Building self esteem, one cheap pop at a time.

A "Cheap pop" is comedy slang for a comment to an audience that elicits automatic applause.  You say something obvious and pandering (therefore "cheap") and it receives the expected "pop" of applause. You know what I'm talking about, performers and politicians use them all the time.  Statements like:  "Lets give it up for the troops"  "God Bless America" (Lee Greenwood) or Bush, arm draped around a firefighter, even SNL bringing out the Sandy Hook Elementary School Choir to sing Silent Night, Super Duper Turbo Nuclear Cheap Pop


My CD is made in China but 'merica man!

Bush with NYFD Prop

I want to hear the Sandy Hook jokes the SNL guys wrote.



 But personal Cheap pops are my favorites: "Hey everyone, I just... (insert joyous event here) got married, engaged, had a baby, having a baby; 

How much do you tip the drummer?

Music makes you move.  Slave drivers on galley ships knew this long before the Walkman and MP3. The pounding drum on a galley ship moved the rowers along.  There is an instinctual need to move with the beat.  That and the guy with the whip.

Nosmo King

I smoke cigarettes.  Only a few packs a week but I do smoke.  It's time to quit.  I'm feeling it after I work out, and in the morning and right now actually as I just put one out.  It sucks being a smoker.  I hate it really.  But it's got me and it's not letting go.

Telemetry Schlemetry

I need a bike.  To ride for exercise and for the Triathlon next year.  I googled "cheap Triathlon Bikes" and found an article in Cycle Review titled "Best Tri- Bikes under $2000"  Evidently the "Geometry and Telemetry" of tri-bikes is special and you need carbon fiber frames and all kinds of other specialized shit. Triathlete, please; I'm not racing, I'm finishing.

A real tri bike can go $5,000 and up.  Those guys running the IronMan on TV are on cycles in the low 5 figures.  I'm just a fat guy who needs a bike that will hold my weight.

In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king.

The gym can be intimidating, especially if you're old and fat, like me.  The gym I used in New Orleans was all fancy.  It was a state of the art shrine to fitness.  A huge facility with high ceilings and glass walls, a juice bar, spinning and step classes; and buzzing over the equipment like bees in a hive were ripped, skinny, fit, pretty people in coordinated work out clothes.  I did not fit in.

Where I work out now is a little different.  I use the gym at the Cardiac Center of SMRMC, the hospital where my wife works. 

Live long and prosper.

I'm a newly minted vegan.   All shiny and smiling!  I said it, I'm a VEGAN.  And after researching it I can't understand why everyone else is not.  It's this guys fault; Dr. Joel Fuhrman. I challenge anyone with health or weight issues to read his book Eat to Live or watch his video and not at least question their eating habits. 

For me, it's not a moral choice it's a selfish choice.  I want to live a better, longer healthier life.  I don't care about saving animals, plants are alive too after all.  I an just interested in optimum health.  And I don't know why it took me so long to care about myself.

The path of least resistance... why there are crooked rivers and crooked men.

My brain is screaming at me to go eat something.  I woke up at 3am with hunger pangs.  A rarely felt sensation.  I took me a minute or two to identify the feeling.  I doubt I've been actually hungry in decades.
The main problem for me with diet, exercise and weight loss is that it feels unnatural.  It's like swimming upstream against a strong current.  Whereas eating what I want, when I want is like floating down stream on a tube with a beer.  This mindset is deeply ingrained. 

No specific un-aided recollection

I've always been envious of celebrities and the rich.   Because they can afford a personal chef. I thought that would be the way to go. My own chef, who would prepare delicious lo-cal food for me at every meal. That would make getting and staying fit easy.

And then I thought about it. I have a personal chef, ME. I just must hate my client (also me). Cause I've been feeding him garbage for years.

I'm sorry Mr. Guidry but you've exceeded the recommended lifetime allowance for food, I'll need your card please

I have eaten more than I should all my life.  In fact I'm sure I've already eaten a lifetimes worth of food and then some.  

If we were issued a card at birth with with a lifetime's worth of food credits on it, I'd be done already.  I'd be drinking only water, (plenty left on my water card), from now until I died in 10 or 12 days.  Unless of course someone dies prematurely and I can take their food card, but who can I kill?  

Hey, there's an idea for a TV series , "Hungry". It's Logan's Run meets Hunger Games.  Perfect for the SciFi network.  Before I flesh it out, better check to see if Phillip K. Dick already wrote it.

I'm not just telling you, I'm telling everyone!

One of the main purposes of writing this blog is because it will help me get to the IronMan 70.3 in April 2014.  How will sarcasm, bad puns and the random derision of Subway Jarod help me get to the  IronMan , you ask?  Allow me to explain:

Studies show that people who write down thier goals, achieve those goals more often than people who don't.  So I'm writing this stuff down AND, bonus.... I'm puting it out there for othes to see; to enroll others in my quest and therefor my eventual success.  Hence, der blog. For me it makes this real.

