Yummy Fitness

This year we have sailing trip planned to go around the San Juan islands for about 2 weeks.

I really believe that when on vacation you should have as much fun as possible, and while you’re out, you also want to keep fitness in the back of your mind. It’s important to integrate fitness into your vacation so you don’t set yourself too far back on your goals.

When on vacation it’s easy to just go crazy, eat way too much food, have a little too much of the “silly juice” and go off into “vacation crazy world.”

If you know me, you know I like to have fun while I’m on vacation, and I don’t really hold much back. In fact I often need a vacation from my vacation when I get back because we did and saw so much while we were out. But I like that.

I also like to eat a ton of great food, I like to go out to eat, and I do like to drink the “silly juice.”

So how do you integrate going buck wild crazy, truly enjoying yourself, and not setting yourself back light years on your fitness goals?

What I like to do is to experience as much as I can, so that means trying to go on great hikes, renting bikes and exploring cities/towns/islands, walking around and exploring town, etc. Basically, be adventurous, be active, and really enjoy and experience where you are!

You don’t want to spend your vacation locked up in a hotel room, or driving around in a car. Why not go smell the smells, breathe the air, go see what’s around the next corner. Keep moving.

Now, you don’t have to keep moving all day long, but at least a good part of your day could be spent moving, and having a great time while you do it.

The best part about this is that it doesn’t really feel like exercise at all because you’re just exploring, your not exercising. You’re not hiking, your enjoying nature, and the great scenery. You’re not biking just to burn calories, your enjoying the breeze, the wind in your hair, and the countryside.

Enjoy your vacation and you’re sure to burn tons of calories.

And when you burn a ton of calories, guess what… you can eat a ton of calories, and you’ll be just fine.

You might not lose weight if that’s what you’re trying to do, but you probably won’t gain weight if you’re really experiencing your vacation. And as an extra bonus you might just rev up your metabolism by eating lots of great food, so when you get back you’ll be losing weight at an accelerated pace.

If you’re trying to gain muscle, just remember that challenging hikes and bike rides can be great for those leg muscles. And remember to get lots of protein rich foods at the great restaurants you go to. Also remember that a “strategic deconditioning” period for 2 weeks is actually recommended by many muscle building programs. (Strategic Deconditioning basically means taking a rest from lifting weights so your muscles can recover, and actually are more primed for growth later. This term was created by Bryan Haycock’s Hypertrophy Specific Training, which is a great program by the way.)

Anyhow, remember to have fun! That’s the key.

I just found a video slide show I made of Lindsey and myself on our last sailing trip in September of last year. This was before we even knew we’d be making a blog, and to be honest I haven’t seen the slide show in many many months.

But I hope you enjoy watching us being silly, and maybe you’ll get some ideas of your own.

Have fun and enjoy!

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His name was Mike Mentzer (picture included below courtesy of Amazon), and he was probably one of the most controversial, and revolutionary professional bodybuilders to ever enter the sport.

Mike challenged almost every element of conventional wisdom regarding how to build muscle like the pros. And his results spoke for themselves, he held many professional titles including Mr. America in 1976, and Mr. Olympia (HeavyWeight Over 200 Pounds) in 1979.

But what made Mike so controversial?

Mike believed in that “a calorie is a calorie” and many stories have been told of Mike being backstage during bodybuilding competitions eating danishes just to torment the other bodybuilders who were on very strict diets before their shows.

Mike also did not believe that you needed to eat 2x-3x your bodyweight in protein every day to get great results.
In addition, Mike strongly believed in the “less is more” principal and his entire training philosophy revolved around training one set “to failure” (when you can’t pick up the weight any longer in good form) instead of many sets back to back resulting in hours in the gym.

Mike would only spend 3 days in the gym a week and only train 7-9 sets per workout total. This is completely backwards from many other workout programs, professional and non-professional. Most exercise programs would tell you to workout at least 3 sets per exercise and 5 exercises per day which would result in 15 sets per day.

Many professional bodybuilders would train many more than just 5 exercises and would also train 6 days a week, sometimes twice a day. This could total in 180 sets or more a week where Mike’s training only called for around 24.

