Mutare Tu Mente II: Units of Heat

Greetings! I hope everyone has been having a lovely start to the year.

In my previous blog, I talked a little bit about a little bit about those common New Year's resolutions to "lose weight" and "get in shape" - two rather vague terms that don't (in my mind) properly define the goals you may be trying to accomplish.
For instance, "losing" generally has a negative connotation. You lost the game. You lost your phone. Psychologically, people prefer the opposite of losing - either gaining or winning. But it seems like they try to create a psychologic disconnect with the term when they talk about how much they weigh. Maybe this is one of the reasons why "losing weight" can be so difficult. In most cases we associated losing with a failure of some kind, but in the case of our weight we want to succeed in losing.
So in my last blog I talked about the term "reconstitution". In a workout, generally you are doing a combination of burning fat and building muscle, and a proper combination of the two can result in positive changes on the scale and how you look.

Today I want to take a look at calories. Oh, the dreaded calorie! Calorie counting has become part of everyday life. Menus (at least in California) are required to list their calorie counts for every food item. People obsess over them.
The commonly held data is that one pound of fat holds about 3500 calories. OK, so you go to the gym and jump on the treadclimber and after a solid 30-minute workout the machine says you've burned around 600 calories. Cool, that means you only need to use the treadclimber for about 3 hours to burn one pound. Oh, but you also ate food that day (in order to survive) in excess of 1200 calories, so you better tack on another hour of stair-climbing to offset your meals.

Can you see how ridiculous (and dangerously unhealthy) this mindset is? Calories are just a basic unit of heat that comes from burning energy stores. You aren't burning calories, you are burning fats and sugars. If you think of it like a car, gasoline is the energy store and the exhaust coming out of your tailpipe are the calories (This is not scientifically accurate, I know. I'm speaking metaphorically here).
Knowing you are "burning" calories is useful only in that you know that you are also accessing the energy stored in your body's fats and sugars. It's data, and it's as useful  as the data you get when you step on a scale. It's a number you can use to track your progress.

But there is better data you can use.
The basal metabolic rate is the amount of energy your body uses when it is at rest. To pump the heart, inflate the lungs, operate the nervous system, and basically keep the body alive your body needs energy. Yep, you burn calories just by sleeping.
Without taking in more detailed data, like lean body mass and things like that, my BMR is around 2000 calories. What that means is that, without doing any activity at all, in order to keep my weight where it is right now, I would need to consume 2000 calories per day.

So without doing any activity at all, I could drop my weight by eating fewer than 2000 calories every day. At least until my BMR dropped to the caloric amount I was eating.

But let's be clear, when most people talk about dropping weight, they would like to be healthy once they reach their goal weight.
Let's go back to the treadclimber example. After a solid 30 minute workout, the machine says you burned around 600 calories. But your heart is also beating faster, your lungs are pumping more oxygen, your blood is moving quicker, and you are sweating, which is your body's way of trying to cool you down because you are running hotter than normal. A calorie is a unit of heat, right? Once you step of the treadclimber, you don't just go back to your regular everyday caloric burn, you're still giving off a lot more heat than normal. In a workout, it's not just about the calories you burn during the workout. What I think is more important are the calories you are burning when you are done.
You burned some calories in the workout, which is good. But you also put an energy spike into your BMR, which is way better. The body recognizes that you are in a heightened state of movement and starts burning energy stores to keep you going, but it doesn't stop burning energy stores just because you stopped working out. For a little while, it continues to burn energy in case you want to keep going.

There is a lot more scientific detail you can delve into if you want, and the main point I can't stress enough is to make healthy choices, but there are ways you can inject small energy spikes throughout your day to play tricks on your BMR.

Try this one every day for a week and see what happens:
Do everything exactly the same as you would normally. Eat the way you've been eating, work out the way you have (or haven't) been working out. But before eating lunch and/or dinner do twenty air squats and twenty wall presses. These are easy, low-impact moves designed to increase overall tone and balance. What's great is that by doing these, in less than five minutes you've tricked your body into thinking that you're going to need more energy than you actually do. You've placed an energy spike into your basic daily routine.
I promise that it will help.

For those that are interested in a quick BMR calculator, try this one.

Mutare Tu Mente I: Reconstitute!

Anyone who's known me for a significant length of time knows that I don't do New Year's resolutions. Instead I go on either a 2-week or 1-month detox from all the lovely vices that for the most part aren't too terrible as long as they are not abused: No alcohol, no caffeine, no smoking (though that last one gets easier and easier to stop for far longer). Woof.

