T12:15:00.007+09:00

This is the first of a three part series that will be coming out every other week.

As I discussed in the intro to this series, your mental states will be a key factor in how healthy you are. But most people go to work on everything but their minds. They buy protein powders, cross country skiing machines, read fitness articles, but never work on the mental conditioning that will give them sustainable, joyful wellness.

I'll teach you how to approach mental training in this series.

Part One - Seeing the Projector

What is it that's keeping you from being as healthy as you want to be? Every answer you give (not enough time, not enough motivation, etc...) will come back to one source. Your mind. You feel like you don't have enough time and energy to eat well and exercise because you spend too much time and energy listening to yourself say "I don't have enough time and energy."

That's about as clear as mud, so let's break it down.

Your brain is constantly sending electrical signals here there and everywhere. It's absolutely buzzing with energy. Think of it as an wet, fleshy, Tesla coil.

Most of these signals are for things we never notice, to keep our hearts beating, our lungs breathing, our stomachs digesting, etc... but a few of these signals, the ones flashing around the frontal lobe, come across to us as thoughts.
Thoughts are funny. You can only have one of them at a time. But they come one after another at such a furious pace that they become the background noise of your life. Something like a noisy air-conditioner that you eventually stop hearing entirely (until it's turned off).

Spend some time with kids and you'll see they breezily surf along their thoughts and the emotions they bring. But as we mature, we attain perhaps the greatest trick any lifeform has every pulled off. We get the ability to peek behind the curtain and say, "Would you look at that! I'm thinking!"

It's as if we were watching a movie in a theater for years and years, and finally one day turned around to see the projector's white beam. Suddenly, the hero's triumphs, the villain's wickedness, the ups and downs of the story are revealed to be just a projection.

This puts us in an interesting position. We have a thought and feel an emotion, but behind that there's a greater presence that knows we're simply having a thought and feeling an emotion. This can make some people queasy. There's a certain comfort in just bouncing along the thought stream as an idle passenger. This is in fact why we're so attracted to television and cinema. But living your whole life as driftwood in your consciousness won't get you far. The trouble with thoughts is that they're not particularly far-sighted. They react to what's immediately in front of them, and tend to latch on to the easiest seeming solution at the time.

I'm sure we all know that person who just never seems to get their life together. There are a lot of reasons for this, but most of them boil down to letting short term thoughts guide their choices. A lifetime of this kind of decision making will lead to some dark places.

So, what's the alternative?

To see your thoughts for what they truly are, impossibly brief flashes of electrical discharge inside your skull. A thought has only power when you buy into the story it's telling you.

Consider the difference between;

"I want to kill this guy"

and

"I'm thinking that I want to kill this guy"

I'd much rather be in a room with someone thinking the second sentence. The knowledge that a thought is just a thought gives you the freedom to make a different choice.

This clearly has a lot of meaning as we try to become healthier. Substitute "eat a piece of cake" for "kill this guy" and you'll start to see how powerful recognizing your thought patterns can be.

Sadly, it's not as easy as reading a blog post to really understand that thoughts are just thoughts. No matter how much you try to be aware, the unyielding flow of thinking will always suck you back in, unless you put in some training time. And that's where meditation comes in.

Meditation has been loaded with so many new age meanings that I hesitate to use it. A much more accurate phrase for the kind of meditation I'm prescribing is "structured time for passively watching your thought-stream." Doesn't exactly fit on a T-shirt.

Here's what you do. Find a comfortable seated position (we won't get into meditation cushions and lotus poses today) and quietly observe the random bursts of thoughts that flicker through your frontal lobe.

Within a minute all kinds of thoughts will start to spin off at a dizzying pace. Some of them will say this is a waste of time. Some of them will note how silly this is. Some of them will be outright hostile to the exercise. That's fine. Just watch.

You might have a thought that says, "Oh, I need to send that email" but don't you dare start to move towards the keyboard. That's not what this time is for. To do that would be to slip back into the thought-stream. Just as you wouldn't stop a workout at the gym to go send an email, you don't stop your mental training on a whim.

Do this for 5, 10, 15, or 20 minutes. It won't be easy or fun. You might feel like you're going crazy. You'll think of things you haven't thought of in years. You'll dream up conspiracies, you'll plan world domination, you'll worry for your loved ones and you'll loathe yourself. Relax. They're just thoughts.

And that's how meditation works. Through repeated exposure to the "raw feed" of your thoughts, you learn to take them less seriously. You get used to dismissing them as the chatter of a healthy, active mind. And you can start to explore what you really want to do with your short time on the planet.

I know that there are a great, great many of you who will read this, understand it, agree with it, and still not meditate. Know that you are fooling yourself if you think intellectual knowledge equals real understanding. This is the equivalent of reading health magazines about how to get "amazing six pack abs" and never doing a sit-up. Practice is the only way.

Try the super basic meditation I've layed out here for the next few weeks, and check back in for the second part of this series, where we'll talk about dealing with negative thoughts. You must go through this first step though, because you'll never be able to deal with thoughts at all if you don't see them for the flimsy things they are!

Tell me how it goes in the comments!

Knowledge Workers Survival Guide, on sale now!

2010-01-25T09:26:00.004+09:00

Hey everyone! You might have noticed that I haven't been posting as frequently as I usually do these last few months. The reason is that I've been holed up in the house completing a pet project that's been on my mind for years. And this week it was finally launched!

I present to you:

The Knowledge Workers Survival Guide : Posture

Over the years I've seen a steady stream of students come through my doors literally crippled by their desk jobs. I don't use that word lightly. These people have serious lower back problems, chronic neck pain and the headaches that go with it. They are unable to perform even the most rudimentary physical movements such as a forward bend. They are injured easily, slow to heal, and so habituated to their physical patterns that they don't even realize that constant discomfort and irritation is not the natural state of the body. And to add insult to injury, these beautiful people become hunched, slumped, pudgy versions of their youthful selves.

It really breaks my heart. We are not coal-miners or plow-pullers. Our jobs do not need to make us broken people. It is an entirely self-inflicted wound. And it doesn't have to be this way.

So I started a special course for these knowledge workers a few years ago. I would give them "homework stretches" to go and practice during the week. Then we'd see what worked, what they understood, and what was too hard for them. Through these iterations I gradually carved out a teaching methodology and stretching system that was more approachable than anything else I had seen out there. As with the PCP, the Knowledge Workers Survival Guide was born from concrete experience and trial after trial, not a pie in the sky idea of what the ideal student would do with unlimited time and resources.

The guide is set around a simple structure.

Our anatomical backstory. How hominid evolution got us the bodies we have. (Creationists, you might want to skip this chapter!)

Understanding how much sitting we actually do in a given day.

Tracing the effects of this sitting on our muculoskeletal structure. Understanding why you have backaches and a stiff neck and look hunched over even when you try to stand straight.

and the all-important:

What the hell to do about it! Stretches and strengtheners that will get you back on course.

The guide comes to 55 pages and has over 200 illustrations and photos. It will help a lot of people if it gets out there. So if you know anyone who's getting sucked into the negative pattern of a seated, computer-oriented life, send them the link and give them all the encouragement you can. Every sale will also support me and the work I do for future volumes of the guide. I'll be tackling Knowledge Workers Survival Guide : Diet and Knowledge Workers Survival Guide : Mind in the coming months. Like I've said in other contexts, every minute I spend not working for the man is a minute I spend working for you!

www.knowledgeworkerssurvivalguide.com

Enjoy the book, and come back next week for the usual blogtastic PCP advice and mythbusting!

Becoming Your Psychology

2010-01-18T17:12:00.007+09:00

My job is pretty interesting. I meet a lot of people in a given week. But, unlike, say, a business person, I'm not just shaking hands and making eye contact, I'm seeing dozens of different people moving their bodies to their limits. So when I "get to know someone," it's in a very material way. I will not only know what you do and what kind of personality you have, but also what parts of your body are stiff, misaligned, or otherwise out of whack.

I've seen a pattern emerge over the years of meeting people in this way, and I'd like to share it with you now.

Tense, anxious students have tense, anxious bodies. Relaxed, laid back students have pliant, relaxed bodies.

Some more detailed examples. A client who is fidgety and unsure, who asks a bunch of tangental questions before he or she has even started to move, will have an incredibly difficult time letting the correct muscle relax, or to breathe smoothly during exertion. A student with a lot of anger or frustration will often have clenched toes and a tight neck throughout an entire class, without even realizing it. An ambitious business-type person will tend to lean into exercises and overpower what should be light poses. A low key student might be good during relaxation, but give up easily when a little muscle burn is called for, and fail to get the strengthening they need. At first I thought I was just projecting my perception of people onto their bodies, but I've seen the effect enough now to know it's quite real.

The phrase I use to describe this is "Becoming your psychology."

We speak of the mind/body connection, but it would be more useful just to start saying "the mindbody". They truly are one in the same. A pattern that you are enacting in your brain will also be expressed in your bones and muscle tissue. Because they're the same thing.

A lot of people come to me hoping for a physical change. But if they aren't willing or able to change their psychology, the physical changes will only be superficial and temporary. Put another way:

Your body will resemble the kind of person you are, not the kind of person you want to be.

Whenever one my clients has a successful outcome, it is always because they went to work on their gray matter just as much, if not more, than their flesh and bone. You can lose some weight increase your flexibility, and gain some muscle, but if you still have the psychology of an unwell person, your progress will be limited and you will slip back into your established mindbody pattern within six months.

This isn't new age mumbo jumbo about "thinking yourself well". This is all about the reality of brain and nervous system interactions. In my experience, you cannot be physically fit without corresponding mental fitness. (Note that I'm discussing individuals with normal mental health. Once serious mental illness is involved anything can happen)

The most common mistake I see are people who come to me looking for answers to their pot bellies, backaches, and rounded shoulders. They are looking for the right diet, the right stretch, the best desk set-up. They're ready to change everything, to spend hundreds of dollars on equipment and training, but they're not ready to do the most important thing; to revamp their psychology.

Want to blast away those love handles? Become the kind of person who is satisfied with just a taste of dessert. It'll work better than 3 hours of exercise a day. This doesn't mean you're the kind of person who only has a bite but secretly craves the whole pie. That simply means you haven't changed your ways at all. When you are truly content with a just a forkful, because that's just who you are, then you have arrived.

Want to feel more limber and alive in your body? Become the kind of person who is utterly at peace waiting in a long line to pay for something. Not just miming outer calm while inwardly seething at the ineptitude of the staff, but truly tranquil. If you could manage this kind of psychological change I could have you in a deep backbend in a matter of weeks. I had one student who, after a near death experience, achieved this very thing.

For any desired physical fitness outcome, there is a corresponding mental transformation that will get you the results permanently, in a shorter time and with lower risk of injury.

Naturally, this change is very difficult to pull off, or we wouldn't be as neurotic as we are. Changing your psychology for the better is more demanding than any exercise you could do in a gym. There are a lot of things you can do to help the process along, things I'll be detailing in the next few weeks, but the first rung of the ladder is to get to know what kind of psychology you're sporting right now.

There's a surefire way to get to know who you are. It's what Buddhists sometimes call "watching mind," or the ever popular word, "mindfulness". By consistently checking in with your mental patterns, and watching as they play themselves out in their endless loops, you will have made the first step towards real change.

Mindfulness isn't a theory, it's a practice. And only through practice will any of what I've just written make much sense to you. There are tomes and tomes on the subject of mindfulness, all of which I recommend you to read. But if you've just got a minute, check out the new project Gwen Bell and I have launched this year, The Mindfulist. It will help you learn how to check in on yourself throughout the day, every day.

So don't spin your wheels pursuing the next fad diet or exercise gizmo. Get to work on the stuff between your ears! Start with the mindfulness stuff, it's not just talk. And check back here in the next few weeks, every other week, between posts on other topics, I'll be writing a 3 part series on the psychology of wellness that, if you've read this far, you're sure to find useful.
Who will you become this year?

What the DriveThru Diet is Really About

2010-01-03T14:13:00.008+09:00

Not one, not two, but three separate people have sent me the link to Taco Bell's new DriveThru Diet campaign, with the invitation to give it the PCP smackdown. It features the Taco Bell version of Subway's Jared, a slim, attractive lady named Christine who lost 54 pounds over two years simply by choosing the new line of lower calorie items at Taco Bell. (If you can stomach it, watch the infomercial, but be warned your soul will feel a little more crushed and empty afterwords)

Where do we start with this one? Fortunately, a LA Times blogger already did most of the detective work I would do as far as figuring out how the calories shake out in this situation. If you have the time, give it a read. No big surprises. Taco Bell's "healthy" menu options are not really healthy, just not quite as toxic as the regular stuff.

Below is a screen capture of the DriveThru Diet homepage.
This is a real landmark in diet advertising I think, and it's all in the fine print. Which actually isn't so fine, it's up to a respectable 10 pt font. In this short bit of copy there are four completely unambiguous statements that show Taco Bell's hand.

"the Drive-Thru Diet® menu is not a weight-loss program"

"These results aren't typical"

"For a healthier lifestyle, pay attention to total calorie and fat intake and regular exercise."

"Not a low calorie food."

I'm sure most of this is worries over legal repercussions from suggesting that a steady intake of Taco Bell can make you lose weight. But I also believe a good portion of the thinking behind these disclaimers is an acknowledgement that the modern consumer of 2010 is simply too savvy to believe that fast food will lead to any positive health benefits.

