Paradigm Shifts: Change Your Outlook, Change Your Body

Fitness, for me, has not just been a physical journey. It has been an introspective one a well. Through learning about myself, seeing how I've changed, and interacting with people who have been in similar situations, I've come up with a few mental changes you can work on to be more successful - not just in your fitness journey, but in other aspects of life as well.

Learn your triggers, then learn to deal with them
I'll start this post out with a bit of honesty. I cheated on my diet today. Why? Stress. Today's my last day of spring break, I haven't done any of my homework, I had to wake up at 5AM for work today (and, due to daylight savings time, I lost an hour of sleep on top of that) and to top it off, I wrecked two wheels on my car in as many days.

So, I've identified stress, and specifically the cause of it, as what triggered me to overeat. Good first step. To deal with triggers, I suggest one of three basic strategies: Eliminate, navigate, and mitigate.

Eliminating triggers is probably the simplest and most effective thing you can do. Once you've identified a trigger, avoid it entirely. One easy example I can provide, I'm a beer snob, and I like my beer how I like my metal: black, heavy, and dark. However, when you like 11% ABV Russian Imperial Stouts that come in between 300 and 400 calories a bottle, you can't be drinking too many of them. So, the first thing I did, I stopped keeping beer in my house. My opportunity to drink as an impulsive decision has been eliminated, and I'm much less inclined to do so if it involves getting in my car, going to the store, and buying one. Second thing I uninstalled Untappd, an app where you earn rewards for, you guessed it, drinking beer. No longer feeling compelled to earn those rewards, the frequency of my drinking dropped dramatically about a week after I removed the program.

Unfortunately, it's not always possible to eliminate triggers. Option two is to navigate them. I work with food that doesn't fit in my diet. Dealing with that temptation on its own wouldn't be a problem, except I have one coworker who insists that I eat it. I politely decline, she becomes more insistent. Unfortunately, this dynamic has derailed me more times than I would have liked. Since I can't realistically avoid the situation altogether, I've had to develop strategies to navigate the situation. A few things I've done in this situation:

• Ate the food she offered me, just a lot less of it.
• Told her that I already had some, or that I would get some later.
• Reminded her that if I stop watching my diet, I gain weight rapidly.
• Took some of the food she gave me, and threw it out while she wasn't looking.

Option three is to mitigate. Mitigating is when you've already slipped up, learning how to apply the brakes and steer yourself away from a full out binge. Basically, avoiding the situation where you tell yourself, "Well, I've already blown my diet today, I might as well have another piece of cake." And, inevitably, one more piece of cake turns into at least three.

Mitigating is what I did today. I realized that my willpower was diminished, and I wasn't going to be able to stick to my portion sizes. So, I at least stuck somewhat to healthy foods, filling up mostly on chicken, oatmeal and cottage cheese. Once I'd eaten enough to satisfy myself, I was in a better state to wind down, and curb my calorie consumption. Admittedly, this is not an easy thing to do, and I'm not always successful at it. However, I have found that just being conscious of the fact that you're doing it gives you a foothold into controlling it.

Stop playing the blame game
In my paragraph about navigation, I could easily blame my coworker for trying to knock me off my diet. I could blame myself for being weak-willed. I could blame my parents, the education system, my genetics, or the manufacturers of El Monterey microwavable chimichangas for making me fat in the first place. How does this help me? Simple, it doesn't.

Blaming others for your own failures is obviously not productive. Primarily, because it's based on the egotistical idea that you are fundamentally perfect and don't need to change. That begets learned helplessness. Blaming yourself is equally unproductive. That leads to feelings of inadequacy, and again, learned helplessness.

So, who is to blame? It doesn't matter. Stop thinking about that question, and stop using the word "blame." What matters is the fact that you have the power to make choices right now and going forward.

Lose the sense of entitlement
While you're removing the word "blame" from your vocabulary, strike out the word "deserve" as well. I remember seeing a commercial for Planet Fitness, advertising free pizza nights for their members. "You've been working out, you deserve to have some pizza once in a while." A couple months later I was reading an article about why Planet Fitness is so financially successful, and one of the key reasons is because, in a given month, 75% of their members never show up. Now, think about that for a second. They're giving people food which counteracts their fitness efforts, as a means of rewarding their fitness efforts, when most of them put in no effort. That's flat out ridiculous.