This new year though, a couple people I know are going to be doing some major body reconstitution and I'm on board to help. I figure, since I'm helping I might as well jump on the band wagon. Body reconstitution is a pretty popular New Year's Resolution (most people call it weight loss), so I thought I'd blog about some of the things I'll be doing in case it'll help anyone else out on the internets with their own resolution.

The first thing I'm working on is a mindset issue. Most people who go to the gym have a certain goal weight in mind, like, "I weigh 215, but I want to weigh 185 like when I was in high school." For someone like me, that was 17 years ago. As an issue purely of time, I gained (with minor fluctuations either way) 30 pounds over a span of almost 20 years. That's a long period of time that includes hundreds of small lifestyle changes. For instance, I'm stronger in the arms and chest than I was in high school, but weaker in the legs (I'm actually much more balanced now). If I start talking about  getting back to a weight I was in high school, I don't want to lose the muscle mass I've gained in my arms and chest, so really in order to reach my "goal weight" I need to be considerably more healthy than I was in high school.
So while a "goal weight" is not a bad route to go, it may not be the best route. When a person goes to the gym, they are not only burning fat, they are gaining muscle. And if they aren't making correct diet choices and using the equipment properly, the fat they burn and the muscle they gain come in extremely inefficient amounts. This causes most people who make a New Year's Resolution to give up after a month, because they aren't losing in a matter of weeks what they've built up over decades of time.

This is why I focus on the term "body reconstitution". For practically everyone, 20 pounds of body reconstitution is an immediately noticeable "holy shit, what have you been doing with/to yourself" reaction from others. But that 20 pounds doesn't necessarily reflect the changes happening when you step on a scale.

A couple years ago, I weighed about 225, the heaviest I've ever been. It was not healthy weight, either. I decided that my goal weight should be under 200 pounds, based on height and age and profession. I worked really hard and got down to about 210 pounds, and frustrated as hell that I was plateauing there. But everyone who saw me was saying how much more healthy I looked. For a birthday, everyone bought me food or restaurant gift cards because they thought I wasn't eating enough (though I was).
What had actually happened was that I reconstituted about 25 pounds.
I lost 20 pounds of soft, blubbery fat. But I also had gained 5 pounds of leaner, harder muscle. The scale was telling me I'd only lost 15 pounds, but visually I had changed by 25 pounds, a huge difference! At the time, I figured there was either something I was doing wrong or I'd never get below 200 ever again. But really, I was doing something right, and my weight-plateauing was from some other lifestyle issues.

What I think a focus for most people (including my friends making their resolution) should be is to reconstitute 20 pounds: Burn away 15 pounds of fat and gain 5 pounds of muscle, a change on the scale of 10 pounds.
I've heard plenty of people complain that they've gone to the gym regularly for 2-3 weeks, and gave up when they saw their weight wasn't going anywhere when they stepped on a scale, and they weren't seeing any visual differences.
5 pounds of body reconstitution is not going to make a big visual splash at all, but I'm nearly positive that most of those people who were giving up had lost some amount of fat and also gained some amount of muscle. It's entirely possible to burn 2 pounds of fat in 2 weeks, which is an amazing, healthy stride! It's also entirely possible to pack on 1-2 pounds of muscle in 2 weeks, also an incredibly healthy stride. But there isn't a huge visual change and the scale says there hasn't been any change. So people get frustrated and give up.

So all you internet folk out there, consider this your step one for "weight loss". Don't think about it in terms of pure pound reduction. Think about it more about how you want to reconstitute the weight you have.

Over the next couple weeks, I want to post some of the other mindset issues that people have about health and fitness, and where I think they could be doing things better. Stay tuned...

Vilia Miretur Vulgus

"Let base-conceited wits admire vile things,
Fair Phoebus lead me to the Muses' springs." 

--Christopher Marlowe

A little less than a year ago Tom Bradac, the artistic director of Shakespeare Orange County, approached me about an interesting opportunity: He was working with Guy Roberts, artistic director of the Prague Shakespeare Festival, to bring an adaptation of Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis to Prague to perform in the Prague Fringe Festival (which is next week, crikey!). In addition to being an actor for SOC, for the past eight years I've also been the technical director for the company, in charge of facilitating all the technical needs of each production. So my initial thought was that Tom was asking me to handle the technical aspects of the show.

Wrong!

He asked me if I wanted to play the part of Adonis. What the... Hell yeah, I did!

There was just one hitch. Well, hitch-ish. I realize that self-perception nearly always differs from how others see us, but Adonis in the play is essentially a sex-object Venus throws herself at. I've never viewed myself as a sexy hunk of man-flesh. I don't see myself in the mirror and think, "yeah, I'm what the ladies want."
Granted, this is a play. It's not real, it's pretend. So actually being a sex-object isn't necessary.

