This was supposed to be tips on health. It is now an enormous rant on body-image, strength, and general spartan disposition. With love, of course.
Don't look at the fucking scale every day. That's tip #1.
Seriously. It's only going to cause aggravation and stress and lead to further damage. Remember, it's not only the physical state that must be conditioned but the emotional one as well. And if you are like me and live in the most elitist city on the planet (NYC) body-image is everything.
Water accumulation (both cellular and liquid intake, i.e. a bottle of water is about 1 lb sitting in your intestines), sodium intake spike (even as little as 500mg over translates to an extra pound the next day), carbohydrate intake, even fucking potassium. All of these tiny fluctuations can result in positive or negative changes in weight. Do not let this bring you down. It is only temporary and any real change in your body chemistry will be seen over time through strength and resistance benchmarks.
For me it's always like this:
Day 1 - oh fuck I'm up a pound this is bullshit I just suffered for three godamn hours
Day 2 - what the fuck man WHAT THE FUCK MAN ANOTHER POUND UP?
Day 3 - I'm going to kill myself two fucking pounds man? FUCK WHY THE FUCK *resist urge to eat feelings keep fighting*
Day 4,5,6 - I'm not even looking, fuck this.
Day 7 - Wow. I'm down 1.5 from Day 0. Silly anxiety.
Every single week. For the past 9 months and 55 lbs now.
In short: fuck the scale.
Tip #2 Do some nutritional math and find out more about your body.
Get on Google. Search for 'basal metabolic rate calculator' and get your BMR. If you are overweight by 15-20% or more deduct at least 750-1000 calories from that shit, dog. This is your new daily caloric intake limit.
Sally is 5 feet 5 inches tall.
She is sedentary (her job is sitting down somewhere, not a construction worker jack hammering shit somewhere)
Knowing this and putting it into a BMR calculator, we figure out her BMR is 1514.3 calories a day. Sally's body uses this to perform daily surviving.
However this is not fully her Daily Need as that number is only for survival. I mentioned before she was sedentary (pretty much every human outside of manual labor is). So according to the Harris-Benedict formula for figuring out daily needs; sedentary is a 1.2 multiplier.
1514.3 x 1.2 = 1817.6 Daily Calories.
1817.6 is her daily maintenance calories. If she eats this number daily, she will maintain her current weight.
Sally is 150 lbs and at 5'5" her BMI (Body Mass Index) is around 25. She'd like to be at say 18% for that svelte look so she needs to drop around 20 lbs.
From those 1817.6 daily calories, subtract 500.
Her new daily caloric limit is 1317.6
This is pretty damn low but doable. Mixing in a workout routine that burns 500 calories a day (High intensity interval training with a bit of strength training = 45-60 minutes a day) and she will have a nice fat deficit of around 750 calories daily. This translate to around 4000-4500 calories burned a week. Or about 1lb a week. She could make that 20 pound goal in about 5 months. Nice and healthy while packing on good muscle depending on what she eats.
We only covered quantity; now we will cover quality.
Tip #3 Watch your godamn macro-nutritional values
Sally has 1317.6 calories to eat a day (plus whatever calories she burns off). For her to lose fat and not lose muscle she has to eat a higher ration of protein/carbs to fat.
Say she burns 500 calories on Monday. Her maximum intake on Monday is 1817.6. Ideally 50% should come from protein. 30% from Carbs. And 20% from fat.
Lean chicken breast, lean fish, lean meats in general. Nothing deli-sliced (that shit is cured in brine = crazy salt), nothing canned, nothing bought anywhere that's not killed recently.
Good fats only. Avocado. Brazil Nuts. No peanuts. No oil. (Coconut if you must) No bacon. (Only on cheat day and for breakfast only) No fucking bacon. No bad shit. No fast food.
No sugary drinks, my niggas. No sodas. No orange juice. Seriously. That shit has 40+ grams of sugar PER SERVING. No juices of any kind. Unless they are fresh squeezed and even then limit to one cup a week maximum. You really don't need the sugar. Coffee limit to twice a week max. Better to have green tea all the time.
Eat when your body is hungry. Most of the time it's only just thirsty. Hydrate like a beast. Your body weight in fluid ounces every fucking day. Every single day. Let me repeat. Every single day.