Mike’s principals were deeply rooted in a training philosophy called High Intensity Training otherwise known as just HIT. But he had modified the program a bit and called it “Heavy Duty Training.”

Throughout Mike’s career he was ridiculed quite a bit for his unconventional diet and exercise practices, but no one could argue with his results. Except in 1980 during the Mr. Olympia contest, some say the judges turned against Mike to rekindle the spirit of the bodybuilding sport, after Mike lost to Arnold Schwarzenegger when Arnold suddenly came back into the sport one time again after a 5 year break.

Many people feel that Arnold was not in shape for the contest but won regardless. Mike maintained that the show was rigged up until the day he died in 2001.

Mike was definitely a controversial character, he had many counter-culture ideas, and took the elements of bodybuilding and distilled them into some of the core elements that worked well for him and others. He did not take the strict approach that many people trying to build muscle take, instead he ate the foods he wanted to eat, and he only exercised as much as he needed to get great results.

Personally, in the past I’ve followed the principals behind High Intensity Training and I’ve experienced great results. It gives results and gives you back time.

In addition, my strength really shot up very quickly by using the HIT principals.

I don’t think that everything Mike did was correct, but in the end no one is ever 100% right, and I respect Mike for speaking his mind and for being real and true to himself.

I think Mike is living proof that you can still have the life you want to live, eat the foods you want to eat, spend little time in the gym, and still get great results.

Rest in peace Mike.  

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Generally I like to get it as much food as I can organic and locally grown. It’s not always possible to do that, and with the price of food going up is actually not extremely easy to find good places to get good food that’s cheap.

Yesterday I happened to run across a really neat fruit/vegetable stand that had local and mostly organic foods and the prices were pretty reasonable, so I decided to get some groceries there. It was really a fun place to shop and I as I was going to the front counter to check out I saw that they had some little treats for sale and the treats said that they were “healthy” with all sorts of marketing around the packaging that said “feel good cookie.” It was made without wheat or gluten and only using expeller pressed canola oil and good fiber and protein and 30% of your daily value of calcium.

If you look at the back of their packaging it also said that the company was inspired to bake vegan goods by the discovery that animal products contribute to his diseases like heart disease, obesity, cancer, diabetes etc.

So from looking at all of the marketing around this “healthy” chocolate chip cookie made only from fruit and evaporated cane sweeteners you’d think that you’re doing yourself a favor and being really “healthy” by eating this.

But if you’re trying to lose weight, you’d be extremely wrong.

What they don’t tell you on the front of the package (and what you should really be careful about) is that you should always look at the nutritional information for any food, even “healthy food.” Don’t get me wrong here, this very well may be healthy choice from a strictly “nutrition standpoint” with its ingredients and it may fit in with your personal values if you are a vegan or if you can’t or don’t eat wheat products.

But what they are not telling you’ll on the front of the packaging and all their marketing is that this little “healthy” treat can dramatically set you back on your weight loss goals.

What could be so bad about such a “healthy” cookie? Well right there in the fine print of the nutritional facts this little 3 ounce cookie has 450 calories per serving it has 65 g of carbohydrates and 11 g of fat.

And although on the front of the package it brags it has “good fiber and protein” it only has 4.6 g of protein in the entire bar. Folks, that’s about 1% protein.

In other words for every 100 calories of other “stuff” inside that cookie you’re only getting 1 g of protein. That’s not what I call a good source of protein, especially when something like chicken breast has 80% or more protein. In fact most ice cream has less calories per serving and more protein than this “healthy” treat.

So be really careful what you consider to be healthy. Healthy does not always mean “good for losing weight.” Especially in this case where three of these cookies good completely bust you for the entire day for most people’s weight loss requirements.

Sometimes it’s actually better to eat some ice cream than to eat a “healthy” calorie packed cookie. And let me tell you, it’ll probably taste a heck of a lot better too!

Here’s some pictures of the “healthy” cookie next to a 5 dollar bill so you can see how “big” it was, and I also included a picture of the nutritional facts, so you can see for yourself.

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