It's getting hot in herr, so get out all your toxins

The other night I did 2 things I have never done before. First, I assembled a sauna.  That of course followed something else I didn't think I'd ever do - buying my own sauna.  The second thing I did for the first time that night was use an infrared sauna.  Wow.

OK, if you're thinking I'm crazy rich if I can buy my own sauna, you're wrong.  I'm not poor, but they're far cheaper than you might think (or they can be...they can also be super expensive.  Mine is small and I negotiated like crazy for it).  As I've mentioned before, my wife is chronically ill, and her recovery is fraught with a lot of toxins being released into her body.  This makes things a lot tougher for her as she's not only dealing with her illness, but also a high level of toxins in her system. Her doctor has been pushing her to use a sauna to draw the toxins out, so between that and my back muscle pain, we decided to make the investment.

Second, if you're thinking I must be quite the handy man, you're only partially right.  I do lots of home repair/maintenance stuff myself, but this was surprisingly simple. The hardest part was getting the 400 lbs of parts up to the bedroom we were putting it in.  See, with infrared saunas, you don't need some major built in unit or ventilation system like with a traditional convection sauna with hot rocks. The unit doesn't get as hot (by 40-50 degrees F) because it doesn't need to - IR heat penetrates muscles better than ambient heat, so it does the same work with less energy and less heat (and less time).

The 15 minutes I spent at 120-122 degrees F on the first night was great.  If you've been in a sauna, and felt that heaviness when breathing, it's largely nonexistent with an IR sauna. Yes, the air is thicker and hotter, but not like you night have experienced in saunas before. It was totally bearable.  I walked out, toweled off, and felt fantastic - relaxed and loose throughout.  I went to my basement, did my back PT, and then ran for 15 minutes.  I felt really good.

Anyway, the point of this post is to suggest using a sauna for drawing toxins out, and for relaxing muscles and minds, which will heighten performance.  There are arguments that say fat loss plateaus due to toxins, so even the detox could help with hitting your physical goals.

Time to adjust your goals?

As much as having stretch goals is important, you also need to be both realistic and safe.  Just don't use those things as excuses.

Case in point - my goal.  I was gunning for 10% body fat or below after I hit my weight goal of 185 (I'm now between 175 and 180 on any given day).  I started at 19.5% body fat on July 1, 2011, and am anywhere from 11.5-12.5% now.  That's on my Tanita scale.  On my calipers (using a 3 point Jackson-Pollack method), I'm 7-8% body fat.  Tonight, I got a new scale (the Omron model I suggest in our store - it's fantastic), and it said I'm 7.7%.  So what am I?

This is a conundrum Tim discusses in the book.  They're all wrong, most likely, but the key is to be consistently wrong throughout your journey so you are at least tracking relative progress.

So here's what I'm writing about tonight.  My 10% goal for my reading on my Tanita scale may not be physically possible, or at least may be medically unsound.  Why do I say that?  Well, if the calipers and Omron are right, or close to it, I don't have much fat to lose before getting down to where 'healthy' ends, and 'too low / danger' begins.  For my age and height, this is probably around 6% based on everything I can find.

So, if I have about 2% to lose according to the Tanita scale, then, even if it's half right, that puts me pretty low on the calipers and Omron.  In fact, I was 7% on the Omron earlier tonight - just reinforcing this message.

I've been holding back on abandoning my goal because I would be left goal-less, and feeling like I gave up.  However, I'm damn fit.  Sorry, but it's true.  Relatively speaking (relative to where I was and where most 33 year olds are), I'm damn fit.  Am I Lance Armstrong?  No, not in the slightest.  But I'm very fit.  So is it so bad to walk away?  No.

Then again, I'm not walking away.  I have a goal of running my first race this summer (only a 5K, but you must start somewhere, and it's still more running than I've ever done in my life).  I also have a goal of maintaining my fitness level.  I also have a goal of keeping on this program to the 1 year mark before allowing myself any adjustments.  None of these things is trivial, and they're all healthy.  If I push to burn more fat than would be wise, I'd be jeopardizing all I've achieved.  I think it's time to back off that goal, which I made with imperfect information.  If I get there naturally, that's fine, but I am not going to try to get there purposefully.  I'm going to try to stay healthy, fit, active, and on top of my dietary health - as I have been - and will keep making myself happy and proud with what I've done and maintained and the example I'm setting for my son.

