now eat this...diet!

There is nothing more indulgent than having someone else do the heavy lifting when it comes to preparing meals.  I mean, really!  Shopping for food, bringing it home, packaging and storing, then cooking...work?  LOL.  In the effort to trim unnecessary lard from your bodies, you have to start with the meals.  Come on people...abs are formed in the kitchen.  You can work your butt off in the gym, but you'll get no place fast if you don't modify your behavior and relationships with food.

I attribute a great amount of my success to: mental preparedness and self-awareness.  I had to make a decision that it was way past time to get back into the fit club.  I was always an active person and my sedentary retirement lifestyle inflated my body to unforgivable proportions.  I had to design a plan.  Nothing too detailed, but simply 'jump in'.  Setting yourself up for success is part and parcel to how the ends will justify the means.  You have to attack the weight with a sense of discipline, but you have to have realistic goals.  Achievable ones.

Next is the diet.  If the success pie is 5/5, then 4 out of 5 is your diet.  A huge amount of how your body responds to exercise is by it's fuel (food).  Listen to your body.  See, this comes back to mental prep and self-awareness.  Without discipline, you can't listen to your body when your stomach craves bad behavior.  You can eat what you want, but eventually your gym performance will start to shape your mission in the kitchen.  Balance and portion control is the key.  Eat as often as you like, just stick to serving sizes.  If you are eating 3 meals a day your protein ounces should be around 4.  But if you're eating 4-6 meals a day, then you need to break it up and spread it across the meals, say 2-3 ounces.  There will be plenty of opportunities to cheat.  My motto is 'eat often, eat less, eat variety'.  Since I love food, (self-awareness acknowledged) I attack my meal prep to 'taste' as much as I can in order to be satisfied...NOT FULL!  Seasons help to achieve this.  Move beyond traditional salt and pepper.  Experiment with peppers, expound on the leafy herbals like Parsley, Basil, Thyme, and Rosemary.  Food that has a lingering aromatic affect will satisfy you long before you eat it, and in turn you will not require a wheelbarrow and pitch fork to eat.

On the diet side, I have tried some interesting shake-ups when it comes to comfort eating.  Olive Oil is my best buddy, even though coconut oil, and canola I still use on occasion, but in very small amounts.  I even use animal fat that is left over from bacon.  Yes.  I do.  I don't bath my food in fats, but if I want a seasoning that only bacon can bring, I do it.  Rocco Dispirito, with the foreword by Mehmet Oz, has created a new cook book titled, Now Eat This! Diet which shows you how to have your food, prepared in a healthier way.  Actually we could have collaborated on this since this was my mantra from the onset.

I'm not here to give a stump or plug in for Rocco.  I am not getting a single cent for this mention.  But I did it only to show you that it's not impossible to prepare great tasting food for a third of the weight in junk.  You can actually get to eat more food in volume if you just weave in more healthier choices.

If you master the first two edicts, then the final part is going to be a piece of cake!  It's exercise...YAY!  I know you are excited now, so start out slow, but again do it often.  Get your body prepared for the challenge.  It's going to be hard.  But once your body gets in condition to exercise it would widen it's ability to tolerate more intense training.  Schedule, adapt, challenge.  I work out on a schedule, but I'm making constant changes so that my body is always struggling a little to figure out how to get through the battle.  My challenge 3 months in was a 5K finish.  This spring, it's to run faster and finish with a better time.  Since I can't exercise when I want, I do it when I can and I make it intense with the stretch at the end as my reward.  I love stretching!

For restarts or beginners, aim for stress-freeing your joints.  If you injure yourself, you'll be sidelined and you may throw it out altogether.  So, no running yet, not until you drop some poundage first.  Best options: elliptical, bike, arc trainer!  I fell to injury for pushing to fast.  Avoid this by making gradual changes.  I run currently, two days a week with an alternate still on the bike.  My runs aren't the same on both days.  I usually make one of those days a distance run and the other HIIT (high intense interval training).  The purpose here is to strengthen the parts to run without fatiguing.  In other words, work faster and finish strong as the goal.  So the first run essentially is for endurance (long winds) and the second is for stamina (speed).  I have 41 year old joints that were never conditioned for running, so I have built in relief days, where I cross train with a boot camp or cycle.  The cycle day is HIIT as well.  I have the seat and the handles for support so I try to kill it and train my lungs to operate at maximum capacity plus one.  I really push it!

There you have it!  There's a Breast Cancer Walk/Run coming in May in downtown Detroit.  The Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Race for the Cure will be on May 21, 2011.   Lace up, and get ready.  I'll meet you there.