If this campaign was run without the disclaimers, most people would just roll their eyes, shake their heads, and think "How stupid do they think we are?" Being so upfront with the information that "get real you're not going to have the same results as Christine" inoculates Taco Bell from the backlash of consumers fed up with the outlandish health claims of the food industry.

The question is, if it's so clear to everyone involved (both seller and consumer) that this DriveThru Diet is a sham, why run the campaign in the first place?

Now we've arrived at the real reason for the campaign.

In psychological parlance you've probably heard the term "enabler". An enabler is someone who allows another person to continue a destructive behavior. So, for example, a wife who covers for her alcoholic spouse when his office calls is functioning as an enabler for his drinking.

Enabling happens all the time in subtle ways. Let's say you're at a party and have made a commitment not to overeat. Someone will inevitably see you passing on the cake and try to get you involved:

"But you're not fat! A little cake won't hurt!"

"Come on, it's a party!"

"Oh it's so good! Don't you want to at least taste it!?"

Without this person's input, you would've been fine with no cake. But his or her urgings pull at all of the parts of you that really would like a piece of cake. Sometimes you manage to resist, more often you give in and go for just a little piece. What could it hurt?

We all play both roles at different times in our lives. When I started eating right, I noticed that for years I had been dragging people out to pizza places, ordering them beers, and splitting deserts with them, even when they weren't that into it. It's hard to say why I did that. I guess it just made me feel better if I had company as I ate myself into obesity.

I think this Taco Bell campaign is also a crafty form of enabling. There are a great many people out there who know that fast food is an unhealthy choice and that they shouldn't eat so much of it. But like Christine, they aren't ready to cut out "their" fast food. So, lunch rolls around and they feel torn between the salty gooey cheap Taco Bell option, and the pricier more bothersome fresh food choice. This kind of campaign might just be that extra little push that makes them opt for the Taco Bell. It doesn't matter that they don't really think they'll get thinner eating this junk. What matters is that someone out there, namely Christine, has told them it's ok to eat Taco Bell. That's all they needed to hear.

Taco Bell has spent several million dollars to give the devil on your shoulder a few extra talking points as you try to navigate your food choices. "Hey that lady on TV did it, how bad could it be?" And it will work. All in all, it's a good campaign, if selling tacos is your bottom line.

Yum! Brands Inc. owns Taco Bell. (Along with KFC, Pizza Hut, and Long John Silver's.) They would love for you to keep up your fast food habit. In fact there are dozens of people having conferences about how to convince you to put this stuff in your body.

My question is, what do you want? What's your bottom line? Are you going to be enabled all the way to the hospital? Or have you had enough?

Be firm in your choices. Fast food makes you look and feel bad. If you have some, enjoy it for what it is; cheap, empty sodium-calories that you will pay for later. This is not going to change, no matter what new spin they give the menus each advertising cycle. Everyone knows this. Even Christine.

What Do Your Macaulay Culkin Meals Look Like?

2009-12-25T15:58:00.011+09:00

This time of year I seem to be constantly invited out to eat. End of year celebrations, wedding parties, birthday blowouts, promotion windfalls, and simple run of the mill debauchery abound as weather turns frosty and night falls early.

Sometimes people who don't know me well are surprised by my willingness to hit a dessert buffet hard or have that one glass of booze too many.

"Aren't you that, uh, Peak Fit Guy?"

(Between swilling beer) "Peak Condition Project! Yeah baby! Want to sign up!?"

"I thought you couldn't drink and eat all this stuff..."

"You can't! Cheers!"

Anyone who sticks around long enough will eventually get the What is True Peak Condition? lecture from me. It goes something like this.

Being in Peak Condition is not just a matter of having a six-pack (which I discuss here) or looking good to the opposite sex. It means being physically and mentally fit. If your mind is screwed up there's not much use in having an awesome body. No one will want to be around you anyway. So you need to keep it real. Not having a glass of champagne at a friends wedding because it'll throw your diet off is not Peak Condition. It's obsessive. Having your body fat so low that you can't leave the house without 6 layers of clothes on on a spring day is not Peak Condition. You've taken it too far. This guy on the right is not in Peak Condition. This guy is unbalanced and fanatic.

There's a time and a place for rich foods, strong brews, and lusty wenches (ok, I threw that one in to make sure I've got your attention). Celebrating with friends, marking the passing of the year with feasts and special foods, these are important parts of the human experience. Constantly saying no to these indulgences will make you both very fit, and very lonely.

So how do I manage to have a great time going out to eat and keep the level of condition that my clients and I expect of myself?

The first and most obvious thing, is to keep your indulgences reasonable. If you're going out to eat and drinking the night away more than once or twice a month, you're not indulging, you're binging. This will zap your fitness goals pretty quick.

Second and more subtle is what I want to talk about today. This is your Macaulay Culkin meal. Remember in Home Alone, when Macaulay Culkin realizes he has the house all to himself. Left to feed himself, he first goes a little crazy with the popcorn, chips, ice-cream and marshmallows :But after a few days he settles on more "healthy" food like a microwaveable macaroni and cheese dinner:

(Note that a bag of chips and macaroni and cheese are exactly the same thing; a clump of processed carbs and salt with artificial flavor and color)

When you're all by yourself, in the comfort of your own home, what do you eat? Is it light, fresh, and made from natural ingredients? If so, you're probably doing ok with your health and fitness goals, despite a few over-enthusiastic evenings on the town from time to time.

But if your Macaulay Culkin meal resembles what he eats in the movie, processed, instant, packaged, or delivered food, you're in for some trouble. Unless you're a big time restaurant-goer, your home alone meals will make up the bulk of your caloric intake for the week. If those calories consist of junk (and by junk I mean anything that comes from a factory), your body will never look like you want it to. There's a time for heavy, non-helpful food and drinks. Special occasions. They shouldn't be part of your daily at home rotation of food.

What do my Macaulay Culkin meals look like? Well, they're pretty boring. Lots of steamed vegetables, not much salt. Some fish or egg whites for protein, and light on the carbs. No desserts. No calorie laden drinks. Fruit inbetween meals.

And a lot of the same food, over and over. If you ate with me on a daily basis, you'd probably get bored pretty quickly. I don't mind eating the same meal 5 times a week, if it's a simple and nourishing dish that's in-season. This is certainly not the kind of food that I'd cook for guests who came over for dinner. It's roughly cut, the ingredients are nearly raw, and it's way more vegetables than a normal person eats in a sitting. But that's the point. No one has to eat this but me. I'm home alone. And I love these meals. They make me feel good and help me do all the things I want to do in a day.

Be honest with yourself, and assess what you're eating when no one's looking. If you're not satisfied with your condition, it's a good bet that the problem is starting in these solo meals, not the more glamorous nights at the pub or bistro.

Get your home alone meals clean and your exercise right, and your body will have no problem dealing with the caloric overload that comes from the special events in the year. Events you need to be a part of if you're going for true Peak Condition.

Left to your own devices, are you going to eat smart? Or are you going to eat like an 8 year old in a big empty house?

Eddie and Ken

2009-12-14T13:11:00.005+09:00

Let us imagine two people have contacted me to start getting into shape and finally conquer their fitness goals. (I'll use males for my example but the following is all applicable to both genders.)

Contestant #1 is a totally clueless shlub, let's call him Eddie Eatsalot. He works in the software industry and has never even thought about exercise before, much less done it. (He is a level 80 Paladin on WoW however). As he's gotten older he's noticing that every year he feels worse and worse, and his waistline is getting bigger and bigger, and he doesn't want to end up like his dad who had a heart-attack at 45. Eddie wants to do something about his situation, but doesn't know where to start. So he contacts me.

Contestant #2 is a different story. Ken Keeno has always been interested in health. He's been a member of swing dance, futsal, and rock climbing clubs. He's got a gym membership he uses a few times a month. Ken's in pretty good shape, but he's carrying some extra pounds around his middle and wants to really get to that "peak" we talk about in the Peak Condition Project. Ready for a new challenge so he gets in touch.

Now, the question is, who will get better results?

There are always exceptions, but I'd put my money on Eddie. It seems counter-intuitve, but the guy starting from "0" (or perhaps -1) will usually have amazing changes, while the guy who has a much larger knowledge base about health won't see the same effect. Hard to believe, but I've seen this play out time and time again.

Let's try to break down what's going on here.

The biggest difference between Eddie and Ken is that Eddie comes to me a clean slate. He doesn't know what the South Beach Diet is, he's never done a curl in his life, and he has absolutely no idea about how to take care of himself. For me, these are all very positive things. It means that Eddie has to trust me. And it means that he won't start improvising halfway through his project.

Ken, on the other hand, is a much bigger challenge. For everything I tell him, he's heard a different variation from someone else. He's done every exercise under the sun and knows that even though we recommend the hands to be put here during sit-ups, he had a trainer who told them to put them there. When the going gets tough, as it does about Day 45, Ken will start to wriggle around, adjusting things here and there. Not to get too mafia, but the guy knows too much.

Why is knowing too much a detriment to your health goals?

Here's a little secret about your body. It will respond to most any well thought out diet and fitness plan, if that plan is kept consistently. It doesn't really matter if you do Jenny Craig or Weight Watchers, PX90 or the PCP.

I say this till I'm blue in the face; your body is a harmonic wave pattern that only responds to patterns. Doing Atkins for a month is not a pattern. It's a fling. And your body will bounce right back to its original harmonic as soon as the fling is over. If you want to truly change, you've got to change your frequency. This means new diet patterns, new exercise habits, and a whole new way of thinking.The answer is not in this or that plan, it's in the consistency with which you do it. And someone like Ken, who bounces from plan to plan every few months, will have a confused and out-of-whack body that, just as it gets going with one technique, is forced to switch to another. The new patterns are never allowed to set. When your plan is mushy and undefined, your body will look, well, mushy and undefined.

Another way to think about it, which I lifted from a lecture from Pema Chodron, is thinking of good health as being the top of a mountain (she was using enlightenment as the top). What do you do when you want to summit a mountain?

First, you look at the different routes. The north face is exciting and dangerous, the east path is long and winding, the south is steep but quick. They all have their pros and cons, but you finally make your choice.

Finally, it's time to climb the damn thing. Somewhere along your path you might catch a glimpse of the other trails. In your weary state, they might look more inviting. But if you keep switching routes everytime you encounter another path, guess what? You'll be going around in circles at the base of the mountain. Climbing a mountain is about choosing a trail and sticking with it, even through the tough moments. Eating right, losing fat and gaining muscle is no different.

The thing you have to ask yourself is, does the route you've chosen match your lifestyle? Is it sustainable? Will walking the path you've chosen be an exercise in denial and self-loathing, or will it reveal new vistas as you clear the cloud-line? I like to think our plan has a good balance of discipline and reward, approachability and hard-coreness, and it works for the people who trust it and follow through with it. But maybe it's not for you. That's fine, keep exploring your options. But when you're ready to go for the top, stick to whatever path you've chosen and trudge onwards and upwards. Don't kid yourself, it is a trudge. And there are no shortcuts.

Now, maybe you're a Ken Keeno reading this and thinking, "Damn, he just called me out, I guess I better not even bother with this guy." That's not true. I like you Ken! I've got a lot of Ken in myself, actually. I read everything I can get my hands on about health, and I try all kinds of stuff during my "off-season". Knowledge is always a good thing. But when it's time to train I find my inner Eddie. And the results keep coming.

I'll leave you with this well worn Zen story to sit with:

Nan-in, a Japanese master during the Meija Era(1868-1912), received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen.

Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor's cup full, and then kept on pouring.

The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself. "It is overfull. No more will go in!"

"Like this cup," Nan-in said, "you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?"

No Free Lunch

2009-12-02T14:34:00.006+09:00

I was talking to an older friend of mine a few weeks ago, and she excitedly told me that she and her daughter had both chipped in half for a top of the line, brand new, wait for it... electric chair!

Huh?

After a few moments of confusion, I figured out that she was talking about some kind of therapy chair that surrounds your body in an electric current. I asked her exactly how it helped the body, and she rattled off something about the electric current improving circulation and relieving pain. Here's what an electric therapy chair looks like.
So they've got that eyesore in the middle of their living room now. Afraid to hear the answer, I asked her how much she paid for it.

"1300 dollars."

"1300 dollars. That is not cheap."

"Plus my daughters half of course."

"Wha? that thing is 2600 dollars!? Jesus H. Christ! Do you really think that's going to work?"

"Of course, why else would it be so expensive."

"..."

This is not a post about sham electrical therapy, although I'd love to tackle that sometime (along with magnetic bracelets, reiki, homeopathy, and a few hundred others).

No, this is about one of the immutable laws of the universe.

This can be expressed in a number of ways. Some call it the first law of thermodynamics (energy can neither be created or destroyed), but I prefer the simpler formulation.

There's no such thing as a free lunch.

Everybody wants to be healthy. Lean, strong, free from illness, able to enjoy life to its fullest. Unfortunately, very few people are actually ready to make the changes that bring about a state of wellness. So there exists this vast middle of people who want to be healthier but are unwilling to do much to gain that health.

An entire set of industries has sprung up to cater to this group, who I call "Health-Potatoes". They aren't concerned enough about the state of their body to make a lifestyle change, but they are concerned enough to hand over some cash in exchange for a machine or treatment that promises to make them better with minimum effort on their part.

There's a spectrum of gadgets and services for the health potato, ranging from outright bogus therapies to scientifically proven products that still don't do much for your health. People buy these things hoping to look and feel better, don't see many results, and after a few disappointed weeks repeat the cycle with the next big thing.

Let's look at an example. Massage.