The harder I work, the luckier I get.

I'm getting some negative push back from select family and friends, (who are of course morbidly obese), about my current endeavor.  "It can't be healthy" they opine or "My doctor told me to never fast" they lie. Or my favorite "My Jenny Craig adviser said it never works and you'll just put it all back on." .... Basically the fat people are saying "Hey stop it already! You're doing this the hard way, I only want to hear about easy ways.  Because if the hard way works and really it's the only way, I'm screwed.  So stop trying or fail already so I can avoid taking responsibility for my health and well being."

Jack not Jared

I'm fasting at the moment.  Well not really "fasting"  because I'm doing a cleansing juice fast and still taking in about 800 calories/day but for an American? Especially a doughy middle class white southern American?  Not eating food is fasting.  Now 5 days in I'm starting to feel the grip of Food loosening.  I'm obsessed with food, the getting, storing, prepping, preparing consuming.... its a huge part of my day, and my life. 

Why does your pig have a wooden leg?

My first workout felt like a long long joke with a weak punch line.   Mainly because I followed the plan.  And the plan requires a warm up which, in my case, will be 4 times longer then the actual work out. 

A fitness expert once explained to me in detail why warming up before exercise is so important.  Especially when you are over 30 (or way over thirty), overweight (or way over weight) and have joint or other physical issues (BFG issues supercenter, how may I direct your call?). I wont bore you with the technical stuff but anecdotally, I tried to short cut the warm up in the past and ended up on the couch with both knees in soft casts packed in ice.  So I am a believer.

“Instant Gratification takes too long.” - Carrie Fisher

I have been here before. The beginning, the grand plans, the joining up for this and signing up for that and buying the special what not. What has done me in in the past is impatience. Wouldn't it be great to get diet and exercise results at the same rate (and with the same ease) as you gain weight and go to pot?

Becoming a BFG was soooo easy, even wonderful. I love food, and movies and food and doing nothing, and did I mention food?

Fast and Furious

Whenever I have done this fast in the past I always hear from people; “you know fasting don't work, right?” or “you can really hurt yourself fasting”. Well let me clarify I hear that stuff from FAT people. Only fat people think fasting doesn't work. Skinny people know it works, cause that's how you stay skinny, you eat almost nothing. Well almost nothing compared to what I, a disgusting fat body eats.

Now before you go all "don't be so hard on your self" and "you've been thru a lot recently" and  "give your self a break" DON'T!

This is not punishment, or abuse, this is love. Self love.

There are many who believe that caloric restriction and or intermittent fasting is a key to a longer and heather life. I'll include some links to wiki articles below.

But here is my theory:

Humans are not designed to sit and eat all day. We were hunter gathers who evolved farming and food production faster than our bodies evolved to adjust to the constant presence of food.

We were running around eating what we found or killed and some days there was none. Some days there was plenty but most days there was not.

I think (and there is research to back this) that we humans function best, are healthiest when we can't sit and eat all the time. Imagine having to really physically work for food? What if you had to walk several miles to gather some berries and that was it for the day? Burning calories to get fewer calories.

Now we have processed food everywhere. The waiting room where I work has cookies and cakes and doughnuts, you know just in case a customer is between meals.   And of course it's all processed carb heavy foods that can last in a plastic wrapper for a year or two.

Carbohydrates = sugar, period. Especially processed carb food like bread/wheat/pasta/cakes...all the complex carbohydrates that make up the average American diet. And processed carbs like cake and pasta are to natural carbs what crack is to cocaine. Stronger, faster acting and a destroyer of lives.

Look at what happens to aboriginal populations once processes food is introduced? People who have never seen a tooth brush but have amazingly strong, perfect white teeth look like life long meth addicts in a matter of months once introduced to processed food. Diabetes and obesity are rampant in aboriginal populations introduced to a processed food diet. We eat shit.  Mostly figuratively (but occasionally literally in the form of processed meat products, see/read Fast-food Nation and never buy a burger again), and get the expected results.

I think of Daniel Day Lewis in Last of the Mohicans, he ran about 6 marathons on film and ate like a hand full of berries and half a squirrel the whole time. Who wins marathons? 50 Year old, 105lb, barefoot Kenyans. I'm just saying, heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, and many other killers of average Americans can be CURED by diet, proper hydration and exercise; that’s right CURED buy walking, drinking water not sodas and putting down the fork!

