More I learned from Japan ... SUGAR BABY!

When I lived in Japan, it gave me a lot of perspective on things I took for granted growing up. Some had to do with nutrition. I have previously talked about portion size and the speed at which you eat (chopsticks vs. fork), but this story has to do with sugar. (SUGAR BABY! is a reference to a Japanese show my daughter used to watch).

I have always enjoyed sweets. Enjoyed them too much, actually. As a youth, I would eat donuts whenever available and enjoyed it. Are there many things sweeter than a donut? Well, the first time I lived in Japan, I was in college. After being there a couple months, I went to have my first donut in Japan. The town was Kurashiki in southern Japan and they had a real live Dunkin' Donuts! I went and ordered a chocolate covered donut. I sat to eat it and I was utterly shocked. This gorgeous (presentation in Japan is top-notch) chocolate-covered donut tasted like plastic-covered pita bread. The chocolate tasted like plastic and the bread part was really bland. At least that is what I thought at the time. One thing you will notice about Japan is that super-sweet cakes or bread products are almost non-existent. A Japanese person having a donut from the US would be shocked at the level of sweetness. We dump so much sugar into things and it seems completely normal because we grew up with it.

After I lived in Japan for a year, I got used to things not being so sweet. Sometimes I would get a donut from Japan and I could actually taste the subtle sweetness of the chocolate and the donut. And it was a great treat.

Fast-forward to today and I used to think unsweetened applesauce was like water. But I eat some nearly every day in some oatmeal (one of the few meals I almost always fall back on is natural oatmeal and some unsweetened applesauce and cinnamon). Now, unsweetened applesauce tastes perfectly sweet. It is delicious in oatmeal and other recipes.

I understand it is hard to let sweets go, believe me. If you have been eating a lot of sugar, when you try to cut it out it is almost the same as giving up any drug. Your body will want it. It will crave it. These kind of cravings may be intense but they will go away. And once you get over them, you will appreciate the sweetness in things you never thought of as being sweet before. And that is going to be better for your health.

And to make my point, when I got back to the US, one of the first things I wanted was a chocolate cake. So I baked one at my parents' house and had a piece (or two). And you know what? Not only was I blown away with the sweetness, my body absolutely flipped out and I got very sick. My body was not used to spikes in blood sugar like that. That should have been a lesson I took to heart right then ... but I didn't. It took me 15 years or more to finally get it. But the sooner you understand this, the better off you will be.

A signature

If I am going to put my thoughts out there for everyone, I think I need a good signature. The first idea ...

"I have a desk job, kids, wife, pets, bills, chores, hobbies and I am fit"

Or maybe ...

"Fitness is for everyone"

"Find what motivates you"

Gotta keep thinking about this one.

It is all connected ...

Getting fit through healthy eating and exercise does more than just get your body in shape. It gets the blood circulating and gets your hormones balanced. Your body wants this and it filters into every aspect of your life.

What are the areas of your life that have improved because you started taking better care of your body?

Thinking about these things makes it easy to realize the investment in your health despite busy and hectic schedules is extremely valuable. I have a long family history of depression on my mother's side of the family. I have seen what it does to families and I have also seen what anti-depressant drugs can do to someone suffering. There are definitely people who need the medication, but I am of the belief that in my situation I will have the most control if I am first in control of my body. Exercising and keeping blood sugar levels stable is the first way to help control hormones. It has incredible benefits on mental health and I feel strongly that I can avoid depression or at least be best equipped to deal with it if I am active and eating well.

Find what motivates you. This is a huge motivator to me ... and knowing that it is all connected makes the time I set aside for intense training and planning healthy meals is more than worth it.

Leverage Your Strengths (Part 2)

Chances are good that if you are reading this blog, you have tried different programs or diets in the past. You may have had varying degrees of success, but you certainly gained a lot of perspective on how different ideas work for you. Leverage that.

If you have already achieved the perfect level of fitness you desire from a program in the past, then you already have a good idea what you need to do. Do that. Good chance you will get there again.

If you have never achieved that level (like I had), then start out my first looking at what has worked in the past. This can be a good place to start. But also take note, if what worked before only got you to a certain level, chances are good that it will take you only to that level again. When you want to get past that level, you will want to change things up and most likely increase intensity and tighten your diet.

Lets say you are a 220 pound male and your ideal weight is 180 pounds. But at your lightest when you were doing stairmaster three times a week and eating a low-fat diet, you were 200 pounds. Well if you go back on that program, I will not argue that is a good place to start. After all, you are making some good changes. And there is a good chance you can get back to 200 pounds or possibly even less. If that helps you get started, go for it. After starting with what you feel familiar with, keep reading fitness related material and tweaking what you are doing. Add weight training in there. Mix in healthy fats into your diet. Keep reading and trying to improve. Your routines will change a lot over time. If you envision having a fitness-model-type physique, you will have to do more what they do ... and they don't just do stairmaster three times a week (MOTO).

Leverage your strengths and experience. Expect ups and downs in your journey and enjoy them both.

Leverage Your Strengths

No matter who you are, you have things working for you and things working against you when you try to get fit. There will never be the perfect time to get fit. It really is an every day adventure.