There are little massage places all over the city I live in. The rate is usually about 30 dollars for half an hour, 60 dollars for an hour, etc... These are just your run of the mill kind of massages, shoulders, back, leg, and foot massage, not sports therapy or the other kind of massage.

These places are pitched at the hardworking office types that pack the trains every morning and evening. Had a tough day at the office? Stop by the massage place for a shoulder rub on the way home.

Now, I'll be the first to tell you, massages feel good. And after a skilled shoulder and neck rub, you feel lighter, your stress levels are down, and it seems like money well spent.

Massage opens up the muscle fibers, works out the knots, and removes pent up tension you hold in your body... for about 2 hours. After that, your habitual patterns will reassert themselves. Tension will seep back in, knots will retangle, and you'll be back at the massage place the next week looking for that same relief.

If you go to a massage looking to release tension in your shoulders, then why not take some positive actions to address the fundamental reason you have tense shoulders in the first place? Too much sitting, shallow breathing, weak back muscles, a lack of exercise, and unawareness of how you're carrying yourself throughout the day. A habit of deep diaphramatic breath will do more to drain tension from the shoulders than having a live in masseuse. All for the price of 0 dollars a breath.

But that sounds like work, doesn't it?

Here's the meaning of "no free lunch". If you want to effect a real change in your body, you're going to have to use your body. Things that approach from the outside will never have lasting effects. You can only change from the inside out. Another way to think of it is that your muscle and bone will never get more healthy through the work of another person's muscle and bone. Be that person your chiropractor, acupuncturist, or a factory worker in China making the latest gadget to get you in shape. Only your muscle and bone can truly change itself.

My friend who bought the electric chair spent 2600 dollars on it. At my yoga studio that would buy you 128 classes. I'd love to find a pair of twins, put one in the electric chair for two years, and send the other to yoga classes for two years, and see who was healthier, with better circulation and less pain at the end of it. I think you know instinctively who'd come out on top.

Look around you. Hopefully you know someone who's pretty healthy and fit. You'll notice that they don't drink diet soda or slimming drinks. Their house isn't full of late night TV fitness gadgets like the vibro-shape that promise results with no effort.
They won't have a weird diet plan that comes from the latest nutrition fad. The investment they make in their bodies is that of time, not cash. In fact, they won't spend much money on being fit at all. They'll do crazy free things like jog, jumprope, swim, push-ups and pull-ups.

(I realize that the way things are going it's entirely likely that you don't know anyone who's really healthy in this way. If that's the case, then know that you're reading the words of someone like that right now)

So stop giving your money to these people and invest in your greatest asset, YOU!

Either forget about getting fit, or go for it and get on top of your health goals the only real way, by changing your lifestyle, your diet, and exercising.

Because I'd much rather hang out with a committed slob, eating some chips and playing video games, than listen to a Health-Potato rattle on about how they're really going to get healthy this time.

The Kind of Stuff I Think About Waiting for the Microwave

2009-11-19T14:53:00.008+09:00

This fall and winter I've been really getting into matcha lattes. If you don't know, matcha is a rich, bitter version of Japanese green tea. The astringency of matcha is a bit too much for me, but a few months ago I found out that combining it with a sweet, creamy latte results in a wonderfully warm, filling drink.

So I started ordering these things waaay to much from the cafe that is located devilishly close to my house. Much deliciousness, and a lot of wasted money over time. Which is why I was pumped to find these Nescafe HomeCafe packets last week.

You just heat up some milk in the microwave, stir in the powder, and you've got a matcha latte at home, at a fraction of the price. And it's just as good as the stuff from the cafe. Heh heh, they probably dump the same powder in their drinks anyway.

So, the other day I was standing in the kitchen waiting for my milk to heat up in the microwave to have a matcha latte, and as one does, I was absentmindedly reading the back of the box. There was the usual stuff about "enjoying the rich taste in the comfort of your own home blah blah blah". But what caught my eye was the beige box on the right.

If your Japanese isn't quite up to speed, allow me to translate.

"According to daily requirements, desserts and sweet drinks should be kept to about 200 calories to maintain a good dietary balance. So use the calorie chart well and control your sweets."

What stuck out to me was that in all my years of writing about this stuff, reading labels, and checking calories, I have never heard such a clear and unambiguous statement about how many calories of sweets a person should eat.

200 calories of sweets a day. What could be simpler? Combine this with the Nutrition Information on the back of packaging and the increasingly mandatory posting of calorie content at restaurants, and you've got a pretty foolproof way to keep your desserts and treats under control.

I'm no fan of counting calories (as you can read in this post) but the 200 calories number is certainly much better than the vague and unhelpful advice I grew up with. Remember this old chart?

This is what I learned as a kid. What a mess. As many have noted, it puts sugars and sweets at the top of the pyramid, denoting their more desirable status, and includes dairy as a mandatory food group for a healthy life, Ignoring the billions of Asian people that get along just fine without it every day, often with longer lifespans than milk drinkers, but I digress. Back to the sweets.

What does use sparingly mean? I could eat 12 Milano cookies, but I'll eat sparingly and only have 6. At 60 Calories a cookie that's 360 Calories, nearly two days worth of sweets in one go.

Other food pyramids try to break the sweets down into servings. They'll say something like "Sugars and Fats, 0-3 servings a day." What the hell does that mean? There's a pretty big difference between 0 and 3 servings of Ben and Jerry's Chocolate Ice Cream (a 750 calorie difference to be exact)

So, a few years back the USDA redesigned the food pyramid. This is what they came up with:

Sigh... I get what they were aiming for. All the pieces of your diet work together, along with exercise, to create a "healthier you". (It looks like the dairy lobby got an even bigger slice of the pie this time.) So what have they done with the sweets? Can't find them? That's because they aren't there. That's right. The USDA, faced with the vexing problem of how to advise people about what to do with the candies, colas, and desserts, just decided to skip over them completely. Too bad no one else is skipping them...

If you tunnel down deep on the MyPyramid.gov webpage you can extract the following advice.

"For example, assume your calorie budget is 2,000 calories per day. Of these calories, you need to spend at least 1,735 calories for essential nutrients, if you choose foods without added fat and sugar. Then you have 265 discretionary calories left. You may use these on “luxury” versions of the foods in each group, such as higher fat meat or sweetened cereal. Or, you can spend them on sweets, sauces, or beverages. Many people overspend their discretionary calorie allowance, choosing more added fats, sugars, and alcohol than their budget allows."

So, there you have it, we're back where we started. For someone with a healthy, balanced diet, about 200 calories of sweets a day isn't a big deal. It seems that they are so scared of saying "it's ok to have sweets" that they choose instead to obfuscate this information and gloss over the whole issue of how many sugar calories a person can safely consume. If more people had the number 200 calories in their head they'd be a lot better off than all these vague and cloaked descriptions buried on web pages.

So, why isn't the 200 calories of sweets a day number more out there? Because it's a very inconvenient number. Getting back to cafes, if you were to seriously stick to the 200 calorie number, and went into a Starbucks, more than 2/3rds of the drinks would be off the table from the word go. (Check for yourself if you're so inclined) And you can forget the baked goods case.

The same goes for most candy bars, desserts, colas, and anything else that would fall in the "sweets" category. Once you really see the numbers, you'll realize that 200 is not very many calories. It means you can have ONE small indulgence a day, and that's it. If you have a sugared breakfast cereal, you're done for the day, even more than 12 hours later that night when you're craving something sweet after dinner. ONE bowl of cereal. ONE muffin. ONE candy bar. ONE mocha. One a day, and unless you're active, even that's pushing it. If you're going for really excellent condition like people who join the PCP, then you need to dial that back to one a month. I know, the truth hurts!

Here's the bottom line. These industries do not want you to know about the 200 Calorie a day mark. Because you might just buy less of their product. This is also why they don't want to post their calories. So people do their best to eat what they think is a proper amount, not knowing that even on a good day they've blown their diet in some serious ways, and find after a few years the fat is really getting piled on.

It doesn't have to be this way. In fact, you'll note that the matcha latte box with its very accurate and helpful nutrition information was made by evil international mega corporation Nestle. But only in Japan. Why?

I can think of three reasons.

1. The average Japanese consumer isn't buying a ton of extra sugar calories every day. They tend to, excuse the phrase, eat them sparingly. Perhaps this makes the package designers a little more likely to include helpful information without the worry of impacting number of units sold.

2. Being overweight is considered a serious condition in Japan. Everyone employed at a company over 30 years of age is required to have a check up at least once every 5 years. Over 40 is once a year. If your weight creeps up past a certain point, you're diagnosed with "Metabolic Syndrome," which is just a scary way of saying, "Hey, you're fat." People "diagnosed" with Metabolic Syndrome are required to see a counselor who gives them information and strategies to get the fat down. One of which is paying attention to calories. Hence, packaging that provides extra information is considered more valuable. (By the way, the Japanese diagnosed with Metabolic Syndrome look like about the same weight as the average American, to me at least.)

3. Going out on a limb here, I'd say that Japanese society in general is more community oriented than the US, and that someone at Nestle Japan just thought it would be useful to society for them to put a little reminder on the back of the box not to over-indulge. Hard to prove this one either way but I'll put it out there as a subtle background influence.

This is not aggrandize Japan or trash other countries, it's to say that there is another way. We can be knowledgeable about what we put into our bodies without being health nuts, and we can design systems that help us stay trim and fit without having to scour the internet for nutrition content.

Try the 200 calories of sweets a day thing for a week or two, and see how much easier it is to moderate your treats when you have a reasonable idea about what moderation looks like.

And USDA, if you design another food pyramid in the future, give me a call first! I whipped one up in 5 minutes which is more accurate and easier to understand than yours.

Wellness-Hacking Your Hobbies

2009-11-09T15:09:00.012+09:00

Week after week I'm up here on the site hammering away at the same things. Mainly:

Eat vegetables, and I mean a ton of freakin' vegetables.

Don't consume much if any added salt and sugar.

Cook at home and don't eat pre-made crap.

Exercise, and by exercise I mean consistent daily exercise.

Don't buy gimmicky fitness equipment, and don't join a gym.

Don't make excuses, either get fit or be out of shape, either way don't stress about it.

I remember reading an anecdote in one of Janwillem van de Wetering's books (either The Empty Mirror or Afterzen) in which an old Japanese Zen master takes his graduating pupils to his house. For years these students have been studying under the old man, and have the deepest respect for his teachings and authority. The master takes them to his house for what they think is a celebration, but it turns out to be a final lesson. He shows them an old beat up couch, and says, "This is where I sit, all day sometimes, and watch Sumo wrestling on TV." And then he takes them out back and shows them the recycling bin, "And this is where I keep the empty bottles from all the beer I drink while I watch the Sumo. Sometimes I get really drunk!" What the master is trying to teach his departing students is that they need to let go of all attachments, even to the idea of their teacher as a pure and faultless person.

This post is going to be a little like that.

Sometimes I'll go out to eat with someone and they'll say something like, "Do you mind if I order dessert? I know you're the health guy and everything..." Or when I meet someone walking around town the first thing out of their mouth, even before "Hello" is "Oh my gosh I'm so sorry I haven't been to the studio in a while it's been crazy busy at work and you know I'm going to come back, it really helps me, the exercise, you know, of course you know heh heh... how are YOU!?"

Here's a newsflash for everyone. I like dessert. I also like being lazy and skipping workouts. I like drinking beer and sitting on the sofa all day. Except I don't watch Sumo. I play video games.

I love video games. The 8 bit Nintendo came out in the US in 1985. I was 7 years old. I was actually given my first system by an older boy whose family was friends with my grandparents. I remember asking the older boy, "Are you sure!? I mean, it's a NINTENDO." He said, "whatever, I never play it. And I need that time for baseball practice anyway."

Baseball... Choosing a game where you just stand there while guys throw things at you as hard as they can? Over a Nintendo!? There's no accounting for some people's tastes. Needless to say, I took the game system off his hands.

For a extremely near sighted chubby kid with no brothers or sisters around, video games were a revelation. I've gamed my way through a Nintendo, Genesis, Super Nintendo, GameBoy, PS1, Dreamcast, PS2, PSP, DS, and Xbox 360. Not to mention several dozen piggy banks worth of quarters at the local arcades.

I kept waiting to grow out of videogames, but the games just grew up right along with me. And so I find myself now, 20 odd years later, still way into games.

Now this puts me in an interesting situation, because playing a video game goes against almost everything I tell people to do in both yoga and the PCP. Mainly, it involves long hours of sitting with hunched shoulders, completely sedentary except for a few finger twitches. Over time, this will mess up a person's posture, muscle mass, and fat percentage in a big way.

So how could I with good conscious dispense advice on staying away from chairs and inactivity and participate in the same activities myself? The easy answer would be to say, "Well, I have an active job, I'm on my feet all day, and I'm so good in other aspects of my life, so what's the harm?"

This reeks of the number one mistake people make, rationalizing bad choices. Avoid this at all costs. When you feel the need to rationalize something, you're actually listening to the alarm bells of your psyche. Going through with the rationalization (I worked hard today, I deserve this Snickers bar) puts you on the fast track to poor health. Feeling bad/guilty about something is an important correction mechanism, and smothering that instinct with a bunch of excuses and loopholes will only end in trouble.

So, I knew that my rationalizations were a joke. But I still wanted to play some videogames.

