Ever have one of those days?

I'm Offended

This is the latest Thinking Athiest Podcast.
It's a great one and certainly much food for thought.
Take a listen. I thought it was very much worth my time.

I'm Offended

Oklahoma takes the cake!

There are always strange things going on around us, but Oklahoma has reached a new low for setting the bar. If this doesn't make you shake your head in disbelief, you have definitely fallen asleep.

Oklahoma GOP wants to restrict marriage to people of faith

I can't say enough about this terrific video, so I won't. Watch it yourself.

I don't know any women who aren't in at least five categories, and I don't any women who are in none (and wouldn't want to).

10 Women Christian Men Shouldn't Marry

3,500 Calories To Lose A Pound, Revisited

by Tom Venuto  social-right post-social-media

Almost everybody has heard that there’s 3500 calories in a pound of fat, so if you create a negative energy balance of 3500 calories in a week, you lose a pound of weight. Create a negative energy balance of 7000 calories (deficit) in a week and you tip the scale to a two pound weight loss and so on, right?

Dr. Kevin Hall, an investigator at the National Institute of Health in Bethesda has done some interesting research about the mechanisms regulating human body weight. He recently published a research paper in the International Journal of Obesity that throws a wrench in works of the “3500 calories to lose a pound” idea…

Some of the equations in his paper gave me a headache… but despite the complex formulas he used to come to his conclusions, the article contained a lot of simple and very practical tips you can use to properly balance your caloric intake with output, fine tune your calorie deficit and help you retain more muscle when you diet.

Below, I’ve distilled some of the information into a simple bullet-point summary that any non-scientist can understand, and then I wrap up with my interpretation of how you can apply this:

Calories required to lose a pound and fine-tuning your caloric deficit

1). 3500 calories to lose a pound has always been the rule of thumb. However, this 3500 calories figure goes back to research which assumed that all the weight lost would be adipose tissue (which would be ideal, of course). But as we all know (unfortunately), lean body mass is lost along with body fat, which would indicate that the 3500 calorie figure could be an oversimplification.

2). The amount of lean body mass lost is based on initial body fat level and size of the calorie deficit

Lean people tend to lose more lean body mass and retain more fat. Obese people tend to lose more body fat and retain more lean tissue(revealing why obese people can tolerate extremely low calorie diets better than already lean people).

4). Very aggressive low calorie diets tend to erode lean body mass to a greater degree than more conservative diets.

 5). Whether the weight loss is lean or fat gives you the real answer of what is the required energy deficit per unit of weight loss.The metabolize-able energy in fat is different than the metabolizable energy in muscle tissue. A pound of muscle is not 3500 calories.A pound of muscle yields about 600 calories.

6). If you lose lean body mass then you lose more weight than if you lose fat. If you create a 3500 calorie deficit in one week and you lose 100% body fat, you will lose one pound. But if you create a 3500 calorie weekly deficit and as a result of that deficit,lose 100% muscle, you would lose almost 6 pounds of body weight!(of course, if you manage to lose 100% muscle, you will be forced to wear the Dieter’s Dunce cap).

7). If you have a high initial body fat percentage, then you are going to lose more fat relative to lean, so you will need (and can use) a larger deficit to lose the same amount of weight as compared to a lean person!

8). Weight loss typically slows down over time for a prescribed constant diet (the “plateau”). This is either due to the decreased metabolism mentioned above, or a relaxing of the diet compliance, or both (most people just can’t hack aggressive calorie reductions for long).

9). Progressive resistance training and or high protein diets can modify the proportion of weight lost from body fat vs lean tissue (which is why weight training and sufficient protein while on calorie restricted diets are absolute musts!)

So, based on this info, should you throw out the old calorie formulas? Not necessarily. You can still use the standard calorie formulas to figure out how much you should eat, and you can use a 500-1000 calorie per day deficit (below maintenance) as a generic guideline to figure where to set your calories to lose one or two pounds per week respectively (at least on paper anyway).

Even better however, you could use this info to fine tune your caloric deficit using a percentage method and also base your deficit on your starting body fat level, to get a much more personalized and effective approach:

15-20% below maintenance calories = conservative deficit

20-25% below maintenance calories = moderate deficit

25-30% below maintenance calories = aggressive deficit

31-40% below maintenance calories = very aggressive deficit (risky)

50%+ below maintenance calories = semi starvation/starvation (very risky / potentially unhealthy)

Usually, we would suggest starting with a conservative deficit of around 15-20% below maintenance. What this research  is saying, is that there can be big differences between lean and overweight people in how many calories they can or should cut.