Figure out what is working for you and what is working against you and plan around it. I could easily argue that me having to take the kids to and from school, finish my full-time job and maintain a happy marriage and keep my house maintained is too much for me to dedicate time to fitness. But I also have some things working for me. I happen to work at a job near a gym. My schedule is such that I have time to work out at lunch and I do not travel much at all for work so maintaining a schedule may be easier for me than someone who is traveling a lot.

Never sit around and say something like "if I was single, I would be at the gym a lot more". Well it might be true, but chances are you wouldn't prioritize fitness any more if you were single than you do now if you are making excuses. No excuses. When you say and think things like that you are defeating yourself. You are already giving yourself an out if things don't go your way. If you can't get fit, you can blame it on work or family or whatever. Look, all of those things do have an impact and can be tough, but I bet you can think of someone who has it even harder than you but still maintains good fitness. Why is that? They make time. They make it a priority and it leads to so many other wonderful benefits.

Fitness is a great investment. It enhances your entire life. Make the time.

More MOTO

My wife kids me that I make a big deal of things that are obvious. It is true. I am a bit weird that way. MOTO (Master of the Obvious).

Fitness and nutrition, if you base your knowledge on what you often read and see on the news, can be very confusing. Much of what you see is money-driven. Low carb, High carb, trans fat, target heart rate zones. All of this information has merit, but the way it is presented seems to focus more on PR than actually helping people. I would argue that if you strip back all the buzz words, the basics are obvious ... and you already know it.

Would you eat some whole foods or diet foods from a box or can? I bet you could argue that the diet bars are more nutritionally balanced and provide the exact ratios you need for optimal health. You could argue that, but what does your head tell you? Someone trying to sell you something will tell you to jump on these shakes and bars, but really, what is your body built to run?

This is just one example, but I feel like people just need to trust themselves more when it comes to nutrition. Ask anyone what their opinions on fitness are and you are sure to get an earful even if they are not even fit at all!

Be critical with what you hear. Trust yourself and you will be able to figure out what works for YOU and not someone else.

Starting Again

The feeling of "starting over" can be tough. It is different than starting anew. When you have not been fit forever and you get back into fitness, it can seem adventurous and exciting (and scary) in a way. That excitement can usually feed your desire to workout for a little while. But when you have made great progress and then take time to maintain or to even take time off (expectedly or not) and you go back to the gym, it can be a bit of a mental and physical battle.

I am going through this right now. After staging and then selling our house and moving, I had a two month period where time to get good structured workouts was sparse. I continued to eat pretty well, but I certainly was not on the solid schedule I try to normally keep.

Then when things settled down, I started back into the workout routine I had from before. But only being two months removed from the best conditioning of my life poses some interesting mental and physical challenges as I get back to work. First, I would not dare go straight back to the weight I was lifting. But I want to! Chances of injury increase because I know where I can and should be and I want to get there quickly. I miss the euphoria of meeting new goals and feeling the energy a good workout gives you. But now I feel like it is starting all over again and I don't want it to.

The important thing to keep in mind is that even though it feels new, you are way ahead of the game. And you have all kinds of new knowledge and experience to leverage from last time. And even though a lot of the original soreness will return, you are off to even better places. After a couple of weeks, it will feel normal again and you will be off to the races.

Some more on a real blog ...

"thefitnessblogger.com" is available. That could be a good name. The site will be about blogging and putting a positive message out there.

I have a life. We all do. Marriages, friends, kids, parents, jobs, hobbies, houses, investments, bills ... so much to do. Lots of responsibility and when we find free time, technology is affording us all kinds of cool stuff to do. There are a million distractions.

I don't believe we need to shun responsibility or do away with the things we enjoy the most to be physically fit. It is not about deprivation. Eating right and exercising enhances everything else we do and is the best investment we can make in ourselves. The benefits are endless and I will cover some of my experiences and let others share their ideas.

And on the topic of Japan ...

Another thing I noticed during my time living in Japan was that they eat slower. Why? In general, I think, because they eat with chopsticks. Don't get me wrong, you can eat hella-fast with chopsticks if you want to, but usually you will eat slower. I am pretty good with chopsticks and I eat slower when I eat with them. Taking time when you eat is a great way to not overeat. Your body appreciates it, too.

Judging Satiety with Your Stomach

After living in Japan for three years one of the first things I noticed when I came back to the US was the number of overweight people. This was back in 1991. There are not nearly as many overweight people in Japan. There can be all sorts of reasons for that, but one of the major ones is portion size.

Go to any restaurant in Japan and you get reasonably sized portions. Americans who go there call them small, but I would argue they are just right. This is an interesting article from CNN showing a sort of off-beat experiment where two groups were tested. One group ate soup from a normal bowl. The other group ate soup from a bowl that would secretly keep the bowl filling up from the bottom. Pretty easy to guess who ate more even though both groups reported the same level of "fullness".

http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/10/04/ig.nobels.ap/index.html

A 73% difference!!! Wow. But it is true. When you eat, judge with your stomach before judging with your eyes. Eat well and keep active.

Getting Serious About Blogging

So I think I have something valuable to share. I think I have gone through enough learning how to live lean ... and how to get there.

So what would the goal of the blog be? Help you get and stay fit. I want to provide daily inspiration and positive messages to those trying to get or stay lean. It is about the mind, about health, about providing perspective on things going on in the fitness world. It will also be about generating revenue for myself but everything I provide will be free.

Not sure what I will name it just yet, but I think I can offer enough to people to help keep them going.