The second answer was to just accept the cognitive dissonance that arose when I spent an afternoon gaming. "Yes, this is not good for my body. Screw it, I'm doing it anyway." This too is a dangerous path to tread, as a kind of destructive self-loathing spiral tends to take hold. Once you've made the choice to do something unhealthy, the next choice to do something unhealthy becomes even easier, cause hey, you've already blown it, right? The "acceptance of self-loathing" technique had the side effect of making game time much less fun, as the nagging voice in my head wouldn't shut up about how this really wasn't a very helpful practice for my body, and that I would feel it the next day.

But I still wanted to play some games!

Thus was born the middle path of gaming. Behold!

Technique 1: Gaming doesn't mean losing leg flexibility. In fact, it's a great way to spend time in deep stretches. This works best for portable gaming. I played through the entirety of Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories in wide angle forward bend. 30 plus hours of gameplay. 30 plus hours of groin stretches.

"Gaining XP in real and virtual worlds!"

I often play DS games in a supported backbend. 30 minutes of this a day will keep your spine as supple as a cat. The PSP, at least the launch system I have, is too heavy for this. (Somebody mail me a PSP3000!)

"A new perspective on this Professor Leyton puzzle might help..."

Basic idea, stretch while you game, read, or use a laptop. It's not rocket science.

Technique 2: Strength training is a perfect counterpart to games. Gets the blood pumping and is a nice way to get grounded in the real world. Here's one of my favorite combos.

Street Fighter 4. Play an online match. SFIV online is pretty brutal. Those guys in G1 are not messing around. If I pull off a win...

"boo ya!"

then I do an easy set of neutral grip pull-ups, an exercise I really like.

"victory lap!"

But if I lose my match...

"son of a !"

it's a tough set of regular pull-ups plus a set of chin ups combined with leg raises, which I detest.

"Failure will not go unpunished"

After the loss I'm usually kind of mad at myself so it feels like a kind of penance. Then back to the Xbox. Repeat for an hour and you've gotten a great workout, as well as your Street Fighter fix. This can be modified for any exercise and any game that gives you a break every few minutes.

I won't bore you with all my other little tricks, because you're probably not a gamer. What's important is that you see there are ways to work with your little foibles and hang-ups besides shutting them out completely. The idea of becoming a healthy person isn't to erase your former self, it's to become your true self. That might mean someone who loves videogames, or baking, or movie marathons, or any number of things that can coexist happily next to your wellness based lifestyle.

We tend to slip into a mindset of all or nothing when it comes to health. There seems to be a false choice between being a couch potato or a gym rat, an out of shape office drone or an annoyingly chipper aerobics teacher. I just want you all to know that there is a middle, and that most truly healthy people dwell there, not at the polarities.

So take a look at that one thing you love to do but that you know is making a negative impact on your health. With a little thinking outside the box, it can probably be modified to support your body rather than breaking it down.

Being healthy is important, but not more important than being yourself. Game on!

Thinking About Habits

2009-11-03T15:03:00.007+09:00

It's been a busy few weeks of PCPers finishing their projects up and reentering the "real world". I always instruct Day 90 PCPers to take a non-optional 3 day vacation from any kind of workout or diet regimen. There are three reasons for this:

1. To give their bodies time to recover from the very tough final week of the project.

2. To give them some perspective and make sure dedication to the plan doesn't transform into obsessive dogmatic behavior.

3. To give them a taste of how it feels to crave exercise and healthy foods.

That third one is what I want to talk about today. What surprises people who complete the program is how quickly their old habits die and are replaced with newer healthy ones, and how it is literally hard to stop jumping rope and eating well after three months of it. How does this happen?

To start with, the human mind is probably the world's best pattern recognizer. Take a look at this completely random collection of water vapor:

Bet it was pretty hard for you not to see the face, right? Given just the slightest hint of a known pattern, the mind will fill in the gaps. We do this with our ears too. Listen to this first clip of random noise made by a piece of software that converts sine waves into audio:

Random Sine Wave Clip

and now listen to this sentence in English.

and go back to the random sine wave clip again.

The second time it's almost impossible to not hear the sentence, no matter how hard you try. (Thanks to the Skeptoid Podcast for turning me on to these samples)

This is all to say that every day your mind and body are out there trying to make sense of the disordered and random universe. If you start engaging in a certain behavior, your mind will begin to accept that behavior into its standard operating procedures. If you woke up every morning, went to the bathroom mirror, and slapped yourself in the face for 20 days straight, you'd find yourself on Day 21 heading towards the mirror for your daily slap without too much thought. Your pattern building part of the brain doesn't distinguish between good, bad, fruitful or wasteful activities. It just bends towards the things it's used to.

This is why it's not all that difficult for a Day 60 PCPer to get their workout done. By Day 60 doing the workout is just what you do. There's no sluggishness in the brain when the thought "Time to workout" comes up. It's a familiar and actionable idea. If you stick with the healthy habits you'll find, like recent PCPer E did, that it's actually harder to sit around the house eating junk food than it is to exercise and eat well.

I've thought a lot about habits in the past few years. In no particular order, here are some insights into how they work and how you can harness them to bring wellness into your life.

There are many grades of habits. They occur over various periods of time. Something you do only just once a year, every year, is still a kind of habit.

The more often you engage in a behavior the more likely your doing something habitually. You may not be aware of the habit even as you follow through with it time and time again. For example, I was going through my year end receipts and noticed that I go to one cafe for about two months before switching to another cafe for a month, followed by a month of almost no cafe visits. Then I seem to repeat the pattern again. We're probably on dozens of these habit-loops at any given time.

When habits have a strong physical component they get very sticky. Putting something into your body will set up a habit-loop in just a few days. This works for both helpful and unhelpful products, so be careful about what goes in consistently, for it is what you will crave.

Somewhere a line is crossed from habit to addiction. I see this line as the point when the higher thinking parts of the brain can no longer overrule the momentum of the habit pattern. Addictions are never good, even when they are to healthy things like jogging. I have seen runners come through my studio who are torn up all to hell from their exercise and refuse to quit until their knees are completely wrecked. Watch out when you feel like you're approaching the addiction line. Dial it back!

Barring strong physical addictions such as drugs like nicotine, most habits can be short-circuited in less than two weeks. It seems implausible, but I've seen it time and time again.

However, those two weeks are crucial. If you partake in the activity just once during those 14 days, the timer resets and you've got another two weeks ahead of you until the habit is broken.

The best way to break a habit is by just shutting it off. Cold Turkey will be painful but short. If you try to wean yourself off step by step it will take forever and may not work at all.

Just because you're not doing something anymore doesn't mean the habit is broken. If you're still dying for a brownie every night after dinner but keep denying yourself, then you still have a brownie habit. It's the desire for a brownie that is the habit, not the consumption of it. When you find you haven't even thought about a brownie in a few days, then you know the habit has been demolished.

Starting a habit works within a similar two week horizon. Is there such a thing as Hot Turkey? If there is, that's what you need to do. Let's say you want to form a healthy habit of eating fresh veggies and fruit. Eat them every day for two weeks. Don't miss a day. You'll find yourself craving broccoli and apples in no time. Read any PCPer's blog to see this in action.

The best way to form a new habit is to have a plan. Daily charts that you can check off, someone keeping tabs on you, and little reminders around the house will all make the transition easier. When you find yourself doing the new activity without needing these little props, then you can be pretty sure you've formed a solid habit.

Once you recognize that you are a being made to recognize and reproduce patterns, you can start to see how most of the things you do aren't spontaneous at all. Your actions are usually the end products of habit loops formed sometime in the past. This is not something to be worried about. Spend your time sculpting your habits towards positive things, and watch as your brain keeps you on the rails without massive expenses of willpower.

And if you find yourself in the grips of an unhealthy habit, take a deep breath, and just stop. Right now. It will never be as hard to break a habit as it is today. Tomorrow will be just a sliver easier. And the next day a little more. The hard work is now!

Maybe I'm weird, but I find that incredibly motivating.

You Asked for It, Patrick vs. HFCS

2009-10-12T14:25:00.009+09:00

A number of people have asked me to weigh in on High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) and the debate that was stirred up a few months ago when the following ads were played all over the US. The Corn Refiners Association produced three of these commercials and we're just going to take our time and work our way through them, and calmly look at the facts. Ok, number 1.

HFCS "Party" Commercial (note that the Corn Refiners Association won't allow YouTube embeds anymore, probably a response to posts just like this, so you'll have to open with a new window and watch on YouTube. Do it, it's worth it!)

What an uncomfortable thing to watch. Don't you just feel like these two women are brimming with barely constrained rage? I thought someone was about to get slapped. Anyway, on to the substance of the ad.

The setting, a kids party, and by the table full of presents and balloons in the background I'd say it's safe to assume a birthday party. The food product, the ubiquitous "grape drink". Concerned mom is worried the HFCS isn't good for the kids, but when pressed can't explain why. Chill mom explains it's natural, the same thing as sugar, and no big deal. Everyone's happy.

Let's break it down:

Everything said in this commercial is true. HFCS comes from a natural source, corn, and is basically the same as sugar. There's been a lot of studies on this and there's just no evidence that HFCS damages the body in any specific way. (There's always a new study coming out, most recently that HFCS contains mercury, but I think that kind of stuff is all a distraction. If you study anything enough you'll find something unhealthy in it, and it usually only kicks in if you imagine someone consuming gallons and gallons of the stuff in a day) For all intents and purposes, it's sugar. Cheap, liquid sugar that the food industry loves because of it's ease of use and long shelf-life. So I can see the Corn Refiners Association's point. Why is their product being vilified when it's just another form of sugar?

Here's the crux. ...and like sugar it's fine in moderation. Again, very true. But let's get down and dirty with the numbers a bit.

The consumers of this beverage will be young children. The American Heart Association recommends that kids have between 6 and 9 teaspoons of sugar a day at most. I couldn't track down the exact dietary information for "Grape Drink", but I'd say it's safe to assume it has around the same sugar content as a soda. A 12 ounce can of soda has 10-13 teaspoons of sugar in it, depending on the brand. So it's reasonable to assume 6 oz. of soda or grape drink would have just about a full days worth of sugar for a child. And it appears chill mom is pouring a portion equivalent to that in the punch glasses.

Are you seeing the problem here? For a child at that party to have, as chill mom recommends, a moderate amount of sugar, they would have to drink that one glass as their only sugar intake for the whole day. No refills. No sweets. Also, no cereal, fruit, or fruit juice for breakfast that morning, no bread, no condiments, nothing for the rest of the day that contains naturally occurring or added sugar. Can you imagine? "Sorry honey, you can't have any of Susie's birthday cake, we're eating sugar in moderation and you had that grape drink a half hour ago so it's just celery sticks for you!" And yet that is exactly what chill mom says she does by keeping things "in moderation." Fascinating.

Ok, on to the even more cringeworthy clip 2:

HFCS "Two Bites" Commerical.

A tranquil park or university quad, a young couple having a picnic. The guy is worried the popsicle has HFCS, his ladyfriend assures him it's no different than sugar in moderation. Guy is so relieved he yanks it out of her hand and asks if she brought two. Ha ha that was an awkward moment in our relationship but now life is great.

Obviously all the same arguments made for the first ad apply here, but this time they're bringing in the idea that it's the calories that are the same between sugar and HFCS. Again, all accurate. (What's ironic is that in both the first and second commercial they're reassuring people about the same product. In the first commercial it's colored sugar water in its liquid form, and this is the frozen variation. All these people sure do like their sugar, they're not even dressing it up.) Anyway, if it's calories you want to talk about, we can do that.

This guy seems of average height and build, in his early 20s. If he has a sedentary life like most modern people he will need to consume 1800 calories a day to maintain his weight. One of those popsicles will come in at around 100 calories. So, because of this unexpected highly sweetened frozen water snack, this guy has put himself 100 calories above and beyond his usual caloric intake. The question is, will he keep that in mind as he goes about his day? 100 calories is about what you'd get in a can of light beer. That night, will he say to his girlfriend, "You know what, I just remembered I ate that popsicle at the park, so I'm going to pass on the Bud Light, I'll just have a water." Maybe he will. But lets look at a still from that video:

A young man in the prime of life will not have a double chin and jowls unless something is seriously out of balance with his diet. (I'm sorry to pick on this actor like this, hey HFCS actor, if you contact us we'll give you a free PCP. Maybe you'll get better roles. I'm serious, get in touch!) Somewhere this guy is getting a bunch of extra calories. I'd hazard a guess that he's not consuming his sugar in moderation as his girlfriend suggests. A HFCS laden popsicle is the last thing he needs. And I thought she loved him.

On to our final adventure in bizzaro-earth, where everyone loves talking about corn syrup:

HFCS "Breakfast" Commercial.

Breakfast table, big brother freaks about the HFCS, little brother assures him it's just like sugar, and big brother just can't contain himself and rips the bowl out of his hands.

At least it's a "food" this time and not sugar water. This ad's variation is that it's nutritionally the same as sugar. That's quite correct. They both have absolutely no nutritional content whatsoever. The little brother could also have said, "it's a big chunk of completely empty calories that provides nothing my body needs, just like sugar!" Ah, cereal.

How much HFCS is in this stuff exactly? The ad features some kind of box that resembles Kellogg's Rasin Bran, so lets use that as our base. The little brother appears to have poured himself a two cup serving of cereal. According to the label that's 35.2 grams of sugar (HFCS), which works out to about seven and a half teaspoons of sugar. A teenage boy should consume no more than 13 teaspoons of sugar a day. So before he has even left the house the little brother has blown half of his daily sugar. He could have one of those cups of grape drink from the first ad and he'd be at stretching the upper range of what it means to be "just fine in moderation." Again, no more sugar means no bread, no yogurt, no ketchup or tomato sauce, no fruit or fruit juice, no desserts, no more sugar, period. You think he'll make it through the day without slipping up on his promise to be moderate?