Avoid all processed anything. No white flour. No white pasta. No useless american garbage. Brown rice only. For men, avoid whole wheat breads and pastas. Shit promotes estrogen. Avoid soy products as well.
Drink two table spoons of apple cider vinegar mixed with 4oz. of water daily. Take one table spoon of cod fish oil for that excellent Omega-3 fat that nobody ever meets. Juice like a motherfucker in the mornings.
Take some Kale, some ginger, some lemons, cucumbers, carrots, an apple, and a beet. Put that shit in a magic bullet. Drink the whole damn thing. Your body will love you for it. It will do wonders for your poor sagging american metabolism.
Finally Tip #4 Right now download MyFitnessPal.
Seriously. You want to lose weight? Download that app right now. You will be amazed at how much shit you are actually consuming once it is all right there in front of your face. How easily your sugar/carb/sodium/saturated fat limits are obliterated while you thought you were 'eating healthy'. DO IT. DO IT. DO IT.
I've lost 55 lbs over the past 7 months and I've gained nearly 15 lbs of muscle on a 1840 daily caloric cut. I burn around 1250 calories a day. My weight loss should have been much more but I am an endomorph so I gain fat as easily as I gain muscle. Plus I've never given a flying fuck about my health before so my metabolism took a while to start speeding up.
But now? I wake up every day at 6AM to train for three hours straight in an iron boxing gym and I have extremely high levels of energy even during the crazy muscle fatigue that follows after.
The struggle is real and being a witness to it, I feel compelled to share what I have learned.
Everyone should know what their bodies are capable of before they die. Everyone should be able to love who they are.
Life is much too short and much too cruel for one to despise the frame they walk in. If you don't like what you see; destroy it; utterly destroy whatever weakness disgusts you and rebuild something beautiful on top of it.
It is only through your own strength and effort that you give the aspect of beautiful to something you previously could not have fathomed would ever be such.
I am a firm believer in body-positive thoughts and perspectives but I do not condone what I call 'body-static' thoughts and attitudes.
At least not since I discovered what the hell happens when you get off your ass and do something about it.
I always hear this phrase. 'Love who you are.' Who you are? Who you are is a strong and beautiful biological specimen of millions of years of evolution. Most of us do not showcase this unbelievable phenomenon of evolutionary perfection. The human body is an amazing machine capable of incredible feats. The sad truth is most of us simply waste its potential away.
'Who you are' is not who you are 'right now'. And one should strive to change this rather than to simply accept the current status quo.
Risking the ire of all body-progressives everywhere I will say this: I have hated myself for as long as I can remember and it was only through utter agony that I have begun to feel the slightest tinge of appreciation for my body and its strength. I despise the weakness I allowed to infect me and I strive to tear it away from me breath after breath. It is truly, now, only a matter of time.
My life was changed with a simple sentence, my friends.
"Every man (and woman) should know the measure of their strength before they die. Everyone should know their own incredible capacity. It is a gift rarely taken."
I know many wonderful and beautiful people who struggle and suffer through body-image issues; who sincerely limit their own light due to a dysphoric inability to approve of their own right to be happy about how they look. Beautiful people, truly amazing individuals, who are constantly living in a state of repetitive fear and anxiety. This is not right and this is not fair. This rant is for you as much as it is a reminder for me.
Believe you can and you will. I swear, you will.
It works. It really works. The journey is not impossible. It is a day at a time.
You just have to do it. Make the decision every single day to just do it. Think of your future self. Think of how strong you will feel. That burger or those chips will do nothing for you. Eat that chicken. Run that extra mile. Fight the extra round. Because when you stand in front of that god forsaken mirror; your muscles and your frame will scream back your own determination to you. When you send that 250 lb. bag flying upwards with a punch you never thought you could ever accomplish. That's poetry. When your feet and your legs feel light as air and you jump rope 10 rounds straight. That's poetry. When you can't breathe, you can't see, you can't fucking feel anything and you see yourself moving in synchronization with your opponent who is now losing; THAT'S FUCKING POETRY. WHEN YOUR HEART IS ROARING AND YOU ARE DOING THE IMPOSSIBLE AND YOU SWEAR YOU HAVE NEVER MOVED SO BEAUTIFULLY THAT THIS STRENGTH ONLY EVER BELONGED TO THE PERFECT AND THE OTHERS;
Make the sacrifice. Swallow your pride. And fight.
If you don't, I'll keep ranting until you do.