While this may seem like an extreme example, it's really indicative of the mindset that a lot of people go into with fitness, that they have to reward themselves for sticking to their plan, even if the reward isn't sticking to the plan. Truth is, people often don't know how many calories they're burning, or how many they're consuming, so these rewards often undo the work they've done. This is why people who reward themselves are overwhelmingly unsuccessful.

I propose a new plan. You're probably an adult with a job, or maybe a student. You go to work or school every day because it's something you have to do, not because you've bribed yourself into it. Step one, learn to take some responsibility. Step two, make sure your plan is sustainable. If you constantly need external reinforcement, you should rethink what you're doing, because your plan will likely fail in the long term. Step three, change the way you think about your deviations. There are ways to build a certain amount of flexibility into your diet. If you do decide to eat some junk food, it will be because you've accounted for it and determined that you can eat it without significantly hindering your progress.

Stop being self conscious
I'm amazed at how many people come to the internet looking for a solution to the same problem. They want to start working out, but the thought of working out around other people terrifies them. However, the truth is that to make meaningful progress, you have to leave your comfort zone. Jogging in a crowded gym is one step you can take to get yourself more accustomed to taking risks.

Now, I occasionally get weird looks in the gym if I'm doing barbell glute bridges, or snide comments about my diet from coworkers as I'm shoveling handfuls of spinach into my mouth. However, I would recommend keeping the following things in mind.

• What you're doing, you're doing for yourself. The opinion of strangers should not matter to you.
• Maybe people will judge you. But unless it's a person who you personally care about, or who can directly influence your life, it's irrelevant.
• The vast majority of the times people judge you, they will forget that they have done so by the end of the day.

While I don't necessarily agree with the entire sentiment of it, The Complete Guide to Not Giving a Fuck by Julien Smith is an interesting read on the topic.

Realize that you're not as busy as you think
"I don't have time to exercise," is a pretty common excuse I hear. Yeah, I get it, everyone's busy. Between school and work, I'm out of the house 7 days a week, usually a couple of those days surpass 12 hours. I still find time to cook and work out. Let me rephrase that. Everyone thinks they're busy. I remember being in college my first time around, telling people I was too busy to do things, and routinely spending hours on end playing flash games.Without knowing the details of your schedule, it's hard to say exactly how. But, two general tips I can give you is to cut down on nonproductive activities, and find ways to streamline your schedule.

First, nonproductive activities. Over the past couple years, I've basically stopped watching TV and playing video games. I realize it's a thing that people enjoy, but once you're done, you have nothing to show for it, and you haven't even gained any meaningful experiences.

Streamlining your schedule can usually be done by eliminating redundancy. A few things I've taken to doing is doing meal prep in large batches rather than cooking a lot of individual meals, eliminating unnecessary shopping trips, and studying while I'm riding the train.

As Arnold Schwarzenegger recently said, "If the President has time to work out, and the Pope has time to work out, you have time to work out."

Morrocan-influenced Chicken Shawarma

Ingredients

• 6oz chicken breast
• 1 Tablespoon ras el hanout
• 1/2 teaspoon liquid smoke
• 2 Tablespoons lemon juice (separated)
• 1/2 cup plain nonfat Greek yogurt (separated)
• 1/2 cup instant oatmeal
• 3 fluid ounces liquid egg product
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1 Tablespoon PB2 powdered peanut butter
• Optional: thin sliced red onions and/or green apple, chopped dates

Directions

• Cut chicken into thin slices. Coat evenly with one half of the lemon juice, the liquid smoke, and the ras el hanout. Saute in a nonstick pan, and set it aside when you're done.
• While that's cooking, mix the batter for the flat bread using the oatmeal, baking powder, salt, egg, one half of the Greek yogurt, and salt. Prepare that like you would a protein pancake.
• While the bread is cooking, mix a sauce using the other halves of the Greek yogurt and lemon juice, the PB2 and the garlic.
• Place chicken on one half of the bread, top with sauce, and fold in half.