Let me just say for the record that there are few breakfasts worse than a bowl of cereal, even the healthy stuff. You need real food, (read protein, vegetables and fruit) to get you through an active day. A bowl of cereal is a bowlful of empty carbs and sugar. By ten a.m. you'll be hungry again, with a vending machine full of HFCS calling out to you. The big brother was on the right track for calling out what a crappy breakfast his doofus sibling is eating.

As you can see now, the problem with HFCS is that it is slowly creeping into more and more food and drinks. And while, as the Corn Refiners Association points out again and again, it is a "natural" product (just like those other wholesome substances, heroin and cocaine) we're eating far too much of it. Each of these ads inadvertently telegraphs that none of the characters is truly eating HFCS in moderation. The Western diet has forgotten what a moderate amount of sugar even looks like. How do you eat something in moderation if it's in one-third of all processed foods?

There's only one answer here, and that is of course to stop eating processed foods. A diet based on fresh vegetables, whole grains, and fruit, prepared at home will by definition not contain a drop of HFCS. It won't even be an issue.

And this is the true irony of these ads. Suppose the audience actually listened to the Corn Refiners Association's chiding, and started consuming HFCS in moderation. Suddenly, a gallon of grape drink would last a family for a month. Popsicles would be replaced by apples. People would switch to non-sugared cereals. If the public really followed the advice presented here, the Corn Refiners Association would, in fact, put itself out of business.

The refining conglomerates know that they're safe though, because here's the bitter surprise; most people don't have the facts, don't know how to get ahold of the facts, and will only get fatter and sicker by continuing to over-consume sugar, whether in it's old fashioned cane or newfangled HFCS. And these companies will be happy to continue adding the stuff into your food all the way to your grave.

I don't have a million dollar ad budget like them, so it's up to you to pass this on to someone who needs the real facts. With education, these ads look as ridiculous as the tobacco ads from the 50's, and just as detrimental to your and your loved ones' health.

Stop Bean Counting!

2009-10-06T21:55:00.013+09:00

If you've ever had a conversation with me about health you'll know that I absolutely detest applying any kind of number to the body. Weight, BMI, Fat %, Muscle Mass, I couldn't care less. Sometimes we have to use these during the PCP to get a general picture of a participant's condition, but I try to avoid the top line of the keyboard at all costs.

Human beings are incredibly good at bean counting. It satisfies us in some way to take this complex world and break it down into digestible digits. Alan Watts, as usual, explained this better than I ever could in a lecture entitled "Seeing Through the Net":

"But nature itself is clouds, it’s water, it’s the outline of continents, it’s mountains, it’s biological existences, and all of them wiggle, and wiggly things are, to human consciousness, a little bit of a nuisance. Because we want to figure it out.

And it is as if, therefore, some ancient fisherman one day held up his net, and looked at the world through the net. And he said, 'My, just think of that: there, I can see the view; and that is one—that peak of that mountain is one two three four five six holes across; and the base is one two three four five holes down. Now I’ve got its number!' See?

And so, the lines of latitude and longitude, the lines of celestial and terrestrial latitude and longitude, the whole idea of a matrix, of looking at things through graph paper painted or printed on cellophane, is the basic idea of measurement. This is the way we calculate. We break down the wiggly-ness of the world comprehensible, countable, geometrical units, and thereby figure it and construct it in those terms.

And this is so successful—up to a point—that we can, of course, come to imagine that this is the way the physical world really is. Discrete, discontinuous, full of points, in fact a mechanism. But I want just to put into you mind the notion that this may be the prejudice of a certain personality type."

Your body is a 100% natural specimen. Every single function that keeps you alive and regulated obeys the rules of nature, not mechanics. We are completely analog creatures. We are harmonic wave patterns. Your heartbeat, metabolism, sleep patterns, circulation, immune function, and everything else your body does to keep you alive is a series of cycles. Oscillating, maddeningly organic cycles that defy interference from our measly attempts to change them by plugging in some new numbers.

I could go on forever about this, but the number I want to talk about in this post is that of calories. Most people are so conditioned to the term Calorie that they've lost all sense of what a calorie is. Do YOU know what a calorie is? Don't run off to Google, just sit there and ask yourself, what is a calorie? Most people have a vague sense that a calorie is the amount of "foodness" in a particular food. And that too many of them are bad. It's as if in the magical food factory the scientists fill up scones and fudgecicles with calorie units, and then when they're all full they put them in boxes and ship them to the store. Calories become a way to numerically pin down a food, just as the fisherman was able to chop up the view with his net.

For once and for all, here's what a calorie unit is:

A calorie is the amount of heat needed to raise 1 kg of water from a heat of 0 to 1 degree celcius.

Underwhelmed? You should be. A calorie is just a way of talking about energy. In fact, the word calorie was originally used to talk about the heat output of engines. Can you imagine saying to someone, "My new motorcycle has a 90,000 calorie engine?" You could very well do that. It wasn't until the mid 20th century that calories became so closely tied to food. (I'm going to skip the science here but if you really want to know how it all breaks down follow this link) So, clearly your body needs a certain amount of energy (Calories) to get through the day. We get this energy through food. Enough food, enough energy, not enough food, you get a deficit, too much food, you have a surplus.

If you consume too much energy in a given day, the body will say, "thank you very much" and store that extra energy as fat. And it will do this forever and ever as long as the extra energy is coming in. It's working on an ancient pattern that all the diet pill makers in the world can never override. A few years of doing this consistently will do amazing things to the body.

If you don't consume enough energy the body will turn to its storage units of muscle and fat and break them down to get the power it needs. And it'll keep doing this until every last bit of muscle and fat is gone, and then it'll go after the organs. And only when every last scrap of energy is gone will the body fail (dehydration usually gets to it first) Don't want to bum you out, but here's how amazing the body's ability to change and adapt is:

It's all about how much energy is entering the system. But far too many people take this knowledge and run with it in the wrong direction. They become Calorie counters. They figure out that they burn X many Calories in a day and if they eat Y amount of Calories they'll get Z effect.

But here's the important point. Your stomach is not like an ATM. You are not digital. The body evolved over millions of years to be adaptable and to set up systems which further survival at all costs. This means that you can screw up your Calorie intake in major ways and still chug along for a good 40 years of ill-health, low energy, and dissatisfaction with your body.

What I try to encourage people to do is stop asking "how many calories are in this food?" and move towards, "how much energy is in this food?" This little change has big effects. It frees you from the nagging guilt you feel when you have a high Calorie, "bad" food.

For example, you've had lunch, and you'd like a little something sweet to finish the meal. You have the choice of a pear, or a slice of lemon meringue pie. Usual diet thinking will steer you away from the "bad" choice of pie and towards the healthy choice of the pear. But we all know the second you're told something is forbidden it becomes all the more tempting, and soon the mind will throw up the usual litany of rationalizations:

"You deserve it, you finally finished that project! It's like a celebration!"
"You can just have a lighter dinner tonight, it'll be fine!"
"Life's short, enjoy the little things!"

If you approach it as a sinful yet scrumptious high Calorie food, usually the pie wins.

Let's rewind that situation and sub in the word energy for Calorie. The pear is a low energy food. It's mostly water. The pie is a very high energy food, it packs quite a punch into its little slice. You've just had a good lunch. Your body is full of energy. Looking at the rest of your day, you have a little office work to do, some errands, nothing that would require a ton of extra energy. So the pie energy will mosy likely be unused, and the body will gladly take that excess, transform it to fat cells and distribute it all over your body. We've got enough fat cells as it is, so the low energy pear makes a lot more sense. Pie sure is yummy, but it's unneeded energy. One pear coming up.

Did you see how there were no good guys or bad guys in that situation? Just you figuring out which choice is best for your energy needs.

Sometimes people come back with, "Yes, but by that logic I could skip lunch, eat two slices of pie, and still be ok because I met my energy needs." That's true! Why don't you try it? I'm serious! Have pie for lunch today. It won't make you fatter.

You'll quickly find that high energy foods alone don't make you feel very good. Delivering energy to the body is huge bursts upsets your digestion, mood, and mental function. And of course over time, without the nutrients that come from unprocessed natural low energy foods, your body will start to have debilitating deficiencies.

Thinking about the energy in foods will gradually point you towards nourishing and natural foods. If you've only got a certain amount of energy you can consume in a day, you simply don't want to blow it all on chocolate bars and potato chips. You want more bang for your energy buck. And this will all happen without you having to consult a list of numbers or nutrition labels artificially imposed on your diet.

Eating doesn't have to be a stressful math problem of Calories consumed - minutes on the treadmill + guilt of indulging - rationalizations and promises to do better tomorrow.

By thinking in terms of energy, not numbers, food can become a simple pleasure, just like it was for the hundreds of thousands of years before science held the net up to it.

A Different Perspective on Food

2009-09-29T16:15:00.006+09:00

I attended a zen retreat recently. It was the first one I'd been on since I created and started helping others do The Peak Condition Project, so I was curious about how my perspective had changed on the zen style of eating. (I've written a great deal about Zen eating habits and even made this video which people seem to like.)

Zen eating is a peculiar thing for most people. For one, it is always done in silence. Eating in silence with others is a great feeling, and an amazing community spirit builds up without saying a single word. If you've never had the experience organize a silent meal with your family or friends sometime.

The food at a Zen meal is served quite ritualistically, with lots of chanting, bowing, gasshos, and waiting for everyone to be served. There is such a reverence for the serving portion that many first time Zen meal participants aren't ready for what comes next.

Bam! Like a starter's pistol has been fired, the leader starts eating, and by eating I mean shoveling food down his gullet at an alarming pace. This might be becoming rarer, but if you end up with an older Japanese master as the leader, be prepared to see an intense blur of chopsticks multitasking between rice, soup, and pickles.

The tricky bit is that when the master finishes his meal, everyone finishes. It doesn't matter if you've only just started on your rice, the meal is over. Not only will you still be hungry, but you'll have committed the big Buddhist no-no of wasting food.

The result is that everyone starts racing furiously to finish before the leader, and the meal can be quite an ordeal, especially for foreign guests with less-than-stellar chopstick skills. I encountered one guy, who, sneaking snacks between meditation sessions, growled, "Why don't we do a few less minutes of bloody chanting and a few more minutes of actually eating the bloody food..."

This quirk of Zen retreats drives people bananas. You spend all day learning to nurture your mindful attention on the present moment, taking 45 minutes to carefully sweep a room, and then at meal time it all seems to go out the window, just when you'd actually like to take the time to enjoy the carefully prepared food.

I used to really hate the rushed meals too, especially after the warm-fuzzies you get on a Thich Nhat Hanh retreat where you're encouraged to chew every bite 30 times to truly appreciate the complex flavors that are present in simple foods when properly masticated.

This time however, with PCP eyes, I started to see the underlying belief system that leads to Zen speed eating. It was there all the time, I just wasn't ready to understand it. The answer can be found in one of those annoying chants you have to do before the meal. Below is an English translation:

We reflect on the effort that brought this food and consider how it comes to us.
We reflect on our virtue and practice, and whether we are worthy of this offering.
We regard it as essential to keep the mind free from excesses such as greed.
We regard the food as good medicine to sustain our life.
For the sake of enlightenment we now receive this food.

The fourth line is the key. We regard this food as good medicine to sustain our life. Think about that. Think about the last time you were sick and had to take an antibiotic. You didn't look forward to it, you didn't relish the coating and flavor of the pill, you just opened the bottle, put it on your tongue, took a swig of water to down the thing, and went on with your day. Presumably, a Zen priest is merely getting his sustenance with the same efficiency and non-attachment as you took that pill. He just wants to get on with the important work of gaining enlightenment.

Modern culture abhors the idea of food as medicine. Each meal strives to be an event in itself. Flavors compete to get the tongue's attention as the eaters comment enthusiastically about how good this dish is or how poor that one is. Especially as food manufacturers have figured out how to cram even more flavor into our meals, we've all become gourmands. And each year, in an attempt to please ever dulled palates, the sodium and sugar levels creep up and up as our waistlines creep out and out.

There's some merit to reorienting yourself to the idea that the food you eat is more medicine than entertainment. This perspective tends to pop the bubble that delicious food can sometimes create, as you picture how happy a given meal will make you (a happiness that fades soon after the first few bites). If you're just eating to sustain yourself, there's less tendency to crave over-the-top flavors and artificial food products. Your body knows intrinsically that, in terms of medicine, Cheetos are less appealing than apples.

However, I'm not sold on wolfing down plain food as the best way to eat. As a Buddhist would say, there's a middle way here.

I think we can take the best of both worlds. The appreciation Western culture has for taste, texture, and presentation, with the Zen lack of extravagance and attachment. Simple, wholesome foods, prepared with care, shared with friends, and respected on both levels, as medicine and a shared culinary experience. Eaten at a normal speed, not too fast, but also not awkwardly slow.

I know that's a tall order. If I'm lucky I can get a half dozen of those kind of meals in a busy week. Life doesn't always allow them. But you'll look and feel so much better if you can start incorporating them into your routine.

And as a final note, Zen retreat food is far from perfect (Although light years better than the average Western meal). It's waaaay too light on the vegetables and tends to fill people up with empty carbs. Also, fruit is entirely absent. It might be ok if you're spending several hours a day on the meditation cushion, but won't get you anywhere near Peak Condition. So take the "food as medicine" portion as a useful reminder and leave the rest.