I should be feeling dejected by this conclusion.  I'm not.  I'm empowered by it because I'm not scared of what will happen.  If I was not in the mental place I've come to, I'd be scared, and I'd be starting a reverse or downward slide.  Not now.  I have a new mind, and it started with a new body.

How about you?

My first time w/ Principle 2: "Pay what you weigh"

My first experience with newbodi.es Principle 2 came when I was 8 years old, and was sleeping over my friend Robb's house.  His mom took us to The Ground Round for dinner (I think they may be bankrupt and out of business now, but it was a lower quality, worse for you, less gimmicky version of Applebees or Chilis back in the day that basically just slathered cheese and/or BBQ sauce on every dish).  They ran a promotion where kids could eat for the low low price of one cent per pound. As 'the fat kid', I was mortified of the idea since I failed to realize that, to parents, it was just about a super cheap meal even if paying for a big kid like me.  My friends all earned their parents some change if they paid with a oner.  To cover me, you needed a five spot, or perhaps a buck and some loose change.

The wait staff would come out with a scale when it was time to bring the bill and weigh each kid and make it known to everyone around.  I hated it.

See, I hated it because it was embarrassing.  I was something I didn't want to be, and didn't want people to see it anymore obviously than they could by looking at me. I didn't want the number out in the open like the then it was so much higher than other kids'.

This hate is good, though I didn't appreciate or benefit from it at the time.  I just didn't understand it or its power back then.  I now use this hate as a form of motivation.  Instead of weigh-ins, I post very actively on Facebook and Twitter about my personal project and my metrics.  I also use a great service called Stickk that a friend put me onto where you state your goals, assign a referee to help keep you honest, and you can even put money on it.  Essentially, it's 'pay what you don't weigh' since you pay up when you don't hit your mark.

So, this is what Principle 2 is all about - go public.  Create social pressure to deliver what you want to deliver for yourself.  Create risk that you will be embarrassed or look bad if you fail.  Failing yourself is upsetting enough, but how many people have tough talks with themselves about how they're going to do better - eat smarter, exercise, etc - but never do.  I'll be the first to admit that I probably had 30 of these with myself each year since I was like 11.  No joke.  They never worked.

So, start posting, and then stop disappointing yourself and all those who are now looking at you to deliver.  You can do it.

Q: I'm so hungry by the time I get home, it's been really hard

Q: I'm so hungry by the time I get home, it's been really hard to stay on the diet.

A: That is simple - you're not eating enough during your meals.  We are conditioned to believe that eating too much (or enough) is the root of all evil when trying to lose weight (or, more accurately, eating a lot along with eating fat).  This just isn't true.  It's not quantity, it's quality.  In fact, to be more precise, you need high quantity of high quality.  Drop one of those two, and you have problems.

Tim Ferriss discusses this a few times.  The way he sees it - and I totally agree - is that you aren't eating enough during your meals if you find yourself hungry or needing to snack.  He isn't a subscriber of the "3 meal + 2 snack" approach, and would recommend bigger meals instead.  Having stuck a subcutaneous glucose monitor in himself for a month or so, he saw that you don't actually need the snacks to keep metabolism going the way people say you go.  Since snacking is not valuable for stimulating metabolism, Tim sees hunger that drives snacking more as sign of your fuel intake being far too low to cover your work effort.  He reminds readers that their new diet is lower in energy than their old one, so they need to ramp up volumes - a cup of kale doesn't have the same fuel as a cup of oatmeal.

For me, I follow a 3-4 meal approach (depending on how much time and access to good food I have during the 3 meals, I'll add a fourth), but I also listen to my body if I'm hungry, and adjust my meal intake or I do have a snack that's within the rules to get me to my next meal when the previous one wasn't sufficient.  In that next meal, I'll go overboard on the good stuff to be sure I'm good and full.

It's funny, I don't recall being so full so often in my life...and certainly never being so full on tasty food where I consistently lose weight and fat.