Notes
This is probably far from something you'd get in any authentic restaurant, but it still turned out pretty tasty. One big change was using PB2 in place of tahini. Way back, like 20 years ago, my family was big into eating hummus, but it wasn't nearly as popular as it is today. So, it was a little hard to come by, and so was tahini for that matter. We'd typically use peanut butter as a substitute ingredient, I personally find the taste to be pretty similar.

Macros
7g fat, 35.5g carbs, 63g protein

Level Your Learning Curve

Let me tell you a story about three guys I know: Mike, Bill, and Pat. Mike had recently gotten out of the military and his fitness was slipping. Bill, during high school, was a black belt in Tae Kwon Do who trained under a world champion, but again, his fitness slipped once he got to college. Pat was one of the stars of his high school football team, and wanted to get in better shape to prepare to play in college. They decided on a solution, they were going to do P90X together.

You've probably seen commercials for P90X. It's an intense, 3 month circuit training program, that along with the prescribed diet, promises dramatic results. That is, if you can stick with it.

It took less than two weeks for Pat to quit the program. He found that doing P90X on top of his regular football training was just too much.

Within about a month, Mike had abandoned the diet. He found that eating so strictly, compounded by his other life stresses, was too much to handle. He stopped exercising a few weeks after that.

Bill actually completed the entire program. But after that, nothing. For a while, at least. About 6 months later, realizing his fitness was slipping again, he went with the next program in Beach Body's arsenal: Insanity. He did it for about 2 weeks, then gave up because it was too hard.

All three of them failed in their fitness goals for basically the same reason. Not due to any sort of personality defect, judging by their backgrounds they're all perfectly capable of working hard and staying motivated. It was because their plan wasn't sustainable. They threw themselves in the deep end, tried to run before they could walk, so to speak. And, while Bill was able to swim rather than sink initially, his downfall was that he had no endgame. He didn't maintain.

Since then, each of these men has chosen a different path to fitness and has been successful. Mike is back in the military, he runs on a regular basis, and has cleaned up his diet to include less fast food, and more healthy home cooked meals. Bill has been doing Stronglifts for strength training, and Leangains. Pat went off to college and became a successful rugby player.

Which brings me to my point. Getting fit is hard, and it's a long process. Anyone who tells you otherwise is probably lying so they can sell you something. Here's where you need to strike a balance, though. On the one hand, you will need to push yourself beyond your comfort zone. On the other hand, set the bar too high and you will inevitably fail.

So, how do we reconcile this? Here are a few tips.

Set goals, and narrow your focus.
The definition of what it means to be fit varies widely from person to person. Low body fat, high muscle mass, strength, flexibility, endurance, speed, being good at a particular sport... these are all valid, but you have to prioritize. If you try to do everything, best case scenario, you become pretty good at everything, but not outstanding at anything. Worst case scenario, you get overwhelmed and don't make significant progress.


Start small, and build from there.
The first few months of my fitness journey was definitely small scale. I got a job, which reduced my opportunity to eat out of boredom. I went to the gym, and just kind of did whatever I felt like. I stopped eating ice cream and microwave chimichangas with cheese sauce all the time. Just doing this, I lost 25lbs in 3 months.

Then I started doing Stronglifts. It's 5 exercises, the weight scheme is written out for you, it's low volume, the weight starts out light. This, in my opinion, is what makes programs like this good for beginners. It starts out easy, and gets hard gradually.

Over the years, my diet and training methods have evolved. They're a lot more complex now. If I had gone from zero to what I do now... it wouldn't have worked.

More difficult does not mean better.
You're probably familiar with the phrase "Work smarter, not harder." While hard work definitely does play a role in fitness, effort doesn't directly correlate to results.

One obvious example of this: Dick Talens, one of my fitness mentors, also struggled with obesity during his early years. One tactic he tried was a low sodium diet. He suffered through bland food and feeling miserable constantly, and still got no results. Why? Because sodium intake doesn't significantly affect fat loss.

For something a little less obvious, you can go to the gym day in and day out, feel exhausted when you leave, sore the next morning, but unless you're incorporating meaningful progression and have your diet in check, it's not going to do thing for you.

Focus on sustainability.
By this, I mean two things primarily. Build habits, and maintain.

One question I see a lot is, "How do you motivate yourself to go to the gym all the time?" My answer: I don't. Why am I going to the gym today? Because it's Wednesday, and that's what I do on Wednesdays.

