Recover Long

Train short and hard but recover long!

Don't Try This At Home

You know how they have to tell kids not to try this at home? The reason cooked they say this is because children feel so liberated in their bodies, they feel like they can do anything they see. And in general they can almost do anything they see. Remember when we used to feel like that? Liberated in our own bodies? Before we stopped moving that is...

Chemitarian?

Some people call themselves vegetarian, or vegan, or they are on this cleanse or this diet or that. How come they all seem like chemitarians as one of my clients puts it. Meaning they eat mainly a lot of chemically processed foods, refined foods, processed grains, and nonmeat food matter. Potato chips, Doritos, Cheetos, Twinkies are all things I've seen people eat who've sworn off meat.

All these diets still are heavy in chemicals, processing, and low in real raw vegetables.

Desire or Addiction

When your desire for food is more than your need for food, is when you have to start asking yourself if its becoming an addiction.

News Flash

Hey folks, quick news flash here. Real food is not cheap.

What Is A Trainer?

It's not very well known but there are bars called hostess bars or dance halls called hostess dancing. It was more popular in the past, but it's still around. A hostess bar is a place where you pay by the hour and the hostess compliments you, blows up your ego, acts interested, listens, and does everything for you. Like get you a napkin, your drink, pick up stuff, just fawn over you, flirt with you, etc. Hostess dancing is pretty similar. You go to a club and pay a girl to dance with you, tell you how good you are, how handsome you are, etc. 

A lot of people seem to think that's what trainers do also. Trainers think that's their job, and the clients expect that when they hire a trainer. Someone who compliments them all the time, gets them their water, their towel, tell them how good they look, how they are too lean, too buff, the man, too strong, flirt with you, make you feel desirable and sexy, stretch you, open the doors for you, put the weights back for you, hold your hand while you are doing lunges, support your back while your are lifting something, etc.

Wait-a-minute, seems like people expect this also at the nail salons, from their stylists, their hair dresser, dry cleaners, etc. No wonder hostess bars are becoming obsolete.

Well the buck stops there. A trainer isn't a host or hostess. They aren't your cheerleader. They aren't there to pick up your weights, get you your towel, tell you how good looking you are. Why the hell would they put your weights back when the whole point of you being there is to lift a lot of heavy things? That makes no sense. Why is the athlete resting while the trainer goes to get their water?

Would you expect that from your football coach or tennis instructor or martial arts instructor or one of your professors in college? No. So what are you paying for? It's a waste of money to use your trainer as an emotional crutch. And it that's what the trainer is best at, he is not maximizing his job. 

A trainer's job is to train you, on your lifestyle, habits, diet, athleticism, and your mind. Whenever I have my athlete/client stretch after a work out and they see a trainer gently massage their client or stretch them, they ask me why I don't do that for them? Then I ask them, why don't I just work out for you instead too while you just watch. 

The client needs to work out, not pretend to work out. And trainers need to start doing their jobs, I don't care how much money they charge or what celebrity they train or how expensive the jeans they are wearing while they train their clients are. Are you a trainer or an actor/trainer?

Emotional Eating

So you only eat whatever you want when you are upset. It's a treat, a reward, and it's only when you are upset about something, so its excusable. But what happens if you are the type of person who is always upset???

Looks Can Be Deceiving

Just because someone looks out of shape doesn't mean they don't work out. It just means they eat poorly.

Flex!

I asked a new client to flex her stomach, she asked me how.

Soy Sauce

If soy sauce does this to a dead squid, what is it doing to us?

Overfed

We are overfed, under nourished.

Body Builder Syndrome

Most common thing I hear a client say is, "I don't want to look like a body builder."

Most common way people work out at the gym is like a body builder.

Dangerous Sign

Saw a girl in front of a famous high end bootcamp gym, she was outside getting air. Exhausted. Mom and bootcamp trainer gave her a Gatorade and told her to get back in there and suck it up if she wants to lose some weight and look good. She soon passed out and an ambulance had to be called. This is a pretty lean athletic looking girl mind you, and after speaking with her mom who didn't want her to get in the ambulance in the first place, told me she was in perfect medical health.

This is so bad for so many reasons. Her crazy mom, the crazy trainer, the hive mind mentality of all the people in the bootcamp, them giving her Gatorade to give her body of instant sugar and energy that will only last temporarily, her body's inability to draw energy and fuel from her fat reserves, there's so many other things wrong here, mainly a girl in her early 20s just passing out after twenty minutes of this bootcamp who according to her mom was in perfect health. Now who knows of the perfect health is accurate.