The good stuff to load up on are mainly cruciferous veggies - broccoli, spinach, kale, baby broccoli (which is a hybrid of kale and broccoli), chard, etc.  It all sautés nicely, goes well in soups, omelets, fritadas, etc. But throwing in an egg, or a cup (or two) of lentils is a fantastic idea. Lentils are amazing.  Super rich in protein, filling, and can be very tasty (they take seasoning well when cooking them).

A suggestion I'd make is to eat your 3 squares according to the rules, but for the first week or two, try adding a mid-afternoon salad.  A big salad.  Try getting a hard boiled egg in there.  I did this for the first two weeks, and it really helped.  And sprinkle some chia seeds on it.  Then, before bed, do what Tim suggests - have a tablespoon of almond butter or something similar to get some protein and fat in you to ride you through the night. You'll sleep better, and you may just find, like me, that your weight and fat are lower on mornings after doing that than on mornings when you don't.  I was shocked.

I started to figure out good recipes I'd want to eat that were totally within the rules and actually simple to make, which helped me make bigger meals I'd eat all of, and so now I tend to eat 3 meals instead of 4.  I'll share some in the future, but you can also download The Slow Carb Cookbook from our Resources page to get started.

The mental workout > the physical workout

If there's one thing I've really learned through my own journey, it's that getting your mind really worked out will have a bigger impact than if you disengage it from the journey your body is on. Principle 10 is to read, and I really mean that.  I'm not someone who ever liked to read, and I now have a backlog of 5 books I'm waiting to read, and am half kicking myself for picking the longest to read next since it'll keep me from the other books for so long.

The reading doesn't have to be about exercise, changing your life, etc.  It can be fun and light.  I would just suggest you balance that with something mentally engaging and stimulating that brings inspiration into your life.  For me, these tend to be business books (and usually about the car industry).  Two that really stand out to me that truly inspired me are the Steve Jobs biography  by Walter Isaacson and American Icon about how Ford turned itself around under Alan Mullaly by Bryce Hoffman.  I just finished the latter - such a great book.  It really has me thinking a lot about my own work situation and performance, and how my organization can be better.

And that's the key - I'm thinking about bettering something. That's what newbodi.es is all about, and why you're here in the first place.  It doesn't just have to be to lose weight. Remember, newbodi.es helps people change their minds and lives starting with their bodies.  Notice the word choice, "starting with..." not, "by only addressing..." or, "only engaging..."  That's crucial.

So, some non-body books I'd recommend are those two, plus The Toyota Way by Jeffrey Liker, Car Guys vs Bean Counters and Guts by Bob Lutz, Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand (author of Seabiscuit - the long one I've just started) - arguably the best and most inspiring book I've ever read, and Why Smart Executives Fail, by one of the best professors I've ever had, Syd Finkelstein.  I have Born to Run in the newbodi.es store, which you absolutely have to read. It's great, inspiring, educational and a fun read.

These are what I've enjoyed. What about your? If you have a book you think could really spark some minds, let me know in the comments.

Q: Talk to me about goal setting

Q: I'm wondering what I will do when I get to the end of my goal of 30 days on the diet.

A: Good question, but that's not your goal.  There are a couple of things about goals that this statement misses, and one about 'the diet'.  Let's take them in turn:

1. Let's start with the diet part.  This - the Slow Carb Diet - isn't a diet in the misused 'Slim-Fast' sense of the word - a shake for breakfast, shake for lunch and sensible dinner.  It's diet in the true sense of the word - what you eat day in / day out to fuel your life.  Look at it that way, and ideas like '30 days on' fade away.  This is about educating yourself to eat healthier for life, and get the body you want - and maintain it - as a result.
2. Goals, to me, shouldn't be focused on grinning and bearing it, which is exactly what you are doing by saying, "30 days on the diet."  It's really saying, "I can put up with it for 30 days," as if you're holding your breath in pain at the bottom of the pool for a couple of minutes.   This is exactly what's wrong with this statement. First, when you are done with the breath holding, you gasp in a huge amount of air. In the food world, substitute air with all kinds of foods you've been avoiding, and you see why people gain the weight right back when they think this way.  Second, you're viewing the journey as a painful thing you just need to get through and be done with. That negativity will breed failure (don't forget my blog on this topic!).
3. Is this why you're 'on the diet'?  To be 'on' it?  No, of course not. You're on it because you want to transform yourself into something better.  It's not about a pair of jeans or some event you want to look good for.  Those things are fleeting and superficial. Deep down - and this takes some introspection to truly see - you want to be better for yourself.  This transformation is the goal.  As I've shared, I had weight loss targets as my initial goal, and then moved to fat loss targets once I hit (and surpassed) my weight target.  I'm now 10 lbs under my weight target. I've kept my targets fluid and challenging - yet achievable - to keep me in it and inspired to fight on for myself.