But I'd be lying if I said it wouldn't nice.

So I thought that for this play, part of my process would be to examine some of the physical things about me that I felt could use some improvement and work on them. It wasn't necessary, but it also couldn't hurt right? Especially after my director told me that I'd be starting the play completely naked.
At the same time, however, we started rehearsals 6 months before the performance dates. I didn't want to undergo some crazy workout and diet regimen that would drive me batshit crazy for ten months (I started this at the end of August). When you see actors in the movies undergo those crazy workouts (like the actors in 300) they have three advantages over me: a) they are provided a trainer, b) they are paid to do it, and c) very often they can devote themselves to it like a  full-time job.
I already have a full-time job, and while it can be fairly active, it won't ever result in six-pack abs (not that six-pack abs are the goal, mind you. It's just an example. Geesh). And since I didn't want to drive myself crazy and/or miserable following a maddening diet or gym schedule, I thought to myself, what are small, achievable changes I can make that can provide the best possible results? And what I thought I would do is track my progress. So here's me in August last year:

Warning: topless fuzzy male.

You'll probably notice two things right off the bat: I need to clean my mirror and I'm pretty lousy at taking pictures. Okay, so objectively speaking, I'm not obese. There's a little jiggle in the middle and the saggy jaw has always bugged me, but really, not too shabby. So here's me today (literally today):

Now with cleaner mirrors!

Alright, so there's some visible difference! I'm a little flatter in the middle with more muscle definition through the chest and shoulders. I'm not sure what I'm doing with my neck in my profile pic, but my face is a little thinner also, it seems (though genetics will have damned me with a saggy jaw for the rest of my life). How much work did I do?

Not a whole lot, really. I took a lot of my cues from The 4-Hour Body by Tim Ferriss.
The changes I made were fairly small, but very significant. Ferriss' book mentions, quite often, the MED: the Minimum Effective Dose.

"If you need 15 minutes in the sun to trigger a melanin response, 15 minutes is your MED for tanning. More than 15 minutes is redundant and will just result in burning and a forced break from the beach. During this forced break...someone else who heeded his natural 15-minute MED will be able to fit in four more tanning sessions. He is four shades darker, whereas you have returned to your pale pre-beach self. Sad little manatee. In biological systems, exceeding your MED can freeze progress for weeks, even months." --from The 4-Hour Body [emphasis mine]

I haven't seen much change in my weight. Weird, right? I took more than an inch off the circumference of my waist, had to drill a new hole in my belt so I could tighten it more, and I jiggle a lot less when I run. When I started this project, I weighed between 212 and 215 pounds (depending on the day/scale). The last time I weighed myself (less than a month ago), I was about 207-210 (difference of scales). And I only lost about 5 pounds in 10 months? This little detail is what frustrates so many people who don't see much change in their weight when they get a gym membership.
The big difference is to focus not on weight loss but weight recomposition.

If you're interested in finding out more specifically what changes I made, drop a comment. But what's most important to me is that because these changes were small they were also easy to keep doing. So while I'm incredibly pleased in the results of my little experiment for this role, it won't stop here. There are still some small changes I would like to make (and giving up beer is not, was not, and will never be one of them), and so the improvement is on-going.

Well, I'm jumping on an airplane tomorrow to go to Prague (stay tuned for updates from that little corner of the world), but I wanted to share my little project with you for your enjoyment. If it provides a lil' bit o' inspiration as well, then that's good too.

Tempus Mutationes

So, it's September. The leaves are going to start changing, school is starting, the summer clothes are going to start disappearing, the weather is going to...HOLY FUCK it's hot!
I know, I know...Folks living in many other parts of the country and/or world are thinking, "Dude, stop your bitching." Okay, maybe not "Dude".

Anyway, Shakespeare Orange County was fairly successful this year, and I'm proud of all the work I put into it.

Set for A Comedy of Errors, designed by Yours, Truly.

Next year, we're going to be doing some different things, including taking a show on the road to Prague! The show is a staged adaptation of Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis, and I was honored to be asked to be a part of it. First I'm thinking: sweet! And then I start thinking this:

"Adonic- noun: a verse line with a dactyl followed by a spondee or trochee; adjective: of or pertaining to Adonis, physically perfect." 

And then I look down and see that my stomach is neither a verse line nor physically perfect.
Don't get me wrong, working all summer doing what I do helps keep me in relatively good shape. But there is a whole lot of by-god-room for improvement.

So, last week started the official beginning of my Adonis workout regimen. I got 9 months of disciplined diet and fitness changes ahead of me, which feels a bit daunting and a lot of hard work. Until I think about the diet and physical changes pregnant women go through in 9 months, and I realize I could probably do this.
Wish me luck.