But on top of everything else I listed as problems, where was the monitoring, the assessment prior to work out, the consultation, etc. But this is what's popular, and this is what people want, and her passing out did not bother anyone in the class nor did it stop anyone from continuing to run mindlessly on a treadmill...

Evolution!

Human beings have become bigger and weaker!

Instant Food

You hear terms like instant, fast, quick, easy, to describe food. That means its been processed and refined and refined and precooked and processed so it's easier to prepare. That also means the food becomes instant energy. That means it floods your blood with sugar. That means your body has to quickly store it into fat or use it . That means your body no longer wants to use fat as the main energy source but use that instant energy from food as your energy source. You are reprogramming your body, making it think food will always be plentiful so you don't need to burn fat, just store it. Makes you think twice before you carb up or down a Gatorade let alone sodas or fast food.

You Are Not Big Boned

Why And How

Those are two philosophical trains of thoughts. Why and how? A lot of people's personal philosophy is all about why, why do we do this, why are we good or bad, why do bad things happen, why do I think, why do we believe in gods or God, why do we care about quality, etc.

Another more pragmatic way of thinking is not focusing on the why, but on the how. How can we fix this, how can I move on with my life, okay so this bad thing has happened in my life, how do I improve my current situation?

It's not important why you got fired, it's important how you can start to make money again and more of it. This is a much more efficient way to think about your life.

I've seen coaches in sports yelling at their athletes after a bad play, asking them, "why did you do that?" The athlete doesn't always know why he made that error nor is that even important. If they did something wrong, its more important to figure out how to fix that problem, or how to enhance their strengths.

In some people's lives they will come to a point where they will ask themselves, "why did I let myself go, why am I so fat, why do I hate working out, why did I eat that?" And you have now a choice. You can spend the rest of your life psychoanalyzing yourself and trying to figure out why or you can start today figuring out how do to change things? How do I eat better? How do I make working out more sustainable and appealing? How does my body burn away this fat?

Why's lead to a series of more whys and then you just end up in mental jibberish. When you think about how, you get right to the point and start to become productive. Why also has its place, but it's more about investigation, whereas how is about creativity and productivity.

Starving Yourself

In this modern age of overeating, we can still die of starvation. An obese person can die of starvation. They can have all this built up fat that their body no longer knows how to convert into fuel and if they completely stop eating or eat very little over a certain period of time, they will begin to starve to death.

The other factor is malnutrition. We could eat all the food we want and still starve for nutrients. As a child, I thought I ate a lot of food. I ate a lot of the typical Asian diet which isn't as healthy as people think it is. When people describe Asian diets, it's funny because they are describing ways we were eating in the past. Not how modern Asians eat, with nonperishable packaged foods, MSG, tons of white rice, lots of modified meats splattered with sauce. So I thought and my parents thought I ate a lot, and I did. I ate a lot of white rice and soy sauce. The doctors said I had malnutrition. Everyone was confused so we went to an herbalist who just said it was something else and gave me a tea that made me sick. I've been eating to starvation.

This is not unique to me, a lot of people suffer from malnutrition even though they eat so much. It's become such a problem that supplement and vitamins sales have grown and grown and almost every person I know has a multivitamin and fish oils in their cabinet.

We can still eat and eat, and starve. Sure you could eat a ton of white rice or just plain oats like they feed animals, and get big and fat. You will also get sick and lack sufficient nutrients and if you don't eat, your body will just starve and not know how to burn off its fat for fuel. Then like animals we will need to be pumped full of hormones and given shots to keep us alive.

To me there is no difference between white rice, white bread, or white paper. It's all the same to me. In fact you can make paper out of rice. In some countries they have even used paper and cardboard as filler in foods. It's also been fed to animals as well. How much healthier is rice to eat than paper? Not by much. You ever eaten rice cakes or rice puffs that is unflavored? Tastes like paper. It's even hard for me to spend money on rice dishes, why am I spending so much on flavored paper? A huge bag of rice at an Asian market costs hardly anything. Most of this food I may be ordering at a restaurant is mostly rice. What am I paying for here? Not for nutrition. Or they will fill it up with some other cheap filler, some other grain, or possibly corn, or soy, or potato, etc. All cheap at the market that we pay much more for than actual costs.

Why is it so hard to lose weight or burn fat when our bodies should constantly be burning fat for fuel every moment of the day? What did our modern diets do to us?

Scary Food Facts

http://health.yahoo.net/experts/eatthis/9-scariest-food-facts