(Silent gassho to you!)

The Key to Growth? Embracing the Suck.

2009-09-18T14:42:00.006+09:00

Imagine you're going to take a helicopter tour of the city. You're chatting amiably with the pilot as the chopper warms up, and ask about his experience flying. He answers:

"Well, I've got one of the smoothest take-offs in the business. And you won't see a finer bank and turn 'round these parts. Of course I tend to botch the landings 9 times out of 10..."

"What! You can't be serious."

"Well, landing is hard, and it's so much more fun just to fly around. So I didn't practice much... anyway, she's all ready to lift-off. Step aboard!"

You might take a pass on the helicopter tour. It's clear that the takeoff, flying, and landing are all key to becoming a licensed pilot.

However, when it comes to their bodies, many people are quite happy to settle for 2 out of 3.

For me, a truly healthy person will be above all things well-rounded. This means appreciable levels of strength, cardiovascular health, flexibility, a reasonable body fat percentage, as well as a whole host of more specific techniques like correct breathing, mental control, and the ability to choose a proper diet. I could go on and on, getting more and more specific, but I'll save that for another format.

The point is that mastering one area of your body, while being better than nothing, is still a long way from true health. You might be familiar with one of these types:

The buffed up gym guy who can't touch his toes or clasp his hands behind his back.

The gym dude whose upper body is totally ripped but who has little chicken legs.

The girl who eats sensible portions of healthy food, but gets winded going up two flights of stairs.

The lithe yoga lady who can put her legs behind her head but can't do a push-up.

The massively strong bouncer or piano mover who carries an extra 40 pounds around their gut.

The marathoner whose muscle is so stringy as to make them look sickly, even as they run incredible distances.

The "master meditators" who can do hours of meditation, hands resting on their fat bellies.

These are all examples of people who've gotten on top of one aspect of conditioning but neglected other areas. Again, all of these are much better than the slob on the couch (but I figure if you're reading this article you're not one of those types anyway, and aren't satisfied with being slightly above average).

If you know you have a blindspot, why not just turn around and face it head on? If you can't touch your toes, cut 10 minutes from your strength building routine for a deep forward bend stretch. If you know your legs aren't looking as strong as your top, spend a few weeks with the squat and lunge until things come into balance. If you're an ace at meditation how about spending a little less time on the cushion and a little more in the kitchen, learning how to cook fresh, healthy meals?

The solutions are pretty obvious, but very few people will do them. The reason? Working on your weak points isn't much fun. Why? Because you suck at them. That's why they're weak points. This natural law will really get you over time. Each week that you favor the things you're good at and skip or half-ass your way through the weak points, you only lock in the unbalance.

So if there's an exercise or an activity that you really hate, it's probably a good sign that you need to do it more. I spent years refining my inverted yoga poses so that they're the absolute "best 'round these parts."But the whole time I neglected my legs, especially my groin, because, well, I looked and felt like a beginner when I did them. One day I just got sick of it and vowed not to spend another second in a flashy inversion until I got a handle on my leg stretches. I spent the next two years on them.

Now I find myself drifting towards leg work because it's so fun now. This is a warning sign that it's time to find another weak point to address in my yoga practice. Maybe backbends.

Working with things you suck at is both humbling and empowering. And as you shore up the parts of you that are weakest, your standard of what is acceptable will only get higher and higher. If you consistently work on your weak areas, you'll wake up one day to find that they've become your strong points. And you've left the others in the dust.

I give this advice to some people, and they seem daunted. But I HATE lunges, I'm lousy at jumpropes, I don't have the time to cook healthy food. Recognize that your mind will throw up a lot of smoke when you contemplate doing anything you're not good at. Take it slow, think in years rather than weeks, and do it with a light, joyful touch.

Improving yourself is fun. Even if you're bad at it.

Dealing with Cravings

2009-09-09T17:43:00.009+09:00

You know the feeling, you're going along with your day, and suddenly, you've GOT to have a certain food. Different people have different weaknesses; chocolate, potato chips, french fries, diet coke, etc... the list is varied but usually the food you can't go another second without isn't particularly good for you. It's rare to hear someone say, "stop right there I've GOT to have an asparagus" (well, PCPers say stuff like that, but that's a different story)

Cravings are funny things. They seem so small and immaterial from the outside. But when you're in the heart of a craving, it can seem to fill up every nook and cranny of your brain, demanding gratification. It seems that your body is being pushed by some invisible hand toward the snack aisle or fast food place, and saying "no" simply isn't an option.

Most people never even make it that far into a craving however. They feel the urge and without much thought follow through on it. In a very real sense, for the duration of the craving, they ARE the craving, or at least a vehicle for the craving to satisfy itself. A few years of doing as your cravings command will get you looking like the average American... heavy.

Now there's a lot of interesting stuff about the brain chemistry of cravings (dopamine centers firing, etc...) but that's not very real to most people so let's leave it aside for now. For our purposes, let's think of a craving as a super charged thought. And, lucky for you, as a zen teacher dealing with extraneous thoughts is what I do for a living.

All too many people live their lives like one of the toys in the video below. (I've made this comparison before on Zen is Stupid).

The ball is kind of like your mind. It pivots around fairly incoherently and we, like the weasel, get jerked along too. So, the thought/feeling of "there is anger" comes through as "I'm angry." We can spend years and years getting jerked around by untamed thoughts if we're not aware of one thing:

A thought, including a craving, is a flimsy thing.

With some practice and training you can learn to see your thoughts more like mischievous neighborhood kids than all-controlling masters of your destiny. They're not bad in themselves but they will get you into trouble if you follow them blindly.

So, for a simple exercise, just start talking to your thoughts as they arise.

"Mmm, a cookie would go really well with this coffee."
"I hear you. A cookie would be great. But not today. I know you want one, but it's not worth the layer of fat it'll put on us."
"Oh come on, it's just a cookie."
"You're right, it's just a cookie, but if I listen to you on this how will I ever get in the habit of accomplishing the things I really want? Sorry. No cookie today"
"Jeeze, you're such a party pooper!"

I know I know, this seems a little schizophrenic. But it's not really. It's just a way of making the point that you are much bigger than the little thoughts that occupy your mind most of the day. If you practice like this for a while you'll see that the mental chatter takes on a comfortable shorthand.

"Cookie with the coffee?"
"Sounds good, but no"
"Sure?"
"Yep, there are more important things."
"Cool"

This will all happen in the flash of an eye and seems pretty minor. But a lifetime built upon these wise decisions will be a long and healthy one.

You can practice this "befriending and talking to your cravings" with food very frequently, as food issues are guaranteed to crop up a few times a day. The magic is that your brain will start to carry it over into many areas of your life. Some examples:

"Take the money?"
"It'd be nice, but it's not really ours."
"Sure?"
"Yep, it's just 100 bucks."
"Cool."

or

"Sleep with this woman?"
"It'd be fun, but I value my marriage."
"Sure?"
"Yep, pretty damn sure."
"Cool."

Feel free to do all manner of push-ups, curls, dips, and crunches, but the most important part of your body to strengthen is the few inches between your ears. A strong mind is the keystone of a healthy body and an ethical life.

And you can start training right now, by not mindlessly eating the next junky thing your brain comes up with.

Only 30 Days! Unbelievable!

2009-09-01T12:35:00.009+09:00

As I was clicking through YouTube a few days ago this ad came up in the right hand corner. I've been meaning to talk about this for a while and now seems as good a time as any what with last week's post about women's perceptions of their bodies.

Here's the ad. A classic before and after shot.

Now I know your first reaction is "impossible!" or "yeah right, 30 days my ass, that's probably the same guy after 6 months." But I'm inclined to believe that this is a real 30 days before and after shot. How is it possible to "Gain" so much "Muscle" and look that great after just 30 days?

This is a classic trick that these types of exercise programs will pull on people who don't know any better. So let's make sure you all know better.

First off, check the before picture. The guy looks like a pretty schlumpy, joe six-pack type. But a closer inspection will reveal he's actually in rather good shape. The evidence? First, look at the area around his hips. You can clearly see that distinctive notch where his pelvic bone is outlined.

I've worked with all kinds of people and can tell you from experience that notch only becomes visible when the body fat gets to around 10-12%. So this guy is clearly already working with a low body fat that only comes from consistent workouts and a good diet. A truly chubby guy wouldn't have that notch as it would be covered and softened by a few extra layers of subcutaneous fat.

Next, check his pectoral muscles. There is a clear square shape going on here, which I've illustrated below.Do you see the way his pecs have a straight line on the lower and middle edge? That's not what fat looks like. Again, it's apparent this guy has a lot of muscle and works out. A truly husky guy would have the traditional man-boob shape, a curve along the bottom without much of a break between the pecs, as Tony Blair models for us.
Ok, so what exactly is going on here? If the before guy is in such good shape why does he look so schlumpy? Three reasons.

1. The picture was taken "cold". Meaning his muscles were completely relaxed. Muscles are incredibly changeable things. They can double in size and get razor sharp definition with a good pump. You can see the guy on the left is completely relaxed and in the middle of an exhalation when the abs are invisible, while "30 days later" man is pumped to the hilt. That alone would account for most of the "Gained Muscle"

2. The lighting is soft and mainly from behind in the original photo, casting a shadow over the torso and removing the chance to see any tone. The second picture has a much harsher light above and slightly in front, which maximizes the appearance of tone as it casts strong shadows into the valleys and lines between muscles. You've probably had this same experience where you look really good in some mirrors in your house and less than ideal in others. It's all about where the lights are.

3. Hygiene. The "After" guy has obviously gotten a hair cut (and dye?), found his smile, and slathered himself in suntan oil. These small details will automatically make him look fitter and more appealing.

To prove these points I've taken two pictures in my laundry room. The first is a cold relaxed shot with backlighting and a po-po face. The second is stronger front lighting after 10 pull-ups, 30 sit-ups, and 20 push ups for a very mild pump. I also shaved, combed my hair and via a filter added some warmth to simulate the tanned effect. Total time between the two shots? Five minutes. I tried to keep the time between shots as short as I could, with a full workout and a big pump the results would be even more "impressive."

So here's what I think is going on here. This guy is a pro or semi-pro bodybuilder. (In the second picture he's executing one of the mandatory poses that all bodybuilders must do in competition.) Just like any sport, bodybuilding has an off season and on season. The first picture was probably taken in a break period, when bodybuilders relax their diets, gain a bit of padding, and work hard on building muscle. Then in the 4-6 weeks before they compete they drastically cut their body fat with the hopes that the muscle that is also lost in the process is offset by the extra they gained during the off season.

The irony here is the the before guy was probably stronger than the after guy, because of the muscle loss that occurred during the dramatic loss of body fat.

If anything, the ad is an example of fat loss, not muscle gain. I wonder if they'll get around to telling you how to lose fat when you purchase their program? Or will they send you to the gym with a handful of weight training exercises and say "Good luck, sucker!"

Now I don't mean to single this ad out, at no point do they say that the before man was just some average guy off the street. But what this ad and ads like it is imply people can make these kinds of gains starting at zero. It's simply not possible. It's not how the body works. It defies physics.

Laying down a foundation of visible muscle takes months of patience and discipline. Once you've attained a decent level of fitness and body fat, you can start to do these one month hardcore training sessions and get eye popping results. But it's not necessary and doesn't make you any healthier.

And far too many people sign up thinking their going to look like "After Guy" and when they don't, give up training all together and feel both slightly ripped off and disappointed in themselves.

So now you know what's up with these before and after pictures and can spot the tricks of the trade from a mile away. Forget these kind of claims and just start taking care of the body you have today. That means a good diet, consistent exercise, and a much longer time table than 30 days. Go get 'em!

Plus Sizes and Personal Expectations

2009-08-25T17:15:00.006+09:00

Intrepid PCPer Melanie wrote a post the other day that gets at something that's been on my mind for a while. At issue was the following photo which was buried in the back of Glamour magazine a few months ago next to an article about finding what's beautiful about you as a woman and not beating yourself up about your flaws.

Pictured is a plus size model looking extremely happy and content with herself, despite some extra dimples and rolls on her stomach and thighs. The readers of Glamour were apparently elated at the image of a "regular woman" and showered the magazine with thanks and praise.

Now, here's the question Melanie raised and which I've been pondering myself for awhile.

"Is this lady in good shape?"

Clearly, she's healthy (she's 20 years old so that shouldn't be a surprise) but she's not what we'd call in Peak Condition. And there's nothing wrong with that. But if this model approached me and said, "I'd like to lose these last 15 pounds and get some tone," I'd be all for it and get her PCPing with the very next group, without fretting that at a size 12 she represents the average American woman.

The balancing act with body image is being comfortable with who you are but still open to improvement and exploration. Getting in shape need not be an exercise in self-flagellation about how fat you are and how thin you'd be if you could only muster the willpower. A healthy approach is to say, "Ok, this is where I am now, and I'm going to give it everything I've got and see where it takes me."

Being overweight or carrying around a few rolls of fat is not the end of the world. It's just the state your body's in, and can be changed relatively easily given time and consistency. If you don't have the drive or desire to give it those two things, then stop worrying about it and get comfortable with how you look. But if you feel some psychological dissonance, a pesky voice in the back of your head that says, "I look like this, but I don't feel like the kind of person who looks like this," then start making changes.