Is this '30 days on the diet' goal all bad?  No. You've hit on a really important point - we need to make things time-bound. If not, we back away from achieving them as we can keep pushing out the end date we have in our minds, and never get there. So, I like the time aspect of this, but flip the rest of it into something focused on what you really want to achieve.  While we're at it, goals must be trackable - you need to know both when you've nailed it, but also how you're doing along the way so you can course correct before it's too late.  in the diet example, you could keep a food journal, and note any cheating you did with 'on it for 30 days' meaning zero cheating (outside of cheat day, of course).

Remember Principle 4 from the newbodi.es 10 Principles to change your body & life:

set goals - near and farSet goals that both push you (longer term or ultimate goals) and motivate you with frequent achievement (short term goals). This isn't meant to be a walk in the park, nor is it meant to be unachievable. Build balanced personal challenges with clear timeframes - like I want to lose 30 lbs by the summer and 5 lbs by the end of the month. My ultimate goal was to go from 222 to 180 by year end. I did it 3 months early. My new goal is to get to 10% body fat or below. I started at 19.5%, and finished last year at 13%. I am giving myself until July 1st - the 1 year mark from when I started it all

It may all sound really obvious to you, but it isn't obvious.  And it may seem irrelevant since it's just about goal setting for yourself, but it is relevant. If it was so obvious, people would only set meaningful, inspiring goals that lead to achievement, and they don't.  If it was irrelevant, then people would perform amazingly regardless of whether they set a good goal or not.  The goal is the foundation of success - set it well and you set yourself up to really shine.

Got a goal? Share it with me, and we can talk through it. Share it with others publicly, and then you have the social pressure to reinforce your success (Principle 2).

Basically Speaking

 A friend and I met for coffee (green tea, actually) the other day, and got into the whole healthy eating / lifestyle discussion.  Turns out, he's into it, too, and a different side than I'm familiar with, so we both traded crazy, obsessive approaches.

I've been looking into what he's following - an alkaline diet to raise the body's pH from where it typically is for most Americans (which is slightly acidic).  He's flooded me with links and articles, but one really stood out as giving a great overview of the issue.  While it's light on advice or practical tips to get more alkaline (or 'base' - hence the title of this post), it gives you the info you need to understand the issue and decide if you want to pursue it, so i wanted to share it with you all.

http://www.humuhbuddhistjournal.org/Editions/June08/restore-health-printable.htm

Some key take aways:

• pH is a scale from 0 to 14, where 7 is neutral, anything under 7 is acidic, and anything over 7 is basic or alkaline - the more extreme in either direction, the more acidic or basic the pH rating
• Lower blood pH (aka more acidic blood) has been found to be associated with less than ideal health (weak immune system, fatigue, etc)
• Getting to optimal blood pH can really improve your health and well being
• The body will try its best to self-regulate to achieve its optimal blood pH of 7.35-7.45
• It does this by using base in your diet to counter the acid in your diet
• If there's insufficient base in your diet to offset the acid, your pH will go lower (be more acidic)
• This means it's important to manage the balance of acid and base in your diet so you don't go out of balance and into a more acidic state
• Test your pH to know where you stand, and adjust your balance or supplementation regime (either with a supplement or with a whole food like organic lemons squeezed into water) to improve it
• You can test your saliva, but it is highly influenced by food or liquid residue in your mouth, so testing urine is a better idea - you're gunning for 7.2 urine pH
• Ew

So, other than the pee testing, this is very good and powerful info.  I'm trying to learn more myself to see what I can do to affect a more alkaline blood pH.  I tested my saliva yesterday, and was at 6.4.  I need to test my urine, but, um, well...yeah, so anyway, I need to do that sometime.  Either way, I'm clearly too acidic.  I'm excited to share the changes I expect from getting more alkaline.