For me, it was pretty easy to build the habits initially. I genuinely like weightlifting, so getting into it was easy. But, of course, that's not the case with everyone. Not all hope is gone, though. The number one thing I can recommend is finding an activity that you like. It doesn't necessarily have to take place in a gym. Ride your bike, walk your dog, sign up for dance classes or a kickball league.

One tool which helped me as well was Fitocracy. Fitocracy is a workout tracker that also works like a game, giving you points for the workouts you do. It adds a fun element to exercise, which can definitely help get a new person started.

There are also plenty of tricks you can find to help out. My personal favorite, if you want to go to the gym after work, pack all your gym gear, bring it to work, and start drinking your preworkout before you've left the parking lot. By doing all those things, I feel like I've already committed to going to the gym that day. One thing that Terry Crews suggested, that I thought was interesting: Go to the gym, but don't work out. Just focus on building the habit of physically going there first.

As for maintaining, here's an unfortunate statistic: Approximately 80% of people who lose a significant amount of weight regain within a year. I can tell you, this has happened to me more than once. As you approach your goals, you have to develop a maintenance plan.

I believe that part of developing a successful maintenance plan is starting from a sustainable fitness plan. People who go on crash diets seem to be the worst about regaining weight. I read an article recently about contestants from The Biggest Loser. Once they were removed from an environment where they were surrounded by nutritionists and trainers, and were able/forced to train several hours a day, and free of life's other stresses and responsibility, the whole house of cards came down, and they have overwhelmingly regained weight.

The thing that I think helps people the most is forming a new relationship with food and their bodies. Make junk food an occasional thing, not a habitual one. Find ways to stay active. Be conscious of your portions. Be aware of when bad habits come creeping back.

Protein Pancake

Today I found out it's National Pancake Day! Apparently that means free pancakes at IHOP. All the IHOPs near me closed in the past year, though, so even if I wanted them I couldn't get them. So, instead, I'm bringing you the pancake recipe I've been using. Whole foods, high in protein, and it actually tastes decent.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup instant oatmeal
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 cup 1% cottage cheese
• 1.5 servings (3 floz) liquid egg product (Egg Beaters, or similar)
• Nonstick spray
• Sweeteners/Fillings (see below)

Heat a nonstick skillet over medium heat, and lightly spray with nonstick spray. In a food processor, grind oats to a powder, and mix in baking powder and any other dry ingredients. Add cottage cheese and egg, and any other wet ingredients until evenly mixed. Then stir in any large, chunky ingredients.

Pour the batter into the pan, and cook like you would a normal pancake. I do find these to be a bit difficult to flip, so I'll typically cook the bottom on the stove, then put it under the broiler to finish.

Macros: 3.5g fat,  31.5g carbs (3g sugar, 4g fiber), 19.5g protein.

Sweeteners and Fillings (Optional)
You can get creative here, but a couple I've tried:

• Cinnamon roll: 1 T cinnamon, 1 T splenda, 1/2 t vanilla extract. This is good with raisins or dried cranberries.
• 1/4c blueberries, fresh or frozen
• 1 T unsweetened cocoa, 1 T splenda.
• I will soon be trying this with PB2.
• Skip the sweeteners, add some salt, and use it as a pizza crust or other savory-type bread.

Engineering Your Body: Macrobatics and Linear Algebra

One thing I've always been skilled at is looking at problems, finding out ways to represent them numerically, and then solving them. As a mechanical engineering student, I've become a lot more proficient at it. So I'm bringing you the Engineering Your Body series, about how to streamline your fitness with a bit of math.

The following scenario is not uncommon: I come home from school, and during the ride home I've been thinking about dinner. I have 18g fat, 44g carbs and 60g protein left in my macro allowance. I feel like eating something vaguely Mexican tonight, so I've decided on some chicken breast, brown rice and guacamole. The question of the day is, how do I decide how much of each to eat?

That's where linear algebra comes in. Linear algebra is a field of math that's primarily focused on solving systems with multiple equations with multiple variables. What I'm going to focus on now is pretty basic, it's actually stuff I've been doing since 8th grade, but using some tools to make the whole process easier.