If you have very high body fat to begin with, the typical rule of thumb on calorie deficits may underestimate the deficit required to lose a pound. It may also be too conservative and you can also probably use a moderate to aggressive deficit more safely without as much worry about muscle loss, metabolic slowdown, etc.

The long and short of it is that its not quite so simple as 3,500 calories being the deficit to lose a pound. Like lots of other things in nutrition vary from person to person.

Victor Buono

As I work on getting in shape and shaving off a few pounds, I am reminded of the actor, Victor Buono, I was a big fan of his early on. He made a lot of character parts in movies, but is just as well known for his King Tut character in the original Batman TV series. He was always a very large guy and at one point, he made an album called Heavy. It was a parody of himself and fat people in general. Quite creative and original.

One of his more famous pieces was The Fat Man's Prayer. Have a listen and enjoy.

The new me... in progress

Yeah, I know... I've said this before, but this time it's for real, really, I'm not kidding.
I've been working on this for a while, but although I've given it a fair shot, I haven't been consistent. I haven't found the ability to push myself to the edge where real improvement actually begins. As time has passed and I was experiencing little or no improvement, I decided that it was time I call in the big guns.

Being at the vintage I am, I realize I am going to get few chances to still get the body I knew was inside and trying to get out. I looked for a trainer that could see the same potential and would push me the way I used to push myself.

The person I found is just the guy to do the job. We met prior to starting and had a long chat, and I instantly knew that I had found who I was looking for. We actually have a number of things in common, and he thinks the way I do about setting and accomplishing goals. 

His name is Danny and from the first visit, I knew my workouts were never going to be the same. He is dedicated, persistent, always positive, and he laughs at my crummy jokes. He is also doing his best to squeeze every last ounce of effort out of me.

We have been at it for only three weeks, but so far in this short time, but he has extracted more total results out of me than any previous trainer I have worked with, for any length of time. 

We are still early in the process, but if the first few weeks are any indication, I am finally on the right road. Danny sent this out (PHYSICAL FITNESS IS NOT ABOUT WORKING HARD, IT'S ABOUT WORKING RIGHT!), and it certainly typifies his attitude and work ethic, and I'm glad I found him.

Let's see how it goes. When there is something to report, I'm going to be pleased to let you know. 

Cheers,

6 Steps to Change Your Life for the Better

by John C. Maxwell

You can change your life if you really want to. You can improve it, make it better. And it all starts with changing the way you think. So are you ready? I am going to walk you through a six-step plan for achieving positive change.

Step 1: When you change your thinking, you change your beliefs. Change begins with looking into your own mind. What you believe—what you think—is a collection of continual thoughts that have formed themselves into a conviction. When you break down the process of thinking into a manageable number of steps, you can reduce the perceived risk associated with change.

Step 2: When you change your beliefs, you change your expectations. Belief is the knowledge that we can do something. It is the inner feeling that what we undertake, we can accomplish. For the most part, all of us have the ability to look at something and consider whether we can do it. So in belief there is power… our eyes are opened, our opportunities become plain, our visions become realities. Our beliefs control everything we do. If we believe we can or we believe we cannot, we are correct.

Step 3: When you change your expectations, you change your attitude. Your expectations are going to determine your attitude. Most people get used to average; they get used to second best. Nelson Boswell said, “The first and most important step toward success is the expectation that we can succeed.”

Step 4: When you change your attitude, you change your behavior. When our attitude begins to change, when we become involved with something, our behavior begins to change.

Step 5: When you change your behavior, you change your performance. Most people would rather live with old problems than new solutions. We would rather be comfortable than correct; we would rather stay in a routine (rut) than make changes. Even when we know that the changes are going to be better for us, we often don't make them because we feel uncomfortable or awkward about things feeling different. Until we can get used to living with something that is not comfortable, we cannot get any better.

Step 6: When you change your performance, you change your life. Yes, a person can fail, but they can turn around and understand their failure to make it a success. But I want to tell you, a person who makes excuses for everything will never truly succeed. I promise you, when you excuse what you are doing and excuse where you are and you allow the exceptions, you will fail to reach your potential. It is impossible to turn excuses into possibilities.

Hope is the foundational principle for all change. People change because they have hope. If people do not have hope, they will not change. You are responsible for the changes that you make in your life, but the good news is, you can make the changes you need to make in your life.

Best wishes for 2015

I for one am glad to say goodbye to 2014.

Let's learn from the lessons it has taught us.