But I digress, back to the Master Cleanse. Not a proper fast but rather a liquid only extreme low calorie cleansing diet for 10-30 days. Pioneered 60 years ago by a health nut who was arrested for practicing medicine without a license but hey even a broken watch is right twice a day.

Since it's inception the diet has been used widely and with great success. I have done it twice in the past to jump start a new program. It works for me so I love it.

In 8 oz of pure water add 2 tbs of fresh squeezed lemon juice, 2 tbs of dark amber class b pure maple syrup and a big dash of cayenne pepper. You can make it a gallon at a time by adding 1.5 cups juice, 1.5 cups syrup and a heaping tbs of cayenne. Pour out about 3 cup of a gallon jug of purified water first and you're all set. Using organic products is said to aid in the detox and the organic lemons taste better I think.

Directions:

You drink 8-16 glasses of the lemonade a day and lots of water....thats it.

To boost the cleanse aspect a morning “flush” is recommended. 16oz of water with 2 tbs of un-iodinized salt gulped down as fast as possible on an empty stomach. Then an evening laxative Herbal tea like the aptly named Smooth Move.

This is where the “Fast and Furious” pun fleshes out. Fast and then run furiously to the toilet.

But you also lose weight fast and furiously. And the more you have to lose the faster it comes off. So I can conservatively expect to lose 15-20 pounds in 10 days. Not a misprint (or bad math Scott ;-)) but reality. When you're a BFG it comes off quick.

Here's some links to support my weak ass assertions and the wild leaps of assumption committed above:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermittent_fasting

http://www.healthinfonet.ecu.edu.au/chronic-conditions/diabetes/reviews/our-review

http://www.examiner.com/article/many-indigenous-people-who-never-brush-their-teeth-also-never-get-tooth-decay

http://themastercleanse.org/

350,000 - Numbers dont lie

A journey of 350,000 calories begins with single step. 350,000 calories = 100lbs, or more specifically 350,000 is the number of calories you would need to burn in order to lose 100lbs and conversly 350,000 is the number of calories you would need to consume in order to gain 100lbs. These are of course "net calories", less then you consume to lose and more than you burn to gain.

Lets break this down; You gotta burn 3,500 more than you take in to lose a pound.... one single pound.   So if you're a big fat guy like me.... Quick aside, I'm not being hard on myself, the clicinical term for me at my current weight is morbidly obese, to me "big fat guy" some how sounds better..... now .....So if you're a big fat guy like me, with a BMI of 41.6 you need about 3,000 calories a day just to maintain, just to sit on the couch. 3,000 calories a day will keep me even.

So for example if I cut my intake down to 2,500cal/day I would theroretically lose a pound a week (500cal deficit x 7 days = 3,500 calories a week or 1 pound). Or 52lbs in a year. Cut down to 2,000 a day and we're there; 100 lbs in a year.

This is the basic idea but overly simplistic because of course as we lose weight we need fewer calories to maintain the new smaller us. So that 2 pounds a week we lose for the first few weeks at our new 2,000cal/day diet will begin to taper off and then disapear.

That is where exersise comes in. If I take in 2,500cal/day and I burn 3,000 just watching TV and then I add 30 minutes of walking at a moderate pace, 3 times a week  I'll burn an aditional 500cals a week. (that's right walking my big fat ass a mile only burns 165 calories). Increasing weight loss and hopefully improving my calorie burn while on the couch.

And ofcourse as you lose weight you have to go faster and father to burn the same calories.

This is why weight loss is so damn hard and why people get so frustrated.  Add to this that I live in the south, where the food at the gas station rivals any resturant in the rest of the country... And that I'm middle aged and have less testostrone and all the other hormones of youth....this is gonna be a bitch.

I say all this so you will understand the extreem nature of my plan.  I know what I'm doing and what needs to happen to get me from the couch to the finish line of a half Ironman 100+ pounds less then I am today in 381 days.

I'm not gonna over do it, over train or blow out a knee (again like I did last time). I'm gonna start the exercise slow, in the water with no joint stress. and start the diet hard with a fast. More on that next post.

This is gonna be hard but also fun and exciting.  And I am blessed.  My prooblem is that I want to get into shape.  Not fresh water or my kids playing near unexploded mines, or cancer but weight and fitness.  I'm blessed with first world problems today.

So follow my progress and join me if you like.  It all starts Thursday March 14th, 2013 at 6am CDT.  Training, diet and progress updates as they occur.

Here's a link to a BMI (or body mass index) calculator and a basic Metobolic rate (caloric need) calculator

http://nhlbisupport.com/bmi/

http://www.diet-blog.com/05/how_to_calculate_your_daily_calorie_needs.php

See you at the finish line!

Thanks to Scott Nieman who cought my math mistake in the first posting.  I had origionally put 35,000 calories....it is 350,000......  OMG!