So, first we collect our foods and read the labels.
Chicken breast (4oz/112g): 2g fat, 0g carbs, 24g protein
Brown Rice (0.25c/42g): 1g fat, 32g carbs, 3g protein
Guacamole (2T/30g): 4.5g fat, 2.5g carbs, 1g protein

First, you set up your system of equations. Using C to represent a serving of chicken, R for a serving of rice, and G for a serving of guacamole, you get

Fat: 2C + 1R + 4.5G = 18
Carbs: 0C + 32R + 2.5G = 44
Protein: 24C + 3R + 1G = 60

Which, converted to matrix form, looks like this:

Now, I'm guessing that unless you've taken a fair amount of college level math, that baffles you a bit. That's ok. You'll notice in the first matrix, each column represents a different food, each row represents a different macro. All we have to do is convert that to an augmented matrix and perform Gauss elimination. I'll teach you how to do that, even if you have no idea what that means.

Step 1: Go to http://www.WolframAlpha.com
Step 2: Enter the following formula: rowreduce[{{F1, F2, F3, FT}, {C1, C2, C3, CT}, {P1, P2, P3, PT}}]

Where F1 is the grams of fat in ingredient 1, CT is your target carbs... I'm sure you can figure the rest out. For my example, my input was rowreduce[{{2,1,4.5,18},{0, 32, 2.5,44}, {24, 3, 1,60}}]

Step 3: Read the results.

The ones and zeroes on the left are what's called an identity matrix. You can ignore that for the time being, it's the column on the right we care about. What it tells us is, from top to bottom, how many servings of chicken, rice, and guacamole I should be consuming. So, looks like what I need is about 9oz chicken, 50g rice, and 5.5 T guacamole.

Now, to address a couple weaknesses in the system. For one, it only can calculate exactly 3 ingredients: 1 per macro. If you wanted to add extra parameters in there like fiber or sugar, you could add extra ingredients. My personal recommendation is just to pick ingredients off the list, add whatever quantity you deem appropriate, and then subtract it from your target macros. Maybe I want to add some cheese to this.

 Shredded Cheddar (0.25c/28g): 8g fat, 1g carbs, 6g protein.

I've decided that I want 1 serving of cheese. So, my new target macros are 10g fat, 43g carbs, and 54g protein.

If you're good with linear algebra, you can do this by hand and come up with a family of solutions: Basically meaning that there's no single answer, but that how much of one ingredient you use is dependent on how much of other ingredients you use. It's basically the same thing I suggested before, but a little more systematic.

Second thing is, you have to pick ingredients that you reasonably think you actually can fill your macros with. I picked some easy ingredients: chicken is high in protein, rice is high in carbs, guacamole is high in fat. But, hypothetically, let's take rice out and replace it with cheese. Our new results look like this.

The fact that one of the answers is negative means you can't make these ingredients work. Basically, guacamole has become our primary carb source. To get enough carbs from the guacamole puts us way over our fat target, so you have to compensate by eating negative cheese. I don't know about you, but I can't just vomit cheese at will.

Basic Strength & Mass Program

With regard to the popular barbell programs that are out there like Starting Strength and Stronglifts, this is one of the things I have definitely changed on. Earlier, I would preach that low rep strength training was the end all be all of fitness, which I've come to realize is definitely not the case. Don't get me wrong though, these aren't bad programs. They do have their place. For an athlete looking to get stronger, they're great. And there is a beauty in their simplicity, that a beginner can do these programs with minimal guidance. However, for a person who wants to look better, I think they're lacking. So, I took what I liked about these programs, tweaked it, and combined it with something similar to the triumvirate accessory scheme from 5/3/1.

So, here is Mephysteaux's Basic Strength & Mass Program.

Workout A:

• M1: 3x5 barbell squat
• M2: 3x5 barbell bench press
• M3: 3x5 barbell row
• A1: 3x10 leg press
• A2: 3x10 incline dumbbell bench press
• A3: 3x10 one arm dumbbell row
• Optional ab exercise

Workout B:

• M1: 1x5 sumo deadlift
• M2: 3xF chin up
• M3: 3x5 barbell overhead press
• A1: 5x3 sumo deadlift (with emphasis on speed/power)
• A2: 3x10 lat pulldown
• A3: 3x10 dumbbell overhead press
• Optional ab exercise

The Structure
These two workouts should be alternated 3 days a week. So, week 1 is AxBxAxx, week 2 is BxAxBxx. Repeat as necessary.