Here's the bottom line. Those rolls of fat are perfectly fine. They pose no serious risk to health and don't detract from this woman's beauty. But they didn't magically appear there. They were added on layer by layer through a consistent consumption of calories that were never burned away through exercise. There's no shame in that, in fact, any diet that has even a small portion of modern food products will almost inevitably lead to that result simply because we can now cram so many calories into unfulfilling processed foods.

But to celebrate this woman as an average sized American is to airbrush over the fact that the American average is severely out of whack. Here's a recent batch of statistics for the US:

58 Million Overweight; 40 Million Obese; 3 Million morbidly Obese

Eight out of 10 over 25's Overweight

78% of American's not meeting basic activity level recommendations

25% completely Sedentary

76% increase in Type II diabetes in adults 30-40 yrs old since 1990

So, embracing the average will, in this case, still make you look and feel pretty terrible. Not that the uberskinny models gracing the other 200 pages of Glamour are a good alternative.

The way through all this is simply taking long, lighthearted look at yourself in the mirror. Give yourself a wink and a smile for the parts you like, and assess not only what parts you're dissatisfied with but how much you're willing to do to be more satisfied. If you're not ready to put the time in and take the snack foods out, then you should probably work on accepting those unflattering areas. But if you feel a serious and steely drive to finally get your body exactly where you want it, then go for it. A steady application of a good diet and fitness plan will get you results, it's not a matter of faith, it's just the physics of calorie consumed/calorie used.

I'm not in the business of telling people they can't do things or that they should accept "pretty good." In all of my work I demand a lot from my students and clients, and they consistently deliver in spades. When you set low goals for yourself, like losing a few pounds before beach season, output is similarly lackluster. Big goals result in deep drive, if you've got a plan.

In other words, while we should be happy to see a healthy well fed person depicted in a fashion magazine, that doesn't mean we can't do a lot better.

Dumb Muscles

2009-08-18T10:31:00.009+09:00

If you've ever spent time in a gym, you've probably seen some figure like this on the side of one of the circuit training machines.

So you contort your way into the machine, and crank away a few dozen reps, secure in the knowledge that you're strengthening your quads/triceps/lats or whatever the little diagram says you're working. You work your way through all the machines and voila, you've hit every muscle group and gotten a total body workout!

I'm not going to lie to you, doing machine workouts will get you results. Your muscles will gain a lot of size and if you're one of the few people on top of your diet you can get amazing tone. I can tell the moment I meet someone if they work out primarily on machines. They have what I call "machine molded" muscles. You know the type, each muscle group stands out on its own, and they resemble the "textbook" musculature found on superhero action figures.

But, (and you knew this was coming) here's the catch. Machine molded muscles are also "dumb muscles." What machine users are missing is that your workout happens primarily in your brain. Every time you do an exercise, you are etching that pattern into your cerebral cortex. By isolating a muscle with a machine, you are also isolating the neuron pathways that accompany it. What this means is that your hard won muscle isn't very useful for anything besides that one exclusive action that the machine guides you through. So you've got a body bulked up with dozens of muscles that don't know how to talk to each other. The result? You can do 100s of lat pull downs,

...but barely eke out 6 pull-ups.I have tried this with lots of people at the fitness center and found it to be true every time. Try it on your local gym rat-friend today! The reason? A pull-up is a compound movement calling on the back, core, shoulders and forearm to smoothly lift the body through space. If you took a brain scan of someone doing a pull up I'm sure you'd see areas of the brain lighting up everywhere.

The lat pull-down, while almost the same movement, is calling on one specific muscle group moving along a guided track. It's a "dumb," boring exercise. (Did you note that TV on the wall in that circuit training picture? Ask a PCPer if it's possible to watch TV while doing one of our workouts!)

Machine workouts were certainly a revolution when they came out in the 70s and 80s, but I'm not sure they're doing anyone that much good. The irony is that using all these machines doesn't seem to give you any better athletic performance.

No professional athlete will ever have that bubbly molded look. From gymnasts to "worlds strongest men" competitors, muscles built on the real work of moving the body through 3D space just look different. Furthermore, the gains from machine built muscles tend to evaporate quickly when you catch a cold, go on vacation, or have a busy few weeks at the office. Not so with integrated smart muscles based on compound real world movements.

But the most damaging thing about machines is that they take away your independence. Fitness and strength become outsourced to your local gym. You get the message that without that special building with that special equipment and that special trainer you don't have a shot at getting in shape. As we prove here week after week, that's simply untrue. Your own body-weight and the most rudimentary of tools will get you farther than the most high-tech of gyms.

We're learning the hard way that you can't just take a vitamin supplement and be healthy. You have to eat a bunch of vegetables as part of a balanced diet. Similarly, working on a very small sliver of your musculature on a machine does very little to get you towards true fitness. You might look fit, but in essence the changes you've made are primarily cosmetic.

So, to state it flatly, are you training for the life that awaits you outside, or for the mirror in your bathroom?

3 Techniques to Disarm Mallory Eating

2009-08-11T11:00:00.013+09:00

When asked why he continued his pursuit to summit Mt. Everest, the explorer George Mallory famously said, "because it's there." So I've coined a term for a very peculiar type of eating that we've all engaged in at one time or another.

You're sitting around the house, kind of restless, and you notice a slice of cold pizza in the fridge. You're not particularly hungry, but without a second thought you take it and nibble on it while surfing the web for something interesting to read. If someone stopped you there and said, "Why did you just eat that!?" you'd probably end up saying something close to, "well, because it was there." That's what I call Mallory Eating. It can take on many forms. A bowl of nuts, a stale piece of bread at the end of the loaf, an open bag of sweets, a half drunk bottle of soda, leftovers from Chinese takeout, it doesn't seem to matter much, if it's there on the counter or shelf, it has a high likelihood of ending up in our stomachs.

I'm sure there's a deep biological reason we fall for Mallory Eating. Our hunter gatherer ancestors must have been constantly on the lookout for the chance berry or small animal. If it was there, you had better eat it, because who knew when the next food supply would come?

These instincts only serve to undermine our health goals in a world of plentiful food however. Because they seem like such small snacks, we don't realize that over the course of a week Mallory Eating will add several hundred calories to your daily intake.

So I offer three techniques to free you from Mallory Eating forever.

The first is white belt level:

Just remove all these snack-type foods from your home. Easy as that. The pull of Mallory Eating is the accessibility and ease of eating. It's not as if you are suddenly seized with the desire to whip up a soufflé. If you take away easy to eat stuff, you won't eat as much. Simple as that. It's easy to beat a craving when nothing is there to trigger it.

This also has the advantage of clarifying how bad you really want to eat something. If you're willing to do some cooking or make it to a store to get the snack you're after, that must mean you really want it, and it's probably ok.

Next, a blue belt technique.

Replace the unhelpful snack foods with healthy ones. The bowl of salted nuts changes for a bowl of baby carrots. The half-eaten bag of potato chips becomes a half eaten apple. The soda becomes herbal tea. Surrounding yourself with these kind of foods will turn Mallory Eating into a diet booster. If you eat healthy food frequently throughout the day, your metabolism will stay ramped up and you'll end up burning more calories than the old idea of 3 square meals a day. This is a blue belt technique because it requires a bit of planning and discipline to make sure healthy choices are not only in the house in raw form but prepped enough that they are ready to go as a snack food. Some of my favorite healthy snacks include:

Carrot, daikon, celery and cucumber sticks (often eaten with miso or yogurt dip).
Hard boiled egg whites with cottage cheese in the hollow instead of the yolk.
Apple slices in water.
String cheese.
Dried fruit.
Steamed vegetables.
A jug of iced herbal tea.

You'll have to change some shopping and eating habits to get to this level, but it's not that hard.

Finally, the black belt counter to Mallory Eating.

Surround yourself with as many unhealthy, fattening foods as you can, and simply don't eat them. Buy a bag of delicious cookies, open it, give one to a friend, and then just leave the bag there. Pass it everyday, think how easy and tasty that cookie would be, but don't eat it. Because that's not the kind of stuff you eat anymore.

This technique is especially useful if you live with other people, but will obviously take a lot of mental strength. Anyone can resist the first 3 or 4 times, but it's only the truly strong who can let an entire bag of cookies be eaten or go stale without having a single one. Ultimately this final technique will be the one that will benefit you most, because they second you step out the door you are in a world of Mallory Eating. Every newstand, checkout counter, bakery, and cafe, will have dozens of scrumptious snacks there for the taking. Moving through this glut of snack food serenely and without attachment is the mark of someone with a mature and balanced relationship with food. This doesn't imply that you'll become immune to the desire for unhealthy snacks. The black belt level simply means that you hear the cravings and urges, but recognize them as passing and meaningless feelings, not things you must act on.

Good luck. George Mallory didn't survive his fascination with Mt. Everest, but I'm sure you have a shot at beating all the little Everests that make up an average day trying to be as healthy as possible.

Chew on This

2009-08-05T20:50:00.000+09:00

I was thinking today, I've taught over 2500 yoga classes in the past few years, which comes out to over 3000 hours on the mat and who knows how many students.

I've been teaching meditation since my freshman year of college, again, thousands of sessions, thousands of people.

And since I got fed up enough with my weight issues that I created The Peak Condition Project, I've led hundreds of workouts with all kinds of people.

And you know what? In all those thousands of experiences, I have never seen a single person leave the studio, zendo, or workout space in a worse mood than they came in. Not one.

It's pretty incredible actually. We have at our fingertips the ability to feel better, more balanced, more positive, and it costs next to nothing and is available anytime.

And yet on any given night I can find more people in the nearest bar than at my yoga studio. Many many more. Expensive, short term, drug based happiness, that sip by sip tears down the body and brain.

When I lay it out like that it makes me kind of sad. But all I have to do is look at all those hard working people rocking their PCPs and I feel refreshed and ready for the next day. So thank you clients, students, and friends for all the inspiration you give me.

We're definitely on a two way street here!

What It's All About

2009-07-29T15:28:00.000+09:00

Sometimes getting in shape can take on a life of its own. When you're staying on top of your diet, working out consistently, and struggling with the constant pull to cheat, indulge, and give up, you naturally develop a kind of tunnel vision.

It can be easy to forget why you wanted to get fit in the first place as you hone in on getting the body fat down and the muscle percentage up. Sometimes PCPers will email me saying things like "I only lost 1 pound this week! What's the deal?" when just a few weeks earlier they would've been thrilled with losing any weight at all. Or people will get frustrated that the new exercises are difficult for them, not realizing that the very reason we had to switch to new exercises is that they have mastered the old ones.

Concentration is essential to making serious changes to your body and your life, but sometimes it's important to pan back from the tight zoom and look at the reasons you're working so hard. Most people get into this kind of work not because they want to be a certain weight or improve a certain part of their physique, but because they want to have more energy to live life to its fullest.

So my favorite stories from PCPers are not about how they did 500 jumpropes without a trip, or cranked out an extra set of chest dips, it's when they have a moment that vividly shows them how being healthy and strong really makes life better.

Some posts I can think of off the top of my head include:

Michael running a cross country race 2 minutes faster than last year with no preparation at all.

Corry just randomly doing a complete pull-up one day.

Saya and Minami discussing how their dancing has improved after getting in real shape.

My own experience of doing a full day's work outside and having the energy to run all the way home.

There are many, many more, maybe as I think of them I'll edit this post to reflect them all.

The point is, sometimes we are reminded that we're not getting into Peak Condition just for the sake of getting in Peak Condition. We're working hard so that we can squeeze every last bit out of our time with our friends and family, our careers, our personal goals. It's the reason we make people choose that activity in the center of their blog banners that will make the project more than just a fitness regime.

Which leads me to my latest, "I didn't know I could do that!" moment. Last week I climbed Mt. Fuji. Fuji is the highest mountain in Japan, and I had the misfortune of climbing it in terrible weather. Pea-soup fog, high winds, and hourly hailstorms.

You'll hear some talk about how climbing Mt. Fuji is an underwhelming experience, like this guy from a forum I found:

But be warned: Mt. Fuji is probably the most boring mountain in the world to climb. It's a symmetrical volcanic cone, so it's just slog, slog, slog up a zigzag track through a Martian rock landscape for hours on end (4-8 depending on your fitness level). Then you get to the top and freeze your rear waiting for the sun to peep over the horizon so you can head back down.

That's true if you take the usual route, but we chose the more challenging Fujinomiya ascent, which is actually a really fun climb, consisting of a lot of 3 dimensional challenges over steeply laid volcanic boulders overlooking deep ravines of moonlit banks of ice.

I did no special preparation for the trip and was expecting to have to take it really slow because I live right at sea level in a very flat city.

But, you guessed it, near peak condition, the climb was nothing. When you crank out 40 pistol squats every few days a little bit of rock doesn't pose much of a challenge. And I had absolutely no problem with altitude sickness, even as the people around me started vomiting and sucking down canned oxygen. I felt great the whole way, and even carried two packs for the final part when my partner gave out on me. All of this in those nasty conditions.

It wasn't a matter of showing off, toughing it out or fighting through fatigue. I just wasn't tired, or winded, or spent in anyway. I even jogged up a few of the lesser inclines. Just more confirmation that the rudimentary exercises we do are all you need to not only get into peak condition, but to perform a variety of challenges at peak levels. In this case, "peak" took on a whole new meaning!

So don't forget why you're doing this, or, if you're not doing anything for your health at the moment, why you should start. Looking good is just a side effect, the real action is unlocking your true potential for excellence, with the foundation of a lean, strong body that works for your goals, rather than constantly undermining them.

Now time to zoom back in and get to work!

Abs Abs Abs!