Each workout has two groups of lifts: main (M) and accessory (A). Exercises that share numbers in the same workout are related in what muscles they work, and will also be related in the weights used for them.

Rest 2-3 minutes between sets on main lifts, 45-60 seconds for accessory lifts.

For each main lift, you'll determine a working weight. Your sets will go something like this:

• Warmup
• Set 1: 80% of working weight
• Set 2: 90% of working weight
• Set 3: Working weight
• Then, when you do your accessory lift, use 50% of your working weight. The exception to this is leg press. I recommend leg pressing 1.5 times your working weight on squat.

If you successfully complete all your sets, then move your working weight up 5lbs next session. If you fail reps for 3 sessions in a row, take a 10% deload.

What changes I made, and why

• Reduced the volume on squats from 3x/week to 1.5x/week. Once you get into heavier weights, squatting that much, and deadlifting on the same day, I think will rob your performance on deadlift.
• Replaced traditional deadlift with sumo. For one, sumo better activates the glutes and hamstrings. The main reason, though, is safety. After injuring my back doing traditional deadlifts, I just won't do them anymore with anything approaching my max. Sumo makes it a lot easier to keep for back straight, which I think is especially important for a newer lifter who might not realize when his back is rounding. I know I was guilty of that.
• Added chin ups in place of the missing squat. Barbell rows, in my opinion, are a good back exercise, but don't hit the lats and biceps as hard as the writers of these programs say.
• Switched to a ramping weight progression. I personally have found that I can lift heavier weights if I ramp up to it, and don't have to sustain that weight for several sets.
• Added the accessory lifts. I found my muscle development was a lot better when I did this, particularly in the chest which I don't think gets worked hard enough just with dumbbell bench press. I've also found that, with low rep lifting, you can easily fail reps with some energy left in the tank, adding the higher reps helps you expend some more effort without totally burning out.
• Reduced the volume from 5 sets/exercise to 3. This is to account for the added accessories, both so you don't overload on volume, and so you don't have to spend forever in the gym.

Optional Changes 

• Once a week (I typically did this on Fridays) replace one accessory lift with an isolation lift. Typically, I would swap incline bench press for machine fly, and lat pulldown for dumbbell curl. I personally think that legs, back, and triceps get hit hard enough as is, and don't really need any additional work.
• The 5x3 deadlifts are meant to develop power off the ground. If you feel so inclined, they can be replaced with deficit deadlift or power clean.
• Ab exercises: I never did these, and now that I'm lean enough to have some abs, I regret it. Right now I'm cycling between decline crunch, ab wheel rollout, and vertical leg raise as my main ones.

A Nu Start

"1. Novice idiot is convinced to read "starting strength", trains for a few months, experiences gains
2. Novice idiot considers himself an expert, pitches the gospel to unsuspecting and desperate minds"
-Segugio

Realizing that this blog still got traffic, I went and deleted some of the old posts for basically the reason stated above. I, basically, was the novice idiot he describes. Except I did Stronglifts. I've decided to restart this blog, partly because unbeknownst to me it's still getting traffic, and partly because I've gotten to a point where I actually can form my own opinions about fitness, and think this is a good platform for them.

So, a little about myself. I started my current fitness journey in 2011: 6 feet tall, 24 years old, 280lbs. Early on I joined Fitocracy, and within a few months I was a forum moderator, which is why I initially started this blog: to share my "knowledge" with people without forum access. And by that I mean I got information from internet people who I trusted, and spread it as infallible truth. However, in the past several years of experimenting with different diet and training methods, I've discovered some things.

• Something that works for you might not work for everyone.
• Something that works for you now might not (probably will not) work for you forever.
• Something that would work for you probably will not if you execute poorly.
• Just because something works for you, doesn't mean something else would not. In fact, that something else might work better.

That said, I come from a more humble standpoint this time around. I've made mistakes and wasted a lot of time as a result. The information I provide here, generally, has been my personal experience. I encourage readers to consider my ideas, but also to go out and talk to people who have done what you're trying to do, and see what worked for them. If you disagree with my ideas, then feel free to post them.