2009-07-21T10:54:00.000+09:00

"Yo Patrick, I want a six-pack. What should I do?"

Well, that's a tricky question. First of all, do you know what you mean when you say "six pack".

"Um, the six muscles on the front of my stomach?"

Ok, in reality there aren't six muscles on the front your abdomen, there's just one. Abdominus Rectus. It's a shallow sheet of mostly white muscle that is cross divided by connective tissue, giving it it's bumpy look. There are three of these subdivisions resulting in the appearance of 8 raised mounds.

"Ok, but I don't seem to have that muscle."

Yes, you do, if you didn't you wouldn't be able to stand up. You just can't see it.

"But I do sit-ups every day!"

Good for you. But know that you can do sit-ups, crunches, and leg raises from dawn to dusk and you'll never, ever see your rectus abdominus.

"Because I'm fat?"

Seeing your abs isn't simply a question of being not fat. It requires having a body fat percentage that very few people have the patience or willpower for in this calorie rich world.

"So I need to lose weight?"

Simply getting down to a weight that is considered healthy still won't reveal those abs. That's because they happen to sit behind the stickiest of all fats, the intra-abdominal stuff called visceral fat. This fat will stick around long after all the fat on your face arms, legs, and butt has disappeared. This is why someone can look pretty fit and trim but still have little or no ab definition.

"You're saying there's no hope for me?"

If seeing your abs is that important to you, you're going to have to take your training very seriously. You're going to have to lose most of your regular body fat, and then keep going another few months past that so that the visceral fat will finally be used up. Only then will the raised bumps of your abdominus rectus muscle start to peek through your skin.

This means a sustained period of eating right, not indulging in fattening foods, and doing some kind of cardio work. Not just a few weeks. Not just until you get sick of it, but week after week after week without a break. Not many people have what it takes.

"So where do the sit-ups come in?"

All those abdominal exercises will create a little more size and definition, but they are simply the tip of the iceberg. 90% of abs is in your body fat percentage. Ab exercises are like adding that final coat of wax to a sports car.

"It sounds so hard."

It is hard. And even more important, in terms of health it's not terribly important to have amazing ab definition. It's essentially a cosmetic pursuit. That being said, when you do get your coveted six pack, you'll feel a lot of pride and a huge spurt of motivation to keep it there. And our time period happens to place a lot of emphasis on that particular muscle, so, in the 21st century Western culture, it can be a big help with mating and career rituals.

"I just thought it would be cool to look like that person on the magazine cover."

You gotta let that stuff go. Those people in the magazines get paid to maintain their physiques. They have deep support systems and staff to ensure that they keep their condition. Furthermore, before those photo shoots they don't eat or drink for 24 hours, and they have professional training about how to make their abs pop out. Add to that make-up, lighting, and photo-shopping. And the photographer will shoot 200 shots to get that one snap when everything looks just right. This is the standard you're holding yourself to? Reality check!

"I still want a six pack"

That's great! But you need to approach it as a fun, long term project, and not a whimsy. Anything less will result in more stress and self-reproach, which will only drive you to the ice-cream aisle faster. Visible abs or not, you're already a whole and complete person. That doesn't mean you should stop trying to be better. Just do it joyfully!

Are You Really Showing Up?

2009-07-14T17:04:00.000+09:00

I have a lot of yoga students who will show up out of the blue, come to classes steadily for a few months, and just as suddenly disappear for half a year. And then they come back and resume classes like nothing happened. I used to try to get to the bottom of these disappearances. When they would turn up after a long absence I'd try to ask leading questions, like "Have you been busy?" or "It's been a while right, so take it easy today..."

These probings were usually met with blank stares. The students didn't seem to register that I had last seen them in March and it was now August. This nonchalant dropping in and out for months at a time was a real puzzler for the first few years I ran Yoga Garden, accentuated by the fact that in those early years we really needed consistent students to keep afloat!

Gradually, I figured out what was happening. I was looking at things like a teacher and owner. The first Friday of March, so and so came, then they skipped a week, then they came back, and then skipped a month before resuming their practice in May.

But from the student's perspective, taking a yoga class or starting a workout program is much more than taking up a hobby. It's the taking up of a new identity. They are now the kind of person who "does yoga" or "works out". This sets up a kind of mental continuity that makes the gaps between practice seem much shorter than they really are.

So, for the above pattern, from the students perspective, they took 2 classes in March, had a lot to do at the office and got back to the mat a few weeks later (in May). At no point did they give up on yoga or stop thinking of themselves as a "yoga student." Meanwhile I'm at the studio asking "where is everybody!"

Now, I don't mind people taking breaks. The pace and demands of the modern world just don't allow you to always take the best care of your body (even me! check my post on getting comfortable with your priorities)

The problem arises when someone who has been taking the "one week on, three weeks off" approach to yoga or working out comes up to me and says, "I've been doing this for a year now, and my body just isn't changing."

There's the hitch. Just because you internally feel like the kind of person who does yoga every week doesn't mean your once a month practice will give you the results of someone who really makes it to the mat once a week. While I believe the mind does have great powers to effect your health, it can't do the physical work of stretching or building muscles.

So if you're having trouble getting the results from your chosen physical activities, ask yourself,

"Am I letting the concept of how much I exercise cloud the actual amount of exercise I'm doing?"

Or, in other words, are you really showing up? Or just thinking it would be nice to show up?

(By the way, if you do this analysis and find that you are actually exercising a ton and still not getting results, then your diet sucks)

People who do the PCP can't believe how quickly and completely their bodies change. I'll get comments like "I've changed more in the past 4 weeks than all those years of going to the gym!" The reason is not that we have any secret formula, just that we make sure that you show up. And showing up for 90 days, for the diet, for the jumprope, for the workouts, will really change a person.

The neatest part is that when you stop making excuses and really start doing the work, not showing up just doesn't feel right anymore. You will break free of the crippling mental trap that being a person who would like to exercise more equals being the person who exercises.

So why are you still reading this? Get to it!

Hey, Guess What? You Don't Deserve It!

2009-07-06T20:07:00.000+09:00

There's a mental tick I've noticed in myself and others that can do a lot to undermine our hard work as we try to keep the weight off and the muscle on.

This is the idea that somehow a fattening and unhealthy food becomes acceptable if you've had a tough day and "deserve it". Or conversly, skipping a workout and putting your feet up because you've "earned the break."

I'm all too familiar with the slippery den of excuses and half-truths that the mind will throw up when confronted with anything unpleasant. I've tried them all myself, in fact. But this thought pattern is particularly devilish because it appeals to our sense of balance and fairness.

If you've worked hard all day and gotten a lot done, it only seems natural that you should do something nice for yourself. Out with the jumprope, in with the cookies! All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, right?

The catch is that, in terms of calories burnt and fat stored, you don't deserve it. You haven't been working in a field, climbing a mountain, or walking from dawn to dusk. The sad truth is only that level of physical activity could offset the chunk of fat that a piece of chocolate cake will deliver to your system. Our bodies simply weren't designed to handle the incredible density of caloric content that modern food allows us to indulge in.

The richest king in all of Renaissance Europe wouldn't have had at his demand the decadent selection available at your local candy shop. We are living in the land of milk and honey... except now it's milk chocolate and honey mustard buffalo wings. And it's making us look and feel terrible.

So here's the hard truth. You have to work all day, and still do your workout, and still eat a low-fat balanced meal with small portions, to get anything like the body you want. There's simply no way around it. It sucks. It's not fair. It's maddening. But there it is.

A funny thing happens once you digest this fact however. We humans are incredibly adaptable creatures. When confronted with a bad situation, we adjust our perspective and get along with things. Employees stuck in crappy jobs still find little things to make the day go by smoothly. Prisoners serving out life sentences still live very "full" lives, it's just a somewhat diminished version of the outside world. Contentment is a moving target, and all of the movement happens in our minds.
(For more on this, check out this Dan Gilbert TED talk on happiness. It'll shake you up.)

So, imagine you have been told that you have a rare disease that absolutely forbids the consumption of pizza. Your body is host to a parasite that, in the presence of mozzarella cheese and tomato sauce, will cause you to explode. One bite of pizza and you're toast. How would you feel?

Sure, there'd be a few sad moments as you realized you'd never attend another pizza party, but after a couple of weeks it would just be part of your life, you'd miss the days of pizza, but there are so many other things to enjoy while you're still kicking around!

The western diet is also making us explode, just in slow motion, over 20 or 30 years. A steady drip of indulgent foods, even for someone with an otherwise healthy lifestyle, will put them in the overweight bracket around the age of 35. All too many of these diet excesses slip in under the guise of "treats" because we "deserve something nice once in a while."

Hey, guess what? You don't deserve it! Just tell yourself that a few times and it starts to sting less. It just becomes another unpleasant thing you can deal with. Like not having the ability to fly, or not being able to breathe underwater, it's just how your body works. A serving of The Cheesecake factory's Fried Macaroni and Cheese (2000 calories) will never, ever, not make you fatter and sicker. So let it go! Stick with your fruits and vegetables.

And here's where the magic happens. After a few days saying "You don't deserve it," the true meaning of the phrase will bubble up. You don't deserve those cheesy nachos. They wreck your body and make you feel crappy. You're a wonderful, vibrant, beautiful person. The truth is you deserve so much better!

Clean Your Plate?

2009-06-29T18:09:00.000+09:00

On my journey from chubby to champion I've learned that almost all of my previous weight problems stemmed from cultural beliefs that I had simply never questioned.

For example, although I can remember few actual instances of anyone telling me to "clean my plate" it was always an unspoken expectation that there wouldn't be any food left on the flatware at the end of the meal. I don't know why it never occurred to me to just stop eating when I was full. But it didn't. I just plowed on through, no matter how my stomach felt.

I've been thinking recently about what messages I was receiving from my environment that made me believe so unquestioningly in the "clean plate" idea.

First, there is the worry of being ungrateful for the food we have. When I was a kid Ethiopia was famous for its starvation problems, and I distinctly remember the old standby "there are starving kids in Ethiopia who'd love to have that much food." Starvation is a terrible thing, but obesity isn't much better. There's no cosmic balance of hungriness, it's not as if stuffing an American kid to the gills will somehow alleviate the suffering of a malnourished Ethiopian. But to leave some extra food on the plate was like a slap in the face of a starving kid. There's a happy medium where we can be grateful for the bounty we have while eating just enough to keep us healthy and active.

Next was the idea that uneaten food was an unconscionable waste of money. This seems like a holdover from the days before modern farming hadn't made food ubiquitous and cheap. It's especially on display in restaurant settings. The percent of our budget we spend on food is lower than ever before, yet people seem to think throwing away uneaten food is going to break the bank. While we should cut waste wherever possible, it doesn't make much sense to "save money" by sacrificing your waistline (and piling on a bunch of weight related disease costs later in life).

And then there is the feeling that not eating everything on the plate is a kind of insult to the person who made it. Maybe this is just because I'm too sensitive, but I noticed early that eating everything offered to me plus seconds made the cook extremely happy. Picture "Well, you must really have liked it!" said with a grin spreading across the face. I often ate more than I really wanted just to make sure the preparer knew how much I appreciated it. We need to reorient ourselves to the idea that quality food enjoyed slowly and with care is the greatest complement to the chef. Shoveling it down and asking for more with your mouth full certainly has a dramatic effect but it'll catch up to you in the long run.

Finally, there is the biggest misconception, that eating a lot of food makes you more robust. We even have the phrase, "he's a healthy eater" when we want to communicate that someone eats a lot. Again I think this is a remnant from a time when abundant food was the exception and not the norm. Eating more calories than you consume in a day is not being a healthy eater, it's being an unbalanced eater who doesn't have a handle on their nutritional needs. Especially as a kid, I was encouraged to fill all the way up because to do so was a sign that I was a healthy boy, it made the people around me proud. As childish as it may seem, these first impressions stick with people far longer than they realize.

So what's the alternative, especially for parents trying to feed their brood?

First, I'd start by jettisoning the idea that a human being eats a certain total of food every day. The human body is an impossibly complicated system, and it will require different amounts of nourishment each day. Especially kids who go through periods of high caloric intake to power a growth spurt and then just as suddenly taper off and need to eat less. The body is custom made to respond to changes activity, stress, even weather. We need to learn to listen to our stomach, not our preconceptions of what three square meals a day looks like.

Similarly, we need to embrace the concept that you can be fully nourished and not yet "full". It takes a little practice, but anyone can learn to find that point in an eating session when they are satisfied but not full. We have the image of a truly good culinary experience being one in which we push back from the table, loosen our belts, and say "now that was a meal!" Actually, you've just put your internal organs through a system shock and will feel lethargic for hours. That's not eating, it's gorging. There's another way, and it's taking the time to enjoy each flavorful bite, and standing up from the table feeling light and upbeat, saying "that was a great meal, and now I'm ready to get on with my life!" No more food comas!

The easiest way to facilitate this more natural relationship to our portions is to let our family and children serve themselves, and switch the emphasis from "Eat as much as you want, we've got more in the back!" to "Don't worry about eating it all, it'll keep for a few days in the fridge."

Now I know a lot of this is head-slappingly obvious and you're probably already doing many of these things. The point is that, when I was growing up, no one ever told me this stuff. I really had no idea you could step away from the table at a time of your choosing, not when you finished a marathon of whatever portions had been allotted for the meal. Not until I was already way behind in the fitness department

So even if it seems stupid, find a young person in your life and tell them, "There's no need to clean your plate, just eat until you feel satisfied."

And model that behavior. That's all kids pay attention to anyway.